THE BATTLE CONTINUES
Phase 5: Korlus
With Uralis under Alliance control, the invasion forces consolidated their control both in space and planetside. The full thirty-six million strong contribution from the Army was landed without incident over the course of a month, contrary to planners' fears of concentrated aerial attacks. These included both the front combat troops that would go on to take the rest of the planet and the support personnel that made the whole enterprise a possibility. Air defence systems, logistics, electronic warfare centres, ordnance disposal facilities, hospitals, maintenance yards, meteorological sensor nodes, military police stations, communication hubs and psychological operations teams were all built up with the help of the huge numbers of combat engineers. The Alliance's extensive experience with colony-building allowed them to construct a new city in a matter of weeks, with the prefabricated buildings airdropped by the thousands each hour. It was a stunning feat in itself. The locals named the city "Cassandra's Bastion" after the Field Marshal, but it was in fact never given a single official designation, as it was divided by legion into separate living spaces.
The building work did not only extend to the military sphere. The Field Marshal found herself engaged with much political work in the opening weeks. Although she had effectively seized command of the planet by force of arms, she had no intention of ruling it in the same way. Civilian matters were to be left to the civilians. A consultative assembly based along the lines of the Alliance's own Parliament was founded to "advise" the Field Marshal on the governing of the planet. In reality, the assembly did all of the work of ruling those areas of the planet that were free. Only when their plans conflicted with the military needs of the Alliance Army were they overruled by DeRuyter. This happened often in the early days, particularly as the land required to house thirty-six million soldiers had to be expropriated from the agricultural barons that formed the economic backbone of the former Coalition of the Free.
The Navy was not idle during this time either. For two weeks, Admiral Hunt's carrier air groups laid waste to anything that looked remotely spaceworthy, both on the ground and in the air. The Corporate Congress had long expected just such a measure however, and kept their best machines out of the fighting safe underground. They could not hide everything however, and the Na'hesit's air transport capability was systematically devastated, leaving each continent unable to reinforce the others quickly. The Alliance would not see a repeat elsewhere of the evacuation of enemy redoubts on Uralis, a fact for which DeRuyter would have much reason to be grateful. For another two weeks, the Navy had little else to do but protect the troopships. Seeking out battle elsewhere might invite the return of the corporate flotillas, which remained completely intact with the pirate fleets in the Terminus. However, once the task of landing the troops was complete, the Navy's next task would begin.
That task would be Korlus, the centuries-old, galaxy-famous dumping yard of every species. This was not just a reference to the starships that would be ditched and broken up on its surface. The planet was called home by nearly three billion people, almost all of them the dregs of the galaxy. Exiled krogan clans and vicious vorcha packs hold power in most areas of the surface, exploiting a large slave labour pool to salvage or scrap whatever they can. Turian interests controlled the anti-ship defence systems. These consisted of a series of huge, dreadnought-scale cannons on the mountain ranges, backed up by GARDIAN batteries all over the surface. Mercenaries wanting privacy and secrecy also located themselves on the scrapheap, among the corpses of the vessels long-picked clean or underneath them. Finally, wholesalers of ships operated in orbital-stations, selling off repaired and salvaged ships, as well as the raw resources and parts obtained from those that couldn't be saved. Together, these factions operated in a state of uneasy peace, a coalition held together by the profits of the planet and the ruthlessness of the parties.
The presence of two particular things on Korlus together made Alliance intervention inevitable. The orbital shipyards were a huge threat, as the Corporate Congress had excellent credit among their owners. They might be able to simply build enough ships to threaten the invasion forces once the Second Fleet was forced to leave later in the year by the Verge blockade. This alone would not have required intervention, and the shipper-barons of the planet were quite happy to offer a reasonable deal on preventing just such an eventuality from coming to pass. However, the presence of human slaves precluded any notion that such an offer would or could be accepted. The plan for Korlus was originally much more grand, involving a full invasion force of its own. The huge population, the presence of large numbers of krogan and the terrain conditions convinced planners that it would be unwise in the environment of a larger war. A different approach would be taken, involving no Alliance ground assets at all.
It was to be divide and conquer.
Courtesy of the Quarian Migrant Fleet, which maintained a permanent presence in orbit of the planet due to its constant need for parts and new ships, Admiral Hunt had real time information on the entirety of the planet's defences. He left frigate wolfpacks and the planetary assault cruiser patrol groups at Anhur, to protect the ground forces and support their advance, while the rest of the Second Fleet proceeded to the Imir System itself. Rather than close to fight, Admiral Hunt held back his cruisers and frigates. The huge weapons on the planet would have caused significant losses before being destroyed. Instead, he ordered the Niké-class fleet carrier Victoria, the Macha-class fleet carriers Astarte and Morrigan, and the escort carriers to launch an FTL-fighter strike on the mountain positions with EXALT-torpedoes.
