THE EVE OF BATTLE
On October 1st, the last batarian reconnaissance effort began. Orbital scans of the planet were made from the refuelling station, a favourite technique of the External Forces. The recon vessels entered the system as if to refuel, went to the station and took high resolution data from afar using their sensors as they topped up their tanks. This was done primarily to confirm that no new defences had been set up. It is also during these opening moments that General Gadnalak is supposed to have made his brief visit to Mindoir under a fake identity.
Meanwhile, the Alliance Navy was not resting. The attack on Mindoir itself had to be delayed for as a cruiser patrol moved through the system, and the date was moved back to October 5th, two days later than planned. The patrol had in fact been an indicator that the Alliance knew that something was about to happen, but their intelligence services had still been unable to discover any real details. The reason for this was simple, as the date for the attack approached, Gadnalak had ordered the deaths anyone with even periphery knowledge concerning the attack in the last week of September. Anyone who wasn't part of the operation but had contributed or discovered something to do with it was hunted down mercilessly. One report claims that he called this "sharpening the blade" for the kill.
To further throw off the Alliance, the general insured the pirate preparations for the diversionary attacks on other systems were much less well protected from discovery. He even leaked some of the details of those planned attacks to the Shadow Broker, in the hopes that the information trader would go to the Alliance with an offer. The ruse worked, and Alliance naval and army resources were deployed towards those areas. Mindoir was put on high alert as well, but it was not reinforced either with ground troops or ships, without which the defences would be overwhelmed.
THE BATTLE
Phase 1: The Fight In Space
The Batarian 43rd Attack Flotilla jumped into Mindoir's system when most of its inhabitants were asleep. Approaching the fuel stations around Seiren, they found them completely defenceless and quickly took control of both the structures and the workers. Survivors from the battle described the batarians calmly strolling onto a station, shooting two turian workers casually, and then rounding up the humans for transport into slavery. The brutality of the battle was to be deliberately levelled against humans as a matter of deliberate policy, as the few members of other species were simply removed one way or another.
The attack provoked the Alliance into the response that the batarians had hoped for, and Dhark Ar'dra's naval force was soon attacked by the garrison's corvette squadron. Rather than destroying them outright, the commander evaded the enemy. In the course of doing so, a frigate was heavily damaged by Alliance torpedoes, and had to be abandoned in orbit. The objective of the action was achieved in its entirety despite this, and the main batarian invasion force was given a free run at Mindoir itself. The batarian ships would toy with the corvettes for as long as possible, giving the impression of a more fair fight. This was done to make the Alliance hesitate to respond with absolute force, and continued until the abductions began and retaliation became certain. The Alliance ships were then at the receiving end of a brutal counter-attack, and every last corvette was destroyed.
Phase 2: The First Day
As the fighting in space continued, the shoals of batarian shuttles launched from the holds of landing ships and began landing troops at their objectives. The External Forces troops were landed on the night side of the planet, on the main continent where the vast majority of the population lived, and where the bases of the Alliance Army stood waiting. The assault took the garrison by surprise, and troops had to be awoken and prepared for the fight. The batarians landed around every major rally-point of the Alliance Army, surrounding each in turn. Resistance at this point was extremely light, limited only to police units and armed civilians. These were slaughtered almost to a man. By sunrise, each task group of the 3rd Corps took up their positions and began probing attacks on the Alliance bases. Gadnalak refrained from launching all-out assaults however, concerned that this would allow enemy forces to escape encirclements and counter-attack This was perhaps his only error during the battle, as if the batarians had pressed the bases in front of them immediately, the vast majority would have fallen and the planet would have been left utterly helpless.
