1st Airborne Transport, Deployed!

Being able to become a big shot, Old John naturally would not refuse.

And after the first batch of two million reserves arrived, Huron stuffed them into the super infantry division establishment of all-infantry battalions for training.

Only two months were needed for this batch of troops to reach level-2 initial training, and then they would go on to become grassroots administrative personnel, liberating the previous Chapter serfs.

Then Huron could organize and train true standing troops, namely boarding teams and anti-boarding teams.

In the foreseeable future, the Astral Claws did not have a demand for large-scale ground warfare, but the demand for elite boarding and anti-boarding forces would never be small.

Because he planned to emulate the original Huron by enhancing his fleet's strength through striking and plundering the warships of other human pirates.

Although repairing a lightly damaged frigate took a full year even with three shipyards, these shipyards were also classic void productivity yards, and realistic shipyards could also repair other warships.

Moreover, the speed of one year was actually a bit horrifying, because the shipyard's repairs would also clear out the accumulated Warp pollution. This was something Huron only discovered recently after studying the system in detail.

As the second-largest Warp rift in the galaxy, the Maelstrom region was filled with Warp torrents everywhere, and diffused psychic pollution permeated the entire star system. During realspace navigation, one might even encounter Warp-characteristic entities like "Ship Souls" and "Warp Daemons".

In such an environment, warships naturally would accumulate Warp pollution. If it were not cleared, who knew when warships would start growing flesh.

This was also a major predicament for the Astral Claws Chapter. Because Huron declared himself king, the Ecclesiarchy forces in Badab also looked upon the Astral Claws with displeasure—or rather, all Imperial forces in Badab actually viewed Huron with annoyance.

Naturally, the Astral Claws had no way to borrow Ecclesiarchy Priests and Battle Sisters to purify their warships.

If the system did not have this function, Huron would have to find a way to win over the Ecclesiarchy or see if there was a resolution to have the Emperor bless the warships.

However, as a college student from a certain major country, he utterly loathed religion, so naturally he avoided touching it whenever possible.

As for clicking resolutions, he only had a little over 150 political points in his hands, which was only enough to click a few resolutions, and the bulk had to be reserved for core-ifying Badab, leaving him stretched thin.

Political points were only increasing by 0.5 per day now, and it would take him a hundred days to increase the success rate of a new recruit augmentation surgery once, let alone other resolutions.

Without this function, he would either have to hole up in Badab and match wits with the Ecclesiarchy for over a decade, or sortie out while risking his warships growing flesh.

Yet with this function, he was confident he could organize a strike fleet within a few years and begin snowballing.

The boarding and anti-boarding teams on a single frigate totaled nearly ten thousand people. Given that they faced all sorts of freaks and monsters, they naturally needed to be elite.

However, it was still far too early to talk about these things, because Huron had not even prepared their equipment, let alone the personnel.

Still, the two Astartes battle-companies were basically done training.

After more than a month of production, the military factories had manufactured over four hundred sets of Power Armour and bolters, equipping the combatants of both battle-companies with basic gear.

Because the Apothecarion, Armoury, Reclusiam, and Librarium were theoretically "non-combat units", with only 2,048 combat brothers, both battle-companies were under-strength, averaging only 800 men each.

Furthermore, according to the plan, each company needed to additionally incorporate 10 Techmarines, 10 Librarians, 10 Chaplains, and 10 Apothecaries, so a full-strength battle-company should be around 1,400 men.

It did not matter, though. In another five years, over two thousand gene-seed would mature, and by then they would be able to reach full strength.

Equipped with gear, the two battle-companies were given the tongue-in-cheek nicknames "1st Airborne Transport" and "2nd Airborne Transport" by Huron, leaving the battle brothers who did not understand the connotation somewhat baffled.

They were not organized as air assault squads, so why take such a nickname?

To sharpen the actual combat experience of the Astartes, Huron had the two battle-companies take turns going on duty to purge the various ghosts and monsters in the lower hive.

Thanks to over a month of engineering construction, the two hundred million laborers and even more lower-hive residents trusted the name of the "Astral Claws" more deeply, actively reporting quite a few bizarre factions to the Chapter.

For instance, mutant tribes, mutated creature colonies, cultists, rebel remnants, alien remnants... The ecological environment of the lower hive was extremely "hospitable", breeding countless enemies of humanity.

Usually, as long as they did not cause a major disturbance, the nobles turned a blind eye, considering it out of sight and out of mind.

Yet Huron completely refused to tolerate these filthy things, especially after some workers were attacked and went missing—then it became even more intolerable.

Daring to lay a hand on his people meant this was no ordinary enemy; he had to strike with a heavy fist. 1st Airborne Transport, deployed!

Uncertain news was targeted for verification by Chapter serfs, while confirmed news directly saw the Astartes take action.

With sufficient logistical support, bolters and chainswords were used to their heart's content, and the Astartes naturally unleashed their full firepower, fiercely delivering heavy blows to the ghosts and monsters.

Lower hive, abandoned pipelines.

Bang... Corian blew apart a mutant attempting to counterattack with a single shot. 1st Company, charge with me, kill them all!

He had already tested the waters; there were no heavy firepower threats on the opposite side, only some crudely made autoguns and a handful of laser guns.

Snatching up a chainsword, Corian vaulted over cover and charged toward the mutant position, and the veterans of the 1st Company excitedly followed in a fierce rush.

Ninety-nine percent of the opposing mutants' faces were covered by a giant eye, and their mouths had been squeezed down to their chins.

The huge mutated eyes gave them exceptional vision, but it also gave them a morbid sense of duty toward cherishing their own eyes, which eventually evolved into the foul habit of eating human eyes alive to nourish their own.

"Fire, stop them from coming!" the mutant chieftain shrieked frantically. He had witnessed the close-combat capabilities of these individuals and knew that once they were closed in on, they were dead meat.

"Bang, bang, bang..."

"Pew, pew, pew..."

Autoguns and laser guns opened fire together, attacks blanketing the narrow corridor, and quite a few laser beams and bullets struck Corian, who was charging at the very front.

Clang, clang, clatter... A flurry of impact sounds rang out, scraping the paint off Corian's breastplate.

Yet Corian's momentum did not slacken. With a single leap, he smashed into the cover, directly crushing two mutants to death, and then swept his chainsword in a circle, chopping all the surrounding mutants in two.

Splattering blood dyed his entire body red, but he did not stop, continuing to charge toward the rear cover with the intent to wipe out these mutants in one fell swoop.

The mutants who had survived by sheer luck had not even caught their breath when the excited 1st Company veterans charged into the position, beginning to clear out the enemies.

Because Terminator Armour was difficult to manufacture, the 1st Company veterans were not using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, and wore Aquila-pattern Power Armour instead.

To the mutants, however, there was actually little difference, because both led to a dead end.

Some mutants attempted to pierce the Power Armour at close range with autoguns, but bullets striking the armour could only scratch the paint before they were torn to pieces of debris by the enraged 1st Company veterans.

In the blink of an eye, the veterans who cleared the position followed the company captain to charge forward once more, annihilating this mutant tribe at top speed.