The next day after our expedition to Blackwood, Queen asked over breakfast “Alright, so of the organisms we encountered in the Thundersnow Steppes, which are the most likely to cause problems for our submissions?”

I immediately replied “Probably one of the herbivore species, specifically the laser goats. I have a sneaking suspicion that they’d eat the boomnut bushes given half a chance, they’ve got such robust digestive and immune systems that finding a way to poison or infect them is a whole lot easier said than done, and they’re aggressive enough to simply fry our squirrels if they come within line of sight.”

Wesseck thought for a moment, before asking “Queen, do you think you can make our nanoweapon effective at protecting the boomnut bushes from being eaten by laser goats?”

Queen idly tapped one of her claws on the table in thought as she tried to figure out what to say, before she replied “Probably. With the vast and varied number of different immune systems it’s going to need to contend with my nanoweapon probably can’t infect literally everything, so we’ll have to prioritize somewhat. That said, one thing I can definitely do is double-check the nuts’ anti theft mechanism to ensure they’ll explode if an unauthorized organism eats them; they’re chock full of PETN, and all that pent up chemical energy should still be there ready for a sudden violent release should the nuts be swallowed.”

I chuckled at the mental image of a laser goat chewing on a boomnut before suddenly exploding, agreeing “Yeah, that should go a long way to discourage most organisms from eating boomnuts. Eaty go bang? Perfect deterrent for anything eating the nuts aside from our squirrel.”

That’s when Wesseck jumped in and noted “Queen, I can handle that part no problem. What I can’t do is make sure our symbiotic microbe can get around every single immune system it might have to contend with. Only you can really do that.”

Queen awkwardly rubbed behind her head as she said “Right, I forgot about that for a moment. Thanks for the reminder, Wesseck.”

Our robotic spider companion replied “No problem, Queen. Yures, how are you going to goatproof the squirrels?”

I grinned as I replied “Indirect fire. Funny thing about lasers is that they can’t arc over obstructions, but the quills our squirrel fires won’t have that problem. Couple that with the rather devastating payload they’ll be packing thanks to a diet rich in boomnuts, and our squirrels should be quite capable of driving the laser goats out of their territory.”

Queen and Wesseck thought for a moment as they mulled this over. Then Wesseck raised an important point “If the squirrels are supposed to be artillery capable of firing beyond visual range, they need some way to actually get information about targets. This means we either need to enable the bushes and other squirrels to act as spotters, or we need to put guidance packages of some sort in the quills.”

I thought for a moment, before saying “I could probably do both easily enough. Run a biological radio antenna down the spine to allow for comms that way, and stick a really tiny set of ganglia, sensory organs, and control feathers in the quills. They’ve already got some integrated nervous structures for the detonator, so making them target-seeking seems fairly doable.”

What followed was a significantly long period of us all working on our organisms to get them up to scratch. Still, after a Megasecond or so, Queen noted “I think we’re ready to do some real-world testing of our organisms. I’ve gotten us some time at a testing range outside city limits, where we can see how our squirrel, microbe, and boomnut bushes actually perform outside of simulation.”

I gazed at my porridge for a few moments as I thought it over, asking “Will we be allowed to test the explosive components there? We’re banking a lot of our strategy on being able to blow stuff up, and if the testing site won’t let us do that we’re not going to get good data.”

Queen grinned as she said “Its the same place where Doctor Brose took me to test out my flame breath. They have absolutely no problem with being used to test high energy weaponry, and they’re big enough for the kabooms not to break anything important.”

Wesseck vibrated with excitement as they said “Awesome! I’ll print off a bush and a bucket full of boomnuts right away! I wanna get there and blow stuff up as soon as possible!”

For my part, I smiled as I agreed “Sounds great, I’ll get a six pack of artillery squirrels printed off right after breakfast, then we can go.”

Sure enough it only took a few kiloseconds for us to get our prototypes ready for testing. We loaded everything up onto a transport pallet, I quickly swapped to my feminine body, and with our adorable creations of SCIENCE in tow we made our way to the train station.

En route I took the opportunity to look up the place we were going. Darwin’s Proving Ground was an organism testing facility with a long history of providing a safely isolated place for bio-engineers to test their organisms’ more destructive adaptations without much fear of things getting out of hand.

As such, when we arrived at the testing range, I was excited to see how our squirrels and bushes would perform. Wesseck was eagerly bouncing up and down with anticipation as we made our way through the corridors and to our assigned testing dome. Queen followed behind us, her presence and constant measured stride anchoring us with a deep sense of confidence.

