219: Chapter 220 What does it mean to be cleaned up?

Mobius Prime, Frontline General Headquarters.

The air remained thick and murky.

Thick blue-green smoke from burning mind-leaves drifted everywhere, filling the entire command room.

Colonel Andrei, the Commander-in-Chief, leaned his hands on the edge of the sand table, his eyes bloodshot.

He and a group of staff officers were tensely consolidating the battle reports constantly transmitted from various defensive zones via radio.

Thanks to Marshal Miller of the Adeptus Arbites keeping his word, and the Church's armed pilgrimage ships joining the near-orbit defense grid,

the pressure on the orbital front had indeed lessened significantly, and interception efficiency had increased dramatically.

But even so, the situation remained far from optimistic.

The Tyranids were simply too numerous, like an endless swarm of cosmic locusts.

Every now and then, some small Tyranid vessels that slipped through the net would brave the risk of destruction to breach Mobius Prime's atmosphere, frantically dropping large numbers of spore pods onto various regions of the surface.

Not far outside the headquarters, the heavy anti-air batteries of Capital Hive City One were firing day and night, lighting up the sky as if it were broad daylight.

Although they shot down a large number of Tyranid spores attempting to drop, some still slipped through the defense line and landed in the wilderness.

"Commander-in-Chief, sir!"

A senior staff officer strode over and reported,

"Currently, small numbers of Tyranid spore pods have landed in the main defensive perimeters, including Hive City One, Three, and Five.

However, due to sufficient fire reserves, the bugs were intercepted by armored units as soon as they showed their heads, preventing them from landing in the densely populated areas of the Hive Cities.

All major city areas are currently well-defended!"

Colonel Andrei exhaled a long ring of smoke and nodded.

"Good job. Has there been any news from Town 233?"

"Reporting to the Commander, not yet." The messenger shook his head.

Hearing this answer, Colonel Andrei closed his eyes wearily, a strong sense of anxiety welling up in his heart.

It had already been two whole days!

Not a single member of the squad he had sent to scout the outskirts of Town 233 had returned!

And radio communication had been completely lost.

On the battlefield, losing contact meant the worst outcome.

That area was highly likely to have been completely blockaded and surrounded by the swarm, and the situation might have already deteriorated to an unsalvageable state.

Because the Tyranids release a massive cloud of toxic spores into the atmosphere upon landing, orbital satellite reconnaissance has begun to fail.

Specific surface information has become very hard to visualize.

If Colonel Andrei wanted accurate battlefield information, he could only rely on direct reports from there or visual confirmation by scouts.

But at this point, the scouts were clearly in grave danger.

"Although Town 233 is not one of the eight main Hive Cities,"

Colonel Andrei calculated rapidly in his mind,

"that wretched place still has hundreds of thousands of scavengers and refugees gathered there! If those clones, who only know how to farm and trade, can't handle the bugs, and those monsters consume those hundreds of thousands of people to replenish their biomass..."

Cold sweat immediately broke out on Colonel Andrei's forehead.

Once the bugs ate their fill, they would likely snowball into a massive breeding horde right on that defenseless plain!

If they were to launch a pincer attack on the defensive lines of the other Hive Cities from behind, the defensive pressure on Mobius Prime would be far too immense!

Colonel Andrei took a few deep puffs of his cigarette and crushed the butt hard into the ashtray.

He decided they absolutely could not afford to just wait around like this; they had to take the initiative and support the battle over there!

He loudly called over a messenger:

"Issue the order immediately! Mobilize the 312th, 389th, and 361st Heavy Armored Divisions stationed in the western suburbs! Along with the four infantry regiments from the 58th to the 61st! Decamp immediately and head out to support Town 233!"

"Attention! Have the armored vanguard company send back first-hand, definitive battle reports as soon as possible!"

Colonel Andrei thought for a moment and added,

"If the battle has already collapsed, authorize the frontline Commander to directly request orbital fire support from the Adeptus Arbites and Church vessels in orbit if necessary! Provided our orbital forces are still there!"

"Yes, sir!" The messenger saluted, turned, and ran out of the headquarters.

As the supreme military order was dispatched,

various units began to mobilize with swift and decisive efficiency.

As a remote settlement originally established by scavengers in the wilderness, Town 233 was not too far from the capital.

But because the deployment of a large mechanized force required establishing supply stations along the way and clearing damaged roads, their marching speed was naturally a bit slower.

Taking advantage of the relatively stable situation in the capital area for now,

no matter how anxious Colonel Andrei felt, he had to find a place to catch up on some sleep first.

As a Commander, maintaining a clear head was more important than anything else.

Colonel Andrei arranged the handover with the staff officers and lay down fully clothed in a narrow lounge right next to the command room.

Before long, heavy snoring echoed through the room.

...

An unknown amount of time passed.

In his daze, Colonel Andrei felt someone shaking his shoulder urgently.

"Commander-in-Chief! Wake up! News from Town 233 has finally come back!"

Colonel Andrei snapped his eyes open, sitting up from the camp bed like a coiled spring.

He quickly straightened his somewhat wrinkled uniform and glanced down at the mechanical watch on his wrist.

He had only slept for four hours and twenty-three minutes.

"Speak! What's the situation?" Colonel Andrei grabbed a cup of cold water from the table, gulped it down, and forced himself awake.

He looked at the messenger standing before him and noticed that the man's expression seemed rather unusual.

Instead of the dread of defeat, it carried a sort of flabbergasted, ghost-seeing bewilderment.

Colonel Andrei's heart sank.

"Could Town 233 have completely fallen and been hollowed out by the bugs?"

Colonel Andrei prepared himself for the worst.

