Chapter 683, ‘Tentacles’
The future development of the war situation was quite different from what the Insect Queen had expected.
Gu Hang, who led the alliance's main fleet, eventually completely wiped out the Zerg reinforcement fleets that were heading south from the Lofo and Jianmen star regions.
In the end, only two biological battleships escaped with a small number of fast warships, and the rest all died in the starry sky.
After the victory, in order to avoid those bugs, they can come back and use the wreckage of these ships to convert biomass. The Alliance even does not hesitate to spend more time here to clean up the battlefield.
Those small ship fragments were burned; the larger biological ship corpses, especially those transport ship corpses filled with biomass, were directly given power and launched into the stars of this galaxy to ensure that they would Completely and irretrievably destroyed.
At the same time, Gu Hang also led the detached main fleet to intercept the insect fleet that was transferred from the Dantao Battle.
They had been ordered to escape, but they were still intercepted and eliminated.
In Shan Taoxing's place, Marshal Xi Rui also received good news.
After the swarm fleet withdrew, he ended the offensive.
Now that the mission has been completed, there is no need to waste any more lives.
After Gu Hang received the report of the battle victory, he became more decisive and gradually withdrew his troops from Shan Tao.
The withdrawal process was also considered smooth. Although the enemy's troops on the ground are still very large, without space support, as long as there is a stable base to ensure that the orbit in this direction will not be hit by anti-orbital biological cannons on the ground, the problem will not be big. .
While continuously evacuating the troops, he also transported a precious 'Sky Burning Torpedo' on hand to the ground.
This sky-burning torpedo exploded when there were not many people left on the planet.
In the end, nearly ten thousand people died on the planet. After all, it is unrealistic to remove all the light and then detonate the sky-burning torpedo, otherwise it would be a real surprise if something unexpected happened.
It sounds disgraceful to blow up one's own people, but compared to destroying a planet that once had a population of 90 billion and is now being digested into a huge amount of biomass, the blow to the Zerg is extremely heavy. Exchange It's quite cost-effective.
As for why not evacuate all the people and then carry out bombing... the core reason is to worry that after the people are evacuated, there will be no ground response. When the insect swarm on the surface is still very powerful, if the sky-burning torpedo is dropped and destroyed by biological creatures, If the cannon or the flying insect demon intercepts it, it will be a huge loss.
The lives of ten thousand soldiers are worth more than the Burning Sky Torpedo... well, there is no doubt that the value of the Burning Sky Torpedo is much higher.
Cold calculation is like this.
But no matter what, Shan Tao was destroyed. There are 90 billion people. To be honest, if all this biomass is taken away by the insect queen, it will probably be equivalent to half of the biomass brought by the fleet going south.
Another wave of heavy losses.
Gu Hang and Xi Rui reunited.
They rested for about a week before setting off again.
The original plan was to go west and open up the connection with Salilius and Martins.
But soon they discovered that they didn't need to do that.
The swarm retreated on its own.
The Queen of Insects has taken back almost all the power she can now control and gather. Those that can hatch transport ships will be hatched, filled with biomass, soldier bugs, and worker bugs, and run back; those that are too late to take away will be left where they are, fully hatched into soldier bugs, and try to be prepared to cause some trouble for humans.
She shrunk her troops to the extreme, almost all of them to the Rheadoches system.
It was clear that they were going to start a protracted war with humanity on Leyaduches, the former iron-armored home planet.
Play the long game.
But what is the reason for her to drag on?
At the beginning, Gu Hang just had a guess without any clear evidence. When he came to the star system of Rayaduches in person, he quickly realized what it was.
Looking through the shadows of the subspace to the farthest reaches of the physical universe, he saw a huge Hive Fleet approaching.
Either through subspace, or through the astral tunnel, or at normal sub-light speed, 'slowly' sailing towards Leyaduches from a very far away place.
The insect hive fleet was quite large, even larger than the insect swarm controlled by the insect queen.
Is that the so-called ‘Tentacle of Duches’?
Humans call the structure on the upper level of the Hive Fleet 'tentacles'. This is an extremely large level, and it is also the largest Zerg structure that the human empire has encountered so far. When the main force of a "Zerg Tentacle" comes to the empire, it will often cause large-scale disasters across multiple universes. The empire needs to gather a very large force to end it.
In the entire history of the empire, there were only two times when ‘tentacles’ appeared and were successfully resisted. Each time, it left a very deep and painful memory for the entire empire.
One ‘tentacle’ may contain many queens. They are generally equal to each other and at the same level, but in fact they will have higher and lower status according to the size of the insect swarm controlled by each queen. The most powerful one, and probably the oldest one, will be called the 'mother' - in fact, it is very likely that the insect queens are related by blood, although the insects don't care about this.
In the past few hundred years, there was a 'Void Wormhole' in Leyaduches, and when Hive Fleets kept emerging, the Zerg scholars of the Empire thought that there might be a 'tentacle' there. In this direction, sailing from the physical universe level, gradually approaching the territory of the empire. What always pops up is just the vanguard fleet.
This possible ‘tentacle’ was named ‘Duches Tentacle’ after the place name.
However, after observation, Gu Hang believed that it was probably not the main force of the tentacles.
There's a bit of a discrepancy in quantity.
That should just be another vanguard force setting off from the tentacles. The main force of the ‘tentacles’ is still unobservable and very far behind.
But even so, the arrival of this Zerg fleet will bring great changes to the battle situation.
Gu Hang continued to observe the Hive Fleet for two days and basically confirmed that his idea was right.
Moreover, he also analyzed a piece of news: at the current speed, it would take roughly thirteen standard Terra months for this Hive Fleet to reach the Rhea Druches system.
This also means that the human side had better solve the problem of Rheadoches in a little more than a year in order to avoid the two sides from converging.
It's not considered sufficient. After all, the insect queen has shrunk so many troops, and it may take a long time to defeat it.
But after all, I was given a certain amount of time to fight for it.
An idea gradually formed in Gu Hang's mind.
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The previous chapter made up for yesterday, and this chapter is for today.
(End of chapter)