THE OPPOSING FORCES
THE SYSTEMS ALLIANCE
In 2176, Anhur ranked as one of the most populous human colonies despite its lack of a sovereign backer, its location within the western sectors of the Terminus Systems, and the sharing of the world with batarian settlers. Several hundred million lived there, and this presented the Systems Alliance with a number of problems. The pool of manpower available to the defence was larger on Anhur than on any other world seized by humanity before, and there was no shortage of weapons to arm them with.
Compounding this was the unknown loyalties of the population itself. Many batarian dissidents lived on the planet, whose loyalty to the Hegemony was non-existent and some of whom were openly hostile to their "mother" nation. These dissidents also fought on both sides of the Rebellion. Alongside were those affiliated to the merchant houses of Khar'shan, fanatically loyal to the cause. Those influenced by their human neighbours sided with the Coalition of the Free. Those who thought the Hegemony was weak under Arch-Hegemon Ar'dra supported the slavers along with those wishing to protect their wealth. The loyalists supported the Corporate Congress to a man. In general, batarians were split along class lines, with serf and worker castes mostly supporting the rebellion and merchant castes and upwards siding against it, but even this was a poor indicator of how to determine an individual's loyalties. Batarian serfs could often be loyal to their masters as a result of their religious beliefs, and the batarian merchant classes all the way up to the nobility were to buy the propaganda of their fellows entirely.
The humans of Anhur were no less troublesome. Aside from the huge number of economic migrants, whom made up the bulk of the Anhur Republican Army's base support, there were also numerous political dissenters; anti-Alliance extremists, nationalists from the former countries of the old Pan-Asian Coalition on Earth, libertarians and anarcho-capitalist groups whom wanted to escape Alliance regulations and laws. These fought for both sides as well, with some political groupings splitting when the rebellion began. The only organised factions that consistently fought for the Rebellion, with none of their number fighting against it, were groups aligned with the Terra Firma Party and Cerberus. However, the human supremacists fought for the removal of the batarian population and would often attempt to ethnically cleanse areas where they were stationed. This would present another issue in its own right to any occupying army. Considerably more humans than batarians fought for the rebellion, but more than half of the mercenaries employed by the Corporate Congress were human as well.
After heated arguments on the subject within her circle of advisors, Field Marshal DeRuyter decided that local forces could not be relied upon at all. This would mean two things. The Alliance would have to do the real fighting with the help of the Eclipse mercenaries alone, and both the rebel factions would have to be disarmed. Both tasks would require at least a display of force, and the size of the population and their political leanings dictated a huge number of troops. No less than thirty six million would be assigned to the campaign, more than 10% of the Alliance Army's total active service personnel, making the invasion the largest in human history until the Great Upheaval of 2184. Thankfully, with the successful conclusion of the colonial campaigns in the Verge, many formations had gained valuable combat experience and were available to fight, as reserves took up their occupation duties.
Alongside the Navy's contribution, the Army assigned six legions to the campaign from two of its three strategic commands. All six contained veteran formations, each was a self-contained army in their own right, having at their disposal all the personnel needed to fight independent theatre-level actions. Only about half of all personnel were combat troops, but every single man and woman in the invasion force was trained for the fight should it come, and on Anhur, it inevitably would. For the purposes of the invasion, the troops were divided by their legion's strategic command. Every legion contained thirty task forces of ten combat divisions each, with other troops organised according to their roles.
Eagle Nebula Expeditionary Forces - Troop Command Afrika
From Troop Command Afrika, the Army's administrative command covering the Union of African States and their colonies, the three legions assigned to the campaign were the elite Tenth and Fourteen Legions from South Africa and Kenya respectively, as well as the battle-hardened Thirty-Second Legion from Ethiopia and Somalia. These troops would fall under the command of the Tenth Legion's leader, Colonel-General Nandi Botha, a veteran commander who had fought with DeRuyter since the beginning of her career and a fierce warrior in her own right. All were equipped with excellent equipment, and morale was solid among the troops, confident in the cause to which they had pledged their lives and honour. Each of the legions was taken directly from the end of another successful campaign in the Verge colonies, all of which had required hostile landings in the face of substantial naval and surface-to-space defences.
The Tenth Legion had a relatively easy assignment during the rush for the Verge, as it had been assigned to capture the batarian garden world of Khar'lilitam, literally translated as "The Great Beach". Despite the name, resistance was initially heavy on the world, as the population was made up primarily of higher caste batarians, many of whom had lost relatives in the nuclear strikes during Operation Tora. Khar'lilitam's more opulent settlements had themselves been hit with low-yield nuclear weapons during that bid to provoke total war, hardening opinion against the Alliance there. However, as essentially a touristic world, it had few heavy weapons despite its large population, and the combat operations soon gave way to police operations. The Tenth was selected for its high discipline, its availability, and its soldiers' close relationship to the Supreme Allied Commander, who knew she could trust in them.
