Blue and Red: Stories From Shanxi
The Battle of Hunter Hill: Day 1
Corporal Dennis Nicholson
"If you believe the vids, the Battle of Hunter Hill was a display of unrelenting heroism against impossible odds as Fox Company selflessly held off a brigade of turians in order to call in reinforcements from Space Station Freedom.
"And you know what? That's complete horseshit.
"Yeah, Hunter Hill had a comm relay, all right, and yeah, we did use it to call in a mayday to Freedom Station, but the fact is, the fold-comm there had been on the fritz for a month. Only reason we were out there was to repair the damn thing, and Captain Miller figured we'd turn it into a winter training exercise while we were at it. It may have been May on Earth, but that year, May was in the dead of winter on Shanxi.
"When the bonies landed, we had no idea what was going on and got cut off. We called for help from Freedom because that's the only place we could get in touch with; with the hard lines cut, the comm tower down, and all the jamming stopping our vehicle comms, we had no way to call in support from the Behemoth or the rest of the garrison.
"We were just trying to stay alive."
Corporal Actaeus Endurani
"I've got to hand it to the brass. I still don't know how, but they knew we were in for a tough fight when we hit Shanxi. They sent us in heavy, two full divisions. We detected the structures on Hunter Hill - we designated it Hill 120 - and General Thierix dispatched the 96th Assault Infantry Legion to clear it out. It seemed like overkill - there were only maybe a dozen vehicles there, and hangars for a few more - but we had our orders.
"Now, 'Assault Infantry' means we're a high mobility attack force that primarily fights on foot: five thousand soldiers riding Tyrus APCs, along with organic Mantis and Jiris support. We don't lay siege, and we don't fortify. We strike hard and fast and keep moving, going from one objective to the next. We had expected to take Hill 120 within a day.
"It's still hard to believe it was just a single company there. I don't care what anyone else says: The soldiers who held that hill are a rare breed, and the Alliance is lucky to have them."
Corporal Dennis Nicholson
"Most of the comm relay at Hunter Hill was actually underground. Sure, there was a comm tower up top with an antenna and dish, but that was for local transmissions and the orbital uplink with the defense sats. Naturally, the tower was the first thing to go, but the fold-comm itself was underground.
"The turians made a mistake, targeting the comm tower up top with their missile tanks first. With the tower down and the hard lines cut, we didn't have much choice but to fight, and the missile strike came early enough to give us time to prep for 'em. It also made those missile tanks priority targets.
"Fox was a motorized infantry company. We had one platoon of Cycloners with Tornados for recon, and the rest of us had standard body armor and rode Grizzlies. The Grizzlies could carry ammo, but we had to be able to stay mobile with our weapons on foot too, which meant missile launchers for anti-mecha duty."
Corporal Actaeus Endurani
"Spirits, I'd never seen so many missiles before in my life. In the Hierarchy, it's standard for every platoon to have at least one anti-armor weapons team, and in some specialist units, there's a heavy weapon in each fire team. The humans? They made sure every single soldier had one.
"The little ones weren't too bad. They'd hit a Tyrus's shields and detonate, showering burning thermite all over the place. It pitted the armor, but didn't do much real damage. Even so, we had to stay buttoned up and couldn't return fire effectively, and if the shields were down, the missiles punched right through the armor and... well, thermite does nasty things to a packed crew or passenger compartment."
Corporal Dennis Nicholson
"The shields were a damn unpleasant surprise, let me tell you, but we had a surprise of our own. You see, the local CDM actually had a couple of fully functional Tomahawks stored there. The old relics came from some rich old collector who liked restoring antique mecha by way of his nephew. He donated them after inheriting them when the old man kicked the bucket, so I heard. Didn't matter, didn't care. Those destroids might have been old, but they still packed quite a wallop."
Corporal Actaeus Endurani
"Turian troops don't break. I'm sure you've heard that, and it's true. Don't get me wrong; we still feel fear, but if there's one thing about us you can rely on, it's our discipline. We may be absolutely terrified, but we won't get routed; we'll hold our position or fall back by the numbers.
"But those destroids... that's as close to panic as I've seen or heard of in the Hierarchy's entire history. We'd never seen anything even remotely like them before, and I'll admit, just looking at them scared a few of us, me included. There they stood, tall and menacing, the snow blowing around them, as impervious and uncaring as the old Valluvian titans. Some of us just couldn't believe what we were seeing, but others started laughing, and the humor spread the more we thought about it. The entire concept of a giant robot was ridiculous.
"Then they opened fire.
"The Jiris outriders were their first targets, those massive particle beams carving them up like a roast shatha. With them went the only weapons we had with the firepower to take those destroids down without unacceptable casualties.
"The problem was, we didn't know that at the time."
Corporal Dennis Nicholson
"The thing about the Tomahawk is that, while it's old, that meant it was built with old-school tech and priorities. None of the fancy layered anti-plasma plating and refractive laser-resistant coating and so on that we get now. The Tommy's armor was built to stop bullets and bombs, and that was it. That was all we knew how to do back then, and we did it well, and with robotech alloys helping out, that made them extraordinarily bullet resistant.
"And the turians... well, they didn't have anything else."
Corporal Actaeus Endurani
"The Tyrus's guns were hurting them, but not enough, and by then, the weather had kicked up, effectively grounding our gunships. The destroids had no trouble picking our APCs out of the snowstorm on thermals, and when the engine on ours got hit, the Ell-Tee had us dismount and spread out. That left us with another problem, though.
