Start with Planetary Governor

Chapter 667, Death of Tiekai

"You have to be careful, he's very strange."

During the battle, Salilius gave a kind reminder.

But Martins had actually already felt it.

And he thinks it's normal.

Humphrey Paul must be the first one among the Ironclad Space Marines to be infected. He is probably the "darling" of the "Queen of Zerg" and has undergone a more in-depth transformation. Compared with ordinary Space Marines, the difference between this Ironclad Chapter Master and humans is even greater.

On this basis, the original vital points may no longer be vital points; his body can perform many inhuman actions...

Maybe these are all normal situations.

It is precisely based on these foundations that Humphrey Paul is able to demonstrate such powerful combat power that he can compete with Salilius. Normally speaking, the 'alive' Humphrey Paul may be an outstanding leader, and may indeed be the most powerful warrior in the Iron Armor, but his strength, in the context of the entire universe, is definitely not as strong as Salilius.

Logically speaking, he should have been stabbed to death by the Holy Spear after lasting twenty or thirty rounds.

But it was meaningless to say anything. After Martins joined the battle, no matter how exaggerated the insect transformation of Humphrey Paul was, he could not fight against the two top fighters at the same time.

Especially with the 'Nirvana Guard' brought by Martins, dozens of people directly separated the battlefield and prevented other iron-armored warriors from supporting Paul.

Finally, when Humphrey Paul was dealing with the phase sword, Salilius pierced his body with a spear and nailed him to the ground. Seeing that his body was still squirming and trying to break free, he pressed on him directly and pressed him to the ground with the Holy Shield.

Martins also took advantage of this opportunity and chopped off its head with the phase sword.

Seeing that Humphrey Paul's body was still squirming, he attacked with a few more swords, completely dismembering his body.

Now, even if Humphrey Paul, who had been transformed into an insect, could continue to fight without a head, it was useless.

Salilius lifted Humphrey Paul's head with his spear and loudly proclaimed their victory.

The enemy leader who had set off a shocking rebellion, involved four cosmic domains, mobilized countless manpower and material resources to wage a war, and even caused a greater disaster, was finally beheaded. His head was still important, worthy of being pointed by Salilius with his holy spear and displayed as a trophy to boast of victory.

And it also has practical significance: showing all the surrounding enemies that your leader is dead!
Of course, this move would be much more effective when facing enemies like green-skinned orcs and Chaos traitors. Even if it was a Chaos traitor, eliminating a traitor leader would have a great impact on the morale of the remaining people, not to mention the green-skinned orcs, who might be defeated directly.

However, the symbolic meaning of 'raising the head of the enemy leader' is meaningless to the infected or the Zerg; but the significance of the leader being eliminated is huge.

Even bigger than the greenskins.

For the greenskins, when the boss dies, some of them will panic and lose morale, thinking that they are the weak and can no longer win. For the orcs who believe that "whatever you think will come true", this loss of faith is catastrophic; not to mention that after the death of the supreme leader, the second-level and even more junior ambitious people will rise up to compete for the position of the supreme leader and start fighting each other and infighting.

This is already a horrific thing, especially when it happens in the middle of a war.

However, compared to the Zerg, the impact of the death of an orc leader may even be small.

The death of the orcs' leader only caused a drop in morale, internal strife, and panic... but for the Zerg, losing their leader meant losing the ability to think.

The thinking of the Zerg and the infected is dependent on the superior unit. They may have the "intelligence" to handle current affairs on their own, but there is no such thing as subjective initiative. This means that for the Zerg and the individual infected, they roughly know "how to do it", but they don't know "what to do", let alone "why to do it".

The most direct manifestation of this is that after they have completed the current command but have not received further instructions from the upper level, they will become truly primitive beasts and stay where they are. When they are close to this point, they will indeed be attacked, but that is just the instinctive action of the beast.

But at this stage, who would be stupid enough to risk human lives to fight them face to face? From dozens of kilometers away, we could set up huge cannons and just bombard them one by one - they didn't know how to run or hide anyway.

For the infected and the Zerg, if only some squad leaders, like the low- and middle-level officers in the human army, died, it would be fine. After all, the command rules of the Zerg can be overwritten downwards. At most, the high-level node units or other node units of the same level can take over the individuals under the dead node units.

Unless it is independent action.

There is really nothing we can do about it.

The swarm has to send out new node creatures to connect to the out-of-control subordinate units and bring them under control again before command can be restored.

Even some scholars in the Empire who specialize in studying the Void Zerg believe that the structure of the Zerg is such a divergent network.

Scholars boldly hypothesize that the Zerg have a "Void Will" that is the source of everything.

From this point, it radiates to each hive mind subject, forming a cluster that scholars call "tentacles". The hive mind is authorized to countless queens, forming one hive fleet after another, which is regarded as part of the tentacles. The queen provides the gene factors, hatches the swarm army including biological ships and advanced node creatures, and authorizes units such as "generals" and "overlords". These units, as commanders, are authorized to the intermediate hive tyrants, and then there are layers of authorization...

In this way, a network is formed.

But if any node is destroyed, it means that all units below that node will be disconnected from the network.

This principle is actually the same regardless of the size of the swarm or the infected. This is why killing some low-level node creatures has almost no effect on a large-scale battlefield. After they die, there are still a large number of node creatures of the same level on the field who can take over their authority, and even their original superiors can directly govern the subordinate units. The extra "computing power" cost has almost no effect.

However, if the node creature with the highest authority dies on a large battlefield, it will be the end of the world.

Under him, all the high-level node creatures have lost their brains; if these high-level node creatures lose their brains, the intermediate node creatures will also lose their brains... The entire Zerg or infected army will produce a chain reaction like a domino, and the final result will be that the entire Zerg army will stagnate.

