第40章 巢都现状

A few days later, both visiting fleets were ready. Aside from small gifts, the fleets were equipped with a company of Astartes, a five-man Librarian squad, and over one hundred thousand Auxilia to handle extreme situations.

As the fleets left the starport, slowly accelerating toward the Mandeville point, Huron withdrew his gaze.

I hope everything goes smoothly.

Matters abroad were settled, but internal affairs were still a tangled mess.

The sixth batch of Auxilia, totaling sixty-four million men, had graduated and thrown themselves into various tasks, further easing the manpower shortage.

It was worth noting that due to the global epiphany, the nobles of the other hive cities had been frightened out of their wits. Even after hearing of the Astral Claws' merciless methods toward the nobility, they still rushed to surrender.

Yet Huron had not even managed to build Palatus yet, and he had no spare capacity to care about those distant hive cities tens of thousands of light-years away.

Although none of these hive cities were as large as Palatus—averaging only over five hundred thousand square kilometers—their total population combined numbered in the tens of billions.

However, wanting to govern these hive cities required hundreds of millions or billions of administrative personnel, as well as developed transportation; otherwise, the supplies produced by Huron's void factories could not even be shipped over.

Still, for the sake of the factories that would be gained after actual control was established, Huron still dispatched over ten million Auxilia to stabilize each hive city and carry out some infrastructure development.

After actually controlling all hive cities, the number of factories had increased significantly. Both military and civilian factories reached the level of 25, while shipyards rose to 10.

However, the area that needed governing had expanded tenfold, and the meager increase in civilian workers could barely be considered better than nothing. After all, a single hive city reconstruction project could demand 20 civilian workers, to say nothing of the various construction projects in the upper, mid, and lower hives.

The growth of military factories and shipyards was relatively more useful. Shipyards went without saying, capable of repairing more warships simultaneously. Coupled with real-world simultaneous repairs, most warships had recovered their operational capability, which was why he dared to dispatch 2 cruisers and 4 frigates.

After basic equipment could be self-produced, the production of military factories shifted toward various high-end precision equipment, such as plasma weapons, melta weapons, power weapons, Terminator armor, Astartes vehicles, and so on. Advancing side by side, they could produce one set on average per day.

Now the Chapter was not only affluent in basic equipment, but even heavy firepower and vehicles were no longer scarce, causing Armenius to start suspecting every other day whether he had managed to unearth a new STC.

Once Auxilia manpower was replenished, the repair and expansion of shipyards and starports were also brought into the planning, though currently, due to various reasons, they could only be maintained at the repair stage.

To speed up various processes, Huron enacted multiple decisions, such as "Mid-hive Industrial Zone Integration and Expansion", "Strengthen Underhive Livelihood Project Construction", "Optimize Worker Training", and "Hive City Transportation Network Reconstruction".

The political points spent on these decisions varied, and Huron spent all of the remaining hundred-plus political points in his hands, making the overall construction speed of the hive cities pick up once again.

Aside from construction, Huron was also attempting to establish an education system.

However, right now, due to tight manpower, most personnel were absorbed by the government and engineering teams, so the overall educational construction was still an empty shell.

The primary educational institutions were instead the training classes within the engineering teams.

These training classes taught based on basic literacy, arithmetic, and specific technical trades, such as electricians, driving, auto repair, and so on.

On one hand, this lowered the illiteracy rate; on the other hand, it reduced the reliance on Adeptus Mechanicus technicians.

The "Optimize Worker Training" enacted by Huron was specifically targeted at improving efficiency in this regard.

It was worth mentioning that because of Huron's Emperor's Epiphany, the Adeptus Mechanicus branch on Badab and the Astral Claws were still in a honeymoon period. Therefore, for such basic knowledge, as long as the Astral Claws were willing to spend money, the Adeptus Mechanicus would still dispatch technicians as teachers.

Another task was the integration of various industrial zones in the mid-hive and upper hive.

The productivity of Badab Hive City was actually not low, but due to various reasons, this productivity only existed on paper and had never actually been achieved.

The most important reason among them was the infighting among the nobles.

Instead of studying how to conduct industrial layout or optimize industrial structure, they preferred to build heavy walls around their own factories to protect the workshops.

Even if this lowered logistics transportation efficiency and reduced production capacity, they still relished it.

After all, the production capacity in their own hands was truly theirs. If it were casually snatched away by other nobles, then no matter how high the production capacity was, it would be fake.

Under the guidance of this mindset, transportation among factories of different factions was extremely underdeveloped, and they all liked to build factories like fortresses, causing production capacity to be fundamentally incapable of being fully unleashed.

To solve this problem, Huron naturally had the Badab Government integrate these factories, demolish various facilities that hindered transportation, and expand logistics roads.

Moreover, complementary industries were concentrated together to scale up, achieving genuine cost reduction and efficiency improvement while raising production capacity.

In response to the anticipated outbreak of production capacity, the extraction and transportation of various basic resources were also under planning.

Aside from cleaning up and recycling industrial waste in the underhive, opening up sealed areas, and building logistics routes, the most important tasks were naturally the construction of the deep hive and the outskirts of the hive city.

The suburban areas built relying on the main structure of the hive city served the primary function of extracting resources to provide for the hive city. After taking over, the planetary government resumed production while carrying out expansion and environmental improvements, striving to increase production capacity as quickly as possible.

A massive amount of engineering machinery and automated machinery was transported here. Aside from prioritizing the expanded special operations divisions, the remaining production capacity of sapper exoskeletons was mostly provided to the workers here.

As for why the special operations divisions needed to be expanded, it was because Huron intended to sweep through the deep hive region with a heavy hand, bringing these abandoned places back under control.

To regain control of these millions of square kilometers and dozens of layers of out-of-control zones, he naturally needed a larger-scale special operations division to carry out armed blockades, continuously build infrastructure, and migrate hive city residents to achieve actual control.

To be honest, the first time he saw this plan, Huron thought his eyes were playing tricks on him.

Was the deep hive not right beneath their feet? How did it end up looking like armed colonization?

Yet after reading the related materials, Huron was convinced as well.

Because the deep hive had spun out of control, the nobles had long since cut off all energy sources. In other words, anyone able to survive in the deep hive—whether human, mutant, xenos, or whatever else—at least possessed the ability to be self-sufficient.

Under such circumstances, wanting to achieve actual control was not much different from engaging in armed colonization. This would be a multi-year campaign of eradication, unless tens of millions or hundreds of millions of Auxilia were thrown in to conduct a thorough purge.

Yet the Auxilia Huron had trained so far only totaled a little over one hundred million; how could he possibly throw all of them into the deep hive to be minced in a meat grinder?

Therefore, the special operations divisions not only needed to be expanded, but their organization also had to be changed, strengthening their armored force and heavy firepower!