I Am The Swarm

Luo Wen had gone through a complex emotional journey regarding the Daqi prisoners of war.

In the early days, after the Swarm had taken custody of the prisoners from the Riken, Luo Wen had worked tirelessly to research a method to convert them into intelligent entities. He feared that during this period, the Interstellar Technological Confederation might intervene and demand the prisoners’ immediate return.

But Luo Wen had overestimated the cohesion within the Confederation and underestimated the civilizations’ loose perception of time. As a result, these prisoners had stayed with the Swarm for over 20 years.

Initially, Luo Wen had only planned to convert a portion of the prisoners into intelligent entities and then mix them with the unconverted ones before returning them to the Daqi civilization. Yet, the Daqi left their people in the Swarm’s custody without a second thought, as if they had no concerns at all.

This indifference annoyed Luo Wen. Was it the Swarm they looked down upon, or was it him personally? If the prisoners were left unattended for so long, wouldn’t it make him look weak if he didn’t fully convert them?

Thus, what began as a plan for partial conversion turned into a complete transformation—every last Daqi prisoner became an intelligent entity in disguise.

Having created spies, Luo Wen naturally needed an opportunity to send them back. He waited and waited, and eventually, a Daqi fleet arrived. Luo Wen thought, If they’re willing to show some humility and pay a nominal fee for accommodations and meals, I’ll return their people.

After all, maintaining the prisoners was a resource drain, so much so that the Swarm had built a massive eco-pod on Planet Izumo just to sustain them.

But what happened?

The Daqi fleet opened fire on the Swarm without so much as a greeting, exchanged a volley, and then turned tail without a word. Their swift retreat left Luo Wen utterly speechless.

After that, the Daqi fell silent, as if they had forgotten the tens of thousands of their people still in the Swarm’s custody.

Luo Wen was left with no options. He couldn’t very well deliver the prisoners back to the Daqi’s doorstep, could he? It wasn’t about saving face—such an action would be too suspicious. Anyone with half a brain would smell a trap.

And so, the situation dragged on. Time passed, and eventually Luo Wen began to worry that the prisoners might die of old age before the Daqi remembered them.

In a fit of frustration, he stuffed them all into cryo-pods, ensuring they would still be usable spies rather than retirees bound for a Daqi nursing home.

Over time, Luo Wen’s expectations for these spies dwindled. Through his interactions with the Troi and the acquisition of intelligence, he realized that even if the spies were successfully planted, the Daqi’s limited power made them an unlikely source of valuable information. Worse still, some of the information they might gather could be deliberately falsified by the Daqi.

Thus, in Luo Wen’s eyes, the utility of these spies became negligible. With no pressing need to act, he allowed the situation to stagnate.

Decades passed, and the matter seemed forgotten—until now. The Daqi, having finally gathered some allies, showed up on the Riken’s doorstep. However, it appeared they had picked the wrong house to cause trouble.

The prisoners seemed to be nothing more than a pretext, a side note to the main event. Even the Daqi themselves didn’t appear to care much about them.

And why would they? It had been over 60 years. If the Daqi had truly cared, they would have acted long ago. Their apathy only deepened Luo Wen’s doubts about the efficacy of his spies.

Still, if an opportunity presented itself, Luo Wen would gladly send the prisoners back to the Daqi. Even if they failed to provide useful intelligence, the cluster of node units among them could at least map a portion of the Daqi’s territory. Such pinpointed data would be far more efficient than waiting for Swarm meteors to drift into the region.

If not for the presence of the Ji, Luo Wen would have instructed the Riken to package all the materials, technologies, and even finished products of the Longevity Serum and hand them over to the Koya Alliance.

But for the sake of a broader strategy, he had no choice but to let go of this easy opportunity for now.

The situation remained at an impasse. Despite failing to achieve their goals, the Koya Alliance members stubbornly refused to leave. Every so often, they would rally their representatives to harass the Riken, escalating their behavior to baseless accusations. They even started meddling with the newly completed Trade City, offering unsolicited and often absurd criticisms.

However, the Riken took it in stride, assigning a few even-tempered representatives to engage in pointless discussions with the Koya Alliance.

The Alliance’s numbers were small, and they provided their own food and drink, so the Riken suffered little from these antics.

This patience emboldened the Koya Alliance. Convinced their criticisms were effective, they became increasingly brazen in their actions.

Luo Wen could not fathom the Koya Alliance’s concept of “face,” but from his perspective, their behavior was utterly disgraceful.

Fortunately, a turning point soon arrived. A few years later, the Ji fleet returned, this time with even more ships. Over 100 massive vessels, each over 4,000 meters long, slowly approached the Riken homeworld’s starport.

The Koya Alliance’s warships, which had been occupying the prime docking positions, hastily vacated the area. Compared to the Ji’s grand and orderly fleet, their colorful and motley assortment of ships resembled a group of clowns.

This fleet had come from the Ji’s nearest garrison point, a term used by the Ji to describe entire star systems they occupied beyond their official borders.

Each garrison point encompassed at least one star system and hosted not only fleets but also a significant number of researchers. These garrison points allowed the Ji to engage more quickly with surrounding civilizations and to utilize local resources for specialized research. The Ji maintained nearly 200 such garrison points throughout their Confederation territory.

With such vast territories and personnel reserves, the Ji were able to assemble a specialized research team at a moment’s notice and dispatch them to the Riken. These researchers had come to recreate the experimental data for the Longevity Serum using Ji-standard methods.

Back at the Ji’s main base, an even larger contingent of researchers eagerly awaited this data. The Ji’s interest in the Longevity Plants exceeded even Luo Wen’s expectations—they could not even wait for the two previous transport ships to return with their cargo.

As a result, the Riken found themselves busy once again, deploying substantial manpower to handle the logistics of hosting the Ji researchers. Whether intentional or not, the Koya Alliance found themselves increasingly ignored, and the years-long discussion meetings came to a halt.

The moment the Ji ships arrived, the Koya Alliance realized their plan to obtain official data from the Riken had failed. But this didn’t deter them from lingering, as they had recently established contact with the Riken black market, which offered precisely what they were looking for—at a surprisingly reasonable price.

Though the process involved a series of twists and turns, the outcome was ultimately favorable. From the Koya Alliance’s perspective, this was a fortunate and delightful turn of events.

And from Luo Wen’s perspective? He couldn’t agree more.

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