Right from the start of the tournament’s deployment phase, Veronica and Rat’s laser falcons had been doomed. Their design had been thoroughly compromised by Togi during the engineering phase of the tournament, and making matters even worse for them he then exploited these vulnerabilities to use the birds as hosts for a parasitic nanoweapon. On its own submitting a parasite for the tournament would have been within the rules, but sabotaging the work of another team to host said parasite was very firmly listed as a violation. Still, Togi didn’t much care about winning so long as he could ruin everyone else’s fun, so he did it anyway.

As such, the instant that the laser falcons deployed into the skies of Blackwood, they were already infected with Togi’s griefing bacteria. At the moment there wasn’t any signal being emitted from the second phase of the nanoweapon’s activities, but soon enough that would change.

The first samples of Togi’s nanoweapon to come into contact with a plant ironically got there thanks to the artillery squirrels deployed by the Snow Coast Symbiotes. The volleyed surface to air missiles were highly effective at blasting laser falcons out of the air, but by the same token also splattered bits of those same falcons all over the local landscape. Bits of infected blood and gore landed on plants and animals all over the region, and swiftly the nanoweapon got to work suborning hosts.

Some organisms were able to fight off the infection and logged it for future reference, with the work of Doctor Sagi Brose and his student Queen Shed slapping it aside with contemptuous ease. However many other organisms were not so lucky, several plants and animals being thoroughly suborned for the benefit of the parasite. The animals were allowed to continue their normal behaviors for now, since it still wasn’t time.

However the plants were now forced to extend their root networks down and sideways, linking up with other infectable plants to produce a vast solar power array to power the underground activities of the microbes in question.

This is when Blackwood first took notice and started fighting back. This sort of nanoweapon driven encroachment was a direct threat to every susceptible plant species, and they were designed to have precisely none of it. Vast waves of toxins and symbiotic microbes were released into the soil to beat back the infection, the ground itself becoming highly corrosive in some locations due to the intensity of the biochemical war being waged below the surface. For a time these measures were, broadly speaking, effective, but that wasn’t to last.

Only now did Togi’s nanoweapon call in animal support, legions of suborned laser goats, murder ants, lesser firefoxes, and other susceptible yet destructive animals coming forth to tear into the resisting plants. Many trees, grasses and brambles were utterly destroyed in the ensuing war, the sessile organisms having the disadvantage of being in a static position when faced with highly mobile attackers. Ones with quite a long range in the case of the laser goats.

However the Boomnut Bushes were far too fiercely defended for this sort of assault to easily dislodge them by this point. Not only had the squirrels been busily at work fortifying the terrain and Queen’s nanoweapon making the ground thoroughly inhospitable to Togi’s creation, but by this point an alliance with Chitin’s doomgrass, thrushes, and soil fixers was well on its way to flourishing.

So not only did the oncoming swarm of attackers find themselves without a clear line of fire, they also found themselves having to fight through massive barrages of squirrel artillery and swarm attacks by electricity-wielding birds. Not to mention that the doomgrass spreading around and inside the fortresses of the squirrels was violently ripping encroaching organisms apart. It wouldn’t have been able to resist Togi’s nanoweapon infection on its own, but Queen’s symbiote boosted the defenses enough to make up the difference.

Still, Togi’s nanoweapon had other things it could be doing in the meantime. Case in point, it could be performing its primary function of concentrating, refining, and most importantly enriching heavy actinide series metals into an easily usable form. It took a great deal of downwards expansion of the tendril network, but a third of a Megasecond in and the microbe could get deep enough for levels of the relevant elements to notably increase from their surface concentration. Other metals were similarly extracted and formed into specific components.

During this period the suborned animals were called in to act as a labor force, first digging a pit where the concentrated metals could be found. Next they assembled the first set of components into a fabrication printer, which both vastly accelerated the construction of further components, and also began production of more sophisticated labor units to speed up the digging and construction. A basic industrial base established, Togi’s creation started printing components for its true project.

The machine now started assembling those components into a very specific configuration, constantly getting bigger as more and more materials were added. After a bit the concentration site stopped going for actinides and instead started concentrating rare Hydrogen isotopes, discarding the normal protium as a waste product. However the structural metals continued being extracted and built into the structure as it extended out of the pit.

Gradually a conical shape took form, towering several meters into the air. Togi’s nanoweapon registered completion as the last piece clicked into place, and the command for the activation sequence was begun.

Immediately several cannons fired to spread pods of Togi’s microbe hundreds of kilometers across the Steppe and surrounding environs. A few minutes later when it was clear they had gotten out of the danger radius, the detonators went off. A core of almost pure Uranium 235 was crushed to the point of nuclear fission, the massive fusion secondary was lit off, and a wave of thermonuclear fire washed over the Thundersnow Steppes, immediately incinerating all lifeforms caught within.

