This Swarm Has Many Friends

"Residents of Sende, please do not panic. The Sende government has already begun negotiations with the Swarm organisms. Peace talks are currently proceeding in an orderly manner. To protect the personal and property safety of Sende's residents, all cities on Sende will enter temporary military control. Going out onto the streets will be considered illegal and result in immediate arrest. All Sende residents are requested to remain safely at home and refrain from moving about freely..."

The same message played over and over on the broadcast. A young Dias child lay blankly against the windowsill, staring at the object that blotted out the sky.

It was a planet teeming with Swarm organisms. Just one day earlier, this foreign object, which did not belong to this star system, had suddenly appeared near the industrial planet Sende. The entire industrial planet had immediately entered full lockdown.

The industrial planet Sende had no satellite like a moon. Every night, when people looked up at the sky, all they saw were stars scattered across the heavens.

It was rare for a "moon" to hang high in the sky like it did now.

The young Dias child seemed to have grown tired of looking. He turned and went downstairs, where he saw his father sitting in the living room as though he were bracing himself for something.

The Dias child walked over, his little hands uneasily clutching his father's sturdy arm. With anxious eyes, he looked at his silent father and asked,

"Father, we'll be saved, right?"

"Yes. Our government will protect us." A trace of gentleness was forced onto the weary face of the Dias man as he stroked his child's little head.

That reassurance eased the anxiety in the young Dias child's heart.

In his small world, his father had always been an unshakable, dependable presence. If Father said it was fine, then it was fine.

But when the child's gaze shifted to the firing device tightly gripped in his father's other hand, he could not help asking in confusion, "...Then Father, why are you always holding a weapon?"

"Because..."

Just as the Dias man was about to speak, a violent roar engulfed them.

Boom!

The wall of the house exploded, sending debris flying everywhere. The Dias man only had time to shield his child tightly behind him before countless fragments pierced his flesh.

In an instant, the Dias man was grievously wounded and unable to move.

"Hahaha, robbery! Everyone inside, get the hell out here! Load every valuable thing you have onto the truck!"

Someone outside the house was speaking. Through the gap between his father's arms, the child clearly saw two soldiers in external armor. One of them held a heavy individual weapon that was still smoking. A heavily armored vehicle was parked beside them, and in its most prominent position was the imperial military emblem, a symbol of the Empire's supreme glory.

"Y-you're Imperial soldiers?!" The child, tightly shielded beneath his father, was stunned. His young worldview had been shattered beyond recognition. He simply could not understand why soldiers, whose glory was supposedly supreme and whose duty was to protect the people, would attack him and his father.

"Why? Why..." The child's words came in broken fragments, his face full of disbelief.

Seeing the child's expression, the soldier who had blasted open the wall with his weapon sneered and asked, "Kid, Sende is about to be destroyed. Do you really think anyone still cares about you?"

As he spoke, the soldier stepped forward, utterly disregarding the other man's severely injured body, and ruthlessly kicked the child's father.

"Hey, quit playing dead. Tell us where the valuables are."

"Otherwise, I can't guarantee his safety."

The soldier pulled out a large firing device he carried with him and aimed it at the child beneath the Dias man, threatening him without mercy.

Shielded beneath his father, the child stared blankly at the firing device aimed at him. He was too frightened to speak, and even his breathing became rapid. For the first time in his life, he understood that even his great father could not always protect him.

The other soldier standing outside the house added in a gentler tone, "We only want money, not lives. We hope you'll cooperate."

"In... cough... the basement..." the child's father said with difficulty.

Guided by the Dias man's words, the two soldiers entered the basement and carried out a massive safe two meters on each side. Without the strength provided by their external armor, the two Imperial soldiers would not have been able to move it even a centimeter.

Pinned beneath his badly injured father, the child could not see what the two soldiers were doing. He could only vaguely hear their conversation.

"Damn, this thing's heavy. You'd never guess this family was so wealthy. Looks like they did plenty of exploiting other civilians during peacetime."

"They have a child. Shouldn't we leave them something?" One of the soldiers still retained the last trace of conscience.

"Leave what? We're not the only ones who need it! Once the people above finish negotiating with the Swarm organisms and accept full infection by Swarm spores, do you know how high the price of outbound flights will soar... Huh? Why are you floating?" The Imperial soldier's voice revealed panic at the unknown change.

"You too! What's going on?!"

Then the child heard a series of crisp cracks, and the Imperial soldiers who had been talking fell silent forever.

By then, his father had passed out from his severe injuries. Though terrified, the anxious child gathered his courage and crawled out from beneath his father.

When he looked again toward where the Imperial soldiers had been, all he saw were two balls of flesh and metal kneaded together.

The heavily armored vehicle that had been parked there was gone as well. In its place was only an even larger metal sphere, as though some unimaginably terrifying external force had forcibly crumpled it into shape.

