Eventually, the organism deployment date came around, and it was busy. All competitors were required to submit their organism specs to one of the approved bio-printing locations for the tournament, and from there they would be sent to the launch rings for deployment.

In our case, we’d opted to watch at the printing site in question, both because we wanted to be present in person for this, but also because it wasn’t totally unknown for the printers to have some difficulty dealing with the weird custom cell lines that contestants dreamed up for use in their critters, and we wanted to make sure that didn’t happen in our case.

So we got out of bed early in the morning, ate breakfast, got dressed up in our best business-casual wear (which was a suit of power armor in Queen’s case) and made our way to Hammer and Bennet Bio-Products, which was our assigned production facility. We’d have to take one of the long distance trains for this if we didn’t want to mindcast, but that wasn’t too much of a hassle, and it would ultimately take somewhat less time than printing out a new body on site.

So a kilosecond or so after we left the lab, we arrived at the bio factory in question. We were greeted at the door by a man wearing a four-armed synthmorph who introduced himself with “Hello, I’m Corrite Gores for Hammer and Bennet Bio-Products. I take it you’re a team competing in the Blackwood Invasive Species Tournament?”

Queen nodded “Yes, we’re the Snow Coast Symbiotes, submitting the artillery squirrel, boomnut bush, and a micro-organism that we honestly forgot to come up with a name for.”

Corrite hummed “Yes, we got your message earlier. Anyway, if you’ll follow me you’ll get to see the section of our facilities that we set aside for your use.” and swiftly hovered away on the magnetic track installed in the floor of the building.

We followed after him through the corridors with Wesseck taking the lead, passing several manufacturing bays until we arrived at bay 20F. Corrite opened the door to let us in, and I couldn’t help but be impressed by what I saw.

There were twelve gigantic cell-culturing vats along the back wall of the manufacturing bay, each with readouts indicating that it was full of feedstock and rapidly replicating cells. These vats were connected to a dizzying array of pipework that lead to a set of outright bio-printing assembly lines making both mature artillery squirrel and boomnut bush specimens, but also un-germinated boomnuts, all of them being neatly packed in specimen re-entry capsules as soon as they came off the lines.

Seeing all this, I found myself quietly uttering “wow.” as I saw what was going on down there. Looking to the left and right, I noticed that Queen and Wesseck were equally impressed.

Still, after a bit it occurred to me to ask “Corrite, would it be a problem if we wanted to inspect one of the specimens? Just to make sure that the manufacturing process is going smoothly.”

Corrite nodded and replied “Sure. Just let me get the drones to fetch one.” before sending a command to the factory systems. A pair of the drones that had been involved in moving packed specimen capsules to the loading dock were diverted, and soon enough an artillery squirrel, a mature boomnut bush, and a boomnut had all been brought up to the catwalk we were standing on.

Queen quickly took a sample from all the organisms present and ran it through her pocket analyzer. After a bit she noted “Well, looks like the cell lines came out within acceptable tolerances. There’s a bit more in the way of heavy metals and phosphates than I designed them to have, but I’m guessing that’s just due to standardized feedstock rather than any particular issues with the growth process.”

Corrite nodded, remarking “Yes, your cell lines were remarkably easy to work with compared to a lot of the ones we get. Sometimes they’re a downright nightmare to culture in sufficient quantity without risking a dangerous nanosecurity breach.”

Wesseck and I winced, and Wesseck said “Eesh, I feel kind of sorry for you having to deal with that. Having to clean up after a nanoweapon breaches containment is no fun for anyone involved.”

Corrite nodded solemnly “That’s true, but it’s also just part of the business to be totally honest. You lot figure out some perfect nanological horror, and we have to figure out how to manufacture it in bulk without getting closed down for safety code violations.”

Offhand I couldn’t help but notice Queen preening, and I asked “Curiously, have you done this sort of work before, Queen?”

