Starting from the Planetary Governor - Chapter 685

Chapter 683, ‘Tentacles’

The subsequent course of the battle in Tentacles was surprisingly close to what the Zerg Queen had predicted.

Gu Hang, leading the Alliance’s main fleet, ultimately annihilated the Zerg reinforcement fleets heading south from the Lefu and Jianmen star regions.

Only two bio-battleships and a handful of swifter warships escaped; the rest perished in the starry sky.

After their victory, the Alliance even spent extra time cleaning up the battlefield, to prevent the Zerg from returning and using the wreckage for biomass. Smaller

ship fragments were incinerated; larger bio-ship carcasses, especially those laden with biomass, were powered and launched towards the system’s stars, ensuring their complete and irreversible destruction.

At the same time, Gu Hang led a separate main fleet to intercept the Zerg fleet drawn from the Shantao Campaign.

They had received orders to flee, but were nonetheless intercepted and destroyed.

Marshal Xi Rui also reported victory on Shantao.

After the Zerg fleet withdrew, he ended the offensive.

Now that the mission had been accomplished, there was no need to waste lives.

After Gu Hang sent the report of victory in the battle, he more decisively withdrew the troops from Dantao.

The withdrawal process was also smooth. Although the enemy still had a very large number of troops on the ground, without the support of space, as long as there was a stable base to ensure that the orbit in this direction would not be hit by the anti-orbital biological artillery on the ground, there would be no big problem.

While continuously evacuating the troops, he also transported a precious “Burning Sky Torpedo” on hand to the ground.

This Burning Sky Torpedo exploded when there were not many people left on the planet.

In the end, nearly 10,000 people died on the planet. After all, it was unrealistic to evacuate everyone and then detonate the Burning Sky Torpedo. Otherwise, if something unexpected happened, it would be a real accident.

Bombing their own people might sound disgraceful, but compared to destroying a planet once home to 90 billion people, now reduced to a vast mass of biomass, the blow dealt to the Zerg was immense, and the exchange rate was quite cost-effective.

As for why they didn’t evacuate everyone before bombing… the core reason was the concern that without ground support after the evacuation, while the Zerg swarm was still strong on the surface, the Burning Sky torpedoes might be intercepted by biological artillery or flying Zerg demons. That would be a huge loss.

The lives of ten thousand soldiers, compared to the value of a Burning Sky torpedo… well, without a doubt, the Burning Sky torpedoes were far more valuable.

That’s the cold calculation.

Regardless, Dan Tao was destroyed. If the Queen had taken all the biomass from a population of 90 billion, it would probably be equivalent to half the biomass brought by the fleet heading south.

Another heavy loss.

Gu Hang and Xi Rui reunited.

They rested for about a week before setting off again.

The original plan was to head west and establish connections with Salilius and Martins.

But they soon realized that this was no longer necessary.

The Zerg had withdrawn on their own.

The Zerg Queen had withdrawn almost all the power she could control and muster.

Those transport ships that could be hatched hatched, loaded with biomass, soldiers, and workers, and then fled back. Those that couldn’t be taken away were left where they were, hatching into full-scale soldiers, preparing to cause as much trouble as possible for humanity.

She was shrinking her forces to the extreme, almost entirely confined to the Rhaeduches system.

This was clearly intended to be a protracted war with humanity on Rhaeduches, the once ironclad homeworld.

A protracted war.

But what was she relying on to hold out?

Initially, Gu Hang had only a hypothesis, without definitive evidence. Once he personally arrived in the Rhaeduches system, he quickly understood the reason.

Striving to peer through the shadows of the Warp, toward the far reaches of the physical universe, he saw a massive Hive Fleet approaching.

Either through the Warp or through astral tunnels, or at normal sublight speeds, it was “slowly” approaching Rhaeduches from a great distance.

That Hive Fleet was enormous, even larger than the swarm controlled by the Queen.

Is that the so-called “Duchess Tentacle”?

Humanity calls the structure above the Hive Fleet a “Tentacle.” This is an extremely large scale, the largest Zerg structure the Imperium has yet encountered. When the main force of a Zerg Tentacle reaches Imperial territory, it often causes a massive catastrophe spanning multiple cosmic regions, requiring the Empire to muster immense forces to neutralize it.

Throughout the Imperium’s history, a “Tentacle” has only appeared and been successfully resisted twice. Each time, it left a deep and painful memory for the entire Imperium.

A single “Tentacle” may host many Queens. While they are generally equal and of equal rank, their status varies depending on the size of the Zerg swarms they control. The most powerful, and presumably the oldest, is called the “Mother.” In fact, Queens are often related by blood, though the Zerg don’t care.

For the past few hundred years, a “void wormhole” in Rhea Duchess has repeatedly seen hive fleets emerge from it. Imperial Zerg scholars have speculated that a “tentacle” might be traveling in that direction, from the physical universe, gradually approaching Imperial territory. What consistently emerged was merely a vanguard fleet.

This possible “tentacle” was named the “Duches Tentacle” after the place.

However, after careful observation, Gu Hang concluded that it wasn’t the main force of the tentacle.

The numbers weren’t quite right.

It was likely merely another vanguard force emerging from the tentacle. The main force of the tentacle was still unobservable, far away.

Even so, the arrival of this Zerg fleet would significantly alter the course of the war.

Gu Hang observed this hive fleet for two days and largely confirmed his theory.

Furthermore, his analysis revealed that, at its current speed, it would take approximately thirteen standard Terran moons for this Hive Fleet to reach the Rhea Duchess system.

This meant that the humans would need at least a year to resolve the Rheaduches issue to avoid a merger.

It wasn’t enough time, after all, the Queen had reduced her forces, so it would likely take a long time to conquer them.

But it still gave them some time, so they could fight for it.

An idea gradually formed in Gu Hang’s mind.

—

The previous chapter made up for yesterday’s, and this chapter is today’s.

(End of this chapter)