“Hah! I like the way you think. What do you reckon, Sloan? Fancy adding a floating fortress to our arsenal?”
The general looks a little sour, but can’t quite manage to conceal the excitement quivering through her antennae.
“It would allow us to do a lot. A mobile defensive platform. We could use it to fend off other islands that attack the mountain, or launch attacks against our enemies. I can’t deny it would be extremely useful to have, Eldest.”
“It sure would. Shame we can’t get one for the moment.”
Both Solant and Sloan droop at my words, their antennae slumping to the ground.
“Be a little realistic, you two,” I scold them. “That dragon has a stronger core than I do, and in case you don’t remember, it flies. I can get up there, but I’m not exactly graceful. There’s no guarantee that I’d be able to win and seize the island for us. Besides all of that, don’t we have enough on our plates right now without having to take and operate our own flying castle?”
“The carvers would kill us if we asked them to fortify an entire island right now,” Sloan sighs. “They still haven’t completed work on this mountain to anything like their own satisfaction. There’s whole sections which haven’t been touched since the termite occupation.”
“Right. It’s a great idea, Solant, but we need to put things in order. Finish work on the mountain, fend off the wave, then we can look toward getting into the skies.”
The little general nods as if agreeing with me, but I can tell her little brain is still ticking over. Good. She’s meant to be an independent thinker. Doing whatever the ‘Eldest’ tells them is a weakness the rest of the Colony has fallen into a little too readily for my taste.
“Right, now that the flying menace has been dealt with, we may as well repeat our previous exercise a couple times. We’ll rotate around the mountain, doing a different segment with each run. Just like before, I’ll flatten stuff, we run out and get some goodies, scope out the situation, then retreat.”
“As you say, Eldest,” Solant agrees, a little absent-mindedly, and I’m tempted to administer a thwack, but I hold myself back. Nurture the independent thought, Anthony….
We repeat the process four times over the next few hours, giving me a break in between to recharge my mana and Vestibule, as well as letting the little ants digest their Biomass.
Every time we run out, I can see Solant soaking in everything like a little sponge, constantly twitching this way and that as thoughts spark in her mind. She seems particularly interested in the monsters, taking time to study each one, poking and prodding at them as she slowly chews her food.
Know thy enemy, eh?
“Right! We’ve completed a circuit of the mountain. What are your thoughts, Solant?”
“... You’re very strong.”
“That’s it? We all already knew that, right? Nono, surely you have a little more.”
“I have a few ideas, Eldest, but I want to think on them a little more, and discuss with my broodmates.”
“Probably a good idea, but we don’t have time for that just yet.”
“We don’t? Aren’t we done?”
“Done?! Are you crazy? There’s no such thing as done when there’s a wave on! Besides, did you think this was the only place where fighting was taking place? Heck no! We’re heading below ground!”
The second front of the endless battle against the wave. The monsters climbing up the mountainside are only a portion of those the Colony is fighting off, the rest are swarming below ground, filling up the tunnels and caverns carved by the termites and spawning in the deep passages that run below the ocean.
Heck, the links between the fourth and fifth stratum are way down there somewhere. Eventually, we’re going to see an assault by the toxic murder creatures from below. In fact, it may not even be far away!
Truth be told, below ground is where the real battle is! As it should be! Tunnel fighting is what we ants were made for.
We plunge down through the fortress until we arrive at a grand, central chamber in the bowels of the mountain. From here, Victor has been overseeing an omni-directional war, managing the hundreds of chokepoints, fortified tunnels and approaches to the fortress from below.
“Hey there, Victor!” I wave a friendly antenna as messenger scouts rush between my legs. “What can I do to help out?”
“That way! Go!” The beleaguered general points with one antenna and I turn to see a flood of reinforcements rushing down a side tunnel.
“Gotcha. Hop on my back, you lot, we’re moving quick!”
After a moment of hesitation, Solant and her twenty broodmates clamber onto my carapace, some clinging to my sides since they don’t all fit and even on top of each other. Especially since Crinis refuses to make way for them.
“And we’re off!”
[Keep up, Tiny!]
We sprint down the tunnel, rushing directly over the top of the skittering troops, and soon enough, we reach the frontline, a little closer to the fortress than I was expecting to see.
Much like our defence against the wave in the second stratum, the Colony has opted for a defence in depth approach. A series of walls and fortified positions where the Colony can retreat from one to the next, exhausting the enemy, blunting their assault, and then rolling them back, retaking the walls and fixing them, ready for the next push to come.
It’s brutal for the enemy, but the monsters down here are strong. I can already see the issue. Our tier five troops are struggling to put enough damage into the monsters to bring them down in a timely fashion. As more and more monsters pile up, the Colony has to retreat further and further. Like a tower defence game, once you reach the point where you aren’t putting the attackers down fast enough, everything can snowball out of control extremely quickly.
“Alright. Everyone off! I’m going to help out for a second.”
The moment the twenty little ants are off my back, I sprint forward. I’ve got damage for all! About time I put my mandibles to work!
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