Although I thought I could get my troops up and running within a few minutes, I quickly found that pulling armor-pierg quills embedded in solid metal was more than a little difficult. When I realized how long it was takio remove the quills, I quickly bought aire case of pliers and got some of the bears to help.

  “How long until we get moving?” Whisperer asked after a couple minutes of plug oversized needles.

  “About ten more minutes,” I replied, taking a step back from the row of bears. “It looks like a couple of them took damage to essential pos, like the main processor or repair system, but most of them should be good to go.”

  My arms were killing me, so I stepped bad let the bears take care of the quills for a minute. Jesse and Tina were busy ing up the st of the antithesis, so I stepped up to the strange row of brambles instead. The pnt structure was different from the thick, wood-like mushrooms from earlier; these were thin, interlog vines. Once I got closer, I noticed there were strange, multicolored fruits hanging from the different vines.

  “What the fuck is this? The antithesis ripped down all the previous biomass. Why not rip this down too?” I mumbled.

  “This appears to be a variant of one of the antithesis harvesting strains. Ohat spreads out huge root works, seeks out specific elements, then collects these elements into a single, easily harvestable package,” Nyx expined, using some random bear to expin.

  Tina stopped dissolving bodies for a moment and turo the bear. “Wait? You mean these are metal fruits?”

  “Metals, rare earth elements, crystalline elements, and even noble gases. It depends oype of vine,” Nyx replied.

  “Should we destroy them?” I asked as I carefully circled the strange hedge.

  “I wouldn’t reend it, at least nht now,” the bear replied. “The tunnel work could colpse.”

  That got Whisperer’s attention. “What? Is their root system that extensive? Why wasn’t it detected by ss before?”

  “The root structure spread over dozens of square kilometers, creating a titanietwork. Sihe roots tain aremely high amount of minerals or other elements, that means they be mistaken for natural formations.”

  “So what? We just leave them here?” Tina asked.

  “For now. We’ll mark down the location ahe up crews know about them. We don’t have the time to break it down and stabilize the structure at the same time. We’ll also have to make sure they look for simir mineral structures going forward,” Whisperer decred.

  I nodded. “We’re still on a tight schedule, and these deys aren’t helping. The st thing we want to do is cause a cave-in and block our way. Or crush ourselves,” I said as I headed back towards my downed bears.

  Most of the bears were ba their feet, but there were still half a dozen dowe removing all the quills. Deadbeat seemed to be just digging around in one, apparently trying to either find any hidden quills or kick-start the repair process.

  “Leave them, buddy. We’ll have to pick them up on the way back. We ’t do anything for them now.”

  “That’s not quite true,” Nyx said, sing from the bear over by the brambles to Spooky, who was standing near Deadbeat. “In fact, you have the catalogs required for a quick repair, just not the tech.”

  “Define quick,” I said, gng at the bear.

  “Within minutes. It would just require a ser module and a nanite module. Since you have the blueprints for the bears, the device identify broken pos and program the nao repair them on the fly. It’ll eveively cheap.”

  “How cheap?” I asked.

  “A hundred and fifty points. It’s so simple that the bears eve on themselves.”

  I sighed. “Fine, give it to me. If it’s that simple, I leave a bear behind to repair the st squad, and they try and catch up with us ohey’re ba their feet.”

  A pin-looking shoebox appeared at my feet, but before I could reach down, Deadbeat s up. The bear ripped open the package, revealing a strange device that looked like some sort of caulk gun, with a massive needle on the end and a tablet attached to the top. He immediately turned back to the downed bear and started shaking the device around like a toddler with a oy.

  “Ummm…. Nyx, I thought you said the bears could use the device. Deadbeat looks like he’s going to break the thing,” I said as I tried to grab the device. Unfortunately, Deadbeat retreated away from me before freezing up. He stood pletely still for a few seds befrabbing the device’s handle and slowly swinging it across the bear in a methodical fashion.

  “Don’t worry, he just needed an instrual package. I’ve pushed the update to all the bears, they should be good now.”

  “And why did Deadbeat snatch the device, and try to keep it away from me?” I asked, looking at the green bear suspiciously. “Is he broken?”

  “From what I tell from his code, it’s just a part of his developing personality. Ever since he helped heal those girls from the Void Runners, part of his kerarted developing a desire to help others. It’s not that odd, all your bears will develop their own personalities sooner or ter.”

  “Wonderful… Hopefully they don’t get as possessive as Deadbeat. Otherwise, things will get out of hand.” I watched Deadbeat for a moment as the bear apparently identified a broken po, stabbed the needle deep into the bear, and pulled the trigger. After a sed, the bear twitched. “At least it’s w. I trust you to hahis properly?” I asked the bear.

  He stopped sing for a minute, looked up at me, then nodded seriously before tinuing his work.

  “The -up’s done. How are things looking over there?” Jesse called from the far side of the room. When I gnced his way, I could see all three of my panions were already at the exit to the cavern, waiting for me.

  “I’m also done here!” I yelled back before I started jogging over. “There are a couple bears still down, and they’ll need more time to recover, so I just ordered them to catch up ter.”

  “That’s fine. As long as you have enough to keep cutting through the barriers, we tinue making progress towards the hive. We’ve deyed long enough,” Whisperer said before turning towards the exit. “Have you heard anything from the other teams?”

  “Not retly. The dig team is probably on-site by now, but I have no idea how long it’ll take them to get into the tunnel system. The Jasper team was moving slightly faster than we were, as Broodmother’s bugs easily deal with the smaller models, but I’m not sure about her ability to deal with the bigger stuff,” I reported as I fell in beside her. “I hope they’re having a better time than we are.”

  “So, how much farther to the hive? Do we know?” Jesse asked from behind me.

  “I estimate the hive is between five hundred fifty-six meters a-hundred ay-two meters from our current location. The antithesis like to keep support systems like these mining pnts, fairly close to the hives. It’s effit,” Nyx reported.

  “What about when Model Seventeens run the show?” I grumbled.

  “Based upon all my simutions and historical evidence, I doubt Seventeens would make such massive ges to the hive structure. These ges typically only happen when a much stronger model takes trol and begins optimizing the geic code of the models created within,” Nyx said nontly.

  Tina’s head sowards the bear. “They do that?”

  Nyx nodded. “When they face heavy resistand are given time to build up and develop, absolutely. That’s why it’s important to proactively remove small hives.”

  “At oint do the antithesis develop this ability?” Jesse asked quietly. “It wouldn’t happen to be in the low forties, would it?”

  The bear nodded. “There are some models with basietiipution skills in the forties, but the real maniputors start appearing ie fifties and higher.”

  “But it COULD happen,” the man emphasized. The bear just nodded again.

  We were all quiet for a moment. “We should hurry up,” Tina decred quietly.