Chapter 345, Traces of Plague
Standing in the bridge, Gu Hang stared at the Koroga 3 outside the window, speechless for a long time.
This is a withered and yellow planet.
The water body on the planet's surface only accounts for less than one-tenth. From orbit, it looks yellow-green, which doesn't look like a good thing. In fact, this is exactly the case. The water body on Koruga 3 is The unusable ones are filled with industrial wastewater and toxic substances that bubble up from the earth's crust after over-exploitation.
Even after multiple filtration and purification, it is not recommended and does not meet safety standards.
What's more, in a broken land like Koroja, the purification process may not be completely guaranteed.
But no one cares about it. Almost all the people in Koroga use this water.
What can we use instead of this water? Is it possible that the water resources needed by 400 billion people can still be imported through interstellar trade?
Except for the small part of the water body, the rest of the planet is dry and yellow.
There is no vegetation, all you can see is desert. The earth is yellow, the clouds in the atmosphere are yellow, and even the air is yellow in some places.
And among this large expanse of withered yellow, there are dozens of large, gray-black 'spots' distributed, and the combined area is very large when you look at the planet from orbit.
These spots are the hive area.
Every hive city on Koroga has a population ranging from hundreds of millions to billions of people living in it.
And now, one of these hives stands out the most.
It wasn't particularly big, just average, but there was a long tail trailing behind it, which was already thousands of kilometers away.
Gu Hang knew that it was moving, although he couldn't see it for a moment. Its forward speed of about two kilometers an hour was not obvious from the orbit, and Gu Hang couldn't stare at it for a long time without moving. .
But he knew that this thing was moving.
This is the city of Fino. The deep ravine hundreds of meters deep and dozens of kilometers wide that it has created in the past month is called the 'Scar of the Plague'.
The Astra Militarum can't do anything about it, and the Pegasus fleet, whose main force is not here, can't do anything about it either.
And this creeping hive city is moving towards its goal with a seemingly slow but in fact determined attitude.
A week ago, it arrived at its goal: another hive.
This hive city is relatively small, but there are more than 3 million people living in it.
After realizing that the target of 'Fino City' was this hive, the people on the planet have tried their best to find a solution.
On the one hand, the hive city is frantically evacuating people, but things are not going well. Unrest broke out in the Diji district of this hive city, and the plague cult had some penetration into the area. The cult believers who were bewitched chanted the slogan "Become one with the loving father" and tried their best to sabotage and obstruct the evacuation.
In addition to the obstruction of cult believers, the evacuation of [-] million people is itself a huge and unfinishable project. The transportation within the hive city is relatively developed, but the "intercity transportation" was only designed for material exchange, business exchange, and a small number of high-level personnel exchanges at the beginning. It was not considered that it would have to bear the movement of hundreds of millions of people at once. question.
There is a huge traffic jam in the hive city, which is almost an unavoidable situation.
On the other hand, in addition to the efforts of the hive itself, the Astra Militarum and the Planetary Defense Force finally gathered together and launched an army-level operation against Fino City.
An army of one million bravely stood in front of Fino City. Heavy artillery bombarded every activated building, and armored vehicles, tanks, and heroic soldiers stepped into the carpet of flesh and blood, using flamethrowers and bombs to destroy the city as much as possible.
But their action ultimately failed.
The number of plague monsters in 'Fino City' was far greater than that of heroic human warriors. They were fiercely counterattacked by plague monsters and deformed cult believers. Their pace could not reach the core of the city at all, and was stopped at the outer edge.
What's more, this place is no longer the home of mankind, and the flesh-and-blood environment is extremely malicious to mankind. The built bunker may be activated, and in turn open its mouth to devour the soldiers hiding behind; the meat carpet in an area has been cleared, and the trenches and foxholes dug out, the soldiers are still fighting in them, but after a while, the soles of their feet, Puss began to seep from the trench walls, corroding the soldiers' uniforms and armor, and then corroding the skin; if you enter a certain building to fight, that building may collapse in the next moment...
On the contrary, their enemies can use the entire activated city to appear anywhere quickly and covertly...
'Fino City' has turned into a bloody hell for humans. And fighting those plague demons in the home ground of hell is simply impossible.
The million-strong army collapsed after suffering more than 20 casualties.
Even if it doesn't collapse, it really has no fighting power.
In the process of withdrawal, there were still a lot of losses.
And after paying such a high price, it only delayed the pace of 'Fino City' for about five days, and then set off again.
When 'Fino City' touched that other hive city, there were at least [-] million people inside who had not had time to evacuate.
Then, people outside witnessed an 'urban integration' with their own eyes.
Fusion in a physical sense.
Fino City was like a giant beast of flesh and blood, moving step by step, wrapping its tentacles and every part of it around every building and structure in the hive city.
The place where it was entangled was simultaneously transformed into a living body.
Three days, just three days later, Fino City swallowed up the hive city and the [-] million people inside who had no time to escape.
Then, it paused for about a week.
It is 'digesting'.
As of today, based on the intelligence coming from the surface, Gu Hang learned that Fino City should have completed its digestion work and officially started moving again today.
Its next target is the largest hive and capital city on Koroga, the famous Yancheng with a population of 30 billion.
The distance between the two places is 2700 kilometers. According to the speed of Fino City, it will reach its target in three months.
What's even scarier is that it might be planning to visit dozens of nests on Koroga one by one at a speed of two kilometers per hour and 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 orbit of Koroga today, invited by Nel Lois.
The tax chief of the Star Territory now directly has the power and responsibility of a special envoy urgently granted by the Star Territory government to solve the problem of Koroga 3.
