Chapter 672, Saving the North Line

Saving the remnants of the Northern Front Corps is a very meaningful thing.

Although there are certain risks, first of all, the risks are not too great, and secondly, the benefits are not small.

Let’s not talk about the risks. Anyway, they have arrived safely, received people safely, and returned safely. The dead are also people from the Anti-foreign Inquisition, not from the Alliance. The Alliance has tried its best and can be said to have a clear conscience in this regard.

As for the benefits, there are three main aspects.

First, it is the combat effectiveness of this force itself.

Although there are only tens of thousands of people, in fact, it is not easy to hold on for several months under the siege of the insect swarm of a planet and the orbital threat of biological ships in the sky.

In fact, although there are not many people, the subordinates of the warships are the real big ones. Those marines inside are fine, in a general sense, they can be regarded as elite. But there are many sailors on the warships before, and even logistics. These personnel were just issued a gun and put on a layer of carapace armor, and they have no combat effectiveness.

But other than that, the rest are all elites.

There are only 15,000 stormtroopers left from the Inquisition assigned to Qin Zhiping. All of them are exoskeletons, and one-tenth of them are equipped with feedback power armor, so they are quite powerful. Although they are all mortals, think about it, the Honor Guards of the Alliance are also mortals. As long as the training and equipment level can keep up, even if they are mortals, their strength level will not be bad.

These stormtroopers can be regarded as "small Honor Guards".

Oh, or the Honor Guards are large loyal stormtroopers. The essence is the same, that is, the equipment and training level of the Honor Guards are better than the loyal stormtroopers, which can be regarded as the strongest among the mortal troops.

Another unit is the bounty hunters with less than a thousand people.

This is a special group. They are not the official organization personnel of the empire, but a group of people who make a living on various bounty tasks of the Imperial Ministry of Justice and hunt various bounty "criminals" in some worlds. The official government of the empire will not be responsible for them, and will not provide them with any help other than intelligence. They have to buy their own equipment, earn their own income, and have no pension if they die.

Most of them come from civilians who can no longer survive in the normal way in the nest city and are forced to sell their lives; even many gang members and criminals don't mind becoming bounty hunters themselves when they kill their opponents or rob each other, or find a familiar hunter as a white glove to send the people they kill to the Ministry of Justice for some money to spend.

Even those who are full-time bounty hunters don't mind changing their identities at certain times and doing something illegal but profitable.

You can't always expect them to be loyal and have high moral standards.

It is precisely because of these factors that the training and equipment levels of bounty hunters are uneven. Most of them are rotten, and the imperial officials don't look down on them.

However, a very small number of them survived the missions one after another and successfully completed the missions. Moreover, unlike most of their peers, they did not spend the money they earned on wine and women, but used it to improve themselves and strengthen their equipment. In this way, they grew into well-known figures and even attracted the attention of the Tribunal.

The Tribunal will generally examine whether these people are clean. If they pass the examination, the Tribunal will try to issue them some more dangerous but more profitable tasks, and will also open up higher-level knowledge, equipment, technology, and even human body modification.

Those who can become well-known hunters are already one in ten thousand, but not every well-known hunter can be favored by the Tribunal; those who are favored by the Tribunal must survive the highly dangerous tasks issued by the Tribunal again and again before they can continue to improve themselves.

Once someone really reaches this level and wins the favor of the Tribunal, various Tribunal factions will try to absorb these people into their own system and become followers of formal judges like Qin Zhiping.

Don't underestimate just "followers". It sounds like being a dog, but in fact... oh, in fact, it is indeed a dog. But even if you are a dog, you are a dog with a system. With a system, you don't have to go on missions as frequently as before, and your life safety is greatly increased. At the same time, you don't have to spend money on equipment maintenance, updating, and strengthening, and your income will not be low, so your life will be much better.

More importantly, it is easy for your offspring to join the system, and you have room for advancement. If you do well in the followers, you have the opportunity to become a torturer or an agent. And after passing the position of assistant judge, you will be a formal judge.

Even the most junior judge is a top figure in the empire, and in theory, you can issue an extermination order for a world. Although that is not very realistic, no matter which world you go to, as long as it is not a place like Holy Terra where you can hit a high-ranking official with a stone, then even the most junior judge is a big shot.

Let's not talk about things that are so far away, but even this group of followers, with nearly a thousand people here, is considered to be the top combat power level among mortals.

Not to mention, there are some who have reached the level of torturer, agent, and assistant judge.

Three or five people like this could even kill a Space Marine if they found a way.

Speaking of Space Marines, Qin Zhiping also has 100 Space Marines of the Silver Watch in his hands.

The Silver Watch is not an ordinary battle group. They are an organization established by representatives of Holy Terra and many Space Marines, and this battle group is handed over to the Inquisition for the Exorcism of Foreign Inquisition to lead.

Their specialness lies in the composition of their personnel. They never recruit new soldiers themselves and plant seeds for cultivation. They recruit warriors who have performed well in fighting against aliens from various battle groups and serve in the Silver Watch.

Of course, sometimes some Space Marines who have made mistakes but are really powerful will be recruited to enter the Silver Watch to "atone their sins."

But no matter what the standard is, one thing is doomed: every Silver Watch is close to the company champion, or even has reached the level of the company champion.

After all, they are selected from thousands of battle groups, and it is not surprising to have such a level.

These 100 Silver Watch warriors are also the elite among the elite.

Such a force of tens of thousands of people is actually just in trouble, and the situation is too bad. As long as they are given time to rest and recuperate, and then used properly in the battle, and cooperate with the alliance's land forces, they can play a key role in many scenes.