As soon as we reached our testing dome, we immediately got to putting our organisms through their paces. I opened the doors on the pet carriers the artillery squirrels were currently sleeping in and booted their test brainware. Meanwhile Wesseck opened the container of boomnuts and started scattering them around the area, and Queen put out a dish of microbial slurry for the benefit of both the boomnut bush and the squirrels.

I idly mused “So, what do we want to evaluate first? There’s a whole lot of complex behavioral adaptations for the squirrels that need to be tested, and the boomnut bushes are also pretty tricky.”

Wesseck noted immediately “We need to make sure that the squirrels can eat the boomnuts without exploding. If they can’t do that, they don’t have access to their primary food source, nor their only source of dietary explosives.”

I blinked “Good point.” before immediately getting out my tablet to send a movement command to one of the artillery squirrels, ordering it to retrieve one of the boomnuts and eat it at a substantial distance away from our current location. Wouldn’t do to get blown up if something went wrong after all.

And so the artillery squirrel scampered off to the far end of the testing range. It grabbed a boomnut off the ground, bit into it, and with a voracious appetite tore into the highly explosive morsel. We waited with apprehension as the boomnut digested, Queen poring over the biotelemetry we were getting from the squirrel’s digestive system.

After several moments, our draconic teammate announced “The detonators have been digested, and the squirrel has started PETN uptake. It’s confirmed; our squirrels can eat the boomnuts without exploding.”

I sighed with relief, noting “Other behaviors pertaining the boomnuts include stashing them for later consumption, and their use as command-detonated mines. I’ll put them through their paces for that while you two make sure the bush is working properly?”

Both Queen and Wesseck were on board with the idea, so I got to work. The first squirrel behavior that needed testing was resource caching. So I quickly sent the command to the squirrels to set about burying a number of the boomnuts around the testing area.

The artillery squirrels quickly scurried into action, grabbing the nuts off the ground, digging small holes, and burying them. A few minutes of action passed before all the assigned boomnuts were firmly embedded in the ground, and I moved on to the next part of the evaluation.

I quickly tapped some commands into place on my tablet, and the artillery squirrels’ memories fuzzed as if it had been a few months since they’d stashed the nuts. I then sent a command to excavate their stashed nuts.

As I watched the squirrels search and dig, Wesseck noted “Well, it looks like nut burial and retrieval is working just fine. Going to be testing the use of boomnuts as landmines and such next?”

I nodded as I replied “Yeah. If the squirrels can use boomnuts for demolitions and traps, it massively increases the number of threats they can dispose of. It’ll also let us add a bit of meat to their diet beyond what was already going to be in there.”

Wesseck rubbed his mechanical pedipalps together as they noted “That sounds great. I’ll leave you to it, Yures.”

The testing for the first couple remote detonations went smoothly, but the third time there was very abruptly a total lack of kaboom. I immediately called out “Hold on everyone, we’ve got an unexploded nut. I’m going to send a drone in to try and diagnose the fault.”

The drone in question proceeded to hover in to take a closer view under my skillful direction. Still, just as the tools were about to come into contact Wesseck noted “Yures, can I take a look at that?”

I obligingly handed the tablet to Wesseck as they poked and prodded at various parts of the nut via remote control. After a few moments they noted “Found what went wrong. See, the wiring for this bit here-” Wesseck tapped the screen, the drone poked part of the nut with a tool, and then was immediately blown apart as the boomnut went off.

Wesseck lamely finished “-didn’t grow correctly, leaving a gap in the frequencies it could receive.”

As bits of drone rained down around us, Queen remarked “Look at it this way Wesseck, better to learn about this sort of thing in testing, when we’ve got time to fix it before the main event.”

Wesseck perked up again, saying “Yeah you’re right! Really glad I figured out how that issue happened. Anyway, I think you’ll be testing the artillery soon?”

I smiled as I said “Yep! Boomnut bush ready to act as a spotter?”

Wesseck bounced up and down excitedly as they called out “Absolutely! I’ve rigged up the photo-receptors, targeting computer, and radio really well and I’m absolutely ready to see how well it works in practice!”

I grinned as I replied “Alright then. Turn it on, then let’s send in the target drones.”

What followed was drone after drone flying into the testing area and being targeted for elimination by a spread of high explosive quills arcing over the terrain, falling down atop the drones’ positions to explode on impact. After the first couple drones got exploded, we decided to see how the guidance packages I’d shoved into the quills would handle evasive maneuvers.

The answer to that turned out to be fairly mediocre honestly. While the quills were guided and capable of major course corrections, they weren’t equipped for the thrust they’d need to really catch a jinking target. As such the drones were by and large able to avoid single quills fired at them. On the other hand, massive spreads of a few thousand quills fired all at once proved quite effective at downing drones; there just wasn’t any room available for them to dodge.