Hundreds of Alliance fighters jumped to the edge of Korlus' atmosphere, and vectored onto their targets virtually unopposed. The barons in control of the space-defences had hoped that the Second Fleet's position at the edge of the system meant that Admiral Hunt was there to negotiate, displays of force to force submission peacefully being commonplace among their kind in the Terminus Systems. As such, no fighter screens were deployed in opposition to the Alliance strike. The torpedoes penetrated the kinetic barriers of the cannons' positions with difficulty, but in the end, they were all destroyed and turned to mangled heaps. It was only then that the mercenary fighter squadrons began to launch, and the dogfight over the planet began in earnest.
With no real threat left, Admiral Hunt brought the fleet to low-orbit over Korlus, swatted aside the frigates and light cruisers that guarded it with overwhelming force, and began bombarding a large list of positions. The facilities and personal residences of the barons, mercenary camps that had refused to sign on with the Alliance, slaver property, krogan camps and vorcha pits, GARDIAN batteries belonging to hostile factions; all were bombarded with a variety of weapons ranging from non-lethal 'EMP' types to lower-yield thermonuclear weapons. This utterly destroyed the delicate balance of power on the planet overnight, and the population of Korlus knew it. Into the vacuum of power, a set of mercenary groups that had agreed to cooperate were placed. Among these were the famous Blue Suns mercenary group. Others seized power in other areas, the Omega Blood Pack among them. Regardless, the human and quarian slaves under the old powers were set free and moved, and the orbital-stations turned over to the Migrant Fleet to administer. These would later be destroyed in acts of terrorism, thought to be the work of the Blue Suns, but regardless, they could no longer be used to build ships for the Corporate Congress.
The fleet returned to orbit over Anhur just as the Army forces under DeRuyter were ready to begin Operation Pompey, the invasion of the continents of New Cilicia and Al-Kheb.
Phase 6: The Al-Kheb Campaign
The continent of Al-Kheb lies to the southeast of Uralis, often referred to as the mirror continent of its northern neighbour. Like Uralis, it is long and relatively thin, but there the similarities end. Where Uralis has tundra, forests and steppe grasslands from north to south, Al-Kheb begins at the equator with sweltering jungle, progressing to mountains and then dry sandy desert as you move southwards until it reaches the low temperate zone again, where the urban settlements are located. Traversing such a variety of terrain would be no small feat for any military force.
Adding to the complications was the population. Al-Kheb was mainly settled by nationalist elements from the former Middle Eastern Coalition on Earth, which had been absorbed by the Pan-Asian Coalition during the Asian Unification Wars, and then annexed by the European Union at the end of the Cold War. Many were unhappy with this state of affairs, and emigrated to independent colonies like Anhur in large numbers. As such, it was a stronghold of anti-Alliance sentiment and was heavily divided between the corporate forces and the rebels. As Al-Kheb was the continent least affected by the imposition of zero-pay contracts, most humans there viewed the Alliance intervention as a threat to their prosperity. Most work was in mining or resource extraction, with manual labour delegated to VI units and skilled labourers making up the backbone of the economy. Those that did oppose slavery had no desire to live under the banner of the Alliance regardless. As such, the continent was the heartland of the pro-slavery human population, and there was to be no rebel uprisings in support of the attacks.
The Allied Expeditionary Forces had just the formations to crack this complicated nut, however. Field Marshal DeRuyter deployed combat elements of three legions for the campaign. For the jungle, she assigned the Fourteenth Legion, veterans of hostile environment fighting across the Verge. For the desert, she had her own former unit, the Tenth Legion, which had extensive training in mechanised warfare. Lastly, for the urban fighting in the far-south, she had the Thirteenth Legion, already tested in similar conditions on Uralis during the breakout from the bridgehead. These deployments were a change from the initial plans, but were viewed as a requirement now that it was obvious that the enemy leadership was more than competent. Against these, General Sickle deployed mostly infantry. Apart from the southern cities, the continent was not particularly important or productive. Little of the industrial base was located there except for resource refineries, and those could be rebuilt elsewhere if required. Fighting in the jungle and in the urban areas was anticipated to be where the real action was, rendering most of the mobile equipment of the Protection Forces less useful than it would have been otherwise. The tanks would be needed elsewhere. Regardless, with the population against them, Sickle had little doubt that the Alliance would run into heavy resistance even without significant reinforcements sent.
The battle began on July 1st, with a huge paratroop attack on the coastline nearest Uralis. Walkers, orbital and aerial assault infantry, and titans were dropped onto the beach zones. They were met by no one, at first. This allowed the first regular units of the Fourteenth to land by shuttle and landing ship on the beaches, and begin moving in-land. For several days, there was no sign of the enemy, and DeRuyter had her troops move along the less heavily wooded coastlines to spread out her forces in an attempt to find the enemy. None revealed themselves, even as the coastal monorails were captured and the roads to the south found. Preliminary reconnaissance of the interior jungles by drone and recon scouts found no sign of the enemy, and the Field Marshal ordered the legion to press forward along the easiest paths of advance.
