Starting from the Planetary Governor - Chapter 660

Chapter 658, Urgent Need

“Thank you for coming!”

Salilius was polite during the call.

Martins’s reply was similarly polite: “We are allies, so be kind.”

But that was the extent of the pleasantries.

The critical situation meant there was no time for small talk.

Salilius then gave Martins a detailed overview of the situation on the Western Front.

After receiving Gu Hang’s final, stern warning, Salilius’s own unease peaked.

At that moment, he indeed considered challenging Leroy to a duel to see who could reach Rhaeduches first.

It was natural. As a commander, having participated in such a massive war, who wouldn’t want to capture the ultimate glory?

But in the end, his rationality prevailed.

He was unwilling to risk the entire army for the sake of honor.

Combined with Gu Hang’s warning, if everything was true, then Rhaeduches was clearly not the end of the war. Taking it would not be victory.

Moreover, Leluwa had already seized the initiative. If the Princess Star Region was easy to conquer, then he certainly couldn’t escape as quickly as Leluwa. If the Princess Star Region was truly a hive of insects, as Gu Hang claimed, and extremely dangerous, then stepping in would be sheer suicidal.

After a full day of deliberation and much clarity, he finally let go of his thoughts and, against all odds, followed Gu Hang’s advice. He halted his troops, established a defensive perimeter, and cleared the area of infected people, striving to establish a stable base to ensure immediate safety while assessing the situation and making further plans.

Then, he waited for the full outbreak of the infestation, for Iron Armor to attack from behind, and for Leluwa on the northern front to disappear without a trace.

He broke out in a cold sweat.

If he had, like Leluwa, rashly led his troops into the Princess Star Region, his fate would likely be no different from Leluwa’s current situation.

But even the current situation was already causing him great anxiety.

The Zerg forces that escaped from the Empress Star Region were actually relatively safe. Though numerous, they hadn’t set foot inside the Empress Star Region, maintaining their defensive lines.

With war raging across a dozen worlds, their fleets providing support and using planets as bastions managed to hold the line.

Though the fighting was intense and the casualties were high, they were able to hold the line, attriting each other and maintaining a significant advantage in terms of casualty ratio.

Of course, casualty ratios are tricky to explain. After all, if the ratio against the Zerg couldn’t be narrowed, there was no point in fighting; they would be exhausted to death. After all, while human life is cheap in interstellar warfare, the lives of the opposing Zerg are even less valuable.

In this current situation, having an advantage is at least not a bad thing.

By reducing the Zerg population to a certain size and then employing certain strategies, whether decisive battles or desperate assaults, to eliminate the core Hive Fleet, the war could be won.

This was also the method that had often secured victory over the Void Zerg in the previous six months of humanity’s struggle for supremacy across this starry sea.

But the greater problem lay with the main force of the Iron Armored Legion, advancing from west to east.

That was a real threat.

The Iron Armored Legion had been missing for a long time. Salilius’s forces occasionally encountered them during their eastward advance, achieving some success, but no full-scale confrontation had occurred. The Iron Armored Legion seemed vulnerable to attack, suffering continuous defeat in a war spanning hundreds and thousands of worlds.

Battle reports indicated that Salilius’s offensive was too ferocious. The all-out assault overwhelmed the Iron Armored Legion, leaving them with no time to rally and ultimately succumbing to heavy losses in a series of small-scale battles, practically annihilating them.

But Gu Hang had always believed this was wrong.

The Iron Armored Legion couldn’t be so easily defeated.

Was Salilius lying about military intelligence and exaggerating his achievements? He initially disagreed; he believed he had truly triumphed over the Iron Armored Legion. But now, with the facts before him, he had to admit he’d been complacent. The battle reports he’d received claiming encounters with Ironclad forces in battle after battle might have been true, but cumulatively, figures exceeding four thousand casualties seemed unreliable.

Perhaps in one battle, they’d encountered ten Ironclads, but after covering their territory with artillery fire and seeing none, they’d assumed they’d been wiped out and reported it.

That was probably the situation.

A single discrepancy might seem small, but when accumulated over countless battles, it became a significant number.

And these problems, accumulated to this point, had finally hit him hard.

The Ironclads, charging from behind, possessed at least eleven main battleships. The exact strength of the Space Marines was still unknown, but every planet they were targeting reported being attacked by thousands of Space Marines and quickly captured. Meanwhile, deeper into the battlefield, Ironclad ships and tactical squadrons were frequently seen harassing them,

just as they had previously done on Changqi Star.

If the defenses were insufficient, they would be conquered, causing enormous trouble.

The loss of a single planet might not be crucial; the risk of Iron Armor attacking directly from both sides, threatening Salilius’s main force, was far greater, but not insurmountable. After all, Salilius still had a considerable force at its disposal, and could still allocate some to deploy for defenses facing west.

However, the greatest threat came from a severance of logistical lines, which would spell doom.

The entire Solar Expeditionary Force, with its vast fleet, the Solar Legion’s Astra Militarum, and the Astra Militarum and defense forces recruited from the local Magre Space, totaled hundreds of millions, if not billions, of troops. The daily expenditure was enormous.

While basic food and ammunition costs could be provided locally from the numerous planets currently occupied, replenishing the equally vast quantities of advanced artillery shells, the high-compression energy crystals required for the ships, the naval artillery shell reserves, and lost high-tech weaponry such as tanks and fighter jets would be exceedingly difficult.

The White Curtain Star Region was not a place of high productivity. Providing some basic assets was barely sufficient, and even insufficient, given production and transportation capacity. As for advanced war resources, they were completely helpless, unable to even produce them, let alone recovering productivity in these war-torn worlds.

In this situation, Martins’ arrival provided a crucial solution.

(End of Chapter)