Starting from the Planetary Governor - Chapter 346

346. Chapter 345, Scar of Plague

Standing in the bridge, Gu Hang stared at Koroga 3 outside the window, speechless for a long time.

This is a withered and yellow planet.

The water body on the surface of the planet accounts for less than one-tenth of the planet. From the orbit, it looks yellow-green and does not look like a good thing – in fact, this is exactly the case. The water body of Koroga 3 cannot be used. It is full of industrial wastewater and toxic substances that emerge from the earth’s crust after over-exploitation.

Even after multiple filtrations and purifications, it is not recommended for use and does not meet safety standards.

What’s more, in this broken land of Koroga, the purification process may not be fully guaranteed.

But no one cares, and almost all Koroga people use this water.

What else can they use if they don’t use this water? Can the water resources needed by 40 billion people be imported through interstellar trade?

In addition to the small part of the water body, the rest of the planet is withered and yellow.

There is no vegetation, and all you can see is desert. The earth is yellow, the atmospheric clouds are yellow, and even the air is yellow in some places.

Among this large expanse of yellow, there are dozens of large, gray-black “spots”. The combined area is also very large when looking at the planet from orbit.

These spots are the hive areas.

Each hive on Koroja has a population of at least hundreds of millions and at most billions.

And now, there is one of the most conspicuous of these hives.

It is not particularly large, just average, but behind it, there is a long tail, which is already thousands of kilometers away.

Gu Hang knows that it is moving, although it cannot be seen for a while. Its forward speed of about two kilometers per hour is not obvious in orbit, and Gu Hang cannot stay here and stare at it for a long time.

But he knows that this thing is moving.

This is the city of Fino. In the past month of crawling, it has created a deep rift of hundreds of meters deep and tens of kilometers wide, which is called the “Plague Scar”.

The Star Army has no way to deal with it, and the Pegasus Fleet, whose main force is not there, can’t do anything about it either.

This creeping hive city, with a seemingly slow but actually resolute attitude, is moving towards its goal.

A week ago, it reached its goal: another hive city.

This hive city is relatively small, but it also has a population of more than 300 million.

After realizing that the target of ‘Fino City’ is this hive city, people on the planet have tried their best to find a solution.

On the one hand, the hive city is frantically evacuating people, but this matter is not going very smoothly. Unrest broke out in the base area of this hive city, and the plague cult has infiltrated this place to a certain extent. The cult believers who were bewitched shouted the slogan of “becoming one with the loving father” and tried their best to destroy and obstruct the evacuation operation.

In addition to the obstruction of the cult believers, evacuating 300 million people is itself a huge and unfinished project. The transportation within the hive city is relatively developed, but the ‘intercity transportation’ was originally designed only for the exchange of materials, trade, and a small number of high-level personnel, and it did not consider the problem of assuming the mobility of hundreds of millions of people at once.

Traffic jams in the Hive City are almost inevitable.

On the other hand, in addition to the efforts of the Hive City itself, the Astra Militarum and the Planetary Defense Forces finally gathered together and launched an army-level operation against the City of Fino.

A million troops bravely stood in front of the City of Fino. Heavy artillery bombarded every activated building. Armored vehicles, tanks and brave soldiers stepped into the carpet of flesh and blood, using flamethrowers and bombs to destroy the city as much as possible.

But their actions ultimately failed.

The number of plague monsters in the City of Fino was far greater than that of the brave human warriors. They were fiercely counterattacked by plague monsters and cult believers with deformed bodies. Their steps could not enter the core of the city at all, and they were stopped at the outer edge.

What’s more, this is no longer the home ground of humans, and the malice of the flesh and blood environment to humans is infinite. The bunkers that were built might be activated, and in turn open their mouths to devour the soldiers hiding behind them; after clearing the meat blankets in an area, the trenches and foxholes that were dug out were still being fought by the soldiers, but after a while, pus began to seep out from the soles of their feet and the walls of the trenches, corroding the soldiers’ uniforms, armor, and then their skin; after entering a building to fight, that building might collapse in the next moment…

On the contrary, their enemies could use the entire activated city to appear quickly and covertly at any place…

For humans, ‘Fino City’ has become a bloody hell. And in the main arena of hell, it is simply impossible to fight against those plague demons.

