A few days later, the two visiting fleets were ready. Aside from small gifts, the fleets carried one company of Astartes, a five-man Librarian team, and over a hundred thousand Auxilia to handle extreme circumstances.
As the fleets departed the Starport, slowly accelerated, and headed for the Mandeville Point, Huron withdrew his gaze.
"I hope everything goes smoothly."
With external affairs settled, internal matters remained as tangled as ever.
The sixth batch of Auxilia, numbering sixty-four million in total, had graduated and been assigned to various duties, further easing the manpower shortage.
It was worth mentioning that, because of the planetwide Emperor's Epiphany, the nobles of the other Hive Cities had been scared out of their wits. Even after hearing of the Astral Claws' merciless treatment of nobles, they still raced to surrender.
But Huron had not even finished developing Palatus, much less possessed the spare capacity to deal with Hive Cities tens of thousands of miles away.
Although none of those Hive Cities was as large as Palatus, with an average area of only slightly over five hundred thousand square kilometers, their combined population numbered in the tens of billions.
However, governing those Hive Cities would require hundreds of millions, if not billions, of administrators, as well as developed transportation. Otherwise, even the supplies produced by Huron's Void Factories could not be delivered there.
Still, for the additional Factories gained through direct control, Huron dispatched over ten million Auxilia to stabilize the various Hive Cities and carry out some Infrastructure construction.
After gaining direct control over all the Hive Cities, the number of Factories had increased significantly. Both military and civilian Factories had reached twenty-five, while Shipyards had risen to ten.
Yet the area requiring governance had expanded by more than tenfold, so the added civilian Factories were barely enough to matter. After all, a single Hive City reconstruction project could require twenty civilian Factories, let alone all the construction projects across the Upper Hive, Mid-hive, and Underhive.
The increase in military Factories and Shipyards was far more useful. The Shipyards needed no explanation: they could repair more Warships at once. Together with the ongoing repairs in reality, most Warships had regained operational capability. That was why he dared send out two Cruisers and four Frigates.
Now that basic equipment could be produced domestically, military Factory production shifted toward all kinds of advanced equipment: Plasma Weapons, Melta Weapons, Power Weapons, Terminator Armor, Astartes Vehicles, and more. Production advanced on all fronts, with an average output of one full set per day.
The Chapter was no longer merely well supplied with basic equipment. Even Heavy Firepower and Vehicles were no longer scarce, leaving Armenius wondering every few days whether Huron had somehow acquired a new STC.
With the Auxilia's manpower replenished, repairs and expansion for the Shipyard and Starport were also added to the agenda. For the moment, however, various constraints meant they could only remain in the repair stage.
To speed up every process, Huron activated several Decisions, such as "Mid-hive Industrial Zone Integration and Expansion," "Strengthen Underhive Livelihood Project Construction," "Optimize Worker Training," and "Hive City Transportation Network Reconstruction."
These Decisions cost varying amounts of Political Points. Huron spent all of the hundred-plus Political Points he had left, accelerating the Hive City's overall construction speed once again.
Aside from construction, Huron was also trying to establish an education system.
However, with manpower currently tight and most personnel absorbed by the government and Engineering projects, the overall education system remained little more than an empty shell.
The main educational institutions were instead the training classes within the Engineering Teams.
These classes taught basic literacy and arithmetic, along with specific technical trades such as electrical work, driving, and vehicle repair.
On one hand, they reduced illiteracy. On the other, they reduced dependence on Adeptus Mechanicus technical personnel.
The "Optimize Worker Training" Decision Huron had activated was specifically intended to improve efficiency in this area.
It was worth mentioning that, due to Huron's Emperor's Epiphany, the Adeptus Mechanicus Branch on Badab and the Astral Claws were currently in a honeymoon phase. Thus, so long as the Astral Claws were willing to pay, the Adeptus Mechanicus would still send technical personnel to serve as instructors for this kind of basic knowledge.
Another effort was the integration of the various Industrial Zones in the Mid-hive and Upper Hive.
Badab Hive City's productive capacity was not actually low. Yet for various reasons, that productivity existed only on paper and had never truly been realized.
The most important reason was the nobles' scheming and infighting.
Rather than studying industrial layouts or optimizing industrial structures, they preferred building layer upon layer of walls around their own Factories to protect them.
Even if this reduced logistics efficiency and cut production capacity, they never tired of it.
After all, only capacity held in their own hands truly belonged to them. If another noble could simply seize it, then no matter how high that capacity was, it was meaningless.
Guided by this mindset, transportation between Factories belonging to different factions was extremely underdeveloped. They also liked building Factories like fortresses, making it impossible for production capacity to be fully utilized.
To solve this problem, Huron naturally had the Badab Government integrate these Factories, demolish all facilities obstructing transportation, and expand logistics routes.
Complementary industries were also concentrated together and expanded in scale, achieving genuine cost reduction and efficiency gains while increasing output.
To prepare for the expected surge in production capacity, plans were also being made for extracting and transporting all kinds of basic resources.
Besides clearing and recycling industrial waste from the Underhive, opening sealed-off areas, and building logistics routes, the most important work was naturally the development of the Deep Hive and the Hive City's outskirts.
The suburban areas built around the Hive City's main structure primarily existed to extract resources for the Hive City. After the Planetary Government took over, it restored production while expanding the area and improving the environment, striving to raise output as quickly as possible.
Large quantities of engineering machinery and automated machinery were transported there. Aside from first meeting the needs of the expanded Special Operations Division, most remaining Sapper Exoskeleton production was also supplied to workers there.
As for why the Special Operations Division needed expansion, it was because Huron intended to sweep through the Deep Hive and bring those abandoned areas back under control.
To regain control over this uncontrolled region spanning millions of square kilometers and dozens of levels, a larger Special Operations Division was naturally needed to impose armed blockades, continuously construct Infrastructure, and relocate Hive City residents to establish direct control.
To be honest, when Huron first saw this plan, he thought his eyes were playing tricks on him.
Wasn't the Deep Hive right beneath their feet? Why did this look like armed colonization?
But after reading the relevant materials, Huron had to admit it made sense.
Because the Deep Hive had fallen out of control, the nobles had long since cut off all kinds of energy supplies. In other words, anything that had survived down there—humans, Mutants, Xenos, or something else—possessed at least some capacity for self-sufficiency.
Under such circumstances, establishing direct control was not all that different from armed colonization. It would be a years-long purge, unless tens or even hundreds of millions of Auxilia were committed to a thorough cleanup.
But Huron had trained only a little over a hundred million Auxilia in total. How could he possibly throw them all into the Deep Hive's meat grinder?
Therefore, not only did the Special Operations Division need expansion, its organization also had to change, with stronger armored forces and Heavy Firepower!
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