Several of the Artillery Squirrel nests were destroyed or heavily damaged, but the survivors immediately went into crisis response mode. They had already known that the microbe responsible had a major presence in the direction of the fireball, now it was only a matter of determining an appropriate response to the problem of surprise nuclear fireballs from nowhere.

Squirrel M115 had been relatively lucky; he’d been underground in his nest’s burrows for sleeping which had sheltered him from the worst of the blast. Clambering up onto the surface level, several problems immediately made themselves apparent. Several squirrels were injured, the defensive berm had been partially flattened, and most pertinently the boomnut bushes were on fire.

PETN wasn’t liable to explode just from being set on fire, but there was no hope of extinguishing the flames, that was for certain. Even if firefighting equipment were available it wouldn’t have been possible to extinguish; high explosives were self-oxidizing and would keep burning no matter what you did to them, barring drastic cryogenic measures.

M115 therefore opted to focus his attention on more productive endeavors, namely coordinating the evacuation from the burning nest and subsequent rebuilding efforts. A radio signal calling for all still living squirrels to respond went out, and M115 was grateful to receive several responses even from those squirrels not currently visible wandering around above ground.

Immediately, M115 joined the crew working on evacuating the nursery. There were squirrels still down in there, and between the smoke and heat they could very easily perish if not evacuated from the burrows in time. So M115 jettisoned all his quills to avoid them igniting in the rapidly heating tunnels, pushed his fear to one side, and charged into the inferno.

The tunnels were filled with smoke as the roots started lighting up with more self-oxidizing flames, M115 knowing it was only a matter of time before the burning remains of the bush seared through the tunnel walls and started making safe navigation of the burrow impossible. So the squirrel hurried with all his speed, soon arriving in the nursery chamber where new artillery squirrels were brought into the world in relative safety.

M115 quickly grabbed a pair of pups in his mouth and started carrying them out of the tunnels towards the exit. He’d barely gotten halfway when he encountered another squirrel coming the other way and handed off the pups for her to take the rest of the way.

M115 was painfully aware of the temperature increasing in the burrows as they went back for another two pups, then another. Tiny flickers of flame were starting to lick through the tunnel walls already on the fourth trip, M115 collecting the last pair of pups from that particular nursery chamber and running for all three of their lives towards the exit.

Unfortunately for M115, that’s when his luck ran out and a section of ceiling came down on top of him. Another squirrel got the pups out and brought them to the surface, even as M115 desperately tried to dig himself out of the cave-in. Alas it was not to be, as a large gout of flame finally burst through the walls of the tunnels and started burning him to death, overwhelming even the temperature limits of the finest bio-technology. That said, M115 didn’t die fast; their body was built with an absolute refusal to go down easily, automated bypasses routing around damaged organs and other such things to keep M115 alive and functional for as long as possible.

Still, it was ultimately futile, the rising temperatures in the tunnels causing a total breakdown of M115’s body in very short order.

Meanwhile above ground squirrel F660 was busy ensuring the defense of what was left of her home. Among other things this included breaking open the discarded quills of those who had gone to rescue the pups and feeding them to those currently without so that they could grow new ones faster, before the replacement boomnut bush could start growing. Still, she’d barely gotten halfway through this when one of the lookouts alerted her to several airborne predators streaking through the skies towards the nests.

F660 still had her full complement of surface-to-air missiles, so the job of dealing with this problem fell to her. Quickly whirling around she spotted eight incoming airborne organisms. It took a mere fraction of a second to task several dozen quills to each target, and then F660 fired. Rocket-propelled quills streaked through the air and two of the organisms went down, but these were proper aerial predators that were already on their guard against such things. So they managed to shoot a significant fraction of the incoming missiles out of the air. In desperation F660 unloaded her entire remaining missile complement of several hundred missiles in an attempt to shoot down the attacking beam bats, knocking another four out of the air in conjunction with the rest of her nestmates.

For a moment it seemed hopeless with anti-air munitions depleted, then the surviving ally thrushes streaked into the sky, electrified talons at the ready. The beambats attempted to react, they really did. But this time they were being swarmed from all sides and couldn’t spin around to cover all the angles fast enough. The thrushes closed to melee range with the extreme swiftness offered by their afterburners, and soon enough the beambats found themselves being ripped apart in midair by the swarms of ferocious birds.

The immediate crisis over, F660 and the rest of the squirrels turned their attention to rebuilding. The charred remains of the boomnut bushes that had once sustained them were starting to burn out now, so the absolute first thing on the agenda was to plant new ones and get boomnut production back up and running as soon as possible. Clearing the stumps would take too long, so the squirrels instead opted to put the boomnuts in at an offset from their previous locations, prioritizing speed over neatness.