The million-strong army collapsed after more than 200,000 casualties.

Even if it didn’t collapse, it really had no combat effectiveness.

There were still a lot of losses during the withdrawal process.

And at such a high price, it only delayed the pace of ‘Fino City’ for about five days, and it set out again.

When ‘Fino City’ touched the other hive city, there were at least 100 million people inside who had not yet evacuated.

Then, the people outside witnessed a ‘fusion of cities’.

Fusion in the physical sense.

Fino City was like a flesh-and-blood monster, moving step by step, wrapping its tentacles and every part of it around every building and structure of the hive city.

The places that were entangled simultaneously began to become alive.

Three days, just three days later, Fino City ‘swallowed’ the hive city, along with the 100 million people inside who had no time to escape.

Then, it paused like this, for about a week.

It was ‘digesting’.

And today, according to the information transmitted from the surface, Gu Hang learned that ‘Fino City’ should have completed the digestion work and officially started moving again today.

And its next target is Mingyan City, the largest hive city on Korojia and also the capital city, with a population of 3 billion.

The two places are 2,700 kilometers apart. At the speed of Fino City, it will reach its target in three months.

Even more terrifyingly, it might be planning to visit all the dozens of nests on Koroja one by one at a speed of two kilometers per hour, or about thirty kilometers per day.

It will eat up the entire planet.

Gu Hang looked at all this and felt a deep sense of powerlessness.

He arrived in the orbit of Koroja today, invited by Neil Laois.

The star field’s chief tax officer now has the authority of an envoy urgently granted by the star field government to solve the problem of Koroja 3.

Gu Hang had learned about Koroja’s intelligence through star communication before.

But seeing the report is completely different from standing on the bridge of a starship in the planetary orbit and witnessing the huge ulcer on this huge planet with his own eyes.

“What is the solution?”

Gu Hang muttered to himself.

Even he was at a loss.

The alliance has developed rapidly in the past four years.

The three major industrial centers of Black Arrow Star have absorbed a large number of people, and the industrialization process is very rapid; agricultural production has basically completed mechanization, and while ensuring that the output has been further increased, it has also greatly reduced the consumption of population by agriculture.

The population of Angry Owl Star has grown to 110 million through immigration and encouraging childbirth, and productivity has always maintained a high growth rate along with the increase in population.

The combined annual output value of the two planets has exceeded 600 million; with the continuous improvement of the quality of life of the people, the fiscal surplus can reach nearly 150 million per year, and the annual tax is only 45 million.

Everything is on the right track. The alliance no longer needs to pay taxes, and even a large amount of output can be put into production. The future looks so bright. Give Gu Hang another four years, or even longer, he can build two rich and powerful planets with powerful technology.

But the neighbor next door, before that, gave him a huge mess.

Gu Hang had thought before that the situation in Korojia continued to deteriorate and would eventually get out of control.

But this situation came too fast.

No matter how fast and better the alliance develops, it is still too small after all, and Korojia’s huge pit can’t really be filled.

Of course, this is not his responsibility.

This is the responsibility of the empire.

In fact, it doesn’t mean that the empire really has no way to deal with this kind of thing.

The “General Cannon” equipped by some armies is a weapon that is powerful enough to pose a terrible threat to the void shield. Even a city-level void shield can be overloaded after a few shots, and another shot can almost destroy a city; there are also some powerful bombs that can be brought in to blow up the city.

Not to mention, there are terrible weapons at hand: starships.

If the empire wants to launch an extinction order against a planet, there are actually many ways. The dumbest one is the starship cannon, which carries out a detailed, comprehensive, and devastating attack on the surface, and thoroughly bombs every inch of the planet’s surface, commonly known as burning glass.