The single exception to this was the headquarters on the outskirts of New Omaha, which had been designated to be taken as soon as possible. The batarians were unaware that it no longer contained the bulk of human military forces on the planet, and attacked it in the hope of crushing resistance before it started. The entirety of the Blood Pack complement and several biotic assault squads were assigned to the task under the 1st Battalion, and Gadnalak took the command himself to assure victory. When it became clear that she could not hold out in her HQ, General De Santos ordered a general evacuation, screening the retreat, both by air and ground transports, with the entirety of Mindoir's drone complement. This was not done without objections, particularly from the militia commanders, whom had serious concerns for the civilians to be left behind. However, at the time, De Santos had no reason to believe that the batarians had either the intention or the capability to abduct anything like the entire population. As the External Forces had not fired on civilians by any accounts, the General concluded correctly that it was a slaving raid, and that the Alliance had some time with which to consolidate.
By dawn, the Alliance forces were at full readiness, but the batarians had realised their mistake. Trying to make good, the group commanders were ordered to attack the Alliance bases directly. This had varying results, with some Alliance outposts being wiped out entirely and others inflicting grievous casualties on their attackers. Smaller infantry posts were hit hardest, and by the mid-afternoon, De Santos had ordered a consolidation of the infantry into larger units for their own protection. By contrast, the armoured brigade of the 737th had comprehensively defeated the forces sent to attack them, but this was in part due to no specialists from either the Blood Pack or the External Forces participating, and the bases of the brigade were by far the most remote from population centres.
Fighting continued all day, only to stop suddenly as the batarians retreated back to their siege lines for the night. This was a source of confusion for the Alliance command, as was the continued open communications link to Arcturus. All previous batarian attacks had started with undisciplined aggression and methodical destruction of communications infrastructure. The retreat had been due to the arrival of the pirates and mercenaries, who began to carry out their own objectives but had run into trouble with militia units. Many of the off duty militia soldiers had spent the day gathering weapons and preparing to resist, and by sunset, had been confronted with the sight of pirates rounding up civilians into large groups. Fierce fighting spread throughout most towns, and while the pirates were far from outmatched, they would be unable to complete their missions. Frustrated by their incompetence, Gadnalak halted the assaults on the Alliance bases. Prioritising the civilians for capture, he kept just enough soldiers besieging the professional human forces while he turned as many units as possible onto the streets to root out the paramilitaries. Going block by block, this objective was largely complete in most urban centres by the end of the day, and his forces did not have to face a determined attack on two sides.
By that time, De Santos would have known the true ambition of the assault. The defence corvettes had been destroyed, and a huge fleet entered orbit over the planet. A fleet made up not only of military and pirate ships, but transport vessels. Shuttles began moving civilians to the slave ships that night, and ran continuously until the very end of the assault. When these facts were reported to Alliance High Command, the reaction was one of complete shock. The consuls ordered a complete counter-attack, but General Gadnalak and Admiral Ar'dra's preparations had paid handsome dividends; due to the diversionary attacks elsewhere, the estimate was for two to three days to mass a force capable of retaking the colony. Mindoir was on its own.
Phase 3: Atrocities
General De Santos knew that in order to save as many lives as possible, she needed to attack. However, as the second day dawned, she had no capability to do so. Her infantry brigades were surrounded and holding on just barely, thanks to the tenacity of her troops and the advantage granted by her units' complement of assault walkers. She knew that even these would give out inside a week if they were not relieved, but she did have a force capable of doing just that. The armoured brigade had successfully broken the sieges of its bases, and were ready to move out to aid in the fight. The problem was their distance from the heavy fighting. As the batarians had near-complete air superiority, the tanks could not be airlifted close enough to the cities, and they would be unable to reach New Omaha until the middle of the next day at the earliest. Forced by circumstances, De Santos ordered her infantry to prepare for defence until the reinforcements could arrive.
Gadnalak was well aware of this predicament, but did not press the attack immediately. He had taken more casualties in the first day than he had anticipated, and planned to demoralise the Alliance troops before moving for the assault. He allowed De Santos to set up forward observation posts unmolested by fire, and then began moving his troops around to create the impression that he had a much larger force at his disposal. In particular, the krogan were marched in and out of the same landing ships to give the impression that they made up a larger percentage of the attacking units than was actually the case. This annoyed the krogan greatly, but did manage to convince De Santos that the krogan would be a major threat.
