I Am The Swarm-Chapter 697: Notification

“Intelligence confirmed—that is indeed the real Swarm Empress!” A shout echoed through the rear operations room.

“Didn’t the Intelligence Division just say they couldn’t confirm it? How did they figure it out so quickly?” one staff officer asked, puzzled.

“Yeah, could this be false information? We need to send a message to confirm,” another officer added, equally skeptical. This was no trivial matter. It would directly affect their upcoming battle plan, so they had to double-check.

The officer who had shouted the confirmation acted quickly, sending a message to verify. Within seconds, he received an affirmative reply.

The response was brief, just eight words: “Target confirmed. Execute the plan.” There was no explanation of how the confirmation had been achieved—just the result.

This terse, cryptic reply left the staff officers even more confused and hesitant to act. They decided to bypass the usual chain of command and directly confirm the information with higher-ups.

“Ah, I see now,” one officer, who had been deep in thought, suddenly exclaimed after reading the short reply.

“What do you see?” his colleagues asked, turning to him.

The officer in question had a peculiar appearance, clearly from a race that wasn’t part of the powerful inner-circle or mid-ring civilizations. He likely hailed from a smaller, less prominent race.

Regardless of his unique appearance, as a carbon-based lifeform, he followed the basic biological rules shared by most races. His wrinkled, desiccated skin and muscles suggested he was quite old.

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The Ji race’s territory was vast, with countless outposts and colonies, so their population was immense. The members of this staff officer team came from various regions, and aside from a few who had worked together before, most were meeting for the first time and were unfamiliar with one another.

Looking at this elderly officer, who seemed on the verge of collapse, his colleagues recalled his background. Overall, his career was unremarkable compared to the others, with his only notable feature being his advanced age.

This officer had been born thirty thousand years ago. Even if most of that time had been spent in hibernation, his life was nearing its end.

When everyone first saw this elderly colleague, they were puzzled. Even if he had been sharp in his youth, his current state suggested he couldn’t possibly match the younger, more dynamic officers.

“I understand now why I was included in this team. It was for this moment, heh heh…” The elderly Ji officer closed his eyes, gathering his strength before speaking weakly. His laughter at the end sounded eerie.

“Please enlighten us.”

The elderly officer nodded and continued, “I suspect my role here is to explain the source of this intelligence. I once encountered a similar situation, but I won’t go into details, cough cough…”

After just a few sentences, the elderly officer began coughing again, as if speaking was accelerating his decline. The younger officers nearby wanted to urge him on but didn’t dare.

“My health is poor, so I’ll keep it brief. In such cases, the intelligence is accurate, but its source is highly classified. Some of the Ji’s most secretive intelligence operatives are involved. Only the elders directly in contact with these operatives know their identities—not even the Council of Elders has access to this information. These operatives often spend years embedded in enemy organizations, holding key positions. To prevent their identities from being exposed, their intelligence is released without any details about its source. If you send this encryption key to the Intelligence Division and receive a confirmation, it means my assumption is correct. However, I suspect the higher-ups included me here to explain this, so no one underestimates our staff office.”

The elderly officer’s explanation, delivered in a halting manner, took several minutes. Once he finished, he was promptly ignored, and he understood this, quietly moving to a corner of the room as if his part in the proceedings was over.

“Well?” Time was of the essence, and the others had no time to dwell on the elderly officer’s reminiscences. They sent the encryption key he had provided to the Intelligence Division.

“He’s right. We got a confirmation.”

“It seems there’s a lot about the Confederation that we don’t know.”

“But isn’t the leadership being overly cautious? To have such deep-cover operatives…”

“I can understand it. The Confederation isn’t a monolith. Cultivating a high-ranking mole within the enemy requires immense resources and time. We can’t afford even the slightest mistake that might expose their identity.”

“Exactly. Take this message, for example. If it had said the information came from Tella, the Swarm Empress chief guard, and we knew Tella wasn’t the mole, then the number of people in the Swarm who could interact with Tella would be limited. If such information leaked, the Swarm could easily identify our mole.”

“I see. But before the Swarm, where were these moles deployed?”

“That’s probably something only the elders know.”

“That’s not our concern. Time is short. Since the intelligence has been confirmed, let’s move to the next step.”

“Agreed!”

—

Meanwhile, at the ceremony site, Ambros, who had been engaging Sarah in small talk, suddenly felt a light tap on his lower back. He didn’t turn to look but quietly noted the pattern: three light taps followed by one firm one.

His heart tightened. This was the prearranged signal he had agreed upon with his adjutant. Since he was in the middle of a conversation with Sarah, he couldn’t frequently check his personal terminal—both out of courtesy and to avoid raising suspicions.

Thus, the task of monitoring messages from the rear had fallen to his adjutant, and they had developed a new set of signals for this purpose.

This new system, created on the fly, used taps on different parts of the body, with varying frequencies and intensities, to convey messages. Because it was improvised, even if the Swarm noticed the signals, they wouldn’t be able to decipher their meaning immediately, allowing Ambros to use them openly.

The pattern of three light taps followed by one firm one meant: “Target confirmed. Proceed with the plan as scheduled.”