Start with Planetary Governor

Chapter 677: Encirclement and Attack

The Emperor-class battleship 'Jin Guan' is the flagship of the alliance fleet currently led by Gu Hang.

At this moment, Gu Hang was having a pleasant conversation with Marshal Xi Rui of the Black Crusaders.

"…The people responsible for resolving those minor problems are Chief Judge Qin Zhiping and his Silver Watch and Stormtroopers. Please believe him, he will give you, Commander Gu, a satisfactory explanation."

Gu Hang smiled and nodded: "I believe him, Qin Zhiping is a reliable inquisitor. Although the Anti-foreign Inquisition is targeting alien enemies, that is their specialty. In essence, they are still inquisitors, and they will definitely do their job well. They are just some jumping clowns, which is not the key."

Xi Rui felt a little apprehensive when he heard Gu Hang's words that it seemed like he didn't care at all about the possible internal conflict.

It doesn't look like he's pretending.

But isn't that the way it should be?

This is consistent with his and Qin Zhiping's earlier judgment.

When all parties were trying to push him out to rebuild the northern army, Xi Rui realized that this was a big pit.

He also hated those guys for their performance in the First Battle of Rhaetoace.

The two fully staffed Black Crusaders fleets could easily go anywhere as long as they didn't encounter extreme situations. But they were in this extremely intense war that affected several universes and ended up like this.

It is undeniable that the biggest war criminal was the wrong judgment of his friend Marshal Leroy himself. However, since we have already entered the Princess Star Region, it is meaningless to talk about decision-making. In the naval battle, the direct cause of the human defeat was the vacillation of those non-direct troops.

Now, he wanted to stir up internal strife for his own selfish interests...Xi Rui had never thought of agreeing to it.

Those people want merit and an independent northern army as capital to strive for higher interests after the war, but Xi Rui doesn't want these.

Those mortals thought that his thoughts were also on things like "status", "merit" and "command power", but they were totally wrong.

His first goal was victory, to eliminate this great enemy for the sake of the empire, and everything else could be put aside.

Do you really think that everyone lives for those petty gains?
Even if it comes to interests, his most important interest is to fight with the alliance, enter Reyaduches, and wash away the shame of defeat on the regiment. If he can see how many of the more than 1,000 Black Crusaders who were previously sent to fight on the surface of Reyaduches survived in the process, and rescue as many as possible, it would be even better.

No matter from which perspective, Xi Rui's goals and interests are not consistent with those of the remnant troops on the northern front. On the contrary, they are highly consistent with Gu Hang.

In this case, how could he hang out with those people?

Coincidentally, Qin Zhiping's attitude at the meeting was also relatively reliable.

After the meeting with many leaders of the remaining troops on the northern front, he immediately discussed with Qin Zhiping what to do next.

As for Qin Zhiping's slight misunderstanding in the middle, it was just a minor episode and nothing serious.

They quickly worked out how to lure the snake out of its hole, how to strike at its weakest point, how to deal with the aftermath and take back the military power... In short, a series of plans have become relatively mature.

Of course, it was still a little difficult to rely on their strength alone. After all, the remaining troops on the northern front had more people than them. They were definitely far behind in terms of elite forces, which allowed them to deal with those "traitors", but if they wanted to control the army after dealing with them, and prevent chaos, and then make these troops useful in future battles, Xi Rui and Qin Zhiping would not have enough manpower.

But it doesn't matter.

They don't have enough people, but there is a person with more people next to them.

During the time Xi Rui and Qin Zhiping had been in the Alliance Army, they had paid close attention to the situation of the Alliance Army. In addition to the Alliance Army's ability to fight, strong discipline, high degree of organization, and no signs of corruption, they also found that they attached great importance to and were even surprised by another point: the quality of the Alliance's middle and lower-level officers was quite high, and the number and density of officers was also high.

The military system of the Alliance is different from that of the general Star Army. There are no large regiments with thousands or even tens of thousands of people, nor are there large companies with thousands of people. A company has a hundred people, and a regiment has at most a thousand or two thousand people. Some large divisions have 30,000 or 40,000 people, but there are also some small and powerful brigade-level units...

