Starting from the Planetary Governor - Chapter 587

Chapter 585: The Alliance is So Good

The Alliance has recently achieved remarkable success, but some are also carrying the burden.

Gu Hang himself, not to mention, was nearly drained from the Battle of Bowen, but he ate a Neurozoa and was greatly replenished.

The Space Marines are another unit that carries the burden.

In the battle to seize the ship, the Phoenix always relies on the Phoenix to seize the key parts. Without these top-notch Space Marines, many victories would not be possible.

And in such a series of battles, including the ones to be packed into the Dreadnoughts,

the Phoenix has lost nearly 500 men. Half the regiment has been destroyed. A

normal regiment would certainly not be so brutal. Unless it is a battle of great significance, such as being unwilling to destroy the ship and insisting on the lives of Space Marines to seize it, the regiment would definitely not

do it, even if there is an order behind it.

The Phoenix followed orders, partly because of Gu Hang’s great influence on them, and partly because Martins knew that his losses would be quickly compensated.

Unlike ordinary chapters, if half of their battle brothers were lost, the subsequent talent selection, implantation surgery, and waiting for growth… it would take countless years to recover. Not to mention, it would take decades for the new recruits to become veterans or even backbones again.

Some chapters that were unlucky might not be able to fully recover after such a battle for hundreds of years.

Phoenix was different.

Martins knew that after losing 500 people, Gu Hang would be able to get 500 new recruits who had received gene seeds to report to him in a few months.

Now, even the gene seed transplant surgery did not need to be performed by the chapter’s pharmacists. The new recruits also came from many different planets in the Dragon Eagle star field.

Then, these new recruits would quickly become brave and skilled fighters, not inferior to the veterans.

So what else did Martins have to say?

Under these circumstances, the choices a Chapter can make are vastly different from those of ordinary Chapters. The Phoenixes are now individually formidable and well-equipped, even possessing items like phase swords in large quantities. Not to mention, nearly all of them now use “Grandeur” Power Armor, which is superior to standard Power Armor. Their Iron Cavalry Terminators are also superior to standard Indomitable Terminators…

Add to these two advantages their fearlessness, invulnerability to attrition, and rapid replenishment…

and Martins feels his Chapter is invincible.

An ordinary Chapter? No, he believes they wouldn’t have any trouble even against their parent Chapter, the Phoenix. The Phoenixes do have more champion swordsmen, and their tactical prowess, especially in close combat, is superior to the Phoenixes. Furthermore, as a fledgling Chapter, the Phoenixes’ individual combat effectiveness is likely to be slightly stronger than the Phoenixes’, or perhaps even on par with them.

Inherited swordsmanship, enhanced cutting-edge combat capabilities, and a wealth of technological equipment inherited from the founding era of humanity’s greater empires… Founding Chapters represent the ceiling of combat power, from a Chapter perspective.

And the Phoenixes are the most exceptional. Perhaps their gene-seed’s adaptability is somewhat limited, leading to recruitment difficulties, a small number of successors, and a weak population. This, in turn, results in a political influence on the entire empire, somewhat inferior to that of larger Chapters. However, their pursuit of perfection and superior swordsmanship, inherited from their gene-seed, make their combat capabilities unparalleled among all founding Chapters.

However, what can these advantages do against the Phoenixes, who are relentless in their sacrifices and rapidly replenishing their ranks? They will

inevitably be exhausted.

With Gu Hang’s support, the Phoenixes truly live up to their name: ‘Immortal’.

Of course, this assumes they maintain their integration with the Alliance.

This will not be abolished. As Chapter Master, Martins is fully aware of this. If he said he wanted to rebel against the Alliance today, the entire regiment would immediately regard him as insane and tie him up and bring him before the Governor.

The only people who would join him in rebellion would probably be the three other veterans who survived the Atonement Crusade.

Well, not necessarily them, but at least Reverend Rizzo certainly wouldn’t join.

Besides, Martins himself had absolutely no such thoughts.