Immediate survival mostly secured, F660 then took the opportunity to listen for the homing signals of all the other boomnut bushes out there. As expected all the nests closer to the blast site had been utterly destroyed, either having been within the fireball or simply pulverized by the overpressure and heat. However, further out the squirrel nests were reporting being almost unscathed.

Given the situation, F660 immediately requested both aid and an investigative task force. A nest a kilometer or so further from the blast had managed to avoid the worst effects, so they quickly reached an agreement to send over a supply of a couple hundred boomnuts and a fifty squirrel investigative team.

The squirrel nests didn’t quite see eye to eye on everything, but one thing the squirrel/bush/symbiote triad were absolutely certain of was that whatever happened could not be allowed to occur again. They needed to identify the organisms responsible, locate major concentrations and how they operated, and develop a strategy to keep them from reaching this stage of their life cycle ever again.

As the squirrels stared up at the slowly dissipating mushroom cloud, a decision was made that a group would need to march into the crater to recover what evidence could be found in the smoldering ruin. M1331 was one of the squirrels sent out on the first fact-finding mission, with the explicit instruction that their radio was to be kept active at all times to send back information.

Five other squirrels formed up, and together they began their march into the inferno. The terrain they passed over was charred and burnt as expected, the many varieties of grass on the Thundersnow Steppe having been instantly ignited by the infrared flash from the nuke. Some types of grass had handled the flames better than others; Chitin’s doomgrass had been designed to be extremely flame retardant among other features, while other grasses had been purposely designed to go up in a blaze at the slightest provocation.

Still, that just meant that some grasses were still partially intact while others were gone entirely, with entire patches of the steppe being entirely barren of unburned plants. M1331 was sending back every single observation of the danage, noting what plants and animals had survived as he moved closer to the blast site.

Then the survivor rates started dropping off closer and closer to zero as M1331 reached the edge of the crater proper. Several organisms had been vaporized entirely, leaving nothing but carbon silhouettes in their former positions, and as the terrain transitioned to nuked-solid glass the survivor rates became a complete and utter zero.

It was already starting to rain at the blast site, particulate matter kicked up by the blast having provided condensing surface in the clouds above. M1331 noted the rainout washing off his quills as he approached the pond forming in the middle of the crater, but was largely unaware of the radioactivity. Admittedly he didn’t need to worry about that too much on account of having been designed for extreme radiation tolerance, but more pressingly the crater filling with water threatened to make whatever evidence could be found at the center of the blast site inaccessible.

So the group of squirrels hurried further into the desolation, racing against the rainfall to reach the center before it was completely flooded.

The team of six got there in the nick of time, a significant puddle already forming at the bottom of the crater. Diving under the water, there was a notable difference in the composition of the heat-fused substances making up the bottom of the crater. Instead of glassy fused dirt and rock, here there was a much more metallic composition to the ground.

Thinking quickly, M1331 determined that any surviving cells of the responsible organism would be buried some distance into the metallic layers, since the heat from the blast would have killed anything too close to the surface. So using the high explosive quills in their arsenal and their already existing burrowing claws, the squirrels started to dig.

Three squirrels were assigned to establishing a berm to keep the water out of the dig site for as long as possible, quickly setting about the task. Meanwhile M1331 began blasting his way into the terrain, trying to reach a depth that didn’t look to have been fried too badly.

After a few minutes of blasting and scooping the debris away to be added to the dike, M1331 saw it, the un-fused terrain he’d been looking for. Quickly scurrying down into the puddle at the bottom of the hole, the squirrel grabbed a small piece of dirt and popped it into his mouth for analysis.

Immediately M1331’s immune system registered an attack by a hostile nanoweapon, quickly containing and identifying the responsible strains of microbe. Further analysis picked apart exactly how it would go about attacking a host, what it would do with them once suborned, and most importantly that in the soil it would concentrate heavy metals exactly like what had been observed at the bottom of the crater.

Culprit found, M1331 and the rest of the squirrels started back towards the nest, keeping their radios going as they traveled. The rain had picked up massively, M1331 being rendered soaking wet by the storm as he climbed out of the crater.

Still, as the squirrels marched through the cinders of the steppes passing corpses and charred remains, M1331 was busily conversing with the other squirrels in the team. They had a suspicion of what had happened, they knew what organism was responsible, now they just needed to make sure that it never ever happened again.

On arrival at the recovering squirrel fort, M1331 made his way straight to one of the more intact burrows and promptly fell asleep. The other squirrels who didn’t need to recover from a heavy dose of radiation could take it from here.

