THE BATTLE CONTINUES
Phase 2: The Seven Days Begins
The next week would be remembered as 'The Seven Days', when both sides tested themselves against the other in a campaign of movement that typified the fighting on Anhur.
The 'night' of June 8th was a quiet one for the men and women of the Allied Expeditionary Force on the frontline. Despite a ferocious set of opening engagements during the day, the corporatist leadership did not order its forces on Uralis to mount a night-time strike while the numbers of Alliance regulars was low. This failure was the subject of much debate in the months and years after the liberation, and is still discussed by historians today. Records and witness testimonies indicate that General Sickle and the Na'hesit both felt they did not have the forces on hand to carry out such an offensive, and that moving more troops to the continent under the guns of the Alliance Second Fleet's fighters and frigates would have been foolhardy at best. Historians later postulated that the risk could very well have been acceptable, given that later events proved that the Protection Forces could move their troops by air under combat conditions. However, there is a large degree of uncertainty whether or not a night attack in the first twenty four hours could have turned the tide. And so the debate rages on, fuelled by the importance of the campaign to the future prestige and power of the Systems Alliance.
However, this delay provided one advantage to the corporatists, one that they could not anticipate and one that Consul Taro had long planned for. As the Alliance began landing its troops, Field Marshal Cassandra DeRuyter declared herself Provisional Military Governor under the 2176 War Powers Act. This was of dubious legality, as it effectively meant that the Systems Alliance was annexing an independently chartered colony under the protection of the Citadel Council. There would be many court battles to come over this declaration, but the most immediate effect was the alienation of most of the leadership of the Coalition of the Free from the Alliance. Most of the groups making up the Rebellion had not been fighting so that the colony could be handed over to the Alliance. Indeed, only human-supremacists openly supported such a move before the offensive that almost crushed the rebellion had begun.
This presented a rather large diplomatic problem for the Field Marshal. What happened next is proof to some that her personality was ill-suited to the complex political task, proof to others of her greatness as a general. When confronted at the Hotel Grand, what would become her governmental headquarters for the duration of the invasion, by the leadership of both the Anhur Republican Army and the Na'kharit, she reacted with her famous forwardness. After hours of quietly hearing complaints and objections, she declared that the Rebellion had lost the war. The complete collapse of the line just prior to Alliance intervention and the intelligence reports provided by the Eclipse were proof of that. As such, the political leadership of the rebels had ceded their right to object, as they had failed the people of Anhur and the Alliance would not. She outlined what the future of the rebellion's contribution to the war would be. They would be disarmed of their remaining heavy weapons, and they would police the rear of the lines in conjunction with her own garrison units. In short, the glory was to be the Alliance's alone. Most of the rebel leaders were outraged, to which DeRuyter coolly responded that she was perfectly content to let them join the enemy if they found the situation intolerable.
For the moment however, neither the Field Marshal nor the CoF leadership could act on the matter. Rebel forces were still important to the integrity of the front line, meaning that disarming them would not be an option. Similarly, the population did not share their leaders' distrust of the Alliance, regarding the invasion forces as liberators, which prevented any open political opposition to their presence. With the situation resolved for the moment, the eyes of all turned to the fighting to come.
On the second day of the invasion, Alliance and rebel forces were ordered forward on a broad front. The corporatists had not been idle in the night, and had prepared effective makeshift defences in depth. At dawn, the assault began with Alliance gunships strafing the forward armoured positions. These were followed by a full mechanised attack by elements of the Tenth, Twenty-First and Thirty-Second Legions, supported on both sides by rebel advances. Resistance was fierce for the whole day. Courtesy of the robotic mining equipment available to them, the corporatists had been able to turn what was previously a more or less flat and forested battlefield into a series of small hills, canyons and tank-traps. This behaviour had not been counteracted, as DeRuyter had issued strict orders to keep mining equipment intact for breaking into bunkers on other continents.
