Part I: Weapons and Wits (Continued)

An Early Stalemate

Within the first four days of Operation Tamaranian Freedom, the Coalition force had already lost almost a quarter of its combat strength. After finally occupying Galarak and Qak-Zandat by December 10, the Coalition troops hunkered down to await reinforcements.

As the Gordanians and Dreknathians raised a larger army, the remaining Coalition ground army of about 750,000 set up a temporary defensive perimeter encompassing Galarak, Qak-Zandat and the petroleum areas. For four months—from December 10, 2007 to April 22, 2008—the beleaguered Coalition army, assisted by Gordanian orbital bombardment, air support, and constant Dreknathian reinforcements, held off repeated assaults by the Tamaranians. In these assaults the Coalition forces lost more heavily than the Tamaranians, and the assaults failed mainly due to the cowardice of Tamaranian militiamen—a fact that frustrated their commander, Prince Richard Grayson, to no end. However, these battles also gave Richard a notorious reputation in the Coalition camps, as he constantly seemed to inflict far more damage on them than they could do to him.

Prince Richard, ironically, was a former American citizen and superhero in the United States. He had been trained by the famous Gotham City hero Batman, and later led the superhero group known as the Teen Titans in Jump City, California, at first using the alias of "Robin" but later changing his alias to "Nightwing." In the summer of 2006, Richard married his longtime girlfriend, Princess Koriand'r of Tamaran, and left the Titans to serve in his new capacity as the Prince of Tamaran. At the time, of course, no one could have predicted that he would one day be fighting the very people he had once dedicated himself to protecting. When war broke out, Prince Richard's duties included leading the Tamaranian soldiers in battle, and he did so alongside his wife. He masterminded the stratagem that led to the slaughter of 190,000 Coalition troops at Qak-Zandat, and overnight became the most respected Tamaranian general, despite his non-Tamaranian birth. However, this respect did not ensure that his troops always followed his orders.

When Richard led 200,000 militiamen in an assault on Dreknathian lines 20 miles south of Galarak on the afternoon of December 10, the battle went well initially as the Dreknaths fell back. However, when armored Gordanian infantry came to the rescue with their heavy weapon staffs, Richard could only look on helplessly as his entire army turned tail and flew from the fight. Knowing that he could not win the battle alone, Richard returned, alone and despondent, to his own camp. The Coalition had not chased the routing Tamaranians, and would not have been able to catch them if they had tried. In the meantime, Koriand'r's army had failed in an earlier assault that day 100 miles north of Richard's attempt. Richard told his wife what had happened in his battle, and complained: "The way this is going, Kory, we might as well just surrender the planet. I hate to say this about our people, but it's true: They're cowards! They're not worth all the effort we make for them!"

Koriand'r reassured him: "Don't worry about losing a battle, Nightwing. Tamaranian militias have always been like this. Tamaran is known not for brave warriors, but for legendary guerrilla tactics. It's always better to live to fight another day—"

"My men are gone, Kory! They—"

"They will return to you, as I have said," Koriand'r responded. "Our military law clearly states that troops have the right to disregard any order that leads to certain death. In return for this freedom to live, however, they accept the obligation to fight another day. They will report for duty tomorrow morning, I am certain."

Princess Koriand'r was right. Early the next morning, Richard personally flew out on his polymerized-titanium cape/glider wing to look at the camps that had been deserted the previous evening. Fires were burning in all of them; 186,000 militiamen awaited him, some of them wounded from the previous day's battle. Richard, still angry, wanted to punish them for dereliction of duty, but Koriand'r finally persuaded her husband to let them go. No matter how frustrated Richard was, the Tamaranian soldiers had been fully within their legal rights to run from battle and were not to be penalized.

Slaughter at Tick'qan

With the Gordanian armada controlling the skies above Tamaran, the faltering Coalition positions were rapidly reinforced with quickly-raised Dreknathian troops, which had no equipment and needed no training. From December 10 to April 22, on average the Gordanian fleet withdrew 60,000 wounded Coalition troops every week and reinforced the position with 100,000 fresh Dreknathian insectoids. As the withdrawn American and Gordanian units were generally superior to the Dreknathian reinforcements that replaced them, the increasingly Dreknathian force hanging on by its fingernails on the surface of Tamaran was progressively weakened. By April 21, the Tamaranian defenders had recaptured Galarak and Qak-Zandat.

