Regina rubbed her eyes and rolled her shoulders, trying to release some of the tension in them, but she still kept part of her attention on the Winged Drones she’d been watching. She observed as they retreated to the hive’s closest bases, while a few stayed behind to try and assess the damage they’d done to the gnomes’ soldiers.

The hive’s losses had been heavier than she’d hoped, unfortunately. Out of the five thousand Winged Drones she’d sent off, less than four thousand were returning. And that included those who had been part of the tactical reserve and not actually participated in the attack. If you could call it that.

Still, it was probably worth it. If nothing else, their casualty numbers provided a good base for planning for the future. A lot of the drones had actually been killed by the scattered higher-level fighters the gnomes had sent along with their army. Those men didn’t seem to be quite part of the regular army, but there were a sizable number of them, probably in the third Tier, or a few even in the fourth. They seemed to have been more effective than the regular soldiers at fending off her Winged Drones’ strikes. Something that was good to know, at least.

Of course, that wasn’t the real reason the hive had launched this operation, and it wasn’t the only goal they’d met. From what little she could see, they’d succeeded in throwing the gnomes’ neat little columns into disarray, and they’d certainly slowed them down.

She hoped the psychological impact of it hit, as well. Being attacked just after they set foot out of their tunnels, while few of them were able to fight back, should do something. Unfortunately, she wasn’t really in a position to see the effect on the gnomes’ morale, so she’d just have to hope there was one.

Of course, they weren’t the only ones who might get disheartened or affected by psychological factors. Regina sighed at the thought. She didn’t really worry about her hive’s morale, but she’d never lost drones en masse like this.

The sounds of footsteps made her glance over, and Max said, “Your bath is ready, Regina.”

She rolled her eyes at him. She hadn’t asked for that, but Via had been busy preparing one while she was distracted just now, anyway. Regina shook her head, but decided arguing about it would be pointless and kind of counterproductive. Instead, she walked into the bathroom and pulled the door firmly shut, not quite in Max’s face, then let Via help her remove her shirt as she undressed and sank into the hot water.

It felt great, and she let herself sink deeper, water swallowing her as she submerged her head for a minute.

She still felt every one of her drones’ deaths, and yet feeling so many of them close together was … intense, but not as bad as she’d been afraid it might be. It certainly wasn’t even ten times as strong as when she’d lost a scout previously. But ironically, Regina felt a bit concerned about that. She’d withdrawn from what was happening, from the psychic link to those drones — not completely, but enough to dull the sensation.

It had been unconscious, and almost automatic. She supposed that made sense. She couldn’t afford to be crippled by her hive’s losses when she fought an actual war in which lots of drones would die. Something Hivekind were clearly not strangers to, as a people. And with the increase in her hive’s numbers, her connection to every individual drone, especially Swarm Drones, did feel more tenuous. Not weakened, exactly, but crowded or drowned out by the many others like it.

Regina resurfaced and took a deep breath, then shook her hair out of her eyes. It had been growing out the last few months. Then she leaned back against the bathtub and closed her eyes again, focusing on her psychic link while she let the hot water sooth the low ache in her core.

Her recent losses only underscored the fact that the hive needed every drone, every egg, it could get. While she had more Drone Breeders, Regina’s own contributions were still important, as well. And they needed more sapient drones to manage their new hordes of Swarm Drones, even if she still felt a bit ambivalent about that.

This had been the first large-scale clash between her forces and the gnomes, even if it wasn’t really a direct battle. Even if it was only the beginning. Regina smiled slightly as she thought about that. Her hive’s fighters might be weaker, but they had an inherent advantage in coordination, not to mention the ability to live off the land and superior mobility for the Winged Drones. From everything she knew about warfare, that predisposed them to using something like guerrilla or at least skirmish tactics. Ben definitely believed so, anyway, and she was inclined to trust the Drone General’s instincts. Besides, every day that passed would help her forces more than the gnomes, considering how quickly the hive got reinforcements.

All that considered, she’d given her warriors the goal to not let their enemies have a single peaceful day, and they’d taken it up with enthusiasm. In the best case, the hive could bleed the gnomes until they weren’t capable of putting up a proper fight. Even if things didn’t get that far, they could still slow them down, harry and annoy them and study their reactions. That would allow the gnomes to learn about the hive as well, Regina wasn’t stupid enough to miss that fact, but she wasn’t about to show them all of her cards.

The stretches of roads the gnomish army’s columns were currently taking had been too close to their territory to mess with, and trying something clever without being spotted by the gnomes would have been very hard. But soon enough, they would reach terrain the hive had been able to mine. Regina was looking forward to it.

Combined with a few more air raids, Ben hoped that it would hurt their logistics and morale, but also give them certain expectations about the hive’s capabilities and strategy. So they would be taken off guard when the hive combined another one of those bombing flights with something new, something more substantial.

They didn’t have enough explosives for too much of that, unfortunately, but Regina wasn’t going to let that stop her. Just dropping heavy rocks from high enough up could do a lot of damage on its own.

She shook her head and checked her status screen.

The Starlit Hive Total: 23,475 Inner Hive: 255 (258)/490 (+25) Swarm: 23,216/100,000 (+2,987) Warriors: 57 War Drones: 10,123 Workers: 50 Production Drones: 2500 Scouts: 40 Winged Drones: 10,561 Harvesters: 20 Aquatic Drones: 20 Shooters: 40 Drone Breeders: 18 Attendants: 40 Witches: 40 Keepers: 8 Monsters: 2 Demihumans: 1

The vast majority of her drones were Swarm Drones, obviously. And of those, the majority were War Drones and Winged Drones to carry the war against the gnomes. Regina still wasn’t quite sure which type would be better or more needed, so she’d decided to keep their numbers at more or less the same level. She could always switch the hive’s reinforcements around as the war progressed. And they had enough Production Drones to take care of the hive’s needs, for now at least. Their substance was still the best and simplest building material for the hive, so it was needed to build up the outposts and bases the plan called for, as well as smaller items and various odds and ends.

