STRATEGY FOR OFFENCE
Once the decision to attack Mindoir had been made, the Vice-Hegemon Ar'dra delegated the actual planning of the operation itself to his loyalist generals. In doing so, he laid out several conditions that had to be met in order for it to be a success. The first of these was to render the Alliance defences entirely helpless, and if possible to destroy them entirely. This was the more daunting of the conditions, particularly as the reputation of human soldiers and ship crews was one of both discipline and unpredictability. The reason for the requirement was to impress upon the Alliance that their defences were meaningless, and that capitulation was the only option. The second condition was that the absolute maximum number of colonists were to be abducted, preferably every last human being on the planet. The rationale for this was more practical, the pirates whom would be assisting the operation were not working for free and the cost of having them participate in such a dangerous action was to be considerable. Furthermore, it would add to the intimidation effect that Ar'dra desired. The last condition was that as few batarian assets as possible were to be used. There was particular emphasis on avoiding the use of naval assets, as Ar'dra's rival Saderoh had considerably more clout with the batarian fleets and would be notified if a larger than usual number of ships were used.
The batarian generals and intelligence officers added conditions of their own to the operation, drawing from their now well-honed experience at fighting the Alliance. Chief of these was that the attack would have to be as swift as possible. The Hegemony was well aware of the Alliance's doctrine. The enemy's defence forces would fight a delaying action, while the fleets mobilised a devastating counter-attack The attack would therefore have to be as quick as possible, and some measure devised to delay deployment of the Alliance relief fleet if possible. Another consideration was human superiority in ground forces. In every engagement on the ground, the pirates found themselves entirely outmatched even when they outnumbered Alliance troops. This was largely due to superiority in equipment, but specific concerns about the virtuosity of Alliance forces were also planned for. Human forces were adept at combined arms tactics and had the uncanny ability to turn ambushes into traps for ambushers. They also relied heavily on drones for more repetitive military duties, freeing troops up for offensive operations, something that could not be counteracted effectively except by swift aggression.
With these conditions in mind, the batarian officers laid out what would become Operation Righteous Cause over the course of several weeks.
The attack was to begin by drawing Mindoir's defence flotillas away from the planet itself by seizing the fuel stations orbiting the gas giant Seiren. For this task, the Batarian 43rd Attack Flotilla was to be drafted from the navy. Consisting of three cruisers and six frigates, the formation would be more than a match for the torpedo corvettes that Mindoir had to defend itself with. Most importantly, the formation had been deployed by Ar'dra's forces before, to screen the escape of pirates, and so using it again would not provoke suspicion within the Hegemony. The flotilla was to be commanded by Dhark Ar'dra, the vice-hegemon's cousin and a key supporter of the hardliner faction in the navy. This phase of the operation was to be drawn out as long as possible, in order to buy time for the ground forces and pirate vessels. Simultaneous with the main naval assault, individual pirate frigates were to attack all over the sector to cause confusion and redirect Alliance naval assets. These were to hold out and evade the enemy for as long as possible, again to purchase time to harvest Mindoir's population.
The next phase would begin as soon as the Alliance ships were drawn out of position. Batarian military forces were to be dropped by shuttle around the main Alliance Army strongpoints, surrounding them, cutting them off from each other and from the civilians. These were to be strangled, and then cracked open by a combined assault of krogan and biotic specialists. It was hoped that by concentrating on the military targets first, the Alliance would fall into a defensive mentality, allowing the abduction of the entire civilian population. For this purpose, the 3rd Corps of the Batarian External Forces was recruited. Commanded by General Khasvan Gadnalak, the force consisted of three crack divisions of infantry, two of which would be committed to the assault on Mindoir with the third held in reserve. The force represented some of the best troops that the Batarian Hegemony had to offer, and their deployment betrayed the regard which the batarian commanders held for human soldiers. In addition, the Omega Blood Pack committed platoons of krogan shock troops under Verm Muksar. These were far from the best krogan mercenaries in the galaxy, and indeed their commander was in poor standing with both the Blood Pack and the batarians. They appeared to have been selected from the most troublesome krogan mercenaries as a means for the leadership of the Blood Pack to be rid of them, but their natural combat ability would nonetheless prove useful.
Once the Alliance forces were surrounded and unable to move, pirate forces were to be dropped by shuttle near the population centres. At the same time, mercenaries were to take control of spaceports, communications facilities and utilities centres. The pirates would fan out, and begin taking civilians street-to-street. The captives would be moved in large groups to the spaceports for transport. Every available ship on the ground was to be hijacked and specially prepared cargo ships would arrive as soon as the space around Mindoir was secure enough. Areas near besieged Alliance military facilities were to be attacked last, to encourage the humans to sally out and batter themselves against the batarians' defences. The countryside was also to be scoured by roving bands of pirates in shuttles to abduct the rural population.
