THE LEADERS:
Anka Gasperi, Consul of the Systems Alliance
On September 1st 2162, Anka Gasperi became Consul alongside her colleague, Ronan Forrest, in a spectacular victory in the first all-human election of the Alliance Parliament. Before her Alliance career, she had served as European Commissioner for Foreign Policy and Trade. Thanks to her success in helping to win the Alliance its embassy on the Citadel, and the vast wealth brought to humanity by its integration into galactic markets and society, she became a figure of legend. By 2170, she had won another crushing election victory and the achievements of her government made her entirely unassailable. Wealth per capita, colonisation subsidies, crime rates, education and literacy rates, all improved by drastic lengths under her leadership. All of these were attributed to her compassionate touch and eye for political gain, a mix of traits regarded as requiring a genius to balance.
Gasperi overshadowed Forrest politcally and personally, and as her co-consul, he was quite content to give her the lead on internal matters as well as strategic affairs. As leader of the Conservative Party, her often more diplomatic positions when it came to contact with other species were criticised from within her own political wing. However, the scale of her achievements insured her own immense popularity and protected her from much criticism. Her political moderation and longsighted perspective appeared to pay dividends, as even the political left acknowledged her, and were more than willing to cross the aisle in order to insure stable government under her leadership.
It is in this context that we must place Gasperi's conduct in the years leading up to the battle. As the batarians prepared to attack, the leader of humanity's diplomatic and military might was much more concerned with negotiations with the Citadel than the sabre-rattling of a rogue species. Though she was the "Consul of the Sword", the executive leader of humanity's armies and fleets, she always regarded the pen as mightier than the sword. Her understanding of military affairs was limited to a political one. Alice Dennison, who would later successfully challenge her successors for dominance of humanity's political right, said privately that the consul was perfectly happy to carry around a sword, but had no idea how to use one and refused to keep it as sharp as possible. This characterised the administration's military policy quite well, and it would doom the inhabitants of Mindoir.
Under Gasperi's administration, the Alliance military was expanded, but expansion barely kept up with the explosion of humanity's colonial interests. The original three fleets were expanded to six, and the Alliance Navy's ships were brought up to galactic standards in terms of engineering. The objective was twofold, to give humanity just enough military power to throw around so that it could not be bullied by the Citadel species, and to insure that rogue species could never conquer Alliance territories in time to prevent the intervention of Citadel peacekeeping fleets.
This strategy largely spawned from Gasperi's beliefs. For the consul, the military was for making a diplomatic show of force. Open warfare was to be avoided as expense and risk, as her moderate fiscal conservativism demanded restraint of both. With colonial developments dominating the Alliance's budget, military spending was always seen as something to be kept under strict control, as it never made a return on investment. While she never doubted that the batarians would eventually go to war to defend their interests, the consul thought that they would be unable do so without the Alliance noticing their mobilisation or without the intervention of the turians.
When batarian pirate aggression began, Gasperi unsuccessfully lobbied the Council and later the turians alone to intervene on humanity's behalf. Due to the batarians' use of privateers and mercenary groups, the Council refused to intervene. The stated reason for this was a lack of evidence of direct involvement by the batarian state itself, but the reality was different. Turian intervention in the Verge would more than likely have meant war with the Hegemony, and war was something the Council wished to avoid at almost any cost. Spectres were dispatched against the pirates, but as with all such groups, they cropped up like weeds. The Spectres returned to the Citadel after destroying a few ships claiming success, only for new groups to begin raiding soon afterwards.
Gasperi responded with firmer actions of her own. She began a full military review of all Alliance forces in the colonies, testing commanders of colonial outposts in exercises and ordering the quality of forces to be improved in all areas. She generally stuck with budget neutral actions, believing that the Army and Navy had the resources they needed to prevent any aggression, but were not making the best use of them. The exception to this was the defences of colonies themselves, which she bolstered for political reasons as much as strategic ones. She also sent envoys to the batarians on the Citadel, and these were received well. However, the negotiations were in fact a ruse. The batarian diplomats were entirely loyal to the cause of strangling humanity's expansion. As a result, by the time of the battle of Mindoir, Gasperi began to hope that the conflict could be resolved by talking, and had no reason to believe that humanity was about to be the subject of one of the most brutal assaults it had ever endured.
