As I discovered, the radar was cumberso and imprecise and untested and required constant fiddling with the antennae, but it worked and my bees could make more of those.
This prototype radar was bad at detecting insect-sized targets at enormous distances, but it could spot larger targets—like dragons—at the range of dozens of kiloters! And Researchina promised to improve this range at least twice more.
Even bees with the best eyesight could barely spot a dragon at this distance, especially a small one. With the radar, our air defense was going to improve dramatically—the bees will be able to prepare their dragon riders or ballistas when they think a dragon is going to attack their positions.
Ordinarily, dragons didn’t attack beehives, but since the onset of the rapid evolution, this was changing. The latest generations of many dragon species had immunity or at least heavy resistance to venom. They used it to eat all the plentifully breeding insects, but were eager to chew on bee larvae. These dragons shrugged off stings, and even when the bees had firearms, the dragons’ thick hides could make them into dangerous enemies.
The radar still wasn’t going to help us deal with the hornets.
"Father, since you approved this project, the Researcher teams will work on improving the range and interpretation of the radar. When they achieve enough understanding of it, they will start working on a radar that can penetrate ground. I will give you an approximate tiline of radar improvents," were Researchina’s last words on the subject.
***
In the forr Hatha territories, Malevolence was still trying to find hornet nests and failing. In her reports, she said that instead of the nests she found more and more dead hornets, most of them already mostly eaten by other insects by the ti they were discovered.
’I can only guess that they died of hunger. But why? This makes—I an, I don’t have any idea why they didn’t return to their nests. This fumbles my plans of trying a few hornets to their nest. Father... do you think it’s possible that the hornets’ previous attack was their desperate effort and after losing they will all die on their own?’
I dashed her hopes imdiately.
’No chance, Malevolence. Did you search underground?’
’Yes. I’ve sent out Beehounds, but they can’t pick out hornet thoughts specifically among all the other insect thoughts—they are less notable than those of tal-eaters. The search attempts are also slowed down by local insects and other beasts, which we must exterminate before advancing. The humans had dug through all the areas near the places from which the hornets had crawled out, but found nothing again.’
’I see.’ Not really—we were being played again, and I didn’t know how. But what else could I say? ’Keep advancing carefully and taking the territory under your control. Make sure that no matter what, you have a safe area to retreat to and plenty of bastions to take cover in.’
’Yes, Father!’
***
In the next month and a half, Malevolence didn’t bring any significant news about the hornets, except that she couldn’t find any of them—unlike other hostile creatures. This put an end to the hope that I could inspect any of them with my system sight.
Dalmanrach didn’t reply to my requests to speak, either.
This felt like the calm before the storm, but like any calm mont, it was a ti of advancents in the Bee Empire.
The Researchers have improved both the radio and the radar significantly, and the Empire Council has made plans accordingly to implent both technologies.
First was the radio.
A radio receiver, as a rule, was much smaller than the radio transmitter. And most bees didn’t need radio transmitters in the first place.
To use the resources most effectively, I ordered to build a massive—the size of a living mountain!—radio transmitter right next to a coal mine.
It would consu a lot of energy, but there would be a new coal power plant built right next to the radio tower.
And the location of the radio tower allowed its transmitting range to cover a third of the bee-part of the Bee Empire.
Like that, with a single radio tower! This ant that we only needed a few dozen to cover most of the Empire, even the human parts.
anwhile, Craftsn Bees all over the empire were building small transmitters that ordinary bees would be able to put into their recreation rooms to listen to news off shifts. Artists Bees, led by the extrely excited Worriesgone, were compiling a schedule of stories, jokes and theater plays that could be told over the radio.
I was watching the onset of a new age in bee culture...
Of course, humans couldn’t be left without it, either.
Tamsha the skeptic—who was much less skeptical nowadays, and spent a lot of ti helping with cha engineering when he could—was extrely eager to hear about a technology that allowed even humans to send their voice over the air.
By my order, he and a team of Researchers using chas, created a human-sized radio receiver. The main difference between it and the bee-sized transmitter was the size of the sound dynamic.
This radio could make sounds even humans could hear.
I was told by Researchina that the expression on Tamsha’s face when he first heard a radio transmission was absolutely priceless.
"I’m glad that you and your girls are getting so used to being near humans that you can even make out their facial expressions," I replied to her, smiling. "I can rember the tis when you thought about nothing but killing and dissecting them all!"
Researchina huffed.
"First, Father, I always thought about a lot of different things! Second, I never stopped thinking about killing all humans. One day the last need in them will be gone, and then they themselves will follow."
I sighed.
"Forget what I said. Anyway, the humans will need more receivers—and I must ask Worriesgone and Whisper to co up with a human-only radio program for them..."
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