ALERT: Minor spoilers for the main series in this chapter. Nothing earth-shattering, but I felt it polite to mention it.
THE COMMANDERS
The Turian Hierarchy
The decentralised nature of turian military command has been identified by human theorists as a key weakness that led to the eventual outcome of the First Contact War, but it is remarked upon the one thing that kept the turians from collapsing completely by their own historians. Regardless of the truth of this, there was no single person in control of turian forces in the combat sector, or even on Shanxi itself.
This was not only the fault of turian organisational preference, but also the means by which the war started. Turian forces at Relay 314 had opened fire without higher command authorisation. Follow up engagements occurred with a similar lack of direct political guidance behind them. Itching for war, military commanders began preparing their own forays into the space of humanity. The politicians allowed this, as it immediately improved
It was only at Shanxi that some semblance of real coordination began, as the discovery of what was thought to be a major colony required it.
General Desolus Arterius, Commanding Officer, New Territories
The man most responsible for both the Battle of Relay 314 and the Siege of Shanxi is Desolus Arterius. The brother of Saren Arterius, his place in history has been greatly overshadowed both by his sibling's betrayal of the Citadel and by the wish of turians to forget the key figures of the war. His family was not particularly important, and he himself was promoted to the highest level any member of it had ever reached. The fact that Arterius only ever directly commanded a special forces company for the duration of combat on Shanxi and beyond suggests that his role was of little consequence. However, any true study of the events of 2157 would be remiss in excluding him.
Arterius was a sectoral general, a position at the twenty-third tier of the Turian Hierarchy and the highest command rank that remained purely military, outside the scope of administration. Sectoral generals are the direct military subordinates of the primarchs, who themselves rule colonisation clusters. In the case of Arterius, he was in command of defence of the 'New Territories' under the oversight of Primarch Faruc Reloranus.
The New Territories were the name for all the territory granted to the Hierarchy under the deal crafted by Councillor Linea T'posa, the majority of which would become humanity's core colonisation sectors. The parts that did not were the subject of great activity in the years leading up to contact. No less than four garden worlds had been discovered, of which three possessed dextro-amino life. The star clusters around these were explored thoroughly and marked as the possessions of the turian people, and almost all efforts were poured into developing them first before the next stage. This was in accordance with the agreement with the asari and salarians, both of whom were watching developments very closely.
That is not to say that no efforts at all were put into seeing just what else the Hierarchy now possessed. Arterius himself was at the head of a military push for further exploration. He turned down six promotions in other sectors, waiting to get his chance to command in the New Territories. Evidence procured from Cerberus in 2186 suggests that he did so as the result of subtle Reaper indoctrination due to exposure to previously unknown alien artefacts. The beginning of his thirst for exploration coincides with the beginning of human use of the mass relay network, suggesting that the Reapers recognised that a new player had entered the galactic scene and contact would be required to bring them to their technological peak. At the time, it was simply thought that Arterius was a zealot of the patriotic anti-secession faction, and he saw the explorations as a challenge to help unite his people.
Regardless of the Reapers' involvement, Arterius was promoted to his favoured post in 2156. He immediately ordered two things. First of all, exploration of claimed clusters was to be greatly expanded. This would lead to the discovery of two more garden worlds, both levo-amino, and would bring great prestige to the Arterius name. Secondly, unopened relays within the New Territories were to be patrolled. This was to satisfy the Citadel Accords rule against uncharted transrelay exploration, but also to prevent the Batarian Hegemony from capitalising on the stability brought by turian arms to the region. The Hegemony had itself expanded in the years before First Contact, and was looking for a back route through salarian space into the Skyllian Verge.
It was the second order that would lead directly to war.
Arterius' role would not end in merely setting up the conflict. After the Battle at Relay 314, it was he who directed turian naval assets to search and destroy, resulting the flurry of small engagements that succeeded in pushing the Alliance Navy's Third Fleet all the way back to Shanxi, and eventually even further. Once that was complete, he sought and gained political support for orbital and ground operations against Shanxi itself, remaining the figurehead commander for the entire duration of the siege and occupation.
Despite this role, he did not take direct control of combat operations once he had initiated them. This was a subject of much controversy even at the time, especially among those that were placed with direct responsibility for operations. It is now known this was because yet more Reaper artefacts had been discovered in the same cluster as Shanxi, and the shuttle carrying them was shot down over the colony. His attention shifted to recovering them, and in the course of doing so, he would be briefly captured by human mercenaries. Among them was Jack Harper, the future leader of Cerberus. Harper, better known as the Illusive Man, is thought to have been first indoctrinated during his contact with the artefacts while in Arterius' hands.