He’d been living comfortably under the Alliance system, and only thought of leaving when he’d gone mad.

For Gu Hang, replenishing 500 new members for the Phoenix primarily cost him grace points.

Training one elite veteran, or so he thought, would cost him, according to his chapter interface, a total of 1,000 grace points per person. This was after factoring in seed exchange, personnel training, and personnel selection.

But in this wave, the cost wasn’t actually that much.

The selection task had already been completed by training the additional 40,000 Glory Guards. The 40,000 Glory Guards were carefully selected using the [Soldier Card] training mechanic. The most outstanding of these, those around the age of sixteen and capable of reaching T1 training, are considered to have the potential to become Space Marines, giving them a very high success rate for implantation.

Furthermore, many of the Phoenixes have fought for five years, meaning they have already produced a batch of gene-seed. Most of the gene-seed from the four hundred casualties has been successfully recovered by the Chapter’s apothecaries.

This allows Gu Hang to reduce the cost of replenishing the Chapter by three to four hundred Grace points,

a considerable cost-effectiveness.

While Gu Hang’s Space Marines were nominally only five hundred, in reality, they numbered a full eighteen hundred.

Five hundred of these went to the Phoenixes,

and another three hundred to the Blood Sharks.

The Blood Sharks, having helped the Alliance save three battlecruisers, also lost two of their strike cruisers in subsequent battles. The Blood Sharks, returning with Ewing this time, number just over seven hundred, having lost over two hundred so far.

This loss is significant and unbearable for the Blood Sharks.

They weren’t like the Phoenix, who knew they had an invincible and resilient backing.

Gu Hang couldn’t fully display these things to the Blood Shark Warband, a group he didn’t yet trust or have close enough with.

But that didn’t mean he couldn’t do it. He did

n’t need to redeem the Blood Shark gene-seed,

though he probably would in the near future.

A Blood Shark-related event popped up in his [Events] interface.

[Event Activated: Blood Shark Chapter]

[A Space Marine Chapter, returning from the darkness of Outland, has decided to end their long wandering and return to Imperial territory. They are eager to establish their prestige and power within the Empire and secure a brighter future within it. The Alliance is their first stop, but will it be their last?]

[Please choose your actions carefully. Your actions determine the next steps of this event.]

[Event Reward: When a Blood Shark pledges allegiance to you, you will unlock the opportunity to redeem Blood Shark gene-seed.]

Gu Hang had previously been indifferent to the rewards of this event, but a recent discovery forced him to pay attention.

He discovered a limitation within the [Chapter] interface: the number of gene-seeds that can be redeemed by Phoenixes is surprisingly limited!

The number of Phoenix gene-seeds in existence at any one time, whether in a person or as a reserve, cannot exceed 2,000. Once this limit is reached, Gu Hang cannot redeem new seeds unless the seeds are lost to the Alliance, for example, due to failure to retrieve them, damage, or payment of gene-seed taxes to the Empire…

He hadn’t noticed it before because he wouldn’t have the luxury of exchanging so many seeds for stockpiling when he couldn’t afford them.

But this time, when he was trying to push the envelope a bit and produce more Space Marines, he hit that limit and was stuck.

Gu Hang’s plan to raise hundreds of thousands of Space Marines and establish a “Phoenix Legion” using Phoenix Seeds was dashed. It looked like he’d have to resort to collecting seeds from various Chapters to expand the number of redeemable seeds.

Under these circumstances, the gene-seed from the Blood Sharks, which Gu Hang had previously disregarded, became increasingly popular.

How could he achieve this?

The Blood Sharks weren’t like the Phoenixes of the past, half-dead and easily manipulated.

On the contrary, they were incredibly powerful.

That would require more careful planning.

Gu Hang planned to resort to a new strategy. The Blood Sharks had a

tradition of collecting blood taxes, and Gu Hang had agreed.

This time, the Blood Sharks were fighting alongside the Alliance, so they weren’t involved in much ground combat, so they didn’t consume a significant amount of cannon fodder, and the number of Chapter Servants needed to be replenished was small.