"What happened?" the child murmured blankly. His limited understanding could not explain what he was seeing.

Elsewhere, in the senate chamber of Sende's administrative center, a Swarm organism said to the governor of Sende, "The rebel forces in Asta City, Sende, have all been cleared out. We may continue our negotiations."

"Thank you for your assistance. Then let us continue."

The industrial planet Sende was one of the Dias Empire's key industrial hubs. Developed over three centuries, its surface was covered in factories of every size, capable of everything from rough processing to fine manufacturing.

Taking this planet had both strategic and probing purposes.

If the Dias Empire could not dispatch a large fleet to stop the Swarm's attack even for a planet this important, then it meant the Dias Empire truly was concentrating its forces in more important locations, trading space for time as it plotted something else.

"Full infection of industrial planet Sende complete," a Swarm individual reported to Lu Shang.

Lu Shang nodded and said, "Mm. Hand over the warships you brought to them as part of the transaction, then head to the next administrative planet of the Dias Empire."

Every time he infected a planet, Lu Shang would transfer some of the warships captured during the Battle of the Bogu Grand Nebula to the other side through trade.

The purpose was to give those planets a certain degree of self-defense, so they would not easily yield before the Dias Empire's forces.

The Dias Empire could either treat the Dias people infected by Swarm spores on those planets gently, or lose part of its military strength by forcibly seizing the planets and carrying out large-scale purges.

The latter would certainly incur greater losses. After all, no one wanted to die for no reason.

As long as the Dias Empire kept those infected people, Lu Shang's objective would be achieved.

"Overmind, we have doubts regarding your decision," a Swarm individual carrying out its next task expressed through the psionic network.

Lu Shang froze for a moment, then said with delight, "Excellent. This is a very good sign. It means you've begun to understand how to think independently. It seems upgrading your Overmind brains was not pointless after all."

He needed the Swarm organisms to think, even if all they did was spend their days coming up with bizarre nonsense.

That was not useless. It was a sign of expanded thinking, and once their minds expanded, they could break free of the Swarm's old rigid thought patterns.

This was an excellent development!

Lu Shang was in a great mood. He gestured for it to continue. "What is it? Ask."

The Swarm individual asked, "Why must we go to such great lengths to infect the enemy individuals on these planets?"

"And why infect them in such a strange way? We cannot understand the meaning of the Overmind's decision."

In the past, whenever the Swarm infected other races, it directly turned them into Swarm organisms. Why infect them and then make them stronger and healthier?

What was the point?

It was not only this Swarm individual that could not understand Lu Shang's operation. The other Swarm carrying out the mission could not understand it either.

"Because my strategic philosophy is, 'Make as few enemies as possible, and as many friends as possible,'" Lu Shang replied.

"Friends? Are we to coexist amicably with other races?" the Swarm individual asked strangely.

The Swarm had not originally understood the concept of friends, but after learning about other races, they had come to understand what "friends" meant.

Yet compared to the tasks Lu Shang had assigned them, the Swarm individual could not see any connection whatsoever between those tasks and making friends.

"No, no, you have completely misunderstood what I mean by 'friends.'"

Lu Shang shook his head and continued, "There is a saying in my homeland: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Why are they friends? Because you can use your enemy's enemy to achieve your own strategic goals."

"And my purpose in having you infect the aliens on those planets is likewise to win them over and use them, creating strategic advantages for our future military operations."

The Swarm individual who had asked the question briefly reviewed its memories, then asked in confusion, "...Win them over? But many of them fear the Swarm. Quite a few have even fled elsewhere within the Galactic Alliance, and almost none of the infected planets are willing to stand on the same side as the Swarm."

Lu Shang could not hold back a laugh before saying, "You still misunderstand."

"Why must winning someone over mean winning them over socially? Before an intelligent individual is an intelligent individual, it is first a mass of matter, then a living organism, and only finally an intelligent individual capable of thought."

"The essence of winning someone over is using them."

"If we cannot use them socially, then we can use them biologically. We can also use them materially, such as by infecting planets."

"Once the aliens on a planet are infected, they will definitely panic. Panic will inevitably make them want to flee somewhere safe. And all we need to do is find a way to unilaterally share all of those aliens' senses. Then they become living surveillance devices the Swarm has placed throughout the enemy camp."

As long as the infected people on those planets fled to other planets or anywhere else, the Swarm sharing their senses could extend its intelligence network there as well.

Even if someone was building some secret weapon, they would still need engineering designers, wouldn't they? They would still need soldiers enforcing martial law, wouldn't they? They would still need workers doing complex jobs, wouldn't they?

Sure, artificial intelligence could handle all that too, but didn't those leaders have family and friends?

When chatting about everyday matters, wouldn't they accidentally let something slip?

For a vast civilization like yours to function, you still need people, right?

As long as enough people are infected, even passersby on the street can become the Swarm's intelligence monitors. How could you possibly hide what your civilization is doing?