In addition to these deceptive measures, Gadnalak moved to provoke her into an unwise attack. Until the afternoon of the second day, the batarian commander insured that the civilians being rounded up were very visible to the troops of the besieged Alliance positions. This resulted in commanding officers barely being able to restrain their troops, and in the case of one position, they could not do so. In the southern town of Delaferme, an entire section of the Alliance defence cordon fell for the trap. Civilians close to the troops were brutalised within clear sight of their position. The troops advanced towards the scene, killing the batarians carrying out the atrocities, only to find themselves surrounded. With the defences of that base breached, the batarians attacked in force with biotics forming the tip of the spear, and the Delaferme Pocket fell in less than an hour. Only the lieutenant of the group that had attacked survived to relay the story. While a crushing victory for the batarians, the example also helped the Alliance maintain discipline. De Santos insured that the details of the incident were distributed to every position and unit.
When these crimes against civilians failed to produce any more foolhardy sallies, Gadnalak ordered full scale attacks on the three largest concentrations of Alliance forces, with the krogan and biotic shock troops taking the lead. The pockets in the towns of Bounty and Wheatfield held fast, repulsing the enemy attack. The other was less fortunate. In the pocket outside the capital, De Santos herself was almost killed when the krogan breached the defensive perimeter and stormed into her interior lines. Only rapid redeployment of the assault walkers from the outer defences to the centre of the base stopped the Blood Pack from taking the position, but this was not achieved without cost. The biotic assault units took advantage, and bloodied the rest of the defenders so badly that the General had to order a retreat to a smaller defensive line in order to compensate for losses.
By the end of the second day, the Alliance still stood its ground. Gadnalak extended an offer for the surviving forces to surrender, stating that they would not be renditioned into slavery if they did so. De Santos replied that she would rather be torn to pieces than see the inside of a batarian slave ship, not believing the offer to be anything close to genuine. She added that she was going to personally rip the batarian commander's eyes out of his head. Gadnalak's response to this defiance is unknown, but he did not have any particular reason to fear the threat. While most of the Alliance's defences held, they would not be able to affect a breakout in time, and the primary objective of the attack was moving ever closer to accomplishment with every passing hour. Two hundred thousand civilians had been rounded up and shipped off-world on the first day alone, and another two hundred thousand by the middle of the second day. Ships and shuttles moved in rotation to keep the numbers moving. Only the rate at which the civilians could be rounded up was slowing things, and the batarians began to resort to rolling artillery barrages to root out stragglers, herding them towards spaceports and fields where shuttles waited to take them.
Phase 3: Counter-attack and Defeat
The early-morning of October 7th provided the first glimmer of hope for De Santos' position, when the 737th's Armoured Brigade made a breakthrough against screening batarian forces between its position and the capital. The entire brigade was now storming towards the city, as the General hoped to capture the main spaceports to halt the flow of civilians to the slavers. Gadnalak was not aware of this, as the Alliance was finally able to begin jamming the batarian communications during the night. All attempts by his engineers to stop the jamming failed, and orbital bombardments of suspected transmitter sites did not end the interference. It would take days to figure out the secure channel pattern on which communications was possible. Concluding that a decentralised system for jamming had to have a mobile control device, he mustered his forces for a final assault on the position he knew De Santos was hiding in; the pocket outside of New Omaha.
In reality, the jamming signal was completely automated, with an advanced VI cyberwarfare programme controlling a transmitter drone network, making it very difficult to crack or halt. However, with the jamming online, De Santos knew that the batarians would assume she had control of it, and prepared for yet another confrontation. The forces defending her position had been seriously battered, but she was confident that her position could be held. The New Omaha pocket was on top of several deep bunkers and tunnel-works, allowing her troops to shelter from artillery and orbital bombardments. The majority of the assault walkers had also survived the trials of the previous two days, though many of the infantry and even more of the militia had not. She had ordered the outer defences that had been abandoned on the previous day to be booby-trapped, as well as mined with conventional and roller type devices.