They can be used as key forces in key battles such as naval battles to seize ships and land battles... It's all right.

Elite troops, no one has too many.

As for the second benefit of saving this group of inquisitors of the anti-foreign order, it is intelligence.

Gathering such a small-scale remnant army has such a benefit, so what if there are more troops in the North Line Corps that can be saved and united?

However, Gu Hang was a little disappointed in this regard.

Qin Zhiping provided a lot of intelligence, such as the whole process of the North Line Corps being defeated, and gave a clear statement: the North Line Corps is indeed finished.

However, the situation that Gu Hang expected, that there are many remaining troops in the North Line Corps, did not appear.

Of course, it does not mean that there must be no, but Qin Zhiping does not know how many people survived and where the survivors are.

The only thing that can be confirmed is that the largest part of the North Line Corps' ground forces is on Reyaduches. At that time, at least two thousand Space Marines and tens of millions of Astra Militarum were involved in the ground battle. There were many loyal stormtroopers in the Astra Militarum, and even half of them came from the famous Eldest Son Legion of the Astra Militarum. They were very powerful, and even the Alliance Army might not be able to fight them.

Such a huge ground force had two major disadvantages: one, it lost orbital protection; two, it was in an enemy territory with difficult supply.

They would inevitably suffer very painful losses, there was no doubt about that.

But was the whole army annihilated?

Gu Hang was cautiously optimistic about this.

After experiencing painful casualties and a sharp decline in troops, the remaining supplies might allow the survivors to support themselves for a while longer; without orbital cover, they could disperse and fight guerrilla warfare... In short, it was about nine months since the battle when the Northern Front Legion was defeated, and they should be able to survive a lot of people, and they were elite.

As for the other units of the Northern Front Legion scattered around, although Qin Zhiping did not know the exact location, it was bad news, but there was also good news. When they were running away, they saw the flight directions of some other ships that were running away, from which they could try to calculate the positions and targets of these ships.

Moreover, Qin Zhiping was probably not the only smart person. They all knew that it was almost impossible to run north and cross the Zerg-occupied areas of several star fields and return to the Star Devouring Universe. So, running eastward and looking for the Alliance was the best choice. If there were any survivors, they might be scattered not far away.

Another good news was that when Qin Zhiping and his team left their ship, they dismantled the ship's star language communication device. At that time, his idea was probably to keep this thing, at least to keep the thought of asking for help - as it turned out, they were indeed saved in the end.

And this thing can continue to play its residual heat now.

After Gu Hang's psychic blessing and transformation, its communication ability can be greatly enhanced even in the shadow of the subspace that enveloped the entire Princess Star Field. And it is part of the communication system within the entire North Line Corps, that is, the Alliance can use it to contact the survivors one or two star fields away.

With this thing, it is much more convenient than the Alliance sending exploration teams one by one, risking to approach one planet after another, and trying to make contact.

What's more, some survivors of the North Line Corps may still have ships. They may not choose to land on the ground, but hide in an asteroid belt in the galaxy, an uninhabited desolate world, the back of a gas planet, etc., to avoid being hunted by the hive fleet.

Before, if the Alliance's exploration team wanted to find these units, it might be more difficult than finding a needle in a haystack - the sea is not as big as the star sea!

Now it's much easier.

As for the third benefit of saving Qin Zhiping and others, it is in the political aspect.

In addition to being the commander, Gu Hang is also the leader of the alliance. He needs to consider not only military issues, but also political issues.

He believed that after the war, the alliance would inevitably face a huge political storm. That might be the most critical time for the alliance's gains in this war, the distribution of the fruits of victory, and even the existence of the alliance.

Any political support would bring considerable help to the storm.

Gu Hang would not ignore this.

Qin Zhiping was a senior member of the Anti-foreign Tribunal, with the rank of [Chief Judge]. Above him, there were only a few chief judges. By saving him, not only could he gain his friendship, but also the friendship of the entire Anti-foreign Tribunal.

As one of the three largest factions in the Tribunal, it directly controlled a top-level faction of the Tribunal, the Silver Watch. The Anti-foreign Order had a lot of say and could directly influence the opinion of the Tribunal representative in the Supreme Council.

With these three benefits, Gu Hang felt that saving this unit would bring great benefits.

In addition to the last point of political benefits, the other two benefits were constantly verified in the following three months.

With the help of the star language device, the Alliance successfully contacted seven scattered troops.

After resting, the Inquisition troops followed the Alliance's ships and attacked everywhere in the past three months. They personally participated in the rescue of four of the troops; the remaining three were also rescued by other Alliance troops.

All the rescued troops totaled more than 20 million people, half of whom were various seamen and crew members. The other half were the troops brought by the ships of the survivors' fleets, or like Qin Zhiping, forced to land on the surface of the planet and hold on until now.

In addition, a total of 70 warships of all levels were rescued.

The largest one even had a total of 37 warships led by an aircraft carrier and two battle cruisers.

It was really as previously speculated that they were hiding in an asteroid belt on the edge of a star system, sailing dangerously, and avoiding the hunting of the Hive Fleet.

These 70 fleets, including aircraft carriers, battleships, and battlecruisers, are no small force. They are also a very sufficient combat force supplement for the half-alliance fleet led by Gu Hang into the Queen Star Region.

And at this time, a message that symbolizes the beginning of a change in the situation was clearly heard:

The Western Front Corps and the Alliance's coalition forces, led by Salisius and Martins, killed most of the Zerg swarms pouring westward and successfully entered the Queen Star Region.

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This chapter is 4k!

Still owes 98k