I Am The Swarm-Chapter 807: Operation Hub

Thus, new ultra-long-range interstellar Star Gates began construction. This time, Luo Wen added an extra sixteen extragalactic bases in one go. With the previous four, that brought the total to twenty—enough to give the Ji a real surprise.

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At the Swarm’s territorial core, in an endless void, a vast cluster of colossal Star Gates was being constructed. The mysterious biological lights adorning them twinkled like stars, blanketing the darkness of space with radiant brilliance.

This was the Swarm’s most vital operations hub. All of its interstellar Star Gates were housed here, along with an even larger number of conventional gates.

Of those, over ten thousand had already been completed, with far more still under construction. The total number would soon approach 100,000. Initially, this hub was only meant to serve four extragalactic bases, but soon it would support twenty—so a several-fold increase was inevitable.

Power for the Star Gates came not only from their built-in energy furnaces but also from the nearby star systems.

The decision to establish the hub in this particular void wasn’t random—Luo Wen hadn’t just jabbed his finger on a star map. It had been the result of systematic measurement and careful comparison.

Such painstaking effort meant the location had advantages.

Surrounding this spot were six star systems—the closest just 1.5 light-years away, the farthest only 2.6. That kind of density was rare in the entire sector. After all, this region was only in the middle segment of the galaxy’s second spiral arm—not even that close to the galactic core.

More stars meant more power. To fully exploit that energy, the Swarm had wrapped each one in biological Dyson spheres.

Then they developed a long-distance energy transmission system. Massive columns of energy were launched outward, passing through several relay planets along the way. These relays were all mutated Planetary War Bugs—many times larger than their normal counterparts, as they had to store entire stellar outputs.

The operations hub itself had specially designed Swarm entities to receive this energy and distribute it. Though energy was lost during the transmission in the vacuum, the sheer output of six stars made up for it. As a result, the ten thousand Star Gates at the operations hub were flush with power—even the gates’ own furnaces were kept offline.

However, with new Star Gates coming online, and the total heading toward 100,000, even these six star systems wouldn’t be enough.

A lack of power would slow gate transit speeds, preventing the hub from running at full capacity and reducing its strategic value.

But beyond those six stars, the nearest system was more than seven light-years away. Linking it into the network would incur massive losses and severely drop efficiency.

More critically, the power shortfall couldn’t be solved by adding just one or two more stars. Based on the loss ratios of interstellar energy transmission, keeping the operations hub running at full tilt would require the participation of every star within a 50-light-year radius.

Why so many? Because the farther the distance, the higher the energy loss. At 10 light-years, 20–30% of the energy would be lost. At 30 light-years, losses could reach 70%. At 40 or 50 light-years, maybe only 10% would make it to the target.

And maintaining such transmission lines required an enormous number of relays. Even ordinary Planetary War Bugs consumed massive resources—mutated ones even more so. To relay energy from every star within 50 light-years, at least 500–600 relays would be needed.

That number alone was staggering. All the planets within a 50-light-year radius probably didn’t add up to 500 or 600. And given the huge size disparities between planets, and the fact that these relays dwarfed 95% of celestial bodies, even pulverizing every nearby planet wouldn’t yield enough materials.

Of course, the Swarm’s territory extended far beyond 50 light-years. Just using resources from the Genesis Sector alone, they could theoretically manufacture enough of these relay entities.

But Luo Wen wasn’t about to squander resources on a bunch of glorified energy pylons. If it came to that, he’d rather dismantle the operations hub and spread it out instead.