Warhammer 40K in a box

Chapter 198 The Rostov Criminal

When Rostov II was developed more than 70 years ago, the Ministry of Internal Affairs originally wanted to create a new penal world.

To this end, they retired a group of Valhalla Ice Warriors here, and subsequently a large number of criminals were transported here continuously.

After all, this is a planet that has been plagued by the undead and has a harsh environment, making it a perfect place to be used as a punishment world.

However, the development of the matter deviated slightly from the arrangements of the Ministry of the Interior.

The pilgrims of the state religion have arrived.

They considered Rostov II to be one of the end points of their pilgrimage.

Although not many people came here, over the decades the state religion had sent more than one billion pilgrims here, and eventually took root in this desolate Gobi and desert.

They even built two large cities in the desert.

But that doesn't mean there were fewer criminals on board the Rostov II.

Because the Ministry of the Interior still regards this place as an important base for dealing with criminals, a large number of criminals are sent here every once in a while.

These criminals mainly come from other planets in the Mariupol sector.

They were arrested by the Ministry of Justice for crimes ranging from minor to serious and were sentenced to hard labor after being tried.

So these people were loaded onto the Ministry of Justice's transport ship and transported all to the punishment world of Mariupol.

However, Mariupol does not have a special penal world, or rather, Rostov is the penal world previously planned by the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Although this world no longer exists as a penal world due to the influence of the state religion, it still has the function of handling criminals on behalf of the Mariupol sector.

After all, if you really count it, in the new star region of Mariupol, only the environment here in Rostov is worse.

In the past, these criminals were stuffed into mines in the desert by the previous governor and forced to mine ore.

Rostov's resources are very scarce, and even if these criminals dig for their lives, they won't find much ore. The purpose is simply to give them something to do so that they don't riot.

But even so, the main task of the Rostov Defense Force was to suppress the riots instigated by these criminals.

However, even so, there were still many criminals who were lucky enough to escape from the mines through riots and became wanderers in the desert.

These people are not numerous, but they have no fixed place of residence. They usually live around the city and rely on some small oases for survival. From time to time, they will also attack and plunder the surrounding areas of the city to obtain necessary survival supplies.

The previous generation of governors also organized a defense force to suppress the rebellion, but the effect was not good.

On the one hand, these guys are disorganized. As long as the defense forces are dispatched, they will flee in all directions and escape into the depths of the desert, making it difficult to pursue them.

On the other hand, the cost of deploying the defense forces is too high. The losses caused by the regular army being mobilized are much greater than those caused by the looting of these vagrants.

In this situation, the former governor could only wait until the vagrants became too violent before sending out the defense forces to suppress them and prevent them from going too far.

After Chen Xi became governor, the issue of homeless people still existed, but it was no longer a priority for him. They were basically dealt with by Rachel. However, what Rachel called "handling" was just occasionally mobilizing one or two companies of defense forces to disperse the homeless people. It was still difficult to truly wipe them out.

However, with the promulgation of Chen Xi's new decree, a large number of militia reserves were organized, and the task of dealing with vagrants became easier.

These militia reserves are trained by retired veterans of the defense forces. After mastering basic weapon use and shooting skills, they will be sent to areas around the city where vagrants are rampant to clear out the vagrants.

These militias are not regular troops themselves, so naturally they do not have the burden of military pay.

Although providing them with weapons and equipment is an expense, the weapons they use are not regular army weapons, but some relatively low-quality gang weapons.

But even so, these things are much better than the dirty guns in the hands of the wanderers, which are comparable to the greenskins' dirty guns.

So theoretically speaking, the Governor's Office only needs to be responsible for the not-so-heavy logistical costs of these militias and can use them to deal with the vagrants.

The benefits of doing this are naturally very obvious. First of all, it clears out vagrants and stabilizes social order around the city.

Although this may not seem like a big deal, it is still very helpful for improving the overall prosperity of the city.

After all, if a city is constantly harassed around it, it will have a great impact on the city's development.

Another benefit is undoubtedly that it trains the militia and gives them certain practical combat experience.

No matter how much experience they can gain from fighting wanderers, at least these militiamen dare to shoot at people and can face the enemy's corpses without any negative emotions. They are already qualified soldiers.

In this way, the Governor's Office only needs to spend very few resources to obtain a very high-quality source of troops.

This is the most cost-effective way to increase the number of troops as much as possible without increasing military spending.

Once these people are officially recruited, it will only take a short time for them to be transformed into excellent defense soldiers. After fighting a few tough battles or having a qualified political commissar, they will soon be able to become qualified members of the Star Army.

For Chen Xi, this undoubtedly greatly enhanced Rostov's war potential. Even if he encountered a major war, he would dare to recruit troops.

Of course, if Chen Xi is cruel enough, he can actually throw the criminals sent from other planets directly into the desert, let them merge with the wanderers to improve the strength of the wanderers, thereby serving as a better whetstone and forging a better militia team for Rostov.

But Chen Xi didn't do that in the end.

After all, as a judge, he knew very well what crimes the criminals in the empire were charged with.

Sometimes, just a few foul words may be classified as a serious crime and the person may be sent to the punishment planet.

You have to know that the Ministry of Justice is very busy and often does not seriously examine cases, not to mention that many people in Xiachao do not receive fair judicial treatment at all.

But this is not an area that Chen Xi can intervene in. He can ensure that these criminals are treated relatively humanely, and not treating them as consumables is already a mercy.

Even so, Chen Xi still selected 100,000 criminals with more serious crimes and sent them to Christen. He transformed all of them into mechanical servants and used them as workers in the orbital star ring.

With this group of workers, the construction of the orbital ring has been accelerated a lot, and it is showing a trend of being completed ahead of schedule.

(End of this chapter)