Chapter 672: Saving the North Line
Saving the remnants of the Northern Front Army is a very meaningful thing.
Although there are certain risks, firstly, the risks are not too big, and secondly, the benefits are not small.
Not to mention the risks, anyway, they have arrived safely, picked up the people safely, and returned safely. The dead were members of the Anti-Foreign Inquisition, not the Alliance. The Alliance has done its best, and can be said to have a clear conscience in this regard.
As for the benefits, there are three main aspects.
First, it is the combat effectiveness of this unit itself.
Although there are only tens of thousands of people, it is actually not easy to hold out for several months under the siege of a swarm of insects on a planet and the orbital threat of biological ships in the sky.
In fact, although there are not many people, the subordinates of the warships are the real big guys. The Marines inside are fine, in a general sense, they can be considered elite. But there are many sailors on the warships before, and even logistics. These personnel were just issued a gun and a layer of armor, and they had no combat effectiveness.
But apart from that, the rest are all elites.
There are only 15,000 stormtroopers left from the Inquisition assigned to Qin Zhiping. All of them are exoskeletons, and one-tenth of them are equipped with feedback power armor, so they are quite powerful. Although they are all mortals, think about it, the Honor Guards of the Alliance are also mortals. As long as the training and equipment level can keep up, even if they are mortals, their strength level will not be bad.
These stormtroopers can be regarded as "small-sized glory guards".
Oh, or you can say that the Glory Guards are just a larger version of the Loyal Stormtroopers. The essence is the same, except that the equipment and training level of the Glory Guards are better than the Loyal Stormtroopers, who are considered the strongest among the mortal troops.
The other force is a group of bounty hunters consisting of less than a thousand people.
This is a special group. They are not members of the official organization of the Empire, but a group of people who make a living by accepting various bounty missions from the Imperial Law Department and hunting various bounty-bearing "criminals" on certain worlds. The official government of the Empire will not be responsible for them, nor will it provide them with any help other than intelligence. They have to buy their own equipment and earn their own income. There is no pension if they die.
Most of them are civilians who can't survive in the hive city by normal means and are forced to sell their lives; even many gang members and criminals don't mind becoming bounty hunters themselves when they kill their rivals or rob each other, or find a familiar hunter to act as their white glove and send the people they killed to the Ministry of Justice in exchange for some money.
Even those who are full-time bounty hunters don't mind changing their identities at certain times and doing something illegal but profitable.
You can't always expect them to be loyal or have high moral standards.
It is precisely because of these factors that the training and equipment levels of bounty hunters are uneven. Most of them are rotten and the imperial officials look down on them.
However, a very small number of them survived the missions one after another and successfully completed the missions. Moreover, unlike most of their peers, they did not spend the money they earned on wine and women, but used it to improve themselves and strengthen their equipment. In this way, they grew into well-known figures and even attracted the attention of the Inquisition.
The Inquisition will generally examine whether these people have clean backgrounds. If they pass the examination, the Inquisition will try to assign them some more dangerous but more profitable tasks, and will also open up higher-level knowledge, equipment, technology, and even human body modification to them.
Those who can become famous hunters are already one in ten thousand, but not every famous hunter can be favored by the Inquisition; those who are favored by the Inquisition must survive the highly dangerous missions issued by the Inquisition time and again in order to continue to improve themselves.
Once someone really reaches this level and wins the favor of the Inquisition, the various factions of the Inquisition will try to absorb these people into their own system and become followers of formal inquisitors like Qin Zhiping.
Don't underestimate being a "follower". It sounds like being a dog, but actually... oh, actually being a dog is true. But even if you are a dog, you are a dog with a system. With a system, you don't have to go on missions as frequently as before, and your life safety is greatly improved. At the same time, you don't have to spend money on equipment maintenance, updates, and enhancements, and your income will not be low, so life will be much better.
More importantly, it was easier for their offspring to join the ranks, and they had room for advancement. If they did well in the entourage, they would have the opportunity to become torturers or agents. And if they moved up to positions like assistant judges, they would become full-fledged judges.
Even the most junior Inquisitors were top figures in the Empire, and in theory could issue an extermination order for a world. Although that was not very realistic, no matter which world they went to, as long as it was not a place like Holy Terra where a stone could hit a high-ranking official, then even the most junior Inquisitors were still big shots.
Let’s not talk about things that are so far away, but even with this group of followers, nearly a thousand people put here, it can be regarded as the top combat power level among mortals.
Not to mention, there are some who have reached the level of torturers, agents, and assistant judges.
Three or five people like this could even kill a Space Marine if they found a way.
Speaking of Space Marines, Qin Zhiping also has about a hundred Silver Watch Space Marines in his hands.
The Silver Watch is no ordinary chapter. They are an organization established through discussions between representatives of Holy Terra and many Space Marine chapters, and they handed this chapter over to the Inquisition for Xenophobia to lead.
They are special because of the composition of their personnel. They never recruit new soldiers themselves, or plant seeds for cultivation. They recruit warriors who have performed well in fighting against aliens from various warbands and serve in the Silver Watch.
Of course, sometimes some Space Marines who have made mistakes but are indeed very powerful are recruited to join the Silver Watch to "atone their sins."
But no matter what the standard is, one thing is certain: every Silver Watcher is close to the company champion, or has even reached the level of the company champion.
After all, they were selected from the best of thousands of battle groups, so it's not surprising that they have such a level.
These one hundred Silver Watch warriors are the elite among the elite.
Such a force of tens of thousands of people was actually just in trouble, the situation was too bad. As long as they were given time to rest and recover, and then used properly in the battle, and cooperated with the army of the alliance, they could play a crucial role in many scenes.