It was exactly what Sickle was waiting for.
As the more heavily armed units moved away to the south, batarian jungle specialists emerged from naturally occurring water tunnel systems. Typically for Sickle, their targets were the rear-echleon units and the supply dumps. The corporate forces were able to disable several key forward operating bases, while making off with a large amount of materiel to continue the fight. Casualties were light on both sides, as DeRuyter had ordered rear units to withdraw before the enemy if challenged after the actions in Uralis. It was still a strategic and morale victory for the Protection Forces, however, and they were more capable of fighting on than ever.
The Field Marshal's response was as characteristically aggressive as ever. The forward units were kept on the advance, ordered to charge all the way to the mountain range separating the jungle from the desert, completing a huge encirclement of the enemy. Once this was complete, she deployed the Thirteenth Legion early into the jungles themselves, creating paths of entry by burning huge strips into the flora with aerial strikes. The Thirteenth were to suffer the greatest casualties of any of the legions deployed to Anhur, and the jungles of Al-Kheb were to be one of the reasons why. Each underground cavern had to be checked individually, as drones roamed the forest surface for targets. Disease took its toll as well, knocking out a quarter of available manpower for the duration.
It took two months for the Thirteenth and Fourteenth legions to complete the sweep, two months of continuous jungle and close-in fighting by soldiers that had expected to remain in reserve until near the end of the campaign. The human cost was twenty thousand permanent casualties, and almost seven hundred and fifty thousand were put out by injury or sickness temporarily. The Anhur Protection Forces lost an unknown number, but estimates put the number at some sixty thousand dead and ten thousand captured. The secret order to the Thirteenth to take no prisoners and widespread use of drones played their roles in this staggeringly high death rate.
With the jungle and mountain passes secure, the Tenth Legion was landed and drove over the Altair Mountains. The desert before them was flat and merciless, but largely undefended. Despite this, the advance was slow. DeRuyter and her immediate subordinate General Botha had no wish to repeat the jungle experience, and suspected the presence of enemy bunkers everywhere. Every suspicious sand dune received a sharp orbital bombardment before Alliance forces were allowed to pass them. In truth, this was a complete waste of time. The geology of the region prevented the use of the civilian mining equipment to make bunkers that could withstand any punishment, so General Sickle had the region abandoned. A journey that should have taken a few days instead took a few weeks.
This had one benefit however, in that it meant that all three legions were ready for the fighting in the cities. The Field Marshal determined that the danger of concentrating casualties in one formation was too great. The plan was changed again, so that the final attacks on the urban transit areas of New Damascus, New Riyadh and New Baghdad would be rotated between each of the three legions. This was also necessary as reports of the populace arming themselves for the coming fight had posted, causing great concern.
The Tenth was to attack first, as it had yet to face a fight. On the western coast, New Damascus was the northern-most city and a hub for the resources reaped from the deserts and jungle. Heavy metal ore was processed in the city, giving it a reputation as a dirty industrial town with good work for those seeking it. It would earn another one entirely as the South Africans began their assault in mid-September. The street-to-street fighting here was heavily favourable to the Alliance, as the climate meant there was plenty of open spaces and large flat roofing for walkers and assault pods to operate in respectively. The militia defenders in particular found themselves utterly perplexed by the vertical envelopment tactics of the mechanised divisions, which took to showering enemy strongpoints with APC-deployed assault pods before ramming through with their bulldozer blades. The professional human, turian and batarian soldiers found themselves surrounded as the Alliance concentrated on where the human militias were most numerous. The latter didn't have enough anti-tank weaponry to sustain any serious defence against such an onslaught, and the last resistance collapsed on September 29th.. The city surrendered, at a cost of some seven thousand permanent casualties for a reward of triple that dead, and nearly fifty times that captured.
New Riyadh was located in hill lands that separated the temperate zone with the desert scrublands. As such, it saw much more precipitation and was more densely constructed, leaving less room for the same sort of tactics as in New Damascus. The town was touristic and artistic before the war, the privileged classes using it as a retreat. The University of Anhur's main campus was located there, though many of the students had joined the rebellion, leaving the facilities under paramilitary control. The attack was carried by the Fourteenth. The Kenyans fought a meticulous street-by-street house clearing operation. Using the fight in the jungle as a template, every single building was to be entered, cleared and secured by infantry. This was not just to insure low civilian casualties, but also to protect the city's architecture itself, which was considered highly valuable in its own right. The Protection Forces fought them for every inch of ground, fighting a much more mobile hit-and-run operation than in Damascus. Streets would be abandoned to the enemy so as to provide opportunities for flanking counterattacks. Snipers would duel in the top floors, taking single shots before moving to the next firing position and searching for their counterparts. The Fourteenth would take the heaviest casualties of the urban operations and New Riyadh would take the longest to liberate. The former numbered some fifteen thousand permanent casualties. The fighting would end on the same day as it would in New Baghdad, despite the operations there starting two weeks later.
