CHAPTER 489: ONLY ONE WAY OUT

I thought about it.

In recent years, the Bee Empire developed a lot of technologies that led to proper artillery. We had bolt-action rifles with proper ammunition (metal casings, not paper ones!) and simple radars.

But artillery able to shoot for kilometres—no, dozens of kilometres!—away would need to be both massive and intricate. I knew that just developing something like that and making it able to shoot far enough might take years.

Then there will have to be built so many artillery batteries that they could cover all the most forested areas of the mountain range we were sitting on.

The range, which was thousands of kilometres long...

"No way, we can’t make it," I blurted. Then, a worse thought flashed into my mind. "The trees are growing only on our side of the mountain range for now, but they are going to cross the mountains eventually. Then they will have a free rein of the other half of the continent. I doubt the local plants and bees will be able to stop them."

This was catastrophic! Those trees were really imbalanced—how did they reach this much power?

Only gods knew the intricacies of their politics. It was up to me to deal with them.

"I see only one way out of this, Amby," I continued. "We have to develop genes specifically to counter these trees. Either by regular means, or by depending on chaotic evolution."

But as I thought about the genes that might help us against the trees, an idea struck me, and I quickly sat up.

"This is it! We already must have plenty of bees who are immune to cold hiding in our Empire! But we wouldn’t know about them, because our climate is so warm..."

The gene existed. It was an analogue of the ’Heat Resistance’ gene, and the fifth tier of it (the tier provided by ’Chaotic Evolution I’) gave complete immunity to cold damage and hypothermia.

I remembered seeing it on some chaotically evolved bees in Hive Supremo, but this gene was much less common than something like claws or fangs or even acid-spitting.

Perhaps it was because we were bees and not naturally predisposed to resisting cold.

"It would be simple enough to organise a test and search for more cold-resistant bees," Amby said, perking up too. Her face got a concentrated expression, which meant that she was going into a full business mode. "This will still take time, but right now, we have some. While the ice-hole trees gradually descend the mountains, we can prepare defences against them. Enough riflemen will be able to shoot down the growing trees while they are still saplings, which could die from one bullet. And shoot any seeds that fly past us, too."

"Yes, you are absolutely right!" I expressed my excitement by kissing Amby on the lips.

She jolted and blushed a little, but then re-focused again.

"We will need to dedicate extra manufactures to supplying the defensive cordon and build permanent forts in the area for logistical purposes. It’s good that there are a lot of mines in the area—it’s already a good location for production buildings. Now that we’ve taken the foothills back, these mines will work again, and we could supply the ammunition and rifle manufactures from there..."

I shook my head.

"Amby, you aren’t wrong, but you are thinking in the wrong direction. This is all simple enough—I’m sure that Workharder and Bloodhero will deal with it. This border cordon won’t be drastically different from any other that we have. Except, perhaps, there might be more humans... But how will we test the cold resistance of the bees?"

Amby blinked and went silent.

I was silent, too. The only sounds were the whispers of our thoughts in the shared mind-space.

How can we test cold resistance when, even at night, you can fly around naked and not feel cold at all?

There were areas of the Bee Empire that were colder, but generally, the only times bees risked freezing were when they were caught in a storm. Storms were also dangerous because of the mass of water pouring down their heads, though—I couldn’t just tell bees to stand underneath it.

"Dragons," Ambrosia said suddenly. "Dragons can carry the test."

For an instant, I didn’t realise what she was talking about, but then I deciphered the glimpse of her thoughts and understood.

"Huh. This... might work."

Amby was suggesting that the bees who needed testing could travel on a dragon’s back without protective clothing except for the face masks.

Dragons flew on much higher altitudes than bees, and at much higher speeds. This high up, the wind could freeze you easily, even with the warm back of the dragon underneath you.

All the dragon riders wore warm clothing. When I flew on the backs of dragons, I was usually dressed in my armour and underclothing, so I wasn’t cold. Perhaps my high stats also influenced this.

Amby only flew on dragons twice, both times in a palanquin-like construction that protected her from the wind, but she clearly still remembered this terrible time for her...

"There’s only one problem," she said. "We never have enough dragons for all our projects already, and a global testing like that would put even larger strain on our forces."

"There are also other ways to cool a bee, although they all have their downsides. People can stand under storms, fly around when wet... The last one has a lot of potential, I’m sure," I said. "The more I think about it, the more I’m sure that our largest concern will be the strain on our workforce created by massive testing like that. And the amount of colds that people will get in the process."

The colds will only strain our workforce more. And it was already strained, since a lot of resources were currently being pulled toward the mountain cordons!

Amby smiled at me ruefully.

"There’s always a strain somewhere. For our colony’s sake, we must persevere. And so must they. I think it’s time to gather the Council, Necty."