"Report the number of Tyrants and Stalkers," Marcus commanded. The Ishimura had life monitoring devices installed on every T103 Tyrant and Stalker to track their status in real time.
"There are 872 T103 Tyrants remaining, 476 of which have entered a berserk state. There are 1068 Stalkers remaining; more than half have run out of weapons and ammunition and are beginning to engage in close combat, with 467 having entered a bestial state," a crew member immediately reported the accurate numbers and status.
"Not bad," Marcus nodded with satisfaction. The first and second batches of T103 Tyrants and Stalkers that boarded the garbage ships originally numbered over four thousand. Now, after only a dozen minutes, their numbers had already halved. But similarly, the orks had also suffered huge losses. The orks on the entire great hammer-class battlecruiser had left their posts without authorization and joined the melee. Therefore, the ork warship that originally posed the greatest threat to the Ishimura did not attack. This gave the Ishimura more time to inflict damage.
After replicating the method and engulfing one of the garbage ships in nuclear flames, another garbage ship was also heavily damaged by the Ishimura's saturation bombardment. "Retreat and set up booby traps," Marcus ordered. Due to the successive saturation fire attacks on three cruiser-class garbage ships, the Ishimura's conventional missile and nuclear bomb reserves were running low. Although the laser cannon array and ADS railgun could still fire, the laser beams and shells they fired could not penetrate the void shield of the remaining great hammer-class battlecruiser. Of course, the main reason for the Ishimura's retreat was that the space near Demerium was becoming increasingly unstable, indicating that a larger fleet of orks was about to emerge from the Warp.
However, although the missiles had been fired, the Ishimura still had many high-power booby traps piled up. They were enough to cause a certain amount of harassment to the ork fleet that had just emerged from the Warp. Immediately, the Ishimura began to turn its bow, and its pulse engines started at full speed. While maneuvering to avoid the attacks of the heavily damaged ork garbage ship, it scattered a large number of booby traps in the void. "All booby traps have been deployed." "Return to Avarax." The Ishimura began to return to Avarax at a rapid speed. Soon, the Ishimura arrived in orbit around Avarax and returned to the protection of the armed merchant ships. The sailors who saw the Ishimura return safely all cheered in victory.
Not only that, the Ishimura also spread the battle report and image data of sinking two ork warships and heavily damaging one ork warship to the armed merchant ships and the ground of Avarax. This would greatly boost the morale of the defenders.
"Connect Alexia to the communication channel." Immediately, Alexia, and the other senior Commanders responsible for commanding this operation, were connected to a unified channel. "I believe you have seen the Ishimura's battle report. The remaining number of ork warships is still unknown, so be prepared for all combat." "Yes!" Marcus himself was not an expert in troop deployment, and he was very self-aware of this. Therefore, after saying a few words to boost morale, Marcus stopped speaking and observed the various Commanders making their final discussions on the combat strategy.
Currently, the forces under Marcus's command on Avarax are as follows: Approximately 5.2 million regular PDF Soldiers with combat capabilities. The number of young and strong reserve soldiers is three to four times the above figure. The number of small heavy weapons such as mortars and heavy machine guns cannot be estimated. As for large-caliber artillery, the number is already close to six digits. More than half of them were produced in Avarax's factories and repaired from damaged artillery left behind by the Astra Militarum when they withdrew. The rest came from the United Government of the Resident Evil world.
In addition to artillery, the United Government also provided a lot of armored vehicles and main battle tanks. The United Government used these armaments to obtain a lot of contribution points from the Universal Union and exchanged them for some technology from the Ishimura and the Avatar World. As soon as these armaments arrived at Avarax, they underwent localization modifications. They were fitted with heavier armor and more turrets and heavy machine guns, with the main focus being to maximize firepower.
In addition to military aid, the United Government also signed a Psychic Contract with the Universal Union and sent many "volunteer" soldiers. Unlike the ICA of the Avatar World, the United Government clearly trusted the Universal Union more. It is worth mentioning that most of these United Government soldiers were not hard-working infantry units; instead, they were safer gunners and tank crew members.
These soldiers signed a temporary Spiritual Energy Contract, and once the war against the orks ended, the surviving soldiers would be returned to the Resident Evil world. Marcus also intended to take this opportunity to formally show the United Government a part of the "Grimdark Universe" he had previously described to them, aiming to completely bind the United Government to the Universal Union.
"Large-scale Warp fluctuations detected, a large number of orks warship signals appeared above Demerium!" Without making Avarax wait long, more orks warships that had just finished their Warp voyage soon appeared above Demerium. According to detection, their number had reached twenty-one. For the time being, no more orks warships have emerged from the Warp. Among them, there were twelve small garbage ships of frigate and destroyer class, six light cruisers and regular cruiser-class garbage ships, and three battlecruisers, one of which was the great hammer-class battlecruiser already engaged in the T103 Tyrants' boarding battle. As for the flagship of this ork fleet, the people on Avarax temporarily had no way of knowing, only being able to confirm that it was one of the other two battlecruisers.
"This battle can be fought." For an ordinary Hive City, more than twenty orks warships would undoubtedly bring destruction. But for Avarax, which was already heavily guarded, this battle could definitely be fought. After salvaging and recovering the wrecks of several garbage ships sunk and heavily damaged by the Ishimura, the orks fleet advanced majestically towards Avarax, yelling "Waaagh!"
In orbit around Avarax, in addition to the Ishimura, which was undergoing emergency ammunition resupply, there were also five heavily modified armed merchant ships and two frigate-class small pirate ships. However, in addition to these ships belonging to Marcus's command, there was another group of warships painted red, also suspended in orbit around Avarax. Those were the Adeptus Mechanicus warships belonging to the Biological Magos Halifus.