Long-Term Plan

Nothing else happened on the way back to camp.

The Governor had been wearing a sour expression for some reason, and no one dared approach him.

Gu Hang's aide, Zhang Chao, was already waiting outside the Governor's Camp. He had received Gu Hang's notice in advance and had arranged for the camp to be ready to receive the supplies.

Gu Hang was desperately short on manpower, so he was deliberately grooming the young Zhang Chao. The kid didn't look cut out for soldiering, but he should do well enough with clerical and administrative work.

Even if he didn't, there wasn't much Gu Hang could do about it. Few of his people could read, and he had no better candidates.

Besides, Zhang Chao was doing a pretty good job.

They hadn't had time to build a warehouse big enough, but they had cleared out some prefabricated huts to store supplies. They piled the things that didn't need special storage—things that could be left out in the wind and rain—on an open patch of ground and covered them with large tarps. That was good enough for temporary storage.

After that, Zhang Chao bustled around taking inventory and arranging the distribution of supplies, including how much to send over to the Waste Mine Society.

He seemed reliable enough, so Gu Hang felt reassured, and his expression improved a little.

As for the frustration of getting nothing from his two consecutive draws, that had mostly faded by now.

Technology always cost Grace to draw for. The odds were what they were. There was nothing he could do about missing out; all he could do was hope for better luck next time.

After slipping into his room, Gu Hang took out paper and pen and began planning his next steps.

He didn't intend to materialize the G9 Gun Family black box from the technology draw just yet. Judging by his experience with the Alloy Plasteel black box, this one probably wouldn't be small, either. Once materialized, it couldn't be put away again.

Zhang Chao had already begun arranging for people to dig out a bunker. Gu Hang planned to establish a secret central base there, which would serve as the camp's future "research and development" center. It needed to be kept under tight security.

As for the black boxes, the less people saw them, the better.

The technology draw had been a minor interruption. What mattered was what he did next.

The supplies he had demanded—or, more accurately, extorted—from Revival City had eased the camp's shortage, especially its food shortage. His territory still couldn't produce enough food to feed itself. Mantan Valley Manor could grow grain, but it would take until autumn, several months away, to bring in a harvest.

The supplies he'd secured would keep them going until then.

That was assuming the population he had to support didn't grow any further.

But that was impossible.

Gu Hang's next goal was to expand his population.

The Alloy Plasteel production line needed to expand, the G9 Gun Family production line needed workers, and construction needed workers, too. In the future, he might draw other technologies and establish other production lines. All of it would need people.

Where would he find them?

That was easy enough to solve.

Nuxiao Planet was clearly a wasteland world, sparsely populated and nowhere near as populous as Hive Worlds, with their hundreds of billions of people. And yet, human life was astonishingly cheap here.

Wandering survivor tribes, and the poor scraping by around Revival City, never sure if they'd live to see tomorrow... They were all potential recruits for Gu Hang.

But he couldn't just take in anyone and everyone.

Once people arrived, Gu Hang would have to provide them with work, food, and other necessities.

In other words, he had to be able to support them and put them to more productive use.

That would require more supplies and greater production capacity.

As things stood, his first step was to sell the most important thing his territory produced now—and what would be its most important product in the future: Alloy Plasteel.

Only once he found buyers could he expand production.

Thinking of that, Gu Hang turned his thoughts back to Revival City.

It wasn't that he had to keep fleecing the same sheep. It was simply close by, his position made it convenient, and taking advantage of it was just too easy.

Besides, he had long since considered Revival City his for the taking. What was his was mine, so what was wrong with borrowing it for a while?

In the end, he was going to take control of that city one way or another.

He only had two years. He couldn't start from scratch in the middle of nowhere and somehow cultivate enough wealth and resources to pay the taxes on an entire planet two years from now.

Setting up shop out here was, at its core, just another approach to taking control of the entire planet.

If he wanted complete control over Revival City, going into the city and playing political games with the local powers would be a dead end. But if he built a force of his own first, then took over Revival City—and even the administrative powers of the Alliance government—it would be a different story.

In the not-too-distant future, when he was ready to take over, he would have to be confident that he could purge every level of Revival City's power structure and make the city's full strength serve him.

That kind of strength couldn't rely solely on the threat of the Quintet in orbit. If they all went down together, he would be finished, too. The councilors in Revival City knew that.

Nuclear deterrence alone wouldn't be enough. If Gu Hang asked for a hundred tons of supplies, they would hand them over. But if he launched The Scouring and demanded their lives, they would fight him even under threat of an orbital bombardment. They might as well all die together.

He needed a real, conventional force that he could rely on to support him in doing what he wanted.

"We still need to expand the army." Gu Hang reached his conclusion.

Expansion was easy.

He picked out two hundred people from among the servants brought down from the starship. One hundred would be equipped with the G7 Assaulters left over from before, while the other hundred would make do with captured local knockoff guns. With one or two points of Grace from the system, combined with the hundred men from the Waste Mine Company, he could put together another light infantry battalion.

Gu Hang left the task of recruiting new soldiers from the three thousand servants to Yan Fangxu.

Captain Yan was already numb to it.

He knew his Governor was about to show off again, turning a few days of training into a regular army that should have taken one or two years to train.

He truly couldn't make heads or tails of it. In the end, he could only conclude that this was one of the Governor's talents: he was a military-training genius.

It was a ridiculous explanation, but Yan Fangxu couldn't think of anything better.

Of course, even though he knew that under the Governor's command, even the worst recruits could become passable soldiers after a few days of training, he still did his best to select the two hundred best from among the three thousand servants.

After distributing their weapons and equipment, Gu Hang casually spent two points of Grace on a training package for the soldiers through the [Troop Token]. Then he left the matter alone, showing up each day just often enough to look the part.

Before long, a new status appeared.

[2nd Infantry Battalion: Light Infantry, Overall -, Cannot Upgrade]

[Quantity: 300 people]

[Equipment: T5, Training: T5, Experience: -]

The unit was commanded by Pobov, who had come from the Waste Mine Society. He had been promoted to battalion commander.