It's a good thing the Colony managed to haul so many suits back from the battlefield, Smithant reflected, since there were only so many pieces that would be useable in this reconstruction and she had a heck of a lot of surface area to cover. The rest of the ants in attendance watched from the sidelines, slightly anxious for the outcome. The pets raised by the Eldest had achieved a strange sort of status amongst the Colony. They weren't ants, obviously, but they were still accepted as part of the family. In a sense they were an extension of the Eldest, and therefore deserving of some measure of the respect reserved for that august individual.