After several minutes of this and a few other tests, Queen noted “Alright, we’ve got the artillery spotting and coordination systems working quite well. Same goes for the command-detonation and all the other behaviors we wanted to take a look at. I think it’s time for the immunological testing; I’ve got several vials of genuine Blackwood pathogens here and I want to see if the immune systems I implemented can handle them.”

My eyes widened as Queen tacitly admitted to bringing Blackwood-grade nanoweapons to the testing range, more specifically ones we didn’t have a kill switch for. This was far beyond anything I had thought she would do to make sure our organisms were ready for the tourney, but in retrospect it made sense.

As such, I acquiesced “Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Still, if it’s no offense I’d rather not be in this dome when the vials get opened.”

Wesseck nodded far too quickly even for them as they replied “Yeah, I don’t want to be anywhere near that when you open it up.”

Queen rolled her eyes as she replied “Well obviously. We’re going to have it opened via drone, and we’re already booked for the testing dome to be thermally sterilized once we’re done with it.”

Then Wesseck raised an important note, saying “Then in that case the immune testing should happen last. There’s still some important behaviors we need to test, such as nest-building and mating. Coming in here to do that after releasing those pathogens? No thank you, I’ll pass.”

I quickly queued up more orders for the squirrels, setting them to construct a nest around the boomnut bush, as they were supposed to. Quickly the artillery squirrels started digging into the dirt, piling up dirt into a ring of earthen defensive works even as they excavated accompanying foxholes and burrows. After a couple kiloseconds, I noted “Nest construction seems to be working just fine. Going to see how they handle their mating behaviors.”

Another kilosecond or so later, we’d confirmed that the squirrels had all necessary behavioral routines in good working order. Sighing with resignation, I agreed “Let’s get clear. We don’t want to be in here when the pathogens are released.”

Wesseck and Queen both thoroughly agreed, and soon we were in a section of the proving ground that was totally environmentally isolated from the dome we had been operating in. The three of us looked solemnly at the prompt on the tablet that would unleash the pathogens Queen had copied from our expedition. Then we all tapped it together at once.

Immediately the readouts of our squirrels and boomnuts registered infection with approximately fifty thousand different pathogens. Immune cells of every description surged into action, ripping them apart left and right, terminating infected cells, and disrupting all attempts to coordinate the offensive by the pathogens.

For a few kiloseconds, it looked like we might have actually managed it on the first try and created an immune system capable of taking on anything that particular region of Blackwood could throw at it. Then slowly, inexorably, the immune systems began faltering. We were forced to watch helplessly as the organisms we’d spent so much work on began being devoured from within by the myriad of deadly engineered microbes.

When it was over, and all the squirrels and the boomnut bush were dead, Queen said “That’s why I wanted to do real world testing of the immune system. Now we know exactly what flaws in the setup were exploited by the horrors of Blackwood’s microbial biosphere, and I can fix them so that when the actual tournament rolls around our organisms will actually be able to deal with the threat environment.”

We all knew Queen was right and didn’t contest it. After a few minutes of sitting in thought, the bulky robotic caretaker for the testing ground clomped over and noted “If you’re done here, it sounds like I’d best run the incinerator cycle for that dome; I really don’t want whatever you unleashed in there leaking out somehow and contaminating the rest of the proving ground.”

Wesseck nodded, saying “Yeah, that’s probably for the best.”

With that, we turned to leave and go back to Cthonic Mare. On our walk back to the train station our load was much lighter than it had been on the way in. All the organisms we’d printed were dead and burned after the immunology testing, as were the testing drones and the pathogens Queen brought. All we were bringing back with us was our testing data, and that didn’t weigh much. But the deaths of those squirrels somehow did.

As the maglev train started moving again, Wesseck asked “Where do we go from here? Obviously we fix all the issues we identified with our organisms and get all the features they already have nice and polished. But what else? There’s significant time remaining before the actual deployment date, and I want to give our three way team of organisms as good of a chance as we possibly can.”

I noted with annoyance yet another shift away from being comfortable in my current body, even as I replied “I’m honestly not quite sure. I suppose we could try and get some data on what our competitors are doing and build in some counters, but I really have no idea how to go about doing that without causing more trouble for our entry in the tourney than it’s worth.”

Queen thought for a moment, even as she replied “We can ask Doctor Brose about it when the time comes. As it stands we’ve got much bigger problems on our hands; we need to make sure our critters can handle what’s already down there before we worry about countering other contestants from this year.”

I shrugged my wings in thought as the train went zooming down its tunnel, honestly not really sure if there was anything else to add to the conversation.

When we arrived back at our lab, we had just enough time to eat dinner before we really needed to get to bed. I hopped upstairs to change bodies to my masculine one first, then came back down to see an utterly delicious-looking haunch of roasted meat being served by the domestic drones.