Meanwhile, the Gordanian government scrambled to raise a larger army. The Gordanian Congress authorized a draft on December 16, making Gordanian males between the ages of 20 and 40 eligible for forced military service. By April 1, about 500,000 new Gordanian troops had been trained and were ready for deployment. They were quickly ferried to Tamaran and, on April 22, landed near the well-defended Tamaranian capital city, Tick'qan.

Prince Richard and the Tamaranian government, however, were well prepared. They had known for months that a secondary landing by the Coalition forces was inevitable, and Richard had presciently guessed that the capital would be the next target. Tick'qan was already defended by several artillery batteries, but Richard knew that this alone would not be enough to hold off the attackers. Accordingly, Richard devised another brilliant stratagem, code-named ID4 (Imperial Defense, version 4) and implemented on April 5, 2008.

Richard knew that after his trap at Qak-Zandat, the Coalition would forever think twice before rushing to take a seemingly undefended city, or consuming any of the supplies within it. Thus, he gave the following plan to Galifore on December 27:

"Tick'qan should be completely evacuated, including all 118 artillery pieces. These artillery pieces will be replaced by painted decoys, which the Gordanians should quickly locate and destroy. Meanwhile, the Tamaranian troops will lie concealed in a vast network of tunnels dug deep under Tick'qan and the surrounding lands. The Gordanians, upon finding the city deserted, should remember the explosive-rigged oil fields and the poisoned food and will proceed slowly and cautiously, inspecting each and every building top to bottom for explosives. They also will probably examine all supplies they capture before consuming any. In order to keep up this illusion and ensure that they continue searching for explosives, the outermost parts of the city's outer ring will be rigged with actual explosives. Then, as the Gordanians try to disarm the bombs, we sneak out from the tunnels, a few at a time, and snipe at Gordanian soldiers from behind. It is imperative that our tunnel entrances not be discovered, so that to the Gordanians it appears as if shots fly out of nowhere and take down their soldiers. If they do discover the tunnels, they should be dug underground to a point some distance from Tick'qan and then emerge from the ground. The tunnels are also rigged with explosives so that they can be made to cave in upon Gordanian explorers." –Imperial Defense version 4, December 27

For several days, Richard's plan happened exactly as he envisioned it. The Gordanian army, under the Gordanian general Torann, surrounded the city and began to disarm the bombs. After the first few inexplicably shot Gordanian troops were found on April 24, the Gordanians were extremely edgy and paranoid. Even when they had searched a building thoroughly and found no Tamaranians inside, Gordanian soldiers stationed in that building might still be found dead two hours later, with no trace of the assailant. Even the Gordanian heavy tanks could be hit by powerful anti-tank grenades that seemed to have no source. (In fact, the tunnel entrances were disguised with holographic projectors.)

However, after a whole week of sniping attacks, during which four Gordanian tanks and 160 infantry were lost, General Torann began to suspect what was going on. He changed his strategy and ordered his troops to dig into the ground. On May 5, one squad of Gordanians dug into the concrete roof of one of Richard's tunnels. Torann immediately ordered a section of the tunnel to be exposed and then pierced. Meanwhile, other Gordanian diggers had discovered two other parts of the tunnel network. On May 6, the Battle of Tick'qan commenced when Gordanian troops simultaneously raided the three sections they had found.

In the tunnels the fighting was fierce, bloody, and not in the Tamaranians' favor. In the narrow confines of these tunnels, the normal Tamaranian field tactics of attacking enemy weak points and rapid retreat could not be used. From May 6 to June 11, 100,000 armored Gordanian heavy infantry worked their way down the levels of tunnels, while Torann kept his light infantry and vehicles above ground and continued disarming the bombs in the buildings. On June 11 the Gordanians finally occupied the seventh and lowest level of the tunnels, 140 meters below the surface. By this time the Gordanian forces involved in the operation had suffered 27,200 killed and 45,000 wounded, while only 11,000 of the original 70,000 Tamaranian defenders survived—a stark contrast from the battles that had occurred up to this point, in which Tamaranian casualties had been relatively light. Richard, fortunately, was among the survivors.

