Starting from the Planetary Governor

Chapter 1388: Chapter 789 Part 2

Not only are the separatist forces, Chaos believers, and Alien enemies difficult to fight; on the contrary, when the Empire is willing to spend money, these things cannot withstand the edge of the Empire’s army.

But the problem lies in the management afterward.

If you can’t issue the Extinction Order all at once, then why bother taking it back?

A large amount of Imperial Army is thus entangled in security battles, costing quite a bit.

What’s more terrifying is that this place seems to have some special atmosphere. Many troops suppressing the rebellion, after a few years, tend to become separatist forces themselves.

The armies dispatched from the Central Empire might be slightly better, but the Star Realm Army, which is not directly from the central core, is not as reliable.

As for the biggest problem, it is actually those who are not even part of the Star Realm Army, the anti-rebellion troops recruited from other Star Domains and Cosmos Domains. They are the ones likely to complete the rebellion suppression with one foot, only to become new separatist regimes with the other.

Currently, the situation in Solaria is naturally better than in its worst period, but the problems are still significant.

Against this backdrop, on the planets under the military governance of the Alliance Army, setting aside everything else, at least the level of order throughout the entire planet has been greatly improved.

Under such circumstances, the Planetary Governors originally endowed with power here were coerced to accept the military governance of the Rage Bear Legion, but later, their attitude turned to tacit approval, even actively inviting the commissars from the Alliance Legion to participate in local governance.

With the Rage Bear Legion in place, a significant portion of the forces was invested in maintaining the planet’s security, which helped greatly. Initially, the Tribunal was quite displeased with the actions of the Rage Bear Legion; a faction active in the Solaria Domain even accused them of ’using anti-bandit operations as a guise for separatism’.

Just like ordinary external anti-rebellion troops, finally evolving into new traitors themselves.

This Tribunal faction, stationed in Solaria for several decades, has seen similar situations far too often.

But soon, they realized the situation was different.

The Planetary Governors no longer criticized the Alliance but rather spoke favorably on its behalf.

Initially, the Tribunal thought that was because the Planetary Governors were also corrupted or controlled by the Alliance.

But later, when the Tribunal personnel actually arrived, they found no signs of corruption here. Not only was there no heresy from the Alliance, but they also cooperated a lot with the scrutiny.

More crucially, the Imperial Tax on these planets was still being paid normally—prior to the Alliance’s military governance, the Imperial Tax from these planets was frequently delayed or even unpaid. When they did pay, the funds for the Imperial Tax were often less than the resources spent by the Empire to pacify the planetary issues.

With the Alliance managing and stationed here, the situation stabilized instead.

Although, there remains a risk of rebellion from the Alliance Army later. But at least for now, no such issues have been uncovered.

In fact, after understanding the situation in Solaria, the Alliance officially provided an explanation to the Empire regarding this matter.

They said, if you don’t want us to occupy, then we won’t. The Alliance never intended to make a profit from this or harbor any other hidden agenda. The matter boiled down purely to the regular mode being too inefficient, and once the Alliance took over military governance, even without professional civil servants, the political commissars managed to establish excellent order.

In Solaria, maintaining order alone is an extremely valuable asset.

Seeing that Imperial Tax was being paid and the Rage Bear Legion hadn’t truly interfered with local development, and still followed the directives of the superior Command Center to go wherever needed for war. Eventually, the Empire acquiesced to all of this.

They didn’t grant explicit authorization for the Rage Bear Legion and the Alliance Army to manage these worlds, but chose to acquiesce.

They tacitly allowed them to obtain supplies locally from these planets. When there weren’t enough physical materials to supplement the army, at least after collecting funds, they could use the money to find Empire merchants to exchange it for various war supplies needed by the military.

…

This is how the war led by the Alliance in Solaria unfolded.

And for the Alliance, out of the three wars in this decade, the last one was actually the most crucial for the Alliance itself.

The Solaria War was fought for the Empire; the Beastman War threatened the Eastern Cosmos Domain, but hadn’t reached the Alliance’s homeland yet.

But only this war against the Dark Spirit Race was fought within the Alliance’s borders, in the northern part of the Spiderweb Domain.

In addition, the form of warfare was also one unfamiliar to the Alliance.

Previously, the Alliance’s engagements mostly involved both sides openly confronting each other in full-force combat.

But the battles with the Dark Spirit Race were different.

This group of Spirit Race pirates operated secretly between stars, making it very difficult to spot them.

Using their unique Star Gate system, they conducted interstellar journeys, appearing and disappearing mysteriously. They specifically targeted newly opened trade routes by the Alliance for lightning raids. Their tactical cunning was extreme: using toxin crystal cannons to incapacitate merchant ship engines, abducting entire crews to make living sculptures, and finally leaving twisted Subspace beacons to lure the rescue fleets into traps.

The Alliance suffered considerable losses at the initial encounters with these Spirit Race pirates.

However, in a ’Black Abyss Sea Battle’, Gu Hang personally took action.

He couldn’t stand the pirates, who were increasingly intruding on the Alliance’s territory for trouble.

Calling in his son, he borrowed the residual abilities left by the Magic Lord of Thousand Changes to deduce and calculate the wave patterns utilized by the Spirit Race pirates for Star Gate transitions, then set up a triple gravitational trap in the Black Abyss Star System, using a convoy transporting supplies and people as bait, seemingly ignorant, to fall into the enemy’s ’trap’.

From there, things went very smoothly.

The appearing pirates were caught by the gravitational trap, significantly slowing their speed. The merchant ships took the opportunity to flee, while the main forces of the Alliance ambush fleet, utilizing the Star Realm Tunnel, jumped into the Black Abyss Star System, rushing in at high speed.

In this battle, the Alliance’s most powerful warship—’Queen of Glory’ of the East, made a grand debut!

More than 67 Dark Spirit Race pirate ships were reduced to cosmic debris.

The treasures accumulated from plundering fell into the hands of the Alliance.

The greatest gain, or an important lesson to the Dark Spirit Race, was that the Alliance also seized the enormous Star Gate arranged in the ’Black Abyss Star System’ by the Dark Spirit Race.

To prevent it from being utilized by humans, the Star Gate swiftly began to close from within.

But before it closed, the Alliance Fleet, especially the ’Queen of Glory’, fiercely fired several heavy shells into it.

These actions likely caused enormous damage to the city of ’Comoros’ on the opposite side of the Star Gate.

These two wars revealed deep-seated contradictions within the Alliance military system: needing to maintain the political correctness of being “Loyal Subjects of the Empire” while carving out a living space outside the Empire’s system. When the military-governed planets in Solaria produced the first entirely self-built “Xuan Bird-class” cruiser, the Imperial Navy Command suddenly “generously” incorporated it into the Solar Fleet—a method already implicitly understood by both parties, maneuvering to both draw Alliance military-industrial capacity and curb their fleet expansion.

But what truly unsettled the Empire was the “asymmetrical warfare” mindset honed by the Alliance in warfare. When the Dark Spirit Race attempted to use dimensional mines to blockade the northern Star Domain, the Alliance Commerce Department launched the “Trade Faith Plan”, openly granting 80% of Lingze Star’s futures trading rights to Merchant Wanderers, forcibly paving twelve new routes with a sea of merchant ships. This transformation of economic means into weapons and commercializing warfare is quietly reshaping the power structure of the Galaxy.

This transformation of economic means into weapons and commercializing warfare is quietly reshaping the power structure of the Galaxy. This transformation of economic means into weapons and commercializing warfare is quietly reshaping the power structure of the Galaxy.