Chapter 991, Landing on Terra
The coalition forces' support for the ground was far ahead of their progress in controlling the planet's orbit.
In the first week after Gallardo's death, when the progress of orbital control was still low, several landing ships set off from the coalition aircraft carrier and headed for the ground.
The coalition fleet escorted them, but at that time there were still some traitors who were ignorant of the danger or had not been found out. They were intercepted by ships, firepower of the orbital defense circle, and attacks of ground orbital guns.
About 30% of the landing ships failed to make it to the landing.
This means that more than 30,000 soldiers died during the landing process.
To be honest, the 70,000 soldiers who fell did not provide much help to the defense of the Terra Palace.
No matter how small the inner ring is, and no matter how insufficient the troops under Marshal Yan Xinzhen are, they are still in the millions.
The arrival of 70,000 people will provide a little room for rotation for the troops of the Imperial Palace Guard Corps who are fighting on the front lines.
However, although the practical significance is not great, the symbolic significance is quite significant.
It is true that the Imperial Palace Guard Corps are all elite. They are well-trained and have high morale. They can persist in fighting in desperate circumstances, especially with the Imperial Guards leading them.
But generally speaking, no human army would completely lock morale. Even if they were prepared to face death head-on, they would still be likely to waver when deep despair struck.
They had nowhere to escape and were in a desperate battle. Even if they surrendered, rationally speaking, the opponents were Nurgle zombies or Khorne berserkers, so they had nowhere to surrender.
But when people really reach the moment of despair, their rationality will collapse.
What's more, this despair is not just psychological, there are also some supernatural factors.
The core of Nurgle, the complete opposite of Tzeentch, lies in immutability, decay, and despair... and all of these, carried by the yellow-green wind, blew into the inner circle of the Terran Palace. And Khorne's mental plague, which can drive people mad and insane, is not to be underestimated.
Even though there are a lot of protective measures in the inner circle of the palace to minimize and prevent the impact, as long as there is just a little bit, coupled with the current situation on the battlefield, the cumulative effect will cause problems.
They would commit suicide, they would unconsciously collapse and lose their organization, they would surrender to Nurgle, they would launch a suicidal attack on Khorne and die easily...
Of course, it must be said that such incidents rarely occurred among the elite palace guards. Even if they did occur, they were only isolated cases.
But individual cases tend to expand under such circumstances.
In reality, the defenders could still hold out for a long time. However, these problems continued to spread amidst despair, and they were always a hidden danger, and they would obviously become a major problem in the future.
But the arrival of reinforcements has greatly helped to alleviate this problem.
To put it bluntly, it's a psychological thing.
No matter how the Imperial Guards spread the word, reinforcements would arrive in the future, and the Son of God was already on his way to support the ground. All the palace guards believed this.
However, no matter how much they believed it, it would not be as reassuring as if this thing actually happened in front of them.
The 70,000 people falling from orbit had this effect.
The reinforcements are real and are already here.
The hope brought by this reality effectively offsets the feelings of despair and greatly slows down the pervasive erosion of the spiritual corruption caused by chaos.
And the reinforcements are definitely not just a flash in the pan.
These 70,000 people are just the first batch of troops.
The next batch arrived in three days.
And, in terms of scale, it has reached 210,000 people.
The probability of a landing ship being intercepted also dropped from 30% at the beginning to 20%.
The number of the third wave of landing troops has reached 500,000.
These waves combined are enough to greatly change the situation in the inner ring.
A month after Gallardo's defeat, when the outer orbit of Holy Terra had been completely controlled, a large-scale landing began.
The enemy is not completely without anti-orbital capabilities. They control some ground-based anti-orbital artillery fortresses - the density of these on Holy Terra is quite high.
However, the Allied Navy became even stronger after absorbing a considerable portion of the Solar Fleet.
The entire coalition fleet, in outer orbit, fiercely suppressed the ground. When those orbital gun fortresses were bombarded, a considerable number of their elves had to be deployed to intercept the shells and missiles, as well as to attack the warships in outer orbit.
After all, you can't just sit back and wait. Otherwise, if the coalition warships continue bombing like this, no matter how strong the railgun fortress's defenses are, it will be blown to pieces sooner or later.
This makes them less of a threat to landing ships.
Of course, there are also some Chaos cannons that accompany the Chaos forces that besieged Terra. When they are raised, they also have anti-orbital and anti-landing ship capabilities.
But the palace played a big role in this regard.
The firepower of the inner ring palace is also very strong, and it can be divided into two parts for use.
Part of the firepower was directed towards the exposed positions of the enemy's heavy artillery. The surface-to-surface missiles and large-caliber indirect fire artillery launched from the positions posed a considerable threat to the enemy's heavy firepower.
After all, the firepower points of these Chaos Demon Army are not protected by heavy city walls.
There are also some rapid-fire interception guns that can be used to intercept enemy interception missiles.
In short, under the cover of the navy and the Terra Palace, the coalition forces' super-large-scale landing operation was successful.
More than ten million army troops arrived on the ground and assembled at the inner ring palace.
Among them, the main force was the expeditionary soldiers brought by Robert from the Infinite Star Domain. These soldiers from the Infinite Star Domain were all carefully selected veterans who had gone through a long warp expedition and experienced the bloody battle of Comoros.
Furthermore, the number of Space Marines was also high. Over 15,000 Space Marines landed in this airborne drop, almost all of them being Robert's genetic descendants.
And Robert, the father of genes, is among them!
In the inner circle of the Imperial Palace, the Son of God had an epic meeting with the Grand Marshal of the Custodes.
At just the first glance, Marshal Yan Xinzhen confirmed that this person was indeed the Son of God and could not be impersonated.
His last bit of worry faded away, and he willingly handed over the strategic command of the entire inner circle of the palace.
(End of this chapter)
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