Starting from the Planetary Governor - Chapter 925

Chapter 917, Stopping the Disaster

Fleet. The Calamity Fleet’s arrival significantly worsened the situation on the world of Papalil.

The world was already facing a dire crisis, rendering the safe zone strategy impractical and forcing the extermination order—an order that was intercepted.

Now, the Calamity Fleet intervened,

creating a desperate situation.

The Alliance fleet, caught off guard, was forced to temporarily retreat. To avoid further attack, they quickly relocated, allowing the Calamity Fleet to smoothly seize half of Papalil’s orbit. The Alliance fleet relinquished its position to the planet’s rear.

The two fleets engaged in a battle along the planet’s orbit ,

but the fighting wasn’t particularly intense.

While the Alliance forces located there were indeed the headquarters of the Southern Front, they weren’t the full force. During operations, the Front’s forces were divided into numerous detachments. The Front would formulate an overall operational objective for multiple star regions, and during this time, each detachment would carry out its assigned tasks according to that overall objective and the strategic details provided by Front Command.

This was done to improve efficiency.

They only gathered when faced with a particularly difficult situation requiring multiple detachments or even the collective action of an entire front. Otherwise, they normally dispersed.

Papalil described the situation as critical, but in reality, before the Scourge Fleet’s appearance, it was a single world problem, hardly a situation that necessitated the recall of other detachments or reinforcements. The Command Fleet’s strength was more than sufficient to resolve the situation.

Everything changed with the Scourge Fleet’s arrival.

The human fleet consisted of only about a hundred warships; another five hundred or so vessels belonging to the Command Fleet were in this sector, having received the news and were rushing to the scene at full speed.

Before their arrival, a decisive fleet engagement with the Scourge Fleet would have been difficult with only a hundred warships.

The enemy was vastly outnumbered.

Conversely, the Chaos enemy, despite its larger size and strength, did not necessarily pursue the Alliance ships and annihilate them.

Instead, after seizing half of Papalil’s orbital space, their first action was to deploy troops to the surface.

Their target area was quite obvious:

a church in the middle of a hive city, occupied by Alliance forces. Its original purpose was to serve as a ground base, a temporary relocation point for the Alliance to evacuate surface residents to the sky before the first Extermination Order strike.

Civilians would undergo a period of screening to ensure they were free of viruses and Chaos corruption before being safely transported to the rear.

Later, after the Extermination Order strike failed, human forces returned to the surface and the site was reoccupied. Its responsibilities remained to screen civilians and attempt to evacuate further civilians. However, it also served another purpose: as a forward military base, attacking a Chaos rebel air defense position seventy kilometers away.

This location was certainly important. It holds some strategic value, and for this reason, the Alliance has stationed a full Skeleton Division here and nearby, along with a company of Space Marines from the Banyan Lizards.

The Banyan Lizards, a successor to the Dragon Legion, sport a brown and dark green livery resembling an old banyan tree. With a 1,600-year history, they’ve long been undermanned. Only after joining the Alliance’s Dark Side Crusade did the Banyan Lizards experience a rebirth. Now, with less than 300 veterans, the remaining 700-plus recruits are Primaris recruits. The

Banyan Lizards’ 8th Company is a Primaris company.

Their original duty wasn’t to guard the church, but to assemble here as the core of the attack on the anti-aircraft defense position.

Now, with the ground invasion of the Scourge Fleet, their most crucial mission naturally shifted to defensive action.

Initially, they hadn’t intended to hold out.

The cathedral’s value lay in its staging area for attacking enemy air defenses. Now, the Alliance clearly lacked the strength to continue the offensive, and the entire situation had shifted dramatically.

Targeted by the Scourge Fleet’s ground forces, the enemy was significantly more powerful, and the cathedral, no longer valuable as a springboard, could logically be abandoned. Preserving their remaining manpower, and accumulating strength for a counterattack upon the arrival of reinforcements, was the more effective option.

However, just as the troops were about to withdraw, an order from headquarters halted them.

They were ordered to defend the cathedral, to hold their ground, even to the last man.

…

This order came personally from Martins,

who was well-versed in the Scourge Fleet.

Perhaps it was the Space Marine Management Association that cared most about the Scourge Fleet among the Alliance’s military units.

The reason was simple: the Scourge Fleet possessed the highest concentration of Chaos Space Marines among the various enemy forces currently facing the Alliance. The commander of the Scourge Fleet was often the leader of a Chaos warband.

If there were any enemies in the universe that the Space Marines most desired to eliminate, it would undoubtedly be the traitors of their own bloodline.

Traitors of the same bloodline were the greatest enemy, their goal being to cleanse the shame; other traitors of different bloodlines came second.

As the head of the Management Association, Martins had read many of the General Staff’s analyses of the Scourge Fleet and knew that it seemed to be searching the universe for something.

To date, the Alliance still didn’t know what that “something” was.

However, seeing their clear goal of attacking the church, was it possible that the “something” the Scourge Fleet was seeking was located there?

They had to be stopped.

Martins even suspected that the traitors might not wait until the Alliance forces gathered the scattered fleets before engaging the Alliance in a head-on battle. After they capture the church and take what they want, they might immediately evacuate.

Once they escape, it will be difficult to catch them.

Martins is determined to stop them.

A single company of lizards on the ground plus a division of the Union Army is definitely not enough.

But as long as they can hold out long enough for reinforcements to arrive, that will be enough.

And the reinforcements will be led by Martins himself.

(End of this chapter)