When the civilians were taken care of or if the Alliance Navy arrived to relieve the colony, the batarians and their allies would withdraw behind their flotilla's protective screen. Should the flotilla be unable to hold off the Alliance ships, it was to turn its guns on the colony and hold the remaining human soldiers and civilians hostage until the evacuation was complete. The whole force would then return to secure batarian space with their captives.
Ar'dra approved the plan after reading its entirety in a single sitting, saying it was the most glorious thing he had ever seen. Preparations began immediately, and for three months, the forces under General Gadnalak drilled and trained for their specific roles. Civilian ships were impressed or captured for service as prisoner transports, and cages were built in their holds. The mercenaries were hired in small groups. Kept in the dark as to the exact nature of the conflict they were about to participate in, they were trained heavily for their specific roles in conditions of the utmost secrecy.
STRATEGY FOR DEFENCE
Alliance military strategy for the defence of its colonies relied heavily on their experience at Shan'xi during the First Contact War. In that conflict, Alliance ground forces successfully delayed the enemy for a period of time, despite terrible odds. Turian forces had been forced to de-orbit satellites and use heavy artillery to clear out areas of resistance. In the case of Xi'an Valley, they were even forced to deploy their most elite infantry and armour units against the United States Marine Corps. However, the Alliance ground forces were comprehensively defeated and forced to surrender, a matter of some controversy even to this day. A month later, the Second Fleet under Admiral Drescher arrived in force over the colony and repulsed the turian navy. Fresh troops were dropped from orbit, and the turian ground forces were then themselves forced to surrender after enduring a devastating show of force.
The Alliance High Command drew two primary lessons from the conflict.
The first was that Alliance Army units could hold out even in the face of air and space superiority, under the right conditions. The chiefs of the Army therefore endeavoured to create the right conditions, in as many ways as possible. Every colony officially recognised by the Alliance had bunkers constructed, with stores of weapons, armour, food and water. These were very carefully camouflaged from detection by space-borne sensors, and were protected on the ground by drones. Gene scanning equipment was installed to insure that only humans could gain access to the bunkers, and access in peacetime was impossible. Hidden anti-aircraft and anti-spacecraft weaponry were similarly distributed on a smaller scale in separate bunkers. Advanced sensory networks were installed on particularly at-risk colonies for intelligence gathering, and coupled with both FTL-comms and message drone capabilities to deliver gathered information back to Arcturus. Finally, jamming devices were installed to disrupt enemy communications. As a border colony, Mindoir was one of the first worlds to receive these upgraded defences.
The second lesson that the Alliance was taught by the First Contact War was that it had to build a system in its navy to relieve besieged garrisons on colonies quickly. It had taken nearly a month to mobilise a naval task force capable of annihilating the turian flotillas over Shan'xi, and the operation had been delayed several times seemingly for intelligence and readiness reasons. Such a delay was deemed unacceptable in the aftermath of the war, and measures were taken in the Navy to maintain the highest levels of readiness possible. The Black Forest Protocol was instituted as the centrepiece of the reforms. Named for the Black Forest in Germany, where tribes of antiquity were often cut off by terrain and weather in winter, the protocol laid out the exact reactions to specific circumstances that the Alliance might find itself in. If a colony was attacked, constant communication was to be maintained with garrison forces for intelligence gathering. This would then allow pre-prepared naval task forces, to react immediately and to the exact extent required. If a colony went dark without any word from its defenders, recon elements were to be deployed at once, and multiple naval and army task forces were to be rallied for a full scale counter-attack. This protocol would later be updated after the battle to include retaliatory and punitive strikes against the known aggressor's own colonies and military installations.
On Mindoir itself, defence plans had been reformed entirely as a result of the arrival of Major-General De Santos, the new garrison commander. Alliance troops had previously been barracked centrally in a single huge base, while several smaller temporary bases were manned on a rotation. This system was dismantled as it allowed an enemy to bombard the central base, wiping out the majority of Alliance forces at a single stroke. A mere two weeks before the battle, the majority of troops were moved quietly out to the decentralised positions and barracked there. The armoured forces in particular were moved further out into the countryside, where it was reckoned that any major enemy landing would occur. Meanwhile, the main base was maintained at its full size and the drop in manpower replaced with drones, to give the impression that nothing had changed. Anti-aircraft defences were ordered to be buffered as well, but the equipment would not arrive in time for the fighting. It remains a point of debate whether or not they would have made a decisive difference in the face of such a determined attack.
The evacuation of civilians to the bunker complexes was added to the role of the garrison forces after the Alliance Defence Intelligence Directorate warned all border colonies that major batarian raiding operations were being prepared in the Verge. The warning came too late for serious effort to be put into prioritising civilian evacuations, and the plan could not have taken into account the scale of the attack. Contrary to Alliance thought, rather than raiding several worlds at once, the batarians intended to concentrate on Mindoir alone, and the garrison forces were entirely inadequate for the job.