Kesrak Ar'dra, Vice-Hegemon of the Batarian Hegemony
In stark contrast to his human counterpart, the political mastermind behind the batarian escalation of hostilities with the Alliance and the brutality at Mindoir was in the midst of a life or death struggle for power. Kesrak Ar'dra was born into a high ranking batarian family, and raised for the world of politics. A staunch protector of the batarian caste system and slavery, he was also an advocate for the military. By 2170, he was the undisputed leader of the hardliner faction within the Hegemony's aristocracy, and had organised the batarian pirate campaign against human colonies since the end of Spectre involvement. Combining noble respectability with contacts among pirates and mercenaries, he aimed to become Hegemon.
In this goal, he was not alone however. The aging hegemon Drok Pracnass was increasingly feeble, and delegated his governmental duties in favour of spending time in his harem. He favoured Ar'dra and another vice-hegemon named Ghan Saderoh. Both wished to succeed to the throne. Ar'dra despised Saderoh, not only out of rivalry but also due to ideology. Saderoh preached that the Verge was meaningless, that the destiny of the batarians lay in the wider galaxy. He advocated entente with the Alliance and Citadel species in favour of war with the mercenaries and minor species of the Terminus Systems. In doing so, he offended every fibre of Ar'dra's being, who not only relied on the very same mercenaries for part of his power base, but also believed that aliens only had one place in the caste system, that of slaves.
Normally, such political disputes would have been resolved either by duel or by assassination, depending on the circumstances. Ar'dra could rely on neither, however. Saderoh was a renowned marksman and a biotic to boot, a duel would have been suicide for the hardliner. To complicate matters, Saderoh also had a large support bloc of his own, meaning that an assassination by either side would have resulted in civil war, regardless of whether or not an attempt succeeded. As he had no desire to hand the Alliance a perfect opportunity to take the entire Skyllian Verge or see his own grave, the ambitious vice-hegemon required another gambit to take power.
Mindoir was to be that gambit. A disproportionately well populated agricultural colony, Ar'dra knew it was less well defended than other colonies from the vast intelligence network he had created for the pirate operations. This was due to its lack of real industry, as well as humanity's colonial defence policy that assigned garrison forces to recon and the evacuation of civilians to safe areas.
Once he knew what he was going to do, Ar'dra's next challenge was to convince the pirate groups to work together. Despite the obvious wealth to be gained in enslaving an entire colony, this task was considerably more tiresome than one would imagine. Many of the pirate groups that the batarians used had fought each other as much as they had fought the Alliance, resulting in barely controlled blood feuds. Ar'dra, not a patient person by any standard, unleashed his loyal Batarian External Forces soldiers on leaders who would not cooperate and brought all the groups into line under his own command. In doing so, he almost tipped his hand to humanity's intelligence services, who noticed that half the pirate barons of the Verge were dropping dead at the time. However, nothing was done about it, and Ar'dra was free to reorganise the pirates along more militaristic lines. In addition to these forces, the vice-hegemon hired Blood Pack krogan mercenaries to act as the shock troops of the operation. He was well aware of just how dangerous humanity's ground forces could be even when outnumbered and surrounded, and prepared accordingly.
Ar'dra gathered as many resources from the Hegemony as he could muster, and these were to be considerable. His ultimate objective was to lead his people into a glorious new age, with humanity as a vassal species. In order to step closer to this, he would have to produce a spectacular victory and take power from his rival. With Mindoir he would succeed in taking that step, even if his dreams of a batarian empire spanning the entire Traverse was to remain unrealised fantasy.