After a lot of discussions the plan was now to ferry 150,000 PDF from the 4th Planet to help with the fight in the 5th planet. We could not take more than these number as due to the invasion a lot of the Hive gangs were specially active. This has meant a delay as we do not have any ships designed for troop transport hence it will take around 5 days to transfer the PDF and their equipment over.
One of the good news is that the 4 Imperium Frigates have now been boarded by a squad of Sunspears each. This means we our fleet has expanded in numbers. Now we can also think about recruiting from the local PDF to form 8 new regiments (24,000 Guards men) after the war has been won.
The Plan is to attack the two lightly attacked Hives: Grot and Beli. We will then be able to draw another 100,000 PDF in total from these two Hives. Part of the reason behind this is to have a secure rear area and we also have not been able to get any data regarding the numbers of orks attacking the other 3 hives. If we wait to get reliable data it would be too long/difficult.
We do not expect the fight in these two hives to last long it should be over in 1-2 days. For each Hive we are investing 60 sun spears + 15,000 Guards men + 75,000 PDF (4th planet) + 100,000 local PDF. Overkill is the word. I am keeping 40 sun spears and 5,000 Guards men in reserve.
Attack on Hive Grot and Hive Beli: The attack went as expected we had overwhelming force and we were able to kill nearly all of the orks in these two hives. The sun spears were used to smash through any barricades or strong point and then the Guardsmen would pour through with the PDF. This time there was no careful build up the plan was to attack like a torrent and finish this as soon as possible. the fighting was pretty much over after a day and a half. Now we are resting and planning for the next push.
While we were busy here the Orks have mostly abandoned the Hive Krans and Hive Perth. instead they have gathered together in Hive Kutsk. From what intel we have at least over 250,000 orks were seen going into Hive Kutsk, that's on top of how ever many orks were already present.
This has changed thing significantly. The original plan was to attack each hive one by one with each hive being won meant more numbers we could aim towards the next battle. Now instead I will have to attack Hive Kutsk as soon as possible other wise we will loose this Hive also.
The new plan is to use the orbital bombardment/ sun spears to secure landing zone. From there we will get around 200,000 PDF and the 35,000 Guards men to secure/expand the landing zone. After that it will be heavy fighting through the layers of the Hive to kill the Orks. This is going to a grind feast as the concentration the orks means stronger waggghhhh. I have arranged for additional PDF troops to be sent as reinforcement from the 4th Planet and the recently cleared hives.
Fighting in Hive Kutsk
The orbital bombardment had created a fairly clean landing zone. The thunder hawks screamed as they dove in and squads of Sun spears jumped out with jump packs blazing away. Following them were dense streams of Drones. It looked like fireflies flying to fires except that these fireflies snuffed out any fire they came across. We were able to secure the landing zone within 3 hours and had started ferrying in the PDF/Guardsmen. We had also started sending in the drones but they were being shot down too quickly. We were going in blind.
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We started of with squads of Sun spears again acting as spear tips. They would go in and then the PDF/ Guards men would follow through. This worked for the first few days but then changed as we went deeper into the hive. Now it was getting harder and harder to push in. There were too many ambushes, a zone you thought was secure would be over run by Orks coming through another hole or through the roof. It was a night mare to fight through. We started seeing a lot of Nobz orks, a lot more than we expected. Another thing that we started seeing was the orks had started ripping out the weapons from the drones and started using them to attack us. This was an unwelcome surprise, we would have to build the drones with anti tamper/ auto destruct in the future. For now we just had to be more careful on how we used the drones.
We had our first Sun Spears death, the corridor that the squad was going through was blown up which separated one of the Sun Spears. A group of Mega Nobz then jumped him. Although he manged to kill a few he was overwhelmed and the support could not get through on time. So far the death/disabled estimates for this battle were: Sunspears (1 death, 5 recovering), Guardsmen (600 death, 1000 disabled/recovering) and PDF (42,000 death, 20,000 disabled/recovering). This was the tenth day of fighting and we were ruining out of bodies. New PDF reinforcement were inbound but a change in tactic was needed.
Discussing various tactics we have come to an agreement. It will be castle defence/raid tactics. We are going to pause the push and create secure strong bases(castle) which will then be used by the Sun spears to raid deeper. The idea is to push in create a strong base then raid around the base and weaken the orks before pushing forward again. This was going to be a slow push inwards and upwards. This also let us save any surviving citizens. At the pace we are going this will be a multi months battle.
Another slight change to the plan was to commit 50 sun spears to attacking/supporting the Hive Krans and Hive Perth. They would be supporting the local PDF to clear out these hives as most of the orks had moved out.
As this was going to take a while I have tasked 5 Frigates (the recently requisitioned Imperial Frigates) to return back to the Bermuda system to send an update (update the drones, feedback on the equipment's etc), get more equipment (specially the Guardsmen equipment so we can found another 8 regiments) and to replace some of the crew from the requisitioned Frigates.
5 Months Later
The death/disabled estimates for the battle: Sunspears (3 death, 1 recovering), Guardsmen (900 death, 4000 disabled/recovering) and PDF (95,000 death, 30,000 disabled/recovering).
The Hive Kutsk has been cleared of Orks. Unfortunately we had another 2 deaths among the sun spears. As the previous deaths it was due to them being separated and being overwhelmed. For future I will be looking into making variants on the terminator armour. See if we can make similar type of armour that gives us much more protection as agility/speed is less important when having these kind of fights.
The 5 frigates came back with supplies. There are enough Guards men equipment hence we have started recruitment from the Veteran PDF units that fought with us.
We are going to take a month of rest where we will finish recruiting the new regiments, look around for tech/knowledge we can take, get updated maps and also look into getting a trade route set up.
It has been 7 months and now we are ready to move on to our next target. This one is the possible Daemon infested system, I am not looking forward to this but best I face them now rather than later. From this system it should take around 2 months of warp travel to get there. As we planned we will be coming out way out side the system and be travelling in stealth mode. We have grown bigger and stronger, I hope to repeat the process again.