Start with Planetary Governor

Chapter 507: Watching and helping each other?
When Gu Hang heard that Humphrey Paul, who had finally assembled the troops in the Spider Web Realm, went to the meeting alone and persuaded the entire fleet, together with the Astra Militarum on board, to surrender, He couldn't help but be stunned.

Especially when some rumors and details came through, it made Gu Hang feel even more incredible.

The admiral who surrendered was named Bowen Melandelli.

During the subsequent review of General Melandelli, the judge detained and interrogated his family, relatives and friends, and searched his residence and office, and obtained some confidential and undisclosed information.

It was mentioned in it that Melandelli and Paul were old acquaintances and they had fought side by side. According to his relatives, Melandelli had a very good impression of Paul and considered him a 'persistent, infectious and trustworthy leader'.

Because of this, Melandelli was shocked when Paul and his Iron Armored Legion were declared traitors by the empire. In his opinion, Paul is simply a model of a space warrior. He has kept peace and fought against the Void Zerg for hundreds of years. It is because of him that the Queen's Star Territory and even the entire Spider Web Star Territory are at peace and free from the void. Insect invasion.

"How could such a person betray the empire?"

This is what Melandelli once said in front of his family.

He has said such things, how could he allow such an obvious sympathizer of traitors to the empire to hold such an important position?
——They obviously ignored that after that sentence, Melandelli also said: "I will personally capture Paul to Holy Terra and let him repent in front of the Golden Throne of the God Emperor!"

Although his attitude seems a bit problematic, it actually doesn't seem completely unacceptable overall. What Gu Hang was even more curious about was what exactly did Captain Paul say when he came to persuade Melandelli? How could he lead his team to surrender on the spot?

These seven battle groups were not transferred from outside, but were widely distributed throughout the spider web domain. After all, this is a vast area with eight thousand worlds. It is reasonable to have seven war groups. In fact, on average, not one planet is worthy of one Space Marine.

In that case, the situation on the empire's side will be much better. As long as the Iron Fury Stone is delayed in the Spider Web Universe for a few years, even if the final price is to destroy the Spider Web Universe into a mess, it will buy the empire more time to gather strength.

It seems that there are still some main forces, but in fact, they are already quite weak.

Among the fourteen star regions in the Spider Web Universe, the three in the southeast have already fallen into the hands of Iron Fury Stone; among the remaining eleven, the remaining defense strength is quite empty.

Judging from the information collected from various aspects, Humphrey Paul seems to be a very charismatic leader with full charisma attributes.

If this force can all be gathered together, united as one, and act under a unified command system, then they will not say that they can completely stop the invasion of the Iron Fury Stone, but at least they can turn the entire spider web domain into a quagmire of war, and turn the entire spider web into a quagmire of war. The entire Iron Fury Stone was dragged inside.

What's more, these seven battle groups may not all be fully staffed.

Why do those planets want to beat themselves to pieces?
Surrender becomes a very rational choice.

……

If you resist, and you can eventually resist until the empire comes to save you, then you have the value of resisting.

The situation that was already very bad suddenly turned into corruption.

The surrender of a high-ranking general like Melandelli was a huge crime, and someone had to be held accountable.

But in the spider web domain, there is still a quite powerful force: seven Space Marine Chapters.

The follow-up defense may mainly rely on the Planetary Defense Forces urgently mobilized from various planets as the main force, and then coupled with the Skitarii supported by the two Mechanicum forge worlds, as well as the [Blood Rose] sent by the Inquisition. A large force of the Sisters. In this universe, there are many battle sisters working for the Inquisition, perhaps even more than those who directly take orders from the empire.

That should be called a 'defection'.

Although there are still some navy and Astra Militarum troops left, their numbers are not even as large as those who have defected.

Even the term surrender is very inaccurate.

However, this situation that the empire expected did not happen.

Not to mention the political turmoil, but the most important thing is that after Melandelli defected, the defense force of the Spider Web Domain was almost empty!

His family and many relatives and friends who had been close to him in the past were executed; several high-ranking officials in the Spider Web Domain who recommended him to lead the fleet were also implicated.

