I Am The Swarm

Shutting down the weapons systems was one thing, but deactivating the radar system was an entirely different matter. It was akin to venturing blindfolded into an enemy stronghold, essentially surrendering one’s fate.

If the enemy approached with a weapon in hand, you wouldn’t even realize it until it was too late. What good was speed in such a situation?

If the Swarm harbored any ill intentions, Bular and his fleet would likely meet their end here.

“Major General, do you think the Swarm has detected us?” Kayi’s usually resolute face now bore an expression of deep worry, her thick black eyebrows curving in uncharacteristic distress.

Bular shot Kayi an annoyed glance, visibly displeased. He was beginning to regret his earlier decision to fast-track her promotion to adjutant. At the time, her exceptional beauty and outstanding capabilities had impressed him. However, it was only now that he realized her mental fortitude left much to be desired.

The situation was already tense enough, and Bular’s legs were trembling slightly beneath his stoic exterior. Maintaining an air of calm was draining all his energy—he simply didn’t have the bandwidth to console someone else.

“Kayi, stop asking meaningless questions,” he snapped, his tone sharp. “Respecting our opponent is respecting ourselves. If the Swarm, in their home base, cannot detect us after we exited the warp bubble, then what reason do we have for even being here?”

Chastened by Bular’s rebuke, Kayi flushed with embarrassment. Despite her striking appearance by Troi standards, she was far from useless. Quickly, she engaged in self-reflection and worked to adjust her mindset.

As time passed, the fleet drew closer to the Swarm’s outermost base. Observing the majority of Swarm units remaining in dormancy and seeing only a small, non-aggressive force intercepting them, Bular finally let out a breath of relief.

His confidence rapidly grew. The Swarm remained an enigmatic entity, and even the powerful Ji Race hadn’t managed to uncover their true form. If Bular could simply lay eyes on a real member of the Swarm and return alive to provide a detailed sketch, it would already be an impressive feat.

The approaching units were classic examples of the Swarm’s biological weaponry, well-documented in the Confederation’s records. The Swarm seemed particularly fond of this type of design.

In fact, many alien researchers had concluded that the octopus-like shape was an extremely efficient combat configuration.

According to the data, these units were primarily composed of soft materials, providing excellent defense against physical impacts. Their surface contained special compounds capable of weakening and reflecting energy-based weaponry, giving them significant resistance to energy attacks.

Additionally, their flexible tentacles allowed for multidirectional movement, enabling exceptional agility in confined spaces. The tentacles also offered formidable melee combat capabilities. With the exception of relatively weaker long-range firepower and endurance, these units had no major flaws.

This had been vividly demonstrated when ten or so Daqi warships, spread out in formation, had barely managed to hold their ground against over a hundred 500 meter octopus units. But when a handful of these units managed to close the distance, supported by smaller Swarm units, the Daqi found themselves in utter disarray. Without timely reinforcements, the fleet might have been annihilated entirely.

This footage had shocked the alien civilizations with access to it. For most of them, space battles were contests of massive fleets exchanging long-range artillery fire. Even at close quarters, their tactics didn’t deviate much, perhaps supplemented by attacks from fighter or drone swarms.

The Swarm, however, had introduced a novel element: melee combat. In a field dominated by long-range bombardments, their ability to “engage in close-quarters combat with terrifying precision” was an unsettling anomaly.

Alien civilizations had long focused on improving weapon range, firepower, and rate of fire, along with enhancing warship mobility, armor, and radar systems. Close-combat capabilities, however, had never been a priority, constrained as they were by the structural limitations of traditional warships.

Yet the Swarm’s biological designs effortlessly circumvented these limitations, enabling them to excel where others couldn’t even compete. This fundamental difference left the galaxy’s established powers grappling with an uncomfortable realization: their conventional strategies were ill-suited to counter the Swarm’s unique combat approach.

Although the Swarm had always been at a disadvantage in terms of mobility—struggling to close the distance to their enemies—their exceptional melee capabilities had nonetheless drawn significant attention from other civilizations.

The Swarm had effectively pioneered a new combat paradigm, proving the feasibility of a theoretical possibility. While many alien civilizations dismissed the Swarm’s effectiveness, they didn’t extend the same skepticism to themselves. They believed that if they could resolve the issue of mobility, such a melee-oriented combat style might yield impressive results. The analogy was simple: a martial artist with unparalleled agility could easily wreak havoc amidst a formation of spear-wielders.

Consequently, numerous projects were initiated among different civilizations to explore this new approach. Whether these endeavors would bear fruit remained uncertain.

As the two groups drew closer, Bular ordered his fleet to broadcast their mission objectives in Rikenese. This was a necessary compromise, given the enigmatic nature of the Swarm’s language and communication systems.

According to available data, intercepted Swarm communications were exceedingly rare, and their content remained undeciphered to this day.

It was hypothesized that the Swarm used a spectrum-based encryption language, composed of a staggering array of primary, secondary, and tertiary colors—far beyond the perception of most civilizations. Without the corresponding reading apparatus, even capturing the full communication stream was impossible, let alone decoding it.

Such specialized devices were so advanced that even the Ji Race couldn’t construct them. This was because developing them required not only profound knowledge of biology and biomimetics but also specific biological materials that were exceptionally rare. ŔÅΝоBЁȿ

Take, for example, pre-Swarm Luo Wen and his fellow humans from Earth. Most of them could only perceive three primary colors, which could combine to produce roughly one million distinct hues.

A small subset of people were dichromats, capable of perceiving only about ten thousand colors.

Even rarer were tetrachromats—individuals who could perceive a fourth primary color. These people could see an estimated one billion colors, significantly more than the average trichromat.

For every additional primary color that a visual system could perceive, the number of observable colors increased exponentially. A tetrachromat could see one billion colors—but what about a pentachromat, a hexachromat, or a creature capable of perceiving thirty primary colors? This alone illustrated the complexity of the Swarm’s encryption methods.

To decode such communications, one would first need to comprehend these unseen primary colors. It was difficult enough for a trichromat to describe their world to a dichromat.

Attempting to convey the vastly richer world of a tetrachromat to a trichromat was even more futile.

For a trichromat to study and understand the tetrachromatic world, they would first need a pair of tetrachromatic eyes. Similarly, understanding the world of thirty primary colors would require eyes capable of perceiving all thirty colors.

To date, the only known creatures in this starfield capable of perceiving so many colors were members of the Swarm. As such, decoding the Swarm’s encrypted communications would require capturing a Swarm unit equipped with thirty-color vision.

Such units were exceedingly rare even within the Swarm itself. The Confederation had yet to identify their appearance, and even if one were captured, the Swarm’s genetic locks presented another significant challenge.

It could be said that while the Swarm lagged behind in overall technological development, they had far surpassed the mechanically inclined civilizations of the Confederation in certain branches of biological science.

Bular sighed to himself. Perhaps this was the real reason why the Ji Race was so invested in this mysterious Outer-ring civilization.

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