While Forlorn wandered through the Underhive with his assistant, Huron was planning Badab's next stage of development.
After a year, the other thirteen Hive Cities had also been brought fully under the Badab Government's control. Following Palatus's example, they repaired hive functions while restoring and increasing productivity.
Huron had once thought that after taking care of Palatus, the largest Hive City, the remaining smaller hives would be easy to handle. Reality had taught him a harsh lesson.
The internet networks between the various Hive Cities were minuscule, used purely by Upper Hive residents. The total number of users might not even have exceeded that of the internet in Huron's previous world. As for the nobles, they had their own advanced communication equipment and looked down on electronic information networks with high latency and poor stability.
The fundamental reason for the internet's tiny scale was the near-total lack of large-scale material circulation between the Hive Cities. This meant there was no unified logistics coordination between hives; nobles with needs simply relied on their own methods.
As a result, only a few roads in Badab's once planet-spanning railway and highway network were maintained. Overall, it looked no different from a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
Combined with Planet Badab's highly polluted environment, most of these transport networks had been abandoned and rendered unusable after exposure to wind, sun, acid corrosion, and alkaline burns. The earlier transport of Auxilia personnel to the various Hive Cities had relied on large numbers of Transport Aircraft and Transport Ships.
But now that the various Hive Cities were under actual control, Huron found that if he wanted to govern Badab on a planetary scale, the transportation network between the hives was not only pitifully small, but also lacked any real carrying capacity.
Thus, his grand ambitions had been thwarted at