The Empire begins with the Fourth Scourge.

2383: Bloody Battle of Fangduo (V)
The black core spaceship started its reverse thrust engine and slowly descended. This huge spherical spaceship with a diameter of 1029 meters landed steadily on the ground. However, it did not open the hatch from the bottom of the spaceship like an ordinary Rookery Hooker-class battleship and release a large number of robots.

But this core spaceship was completely torn apart!
This was obviously a modified core spaceship, the entire hull was divided into four parts, completely exposing the internal structure. And in the middle of the core spaceship, there was a terrifying and disgusting insect nest! !
This nest is like a small mountain, even hundreds of meters high. The surface is covered with a layer of barbed, hideous cuticle, and in the cracks of the cuticle, countless mutant substances are constantly wriggling.

After the core spacecraft was deployed, the nest immediately stretched out its body, extending countless tentacles ranging from three or four meters to more than twenty meters, and hundreds of meters long, and then pierced directly into the surrounding ground! The tentacles kept squirming, and the ground began to bulge. Obviously, these tentacles were extending rapidly underground.

At the same time, the 10 behemoth-class battlecruisers that cooperated with the landing were not idle either. They immediately released dozens of transport planes, dropped off the Marines on board, launched ghost fighters to provide cover, and then rushed towards a nearby energy plant.

As the fierce battle unfolded in the direction of the energy plant, Alexia Ashford also stood up from the bridge of the core spacecraft. As she stood up, a flame passed through her body, burning all her clothes, revealing the fair and beautiful body of a 14-year-old girl.

Then, mutated tissues appeared on her body like armor, as if countless leaves and vines gradually covered the surface of her body. Even her golden hair turned into leaves that looked more hideous, yet had a strange beauty.

The beautiful 14-year-old talented girl disappeared, and the one standing here was Veronica's queen!
Three pairs of cicada wings emitting colorful light grew out from her back, vibrating rapidly, and she flew towards the top of the hill-like nest.

As if welcoming the return of the princess, a crack appeared on the top of the nest, and layers of tissue like petals protruded from it, which looked surprisingly beautiful.

Alexia Ashford stood on the petals, as the petals wrapped around her one by one. She laughed out loud, "Hahahahaha! Ahahahahahahahaha! This is the ultimate form of the Veronica virus! This entire planet will become my world! Hahahahaha!!"

Amid the wild laughter, the petals completely wrapped Alexia and sank into the nest. As the huge cracked mouth of the nest gradually closed, it seemed as if nothing had happened.

However, immediately afterwards, the entire huge nest suddenly shrank, and the huge body of several hundred meters began to twitch violently. The mutated substances began to emit a blood-red light, expanding and contracting like breathing, which was extremely weird.

At this time, the Behemoth-class battlecruisers in the sky were firing at the ground, and the defenders of the Fangduo planet and the armed engineering robots who came from all directions had no chance to approach the power station before they were completely blown to pieces. The ground troops also rushed in quickly, killing all the staff, destroying all the engineering robots, and completely occupying the power station.

"Calling the mother ship Suzuran! This is the 4th Marine Brigade, we have occupied the power station! This place has been cleared!" The Marine Corps commander opened the communication and called the warship in the sky.

[Received! We have forwarded the message to... uh, Ms. Alexia. Please continue to stay where you are until you get the latest instructions! ] The battleship in the sky replied immediately.

However, at this moment, the entire power station suddenly seemed to have an earthquake! The ground shook violently, and the Marines quickly looked for cover and crouched down to protect their bodies.

But the earthquake did not last long. The ground near the core of the power station was suddenly pushed open by an extremely powerful force, and even the ground hardened by the metal structure could not withstand it.

All I saw were huge tentacles extending out from the ground, and then these tentacles began to split into more numerous and extremely slender small tentacles, which then wrapped around the core of the power station.

Not only that, the power station workers who were killed in the previous battle and even the destroyed engineering robots, these debris were grabbed by the tentacles very flexibly and then absorbed into the body through the tentacles.

"This...what is this thing..." The horrific scene shocked the Marines.

When the huge nest appeared from the core spaceship just now, they were already terrified. Now they saw these tentacles absorbing energy and "eating" the corpses, even the robot wreckage! This situation has exceeded the bottom line of what they can accept as intelligent creatures! !

At this time, a tentacle crawled towards them, standing upright like a poisonous snake, and then it actually opened an eye directly from its hand!
The eye was spinning around, even bigger than the wheel of the Warthog. It stared at the commander and suddenly spoke in a woman's voice, "Gather your troops, coordinate with the warships, and attack the next energy center. Soon, my descendants will come to help you."

"Ah...ah...yes, yes!" The commander was at a loss, and after a flustered moment, he finally stood at attention and saluted. Then he led his soldiers away from the power station, which had begun to become extremely scary and weird.

At the same time, countless tiny holes opened up in Alexia's nest, and countless mosquitoes flew out. There were tens of millions of these mosquitoes, and they even formed a black cloud in the sky!
The black cloud circled the nest twice before dispersing in all directions. The black cloud gradually became thinner and its area became larger and larger, and finally disappeared completely into the sky.

These mosquitoes are everywhere, flying towards nearby factories and residential areas. Even though the entire planet has been under martial law, all factories have been closed, and all workers have hidden underground, there are still some fish that slip through the net.

The workers who were bitten by mosquitoes soon developed fever and dizziness, then they fell to the ground and struggled violently, and then soon mutated and turned into terrible monsters!

The mutated monsters created chaos and murder everywhere, destroying factories, slaughtering workers, and destroying robots.