Smaller organization, more levels, more officers, and most importantly, the level of each officer is not bad.

The Alliance is fully capable of, after controlling the remnants of the northern legions, purging all unreliable officers and personnel at the middle and upper levels, and then replacing them with its own team of officers with the help of Xi Rui and Qin Zhiping.

Perhaps there may be some problems in the long-term digestion in the future, and there may be some shortcomings in command, such as the soldiers not knowing the generals and the generals not knowing the soldiers, but at least, during this war, the entire army can be put to use.

Not only did the risk of internal strife get eliminated, but military forces were also replenished.

But Gu Hang didn't care about it particularly.

In other words, it seemed as if nothing went beyond his expectations.

This also fits Xi Rui's imagination.

Gu Hang probably had a plan for any outcome. Not to mention that he and Qin Zhiping had surrendered, even if he and Qin Zhiping stood on the side of the remaining troops on the northern front, Gu Hang would have a way to suppress them at the lowest cost.

This is even more the reason why we cannot engage in internal strife: there is no chance of winning at all.

Those people with wild ideas have never really observed the alliance carefully.

After talking about the Northern Front Legion, Xi Rui planned to leave.

But he saw Gu Hang stopped him.

"There's one more thing, much more important than that."

"Hmm?" Xi Rui sat back down, somewhat confused.

He thought it was some kind of operational mission, and it was quite important, otherwise there would be no need to tell him specifically at this time.

Sitting there with a serious expression, he had already prepared himself mentally in this moment.

As a Space Marine, it is normal for them to shoulder some important tasks.

I just hope that the number of casualties will be lower in the end.

However, what Gu Hang proposed made it useless for him to prepare himself mentally, and he was stunned.

"I hope you can take over the frontal offensive. I will be away with the main fleet of the alliance for a while..."

Seeing Xi Rui dumbfounded and about to speak, Gu Hang waved his hand first: "Be patient, please listen to me first."

Next, Gu Hang explained to Xi Rui in detail a piece of information that the alliance had recently confirmed, as well as Gu Hang’s thoughts on it.

When the Western Front Legion entered the Princess Star Region with great momentum, the Zerg sent a large army to resist. It was not easy to stop the offensive of Salisius and Martins, but Gu Hang did not spare any strength and attacked from the east. The Zerg also mobilized a large army to stop it, but unfortunately, it was not able to stop it.

At this stage, the Queen of Insects in Rheaduches has already exposed the problem of insufficient military forces at her disposal.

Will the Void Zerg also be short of manpower?

It sounds ridiculous, but it is actually possible.

If the Void Zerg is viewed as a whole, there is no such problem. The human empire is already extremely large in terms of population, but according to the estimates of relevant scholars, it is still a drop in the bucket compared to the Zerg.

Even if the main force of the Void Zerg has never actually arrived at the territory of the Human Empire, and only the 'tentacles' or even a fleet belonging to the tentacles have come, they can always show their numbers far exceeding those of humans on the local battlefield.

Past war history has shown that the way humans defeat the Zerg is always to behead the node organisms, destroy the command system, and then eliminate a large number of Zerg with extremely low losses.

Or use a scorched earth strategy to create a star zone or even a star field level isolation zone, leaving the Zerg with no food or replenishment, so that the war can be fought.

Even though we killed 1,000 enemies and lost 800 of our own, there was nothing we could do. Otherwise, we would just watch the swarm of insects snowball and grow bigger, and we would be even more helpless.

But these are summarized data performances and cases. When it comes to each battle, we naturally need to analyze specific issues specifically.

Does the Zerg Queen of Rheaduches possess such a huge swarm of Zerg troops?

No.

Its situation is special. It was captured by the Iron Armored Corps in its larval state, and then raised in a laboratory in an attempt to control it. During its long growth career, it had to conceal itself first, slowly control the situation, quietly expand the infection, and then explode at the last moment.

However, before it could fully prepare for the outbreak, the Iron Armor War broke out first.

That was the result of the combined effects of the imperial political situation and the ambitions of Humphrey Paul, which had not yet been fully controlled.