The numbers shown for her sapient drones were a bit deceptive, since they didn’t include how recently those drones had hatched or what their levels were, or even their Evolved variants. She felt like she had far too many Templates that were all necessary, for them. Sure, Workers might not contribute directly to fighting a war, but their support was crucial. Scouts weren’t as good in a fight as Warriors, but eminently necessary. Shooters were her only real ranged fighters, excepting mages. And speaking of, Attendants and Witches as magic users were obviously pretty important. They could learn to heal and Conjure needed materials, in addition to their fighting capability. So far, Warriors were her biggest group because they could command the Swarm Drones in battle. Although one of the reasons she had as many of the others, like Scouts or Shooters, was that they could help do that, as well.

Maybe spreading her eggs around like this was a mistake, but Regina just felt like the hive needed a balanced composition. Looking at the status, she cursed the fact that she’d woken up alone in a new age without any explanations once more. The only guidance she had were her Hive Queen instincts, and those were … wonky at best, really.

Still, the war would probably go on for quite a while longer, so she could aways change how she approached the new additions to the hive. Besides, it would probably be a mistake to let this war define how she went about adding new hatchlings to the hive. After all, these were people she was including into her hive, her family, and they were here to stay. Having a Hive made solely out of Warriors, for example, would have implications on more than the military level.

“Is there anything else you need, my Queen?” Via asked from the doorway.

Regina opened her eyes and glanced at her, not that she needed to, as she shook her head. “No, thank you,” she said. “Go ahead and get some sleep, I know you’ve been up for a while. I’ll manage on my own. On second thought, though, you can ask Tim and the fliers to reschedule the meeting, see when they’d have time. I need to go check on a few things, especially the eggs.”

Via acknowledged her words and withdrew again, and Regina glanced away. She was kind of glad the drone had interrupted her ruminations. Which might not have been an accident.

The hive status screen only listed drones by their basic Template, not Evolutions. But by now, they did have quite a few people in the second Tier, and a few in the third. She should probably be using them and their Class Skills more purposefully. The gnomes were clearly doing that.

In the meantime, Regina made herself stop dwelling on it. She got out of the bath and put her clothes on, then sat down on her bed and focused on the psychic link again. She seemed to spend a lot of her time like that lately.

First, she checked on the Cernlian civil war, or what she could see of it, to get that matter out of the way. From what she could tell, using a few scouting Winged Drones, the Nerlian and Cernlian army camps hadn’t really moved in the last few days. That seemed to suggest that the plague was serious, at any rate. Regina wouldn’t count on it to last much longer, but even a small delay was already giving Lyns the opportunity to retreat in good order and regroup. The way it brought his forces closer to Regina’s territory again was probably a bad thing in general, but it made things slightly easier for her now.

From there, she quickly checked in with Ray and watched the elves. The Elvish Free State was gearing up to support her hive logistically, and while they were still mostly in the preparation phase, she could already tell it would be useful. They’d also been using their diplomatic contacts to spread news about what the gnomes had done and foster a sense of outrage on the international scale, though Regina hadn’t really seen any results of that yet. The hive was also getting a little direct support, which she appreciated.

The biggest issue, really, was deciding how much to hide from the elves and how to go about it. She didn’t want them to know everything about her capabilities, but she also didn’t want to forgo help she could use because of that.

And besides, showing the elves why the hive was not to be screwed with was probably a worthwhile goal, too.

Right now, Regina focused on the fortress they had been building close to the gnomish cities. Neralt was still there, along with a few other, relatively strong, drones. She’d been keeping an eye on the progress of the gnomish army column closest to it.

By now, their flow of soldiers from several tunnel exits and narrow paths leading deeper into the Confederation had resolved into four main corps, or whatever they called it. The gnomes in one of these formations didn’t all use only one road — which would have been hard with just narrow mountain trails — but they kept in the vicinity of each other and moved in the same direction, in a clearly coordinated fashion. The march through rough terrain had strung them out, which the hive had taken advantage of with their attack. By now, they were clearly managing to reorganize and proceed.

One of these armies was closest and had obviously been heading directly for the hive’s fortress. Regina had to admit she’d been feeling a bit nervous about it, considering there were now what had to be thousands of gnomes moving on their outpost. But they didn’t seem to be in a hurry to try and storm it. In fact, they seemed to be moving carefully, maybe even deliberately slowing down, as they spread out and tried to screen the approaches to the fortress. She suspected they might have been waiting for a second of these columns to catch up.

Well, that should probably be a concern, but Regina didn’t mind right now. She sank deeper into the psychic link, watching behind the eyes of the drones stationed there and taking an assessment of their mental state. The sapient drones were all confident, almost eager to start the fight and kill some gnomes, but they didn’t let it distract them from working diligently.

Ben was already gathering and organizing flights of Winged Drones and preparing to send more of them to the fortress. Which we should probably name at some point. Regina shook her head to dislodge the errant thought and concentrated on the Swarm Drones. The fortress wasn’t big enough to house more than a few thousand, and even then only when crowding them very close together, but the terrain around it hid quite a few more. The various traps, lookout and fallback positions they’d been prepared would come in useful.

Regina settled in and just watched the oncoming gnomes for a while, listening with one mental ear while Ben, Tim and a few others discussed several scenarios and maneuvered drones around the mountain valley. The coming battles would be interesting, if nothing else.