The Gordanians prepared to seal off and destroy the tunnels. However, under Prince Richard's plan, the Tamaranians beat them to the punch, using the remote-controlled tunnel mines to seal and destroy the tunnels with almost 30,000 Gordanian troops still inside. By nightfall on June 11, the capital of the Tamaranian Empire finally fell to the Coalition, but Richard's well-laid plans had rendered it a Pyrrhic victory.

Peace at Any Cost

The Battle of Tick'qan was the costliest engagement to either side up to this point in the war. On the Coalition side, about twenty percent of the wounded Gordanian troops died of their injuries or from the destruction of the tunnels, and an additional thirty-three percent of them would never fully recover from their injuries, remaining permanently disabled to some degree. Combined with the 27,200 Gordanians killed in action and the 30,000 uninjured who were trapped by the Tamaranian mines, the effective combat strength of General Torann's army was thus reduced by more than 80,000 troops in a single battle, including the vast majority of his powerful heavy infantry forces.

Despite the massive casualties suffered by the Coalition troops in the five-week battle, Tick'qan proved to be one of the low points of Prince Richard's military leadership. On the Tamaranian side, 59,000 soldiers—including 54,000 militiamen—had been killed in action. Of the surviving 10,390 militiamen and 671 Tamaranian Imperial Guards, at least 10,500 had been wounded to some degree, and 373 of them were permanently crippled. The exceptional regenerative capabilities of Tamaranian anatomy undoubtedly saved many troops from wounds that would have crippled or killed healthy Gordanians. Still, no Tamaranian military force in history had ever suffered such severe casualties from a single battle.

Tactically, the Battle of Tick'qan was an astonishing victory for the Tamaranians, who had inflicted considerably more casualties than they sustained against an enemy superior in both equipment and numbers. Strategically, however, Tick'qan was a nearly decisive Gordanian victory. The Gordanians had taken the Tamaranian capital city and, more importantly, completely crushed the Tamaranian will to fight. The Tamaranian people, fearing the casualties of an extended war, were ready for a truce.

Morale in the Tamaranian camps was likewise low. Many of Prince Richard's few remaining troops were convinced that he had deliberately denied them their constitutional right to flee from an unfavorable battle. This belief seemed to be supported by Richard's earlier attempt to punish another group of militia for cowardice at Galarak as well as his seeming willingness to sacrifice his own men if necessary to crush the enemy. Whether justified or not, Richard's troops were angry at their prince. On June 19, 27 mutineers led by General Tandroan surprised Richard in his tent and took him prisoner. With the support of Emperor Galifore's royal council, Tandroan sent messengers to Torann's camp asking for a truce. Tandroan and his men hoped to end the war and save Tamaran by offering the hated Prince Richard as a sacrifice to the Gordanians, in much the same way as they had traded the young Princess Koriand'r fifteen years earlier.

By July 3, the Gordanian High Command had conveyed a response through Torann to the Tamaranian peace feeler, offering to negotiate in a neutral setting. A cease-fire was declared on Tamaran the next day. On July 14, talks began on Centari III between the Tamaranian delegation led by Minister of Diplomacy Tarqia'a and the Coalition represented by Gordanian Congressman Zaxcabilik, Dreknathian Ambassador Blackfire, and American mercenary Slade Wilson.

The Coalition representatives began by outlining their price for peace, in a document that, like many others in history, would be known as the "Four Points":

1. Emperor Galifore shall abdicate and Tamaran will institute a democratic system under Coalition supervision

2. Tamaran shall provide its most advanced solar technology for the use of members of the Coalition

3. Tamaran shall give Coalition nations the sole rights to any petroleum and natural gas deposits that may be discovered on Tamaran

4. Prince Richard shall be given to Gordania as a slave

Just minutes before the scheduled signing of the peace treaty, however, the delegates received news that Prince Richard had escaped his imprisonment. This was to be the first of many unfortunate delays in the peace process, which would ultimately bring tragedy to all four of the empires involved.