We have all come out of the warp roughly where we aimed for. A bit far away so that we can launch our probes and coast in while we get a better picture of what is going on. We are also deploying stealth probes/comms satellite behind us just in case there is any surprise.
We have been coasting in for a week silently and we have pretty good idea of what's going on. The system is made up of 6 planets with 2 of them being hive worlds. They are the 4th and 5th world closets to the local sun. There seem to light to medium mining going on the other 4 worlds. This system had been hit by a splinter of a bigger wagggh group. Most of the orks suddenly came out of the warp pretty close to the 5th world, or should I say right on top of the world. They smashed through the local defence and over 80% of them have landed on the 5th planet. The other 20% have landed on the 4th planet. There were around 50-100 Ork ships that came out of the warp and currently the invasion force seems to be around 500 thousand orcs. The invasion has been going on for 6 months and reinforcements are expected to arrive in 5-10 years time. I can also see that there are 4 frigates that have survived and are scattered at the far end of the system. If all goes well hopefully I will be able to gather them and requestion them.
Currently there are 29 ships around the planet 5 and 6 ships around the planet 4. As much as I know my ships can handle themselves I am not going to fight 35 ork ships vs 6 Sun Spears ships (mine). By the vox messages that are coming out things are pretty bad in the planet 5, there were 6 hives and 1 of them have already fallen while 3 are being contested. While in planet 4 there are only 3 hives and there is heavy fighting in the 1 of them and medium to light on the other 2 hives. I have asked for battle meeting where we will discuss how we will carry out our attacks.
After a few hours of discussions a initial plan has been made. There is the best case scenario, the worst case scenario and the 'fly by the seat of your pants' plans where I will be forced to make decisions on the fly. Here are the two plans:
Best Case: We have not been detected yet and using the probes that has been deployed we have a very accurate grasp of the Ork ships movement around the planet 4 and 5. If we continue with the stealth approach it will take us another week to get close enough that we can start to engage the ships. From that point if we go active it will take us a day to get to the planet 5. If we are not detected after a week I will wait for another 2-3 days before we start using rail guns to attack them on the orks predicted pattern. We are going for a saturation bombardment while making sure the slugs/shells are hitting at an angle that should make them skip against the Planets atmosphere hence saving them from orbital bombardment that would other wise be carried out by us. We do want to save them rather than burn the world. We will be carrying out the same attack method for the 4th planet.
Worst Case: We are detected way early and all 35 Ork ships turn to attack my fleet. In this case the plan is to start a long chasing battle. We will be scattering a lot of mines and making use of long range weapons to wear them down. We will also be forcing the surviving 4 IOM frigates to join in the fight. Once we have got them down to 10 or less ships we will carry out direct fight including boarding action. In this scenario we are expecting major loses even before we land, with at least 1-2 frigate that might be out of action or having to write it off.
Three days have passed and we have started carrying out the rail gun attacks and we have also launched Missiles that will go active either on command or when they reach close to those ships. We shall keep firing till we have used up at least 30% of our rail guns/ missiles. After that we will go silent and keep coasting in till we are found or the weapons start hitting the Ork ships. The slugs from the rail gun will take another 5-6 hour before we will know if they hit or not while the missiles will take 7-8 hours.
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Big E be praised the first attacks went beautifully. We had over 50% hit rate from the slugs and over 75% hit from the missiles. What that meant was that out of 29 ships around planet 5 there are only 2 limping ships left the other 27 have blown up or crashed into the planet. In the planet 4 all 6 ships have been destroyed. We have started broadcasting to 4 Imperial Frigates to make there way closer to us and help out with the ork. The planet 4 and 5 have been also told us to give us updates about their hives. We have started active burn towards the planet and at this rate we should get there in another 10-12 hours. During this time we will start taking over the planets military and also get some Space marine squads over to the 4 Imperium Frigates.
10 Hours Later
So we have thrashed out agreement between the planetary governor, the 4 Imperial frigates and Sun Spears (us). Going with the principal of concentrating our resource I have insisted on the following battle plan. Hit the easy one first (Planet 4) get any kinks out and then gear up and hit Planet 5 afterwards. The main reason why there was such an issue with fighting the Ork invasion was that it was so sudden/quick that the Ork had manged to get into the Hives. This meant most of the heavy weapon could not be used, it had turned into fighting in cramped, close quarters areas which benefitted the Orks a lot.
Planet 4: Hive Tempest (Heavy Fighting), Hive Loto (Medium Fighting) and Hive Crozo (Light Fighting).
There were around total of 100,000 Orks that had invaded this planet. With around 70,000 Orks hitting Hive Tempest, 25,000 hitting Hive Loto and only around 5,000 hitting Hive Crozo. The first target we were hitting was Hive Tempest. The overall plan was to blood the Guard unit as majority of them had not participated in any war. This way we could get them to be a veteran unit in a short time. This also provided a controlled battle to test the new Guard equipment. The plan A was to land 5 km away in bulk and then do a massive push across the whole front. this way we could push the Orks out in the open where we could use some orbital bombardment to decimate the Orks. If the push stalled then we would be going to plan B. Plan B meant we would bunker down and create strong point with kill zones. Then where possible we would flush the Orks out with heavy use of Drones/Chemicals. Basically where possible Gassing the hell out of them.
Planet 5: Hive Davis (Lost), Hive Krans (Heavy Fighting), Hive Kutsk (Heavy Fighting), Hive Perth (Heavy Fighting), Hive Grot (Light Fighting), Hive Beli (Light Fighting)
Depending on how the battle in Hive Tempest went we would then be able to plan how to fight in Hive: Krans, Kutsk and Perth.
Hive Tempest
The hive at this level was foul in the truest sense. Foul air, land and environment. Any one not using air filter mask would have issues soon. We had all landed now and the scout drones had been deployed to map the warren like corridors. We had meet with the local Planetary Defence Force (PDF) and made sure they knew to follow orders. Comparing our Guard units with the local PDF was looking at day and night. Just the amount of power armour and gear the guard unit had was making the PDF look like a local gang from some savage world.
We had mapped out the engagement route. broadly speaking there would be 3 arrows moving, one straight the other two flanking. As Orks are known to gather where there is fighting, the plan was for the mid unit to draw the orks in by providing a high intense battle field and then eventually the flanking units would be used in a encirclement move. Once all three units are together again then the Space Marines would also be used in order to push the orks back.
In the name of the Emperor: Kill the Xenos! FIGHT for the EMPEROR. Thus the battle was started.