Lazarus wrote:
The point I was making was that ONE Valkyrie with a squad of guardsmen in could have done the job, there was no necessity for the Ghosts mission. I find it hard to believe that Lugo would actually send the entire regiment, plus valuable transport and armour resources (including the two best tank aces of the Pardus forces present) overland on a bloody 18-day round trip through jungles and mountains when the objective could have been achieved in a couple of hours with a dozen men and a Valkyrie. It's just daft.
As mentioned - how do you know ONE Valkyrie woudl be enough to cart them off? There were a score or more of men in the temple. A single Valkyrie MIGHT carry them off, but what about all the artifacts and the devices to keep them secure? You think a corpse as old as Sabbat's would stay intact through a rough and bumpy airlift ride?
And the range issue Stormbringer mentions is a good one. you recall the enemy actually held quite a bit of territry in between the Guard lines and the shrinehold? Where did you expect them to refuel?
And how vulernable IS one Valkyrie to attack by any sor tof anti-air defense (or even some guy with an anti-air missile.)
Point taken, but even with this the mission is pushing credibility a little too far.
Er, how? Given the context of the situation and the book, I don't see anything that was credulous about the mission itself.
Hagia is not only the homeworld of the most holy figure in the entire Segmentum (with the probable exception of Macharius), it's also where her remains are. You seriously believe the Imperium wouldn't give a rats ass about that?
No, I'm saying that they don't attach nearly the level of importance you seem to think that they would to neccesistate diverting airlift resourcecs from the evacuation to this purpose, which is a matter of priorities.
Moreover, we can turn your own logic back against you - if they DO consider the relics important, that merely attaches another set of reasons to the honor guard - security, as well as according the proper respect and honor to the artifacts and priests. And lets not forget politics. Your method would probably run rather contrary to the "all due respect" angle, if anything.
This is of course in addition to the whole political angle (Hark's intervention) and Lugo wanting to scapegoat Gaunt (having Gaunt fail to retrieve the relics would actaulyl benefit his cause.)
I accept that lack of air support on the Imperial side can be explained by hostility towards Gaunt, but what about Chaos forces? They could have assraped the convoy by air with little losses (4 Hydras isn't enough to secure an 80-vehicle-long convoy - you'd need your own air support. Which they don't have.), but didn't, despite significant deployment of ground resources (probably about 15-20,000 infantry total, hundreds of tanks, and it's not as if Chaos are churning out Baneblades two a penny).
It takes special ground-attack craft to generally have a good dhance of attacking a large armoued column. Whereas a couple lightnings could handily take out your hypothetical airlift group. Not exactly comaprable examples, are they?
Furthermore, why would the "honour guard" Gaunt lead neccesariyl warrant the attention of any grround attack aircraft the Infardi might have? compared to the rest of the larger army currently in evacuation?
Besides, even if they DIDN'T have aircraft, an airlift group woudl still be vulnerable to anti-air weapons of many kinds (guns, lasers, missiles, man-portable or otherwise.)
Can line-of-sight comms be jammed? That'd have to be some pretty physics-defying jamming, since there was a fleet in orbit which could serve as a relay. Lack of orbital bombardment is also noted, but again this could be put down to Gaunt's disfavour.
..... ARe you serious? We can jam RADAR and radio waves, whcih are ALSO line of sight. You can even jam satellite signals. What teh bloody fuck made you think the concept was "physics defying" exactly? Have you never heard of "electronic warfare" or "electronci coutnermeasures?"
Officers point is taken, but I maintain that having only a Colonel-Commissar, a Colonel, a Major and a Captain (forgot about Daur, who wasn't even a Ghost until Vervunhive) in a regiment above Sergeant rank is daft. Officers are there for a reason, scouts or no.
To which again I will point out -
a - The Ghosts are light infantry, and a fairly independently-minded sort at that. An over-abundance of officers for what are rather small regiments (compared to groups like the Jantine or Volpone, which can number 10,000+) would actually be a detrimental thing, given their roles and duties.
This is hardly unprecedented in 40K. The Ghosts seem to behave alot like Junge fighter regiments like the Catachans and ARmageddon jungle fighters, both of which are highly independent groups who tend to frown greatly on the "officer class" as it were. (The Catachans tend to be pretty damn democratic in the running of their regiments - they don't have actual "officers" per se - they just have a guy who they all feel is the most capable to lead and follow out of respect. Its one of the reasons why they frag Commisars, ,in fact. Don't believe me? Read the novel "Death World" which deals with the Catachans.)
b - The front that the Ghosts participated in was rather well established to be "less important" than the main front Macaroth was personally leading. They ended up later on having a number of problems with lack of experienced personnel and officers and the like (including commisars.) Given the origins of the Tanith prior to the planet's destruction, its not really surprising. And, as I said, it's worked out before. Look at the Catachans, who make the Tanith look positively Mordian by comparison.
Except that's at the beginning of Honour Guard. By the end the Ghosts should have around 1200-ish men total, the final battle especially should have cost many hundreds of men, especially given the lethality of 40K weapons.
Actually the 2500 number or so comes from just after he sets out with the honour Guard, page 100, or about 1/3 of the way. The first "major" battle in the Doctrinopolis and the numbers/losses prior to that are therefore conjectural, since I can't find anything nor recall anything that gives hard numbers there.
As for your claims about losses, I would like to see proof of that, because my notes give no indication as to how manyn losses they did take or "how bloody" it was. Gaunt could easily have taken "hundreds" of losses and still kept at 2000+.
Moreover, you seem to assume every hit is automatically fatal. Ghost's flak armour seems rather well designed at stopping hits (as per Straight Silver), and should be at least as capable at makign wounds "survivable" as it does in other books (ie the cain novels.) A ghost can take a hit and not neccesarily die, depending on where he/she is hit, and short of severe damage to brain or spine, augmentics should get anyone back on their feet without difficutly (Varl and Domor are prime examples.)
Edit: as a further note, the Ghost's methods and style of fighting emphasize long range marksmanship and concealment rather than more brutal close quarters fighting that other larger (and better armed/armoured) regiments might favor. In the past it has typically served the Ghosts well against even greater numbers of troops (Ghostmaker and First and Only are prime examples of where the Ghosts have taken on enemies who outnumbered them greatly and taking far fewer losses than they inflicted.)