The Thirteenth was given the task of securing the land between all three cities for the extra time, to allow it some more recovery time after the utterly brutal fighting of the jungle caverns. New Baghdad was situated between two major rivers at the southern-most plain of Al-Kheb, and it was the capital of the continent. High rise government, business and financial buildings dominated the centre. It was just as crowded as New Riyadh, and perhaps three times as large, though it was situated on flat ground which made the use of assault pods and armour easy. Like the Fourteenth, the Protection Forces fought a street-by-street operation, attempting to lure in the Alliance troops for ambushes and force errors. General Petrovsky was to have none of it. After the first major ambush, where soldiers from the 124th EU Infantry were caught in a trap between several snipers and a heavy machinegun nest, he instituted a new plan of attack. Every building of defensive worth was to be shelled and systematically rubbled with precision rocket artillery strikes. Taking his cue from the turians, Petrovsky broadcast the location of safezones across the rivers, and had the bridges monitored by drone teams. Despite this, many civilians were caught in the crossfire. Lacking long range artillery of their own, the Protection Forces had no answer to this grinding, implacable advance. They surrendered after Petrovsky had the tallest spire in the city, the ATS Bank Tower, brought down into the midst of the defender's redoubt. Casualties were relatively light at ten thousand permanent, but the cost in lives spent from both the civilian populace and corporate soldiery is estimated in the hundreds of thousands. Similar numbers surrendered, and the Thirteenth took the only significant number of prisoners they would in the course of the whole campaign.
The last Anhur Protection Forces soldier in Al-Kheb surrendered on November 5th 2176 to soldiers of Task Force Scania, at the Cape of Light after a four hour chase. The continent had been liberated. The fighting on New Cilicia, which had started at about the same time as that of Al-Kheb, would continue.
Phase 7: The New Cilicia Campaign Begins
The breakthrough in the invasion would come as a result of the unique conditions of New Cilicia. It stretched across the entire southern hemisphere, occupying much of the temperate zone. It was visible on a clear day from Al-Kheb at the Cape of Light, and also had a rocky peninsula that stretched into an island chain connecting it with Uralis across the equator. It was from this island chain that the Alliance would attack. The majority of the population were newly-enslaved, and they were mostly human. Batarian slaves were regarded as more reliable as house servants and administrative clerks in Dahshur and Waset, leaving the stronger humans to work the exotic agriculture and manufacturing plants of New Cilicia. Aside from mass production of asari fruits and vegetables, for which there was huge demand both in the Terminus and in human space, every variety of narcotic drug plant was grown and processed there. One advantage that Anhur had over Illium was that it was suitable for agriculture, and the Corporate Congress knew an opportunity when it smelled one. These were exported all over the Terminus, and even into some turian and asari colonies, all of it legally. Aside from that, skilled manufacturing too complicated for VI controlled robots was carried out, including knockoff programming and adaptive computing technology for cheap omnitools. Programmers had been enslaved right alongside farmers, and both chafed in their chains.
The Protection Forces in this sector were mostly batarian, with the roles reversed on Waset and Dahshur. This was a new development, designed to drive a racial wedge between the two slave populations. In that goal, it largely worked, as anti-batarian sentiment rose sharply among humans and vice-versa, over the course of the Rebellion and the invasion. New Cilicia also had the most capable units assigned to it. Armoured and mechanised divisions mounted in Verush Heavies and Jiris IFVs, fully 70% of the Na'hesit's gunship capability, all of the specialised mercenary groups, and the great majority of the Neurally-Controlled Drone Fighter squadrons. The terrain was studded with bunkers, GARDIAN emplacements and pillboxes. The plains, orchards and forests of New Cilicia was where General Sickle intended to break the back of the invasion. Some ten million soldiers were under arms on the continent, including almost all of the veterans from Uralis. DeRuyter was aware of most of this, and had her titans deployed nearly exclusively to the theatre once the troops allocated to Al-Kheb had been landed. The war of manoeuvre was to begin.
The Field Marshal assigned her remaining three legions. The defenders of Elysium, the Fifth Legion. The victors over Dar'lokhan, the Thirty-Second Legion. The armour specialists of the Twenty-First Legion. The first two were hardened veterans for the most part. The last had varied experience, but ideal equipment for the fight to come. It would be the Thirty-Second that would lead the way. Unlike New-Kheb, the landing would be contested from the start. On July 3rd, the titans and assault troops of the Alliance deployed to the northern shore, much as they had to the jungle coast a few days previously. They were met with a hail of concentrated fire, wherever they stepped. Beachfront bunkers and artillery emplacements to the rear pounded away at the orbital assault troops and titans for an hour. The Alliance lost some nineteen titans to hidden GARDIAN batteries before orbital strikes eliminated the threat, a single-day figure bested only by the height of fighting in the Cold War until the Reaper War. The number of shuttles shot down was as proportionately large, though most managed to crash-land with minimal personnel losses.