The blood tax they presented to the Alliance this time required “extremely strong, resolute, devoutly religious, and exceptionally skilled young men.”

This, in fact, was the core of the blood tax: to select enough fresh talent to satisfy the Blood Sharks and become the new blood of the Chapter.

Logically, this was a very demanding requirement. Simply physical strength, outstanding military skills, devout faith, and a strong will were easy enough, but the crucial requirement of “young men” posed a significant challenge.

How could a sixteen-year-old boy possess all these qualities?

Based on the Blood Sharks’ past experience, this would require finding thousands of men, sifting through rounds of bloody and brutal selection and baptism of fire.

It was like raising a Gu; those who survived were always the best of the lot. Whether they were naturally exceptional or had grown to prominence through the process, as long as they achieved their goal, they were considered the best.

But for Gu Hang, selecting qualified recruits was no problem at all.

After replenishing the Phoenix’s personnel, he would still have plenty of young men to train.

Three hundred young men were sent to join the Blood Sharks. Prior to this, Gu Hang had not only trained them to T1 level, greatly increasing the success rate of the gene-seed implantation procedure, but he had also fully trained them to earn points for their “Political Commissar” status.

The Blood Sharks, of course, wouldn’t accept everything, but Chapter Master Ewing would soon discover that the three hundred men sent by the Alliance perfectly met their requirements. Even their previously brutal selection process couldn’t have matched the quality of these three hundred candidates.

As for their loyalty to the Alliance?

Regardless of whether or not this was a factor in the Blood Sharks’ assessment, a normal Chapter rarely considered such a thing.

Space Marines have a near-immortal lifespan. Compared to the decades or even centuries of continuous life and battle within the Chapter, the mere experience of a sixteen-year-old pales in comparison. It’s natural for them to harbor a fondness for their homeland, but it will likely fade quickly amidst the Chapter’s cultural influence.

This was merely the effect of time and Chapter culture. Not to mention, after receiving the gene-seed, the young men’s physical structures would undergo a dramatic transformation in a short period of time, evolving from mortal to superhuman. This process would also be accompanied by immense physical pain and temperamental changes caused by hormone secretions.

In short, few Chapters worried about such a thing.

Could Ewing have foreseen that after training as Alliance commissars, the young men’s loyalty to the Governor would remain unwavering for an extended period?

That was probably unthinkable.

Furthermore, Gu Hang had no plans for these young men to do anything special.

They just needed to be good Blood Sharks.

The training of these new Blood Sharks didn’t even require Gu Hang to invest in their gene-seed. Furthermore, after their gene-seed was implanted, Gu Hang could still see that they still belonged to the Alliance in the system’s identification.

This further reassured him of the new Blood Sharks’ loyalty and allowed him to proceed.

He generously trained these new Blood Sharks to their highest level using the Space Marine-specific training features. Not everyone has the talent to be trained to the rank of company champion; only eighteen out of three hundred men can reach that level. However, everyone can be trained to become a veteran, and even half can reach the rank of non-commissioned officer.

To Ewing, this was a complete surprise: the seedlings sent by the Alliance not only had an extremely high success rate in implantation surgery, significantly reducing the loss of the Chapter’s gene-seed pool, but also, after undergoing a period of superhuman organ growth, they performed exceptionally well in training, rapidly reaching the level expected of a Blood Shark!

This was truly remarkable!

The veteran Blood Sharks’ exceptional combat prowess was honed by wandering the darkness of the Outlands, through countless brutal battles. The fact that these new seedlings could reach the same level, or even slightly surpass it, was truly exhilarating!

The Chapter’s strength, originally expected to take years to recover, was recaptured in a short period of time.

Ewing had initially considered adjusting their strategy for future battles with the Alliance, perhaps reducing the number of troops deployed in certain battles.

But now, adjustments were necessary, but in the direction of sending more men to the battles!

The blood tax from the alliance is so tempting.

(End of this chapter)