‘They have learnt to their cost that their world is nothing but a toy sandpit to us. They know we could destroy every single remaining ant city on Earth in just a couple of days. And now that they do know that, they will not dare organise any acts of sabotage against our world. They are entirely rational creatures and their actions are governed by dispassionate, mechanical considerations. That kind of thinking does not allow them to take unfavourable risks.’

‘Your Majesty, there is certainly truth in what you say,’ replied Interior Minister Babat hesitantly, ‘but yesterday evening I had a nightmare that alerted me to another possible scenario.’

‘You seem to have been having quite a few nightmares of late.’

‘That’s because my intuition tells me we are in very real danger. Your Majesty, the empire’s deterrence strategy is founded on the premise that if the ants were to destroy a part of our dinosaur world, another part of our world would then launch a devastating second strike against them. But what if the ants target every corner of the dinosaur world simultaneously, in a single coordinated attack? If they do that, we won’t be able to retaliate. In that sort of scenario, our… um… deterrence strategy will be… um… non-existent.’

Dadaeus gave his nervy minister’s comments a nanosecond’s thought then shook his head. ‘The situation you’ve described is merely theoretical. It’s a worst-case scenario that will never happen.’

‘But, Your Majesty, that’s how the ants operate: as long as the theoretical possibility for a course of action exists, they will attempt it. That’s the flipside of their mechanical way of thinking. In their simplistic estimation, nothing is too crazy.’

‘I have to disagree with you on that, Babat. I still think it’s unlikely to happen. Besides, the empire’s security measures are pretty damn rigorous. If the ants were planning a full-scale operation, we’d notice pretty quick. What worries me now isn’t the ants – it’s those Laurasians. They’re becoming more and more of a threat to us Gondwanans.’

*

Besides the dinosaurs assembled in the server room, Dadaeus had another audience: twelve soldier ants hidden beneath the motherboard of the server the engineer had just examined. Five hours earlier, the ants had snuck into the Communications Tower via a water pipe, made their way into the server room through a tiny crack in the floor, then slipped through an air vent into the server itself. The security minister was correct. The ants could pass unimpeded through the dinosaurs’ massive buildings and machinery.