The death of Humphrey Paul had a similar effect.

Is there a 'node creature' of the same level who can take over his authority?
No.

Can a higher-level node creature take over his command? No.

Of course, there are higher-level node creatures, such as the Queen of Worms. However, the distance between him and the Queen of Worms is too far. It is impossible for the Queen of Worms to take over his command of an entire army across a star field or two, and she can't even temporarily replace him with a higher-level node creature to give authorization.

Unless it can send a high-level node creature, obtain authorization, come to the west side of the Baimu Star Region, and then authorize a top-level node unit, which will reconnect the following node units one by one.

But that's impossible, and humans won't give her this opportunity.

The death of Humphrey Paul triggered a chain reaction throughout the Iron Armored Army.

In front of Salilius and Martins, the armored warriors who had just been fighting desperately with their own space warriors became wooden and mechanical. They still fought according to their instincts, but they were much more rigid than at the beginning. They would only attack the enemies in front of them, and would not care about the situation a little further away.

Even basic combat is like this, not to mention the execution of any sophisticated tactical coordination.

The same goes for the Titans and Knights on the Iron Armor side.

Martins and Salilius immediately ordered their troops to break out and withdraw from the battle.

The execution of the order went quite smoothly.

And after the troops disengaged, long-range firepower arrived.

This group of enemies just stood there and took the bombing.

Even if it’s just fried like this, I still feel it’s not fast enough.

After careful calculations, the Mechanicus masters accompanying the army determined several explosion points. The troops retreated, and the land-based version of the "Dongfeng Fen" missile was launched and exploded accurately at the calculated explosion points.

At this time, it is not appropriate to calculate the problems of exposure casualties, cover casualties, and casualties in fortifications. They can't hide, and the Dongfeng Fen missile will sweep across an area equivalent to an ordinary city. Hundreds of thousands of enemies will be wiped out by this missile.

It can be said that the battle of Wanzhou Star was won the moment Humphrey Paul was killed by Salilius and Martins.

Of course, overall victory does not mean the war is completely over. After all, there are still countless enemies on Wanzhou Star that need to be eliminated, and it is impossible to use the "Dongfeng Fen" missile to bomb the land inch by inch. That would be too expensive, and the ground troops still have to deal with it.

The general process is that ground personnel are divided into small teams and search in all directions. If they encounter enemies in small numbers, the sharpshooters in the team will use ultra-long-range sniper rifles to eliminate them one by one. If they encounter powerful individuals, they will use heavy anti-armor firepower to shoot them down from a distance and then eliminate them. If they encounter a large-scale cluster, they will call in long-range artillery to clear them out.

There are still dangers, such as the team walking and walking into the face of the infected or Zerg that they didn't find, resulting in being chased; or some of them are in buildings, wreckage, and tunnels, and it is difficult to directly attack them with artillery, so you have to find out the situation in person. If there are too many of them, just blow up the buildings and tunnels and bury the enemies; if there are too few of them... then there is no way, go ahead and clear them out one by one.

These will all cause casualties.

In fact, these casualties could be avoided in theory. However, one missile from the Dongfeng Fen costs 80 tax coins, and the life of a Star Army soldier is only worth 5 coins. The commander above will settle the account.

What bunker-buster bombs, what high-powered weapons attacks, unless it is assessed as necessary, the Army Department should pay with its lives. The cost of killing dozens or hundreds of big heads is much lower.

This is not only the case with Wanzhou Star, but also with many galaxies and worlds ravaged by Iron Armor.

At present, it seems that Humphrey Paul himself is the largest node creature in the Iron Armor Legion. The other Iron Armor units fighting in distant worlds are acting under his authorization. With his death, the authorization chain is broken, and there is no longer any connection with the Queen. All "authorizations" have expired, and everyone is disconnected from the Internet.

They cannot move until a new line is reconstructed that can connect to the highest 'Void Will'.

Their destruction was put to an end.

Even if humans still need to spend many years in the future to fight against these "disconnected" and non-aggressive swarms of insects and infected groups, to put it bluntly, these are just some post-processing actions and the cost will be very low.

In the sky, the starships controlled by the Iron Armored Infected also stopped functioning. They were caught up and destroyed one by one by the joint fleet of the Alliance and the Western Front Legion.

These ships are not worth occupying. The internal structure has been modified too much. If it is not a bug or an infected person, it is impossible to operate. It is not impossible to tow them back for repair and modification, but the time and cost are not as good as building a new one.

Mars took away several "infected warships" and forced people to go up and clean out the infected inside. After the cleanup is completed, they will arrange a tugboat to take away the spoils.

Their decision caused a lot of complaints. There would be many sacrifices if they went aboard to clear the infected.

But obviously, those oil guys don't care. They only care about these precious research samples and how many new things they can come up with later.

Salilius was powerless to stop this and could only turn a blind eye.

In fact, he assigned all these "aftermath work" to his staff and subordinates.

He and Martins jointly wrote a battle report.

After being polished, a copy will be sent to Holy Terra as a good news to calm the mood of the Terra masters and to commend their merits.

The other copy will be sent to Gu Hang.

If nothing unexpected happens, they will leave behind a part of the troops to take charge of the aftermath, to deal with the remaining troubles in the Baimu Star Region, and even to the west of Baimu, in the many worlds that have been ravaged by Iron Armor.

Their core force will launch a counterattack on the east side of the Baimu Star Domain, defeat the swarm of insects pouring out of the Huangnu Star Domain, and try to enter the Huangnu Star Domain to meet up with Gu Hang.

(End of this chapter)