The frontline was chaotic, and corporate armoured forces moved quickly to exploit it. At two parts of the line, mixed units of Jiris and Verush tanks managed to break through to the beaches. There, they were met by elements of the armoured and mechanised divisions of the Twenty-First Legion. A terrible, close-in tank battle began. This favoured the Alliance to a large extent, as their tanks were better suited to close range engagements, but they could not safely deploy titans against the enemy either. By the end of the first day of the landings, the Protection Forces had been repelled at great cost in vehicles and lives. The northern beaches of New Cilicia would remain littered with the destroyed hulks of tanks for years to come, the eezo levels being too high to affect normal salvage. The Alliance had kept their beachhead, but only barely. They had advanced only ten kilometres at the most, and some parts of the pocket were as shallow as two kilometres from the sea. Exacerbating this was the constant artillery fire, which made the establishment of supply depots impossible. Resupply from Uralis by shuttle was still vulnerable to attack by enemy fighters. Meanwhile, the enemy infantry was massing.
DeRuyter was forced to act. She ordered all available air assault units forward under the cover of friendly orbital and air strikes. They established perimeters at key points, including transport hubs, and destroyed the artillery that was vexing efforts to lay the infrastructure necessary for the fighting to come. To insure the enemy armour did not turn around and surround the more lightly armed troops, she ordered a general advance simultaneously. These were extremely risky moves. Fuel, food and ammunition needs placed a limit on how long the fighting could go on at such intensity. General Sickle had deduced this as well. Orders went out for all available forces to concentrate on the airdropped units behind the lines. The dropzones became tangled with Ne'hesit troops, as the Alliance gunships ranged above, strafing tanks and keeping the infantry below alive.
Trapped within one such zone was the air assault brigade of the 25th EU Panzergrenadier Division, of which Lieutenant Haider commanded a platoon. As soon as the Protection Forces began moving, Haider understood the danger immediately. Without orders, she took her platoon to a ridgeline overlooking the path from the beaches and waited. Within an hour, a huge column of Jiris fighting vehicles appeared, on the way to crush the rest of her brigade. The ambush that followed would make headlines. Haider's single platoon destroyed or disabled an entire armoured brigade in a brutal four hour fight. She used her infantry to box in and distract enemy tank squadrons, before calling in her gunships and walkers to deliver killing blows. By striking at random points of the formation, facilitated by the mobility of her gunships, she entirely out-thought and out-fought the mostly human corporate forces against her. They had taken 70% losses by the time they surrendered, and Haider had opened the way for the link up of the two Alliance zones of control in forcing the matter. This was the first but not the last instance of the young lieutenant's brilliance in the course of the fighting on New Cilicia, and indeed it would be overshadowed by later events. However, at the time, her success protected her entirely from the ire of her direct superiors and her own disregard of the chain of command.
The breakout began soon after. The rest of the 25th Panzergrenadiers streamed through the gap, diverting enemy troops to either side of its advance, allowing a wider and wider followthrough. Enemy units were forced to turn like a line of dominos to deal with flanking manoeuvres that rippled along the front. The Protection Forces were forced back, and by the end of the first week, had been pushed out of the shrublands that dominated the northwestern coast and into the agricultural heartlands of the entire planet; the Pedias Plains. Here, the advance halted as the Alliance ran into the start of the formidable fixed defences that dotted Anhur, protections first built to defend against pirates operating for profit, now built up to defend against a far more capable enemy.
The Twenty-First Legion was reinforced, as the European Fifth and the African Thirty-Second were called forwards. The Fifth was dispatched southwards, towards the Trachean Forests, a vast mix of woodlands and orchard plantations that stretched until the southern tundra. The Thirty-Second was to join the Twenty-First for the attack across the plains. The plan of action was simple. The armour would move through the weaker sections of the enemy defences, and the infantry would surround and reduce each strongpoint.
The second offensive began days after the first attacks, and it made steady progress. However, the Field Marshal was to find the rate of advance extremely frustrating. Everywhere, previously unknown defensive works sprung up. Orbital scans suggested that the entire region had been dug out like a molehill, but not all of the earthworks and bunkers were occupied and it was impossible to know which were. Decoys and booby-trapped chambers became part of the life of the ordinary soldier, and the frustration was not reserved for the high command alone. Added to this was the strategy of the enemy to allow Alliance armoured forces to pass, followed up by attacks on the rear of the columns or against the support forces. Even rebel spies could not tell when and where such attacks would strike, as all civilians were kept away from the new defences.
For two months
Once again, Lieutenant Karla Haider would rescue the Alliance forces from what could have been a catastrophic cost to take the planet.