Queen replied “Yeah I was in microbe manufacturing for a little while and know my way around the industry. One of the things I sent these people was tips for scaling up the cell production so they wouldn’t have to figure it all out themselves.”

Corrite chuckled and replied “And I’m glad you did. You saved us probably a hundred kiloseconds of trial and error getting this production run going, it’s been a pleasure to work with you.”

I idly nodded as I looked out over the factory floor and asked “So curiously, how much longer is finalizing production going to take?”

Corrite checked, replying “You should meet tournament standards for deployment in about three kiloseconds. Not much else to do at the moment aside from relax and let the robots do it.”

I nodded as I thought for a bit, saying “I think I’d like to watch. This is honestly really cool to see in motion, and I want to keep seeing it.”

Wesseck chuckled “If you like watching factories at work that’s definitely an option. A lot of industrial sites offer tours.”

I mulled the idea over and replied “Yeah, that could be neat. I’ll definitely have to try it sometime after the tournament.” and settled in to wait.

Sure enough, a few kiloseconds later all of our organisms’ starting population had been printed and packed, and it was time for them to be shipped to the launch rings. We followed the trucks to the loading station using an automated taxi, and watched as the capsules were loaded onto the launch rails.

Wesseck quickly pulled up a trajectory tracker app on their tablet and noted “We’ll have a much better view of things if we watch from this perspective. We won’t see too much from the ground.”

I looked up at the orbital ring overhead and commented “You sure about that? I can see a lot of the ring from here.” though the tone in my voice made it pretty clear I wasn’t serious.

Queen rolled her eyes as Wesseck chuckled a bit and said “Yeah, I’m sure.”, pulling out a volumetric projector to show what was going on in three dimensions.

Immediately a full color representation of Bark and Blackwood blinked into existence, thousands of glowing pips representing specimen capsules already arcing through space towards the planet we were in orbit of. Wesseck fiddled with the projection settings a little, and then the pips representing our team’s capsules lit up blue.

I watched with rapt attention as our submission streaked through space along their trajectory, the seconds ticking by as they gradually grew closer to the ground.

Still, after a bit they quickly lost their luster and I remarked “I’m hungry, let’s go get lunch. Maybe we can meet up with Chitin?”

Queen mulled the idea over for a bit and replied “Yeah, that sounds like a decent enough idea. You want to call them, or should I?”

Wesseck answered “I’d like to do it, please.” and immediately took out their phone to contact our mutual acquaintance. After a few moments to dial and wait for Chitin to pick up, Wesseck started talking.

Queen and I didn’t pay too much attention to the conversation, instead perusing various restaurants in the general area as we passed the time. Thus turned out to be a decent enough idea, especially since Wesseck chimed in “Good news, Chitin’s letting us pick the restaurant, though she says it’s got to be in Cthonic Mare.”

I grinned as I replied “Well then, I know just the place.”

Sure enough, a few kiloseconds later we were all sitting across a table from three Chitins in a restaurant with a penchant for the spicy and a very artistic chef. As I set down, I asked “Curiously, is it a headmate per body, or did you duplicate your entire system?”

The Chitin on the left answered “The former. We’re all branches off the same original that decided we didn’t want to re-merge, but also didn’t all need our own bodies a hundred percent of the time.”

Queen shrugged and replied “Fair enough. I’m usually the only person running on my hardware, but sometimes I host people who are between bodies for a bit.”

Center Chitin nodded approvingly “That’s quite kind of you, Queen.”

Then the food arrived. My plate was piled high with ground meat, beans, chips and other vegetables, and I dug in with great enthusiasm. The fire in my mouth roared to an amazing height while the taste of transition metals tempered it nicely, and I found myself shoveling spoonful after spoonful in.

A mere kilosecond later, I was done. My plate bare, I sat back to enjoy the afterburn. My friends finished their own meals soon enough after me, and Wesseck wondered aloud “I wonder how things are going on Blackwood?”