It can be used as a key force in key battles such as naval battles to seize ships and land battles...anything is fine.
No one can have too many elite troops.
As for the second benefit of saving these inquisitors of the anti-foreign order, it lies in intelligence.
If gathering such a small remnant army can bring such benefits, what if there are more troops in the Northern Front Legion that can be rescued and united?
However, in this regard, Gu Hang was a little disappointed.
Qin Zhiping provided a lot of information, such as the whole process of the Northern Front Army being defeated, and gave a clear statement: the Northern Front Army was indeed finished.
However, the situation that Gu Hang expected, that there were many surviving troops in the northern front army, did not occur.
Of course, this is not to say that there were no survivors, but Qin Zhiping did not know how many people survived and where the survivors were.
The only thing that was certain was that the largest force of the Northern Front's ground forces was on Rheaduches. At that time, there were at least 2,000 Space Marines and tens of millions of Astra Militarum troops deployed in the ground battle. There were many loyal stormtroopers in the Astra Militarum, and even half of them were from the Astra Militarum's famous Firstborn Legion. They were very powerful, and even the Alliance Army might not be able to defeat them.
The two main disadvantages of such a huge ground force are: first, the loss of orbital protection; second, being in enemy territory where supply is difficult.
There is no doubt that they will suffer very painful losses.
But was the whole army wiped out?
Gu Hang expressed cautious optimism about this.
After experiencing tragic casualties and a sharp reduction in manpower, the supplies left behind may be able to allow the survivors to hold on for a while longer; without orbital cover, they can disperse and fight guerrilla warfare... In short, about nine months have passed since the battle in which the Northern Front Legion was defeated, so quite a few of them should be able to survive, and they should be elite troops.
As for the other units of the Northern Front Corps scattered around, although Qin Zhiping did not know their exact location, which was bad news, there was also good news. When they were running away, they saw the flight directions of some other ships that were running away, from which they could try to calculate the location and target of these ships.
Moreover, Qin Zhiping was probably not the only smart person. They all knew that it was almost impossible to run north and cross several Zerg-occupied areas in the star fields and return to the Star Devouring Universe. So, running eastward and looking for the Alliance was the best option. If there were any survivors, they might be scattered around not far away.
Another good news is that when Qin Zhiping and his crew left their ship, they removed the ship's astropathic communication device. At that time, he probably wanted to keep it, at least to keep the thought of asking for help - as it turned out, they were indeed saved in the end.
And this thing can continue to make use of its residual heat.
After Gu Hang's psychic transformation, its communication capabilities were greatly enhanced even in the shadow of the subspace that enveloped the entire Princess Star Region. And it was part of the communication system within the entire Northern Front Legion, which meant that the Alliance could use it to contact the survivors even if they were one or two star regions away.
Having this thing would make things much more convenient than the previous alliance sending out exploration teams, risking approaching one planet after another, and trying to establish communication.
What's more, some survivors of the Northern Front Legion might still have ships. They might not choose to land on the ground, but hide in an asteroid belt in the galaxy, an uninhabited desolate world, the back of a gas planet, etc., to avoid being hunted by the Zerg fleet.
Before, if the Alliance's exploration team wanted to find these units, it would be harder than looking for a needle in a haystack - the ocean is not as big as the starry sky!
It's much easier now.
As for the third benefit of saving Qin Zhiping and others, it is political.
In addition to being the commander-in-chief, Gu Hang is also the leader of the alliance. He needs to consider not only military issues, but also political issues.
He believed that after the war, the alliance would inevitably face a huge political turmoil. That might be the most critical moment for the alliance's gains in the war, the distribution of the fruits of victory, and even the existence of the alliance.
Any bit of political support will be of considerable help in that crisis.
Gu Hang would not ignore this.
Qin Zhiping is a senior member of the Anti-foreign Tribunal, with the rank of [Chief Judge]. Above him, there are only a few Chief Judges. By saving him, not only can you gain his friendship, but also the friendship of the entire Anti-foreign Tribunal.
As one of the three largest factions in the Inquisition, it directly controls an entire top-level Inquisition faction such as the Silver Watch. The right of the Anti-foreign Order is quite large, and it can directly influence the opinion of the Inquisition representative in the Supreme Council.
These three benefits are enough to make Gu Hang feel that saving this army is very beneficial.
In addition to the last point of political benefit, the other two benefits were continuously verified in the following three months.
With the help of the astropathic device, the Alliance successfully contacted seven scattered troops.
After resting, the Inquisition troops followed the Alliance's ships and attacked everywhere during the three months. They personally participated in the rescue of four of the troops; the remaining three were also rescued by other Alliance troops.
The total number of troops rescued was more than 20 million, half of whom were seamen and crew members. The other half were the troops brought by the ships of the survivors' fleets, or who, like Qin Zhiping, had been forced to land on the surface of the planet and held on until now.
In addition, a total of seventy warships of various levels were rescued.
The largest of them even had a total of thirty-seven warships led by an aircraft carrier and two battle cruisers.
Just as previously speculated, they were indeed hiding in an asteroid belt on the edge of a star system, sailing dangerously and avoiding being hunted by the Zerg fleet.
This fleet of seventy ships, including aircraft carriers, battleships, and battlecruisers, is no small force at all. It is also a very sufficient supplement to the combat power of the half-alliance fleet that Gu Hang personally led into the Princess Star Region.
At this time, a message came out that the situation was beginning to change:
The combined forces of the Western Front Legion and the Alliance, led by Salilius and Martins, defeated most of the Zerg swarms pouring westward and successfully entered the Princess Star Region.
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This chapter is 4k!
Still owe 98k
(End of this chapter)
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