Wormhole Cultivation [Book 2] - Chapter 70: Inside Man (Patreon)

I sped up my mind with my mental techniques and flicked my hands, throwing the heavy rings of the Generators out of my spatial pocket. My Air technique, Voice of the Wind, set them spinning without touching them, and then Double Cycle took over, sending them into a tight orbit that almost grazed the white walls.

I let them make two circuits to make sure I could hold them in such a cramped space, then activated Generators.

Black film filled the holes in the rings, and I tore it free. Two Space Discs set off along almost the same orbit, a little higher and in the opposite direction. They were smaller and weightless so that I could control them more easily.

I spread my arms and swung the Generators back into my palms, switching off the technique at the last moment, so I wouldn't cut my hands. I put the Generators away in my pocket and slowed the Space Discs down as far as I could.

Aoran followed them closely with all three eyes.

“Fascinating!” he said. “That’s enough. You can dispel the discs.”

“You do understand that these are active portals that things and techniques can be passed through?” Novak asked, and I held the discs in place in case another demonstration was needed.

Aoran was almost indignant, but answered with restraint: “Of course, Vaclav.” He took a sip of tea and put his cup down with a very slow, careful movement. “Remarkable talents have gathered under your wing. I don’t say that out of politeness: scientists, fighters, artists!”

And which one of us was an artist?

I dispelled the discs. Now that things had turned to praise, a further demonstration seemed unlikely.

“Jake, for example, has already formed a full aura at the Stage Four, held a Six in place and built this marvel of technique and technology with his own wits and hands!” Aoran looked at Novak demandingly. “If you wish to die, I respect your decision. But your disciples must live! All your disciples!”

The room went very quiet.

Novak didn’t answer Aoran. He turned to me.

“The offer still stands, Jake,” he said evenly. “I think you could bargain for not just good terms, but excellent ones. As you can see, Master Aoran will be delighted to arrange everything.”

I looked at him. Then at Aoran. For some reason, this offer seemed dirtier and more false than any of my arrangements with Novak, even the first one, when I’d had no choice and death was the price of failure.

Maybe I just had Stockholm syndrome.

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Thank you.”

Novak raised his cup as if proposing a toast and looked at Aoran with an unreadable smile.

“And I respect his decision,” he said.

Aoran touched his cup and turned it a few degrees anticlockwise, but didn’t lift it or drink.

“These things can’t do Ghaurzakh any serious harm,” he said. “You’d need more powerful generators and a user who was at least… a Six, but with his talent.” Aoran pointed at me.

Novak nodded.

“You probably already know that we lost a facility because demons our scanners considered dead and empty got into it?” Novak didn’t wait for an answer. Aoran most likely knew. “We never found the bodies for an autopsy, but we re-analysed the scanner data and found small artefacts near the core, the heart and in the horns.”

“Pockets,” Aoran nodded, “sewn into the body.”

“Do you confirm that theory?” Novak asked.

“I know they practise such things. Do you want to sew this device into your body?”

“I’m not going to go that far,” Novak replied calmly. “Jake’s Generator can be built into armour. We’ll have to sacrifice some real protection, but it will definitely fit under the breastplate. We’ve already used Portal Cannons in space. Another of Jake’s ideas!” Novak saluted with his cup again, and after that sip it was empty.

Aoran nodded to me, topped up Novak’s tea and winced.

“As far as I know, you use groups of Twos and Threes as firepower,” he said, shaking his head. “However large they are, they won’t even scratch Ghaurzakh.”

“I’m certain we can put together a group of Fives led by a Six, about thirty people. We’ll have to pull them from other facilities and leave the front exposed, but it’s worth it.

“All I need from you is advice on which type of qi and which technique is best to use. What will get through a hole the size of a saucer best, and what will hit hardest someone who, by your own words, is more energy than flesh.”

I immediately thought of Hale and Kon.

Finger and Point. At short range and high power, I’d have chosen Point. There was a better chance the projectile would get through the membrane before it fell apart. But if an Eight was no longer entirely a body, did it matter how deep you pierced?

On the other hand, a projectile was only a carrier for qi. At Yellow Pine, in the Blade Garden, they used paper discs, and nobody was allowed in without armour, because they cut flesh beautifully.

Then again, an Eight wasn’t ordinary flesh.

The xeltar stayed silent for a long time, all three eyes on Novak, looking straight through him.

Novak held that gaze with his usual composure.

“It makes no difference at all,” Aoran said at last.

Novak raised an eyebrow very slightly.

Xeltar explained: “What matters is that all the qi put into the technique passes through the membrane. A portal is a substitution of planes of reality. Qi of that density will hit the displacement itself, as if it were a wall.”

When Hale tried to put her full-power shot through a disc, the membrane fell apart before she could finish the technique, but that took a few seconds, not an instant.

“Even a Point technique concentrated around a very small, short needle?” I asked.

“The membrane will fly apart on contact,” Aoran said.

“Technically, there’s nothing there to make contact with,” I corrected him, and for the first time the xeltar let his irritation show.