Left Chitin shrugged as she answered “Our organism capsules should be landing about nowish. They probably haven’t gotten settled in yet.”

I nodded solemnly as I noted “Really hope that our organisms do well, we need to get at least a bronze egg to avoid retaking some classes with a really horrible professor.”

All three Chitins winced simultaneously, right Chitin noting “Eesh that’s rough. Er, mind if I inquire about what exactly happened there?”

I shrugged my wings “Eh, this hardass named Thonne took out his personal issues on our grades. If he’d outright failed us it wouldn’t have been an issue, but he put us in the narrow range between passing and counting as a valid prerequisite. So if we don’t want to get stuck taking those classes over again we’ve got to at least get a bronze egg in the tournament.”

Wesseck confirmed that, noting “Yeah, microfauna lab for Yures, botany for me. That played a big reason in why we registered in the category we did.”

Left Chitin nodded in thought, “Honestly that sounds like the opening to a work of fiction, but what can you do? In our case we just thought competing in the tournament would be fun, so here we are.”

Queen chuckled as she replied “A perfectly respectable reason for joining the Blackwood Invasive Species Tournament. Personally I’m in the same boat as you, Chitin. I graduated a while back and I’ve been working on microbes for a hundred Megaseconds or so before starting a doctoral program; I figured that the tournament would both be a nice change of pace and would also help me grow my skillset a bit.”

Center Chitin smiled back, and took a sip of the home-brewed soft drink that this place served along with the meal. After a bit of time savoring it, she noted “I personally propose a toast.”

I raised my cup above the table and asked “To Blackwood?”

The Chitins shared a glance and replied “Sure. To Blackwood.”

A moment later, we all raised our glasses and clinked them together over the table, cheering “TO BLACKWOOD!” at full volume.

Meanwhile on Blackwood the capsules containing yet another wave of biological horrors were raining down from the sky amid streaks of flame from the heating of atmospheric entry, slowing to terminal velocity a few kilometers over the ground before they deployed first a drogue parachute, then the main chute. After a couple minutes they began touching down and bursting open to release their contents onto Blackwood’s surface. The Invasive Species Tournament was on.

The absolute first thing on the to do list for the artillery squirrels was to locate the nearest boomnut bushes to their landing sites. While they had a full load of quills each, those quills couldn’t be replenished without a supply of boomnuts to eat for propellant and explosives; in addition, the squirrels were the primary defense system for their symbiotic partner. Fortunately the bushes in question were sending out an encrypted homing signals to guide the squirrels in.

Still, it would take quite a long distance for some of these squirrels to reach their bushes and start digging in. In the particular case of Squirrel F422, she’d actually come down a good ten kilometers from the nearest boomnut bush, and would have her work cut out for her to reach the relative safety of the bushes in the utter chaos currently taking place.

Case in point, the instant her pod opened, she found herself face-to-face with a Brose’s Wyvern, already in the process of opening its mouth to blast her with an electron beam. Fear signals raced through F422’s brain as she immediately took aim with well over a hundred quills and fired a wide spread in self-defense. The Wyvern made a credible effort to try and dodge out of the way, evading the worst of the barrage, but it couldn’t avoid everything.

Four direct High Explosive hits to the inside of the mouth were matched by two mind control hits to the torso. The wyvern immediately aborted its attack as the inside of its mouth was subjected to a rather significant detonation that damaged the director magnets for the particle beam, even as one of the injector quills found a gap in the armor scales and delivered its payload into the Wyvern’s bloodstream.

On her part, F422 was running for her life with a furious injured wyvern right after her. She quickly dodged to the right to avoid a swipe that would have definitely squished her quills or no, the Wyvern’s claws slamming into the ground right on her former position.

Meanwhile within the Wyvern the nanoweapon was busily at work ripping into the immune system. It was already well through disabling the adaptive functions that could have allowed it to be overcome later, and had started working away at the blood-brain barrier.