The Fourteenth Legion had been assigned to mop up non-terrestrial worlds and the not-quite-right worlds that the Hegemony had liked to claim despite the huge effort was actually required to live there. As such, it fought in hostile environments during the Verge rush, mounting heavy attacks on well-fortified bases, artificial environments and biospheres on worlds that the Alliance wouldn't have bothered colonising in the first place. In these tasks, they performed admirably despite no extraordinary training being undertaken for its troops, and they were selected because of their experience attacking fixed positions, of which Anhur had many.
The Thirty-Second Legion finished the worst of the fighting in the Verge before it was assigned to Anhur. It had taken the world of Dar'lokhan from the batarians, the planet that housed headquarters and proving grounds of the Hegemony's Verge Strategic Command. In the wake of Elysium, where that army had been utterly destroyed by Alliance forces, conscripts were gathered and augmented by a huge number of batarian fanatics volunteering to replace the dead. Although not a decisive turning point in the war, it was among the most bloody battles fought. The legion had to fight wave after wave of batarian attacks, across plains, forests and deserts, contending with hostile wildlife and extreme weather conditions. Despite these obstacles, the fighting ended as quickly as anywhere else, and the Thirty-Second was combat ready just in time for planetstrike on Anhur.
Eagle Nebula Expeditionary Forces – Troop Command Europa
Troop Command Europa is the administrative command for formations originating in EU-governed Eurasia, its colonies, and EU allies. It provided three of its own legions for the campaign. The Fifth Legion, fresh from their victory at Elysium, was joined by the "rebel" Thirteenth Legion and the specialist Twenty First Legion, all originating from "Old Europe". These would be led by Colonel-General Oleg Petrovsky, the commanding officer of the Thirteenth Legion. Petrovsky was chosen for this task in the aftermath of Elysium as General Orzeski had made it known he intended to retire once the Fifth Legion's task there was complete. His temporary replacement, Colonel-General Fremont, did not have the same confidence, opening the door to the future commander of Cerberus ground forces. Like the legions assigned from Troop Command Afrika, the equipment of these legions was excellent. However, the mood of the soldiers was unusual. Rather than the quiet, professional confidence seen in the other three legions, these soldiers were out for blood. Throughout the ranks, this would become evident as the campaign progressed. Very few prisoners would be taken by the soldiers of these legions.
Another difference with the three European legions was the experience each had with the war so far.
The Fifth Legion, or Legio V Europa, was and is the first of Europe's multi-national contributions to the Alliance Army, and is one of the most competent formations in the entirety of humanity's order of battle. Prior to mustering out for the invasion of Anhur, the legion had defeated the batarians at Elysium and spent the intervening months hunting down stray batarian groups on that colony, as well as aiding in rescue and rebuilding efforts. Despite its losses, even the now-famous Task Force Wizna was ready by the time the call to arms had come again, and the soldiers of Wizna's orbital assault division would be the first troops on the ground when the invasion began.
By contrast, the Thirteenth Legion, or Legio XIII Borealis, had spent the entirety of the war on Eden Prime. Consisting of troops drawn from Northern Europe and Canada, the legion was long considered urban and mountain assault specialists, but their real talent was for fixing problems with brute force. Their duty had been to guard their country's most valuable colony from pirate attacks, which the Navy swatted away with contempt before anything could land. Contrary to expectations, this simply made the soldiers of the legion more eager for the fight, encouraged by their commander, who insured that they were trained for the most brutal combat imaginable. This thirst for battle and the particular training regimen was noticed by Field Marshal DeRuyter, who insisted on having both the Thirteenth and Petrovsky at her side for the campaign. The troops were delighted by the news, and were impatient to get to the fight. This resolve would not waver throughout, even as the legion took the heaviest casualties of the entire campaign.
