Chapter 667, Death of Iron Armor
"You have to be careful, he's weird."
During the battle, Salius gave a kind reminder.
But Martins has actually felt it.
And he thought it was actually normal.
Humphrey Paul must be the first among the iron-armored Space Marines to be infected, and he is probably the 'darling' of the 'Insect Queen', who has undergone a more in-depth insect transformation. Compared with ordinary space warriors, the difference between this iron armored captain and humans is even greater.
On this basis, the original vital point may no longer be the vital point; his body can make many inhuman actions...
Maybe this is normal.
It is also based on these foundations that Humphrey Paul can show such a strong fighting power that he can compete with Salisius-normally speaking, the 'alive' Humphrey Paul, perhaps He is an outstanding leader, and may indeed be the most powerful warrior in iron armor, but his strength, in the context of the entire universe, is definitely not up to the level of someone like Salius.
Logically speaking, he should have been stabbed to death by the holy spear after persisting for twenty or thirty rounds.
But there is no point in saying anything. After Martins joined the battle, no matter how exaggerated the insect transformation on Humphrey Paul was, it would not allow him to fight against the two top fighters at the same time.
In particular, there were the ‘Nirvana Guards’ brought by Martins. Dozens of them directly separated the battlefield, preventing other iron-armored warriors from supporting Paul.
In the end, when Salius was dealing with the phase sword, Humphrey Paul penetrated his body with a spear and nailed him to the ground. Seeing that his body was still squirming, trying to break free, he directly pressed on him, and the holy shield pressed him to the ground.
Martins also took this opportunity to use his quick eyes and hands to chop off his head with the phase sword.
Seeing that Humphrey Paul's body was still squirming, he struck a few more times and completely dismembered his body.
Now, it's useless even if Humphrey Paul, who has been transformed by bugs and is headless, can continue fighting.
Salius raised Humphrey Paul's head with his lance and loudly proclaimed their victory.
The enemy leader who set off a shocking rebellion, involved four cosmic domains, mobilized countless manpower and material resources for the war, and even caused an even greater disaster, was finally beheaded. His head was still weighty, worthy of Salius holding it on the tip with a holy spear and displaying it as a trophy to boast of his victory.
And it also has practical significance: show all surrounding enemies that your leader is dead!
Of course, this move will be much more effective when facing enemies such as green-skinned orcs and chaos traitors. Even if they are Chaos traitors, the elimination of a traitor leader will greatly shake the morale of the remaining people, not to mention the green-skinned orcs, who may be directly routed.
However, the symbolic meaning of "raising the head of the enemy leader" has no meaning to the infected or the insect swarm; but the destruction of the leader is of great significance.
Even bigger than the greenskins.
For the greenskins, when the boss dies, some of them will panic, lose morale, and feel that they are weak and can no longer win. For the orcs who 'think whatever they think, it will come true', this kind of loss is Belief is disastrous; not to mention, after the death of the highest leader, the next-level and even lower-level ambitions will get up and compete for the position of the highest leader, and start fighting with each other and fighting among themselves.
This is horrific, especially when a war is underway.
However, compared to the insect swarm, the impact of the death of an orc leader may even be considered small.
When the orcs die, their morale will be greatly reduced, leading to civil strife and panic... But for the insect swarm, losing their leader means losing their ability to think.
The thinking of insect swarms and infected people depends on the superior unit. They may have the 'intelligence' to handle current affairs on their own, but there is no such thing as subjective initiative. This means that for the insect swarm and the infected individual, they roughly know "how to do it", but they don't know "what to do", let alone "why to do it".
The most direct manifestation of this is that after they complete the current instructions but do not receive further instructions from the upper level, they will turn into truly primitive beasts and stay still. They will indeed be attacked when approaching this time, but that is just the instinctive action of wild beasts.
But at this stage, who would be stupid enough to kill someone in the face? Dozens of kilometers away, huge cannons were set up, and they were blasted one by one and that was it - they didn't know how to run or hide anyway.
For the infected and the Zerg, if only some squad leaders died, similar to middle and low-level officers in the human army, that would be okay. After all, the command rules of the insect swarm can be overridden downwards. At worst, senior node units or other node units of the same level can take over the individuals under the dead node unit.
Unless acting independently.
Then there is really nothing we can do.
The insect swarm must send new node creatures to connect with the out-of-control subordinate units and bring them back under control before command can be restored.
Even some scholars in the empire who specialize in studying the Void Zerg believe that the structure of the Zerg swarm is such a divergent network.
Scholars boldly hypothesize that the Zerg have a "void will" that is the source of everything.
From one point, it spreads out to the various hive will subjects, forming a cluster that scholars call ‘tentacles’. The Hive Mind has also authorized countless insect queens to form one hive fleet after another, regarded as part of the tentacles. The insect queen provided genetic factors, hatched an army of insect swarms including biological ships and advanced node creatures, and authorized units such as 'generals' and 'overlords'. As commanders, these units are authorized to the mid-level Hive Tyrants, and then there are layers of authorization...
In this way, a network is formed.
But knocking out any node means that all units below that node will be disconnected.
This principle is actually the same regardless of the size of the insect swarm and infected people, from small to large. This is also the reason why killing some mid- and low-level node creatures has almost no impact on a large-scale battlefield. After they die, there are still a large number of node creatures of the same level on the field that can take over their authority, and their original superiors can even directly control subordinate units. The extra ‘computing power’ cost has almost no impact.
However, if it is on a large battlefield and the node creature with the highest authority dies, it will be the end.
Under him, all high-level node creatures have lost their brains; if these high-level node creatures lose their brains, the intermediate node creatures will also lose their brains... The entire army of Zerg or infected people will be like dominoes. The final result of the chain reaction is that the entire insect swarm army will stagnate.