Still there would be several more minutes at the least before the wyvern was noticeably sick, and in that time F422 would need to continue fleeing. She was rapidly looking around the terrain for somewhere, anywhere to hide where she wouldn’t have to deal with a murderous wyvern after her. After some looking around she managed to find a burrow, an inviting dark hole in the ground far too small for the Wyvern to enter but just large enough for the artillery squirrel in question.

Knowing full well that whatever lurked there had the potential to be even worse than the wyvern after her, F422 took the plunge into the tunnel. The wyvern slammed into the entrance just behind her, and F422 settled in to wait for it to finally succumb.

Still, F422 was no fool despite her lack of higher cognitive functions, and turned her attention to deeper in the burrow, lighting one of her flamethrower quills on low intensity to provide illumination for the minute or so it would take to burn out. There didn’t seem to be much else at risk of happening, so F422 jettisoned the candle quill from her back to let it burn out on its own.

Outside nearly a kilosecond passed as Queen’s incredibly nasty nanoweapon finally seized control of the Wyvern’s central nervous system. Immediately its attack ceased as it started on a path to the nearest bush for decomposition as fertilizer, F422 taking the opportunity to exit the burrow and climb aboard.

Compared to earlier, riding a wyvern was a lot less of a risk than being chased by one, especially with the benefit of aerial transport. However F422 still had to stay vigilant, constantly looking this way and that for incoming aerial threats. Sure enough an aerial threat was soon provided in the form of a flock of the newly introduced laser falcons coming in for an attack run on the oddly behaving wyvern.

F422 immediately fired half of her surface to air missile complement, the rocket propelled quills streaking across the airspace between herself and the incoming airborne predators. However in that time the predators in question were able to react fully to the incoming threat, lasering the left wing clean off and sending F422’s ride careening towards the ground with three kilometers still to go before reaching the relative safety of the boomnut bushes and with them other squirrels.

As she fell towards the ground, F422’s mind raced as to how to survive it, calculating aerodynamics and forces on a subconscious level. A conclusion reached, she clambered onto the falling Wyvern's right wing and fired ten High Explosive quills into the shoulder, blasting the limb clean off and holding onto it like a parachute as the rest of the wyvern fell away beneath her to impact the ground with a sickening cross between a thud and a splat.

F422 peered off into the distance for any remaining sign of the laser falcons, but by the looks of things they’d all either been downed by the missile fire or decided that they didn’t terribly want to deal with a missile-armed squirrel shooting at them and left the area.

A few moments later, F422 hit the ground far more gently than the wyvern had and resumed her trudge towards relative safety, the three kilometers of distance still a major concern. Constantly scanning the ground and air for threats with her quills at the ready, F422 proceeded cautiously onwards.

This caution was well-warranted, as it immediately helped her spot a holographically camouflaged snake lying in wait to ambush passing organisms. Having precisely none of that nonsense, F422 simply fired a mind control quill into the snake in question from cover of stealth, coming back a few minutes later to follow the snake as it now proceeded towards the same boomnut bush as her.

A few more minor obstacles were noted over the next kilometer, ranging from toxic and armed plants of various descriptions to a pack hunting organism that quickly determined F422 wasn’t worth the effort after each receiving a High Explosive quill for their troubles. But the next truly major obstacle for F422 was a hive of highly aggressive pollinators designed by Professor Thonne himself.

F422 of course spotted the nest long before she was at risk of running into it. The snake of course was mindlessly charging right towards it, which F422 immediately recognized as presenting the possibility for the bugs in the hive to come after her afterwards.

Immediately as a preventative measure, F422 fired a hundred of her incendiary and high explosive quills into the hive. Thousands of bugs died in an instant and plenty more were crippled, but F422 knew that the crippled survivors were already sending out alarms that would call the entire swarm to her location.

Therefore F422 immediately started running for her life at absolute top speed. She abandoned the snake to its fate in the process; it might distract the bugs for a bit, and there was no way it would ever get away from the hive fast enough. So F422 went on without it.