General Dava Orinia, Commanding Officer, Turian 43rd Marine Division
The officer that would take direct command over the fighting on and above Shanxi was Dava Orinia. In this, she was operating above her pay grade. She was merely a divisional commander, at the eighteenth rank in the Hierarchy, and neither rank were typically assigned to command of entire planetary campaigns. Despite this, she has come to be regarded as highly competent and within her element by turians. Alliance assessment of her abilities was long tainted by her actions on Shanxi, until the beginning of the Reaper War, when her actions redeemed her to a large degree in human eyes.
Orinia began her military service as all able-minded and able-bodied turians do, conscripted at fifteen and trained for total war. Her service record indicates that she was above-average in many respects, but not considered a genius. Her rise through the ranks was rapid at first. It took her only a few months to be assigned as an NCO. However, this slowed as she climbed, and it took her seven years to reach the rank of divisional commander. It has been suggested that this had more to do with politics than her military abilities. Unlike Arterius, members of her family had reached the higher political and administrative ranks before. Turian sources refuse to comment, preferring to maintain that their system of government prohibits such corruption, and so we do not know why exactly her rise was delayed.
Regardless, Orinia was widely considered to be the perfect candidate to lead the initial assault on an alien world, against a foe that no turian ground commander had ever faced before. Aside from her division's own merits, of which there were many, she had a reputation for swift improvisation in the face of new and unexpected threats. This had been demonstrated repeatedly in anti-piracy operations in the lead-up to contact, and Orinia was the recipient of several commendations in those years. Even before it was known what exactly would be found on Shanxi, this was considered an essential trait by the generals and politicians above her, and their appreciation for these talents only grew as the Alliance unveiled more and more nasty surprises.
Orinia's initial plan for Shanxi would lack complexity, a reflection of her suspicion that anything more complex than an outline would be confounded by the changing realities on the ground. As such, standard turian procedure for the seizure and occupation of a hostile garden world was implemented directly from the book.
The orbital and naval defences were to be eliminated by overwhelming force, provided by flotillas of the turian Seventh Fleet. Landings followed by assaults on settlements would follow. Again, standard turian procedure was king. Anyone not wishing to fight would be directed to a safe zone at the outskirts of each settlement by hastati squads going door-to-door, and anyone refusing to move would be eliminated systematically. This concept was well understood by all known galactic species, although the asari disapproved of its brutality. Contrary to some assertions, the intent was not ethnic cleansing but conflict resolution. Once the settlements were secure, larger forces could land to begin searching the countryside for combatants, and so put an end to formal combat operations. Orinia was supposed be relieved of overall command at this stage.
As it would occur however, she would not be, and the events at Shanxi remain the subject of much debate. The conduct of turian forces both during the siege and the occupation, and Orinia's own reaction to the Alliance counterattack, have been dissected numerous times by scholars and soldiers alike. All that is agreed upon is that Orinia was the key figure on the turian side.
The Systems Alliance
The human hierarchy of command was only marginally less messy than that of the turians, but had the advantage of a much more vertical structure.
At the foundation of the Systems Alliance, two military institutions were created; the Alliance Navy and the Alliance Army High Command. The Alliance Navy had very clear chains of command, and did not reflect the various sovereignties on Earth. This was intended, both to allow the exploitation of high technical expertise and to prevent any one state from gaining a decisive advantage in space over the others. It had the unintended benefit of allowing the Navy to plan and carry out operations regardless of what the politicians were saying, in the event of war with aliens.
By contrast, the Alliance Army did not truly exist in 2157. The only personnel loyal entirely to the Alliance as an institution were generals and headquarters staff. These were selected on the same basis as the Alliance Navy, with no regard for national origin. This tradition of cosmopolitanism at the top has continued to the present day, most notably allowing a South African like Cassandra DeRuyter to command Troop Command Europa. The similarities between the two organisations ended there. National militaries provided all the combat and logistics personnel, and remained separate from the Alliance in peacetime.
Only in the event of war with extraterrestrial powers would the Alliance High Command have any authority. As such, the officers of note during the war were not only from the Alliance, and the confusion over jurisdiction would hamper the initial defence.
Admiral Kastanie Drescher, Commanding Officer, Alliance Second Fleet
Known to history as the 'Victor of Shanxi', Kastanie Drescher is perhaps the woman most responsible for humanity's continued independence and existence, the key figure standing at the key point in history, fighting perhaps the most important single engagement in the history of the galaxy. Not since Miltiades led the hoplites of Athens and Plataea onto the plains of Marathon was there ever such a moment pregnant with destiny. Indeed, cosmologicalist historians say that the latter was the inevitable start point for the former, that Drescher's victory was the end point in a story that began 2,600 years before. The chances both commanders took were equally audacious. Like the Greeks, at Shanxi humanity faced an enemy it knew little about and had not truly defeated yet.