From this look, in fact, the forces affiliated with the empire within the Spider Web Domain still have a certain degree of strength. Seven chapters, plus the Sisters and part of the Skitarii, plus a large number of Planetary Defense Force clusters... are not weak anymore.

This is also the biggest reason why most planets face interstellar wars: when fighting foreign enemies, it goes without saying that they will be destroyed if they don't fight; when the empire clearly has hope of coming to rescue, it can still resist and wait for someone to save it.

But in this war, there is nothing. They are not foreign enemies, and they will be given preferential treatment if they surrender; don't expect to be rescued if they fight to the end. It is obvious that the empire uses these planets as a 'line of resistance', hoping to trade space for time and let them delay as much as possible. Don't expect to be rescued.

Then who will blame you?

You can't even say that people are disloyal.

Some people were more loyal to the empire than their hometown, so they led the planet to resist, and were then personally led and eliminated by the Iron Armored Space Marines who had no idea how many people were hiding underwater; and some The people may be quite loyal to the empire, but considering the preservation of their hometown, they painfully chose to surrender.

The other seven trustworthy battle groups, the battle sisters of the Blood Rose, and the Skitarii of the Mechanicus should have been regarded as the backbone.

However, their situations are different.

There was a war group that broke out on the home planet where they were stationed and rebelled against the Iron Armor. The battle group went down to quell the rebellion, but they were defeated by an unknown coalition of iron-armored and angry flames who had escaped from the battle group's intelligence network and ambush three times the number at some point on the ground. Only a few of them escaped.

Two battle groups, combined with the Blood Roses, formed a combat force to rescue a world called Tianyuan VI, which was struggling to support itself under the attack of the Iron Armor Chapter.

As a result, it was only after arriving that I realized that this was a trap that was clearly set up to encircle the area for reinforcements. During this critical war, one of their war groups defected on the spot and broke out internally. Together with an extremely large number of iron-armored space warriors, this elite force was destroyed on Tianyuan VI.

Blood Rose suffered heavy losses in this battle.

Among the other four battle groups, two still stood on their side under the persuasion of the 'Succubus' Humphrey Paul.

The last force that may cause great trouble to the Iron Fury Stone are the two forging worlds of the Mechanicum, which both belong to a system called the 'Alfonzo Sect'.

Of course, they also received orders from the empire to provide people, effort, and resources to resist the Iron Fury Stone.

However, their performance is somewhat ambiguous.

The order was obeyed. The Skitarii also came out, as did their equipment and munitions.

However, there are not enough Skitarii, and they are independent and do not listen to other people's orders. During the war, we paddled throughout the whole process, not fighting any key battles, but just playing on the sidelines.

The strange thing is that Iron Fury Stone didn't mess with them. When attacking, it basically avoided the place where the Skitarii were stationed. There seems to be some kind of tacit understanding between the two sides.

The Alfonzo Sect has said that this is my sphere of influence. The two forging worlds, plus some core mineral worlds in the universe provide me with resources. If you don't mess with me, I won't bother to care about you. Although I sent troops, I was protecting my territory; although I also sent equipment to the empire, please understand that this was only a last resort.

The Iron Armor Chapter also said, I respect your sphere of influence, you guard yours, but don't mess with my plan; you can openly provide equipment and arms to the empire, but not too much; if I If you want to buy something if you need it, you have to sell it to me.

Of course, these words have no evidence, they are just some so-called 'suspicions' made by the Heretic Tribunal when they accused the Alfonzo sect.

However, there is no evidence without evidence. Anyway, as a bystander and a third party, Gu Hang stood next to the star map. When he looked at the map and talked, he seemed to hear the two sides talking like this.

Gu Hang couldn't help but sigh, this Humphrey Paul is really awesome.

'Succubus', this was Gu Hang's joking evaluation of Paul in private.

But in fact, it contained Gu Hang's considerable fear.

This person's charm attributes are truly amazing. The most important thing is that the Iron Armor Chapter has been very powerful in the past hundreds of years and has established influence everywhere. Although there are people like the Redbud Rebellion who have a grudge against the Iron Wrath Stone, most of them are people who have been helped by them and are on their side.

