Chapter 328 05.0327: "The Astra Militarum Offensive"

Two stars, one large and one small, hang high in the sky. In the cloudless weather for many days, the merciless sunlight gradually melts the snow on Highway 54, and the maglev track beside the highway sparkles with metallic luster in the sunlight.

However, the snow on the surrounding fields was still very thick, and the calf-deep snow was a considerable obstacle for any troops marching in non-mechanized ground vehicles.

According to frontier reconnaissance, the core area of ​​​​Far Star is divided into a peripheral agricultural area and a planetary-level organic processing plant area with an area of ​​​​the same level as the continental plate.

The southern front is located in the middle of the orchards, forests and large mechanized agricultural plains in the peripheral agricultural area.

The rebels on the planet have also learned through various means that the Astra Militarum has landed on the planet's surface from orbit. At this moment, the rebels' planetary headquarters is deploying and dispatching tens of millions of troops.

Most of them were light infantrymen lacking vehicles, and even half of the guns in their hands were old-fashioned weapons such as automatic rifles of the planetary defense forces.

The Astra Militarum's battle strategy was to utilize its own higher degree of mechanization, advance the front lines from five war zones respectively, cut the rebels into several groups, and then cooperate with the Imperial Navy's carrier-based aircraft and orbital bombardment support to encircle and annihilate them.

26 kilometers away from the Southern Theater Astra Militarum landing site.

Rebel troops stationed in a complex of underground bunkers are pouring out of small garrisons.

Although the Imperial Navy had previously destroyed one of their large ground military stations, the remaining troops quickly took refuge in a small military station with an underground structure.

Relying on the reserve supplies inside, they escaped the overwhelming bombing of the Imperial Navy Air Force in the early stages of the battle, completed initial reorganization, and contacted the planetary headquarters.

Now, they have received orders to deploy defenses on Highway 54, the spearhead of the southern theater of attack.

Rebel commanders in the theater were well aware of the importance of Highway 54.

It is the blood vessel that transports agricultural products from the outer agricultural areas to the inner organic industrial areas. Its main roads are extremely spacious and have been specially hardened and load-bearing, allowing convoys of giant trucks with a single load of thousands of cubic meters to run over them and tow trailers loaded with agricultural products into the organic factories, making it very suitable for mechanized warfare.

There are six rows of train tracks next to the highway, which further improves transportation efficiency and makes it an important transportation hub in itself.

The rebel commander deduced that with such good transportation conditions, the Astra Militarum would deploy their armored forces here as the spearhead of the attack.

Highway 54 front.

"Move! Pigs! Go plant anti-tank mines in the snow on the road."

A junior rebel officer yelled, kicking the rebel soldiers forward like livestock. He was brandishing a large, bloodstained machete, and behind him was a crude trophy rack with a few skulls with little flesh left on it.

These officers are not the original owners of their tattered uniforms, but rather their usurpers, and fanatical agitators among the heretical rebels often become commanders and gain some unique spoils of victory at the beginning of the riot.

These people's military command capabilities are far inferior to those of the Astra Militarum officers, but their motivation is truly outstanding and the effect is remarkable.

On the highway, hundreds of rebel soldiers were urgently deploying their forces.

They piled up sandbags, erected breastworks, laid barbed wire, and hid various mines, both real and fake, in the snow.

Hundreds of people were also digging trenches on the snow and frozen soil on both sides of the road, building defensive positions and minefields.

Although it is difficult to dig too deep into frozen soil, it is better to have it than not.

The orders they received were to slow down the Astra Militarum's advance, consume its supplies and energy as it broke through layer after layer of defenses along Route 54, and inflict as much damage as possible, thus achieving their operational objectives.

Just as the rebel soldiers were busy setting up their positions, three vehicles equipped with snow-resistant tires were speeding on the road in the distance and gradually approaching.

"I'm freezing to death, you damned Corpse King lackey! Ta-ta!"

A rebel soldier who was leaning on a pickaxe and chewing a handful of snow took the opportunity to curse and looked up to see three small black dots on the distant horizon.

"What is that?" He squinted and looked around in the scorching sunlight.

Soon, one of the armored vehicles stopped and its image became more concrete.

There seemed to be a long pipe on the car, which looked familiar. He seemed to have seen it before. It was very similar to the one driven by those arrogant lobster soldiers next door. What was it called?

The black barrel of the gun was pointed at him.

boom!
Whoosh!
boom!
A gust of wind whistled past, and within a tenth of a second, an explosion occurred in the snow beside the road, sending ice, snow, and flesh flying.

Several traitors at the center of the explosion were also scattered unevenly throughout the position.

The eyeball, dragging a few strands of optic nerve tissue, fell with a plop into the snow in front of the rebel officer, adding a touch of scarlet to the monotonous white.

"Enemy attack! The Corpse King's lackeys!"

A sharp warning came from the sentry in the crudely built watchtower.

"Hurry, hurry, hurry! The Corpse King's lackeys are attacking! Damn it! How can they be so fast! Damn it, the minefield is not yet laid! You pigs! Get to your gun positions! Get to your gun positions! Blow those iron turtles into scrap metal!"