The defense system of Fangduo Planet is based on industrial zones. The defense commanders of these industrial zones immediately organized KX security robots as the main force, cooperating with countless engineering robots' defense forces to encircle and suppress these mutant monsters.

At the same time, comprehensive disinfection and epidemic prevention measures were strengthened in all areas where biological and chemical alarms occurred, and a large number of mosquitoes were also cleared and killed at this time.

If such an "ant colony" were placed on other planets, it would definitely cause chaos on the entire planet. However, on a completely industrialized fortress planet like Fangduo, the results that could be achieved were minimal.

However, Alexia was really just harassing them.

She is the T-Veronica virus formed by mixing the DNA of plants and insects, especially a very rare ancient queen ant, with the ancestral virus. One of the most important characteristics of the mutant organisms of this virus is that they can form a basic social structure like an ant colony. Therefore, the use of the Veronica virus is completely different from that of the T virus. The T virus and even the mutant G virus use the characteristics of the virus itself to create biological weapons, but these biological weapons are just weapons, as the name suggests.

But what the Veronica virus created was an army, a society, and a race!!

From that huge nest, deformed monsters began to emerge one by one. These monsters were basically human-shaped, about 2 to 3 meters tall, but their appearances were completely different and all extremely distorted.

These monsters were all mutated very thoroughly, with sharp claws or tentacles growing on their bodies, and their muscles were extremely developed, as if they were filled with terrifying power like iron. Some monsters even had pus bags filled with green liquid on their backs, which could obviously spray these toxic liquids over long distances.

Some monsters have some robotic parts on their bodies, such as mechanical legs and arms, but these structures mainly only play a supporting role. The real driving forces of these mechanical parts are the mutated structures.

You can even see some monsters holding blaster rifles! These monsters holding blaster rifles are basically mutated corpses with relatively intact heads. Because there is still some information left in the brain, they will instinctively use firearms.

Some of the mutant monsters were still wearing the white polymer alloy armor of the Imperial Stormtroopers. Some tentacles and mutant substances stretched out from the gaps and cracks in the armor, making them look even more terrifying.

In just a few hours, the number of these monsters had reached tens of thousands! Then, under the command of Alexia's supreme will, they moved towards the nearby strategic target.

This is not the end. Some larger cracks appeared above the nest, and then some flying monsters crawled out of the cracks, making a terrible scream, and then flapped their wings and flew away into the distance.

Most of these flying monsters look like scary insects, with wings similar to those of insects, but their bodies are covered with barbed cuticles and have extremely sharp claws that can even tear through metal!

The nearest processing plant to the nest was immediately attacked. These mutant creatures rushed forward fearlessly. They were stronger and faster than the engineering robots! Even if they were shot by blaster rifles, it was difficult to kill them. The parts that were shot and exploded soon began to mutate a second time, growing some new strange organs, and then continued to roar back to the battle.

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The Imperial Stormtroopers defending the area almost immediately lost their morale when they saw these terrifying mutant monsters. Especially when they saw these monsters collecting corpses, their fear reached its peak! Many soldiers turned around and ran away, not daring to fight these monsters head-on.

The only ones still left on the battlefield were clone soldiers and robots.

……

In the outer orbit of the planet Fangduo, the Second Task Force of the Kingdom of Dawn.

Now under the command of Severance Tann, the Second Task Force has completely blockaded the planet Fangduo and cut off all external contacts of the planet.

The current Fangduo planet not only cannot get any resources and supplies from the outside world, but also cannot get any reinforcements. The Second Combined Fleet has enough troops to ensure that this blockade is thorough and complete.

At this time, because the North had just experienced a defeat in the Battle of the Mararian Alliance, the only main mobile fleet of the Galactic Empire was in the hands of Darth Vader, and Darth Vader obviously would not engage in a decisive battle with the Dawn Kingdom's main fleet, which was in its peak state, at this time.

Therefore, Fangduo Planet can no longer count on any form of reinforcements.

Fangduo is a completely industrialized planet. In other words, there is almost no agricultural production here. It is not impossible to say that there is no agricultural production at all, as there are some automated hydroponic farms here, but it is impossible to feed the 50 billion people on the planet.

In the previous operations, Severance Tann had sent a fleet of Ghost Fighters and Banshee Fighters to bomb these hydroponic farms. Hydroponic farms are not like other industrial facilities. Most of them are built on the ground, so they are easily destroyed.

As a result, famine is now occurring on the planet Fangduo.

Severance Tann set up checkpoints in the occupied areas to accept all residents who were willing to surrender. Under the threat of hunger, many people surrendered.

Under such circumstances, just as Severance Tann said, it would take about a year to ensure the capture of many planets.

In fact, what she was most worried about was not whether she could capture the city, but she wanted to shorten the time as much as possible.

Because one year is enough time for the Galactic Empire to raise a new main fleet. However, the Kingdom of Dawn can only produce one-fourth to one-fifth of the warships of the Galactic Empire in the same period of time.

In fact, it was a miracle that the production capacity of both sides could be brought close to this extent in just over 20 years. You have to know that when the Clone Wars just started, the gap in industrial production capacity between the two sides was measured in thousands or even hundreds of times!
But war will not reward you for the miracles you create. The production capacity and technology of both sides are still the decisive factors in determining victory or defeat.

"General, Ms. Alexia has built her own nest near the Odal Mountains on the planet Fondo..." The adjutant came over and said to Severance Tann, his expression still a little frightened, "Excuse me, General... this nest really is... is..."

"Disgusting, isn't it?" Severance Tann sneered and completed what he dared not say. (End of this chapter)