Several lead squadrons of Alliance Orca tanks and Groundhog II APCs were disabled or destroyed as they pushed into the terrain, at no significant cost to the enemy. Alliance commanders reacted quickly to the situation, and by noon in the centre of the battlefield, Alliance infantry were deploying by assault pods from APCs and titans to eliminate the AT teams stalking the artificial labyrinths. It was during these attacks that the first omni-bayonet charges were made, marking the beginning of a new era in infantry combat, one dominated by the kinetic barrier. Rebel forces were not so lucky, lacking the equipment to deploy their soldiers in the same way. Furthermore, the Protection Forces had identified them as the weak links in the chain closing around them and directed their Jiris hovertanks to the flanks where the rebels were moving. With the help of Alliance orbital strikes, the rebels did make progress in the afternoon, but their losses were much more heavy, particularly in terms of vehicles and equipment.
By the evening, the Protection Forces had effected an orderly withdrawal in the face of the Alliance, but had held the line against the rebels. They had been pushed back or given some sixty miles in the centre, but a mere twenty on the flanks. This was deliberate on the part of General Sickle, who still did not feel confident enough to reinforce the continent's forces by air. He wished to provoke overconfidence in his or her enemy, and in this he succeeded. They had moved forward three times as much as their plans had projected. However, in doing so, they had created a huge salient along the eighty kilometre sector in which they operated. In addition, the rebel forces to their flanks were shattered, good only for defensive operations. Both sides would have to react to this opportunity and danger.
Phase 3: The Uralis Salient
The disposition of the forces of both sides presented great threat and great possibility for Field Marshal DeRuyter.
On the one hand, the corporatist forces had just enough troops, gunships and tanks to encircle the main thrust of her own forces by breaking through the tired rebel lines and proceeding northwards. The dividends for the enemy would have been huge. They could close the noose around the two-hundred thousand or so troops that the pincer movement would capture, hugging close enough to Alliance lines to prevent the mass use of orbital strikes, and force her to commit yet more troops to a meatgrinder attack to relieve those trapped. On the other hand, there was a great possibility for her to split her centre in two, push both east and west against the slavers' flanks, march to the coasts and drive the best divisions of the enemy into the sea. This was not without risk. It would leave the centre weakened against enemy attacks. However, the Field Marshal was not afraid of risk when the rewards were so great, and with total orbital supremacy at her fingertips until Uralis was freed, she was fully confident of victory.
General Sickle also had to contemplate his or her options. They had two obvious possibilities that could result in a great victory for their troops. They could take the initiative and attack on the flanks as DeRuyter suspected he might. This was attractive for reasons beyond the military. Smashing the remnants of the Rebellion's own forces would be a huge political victory for the Corporate Congress. It would leave the fighting to be done entirely by the Alliance, which would give them a huge propaganda tool in the form of claims that this was an illegal annexation as opposed to a liberation. They were unaware that the Alliance did not care about its reputation either among the population of Anhur or on the Citadel. Consul Taro, Minister deBankole and Field Marshal DeRuyter all wanted victory more.
The other option was a concentrated attack on the centre if the Field Marshal attacked on the flanks herself. It was seen as practically inevitable that she would, as all military analysis by the Na'hesit on the subject of their great opponent indicated that she was an aggressive commander. Turning the Alliance back in this way while getting out their own troops would be an equally large political victory. However, there were concerns for both plans. Encirclement would cause huge casualties among the Alliance ranks, both within the pocket and during the counterattacks to relieve it, but the question of what would happen next after that was a grave one. Similarly, an attack on the centre might be repulsed under heavy artillery and orbital fire, or delayed long enough for the Alliance to complete its own flank attacks.
In the end, the General went with his or her third option, and managed to save the lion's share of their forces in the process. Fighting on the third day opened with the much-predicted move by DeRuyter; five divisions attacked on each flank of the salient, striking towards the sea. The rebels made more modest efforts along the entire front to hold the attention of the divisions directly facing them, whom could have otherwise turned and overwhelmed the attackers. Further Alliance reserves were moved into the centre from Novokuznetskaya as the morning progressed, bringing the total number of human forces present on the front line to 250,000. Aside from the six orbital assault formations already deployed, these consisted of four armoured, five air assault and ten mechanised infantry divisions.