The morning was quiet again, as the batarian forces withdrew from many of the outer urban areas, which had become ghost towns as a result of the abductions. These forces were returned to space, as Gadnalak now feared that an Alliance Navy force was close at hand, and he did not wish to see troops stranded on Mindoir's surface when it arrived. The pirates were left to their own devices however, and once all the civilians had either fled or had been rounded up, they began a wild orgy of looting and destruction for their own amusement. Those between the capital and the main agricultural areas would pay for this dearly, as the armoured brigade swept through in a wrathful wave, killing all pirates they encountered with utmost efficiency.
By midday, Gadnalak's assault was ready. As before, the biotics and krogan were at the front of the assault. However, this time, they were backed by as many of the vehicles as possible, most of them bearing some form of weapon capable of damaging the enemy walkers. The batarian force entered the outer perimeter without any resistance, to their surprise. The krogan charged forward, and the vehicles followed, eager to engage the Alliance troops behind the inner defences. In doing so, they entered the minefields. The krogan were sliced to ribbons by anti-personnel fragmentation mines. The mounted batarians made better progress, but soon found themselves being followed by metallic balls. These were roller-mines, and they were spectacularly effective against the thin armour of the batarian ground vehicles. Soon, the front of the human defences was littered with burning wrecks, the sight of which would not be forgotten by either side.
Only now did the defenders make an appearance, as the assault walkers massed with the infantry for the inevitable batarian second wave. Costly the first assault may have been, but the impetuous charge had created a large gap in the minefields and the carcasses of the vehicles now provided cover where there had been nothing but open ground before. Gadnalak spotted this, and formed up his troops for the final attack.
The biotics went in first as before, under the cover of an artillery barrage. However, unlike previous encounters, they did not make any real progress. They ended up pinned down in the breach by heavy Alliance fire from the walkers and troops of the 1st Infantry Battalion, 2nd Brigade. After several hours of fighting, De Santos ordered a strike from her gunships, which had been held in reserve due to fear of the batarians' air superiority. This action cost every gunship the Alliance had to achieve, but it paid off. Lacking heavy weaponry to deal with this threat, the batarian biotics were put to the sword before Gadnalak's eyes. Unable to accept defeat, he reacted to this setback with cold, calculated aggression. Every available soldier was sent into the breach in a mass attack, as their commander counted on the superior personal defences of each trooper to keep enough of them alive to sweep over the Alliance position. As the advance began, orbital strikes landed in the midst of the human positions, forcing them to retreat under their hardened defences. When the bombardment stopped, the Alliance soldiers were confronted with thousands of enemy soldiers at a distance of less than two hundred yards and closing.
As the troops in front held the line, De Santos ordered every available man and woman to the defences. Civilians who had never held a gun in their lives and personnel who did not do so except for their twice-yearly marksmanship training exercises were handed weapons, and told to fight for their very lives. De Santos herself and her general staff joined the fighting, resolving that it would be victory or death. The weight of fire exchanged between the two armies was unlike anything that would be seen until the battles during the Taetrus Conflict and the Reaper War itself. Soldiers shot at each other for an hour straight without respite. The human defences held, but only just. At several locations, the batarians reached the lines. Hand-to-hand fighting and horrendous losses characterised the fighting in these locations. With the integrity of the defences threatened, De Santos was forced to organise a roving squadron of five walkers to act as a mobile reserve. This measure stopped the holes in the line from becoming outright breaches, but this also allowed the batarians to reach the defences more often. The defenders were on the cusp of defeat.
Just as suddenly as despair threatened to set in, hope arrived. The humans looked on in incredulity as the batarians retreated en masse. The reasons for this became apparent quickly. The Armoured Brigade of the 737th was mere minutes away from arrival, and furthermore, the Alliance Navy's task force had arrived to relieve the planet. Gadnalak, having no desire to lose the entirety of his troops in the New Omaha sector, ordered a withdrawal. He had been caught by surprise by the swiftness of the Alliance armoured assault, and moved quickly to escape. De Santos wanted to follow the batarian retreat, to inflict as many losses on the enemy as possible, but her troops were exhausted and bloodied. Instead, she consolidated and sent out patrols to find the remaining civilians, or what few were left.