As I sat down, I thought to ask “Hey, what type of meat is this anyway?”

Queen grinned as she replied “Brose’s Wyvern flight muscle, freshly printed in convenient roasting joint form and grilled to perfection. We’ve hit a major milestone today, and I figured that was worth celebrating with something a bit special to eat. So I used the collected biological data from those wyverns we dealt with on Blackwood to culture some of their meat for our consumption.”

I smiled a bit at the thought of this, replying “That sounds absolutely wonderful, Queen. I’m really looking forwards to finding out how you had it seasoned.”

Wesseck simply looked up from his ice cream for a moment, before replying “That’s my part in the cooking! Come on and have a go, it should taste great!”

I obligingly sat down at the dinner table in front of the roasting joint, Queen taking that as an invitation to smoothly slice the roasting joint apart. As she did so, she noted “Wesseck made a point of having the seasoning printed into the tissue, so it should be evenly flavored all the way through.”

It was now that I realized I was drooling a bit, and I eagerly served a portion of roast wyvern to my plate.

Digging in, I found out quite rapidly that Queen and Wesseck were both absolutely right about the quality of the meat and seasoning. It was tender but retained its structural integrity, while at the same time tasting slightly sweet with a hint of fire. As I ate, I made a point of taking a break to say “You two did an awesome job on this! How’d you find the time while we were working? I know growing a good cell line takes a while.”

Queen chuckled and said “Well, we actually started on it about half a Megasecond ago. We’d have invited you to join in, but you were so preoccupied with making sure the squirrels would be ready for the event that you didn’t notice when we tried to get your attention.”

I thought back to the long period of hard intellectual labor I’d been putting in, then blushed with embarrassment as I realized Queen was right. Quietly I admitted “I guess I do have a tendency to get mono-focused on this sort of thing pretty bad. Thanks for pointing that out.”

Wesseck chirped happily as they replied “No worries, Yures! This way we got to pleasantly surprise you with a special treat, which we couldn’t have really done if you’d had attention to spare for anything except bio-engineering.”

Queen simply smiled my way as she swallowed another piece of meat, then noted “I made frozen yogurt for desert, by the way. Rum-berry flavor.”

I grinned at that, saying “Now I’m even more excited! Queen, you make the best yogurt!”

Queen grinned with self-assurance as she replied “Indeed I do! It’s something of a passion of mine.”

That’s when Wesseck chipped in “Well in that case let’s eat! I want to get to dessert before the kilosecond is up!”

I could easily agree with that assessment, and so we ate. The meat continued tasting just as delicious as it had right from the start, as did the legume course it was served along with. Still, by the time we’d had our fill of both we still had plenty of room for dessert. Queen took note of that and signaled to the lab’s computer system that it was time for dessert. Sure enough, a drone quickly retrieved three tubs of Queen’s best frozen yogurt from the freezer.

I looked to my draconic friend for confirmation, and she simply nodded. I quickly started jimmying open the lid with my spoon, before I stuck it in and took a bite. Immediately I found myself transfixed by the flavors Queen had managed to cram into it. It was sweet and sour and savory all in one, everything backed by the distinctly pungent flavor of Ethanol. I absolutely loved it, cheerfully noting “Queen, I wouldn’t mind if you made this in bulk!” before returning to voraciously devouring it.

Queen was busily digging into hers as well, but she managed to poke her nose up from it for just long enough to reply “I think I will! Now that the drones know how the recipe we can have as much as we want!”

Wesseck meanwhile was silent, though on closer inspection that seemed to be on account of collapsing in pleasure, a spoon vibrating in his mouth. I idly waved my hand in front of his face, asking “Wesseck, are you doing alright in there?”

Wesseck replied “Yeah, I’m doing fine, this stuff ish just sho gooood… I want mooore.”

Queen chuckled as she replied “I hope that doesn’t happen again, but I’ll take that as a ringing endorsement as to the quality of my product.”

I smiled at the byplay, noting “I’m not quite as overwhelmed by the quality of the frozen yogurt as Wesseck is, but yeah, this stuff is really really great.”

Dinner started winding down after that, the drones clearing off the dishes and packing up the partial serving of roast wyvern that would probably end up as a snack for Queen later. There wasn’t any frozen yogurt that needed cleaning up however; every last nibble of that got devoured with terrifying efficiency.

And with that it was time to start getting ready for bed. I said my goodnights to Queen and Wesseck before wandering up the stairs. En route I idly noted it was time for another morph swap, so when I reached my room I shuffled through the morph closet before getting ready for bed.

I tucked myself in for sleep, and without much fanfare I drifted off into my resting state. I dreamed of squirrels and explosions.

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