Behind her she heard a loud and ominous buzzing. Chancing a look behind her, F422 saw that a significant number of the bugs were chasing after her and gaining rapidly. Acting out of sheer terror, the squirrel immediately pivoted her quills to the rear, continuing to run at top speed as she waited for the bugs to get closer. Soon they’d come within a few meters, and F422 immediately responded by firing off two hundred of her flamethrower quills to the aft, scorching all but a few bugs out of the air in a massive blast of flame.

As she continued to flee, F422 jettisoned the spent quills to lighten her load, noting the buzzing trailing off behind her as she put more distance between her and the bugs.

There were a few moments where it almost looked like one or two bugs would catch F422, but she managed to avoid that particular fate. Then she noticed yet another Brose’s Wyvern coming in for an attack run, this time a juvenile. An arc of high-energy electrons blasted out of the wyvern’s mouth that F422 barely managed to dodge, and immediately the squirrel whirled around to fire every last surface to air missile she had after it in the course of about a second.

Dashing onwards as the rocket propelled quills streaked after the wyvern, F422 entered the final kilometer, her munitions significantly depleted and her anti-air capabilities gone. Off in the distance the juvenile wyvern had just barely started turning around as the missiles began slamming into it and exploding. Screaming in pain as it fell to the ground with shredded wings and severe wounds all over its body, F422 put the wyvern out of her mind.

Then finally F422 came close enough to the boomnut bush to actually see it. From even this distance she could clearly see other artillery squirrels already starting to dig in around it to make the initial fortifications. Still, there were five hundred meters to go and there was still a massive patch of bramble in the way.

Quickly F422 managed to identify a route around and started her detour, prepared to accept the added four hundred meters of distance this would require if it would get her to that boomnut bush sooner.

However on the way she encountered a herd of laser goats blocking her path, which would surely vaporize her with their lasers if she tried to pass. Squirrel F422 knew she didn’t have the munitions to reliably eliminate the entire herd, but she also knew that she was close enough to friendly artillery squirrels that she wouldn’t need to.

So squirrel F422 radioed for an artillery strike on the herd of laser goats in her way, immediately receiving an affirmative message that over a thousand high explosive quills were inbound.

F422 quickly scampered away out of the minimum safe distance, and four seconds later the quills started hitting home. A thunderous roar of explosions rang out as the quills rained down, and a moment or so later it was done, the entire herd of laser goats having been killed or crippled by the indirect fire.

F422 of course took the opportunity to continue on past the site of carnage towards the base, rounding the corner of the bramble only to be faced with a long eight-legged gunfox taking aim at her. F422 managed to avoid death by rolling to the side at the same time as she fired off twenty high explosive quills in the gunfox’s direction, but that was a very, very close call.

That latest threat dispatched, F422 resumed her march towards the safety of her fellow squirrels who were already doing a good job of cleaning out the nesting site for usage as a base of operations. Still, she was utterly exhausted, stressed out, and despite her programming not to she let her guard down at the sight of presumed safety.

That’s why she never spotted the cloaking shocker, the shape-shifting ambush predator leaping from its disguise as an innocuous clump of dirt and stabbing her with two electrified prongs as it closed in. The circuits were closed and well over four hundred volts of potential were established across F422’s body. This electrical activity wreaked utter neurological havoc across the squirrel’s systems, and among other things it touched off the payloads of F422’s quills. All of them.

Squirrel F422 and the shocker that had been killing her both promptly exploded in a blast of shockwave, shrapnel and flames that completely obliterated both organisms. In the distance the other artillery squirrels looked on at the death of their fellow with a rough approximation of sadness for a moment before returning to work. The bush had to survive, and the death of one squirrel could not be allowed to jeopardize that goal.

---

This is the free edition of The Blackwood Tourney. It is entirely pre-written, and will have one chapter released each week on Saturday. 
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