This forced the Queen of Insects to use the unprepared outbreak phase in advance. Otherwise, she would be defeated directly and there would be no chance of success.

After years of latent infection, the Zerg has a good foundation. If it suddenly breaks out at a critical moment, combined with the two infected armies of Iron Armor and Alfonzo Sect, it should be able to put the Empire in trouble and buy more time for the Queen to develop.

Its strategy was indeed successful on the northern and western routes, but the biggest problem arose on the southern route, which was originally expected to have the least problems.

The infection was contained, Alfonzo was eliminated... and the outbreak of the Alliance, which the Queen had not predicted in advance, led to the preservation of the Western Front. The Alfonzo Cult and the Ironclad Chapter, which played a very important role in its development and outbreak, were now destroyed due to the direct involvement of the Alliance.

When the western and southern lines entered the Royal Star Region, the Queen of Worms had not even completed the work of concentrating and incubating biomass in the entire Royal Star Region.

A large amount of biomass is still on various planets, so when humans attack, every extinction weapon they drop on planets where insect swarms are particularly rich is painful to them.

Under such circumstances, there was naturally a shortage of troops to resist attacks on these two fronts.

If the fight continues like this, humans will really be able to enter Readuches and threaten its life safety.

But fortunately, among the many previous plans, at least one northern line was successful.

Mobilizing troops from the northern front to defend herself became the Queen's only option.

Along with the gathered Zerg Hive army heading south to defend the Zerg Queen, there was also a large amount of biomass collected from the two star fields of Lefu and Jianmen in the north.

Although the collection work was not completed as perfectly as here in the Princess Star Region, at least the total number is not small.

With this hive army, and adding more biomass, it is enough for the Queen to sustain the war until victory.

But unfortunately, the Zerg fleet heading south from the north was detected by the Alliance.

When hearing this, Xi Rui felt a little emotional.

Does the alliance's intelligence organization have any arrangements on the northern front which is in such a mess?
Gu Hang could see what he was thinking - he didn't try to hide it - but he didn't explain much.

On the one hand, the Alliance did deploy a lot of people to the west and north in the early stages of the war to transmit intelligence; on the other hand, Gu Hang also considered the strategy of the Zerg and used the astropathic system to observe the movements in the north. Although the distance was far, he could still vaguely feel the movements of a Zerg army passing through the astral tunnels that humans were good at using.

Only by combining multiple factors can we make a more accurate judgment.

After coming to this conclusion, Gu Hang immediately decided not to let this Hive army join the Queen. In particular, he could not let the biomass of the two star regions in the north fall into the hands of the Queen.

If that happens, who knows how many powerful Zerg ships and extremely powerful individual creatures will be bred.

Encircling a point and attacking reinforcements is an option that needs to be considered.

Although, strictly speaking, they certainly have not surrounded and killed the Queen of Insects, but the current situation is somewhat like that.

However, Gu Hang didn't want to take his troops directly to the north to attack the Zerg reinforcements.

The Queen of Insects is not stupid. If she notices this, she might send a large force to the north to provide support; or, let most of the reinforcements from the insect nest heading south change their route and circle around Gu Hang's main force.

If that happens, there's no telling how the war will turn out.

Therefore, Gu Hang hoped that Xi Rui could take on the important task: taking the remaining troops on the northern front and the small number of troops left for him by Gu Hang, maintaining the current offensive posture and still attracting the attention of the Zerg here.

And he will lead the main force of the alliance to annihilate the enemy reinforcements.

After listening to this, Xi Rui didn't speak for a long time.

He could realize that Gu Hang's strategy was correct. It was indeed very important to destroy the reinforcements and prevent the Queen from joining them.

The Zerg army heading south was indeed very powerful, and the main force of the Alliance had to go to meet it in order to have any hope of achieving a decisive victory.

However...it would be too difficult for him to stay here and maintain the offensive.

How many people are going to die?
Even if so many people die, can we maintain the offensive?

The offensive failed, what should we do if the Queen of Insects finds out?
Problems popped up in his mind one after another, making it impossible for him to agree to Gu Hang's request all at once.

(End of this chapter)