Phase 8: The Battle of Tarsus
Despite much greater success than had been anticipated, the Corporate Congress was sent into a panic as Al-Kheb fell and New Cilicia's fighting degenerated into a quagmire. The slaveholders of the continent were the most concerned, and most began carrying out the first stages of their contingency plans. Where previously they had seen their slaves as cheap employees or chattel, now they saw only witnesses to their crimes, and the hangman banging at the door. Sponsored militia or units of the Protection Forces, along with the personal mercenary detachments assigned to guard the plantations, began rounding up slaves by the tens of thousands and sending them to the city of Tarsus.
Agricultural slaves were piled into housing with the factory workers, overcrowding the residential districts. The Alliance thought little of it. Slaveholders had been moving slaves away from the front since the beginning of the campaign, and Tarsus was a major transportation hub for both monorail and trucks. If the slaves were going to be moved to the far-west of the continent, trains would have to be used. Furthermore, as they weren't moving anything like the same amount of material westward, there was plenty of room. DeRuyter and her subordinates simply assumed that evacuation of the plantations was the intention of the action.
Lieutenant Haider was under no such illusion. Due to her position as an air assault officer, she had a great deal of access to forward intelligence on the activities of the enemy behind the lines, where she was expected to operate. Rebel spy reports, satellite surveillance, reconnaissance by N7s, all information from all sources told her of the enemy's terrible plan. Everything pointed to a mass killing in the works, one of an unprecedented scale since the end of the Krogan Rebellions.
Haider informed her superiors of her suspicions, and was met with a mixed response. Her immediate superiors were sceptical, but when they themselves reported it to their own superiors, there was a great debate over whether or not it was a genuine threat, and what to do about it if it was. The lieutenant had no intention of waiting to see the result, and was determined to act in defence of the humans now being crowded together into the slums. She previously had been ordered to attack targets of opportunity behind enemy lines, as part of the general advance. So had any number of other air assault platoons, with allotted aerial cover as well as missile and orbital artillery support. She would take the interpretation of these orders to an extreme.
On the night of August 15th 2176, an air assault platoon of nine Mantis gunships departed from the Alliance airbase at Adana. Five Mantis-Cs, carrying infantry and the platoon HQ group, two Mantis-Ds to transport the two Riesig Assault Walkers, and two Mantis-E tankhunter gunships slipped out into the darkness on what would be the most important combat sortie of the entire invasion. Haider's plan was complex by necessity. Tarsus lay some four hundred kilometres west of the lines, and possessed formidable anti-aircraft defences. The city itself was built up but spread out. There were no skyscrapers or high rise buildings. Industry and housing for the workers dominated through. With the addition of tens of thousands of slaves arriving each day, the Protection Forces garrison grew with it, mostly consisting of mobile infantry without heavy armour support. The city was also the theatre headquarters for the entire New Cilicia front, courtesy of its supposed invulnerability from orbital attack. The Corporate Congress, confident that the Alliance would not risk casualties among the slaves, often placed their strategic directors in highly populated areas in lieu of kinetic barrier defences.
Using data from the Navy, Lieutenant Haider plotted a precise, low altitude course through these defences, so as to avoid corporate fighter patrols over the combat zone. By spoofing enemy IFF beacons and staying out of range of as many GARDIAN batteries as possible, the whole squadron made it without incident, despite several points at which their flightpath should have been questioned by Na'hesit air controllers. It is thought that they were mistaken for a squadron of corporate gunships, of which there were many coming and going in the days and weeks leading up to that night. A flight that should have taken only a few hours was greatly lengthened by the necessary manoeuvres, and it was morning when the platoon arrived over the skies of Tarsus itself. With the rising sun at their back, the gunships swooped onto the headquarters building, formerly the city hall, and began the attack.
The assault walkers were dropped directly into the courtyard as the tankhunters destroyed the two GARDIAN batteries, opening the way for four full squads and the command group to land on the roof. Most of the largely batarian garrison were still asleep in the adjacent barracks building when the two walkers shredded it with their 40mm gatling cannons. Secondary explosions caused a tunnel collapse into one of the bunkers below, accidentally burying several dozen prisoners as well as a number of interrogators. Haider led her squads on a top to bottom sweep of the main facility, encountering little in the way of resistance as she took possession of the entire continent's command and control apparatus. While none of the command staff were taken alive, as they had no illusions as to their fate after surrender, the lieutenant did manage to deactivate the encrypted communications systems, seize the encryption devices themselves, find plans for the massacres that the commander there had planned, and most crucially, discover a comprehensive map of the bunker system constructed hastily after the introduction of slavery. The entire defence of New Cilicia was compromised in a single stroke, if the information could be acted upon quickly enough.