Of course, just having a relationship and past friendship may not be enough. In addition, it still depends on Paul's diplomatic skills and exchange of interests.

Friendship is the foundation; diplomatic ability and charisma are the means and methods; exchange of interests is the essence.

What benefits can those who surrender, those who defect, the people and forces who stand on the side of Iron Fury Stone get?

Simple benefits are definitely not enough. No matter how much Humphrey Paul talks about lotus, it can't change the fact that Iron Fury Stone is engaged in rebellion. It can't change the fact that Holy Terra's letters become more and more worded. A stern warning.

No matter how many benefits there are in front of you, if the final result is defeat, it will all be in vain.

Clearly, Paul convinced a lot of people that he could eventually succeed.

This success may not overthrow the empire.

That's too dreamy.

But if it can at least resist the empire's interference within the region, then Iron Armor will be considered a 'win'.

The Purple Flower Rebellion more than 120 years ago is a good example.

Although the scale of what they are doing now is much larger than that at that time, and the empire is not so easy to compromise; but it is also because of the large scale and the more terrifying situation, the "united front value" of the fight may become very high.

As long as there are a series of military victories and a growing momentum, more and more people will believe that the Iron Armor Chapter can win in the end.

What's more, sometimes when the iron armor hits the face, the choice faced by many forces is to die, or to believe that the iron armor can win.

So what to choose?

Of course it's easily the latter.

Once again, I must emphasize that this is a 'human civil war' after all. If you lose, the Greenskins will not be completely slaughtered; if you lose, the Abyss Demons will all be corrupted into lunatics, and in the end they will all be sacrificed; if you lose, the Void Zerg will not be defeated. , the entire planet will become food...

Of course we have to fight a foreign war to the end. Anyway, if you resist or not, you will die in the end, and I will definitely bite you before you die.

When fighting a civil war and surrendering, the powerful will still be powerful, or maybe even more powerful; the civilians will be able to survive, and their will to resist will be greatly reduced.

……

The situation in the Spider Web Universe is already in ruins.

Gu Hang saw this and was shocked in his heart.

Sometimes he couldn't help but compare. If it were him or the alliance, and there was such a wave in the Eastern Space Territory, would he be able to achieve the momentum of the 'Iron Fury Stone'?

I'm afraid it won't work.

First of all, there is still a gap in terms of hard power. It would take four years for the alliance to build up the navy's wealth. Iron Fury Stone has it now, and it is even much stronger. After getting the defected fleet led by Melandelli, it became even stronger, and the two sides were almost incomparable.

As for the ground troops, the two sides may be able to compare notes. Although Iron Armor may have over 10,000 Space Marines, Raging Flame and Rock Shield must also be superhuman. The total number may exceed two or three thousand each, which adds up to more than 15,000 Space Marines.

This is still a conservative estimate.

The phoenixes that the alliance could produce strictly abided by the regulations of the Space Marine Codex, and their number honestly did not exceed a thousand.

However, in terms of quality, I'm afraid no one would dare to underestimate it after that bloody fight with the Fury Corps.

Moreover, Gu Hang was confident that the quality of the alliance's army would definitely surpass Tiejai's famous auxiliary army.

However, there is only one thing that Gu Hang and his alliance cannot compare to Tie Kai: hundreds of years of accumulated reputation.

This was something that Gu Hang couldn't make up for even if he was a diplomatic master with full charm attributes.

Without prestige, it would be difficult for Gu Hang to convince many people to side with him and believe that he could win the final victory and not resist to the end for the empire.

In fact, his alliance, like Iron Fury Stone, cannot be dragged into the quagmire of war in its core area if it rebels.

From this perspective, it is indeed unlikely that the Alliance will be able to produce the effect of Iron Fury Stone after choosing to rebel.

The reason Gu Hang began to think about this issue was because he recently received a handwritten letter from Humphrey Paul.

Above, Paul invited the alliance to the south and took advantage of the situation.

Paul promised that he would never go south, and the two sides could carry out trade and even help each other!

(End of this chapter)