Gu Hang had already learned about Koroga's information through astral communication before.
But seeing the report is a completely different feeling than standing on the bridge of a starship in orbit and witnessing the huge sores on this huge planet.
"What's 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 also basically completed mechanization, which has greatly reduced the consumption of agriculture on the population while ensuring a further increase in output.
The population of Nu Xiaoxing has grown to 1.1 million through immigration, encouraging childbirth, etc., and productivity has always maintained rapid growth along with the increase in population.
The combined annual output value of the two planets has exceeded 1.5 million; as the quality of people's lives continues to improve, the fiscal balance can reach nearly 4500 million per year, while the annual tax revenue is only [-] million.
Everything is on track, the alliance no longer needs to pay personnel taxes, and a large amount of output can even be put back into production. The future looks so bright. Give Gu Hang another four years, or a little longer, and he can use his powerful technology to build two rich and powerful planets.
But the neighbor next door had given him a huge mess before that happened.
Gu Hang had thought before that if Koluojia's condition continued to deteriorate, it would eventually get out of control.
But this situation happened too quickly.
No matter how fast or good the alliance develops, it is still too small after all, and it really cannot fill the huge hole in Koroga.
Of course, this itself is not his responsibility.
This is the duty of the empire.
In fact, it does not mean that the empire really has no way to deal with this kind of thing.
The 'Grand General Cannon' equipped by some armies is a weapon that can pose a terrible threat to the void shield. Even a city-level void shield can overload it after a few rounds. Another shot can nearly destroy a city; there are also some Powerful bombs can be brought in and blow up the city.
Not to mention, there is a terrifying weapon just around the corner: starships.
If the empire wants to initiate an extermination order against a planet, there are actually many methods. The most stupid of them is to use starship cannons to carry out detailed, comprehensive, and devastating strikes on the surface of the planet, completely destroying every inch of the planet's surface. The bombing was so obvious that it was commonly known as burning glass.
Of course, there are other methods of extermination orders. Using naval guns to 'burn glass' is actually quite expensive, as a lot of shells are used, the cost is high and it takes a long time, so it is not common. But when certain extermination orders are needed and no other extermination order weapons are available for a while, then we can only make do with what we have.
But for the fleet to carry out bombing, it is necessary to ensure that the surface of the earth poses no threat to the orbit, otherwise it will change from executing the extermination order to anti-orbital firepower against the planet.
Even if you have some other Extinction Order weapons, such as neutron killing, sky-burning torpedoes, earth-burst star destroyers...these Extinction Order weapons do not have such high requirements for orbital safety, but it is best to ensure a certain degree of safety. case, launch again.
Neutron killing is used to eliminate all organic life forms on the surface of the planet. The advantage is that after the destruction is completed, when the neutron storm subsides, the planet can be recolonized and can still be used. However, the disadvantage is that it is expensive and it is easy for some individuals to hide deep. A fish that slipped through the net.
The Earth Blast Destroyer can directly penetrate the earth's crust, detonate the earth's core, and shatter the planet. Of course, this does not mean that the planet will be blown to pieces. The material itself will still exist, because gravity will still maintain the state of a planet, but this is only maintained at the astronomical level. In fact, the entire planet was shattered and reorganized due to gravity. After that, the entire planet was in a state of lava, and it was impossible for anything to survive. This weapon has the best extermination effect, but it is also the most expensive and rarest.
Compared with the former two, the Sky Burning Torpedo mainly ignites the atmosphere, burns out all the gases, and burns the surface of the planet. From a cosmic perspective, the entire planet will look like burning amber in a few days. But the disadvantage is that there may also be fish that hide deeply and slip through the net, and the planet will be destroyed after burning it. The advantage is that it is much cheaper.
But even the cheapest Fentian torpedo is almost as expensive 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 relatively strong anti-orbital firepower, it can be easily intercepted.
If it is intercepted once, it will be too much for one extermination weapon to be reimbursed.
In short, at the level of the entire empire, even an extermination order can be executed, let alone destroying a city - even if the hive is moving.
However, there is still nothing that can be done about it in the Pegasus sector, especially in the Koroga 3.
Executing an extermination order against Koroga is nonsense. On this planet, with such a large population and other industries worth hundreds of billions or even trillions of tax dollars, such a decision would not be made unless it was completely irreversible.
To destroy Fino City, only weapons such as the macro cannon and light spear array 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. Starships can be equipped with limited firepower, limited armor, and limited energy shields they can support. If you want stronger firepower, thicker armor, and more energy, the starship must be bigger, but as it gets bigger, the cost will skyrocket exponentially.
But on the surface of the planet, there are no such problems. Firepower? You can build as many cannons as you can, and you don't have to worry about having no place to put them; regardless of the armor issue, no starship's armor can be thicker than the earth; there is no need to consider the size of the energy shield or void shield generator, either on the ground or underground. Plenty of space to cram in…
This is the starship that doesn't move but doesn't fall!
If the army cannot deal with the anti-orbital firepower, the Pegasus fleet cannot deal with Fino City.
But obviously, the current army on Koroja just can't do it.
Unless the main force of the Pegasus fleet urgently withdraws from the battlefield with the green-skinned orcs.
Even if they don't care about it now and withdraw from the battlefield immediately, but... is it too late? It may take three or four months to return to Koroga across multiple star sectors.
At that time, the famous Yancheng was gone.
The Creeping Hive has been greatly strengthened again. I am afraid that the strength of the void shield and anti-orbital evil energy cannon will be further improved. By then, even the main force of the Pegasus fleet may not be able to solve the problem.
If it gets to that point, it may be too late to consider an extermination order.
(End of this chapter)