In the east, the European Twenty-First Legion deployed two armoured and three air assault divisions to attack on the flat, open plains that made up the northern part of Uralis' great steppes, the centre of its agriculture. In the west, the African Tenth Legion had four mechanised infantry divisions and one air assault division as it moved to attack the enemy along a range of small mountains that framed the coastline and the arid region behind that. In the centre, the other legions were to hold the line against what seemed to be the majority of the corporate forces. The assaults on both flanks started off well, particularly in the west. However, by the afternoon, they were getting into significant trouble. Sudden armoured attacks from the rear and flanks began, halting the advances dead.
These battles are what gave General Sickle their name. Knowing he could not attack the centre or encircle the Alliance forces and maintain it, he opted to defuse the threat of the Alliance's own offensives. They left ten divisions of their own facing the Alliance centre, and had the remainder wait until the humans' own attacks had made it over their start lines and towards the sea. Once they were exposed, the corporatist troops moved parallel to the Alliance's own defensive lines and straight into the sides and rear of the attacks being made on the flanks. Cover against orbital strikes came in the form of burning yet more of the forests and crops, proving itself highly effective. Thus the infamous "Sickle Movement" was seen for the first time by the Alliance Army, and not for the last time.
The Tenth and Twenty-First Legions were forced to turn their attacks southward, to deal with these attacks. They performed admirably in doing so, but Sickle's real objective became apparent soon after. Tens of divisions that had been fighting the rebel forces some twenty to forty miles behind in both the east and west began to retreat rapidly, under cover of the Na'hesit's gunships and mobile AA. DeRuyter's troops attempts to resume the push to the seas were frustrated by fresh assaults that continued into the night, and by the time the Alliance made it to the sea, three quarters of the troops that had attempted to escape managed to do so. Thus ended the Battle for the Uralis Salient.
Despite the tactical Alliance victory, it remained very much a strategic victory for the Corporate Congress. They had lost less troops in the engagement than the Alliance, had demonstrated their commanders' ability to deceive their enemy, and had managed to preserve face against overwhelming odds. DeRuyter was infuriated, and would press the only advantages she had been left with in the aftermath; numbers and battlespace.
Phase 4: Top to Bottom
Despite the victory, Sickle knew that their position on Uralis was increasingly untenable. Preparations to reinforce the continent had been made, including a series of fortified anti-aircraft and anti-ship emplacements on the island chains that connected it to the other continents. Originally, it had been planned to use these corridors of safe airspace to fly and ship in more troops to take back the ground lost. The problem with this was one of numbers. Every passing day saw yet more Alliance ground troops arrive from orbit, and in ever-increasing numbers. Another two hundred thousand were due to arrive on the fourth day alone. Even if they used the entirety of their shuttle fleet and every civilian oceancraft fast enough to make the journey without being blasted to pieces, they would not be able to move enough troops in time to save the continent. Furthermore, the lack of GARDIAN weapons on the continent meant that counteracting the Alliance titans was nearly impossible.
So the decision was made to abandon Uralis to its fate. Sickle ordered a general retreat to the shorelines closest to the island chains, and from there, he would evacuate the sectors across the sea to reinforce the defences of New Cilicia and Al-Kheb. To disguise this plan, he spent the fourth day of the campaign making a fighting retreat in much the same manner that had created the Uralis Salient, causing maximum casualties and then withdrawing to the next useful position. This lulled DeRuyter into a sense of complacency to a certain extent, and she was surprised to find the Protection Forces in full retreat the next morning.
Despite extensive orbital bombardment and the air assault divisions of the Alliance hounding them the entire way, Sickle's troops made it to their embarkation zones on the sixth day. This left 90% of the continent in Alliance hands, and the port towns became the primary combat zones. Over the next two days, some 500,000 humans, batarians and turian mercenaries would be successfully moved out as the Thirteenth and Tenth Legions battered at the defensive perimeters, kilometre-by-kilometre. On the night of the seventh day, they succeeded in breaching them, ending the evacuation prematurely. In one of the pinnacles of the brutality of the invasion, some seventy thousand corporatist troops either fought to the death or were executed after surrendering. How many fought and how many were murdered under the orders of General Petrovsky is unknown. Another thirty to fifty thousand were taken prisoner, most of them in sectors assaulted by the Tenth Legion. These figures provoked great suspicion when they came to light.
And so The Seven Days ended as an Alliance victory, but with a promise for more carnage to come.