Of course, there are other ways to issue an extinction order. Using a cannon to “burn glass” is actually quite costly, and it will use a lot of shells. It is expensive and takes a long time, so it is not common. But in some cases where an extinction order is needed and no other extinction order weapons can be obtained at the moment, then you can only make do with it.

However, when the fleet is sent to carry out the bombing, it is necessary to ensure that the surface of the earth poses no threat to the orbit, otherwise the execution of the extermination order will turn into a confrontation with the anti-orbital firepower of the planet.

Even if there are some other extermination order weapons, such as neutron annihilation, sky-burning torpedoes, and earth-blasting planet destroyers… these extermination order weapons do not have such high requirements for orbital safety, but it is best to ensure a certain degree of safety before launching them.

Neutron annihilation is used to destroy all organic life on the surface of the planet. The advantage is that after the annihilation, the planet can be recolonized and used after the neutron storm subsides, but the disadvantage is that it is expensive and it is easy for some fish that hide deep to slip through the net.

The earth-blasting planet destroyer can directly penetrate the crust, detonate the core, and shatter the planet. Of course, this does not mean that the planet will be blown to pieces. The matter itself will still exist because gravity will maintain the state of a planet, but this is only maintained at the astronomical level. In fact, after the entire planet is shattered and reorganized by gravity, the entire planet is in a state of large molten lava, and it is impossible for anything to survive. This weapon has the best extermination effect, but it is also the most expensive and rarest.

Compared with the first two, the Burning Sky Torpedo mainly ignites the atmosphere, burns all the gases, and burns the surface of the planet. From the perspective of the universe, the entire planet will be like a burning amber in a few days. But the disadvantage is that there may be fish that escape deep into the net, and the planet will be useless after burning. The advantage is that

it is much cheaper. But even the cheapest Burning Sky Torpedo costs almost as much as a cruiser. The price of the extinction order weapon itself is so high, and the penetration effect is not very good. If someone has a stronger anti-orbital firepower, it is easy to be intercepted.

If it is intercepted once, one extinction weapon will be written off, which is unbearable.

In short, at the level of the entire empire, even the extinction order can be executed, let alone destroying a city – even if this nest is moving.

However, when it comes to the Pegasus star region, especially to Koroga 3, there is no way.

It is nonsense to execute the extinction order on Koroga. This planet has such a large population, plus other industries, worth hundreds of billions or even trillions of tax coins. Unless it is completely beyond saving, they will not make such a decision.

And to destroy the city of Fino, the macro cannons, light spear arrays and other weapons on the starship are enough.

But the problem is that it cannot solve the void shield and anti-orbital force on the ground.

It is stupid to use starships to bombard the surface. No matter how powerful your fleet is, it is really a planet. The firepower that a starship can be equipped with is limited, the armor is limited, and the energy shield it can support is also limited. If you want stronger firepower, thicker armor, and more sufficient energy, the starship must be larger, but the larger it is, the cost will increase exponentially.

But on the surface of the planet, there are no such problems. Firepower? Get as many guns as you can, and there will be no worries about having no place to put them; don’t consider the armor problem, no starship’s armor can be thicker than the earth; don’t consider the size of the generator of energy shield or void shield, there is enough space on the ground and underground to put it in…

This is a starship that does not move but does not fall!

If the army cannot deal with the anti-orbital firepower, the Pegasus fleet cannot deal with the city of Fino.

But obviously, the army on Korojia can’t do it at present.

Unless the main force of the Pegasus fleet urgently withdraws from the battlefield with the green-skinned orcs.

Even if they don’t care now and withdraw from the battlefield immediately, but… will it be in time? It may take three or four months to cross multiple star zones to return to Korojia.

By that time, Mingyan City will be gone.

The Creeping Hive, which has been greatly strengthened again, is afraid that the strength of the void shield and anti-orbital evil energy cannon will be further improved. By then, even if the main force of the Pegasus fleet is there, it may not be able to solve the problem.

If it really comes to that step, it may be a bit too late to consider the extermination order.

(End of this chapter)