The Hive’s senior leadership, which mostly meant the oldest drones, had had quite the fight about who would accompany Regina to her peace summit. They’d tried to keep it out of her sight, since their Queen didn’t need to be burdened or distracted by that, but Tia wouldn’t bet that she was unaware of it.

It was the first major conflict of that kind she’d seen, and although she knew, academically, that it was probably good for them to have one and get to disagree with each other, it was still a bit disconcerting. Still, Tia was fine with having lost. Or ‘lost’, she’d put up a token protest but she didn’t really want to accompany their Mother there.

Not that it wouldn’t be interesting, but she didn’t need to be there to talk to anyone in person and she could always watch the others or get them to tell her of what happened. Her specialty wasn’t really needed there and she would be more useful staying in the south.

In the end, Max and Tim had both accompanied Regina, to no one’s surprise. Ben stayed behind because of the war, and she suspected because he didn’t want to go either. Mia had shown interest and suggested she’d visit at least for a time. She’d arranged for it after the official proclamation of the new Empire. That currently made Tia the most senior drone in the hive’s core territory, and at least for the civilian side of it. Which didn’t really mean much since her work was mostly straddling the line between any theoretical civilian and military spheres, anyway.

In any case, Tia slept badly and showed a bit more anxiety than she really wanted to. Ben was in their new capital base, by Forest’s Haunt, while Tia stayed in their former main base further down beside the Great Forest, closer to the underground tunnels. Regina was still available through the psychic link, but she was busy and didn’t want to be distracted, so she felt the weight of responsibility.

In the end, Tia wasn’t even that surprised when something bad happened, although she could have done without getting a crisis dropped in her lap.

It was the middle of the night, she’d just gone to sleep a few hours ago and had been roused from deep sleep. Tia blinked against heavy eyelids for a moment before jumping up. She felt the others beside her stirring, but didn’t pay them much attention. Instead, she scrambled to get her jacket and rushed out the door.

She’d been the first one woken, she realized, although Ben was being roused right now. Tia hurried down the corridors of the base, barely seeing her surroundings as her focus remained on the psychic link. There were several reports coming in, confused and hard to piece together into a coherent whole.

Jem? she reached out. Can you put together what’s happening?

Jem’s mind showed no sign of drowsiness. He must have still been awake, working into the night as he sometimes did. Instead, the Keeper was alert and she felt him sweeping through the psychic link before he reached back to her quickly, focused.

The gnomes, clearly, he answered. There are a few humans involved, I assume they hired them. Perhaps defectors or displaced soldiers from the Cernlian civil war. They are causing trouble deeper in our territory. I assume some slipped in with the trickle of refugees we’ve been taking in.

That means they must have been planning this for a while, Tia realized. Perhaps when they got word of the peace summit, they decided it was a good time to strike.

Probably. The gnomes are also attacking in parallel. I think Ben has a better understanding of how that is going than I do. But they seem to have started a broad offensive and sent specialist teams of higher-level soldiers to get as deep as they can into territory we’ve taken. If they have a single objective, I can’t tell what. They mostly seem to be going for targets of opportunity, although it might be targets they’ve picked out ahead of time.

We’ll see how they act when we push back, she said grimly.

She reached out to Ben and found him already talking to several of the drones in officer roles. Tia listened quietly at first, trying to get a picture of what was happening. They had put people in command of certain areas, as well as overall roles like leading the flying drones or tunnelers. Their best scouts were gone or busy trying to track the gnomes’ movements. Now that their attack had started, a larger force was advancing toward them. A small army the gnomes had gathered, clearly intending to smash through the Hive’s defenses at weakened points on the front.

We need to make sure they don’t have anything else planned, she told Ben. We can’t afford any other surprises.

Ben sighed mentally. I’ll try to reassign some scouts, but we really don’t have enough people to be certain.

We can call up some Keepers and maybe others who’re good with the psychic link, let them look through what Swarm Drones can see, she suggested. We might have to sacrifice some flying drones by sending them on riskier paths, but I think it’s worth it.

It is, he agreed. Alright, I’ll take care of it. Check the defenses we have?

I’m on it.

Before she dove deeper into that, Tia checked on the others. She felt the touch of her Hive Queen, realizing that Regina had been woken and was watching now. Tia didn’t speak to her, leaving that to Ben and the other military commanders, who she judged to be more immediately relevant right now. Instead, she just checked that everything she could prepare was.

She wished she could be there in person, rather than stuck here in the base. But traveling down now would probably take too long and would be risky. Instead, she just had to do the best she could over the psychic link. And make sure the brothers and sisters she’d been working with were safe and didn’t put themselves in danger. Some of them could be a bit careless about that even in the middle of a warzone, too focused on setting the right mines or getting bombs in place, building walls or flooding tunnels to pay enough attention to news about enemy troops getting closer.

Once she’d checked on them, Tia focused more on their physical defenses. They did still have a few minefields prepared, although she knew their use would be limited. They simply didn’t have good enough means of hiding them, and the gnomes were too good at discovering and marking their locations. On the other hand, sometimes just having them as an obstacle made a big difference, because they’d have to enter the fields or give up something to avoid them. It was just a matter of placing them in the best locations. Other defenses were more obvious, like walls. They could probably hide those, but it didn’t make much sense. Still, a few well-placed walls in the right tunnels could be quite useful, Tia had learned.

What she spent most of the time checking on was neither kind of static defenses, though. Or even the extra tunnels the Hive had been digging in the parts of the Confederation’s sphere they’d taken in the mountains and higher elevations. It was the weapons. She supposed technically they might fall under the purview of Ben and his commanders, but unlike bows and arrows, they needed a lot more attention, care and knowledge of how to use them most effectively. Tia had been one of the people primarily responsible for designing them.

