Starting from the Planetary Governor - Chapter 1339 - 764: The Alliance’s Six Battle Groups
Chapter 1339: Chapter 764: The Alliance’s Six Battle Groups
The current financial expenditure of the Alliance, aside from military expenses, government spending, and governmental investments, includes a significant sector called special projects.
This encompasses investments in the Glory Queen Battleship, as well as in some smaller-scale projects.
Additionally, it also includes investments in several Starfighter Battle Groups.
They are not part of the Alliance Army, so naturally, the military budget does not cover them.
However, the Alliance indeed needs to sustain them.
This is quite a substantial amount of money.
Currently, there are as many as six Battle Groups aligned with the Alliance.
They are the Phoenix Battle Group, Yellow Springs Gull Battle Group, Blood Shark Battle Group, New World Torch Battle Group, Fury Flame Battle Group, and Dragon King’s Spear Chapter.
Their situations are quite different from each other.
The Phoenix is a Battle Group that has completed its atonement expedition and returned to normalcy. Within the Empire’s Star Warrior Management Agency, they are considered a Ship-Based Battle Group.
For such Battle Groups, they lack a home planet, and they must find ways to collect and gather the funds they need.
If these funds come through employment, gifts, or war commissions, naturally there is no issue.
But relying solely on these means is often insufficient.
When necessary, the Empire might give some leeway, for example, when they request tax from certain Planetary Governors or Star Domain Governments, by turning a blind eye.
Oftentimes, some unscrupulous Battle Groups employ less than honorable methods in this area, with extortion and violent coercion being quite common.
As for the Ship-Based Battle Group’s methods of acquiring funding, whether the Empire can tolerate these less honorable ways, and to what extent, depends on the background of the Battle Group and the ’victim’s’ background. Perhaps the same actions might leave some groups unscathed, while the victims still get severely reprimanded; whereas other groups might end up being thoroughly investigated by the Tribunal, resulting in utter chaos.
In summary, Ship-Based Battle Groups do not have a stable income source. For the Phoenix, being in this situation is actually not much of a problem since the Alliance has always been supporting them.
However, after the Phoenix made outstanding contributions in the Iron Armor War, Gu Hang used this to secure a home planet for the Phoenix—Korolya III.
This did not affect Korolya in any way; the Phoenix does not recruit from Korolya, they do not receive Korolya’s income, nor are they responsible for Korolya’s defense. This so-called ’home planet’ is entirely nominal.
The primary purpose of this maneuver is to gain tax exemption.
Currently, the population scale of Korolya III, after many years of emigration, still stands at 35 billion, having increased rather than decreased. This is mainly due to the Alliance’s pro-natalist policy, coupled with the fact that once the Alliance became wealthy, Korolya was in the ruling core; technologies like Planetary Climate Modification and Eden’s Ecological Technology were applied on Korolya. Furthermore, many of the Alliance’s frontline technologies were directly implemented on the industrally populous Korolya…
All of this greatly improved the overall environment and productivity of the planet. By normal judgment, the development level of this planet being rated as level four is not an exaggeration.
That would mean 14 billion Imperial Tax a year.
Now, having secured this home planet, they are directly exempt from the tax.
The Alliance saved a large sum.
Of course, the resources the Alliance invested into the Phoenix far exceed this amount of money.
But even without this home planet matter, investing in the Phoenix was always something that had to be done, this money was indispensable.
The situation of the Yellow Springs Gull Battle Group is completely similar to that of the Phoenix.
The real Yellow Springs Gull Battle Group has long since vanished; there has been no news of this Battle Group for hundreds or thousands of years. The current Yellow Springs Gull is fundamentally a Shadow Battle Group crafted by Gu Hang using the surplus of 1,000 Phoenix Seeds, wearing the guise of a missing Battle Group. They operate under their name and also participated in the Iron Armor War, and performed well but remained low-key due to their shady nature, unlike the outstanding Phoenix.
The Alliance similarly applied for a home planet for the Yellow Springs Gull. Is there no reward for merit?
The Empire agreed.
Originally, they intended to secure a developed planet to save more tax, but the achievements of the Yellow Springs Gull were insufficient, so the Empire only allocated a world from the Menghe Star Domain.
The Alliance used the same operation as with the Phoenix, where the home planet is merely nominal, purely for tax reduction purposes.
The tax relief brought by the Yellow Springs Gull to the Alliance is only 800 million annually—that’s just an ordinary world with 8 billion population and a development level of 1.
For the Phoenix Battle Group, 14 billion a year still seems insufficient for the Alliance’s investment in them, let alone the 800 million for Yellow Springs Gull, a mere drop in the bucket.
But any saving is still a saving, after all.
As for the New World Torch, Furyflame, and Dragon King’s Spear, these three Battle Groups are quite similar in nature and can be discussed together.
The New World Torch and Furyflame have essentially been annihilated, using the ’secondary Infinite Warrior Seed’ brought by the New World Torch after its surrender to build two groups. But since these groups carry the name of their predecessors, they cannot escape the guilt. They are entirely on an atonement expedition, with over a hundred years of sentence far from over.
Although under the protection of the Alliance, they do not truly have to struggle on the edge of life and death like the Atonement Battle Group, they also cannot hope to achieve tax relief for the Alliance.
Even if in the future, when their sentences are over, they might become Ship-Based Battle Groups like the earlier Phoenix. Unless they achieve some other merit that allows the Alliance to request a home planet from the Empire for tax reduction.
As for the Dragon King’s Spear, although they also were sentenced to an atonement expedition, their sentence is just 15 years, soon to be over.
In theory, they do not necessarily have to follow the Alliance. Once the 15 years are over, they regain their freedom and can go wherever they wish. The Alliance cannot force them to stay.
However, if possible, they would prefer to stay in the Spiderweb Domain.
Their original home planet is already under Alliance control in the Spiderweb Domain. They cannot bear to part with their home planet, as all their members were recruited from ’Long Beard Star’, where they have defended for over a thousand years.
After extensive communication and negotiation with the Dragon King’s Spear, coupled with their inability to part with their home planet, the Dragon King’s Spear agreed to accept the protection of the Alliance, live through the remaining sentence, and be utilized by the Alliance as a Ship-Based Battle Group post-sentence.
And what the Alliance offers is providing Long Beard Star as their station, along with full responsibility for all kinds of support and expenses for their Battle Group.
All circumstances are the same as for the other Battle Groups, except as a Ship-Based Battle Group, they cannot gain tax exemption.
It was at the time of finalizing this agreement that Gu Hang saw the Dragon King’s Spear on his system interface.
