Starting from the Planetary Governor - Chapter 960

Chapter 951, Fighting for Life

Lu Baigang had already anticipated that his journey wouldn’t be easy, but the initial stages were relatively easy.

The path cleared by the melta bombs dropped by the air force was undoubtedly worthwhile. Taking advantage of the bone vines’ intensified growth, the Alliance forces suddenly increased their speed and advanced a considerable distance.

During this period, the enemy attempted harassment, but it was largely futile.

Without the bone vines as the foundation of the maze, creating a natural environment, the enemy’s threat was greatly reduced. The few ratmen sent out to explore were mere cannon fodder, unable to even get close, and were easily mowed down by machine gun fire from a distance.

However, the latter half of the journey became more challenging.

The bone vines had silently grown in greater numbers. A thin mist had reappeared, making it difficult to block the line of sight, with visibility limited to only one or two hundred meters. At this distance, many of the human artillery pieces were at a disadvantage. Many tank guns, for example, could fire directly up to two kilometers away. Within the armored regiment, some armored self-propelled artillery units could normally reach up to thirty kilometers.

However, artillery units with a range of tens of kilometers weren’t designed to rely on visual sighting.

They couldn’t see.

They relied primarily on frontline troops to locate and calibrate their targets, which required direct fire. This was a significant challenge for artillery skills.

However, the frontline troops’ range was limited. With visibility of only a hundred or two hundred meters, it was difficult to reach further back and pinpoint the enemy’s precise position. But that didn’t matter. They could focus on the direction the ratmen were rushing out of the fog, bombarding a 200- to 1,000-meter radius with blanket bombing.

While that wasn’t as accurate as normal bombing,

it was still quite effective. However, tank guns and machine guns were more difficult to deal with. They could only face the ratmen’s charge, frantically firing bullets and shells into the fog.

This was clearly ineffective, as many ratmen continued to surge from various directions, reaching within 200 meters of visible range.

Continuing with firepower proved difficult. While the Skaven’s weapons were inferior, even at ranges of 100 to 200 meters, humans were bound to suffer some casualties.

The occasional Rat Troll, in particular, was highly resilient. At this range, tank guns and the anti-tank weapons of reinforcements might not be able to quickly hit them.

If a Rat Troll charged into the soldiers’ positions, it would be a massacre. Mortal soldiers’ laser rifles at close range could still inflict limited damage.

Often, in these situations, the Space Marines had to maneuver through the positions and quickly deal with these high-threat targets.

A single Black Hammer warrior facing a Rat Troll was a dangerous task. The chance of defeating the enemy without damage was only about 50%, and injury or even death was a high risk.

A team of three could ensure the swift and safe elimination of the enemy.

Braving the interference of bone vines and the obstruction of countless insect swarms, the entire force struggled forward through the fog.

Ultimately, after considerable sacrifice, they reached their target.

It was a tunnel, and according to intelligence, it led directly to a location very close to the mission’s target area.

The good news was that the tunnel still existed, though the entrance was blocked by bone vines. However, once they found their target, they could activate melta-incinerator weapons and burn it down.

The bad news was that the main underground passage had been eaten away by the Skaven. The alloy tunnel, marked as a “safe passage” in tactical intelligence, had become extremely fragile and impassable upon their arrival, although the route remained unchanged.

At the very least, the heavily armored forces of the human army, especially several Titan units and heavy tanks, would have been unable to pass through.

Only a few smaller, lightly armored vehicles could barely make it through.

This was expected. The main force of the operation was still the Black Hammer Space Marines, supplemented by a small number of troops from the Armored Regiment, including some elite companies, Sentinel mechs, and lightly armored units.

In total, less than two thousand men entered this vast underground passage.

The remaining troops stood outside the tunnel entrance, on standby and also responsible for ensuring the safety of the troops during their evacuation.

The troops that had entered the tunnel also began their movement.