She almost appreciated this sudden attack for the chance it presented to see her work in action. The Hive had used them before, of course, but not in a context like this, and not on this scale. She’d modified their equipment compared to what they’d used against the Nerlians because of the different terrain and enemy. Being able to shoot for very long distances wasn’t as important, and high-angle guns could only be useful in specific locations, not everywhere. But cannons they could use for clearing tunnels were still good, and she’d experimented with what Galatea called grapeshot and other ammunition in that vein, along with more typical ordinance for siege weapons.

Watching some of her cannons decimate a unit of gnomes advancing on them, now, she had to admit it was a bit gruesome. Not that Tia was really bothered by that. This was a major throughlane leading into the western border territory of the Confederation, one of a few. The Hive had used it as a staging point and fallback position. They’d had to abandon the few villages further to the east they’d recently taken, but they wouldn’t be pushed from here. And once we’ve thrown back this assault, we can retake them, and more. And her mortars, cannons and hand-portable guns were helping.

After making sure that this advance was decisively stopped, Tia turned her attention back to the overall state of things, trying to get a sense of the situation from the psychic link. She wasn’t the best person for dealing with the other problems they were facing, but she should probably still keep an eye on it.

Unfortunately, the sabotage the Hive suffered hadn’t stopped. Some of it didn’t matter much at the moment, perhaps because the gnomes had the wrong idea about their supply lines. But there was enough trouble and chaos in the areas leading up to the real war zone to be a genuine problem.

Tia tried to copy what she’d seen from a few others and mentally ‘zoom out’ to hold everything in the psychic link at a lower level of detail, using what Jem and a few others had prepared in it. It took her a moment until she was sure she could process everything correctly. Then she focused on what she could see of the patterns in their enemies’ activity.

Any conventional army that depended on roads and supply networks would be severely impacted by this, she could see. Even for the Hive, while flying drones could just ignore whatever happened in between and fly straight to their target, War Drones didn’t have that ability. The gnomes had clearly struck at the best points they could reach. The Hive wasn’t as reliant on supply lines, but they did use depots of food for larger gatherings of War Drones and flying drones. They could go for a few days without food and even fight, but their combat effectiveness would be impacted without enough sustenance beyond that, and they weren’t always able to scavenge enough from their environment. Especially if there were drawn-out battles, and in rocky terrain without a lot of grass or greenery. 

Now, many of their supply depots were burned, clearly targeted directly. A few tunnels had been collapsed. Tia examined them and wasn’t too concerned by the damage. They would be able to clear the blockades or dig around them. Still, it was annoying. And there were still gnomish soldiers around, attacking any reinforcements the Hive commanders sent that weren’t in large enough groups.

Tia could tell the Hive was whittling them down. These soldiers must have been pretty high-level and the gnomes clearly valued them enough to not just throw their lives away, so they could chase them off and try to push them into positions where the Hive could take them out. Ben and the others were clearly doing their best.

Tia watched them, trying to help where she could and at least make preparations to do better in the future where she couldn’t. Times like these, she really wished she could fight herself. She was pretty good for someone who hadn’t been hatched as a Warrior, she knew that. But her place wasn’t on the battlefield, she could serve the Hive better in the base, in their workshops and setting up infrastructure and fortifications.

Tia? she felt Regina’s mind reach out to her. How is it going?

I’m trying to do what I can, my Queen, she responded. The others are getting it under control. Most of our heavy weapons are intact. I think I hid them well enough, or maybe they didn’t want to risk attacking them. A few tunnels and paths are blocked or harder to take, but we can clear them without issue.

Good, Regina responded, sending a warm glow that showed she was proud of her through the link.

Do you have new orders? It didn’t feel like her Queen had contacted her just for that report.

I’m going to be busy with this summit for the foreseeable future, Regina said. And this attack, of course; I’ll try to contribute what I can. But we need someone to make sure everything is fine at home. There are new humans coming in, and we need to deal with those living here, especially with the conference on. Ben is going to focus on the gnomes’ offensive and the war down there. He’ll be moving south soon if he hasn’t already.

I would join him.

I need you here, Regina interrupted. Someone needs to be physically present, especially to talk to some of those visitors or immigrants. I may end up sending some Nerlians or even other envoys to the hive to show them our strength or teach them something. Mia is going to stay and work on the technical side of things, concerning our new construction and the help we can give the others. We need the rest of Cernlia and Nerlia … uplifted, for lack of a better word, quickly. You should probably go back to Forest’s Haunt, then you would be closer to the workshops, too.

Tia pinched the bridge of her nose. At least she would be able to sneak in a few hours of work in those workshops. Fine, she grumbled. I’ll do my best, Mother.

I know, you’ll do very well. Another warm brush of her mind, and Regina receded.

Tia stared at the ceiling for a moment. Then she sighed and made to get up. It sounded like she’d just been temporarily put in charge of her home. The Hive’s core territory and most of their people who weren’t soldiers. Well, she’d never looked for leadership positions, but unlike Dan, she’d never shied away from them, either.

If this was what she needed to do, it was what she needed to do. Although she would tease Tim about it when he got back. And Mia, Max and Ben. Maybe she could prepare some pranks as a way of training or testing new equipment. Janis might help for any magical parts.

Tia made herself smile as she walked through the corridors of the base, resisting the temptation to obsessively check on the progress of the fight against the gnomes every second. Her brothers and sisters were good. They’ve got it. Who knows, maybe this might even be good for all of us to learn some independent problem-solving.