The death of Humphrey Paul had a similar effect.
Is there a 'node creature' of the same level that can take over his authority?
No.
Could a higher level node creature take over his command? Neither.
Of course there are more advanced node creatures, like the insect queen. However, the distance between him and the Insect Queen is too far. It is impossible for the Insect Queen to take over his command of an entire army across the distance of one or two star fields. She cannot even temporarily replace him with a high-level node creature to give him the authorization. .
Unless it can send a high-level node creature, obtain authorization, and come to the west side of the White Curtain Star Territory, and then authorize a top-level node unit to re-link the following node units one by one.
But that's impossible, and humans won't give her this chance.
The death of Humphrey Paul thus triggered a chain reaction among the entire Iron Armor Army.
In front of Salisius and Martins, the iron-armored warriors who had been fighting desperately against their own Space Marines just now became dull and mechanical. They will still perform fighting movements according to instinct, but they are much stiffer than at the beginning. They will only attack the enemy in front of them and will not care about the situation a little further away.
Even basic combat is like this, let alone executing any exquisite tactical coordination.
The same goes for those titans and knights with iron armor.
Martins and Salisius immediately ordered their troops to break out of the encirclement and break away from the battle.
The order was executed quite smoothly.
After the troops separated, long-range firepower arrived.
This group of enemies was stunned and bombed.
In fact, simply blowing it up like this is not fast enough.
The Mechanicus masters accompanying the army determined several explosion points after rigorous calculations. The troops retreated, and the land-based version of the Dongfengfen missile took off and exploded accurately at the calculated explosion point.
At this time, it is not appropriate to calculate issues such as exposure damage, cover damage, and damage within fortifications. Even if you can't hide, that Dongfeng Burn will sweep across an area equivalent to an ordinary city. It won't be a problem. Hundreds of thousands of enemies will be wiped out under this missile.
It can be said that the Battle of Wanzhouxing was considered a victory at the moment Humphrey Paul was killed by the combined forces of Salius and Martins.
Of course, overall victory does not mean the end of the war. After all, there are countless enemies on Wanzhou Planet that need to be eliminated, and there is no way to use Dongfeng Fen missiles to blow up every inch of land. That would be too expensive, and ground troops still have to deal with it.
The general process is to divide the ground personnel into small teams, search around, and encounter enemies. If the number is relatively small, there will be sharpshooters in the team who will use super-long-range sniper rifles to clean them up one by one. If they encounter enemies, they will be cleared. For powerful individuals, use heavy anti-armor firepower and kill them remotely before calling them. If you encounter a large group, call for long-range artillery to clean them up.
There are still dangers. For example, if the team is walking and walks into the face of undiscovered infected people or insect swarms, leading to being chased; or there are some things that exist in buildings, wreckage, or tunnels that are difficult to attack directly with artillery, then You have to find out for yourself. If the number is large, the buildings and tunnels will be blown down, and the enemies will be buried. If the number is small... then there is nothing you can do. Master, just clear them out one by one.
These can cause casualties.
In fact, these casualties can be avoided in theory. However, one missile of "Dongfeng Fen" costs 800,000 tax coins, and the life of an Astra Militarum is only worth 5 yuan. The commander above will settle the score.
Unless it is assessed to be necessary for ground-penetrating bombs or powerful weapon attacks, the Army Department should take the responsibility to fill them in. It would be much cheaper to kill dozens or hundreds of people.
Not only Wanzhou Star is like this, but many galaxies and worlds where iron armor is raging may become like this.
At present, it seems that Humphrey Paul himself is the largest node creature in the Iron Armor Legion. Other armored units fighting in distant worlds all acted under his authorization. When he died, the authorization chain was suddenly broken, and he could no longer be connected to the Insect Queen. All the 'authorizations' had expired, and everyone was disconnected from the Internet.
They cannot move until a new line connecting to the highest 'void will' is reconstructed.
Their destruction was terminated.
Even if humans will need to spend many years in the future to fight against these 'disconnected', non-offensive insect swarms and infected groups, to put it bluntly, these are some aftermath actions, and the cost will be Very low.
In the sky, the starships controlled by the iron-armored infected also stopped. The combined fleets of the Alliance and the Western Front Army caught up and destroyed them one by one.
These ships have no capture value. The internal structure has been modified too much, and it can't be opened unless it's bugs or infected. It's not impossible to drag it back to repair and re-modify, but the time and cost spent are not as good as building a new one.
Mars wanted to take away several "infected battleships" and forced people to go up and clean up the infected inside. After the cleanup is completed, they will arrange tugboats to take away the loot.
Their decision caused a lot of complaints. There will be many sacrifices if you board the ship to clear out the infected.
But obviously, those oil guys don't care. They only care about these precious research samples and how many new things they can come up with in the future.
Salius was unable to stop this and could only turn a blind eye.
In fact, he assigned all the "aftercare work" to his staff and subordinates.
He and Martins jointly wrote a battle report.
After polishing, a copy will be sent to Holy Terra as a reward for calming down the mood of Terra's masters, and to express their contribution.
The other copy will be sent to Gu Hang.
If nothing else goes wrong, they will leave a part of the troops responsible for the aftermath to deal with the remaining troubles in the White Curtain Star Territory and even to the west of the White Curtain, the many worlds that have been damaged by the iron armor.
Their core main force will launch a counterattack on the east side of the White Curtain Star Territory, defeat the swarm of insects emerging from the Queen's Star Territory, and try to enter the Queen's Star Territory to join forces with Gu Hang.
(End of chapter)