One of these squirrels was F1202, and her assignment was to lead a reclamation crew to one of the nests that had been closest to ground zero. Yes all the squirrels there had died and the bush had burned to cinders, but the triad could not afford to give up territorial coverage that it needed to keep the blasting microbes in check.

And so F1202 began her march as one of fifty squirrels, aiming to reclaim a nest that had since been blown to rubble. Yet again a crew of squirrels marched into the burned and blasted no-being’s-land produced by Togi’s nuke, this time with a different destination in mind.

En route they encountered a herd of laser goats that the ally thrushes had warned them about, but the group of artillery squirrels was ready for this. A volley of mind control quills from cover quickly suborned the herbivores, and off they went trotting back to the nest to bury themselves for composting. Obstacle removed, F1202’s group continued towards the nesting site.

What they found was a destroyed ruin. The bush had burned out completely, many of the exterior fortifications had been leveled, and all the tunnels had been forcibly collapsed by the shock wave. In many ways it was like starting over.

Fortunately the squirrels and their thrush companions had the capability to do exactly that. Quickly they planted their boomnuts in a hexagonal grid pattern around the ruined site, both preparing a minefield and ensuring that at least one nut would be kept intact until reaching maturity. At the same time the thrushes were dispersing doomgrass seed across the same general area as the squirrels were busily reclaiming.

Quickly F1202 put in a radio request for the standard forward base provisioning while they waited for on-site boomnut production to start up, and got a reply indicating that yes there would be a convoy system set up in fairly short order.

Now it was just a matter of holding the location until the bush could start producing its nuts. F1202 wound up on lookout duty while other squirrels did the burrow digging, keeping a look out for incoming predators.

Compared to the normal levels of hostility that would have to be dealt with, the process of securing this base was honestly shockingly easy. The normal hostility of Blackwood’s biosphere had been largely blasted and burned away, leaving a distinct dearth of lifeforms to cause problems. There were still the occasional problems, such as a wandering grazer that got nailed with some mind control quills and used for fertilizer, but there were far less than normal for this sort of thing.

Still the good times had to end eventually, a flight of laser falcons making their unwelcome presence known. F1202 was ready on the surface-to-air missiles immediately, blasting them out of the air without too much trouble. Still, the fact that they would have bothered flying in here where there wasn’t much to prey on was distinctly suspect. As such F1202 was sent out to locate where the corpses had fallen and check them for nanoweapon contamination.

F1202 quickly reached the site of the fallen laser falcons, the corpses having been thoroughly mangled by the exploding quills that had slammed home. Quickly collecting a bit of blood from the corpse, F1202 brought it up to her mouth. Immediately her immune system identified it as the exact same microbe that M1331 had found, signals quickly being sent out to all squirrel nests and ally thrushes in repeater range.

The microbe was immediately assigned the ID f420b750b12e as the symbiotic alliance figured out what they were up against. They didn’t know how, but it was now clear that this microbe was responsible for the massive explosion that had killed so many squirrels and destroyed so many nests. Furthermore, it was now indicated that unusual laser falcon behavior would be a good indicator of this microbe’s presence.

The thrush network processed the data for a bit before sending a reply that they would begin active searches for laser falcons behaving in an atypical manner, as the organisms all got onto a war footing. They knew what they were up against, they knew enough about it to start fighting back, and now they knew exactly what would happen to them if they didn’t.

A few kiloseconds later, the thrushes had reported another flock of strangely behaving laser falcons. The squirrels had promptly advanced into a position to shoot them down, and shortly thereafter the ally thrushes had unhindered access to the airspace. They immediately noticed a large metallic structure in the process of being constructed, looking ominously close to reaching the point of completion. Acting on a hunch Squirrel M357 and eight more were assigned to demolish it as fast as possible, each carrying two boomnuts to do the job.

The animals and working automatons surrounding the structure were easy enough to break, High Explosive quills doing a number on them and crippling their ability to fight back. Then the squirrels scurried through the gaps of the structure to find themselves inside a machinery room with a fabricator working away and several other bits of important looking machinery.

It was barely possible to figure out what was important and what wasn’t in here. There were disgusting-looking microbial growths connected to most of the heavy machinery, a core of some heavy metal was hanging suspended above the factory floor, working drones were in the process of constructing some sort of storage tank until M357 blew them up, and there was an overall sense that this place should not exist on this planet.

The squirrels quickly placed their boomnuts in all the actively moving machinery and jettisoned all of their incendiary and explosive quills inside before promptly exiting the structure. They sent the detonate command to the boomnuts they’d left behind, and with a loud “whumph” mixed with the sound of tearing metal and flames igniting, the bombs went off.

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