Drescher was a European of Franco-German descent. She was born in 2120, in Alsace, to Elodie Drescher, an author. School records indicate a strong preference for literature and art from the very youngest age, and had it not been for greater events, perhaps the young Kastanie would have followed in her mother's footsteps. Like many of the people born in that era, the shadow of rapid climate change would fall across her life. By 2138, relations between the PAC and the EU had degraded. Terrorist attacks sponsored by the other side were increasingly commonplace. In April of that year, a café in Strasbourg was bombed in an attempt by separatists from North Africa to kill a military official. The attempt failed in its objective, but Elodie Drescher was among the dead.
This was the spark that forced Kastanie into the European military, a narrative that her mother would have no doubt appreciated from a literary standpoint. Not of great physical stature and lacking genetic enhancements that allowed other women to serve in the Army, she joined the Joint European Navy. After standardised testing, she was assigned to the naval air wings as a fighter pilot candidate, completing her training in June 2139. The Cold War broke out soon afterwards, and Drescher spent the war at sea and in the air, piloting aircraft from the decks of the carrier Charlemagne. She fought mostly in the Indian Ocean, keeping the Pan Asian Navy bottled up away from the Red Sea and the African coast. Her fighter wing was also the first to respond to the PAC attack on the leased airbase on Wake Island, helping to repulse the dual titan-amphibious assault.
By the war's end, Drescher had reached the rank of Commander, due in part to the high attrition rates towards the later stages but also as a reflection of her aggression. The European High Command found her to be one of the ideal candidates to plan and lead their new military programmes. It was Drescher who suggested the use of and commanded the prototype cruiser Styx on its flight to intimidate world leaders over Hawaii, although this was only revealed in 2179 as a result of the EU's Thirty Year Rule on declassification. The effectiveness of the action in quelling world dissent, however temporarily, placed the commander in high regard to her political masters.
When Space Command Terra was formally created, Drescher was selected to formulate the doctrines and principles by which it should operate. Her experience in both aerial and naval warfare was deemed to be a vital asset for the development of Europe's space-navy, and for the defence of Earth from alien threats. Little changed when the Systems Alliance was formed in 2150, except that she found herself joined by Jon Grissom. The two worked well together, both having backgrounds as military pilots.
Together, Drescher and Grissom oversaw the creation of the Alliance Navy in its entirety; the recruitment of personnel, the construction of ships, the formulation of strategies and tactics. By 2155, the Alliance Council promoted them both to Admiral. This promotion came largely as a recognition of the amount of work done by the two officers, but also as the solution to a political problem. The status of higher ranked naval and air force officers was controversial; most had served in the Cold War at a similar level and had to answer for actions during that conflict.
Drescher was assigned the Second Fleet, the force designated to take the fight to the alien should it become necessary, and she was intent on making sure that all possible measures had been taken. The Second Fleet was drilled hard, both in space and in simulations, even after the immediate outbreak of hostilities at Relay 314 and during the Siege of Shanxi itself. Actual combat experience was scarce, and so the Admiral sought to replace it with continuous exercises. This was not unusual even for Citadel forces, as no major wars had been fought for centuries. Contrary to some popular tellings, the battle to come was not of inexperienced amateurs bravely fighting off crack naval specialists.
The turian naval commanders were barely more experienced than their Alliance counterparts, and the collective experience of the human race in naval operations had unique advantages. Advantages that Drescher would exploit. It soon became clear that the turians either had not deployed or did not possess carrier-type starships. To boot, humanity found that it had superior torpedo technology, especially with regard to range and target acquisition. Drescher would seize on these, and deliver a minor but politically-shattering defeat to the turians.
General Leyland Williams, Commanding Officer, Alliance Shanxi Headquarters
Leyland Williams is a name reviled in human popular culture, his person an example of precisely the opposite spirit to that shown by other officers. This is perhaps greatly bolstered by the actions of his most famous subordinate, Colonel Ryan. Much as the turians would have many reasons to forget Desolus Arterius, humanity would have just as many to forget Williams. Yet this would not happen, partially because Williams would survive the war and partially due to the actions of his granddaughter, Ashley Williams, who would go on to redeem the family name as humanity's second Spectre. Alien opinions of Williams are far more positive, the prevailing attitude being that he could not have done anything other than what he did. Opinion among human historians certainly does acknowledge the difficulties faced by the general, but does not absolve him completely.
Williams was born in 2102, in the state of California, USA. His country faced great upheaval in the early years of the 22nd Century. The North American Union was challenged by secession, resulting in such events as the bombing of the Statue of Liberty by Canadian terrorists, and the supranational state collapsed after a brief civil war. As such, he grew up during a new wave of American patriotic fervour. He enlisted the United States Army in 2124, after completing a four year college programme at UCLA in Political Science. He made the jump from enlisted personnel to lieutenant in 2127, and saw his first action as a Captain during the Second Carribean Intervention in 2130. He climbed the ranks steadily, becoming a major just as the Cold War began.