This would be the absolute worst news.

If it had indeed fallen, the Defense Force would have to deploy more reserve troops to launch a desperate counteroffensive before the bugs could fully digest that biomass and hatch a massive army.

This would severely deplete their overall reserve forces, potentially having a fatal impact on battles in other regions.

"Sir..."

The messenger swallowed hard, his voice trembling slightly,

"the scout vanguard company has already made contact with the defenders over there. They said... those clones have completely cleared out all the bugs that landed in that area."

Colonel Andrei's hand, which was about to button his collar, froze instantly in mid-air.

He stiffened and looked up at the messenger in utter disbelief:

"What the hell did you say? What do you mean 'cleared out'?"

"Literally, sir!"

The messenger also looked as if he were dreaming, filled with disbelief.

"Our vanguard company reported that those clones... are all fucking crazy!"

Colonel Andrei's brow furrowed deeply.

"Cut the crap! Tell me the details of the battle report!"

The messenger quickly turned on the battle report recorder:

"According to the intelligence gathered upon contact, at first, when the swarm first landed, those clones indeed reacted very slowly. Their weapons were too poor, and they had no tactics. They were beaten back repeatedly by those Termagants, suffering heavy casualties."

"But then! A massive, extremely bizarrely styled 'stitched-together' tank suddenly rolled out of Town 233!"

The messenger gestured with his hands,

"even our tankers have never seen such a thing. It's covered from head to toe in ridiculously oversized gun barrels, and it even has a blue energy shield around it!"

"That tank's firepower is unbelievably fierce! Under its cover, those clones who were originally routing suddenly went wild, as if they'd been injected with chicken blood. They began charging back at the swarm with their crappy guns, completely defying death!"

The messenger looked at Colonel Andrei,

"Those clones are like an inexhaustible supply of consumables! Our local militia saw with their own eyes that several clones had their heads bitten off and eaten by the bugs just yesterday. Yet early this morning, those same guys ran out of their guild hall, alive and kicking, to go fight the bugs on the front line again!"

Hearing this, Colonel Andrei wasn't too surprised. Instead, he nodded in agreement.

"That's not surprising."

Colonel Andrei rubbed his chin.

"We've already witnessed their unkillable, resurrecting nature back in the POW camps. It perfectly fits my stereotype of those lunatics."

The messenger continued to report:

"Then, as that big tank's firepower pushed forward, more and more clones gathered outside the town. Later, a large number of clones even braved the immense risk of being shot down by the Tyranid space fleet, flying unarmed civilian merchant ships from Outpost Planet and Abyss Prison, and dropped several shiploads of high-end weaponry directly onto the battlefield!"

"Once they got their hands on Plasma Guns and bolters, those clones basically pushed straight through, stepping over the corpses of the swarm. Now, the bugs within a dozen kilometers of Town 233 have been completely wiped out. They're even searching everywhere for bug corpses to take back and claim rewards!"

After listening to this absurd battle report,

Colonel Andrei, as a battle-hardened Commander, immediately analyzed the core key behind this information in his mind.

Without a doubt!

That massive, kitbashed tank that suddenly rolled out of the town was the key turning point that reversed the entire battle of Town 233!

It was precisely because of that tank's heavy firepower that the situation was forcibly stabilized the moment the clone defensive line was on the verge of collapsing!

This preserved the most precious reaction time and buffer space for the subsequent arrival of a large number of clones and weapon support.

In the Imperial military history that Colonel Andrei had studied thoroughly,

there were countless strong fortresses and battles instantly overrun by xenos, all because the Commanders failed to stabilize the line at the very first moment of engagement, leading to a collapse of morale and a subsequent devastating, one-sided slaughter.

"I really didn't expect this."

Colonel Andrei exhaled a long breath, his voice tinged with deep admiration,

"these lazy clones, who usually seem to care only about farming and business, could actually unleash such terrifying combat will and war potential when pushed into a corner!"

Learning that Town 233 had not been overrun by the swarm, and had even been pushed back by this group of casual players,

Colonel Andrei's heart, which had been in his throat, finally settled back down completely.

He straightened his uniform and strode out of the lounge.

Now that the weakest link in the rear was secured, he could finally focus all his energy on deploying forces for the frontal battlefield.

...

Meanwhile,

in the Ghoul Stars, which was extremely far from the Mobius System,

inside the underground monastery fortress of Occludus,

Chief Librarian Asio, the Chief Librarian of the Death Spectres Chapter, was also standing in the dim Chapter war room at this moment, analyzing the top-secret battle reports coming from the sector with a grave expression.

Deep worry was written all over his pale face.

In just a few short days!

several Imperial worlds on the fringes of the Ghoul Stars had completely fallen under the ravages of the Tyranids!

The tens of billions of people on those planets, along with the surface vegetation and oceans, had been consumed by the Great Devourer, leaving behind lifeless dead worlds!

The ferocity of the Tyranid invasion had clearly exceeded initial strategic expectations.

But this was actually within Chief Librarian Asio's expectations.

The several massive Imperial Navy fleets originally stationed on the fringes of the Ghoul Stars had been forcibly reassigned by the Astra Militarum High Command over half a year ago to suppress a rebellion in the northern Malfatus region.

For those planets lacking orbital fleet cover to hold out for nearly five days under the sky-blotting swarm attacks was already a decent result of the Defense Force performing their duties faithfully.

However, this wave of devastating catastrophe made the already sparsely populated and resource-starved Ghoul Stars even more barren and desolate.

Furthermore, those dead worlds left behind, filled with toxic spores, would require the Chapter to expend immense effort to send personnel to clean them up.