The alloy walls gleamed with a greasy sheen in the dim light, the trace of digestive fluids secreted by living vines. The air was thick as a shroud, the thick odor of humus and decaying flesh filling every helmet filter grille.

At first, it was just a few scattered fungal clumps, tumbling from the occasional bone vine, popping and spraying slime with a popping sound.

But as they entered the middle section, the dome suddenly shed vast expanses of wriggling scarlet flowers, and hundreds of ratmen rushed towards them like a cascading waterfall of filth!

They didn’t roar, only the creaking of their joints rubbing against each other at high speed, and the muffled sound of their inferior weapons firing.

The human forces’ counterattack was the first to arrive, frantically sweeping away the surrounding enemies. The roar of heavy bombs instantly ripped through the creep tunnels, shredding the remaining Skaven into a muddy mess.

Each charged roar of a plasma pistol vaporized a line of Skaven, the intense heat of the plasma even temporarily carbonizing and solidifying the creep. The

rusted metal walls on either side suddenly softened, and vines sprang out, illuminating with ethereal blue runes. With a flicker of teleportation, swarms of elite Skaven units were delivered into the crowd.

Engineer rats teleported alongside the Space Marines and human armor. Their presence posed a significant challenge to the human forces. Their electromagnetic bombs caused heavy armored vehicles to groan and stall in the thick fog, and even the Sentinels were severely disrupted. While the Space Marines’ power armor was relatively resistant to interference, the acoustic communication arrays within their helmets still emitted a high level of cacophony, piercing the ears.

The teleported suicide rats not only inflicted heavy damage with their immediate explosions, but also their highly acidic spores vaporized and spread in the blast, creating a corrosive yellow-green haze that quickly obscured vision and was also highly toxic.

The Space Marines could only close their formation, their chainswords forming a jungle of blades to strangle any rats that had escaped the bomb net.

But when some frenzied battle rats charged forward, though no taller than a Space Marine’s knees, they, like real rats, took advantage of the slaughter by swiftly scrambling to their feet. They thrust their precision drills into the crevices of their power armor, frantically hammering at the joints!

One warrior’s power fist, pierced by the liquid metal, lost its function. As more and more rats gathered around him, he swung his chainsword to sever his entangled left leg at the knee, freeing himself. This freed him, allowing him to quickly dispatch numerous rats that approached, but ultimately, he was still overwhelmed.

“Abandon the vehicle! Forward! Charge!”

Lu Baigang shouted the order through the communication channel in the helmet.

The soldiers began a forceful assault on the signal tower’s base. The heavy bombers, under the cover of their comrades, continued to suppress the rat tide, but each advance was met with a crushing on the corpses of the advancing ratmen.

After exiting the passage, the view cleared slightly, and the signal tower’s base became visible, but the plaza surrounding it was completely covered by a thicker, swollen mass of bone vines. Even more terrifying, these vines were contracting, like a heart.

As the vanguard team reached the edge of the plaza, this “heart” suddenly contracted violently! The ground beneath the plaza suddenly collapsed, forming a bottomless pit of flesh and blood, and many soldiers fell into it unprepared! At the bottom of the pit, a gelatinous digestive fluid was secreted, and the rats rained down from above!

The Space Marines’ strong bodies and power armor could withstand the rips, but the corrosive slime at the bottom of the pit was dissolving their foothold at a terrifying rate.

Lu Baigang was forced to reluctantly abandon his comrades trapped in the pit, but as they moved forward, the more terrifying the situation became, the closer they got to the base.

Lu Baigang felt like this entire area was a labyrinthine trap!

The so-called signal tower had long since become a hollow, infested shell; the giant vine-like organism beneath it was the crucial node supporting the transmission channel.

“Everyone bombard, focus fire on the base!”

Lu Baigang’s command was laced with despair.

The remaining warriors unleashed their final heavy weapons fire upon the base.