Williams' service in the final world war of Earth was largely the reason why he eventually found himself on Shanxi. The United States entered the western theatre of the conflict to aid the Mexican Republic against the aggression of the South American Federation, after the latter had swallowed up the central American states.
The two countries created joint operations brigades at the very beginning of the war, including one amphibious one nicknamed the Sea Snakes. Williams was placed in command of one of that brigade's companies. Half of the platoons were Mexican and the other half were American. At first, the brigade was assigned to regular front duties on the Pacific Coast of Central America, but soon found itself at the very tip of the spear during the Venezuela Offensive. The brigade would serve in Venezuela and northern Brazil for the rest of the war, suffering atrocious casualties, including many more senior officers. By war's end, Williams was in command of the entire brigade, promoted on the field to full-bird colonel and looking at brigadier-general in mere weeks had the intervention of the European Union not occurred.
Williams spent the time between the end of the war and the foundation of the Systems Alliance on desk duty, out of a wish to spend as much time with his family as possible. He was not forgotten however, especially not in Mexican and American military circles. When candidates for 'Coordinating Generals' were being discussed, his name was at the top of the list presented by the United States and Mexico. He was offered a generous land grant on America's first extrasolar colony, Sirona. He agreed, and moved his entire extended family to the colony. His equally famous granddaughter would be born there nine months after the beginning of the First Contact War.
Williams and the other generals assigned to Alliance Army HQ had far less leeway to prepare for contact with alien species than Drescher and Grissom had. In fact, for the most part, they acted as go-betweens for the Alliance Navy and the high commands of the national militaries. That is not to say this role was unimportant, however. The Navy's instinct was to amalgamate the national armies entirely, preferably under its own wing. This meant that Williams and others were included directly in discussions on how best to defend Earth and its new colonies. Williams and Grissom, both American, worked closely together on the initial defence plan for Shanxi itself, as well as a whole host of other worlds and relays.
When the battle at Relay 314 began, Williams was immediately sent to take command of forces sent to Shanxi at short notice. Unlike the Navy, the armies of Earth were in complete disarray due to the political disagreements over how to handle the revealed alien threat. As such, Williams did not receive enough forces to defend Shanxi with, although those units that were sent were of the highest quality. He would deploy them primarily in defence of populated areas rather than defending industry or resources, including sending the US Marines to Xi'an Valley. That decision was perhaps the most fateful for the siege, as the commanding officer of the Marines was not a man to lay down his arms.
Colonel Edward Ryan, Commanding Officer, United States Colonial Marine Expeditionary Force (CMEF)
Colonel Ryan is known by every human as the man who would not surrender to the aliens, a figure of great renown to all but the most pacifistic, and an example to follow for human supremacists. He is the mirror image of General Williams with respect to his reputation in history. He was not a family man, he did not rise through the ranks steadily, and he was not fond of operating in tandem with the militaries of other countries. Williams himself would later say that Ryan was "a bastard, but a glorious bastard at least."
Ryan's military records have been largely destroyed. The Alliance Army has claimed that this was the fault of poor maintenance of the servers and the destruction caused by the Reapers to the Military Archives. However, significant evidence of deliberate tampering, and later, outright deletion of his entire record had emerged as early as 2177. It appears that for some reason, military and political officials at the highest level conspired to sabotage that any analysis of Ryan's actions except for the story put out by the Alliance government. Why they would do this, it is likely we shall never know.
What we do know about Ryan is that he was born in Florida in 2109, that he served with the US Marine Corps throughout the Cold War on the Central American and Columbian Fronts, and he was placed in command of the CMEF, which suggests he was held in high regard. The force was designed for rapid response to the threat of alien invasion, and was deployed as such to Shanxi within three days of the Battle of Relay 314. This was followed by nearly a month of digging in and waiting, as the turians searched nearby clusters.
Williams' instructions for Ryan were very simple: Take up residence in the Xi'an Valley, prepare it as a redoubt for refugees and retreating forces, and hold out at all costs.
The valley itself was naturally defensible, ringed with sheer mountain faces and densely forested. In addition to this, the EU had planned its use for this very purpose in the event of a general revolt and had built a huge bunker complex, cleverly disguised as natural formations to ground-penetrating radars. The majority of colonists on Shanxi were from the conquered provinces of Asia, and Xi'an was planned to be the home of Polish settlers, whom could be counted on to be loyal.
Ryan would do as he was ordered, ignoring later orders to lay down his arms. Why he did so remains as mysterious as his records, but is widely agreed to be in keeping with the man's personality.