Unfortunately, the fighting drew the attention of everyone in the city. From the outer rallypoints at the spaceport and the western barracks on the outskirts, the Protection Forces moved quickly to retake the building, despite a lack of tanks or artillery. However, this was complicated by the slave uprising that sparked off as a result of the explosions and smoke rising from the headquarters, visible from every part of the settlement. While Haider's troops consolidate their position during a few hours of relative calm, riots erupt across the entire urban area. Lightly armoured troop transports on the way to the government quarter were accosted by huge mobs of troops, armed with weapons scrounged from bodies of their overwhelmed guards. Rebel spies began coordinating these mobs by the middle of the day, as the corporate infantry withdrew under massive pressure to the safety of their defence cordons. General Sickle's response was immediate and brutal. In order to clear the way to the headquarters, that had to be retaken intact, he deployed his own Mantis gunships against the slaves. Hundreds died in the first half hour, before the survivors scattered and hid. The Protection Forces marched back in to clear the city, one building at a time.
Haider's situation began to grow desperate as well. Field Marshal DeRuyter, upon realising what the young lieutenant had done, duly informed her that a Titan drop on Tarsus was impossible due to the density of GARDIAN defences. Several N7 squads could be dropped by assault pod into the headquarters courtyard, and they eventually would be, but nothing larger than a person could be dropped without tripping the heat-sensor scans. Yet, Haider could do nothing to drop these defences from her end, and the Navy could not bombard them without killing huge numbers of the rioting slaves either. Meanwhile, civilians continued to put their lives on the line.
The answer came to the lieutenant in the late afternoon, as she was watching helplessly on a holographic map of the city. After activating the public broadcast system, Haider addressed the population of Tarsus, urging them to storm and destroy that anti-aircraft batteries, promising that the Alliance would arrive from space if they did so. Minutes later, she requested the N7 drop, not into her position but nearby each of the key GARDIAN batteries. It was a near-suicidal plan. Without significant reinforcement, the Protection Forces units moving towards the headquarters would overwhelm the tiny number of troops that she had at her disposal. Jiris Fighting Vehicles from the reserve areas to the east had been moved by shuttle, to make matters worse.
The action elsewhere proceeded much as Haider intended, however. All over Tarsus, slaves gathered and charged headlong at the AA batteries, and in numbers that made the morning riots look like a mere brawl. Thousands died in the attempts, despite the targets being poorly defended. Many were only taken after the arrival of N7s, but these batteries were taken intact and began swatting down corporate gunships. Within the hour, the only available orbital assault divisions of the Thirteenth Legion were arriving over the skies of the city in titans, their infantry and walkers deploying from there onto the streets under the cover of the flying fortresses' guns. Na'hesit forces, overwhelmed and disorganised, failed to create a coherent line of resistance anywhere. They found themselves surrounded in nearly twenty pockets across the city. The Thirteenth would dispatch them with typical brutality and efficiency over the next few days, destroying all buildings in areas of resistance and allowing slaves to deal with those that surrendered.
Haider's own situation became extremely desperate. Although the capture of the AA batteries had freed up her gunships to strike at will, the Protection Forces simply had too many troops at their disposal. By the time she was relieved by three titans from the 55th EU Orbital Assault Division, three quarters of her platoon were dead or incapacitated, and a batarian kill squad was in the building readying explosives to bring it down. The lieutenant herself had been wounded in the thigh and shoulder, and was still standing only due to the swift application of medigel. However, history has judged the sacrifice of the men and women under her command to have been worth it. The evidence that the Na'hesit was going to murder tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands or even millions of slaves, was absolutely conclusive. The military gains were also of paramount importance. Thanks to the mapping of bunkers and the cracking of the entire corporate coding system, there was now nowhere to hide.
Phase 9: New Cilicia Falls
General Sickle reacted to the liberation of Tarsus immediately. Rather than attempt to surround the city, which would leave a large part of his army exposed to attack from both the front and back, he had the Protection Forces make a fighting withdrawal over the hundreds of kilometres, trading distance for Alliance casualties at every turn, while keeping the rear of the army secure with airpower. By November 20th, the line settled about twenty kilometres to the west of Tarsus, following along the Cydnus River that divided the continent's western third from the rest. The Na'hesit forces settled in for the defensive, as the Twenty-First and Thirty-Second legions raced to the opposite bank, hot on the heels of straggling units. Out of the forests of the south and the plains of the north, the two legions converged. Together, they had taken some two hundred thousand casualties, permanent or otherwise, to get to the river.
It was here that the information captured by Haider began to show its worth.
DeRuyter had no intention of letting up the forward movement. The planetary assault cruisers of the Second Fleet began pinpoint bombardments of all the known bunker complexes on the western side of the river, rolling east to west. Na'hesit casualties were staggering. Whole units were buried alive or smashed to a paste by the hypervelocity hits to their bunkers. Behind these strikes, the Fifth Legion's combat formations advanced, moved up from reserve positions it had occupied since the beginning of the advance on Tarsus. It smashed the remnants of corporate formations directly ahead of it, and made for the city of Side, the last major urban area of the continent. As they moved, the Field Marshal ordered the rebels to agitate the slaves into rising up once again, and a repeat of the Tarsus uprisings resulted.