The rebel officer, with blood-painted face, had a distorted expression and was wielding a machete in anger.

The cult rebels dropped their engineering tools and jumped into the constructed trenches.

The heavy weapons team also entered the unfinished artillery position. Although the defense here was also simple, it was better than nothing. "Shake it faster! Aim at the enemy armor!"

The rebel artillery commander shouted and looked at the enemy soldiers on the road through a telescope to confirm the situation and calculate the artillery range.

hum! ——

The attacking armored vehicles dispersed from the road, and the smoke generators on the side spewed out large amounts of thick smoke, which soon covered the entire road. Only the roar of the engines could be heard in the fog.

boom!
Bang!
All of a sudden, the laser cannons and cannons on the battlefield began firing towards where the smoke was spreading.

The rebels fought very hard, stuffing energy blocks and cannon shells into the battery slots and gun barrels one by one.

"Stop! Cease fire!" shouted the rebel officer who sensed something was wrong. He looked through binoculars at the other end of the road, but found that there was no return fire.

However, his voice was drowned out by the roar of artillery fire, and the nervous gunners were still mechanically firing on their own.

After a long while, as the messenger ran to all the artillery positions, the officer's order was finally transmitted throughout the entire front line, and the gunners gradually stopped their actions. At this moment, there was only an eerie silence on the position.

Thick white smoke still filled the snowy highway, blocking all lines of sight. The rebel artillery officers were unable to confirm the effectiveness of their shooting, nor did they know whether the enemy vehicles had been destroyed.

The rebel front was at a loss for a long time in the tense state of war.

The wind is not strong today, the smoke on the opposite side has not yet dissipated, and the pervasive silence brings a heavy sense of oppression.

Everyone knew that the Imperial Army would never give up so easily, but they had no idea what would happen next.

Their confusion and ignorance did not last long, as terrible screams suddenly fell from the sky.

"Enemy artillery fire!"

Before the desperate screams had even died down, dense mortar shells of all sizes and self-propelled earth-shaking artillery shells had already fallen into the rebel defensive positions like raindrops, stirring up circles of snow dust that rose into the sky.

4 kilometers behind the Astra Militarum front line.

The towed quadruple-mounted launchers of the three mortar squads of the rifle company, as well as six firing squads of the Arion-type petrified lizards that had been deployed in the front-line artillery positions ten kilometers away, and twelve earth-shaking cannons launched a massive salvo.

(If the tracks are replaced with large eight-wheeled ones, it will become an Arion-type petrified lizard.)
A dense rain of bullets whistled down from the sky, with no signs of attack. It was obviously a coordinated volley fired by the artillery of the Star Army Battalion attacking this front.

The rebel soldiers heard the whistling of the shells, but it was too late. The supersonic shells were already approaching overhead, and they had no time to hide in the bunkers.

The sudden artillery shells landed on the position where the firing point had already been exposed. The explosion caused by each artillery shell brought with it blood-stained snow, broken limbs, and shattered fragments of internal organs.

Screams and wails echoed throughout the front-line blocking position for an instant, and were then ruthlessly covered by a deafening rumble.

Those rebel infantrymen who were lucky enough not to be killed by shrapnel all took refuge in bunkers.

But the Astra Militarum attacked too quickly, the trenches on the frozen soil were too shallow, and the baffles were not completely fixed, so they could only cope with it with difficulty.

In the distance, the Astra Militarum artillery observers watched as the first round of bullets rained down from the sky, and huge explosions of snowflakes rose from the ground, mixed with flying soil and rocks.

The loose soil piled up around the trench was like being scooped up by a huge shovel and pushed into the trench again.

Many rebel soldiers hiding inside were buried alive. Even if they did not die immediately, the other heretics who were hiding from the shelling with their heads in their hands had no time to care about them and had no time to rescue them.

Many of the breastworks on the highway have only been dragged to the designated installation locations but have not yet been fixed.

The huge shock wave from the earth-shaking cannon shell directly overturned the thick steel plates. Tons of steel plates tilted and fell, killing many heretics hiding behind them.

The rebel officer hiding in the cat-ear cave finally came to his senses at this moment and realized that the three wheeled vehicles were conducting fire reconnaissance, exposing their own artillery positions.

However, the defenses he set up were not limited to what was in front of him.

"Blow up their mortars!" The rebel officer gritted his teeth and shouted into the communication microphone, conveying the order to the mortar position in the rear opposite.

"Yes!"

The rebel mortar positions, which were kept at a safe distance from the forward defensive positions, became busy.

The heretic technical calculator with a black spider-web-like metal heat sink inserted into the back of his head began to reversely estimate the location of the Astra Militarum mortar position through ballistics.

Jiong!
Suddenly, a beam of high-energy laser shot out from the bushes in the surrounding fruit forest covered with snow on the side.

The first blocking line of the heretic rebels on Highway 54, a mortar position built 1 km behind, was attacked by a cold gun while the mortar soldiers were calculating the incoming trajectory and preparing to launch artillery counterattacks.

Seeing the ballistic calculator fall down, the weapons team members who were still waiting for data and orders were dumbfounded.

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(End of this chapter)