The Twenty-First Legion, or Legio XXI Germania, was staffed with troops from the European member-state of Germany and its colonies. It had been reorganised in 2172 as an experiment in "next generation" warfare. Its combat units consisted entirely of armoured, air assault and orbital assault divisions, all extremely mobile. The line infantry role was taken up by drones and mechs. The concept was a mixture of turian thought on rapid warfare and humanity's own fondness for the drone as a weapon of war. The hugely expensive Future Hovertank Project that eventually produced the StuG M-44 'Hammerhead' was originally started to provide this legion with a vehicle that could match its turian counterparts. Between Elysium and Anhur, the legion had been split up into its task forces, which were then independently assigned to aid other forces. One of these had been assigned to help the Thirty-Second Legion on Dar'lokhan, and had taken heavy losses of equipment. Others had seen greatly varying degrees of combat, and the separation of the units had caused great resentment. DeRuyter was a great believer in the legion's conceptual purpose, and brought the task forces back together to fight as a coherent theatre-level force once again. The soldiers of the 21st loved her for it, and she assigned them to the role they had trained for; rapid advances to capture huge swaths of territory, and save as many of the enslaved as possible.
Eagle Nebula Expeditionary Forces – The 'Grand' Second Fleet
To defeat the space forces at the disposal of the Anhur Corporate Congress, and to attack potential assets to their cause such as the shipyards at Korlus, DeRuyter was to work with the Second Fleet under Admiral Petra Hunt. The fleet had a sterling reputation. It was the Second Fleet under Kastanie Drescher that had liberated Shanxi in 2157, striking a decisive blow against the turians, helping to bring about the end of the First Contact War a month later. Their commander in 2176 had a more defensive mindset, one that concentrated on preserving his own forces while slowly bleeding his enemy dry. This was ideal against both the batarians and the forces that he would find orbiting Anhur, as both relied on quick and sharp attacks to cause maximum damage. In denying the enemy the opportunity, Hunt would starve any offensive plan of action against the invasion of oxygen.
The full fleet was assigned to the initial invasion for as long as it took to land all the Army's personnel, expected to be sixty days. During this period, the entire strength of the fleet would be present in-system, providing protection for the huge troopships that would be ferrying the truly massive number of soldiers that would participate in the campaign. The fleet was very well equipped for this role, possessing hundreds of ships of all classes, from frigates up until the newly-commissioned Niké-class carrier Victoria and the Thor-class dreadnought Wotan.
Once the invasion forces were on the ground, the fleet would split into three task groups. The capital ships, escort carriers and the heavy cruisers would return to the Skyllian Verge, to help maintain the stranglehold on the Hegemony's shipping lanes. A cruiser task group would be sent to Korlus to destroy any sign of shipbuilding there, to prevent the Corporate Congress from buying or building more ships off-world. Finally, several frigate wolfpacks would remain in orbit of Anhur to provide a protective screen and aid the invasion with sensory data collection.
Eclipse
The asari mercenary company based on Illium had been contracted by Consul Taro on the advice of Minister deBankole as soon as the Rebellion began, a contract that its leader Jona Sederis was happy to authorise. Anhur had been a growing thorn in the side of Illium, as a competitor in white, grey and black markets. Eclipse smuggling operations on the world had also been put down with utmost brutality in the years leading up to the invasion. The Corporate Congress tolerated no threat to their profit margins by asari criminal elements. Sederis, not the most level-headed person by any standard, was increasingly infuriated by Anhur's leadership. She attempted to throw money at the problem, but found a zero-tolerance policy on corruption as well, leading to the arrest and imprisonment of the middle management she had attempted to sway. It looked like the Na'hesit had the upper hand, until the crisis began. When the Rebellion broke out and the Alliance offered no small amount of money to keep it alive, Sederis took the opportunity with a vengeful glee.
Several thousand Eclipse operatives were dispatched, the company using its talents for smuggling to bring in the forces without being detected, aided by sympathetic workers in the spaceports. Asari commandos and huntresses, salarian engineers and infiltration specialists, and human combat veterans were all employed by the company for the delaying operation. In the lead up the invasion, the Eclipse crippled several key supply stations and communications hubs, but despite their best efforts, they failed to halt the advance of Anhur's colonial forces across the continents. Their training of rebel forces in unconventional warfare was more successful, leading to a series of successful bombings and terrorist attacks behind corporate lines. These attacks were largely carried out by the batarian faction of the rebels, who could move among the enemy with less suspicion due to their homeworld's culture.
Eclipse operatives' opinion of the rebel armies was extremely negative. They sent regular reports to both their own superiors and the Alliance Defence Intelligence Directorate on the state of local friendly forces. These reports spoke about the factionalism between the two major players in the Rebellion, the Anhur Republican Army and the Na'kharit, as well as the divisions within each of those groups. The mercenaries had a very low tolerance for the horse trading and lack of central leadership in their allies' ranks, and often resorted to taking command of whole sectors of the front-line at gunpoint, in order to prevent the line crumbling entirely. Despite these problems, the Eclipse very nearly succeeded in maintaining the Coalition of the Free as a coherent fighting force. They would be richly rewarded for their part in the victory to come.