"Have you ever actually tried to take down a destroid from on foot? It's not easy. You can only throw a satchel charge so far, and when your target's vitals are at least six meters off the ground, you stand a better chance of blowing yourself up than taking it down. A mobility kill isn't any easier. A destroid's legs are a damn sight tougher than a tank's tracks are, and they can step on you a lot more easily than a tank can run you over.
"Fact is, unless you've got a big missile or an even bigger gun, you're not taking that thing down without doing something insane. And we didn't have either.
"In retrospect, I should have known better when the Ell-Tee asked for volunteers."
Corporal Dennis Nicholson
"It should be noted that none of us were actually qualified on the Tommies, but the control layout wasn't too hard to figure out; same principles even our current mecha are built with. Maybe that lack of training's why we didn't notice what the bonies had planned until it was too late.
"Crazy bastard.
"Gotta give credit where it's due. We caught them off-guard, but not for long. Managed to toast the missile tanks and several of their APCs before they got their act together, but when they did, they did it in a big way. We didn't know what happened until the satchel charge blew out the right knee of one of the Tommies. One of the bonies had actually climbed up its leg to plant the damn thing.
"Busted leg's a pain in the ass, but we still held the high ground, and we were fighting defensively, so it didn't make all that much difference in the short term. Still, it threw us off our game."
Corporal Actaeus Endurani
"I still can't believe I pulled it off. I don't know what I was thinking when I volunteered for that shit. If it hadn't been for my hardsuit's eezo core, I'd have broken both my legs on the way down. Still, we managed a mobility kill and distracted them long enough for us to catch our breath. Colonel Atticus saw the writing on the wall and ordered us to fall back.
"It was the most disorganized mess of a retreat I'd ever had the displeasure of being part of. Those destroids had shattered our unit cohesion. In theory, that didn't matter; Assault Infantry's supposed to be fluid, able to link up with any other part of the legion and form an effective fighting force.
"On that hill, though, they went back to pelting us with those shoulder-fired missiles of theirs again, keeping us from regrouping. We didn't know it at the time, but they also had snipers picking us off with laser fire. We were trickling back in uncoordinated groups of two or three at a time, with barely any thought left for covering fire. It wasn't a rout, not exactly, but it was damned close.
"All told, after that first battle, the colonel had to merge what was left of my company with two others into a single over-strength company just to keep us combat effective, and we'd lost most of the Jirises and lost or had to abandon dozens of Tyruses."
Codex: C77 Tyrus Infantry Fighting Vehicle
The standard infantry fighting vehicle of the Turian Hierarchy, Armax Arsenal's C77 Tyrus has been in service in one form or another for the past eighty-seven years and served as the inspiration for the Alliance's M-35 Mako. Fully sealed against CBRN warfare, this 13-ton IFV can operate in almost any environment, and its powerful eezo core allows it to traverse almost any terrain, even climbing up sheer cliff faces. The Tyrus is armed with a 31.7mm turreted autocannon to provide direct fire support, and it can carry a dozen troops in its passenger compartment.
Codex: Jiris Infantry Fighting Vehicle
The Jiris infantry fighting vehicle is a light combat vehicle used by the Turian Hierarchy. In addition to its crew of two, the Jiris can only carry a single fire team of four troops and is therefore classified by the Alliance as a missile tank rather than as an IFV, despite its turian designation. Originally meant for reconnaissance, the Jiris was designed as a lightweight hovercraft to maximize its speed, maneuverability, and ability to handle varied surfaces, though it fares relatively poorly on extreme inclinations.
Even with mass effect technology, the Jiris cannot carry the weight of a traditional main gun and maintain its speed and maneuverability. Instead, it is armed with an MLRS-style missile turret capable of engaging targets up to twenty kilometers away; this range can be multiplied with the aid of a forward observer. This gives the Jiris a powerful punch, allowing it to engage targets of opportunity or provide indirect fire support as needed.
Codex: M-29 Grizzly Armored Personnel Carrier
The tough, rugged, and reliable M-29 Grizzly APC was once the standard battle-taxi of the UEDF and still serves with many garrisons and Colonial Defense Militias today. Unlike its successor, the larger Mako IFV, the Grizzly was built purely as an armored transport vehicle for unpowered troops, capable of carrying a squad of thirteen soldiers or Marines fully kitted out in standard body armor in addition to the driver, and its only armament is a single automated anti-missile laser turret that can also be controlled remotely from either the driver's seat or the squad leader's seat next to the driver. The Grizzly was designed to work alongside Cycloners, not carry them, and it cannot do so without extensive refit.
The Grizzly's caterpillar tracks and powerful drivetrain allow it to negotiate some of the toughest terrestrial terrain, but since it predates the Alliance's discovery of mass effect technology, it has no eezo core to manipulate its mass for true all-terrain capability, and its mass gives it trouble on soft terrain. The Grizzly's body, however, is carved out of a single solid slab of robotech alloy, giving it unprecedented battlefield survivability despite its lack of kinetic barriers and earning it the nickname "the Brick."
The Grizzly's biggest flaw remains its sheer mass. Despite a disposable "rocket cradle" that allows the Grizzly to be air-dropped safely from low altitudes, it is a difficult vehicle to deploy and recover, particularly if the track system suffers damage. This resulted in turian forces capturing a number of them on Shanxi, as retreating Alliance troops were forced to abandon their vehicles. After the Relay War, some Grizzlies have been refitted with small eezo cores, but this compromises the passenger capacity, cutting it down to seven passengers.