“Technically, a technique of that power will simply sweep every spatial displacement out of its path!”

Well, there I had to agree. That was entirely possible.

“Something may get through in time,” Aoran went on. “Perhaps you’ll even manage to scratch Ghaurzakh, and perhaps not! Perhaps the membrane will dissipate normally, and perhaps you’ll get a violent local distortion of space.” Aoran pointed at Novak’s chest.

For some reason, I remembered how, in the portal hall of the rehabilitation centre, a portal had flayed a demon down to the bones of his spine, sharpening him like a pencil. But what Aoran was talking about was different. It meant a random distortion of space in my master’s chest. His flesh and armour could swap places, fuse, or turn into mince.

For it all to work, Novak needed my stabilising trick.

Or! “I can hold it!”

Aoran looked at me like I was a fool.

“No, you can’t!” he said.

“I can!” I answered stubbornly. “Keystone Heart!”

His next objection stuck in Aoran’s throat.

Novak turned his head, arching an eyebrow into a question mark.

“A very specialised and very expensive stimulant that doesn’t have wide use,” I explained. “In theory, its effect is similar to my Anchor Point: stabilisation.”

“In theory, because neither has been studied enough,” Aoran grumbled. “Besides, the drug costs almost as much as your breakthrough material.”

“And you know that because…” Novak said, clearly inviting Aoran to go on.

“Because I followed Jake’s progress while he was at Black Hole. Besides, it’s useful to broaden one’s horizons from time to time.”

“Right…” Novak said, whether he believed it or not. He asked me, not Aoran: “How sure are you that it will work?”

I snorted.

“As sure as is realistically possible.” Novak clearly wanted a more concrete answer, though. “Fifty-five per cent,” I sighed. “Seventy, if we focus on one thing: either the user’s survival or the strike.”

Which meant the user would have to be me. My armour would need modifying. Again!

“I can’t ask you to die in my place,” Novak said, shaking his head.

“You never had a problem with that before,” I snapped, surprising both masters.

They’d survive. I was busy deciding whether I wanted to die.

Of course I didn’t!

But how badly I wanted to finish off an Eight. That would be epic!

The decision had to be made now, because without Aoran we couldn’t get the drug. If the plan were rubbish, he wouldn’t even lift a finger.

I drummed my fingers on the table and nodded.

“I should have been dead long ago anyway,” I said, raising my eyes to Novak. “Besides, I won’t be dying in your place. Without you, I’ll never get a meeting with the big bad, and what they’ll do to you after my shot, I can’t even imagine!”

Novak burst out laughing.

“Two Keystone Hearts, please.”

Now it was my turn to raise an eyebrow.

“There’ll be two of us there anyway,” he said. “At the very least, we can raise the chances of this gamble succeeding.”

A wicked grin crept onto my face of its own accord. My mood made an utterly absurd leap to new heights.

“Like master, like disciple!” Aoran said, shaking his head as he looked at us, and overlooking the fact that he was part of that chain too. “No! This is absurd and unrealistic!”

Novak and I exchanged glances. We’d already made our peace with death anyway.

“Fuck it!” I nodded.

“We’ll do it anyway!” he confirmed, and stood up decisively from the table. “Thank you for the tea, Master,” he said, bowing to Aoran, and I bowed after him.

We turned towards the door and took a few steps.

“Wait!” Aoran called after us, weary and irritated.

When we turned round, he already had his elbow on the table and his forehead resting in his palm. In his fingers, to be precise. They pressed against his forehead around his third eye. He wasn’t looking at us, and with those sharp knees jutting out from under his robe and rising above the table, he looked ridiculous.

“I’ll get you the Keystone Hearts, but on two conditions!”

Novak and I smiled and exchanged glances.

“We’re listening,” the Great One said.

“First! You will never tell anyone… for at least ten years, the reason for the next condition.” Aoran raised his head and looked from one of us to the other. “The second condition won’t be spoken until you agree to this one. And this condition must be kept whether or not you agree to the second.”

“Of course,” Novak agreed easily, but Aoran didn’t start talking until I had agreed too.

“Keep Vezhkar’s role in his cousin’s death secret, and do everything you can to protect that secret, regardless of how your gamble turns out.”

That was unexpected.

“That’s the condition,” I said. “But we have to keep quiet about the reason for the condition. About why you’re asking us this?”

“Yes,” said Aoran.

Novak understood first. His posture changed, his eyes widened, and then I realised it too. There was only one reason a high-ranking diplomat… No, a high-ranking Ka Federation spy would ask for a potential enemy's life.

“No fucking way!” I said. “He’s your agent!”

Aoran grimaced as though he’d eaten a lemon, or whatever xeltars consider equally sour.

“You must keep quiet about this!” he stressed.

“All that data on the composition of their forces,” Novak said. “He’s the one who passed it to you?”

“Irrelevant!” Aoran snapped.

“On the contrary,” Novak disagreed, returning to the table and pouring himself tea. “It opens up a whole series of other questions.”