THE ANHUR CORPORATE CONGRESS
Anhur Protection Forces
The military forces of Anhur began as a series of heavily armed urban police forces, not unlike the pre-Reaper War C-Sec. With the colony destined to be shared between batarians and humans, two species with increasing animosity towards one another, the need for highly effective paramilitary forces under the aegis of the justice system was paramount. There were great fears that the two peoples could not live together peacefully, resulting in law and order becoming a huge priority for the Corporate Congress. To the surprise of all, inter-species relations on Anhur actually developed along far more friendly lines than in the Verge, a phenomenon that has been explained by the lack of competing expansionist governments. Indeed, one of the great achievements of Anhur's government was a legal prohibition on racial discrimination of any kind. They cultivated a world where humans and batarians actually liked each other, something thought impossible.
Despite this, the Congress' concerns about security were not lessened. Rather, their inter-community successes heightened their alertness. They had created something unique and highly profitable, and there were no small number of wolves in the wilderness circling, waiting to exploit any weakness. Chief among these were the asari of Illium and the pirate barons under Elanos Haliat, the former having been a powerhouse for centuries and jealous of any new player, the latter a rising power with contacts all over the galaxy and a close relationship with a highly militarised Hegemony. These threats required a reworking of the forces available to Anhur for its defence, and the reforms instituted would put the colony squarely at the top of the Terminus Systems' military rankings.
Like many independent worlds and would-be robber barons, the Corporate Congress looked to the pre-eminent power of the day for inspiration; the Turian Hierarchy. Turian tactical thinking had undergone somewhat of a change in the aftermath of their embarrassment at the hands of humanity. The relentless, across-the-front offensive strategy was still very much present, as was the hold-the-line attitude on the defensive, but a new element had been added as a result of turian experience on Shanxi. The new emphasis was on mobility and rapid envelopment actions, not quite on the level of humanity's spearhead-blitzkrieg tactics, but drawing from that theory. Paramilitary units were converted to military-quality formations, expanded in numbers, retrained in mobile tactics and fighting, and their equipment updated. The Corporate Congress bought equipment from all the major powers. Turian infantry fighting vehicles, human gunships, asari drone fighters, salarian scout vehicles and batarian heavy tanks. The result of this build up was an extremely well-equipped, large, and very confident army.
Nor was the defence of space ignored either. Defence satellites were placed in Anhur's orbit, capable of deterring large numbers of frigates and corvettes. Light cruisers were bought from asari shipyards, frigates rescued from the scrapheaps of Korlus and refitted, and large merchant vessels converted to escort carriers equipped to carry drone fighters. Although no match at all for the major navies of the galaxy, the space forces available to Anhur were the strongest single force in the Terminus Systems, outstripping even Illium's defence flotillas.
The Rebellion created a serious split in the Protection Forces. Twenty percent of batarians and fifty percent of humans in the force mutinied within days of the imposition of indentured servitude. Many escaped offworld in the chaos of the early days, taking their families with them. Still more began organising what became both the Anhur Republican Army and the Na'kharit. Despite this, the Protection Forces retained most of their heavy equipment, with the exception being anything that had been in Uralis at the start of the uprisings. Furthermore, between the formal declaration of war by the CoF on New Years' Day and the start of the Second Verge War, the Batarian Hegemony funnelled volunteer troops and mercenaries to the colony to bolster their forces. These were not the fanatics, but rather those suspected of dissent. The Hegemony emptied its ranks of so-called "defeatists" and anyone not expressing total loyalty to the cause. Those "volunteered" were quite happy to leave. With them went even more matériel.
By the date of the invasion, the Protection Forces were stronger than ever before. Exact troop numbers have been impossible to calculate, but it is thought that there were ten million humans, batarians and turian mercenaries under arms as professional soldiers on Anhur. Many more were armed and acted as militias to defend their homes in areas where the government retained loyalty. Most of their formations were on a par with those they would face in battle, but it would not save them. The sheer weight of numbers, the brutality and speed of the tactics employed against them, and the lack of space superiority were too much for the Na'hesit forces to overcome.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: The troops numbers in each Alliance legion and in the Alliance Army in general are larger than I originally envisaged when I began writing BF2183, but this was a necessary ret-con. I have edited the prologue of the main story to reflect this, along with adding more accurate descriptions of the battles. The game's canon says that about 3% of humans under arms. There are 20 billion humans in my timeline, therefore there are 600 million humans in military service in some form. Note that this is considerably less than the turians. The organisation of these troops will be explained in a special chapter of this story, "The Alliance Army 2173-2183".