Under the bombardment of high-explosive shells and melta rays, the fungal blanket tumbled and charred, but beneath it lay not the imagined energy core, but countless writhing giant rat embryos, connected to the fungal blanket by countless tubes, like a deformed heart parasitic on this maze of death!

The overwhelming firepower only temporarily interrupted its pulse, but could not truly solve the problem.

Instead, from that pulsating “heart,” countless rats “hatched” from within, swarming towards Lu Baigang’s troops.

The edge began to collapse and expand, and more Space Marines and soldiers stumbled to the ground.

“Evacuate! Abandon the objective!” Lu Baigang gave the order at the last moment, after the communication was interrupted. The remaining warriors detonated their pre-arranged melta bombs, creating a wall of fire to temporarily block the rat tide, and dragged each other back towards the twisting passage behind them.

However, at the entrance of the passage, the troops responsible for reconciling them were ultimately unable to retrieve the people they were supposed to pick up.

…

Two hundred Space Marines, deployed simultaneously in a single operation, was a significant investment. Moreover, those two armored regiments were the elite of the Alliance Army. They had Sentinels, Titans, and heavy armored tanks, and a significant proportion of the soldiers were equipped with power armor.

They were undoubtedly elite forces.

It’s not that the Alliance couldn’t deploy more resources, such as more troops, or even an all-Space Marine force.

However, that wouldn’t be very effective.

An all-Space Marine force, say two or three fully staffed Chapters, could probably capture the objective. However, even with the Alliance’s considerable number of Space Marines, only a few dozen Chapters were fighting here. With Space Marines needed everywhere as the backbone of the battle lines, holding the line, forcibly extracting so many of them, while certainly securing this city, would likely inflict even greater costs elsewhere.

Overall, the Alliance’s encounter with this flesh-and-blood maze is not going well.

The Alliance is also suffering losses on other fronts.

The Dark Eldar have opened up a new battlefield in the real universe.

Of course, it’s not a direct confrontation.

After all, in a direct confrontation, even in their homeland of Comoros, they would have to rely on living war weapons like the labyrinth to barely withstand human attacks, let alone confront the Alliance in the real universe and on Alliance territory.

However, they don’t need to do that.

Over the ages, the Dark Eldar have accumulated a considerable number of Veil Gates across the universe. Only a small number have been discovered by the Alliance, after all.

They emerge from unfamiliar regions and enter Alliance territory, specifically targeting non-core planets, launching raids with a few warships.

Elite Dark Eldar commandos eliminated and massacred Alliance planetary government officials, plundered populations and resources, and then wreaked havoc.

All their actions were swift, a hit-and-run operation.

Even more egregious, they deployed biological weapons on several agricultural planets. While their effects differed somewhat from those of human extinction weapons, they achieved similar results. Within days, a genetic plague, spreading rapidly through air and water and infecting all organisms, destroyed the planet’s ecology and killed over a billion people.

This was also a blow to the Alliance.

The Alliance’s remaining troops and fleets deployed everywhere to capture the Dark Eldar, but these elusive creatures proved difficult to capture. This

forced the Alliance to deploy greater forces and disperse their defenses.

However, the Dark Eldar’s guerrilla tactics proved so difficult to defeat that, despite deploying forces a hundred times greater than the enemy’s, they still suffered heavy losses.

This undoubtedly served as a warning to the Alliance, clearly confirming the warnings issued earlier by Dark Eldar diplomat Veserani.

The Dark Eldar were not made of clay. Even if one took a long-term view, they might eventually be destroyed. However, before that, the Dark Eldar, fighting for their own survival, would bring immeasurable losses to humanity.

Peace talks were once again on the table.

Gu Hang received two reports. The Alliance Military General Staff and the Alliance Government had seriously discussed the Dark Eldar’s conditions. They believed that accepting peace talks was not completely unacceptable.

As long as the conditions were right and the benefits were sufficient.

(End of this chapter)