With his front line collapsing, his army in tatters, and Alliance titans dropping onto his last defensive redoubt unopposed as special forces aided by rebelling slaves destroyed his anti-aircraft weapons, Sickle knew he had lost the continent. On November 30th, he issued a set of orders. His best intact units were evacuated by shuttle to Waset, to aid in the defence of the capital. With them went all remaining gunships and neurally controlled fighters, along with the crews and pilots. Every other organised force was to move to uninhabited areas, and then to lay down arms. Given what happened in the following December, it is said that Sickle already knew he had lost. There were suggestions that resorting to guerilla war in the wilds would only result in more retribution, and so he moved to prevent that in the event of a complete defeat.
The next few days were frantic, as the Alliance were inundated with surrendering troops and also had the responsibility of seeing to the welfare of the slaves that turned out in massive crowds to welcome them into Side. As a result, Sickle's plan to withdraw was a complete success. However, nerves were fraying on Waset and in Dahshur.
Phase 10: Augustus
With the fall of New Cilicia, the Corporate Congress was deeply divided. With most of the planet now under Alliance control, they broke into three factions.
The largest believed that the time had come to flee to the Terminus Systems with as much mobile wealth as they could. This would require significant work on the part of the Protection Forces to help break the Alliance blockade. The majority of the Congress were not soldiers or warlords, and a healthy mix of both humans and batarians favoured this approach. Many had independent holdings in the Terminus to begin with, and the loss of their Anhur operations was not so great a loss to them as it might have otherwise appeared.
The second faction believed that flight was folly. To these executives, it was clear that the Alliance would never give up looking for them. The Defence Intelligence Directorate would send assassins and spies throughout unregulated space to hunt down and kill every last one of them, such was the visceral nature of human opinion on the subject. Surrender was the only option. The great bulk of the Congress that wished to surrender were human, but they were supported by the batarian merchant houses out of favour with Khar'shan, including the now-famous House Shaaryak. The Alliance had called for unconditional surrender, but it was thought that this was largely a rhetorical position for public consumption, that the real war was with the Hegemony.
Finally, there were the militarists. Largely made up batarian groups from the original Terminus coalition that had sponsored the first colonisations of Anhur, they thought the other two factions to be hopelessly naïve, to the point of being a dire threat to all their lives. Fleeing to the Terminus would result in their deaths, either by an Alliance sniper or mercenary gunmen. Surrender would see them imprisoned for the last of their days on Sidon, like the batarians and pirates that had attacked Elysium.
These disagreements turned into open conflict as the Alliance offensive on Waset opened with a lightning campaign against Dahshur on December 5th, with elements of the legions that had been engaged on Al-Kheb deploying. As the small adjoining continent was populated almost exclusively by batarians, DeRuyter felt no need to restrain the Navy in its orbital artillery support or the Army's titans. Public opinion would not be affected. The Protection Forces presence was shattered in a mere three days as a result, demonstrating the absolute superiority of any force that possesses both the will and capability to use space supremacy to its fullest. The Alliance took only minimal casualties, with permanent losses at less than five hundred. Civilian losses were massive. Some two hundred thousand died, millions were wounded and millions more were rendered homeless. Although many among them understood the need for the bombardments, others still found it a source of much resentment in the following years.
By December 10th, the small continent had fallen and the assault on Waset itself began with an offensive up the isthmus, as well as landings from New Cilicia as the full six legions were committed to ending the invasion. DeRuyter had no intention of allowing the fighting to continue into 2177, now that she had the strategic initiative.
The Corporate Congress finally splintered on the same day. A majority formed around surrender, as those who wished to escape and those who wished to surrender united around a plan to broker a ceasefire, in order to facilitate both. The militarists baulked at this, and ordered the Protection Forces to keep fighting despite the majority openly proclaiming their intentions. This played right into the hands of DeRuyter. Half of the slaver units surrendered as ordered, deactivating defences and stacking arms. The other half fought on, increasingly divided and eventually surrounded. To make matters worse, once the units that were going to surrender did so, the Field Marshal rejected all ideas of negotiated surrender, using the remaining forces in the field as the justification. She ordered every spaceworthy ship and shuttle strafed by the Navy's fighters and the Army's gunships in lightning raids on remaining enemy airbases and spaceports. There would be no escape, except by immediate and unconditional surrender.
Despite this, it still took another two weeks for the pockets of resistance to be crushed. Waset was the most heavily fortified of all the continents, and orbital bombardment was less effective against these as they were protected by both kinetic barriers and the close presence of human civilians. Eventually, the entire invasion force was compelled to adopt the savage tactics of the Thirteenth, as the remaining Na'hesit forces fought to the last man. These were inevitably a mix of batarian hardliners and human ultranationalists whom had fled from Earth, and although they hated each other, they now died together for a doomed cause.
Resistance finally collapsed on Christmas Day 2176, as the last enclave surrendered their arms to the Tenth Legion in the capital city of New Thebes. Anhur had been liberated.