Archangel's war against crime
From FABT
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Previous: |
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Concurrent: |
Post-war Heretic conflict | ||||||||||||||||
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Next: |
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 Archangel's squad during Operation Merciless
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Date: |
14 September 2183 CE - 11 August 2185 CE | ||||||||||||||||
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Location: |
Across Omega / Sahrabarik / Omega Nebula | ||||||||||||||||
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Outcome: |
Pyrrhic Kima Alliance victory
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- "Omega is full of scum kicking on the helpless, I formed my team to kick back. Turns out, on this station, you don't have to go looking too far to find criminals. All I had to do was point my gun and shoot."
- — Garrus Vakarian explaining his situation to Commander Shepard during the Kima Siege.
Archangel's war against crime, also known as Archangel's War, the Omega Crime War, the Omega conflict and simply as the war on crime, was a station-wide campaign waged by Archangel's Omega Squad led by the eponymous Archangel against the business syndicates, PMCs, drug cartels and other criminal organizations on Omega that took place between 2183 CE and 2185 CE. Having been a cesspool of lawless activity for centuries, Omega was for the longest time called a "sick and twisted Terminian parody of the Citadel", being a haven for criminal syndicates to run their business without law enforcement to keep them in check, allowing them to freely violate hundreds of laws everyday without consequences, with civilians often falling into their crosshairs: the Ruler of Omega and their ruling syndicate made it their business to remain neutral, only intervening when said organizations made a move against them personally or when the station was being attacked by outside influences. PMCs and drug cartels held the greatest influences over the station, with powerful mercenary companies coming and going over the years as they wiped out or went bankrupt, only for a new one to take their place and turf. Gang and PMC wars were fought frequently across the station, rivals competing for more turf or business opportunities, while the innocent often got in the way and paid the price without anyone lifting a finger to stop it, much less the Ruler of Omega. As such, crime rates on Omega were the highest of anywhere in the galaxy, living conditions were poor as a result due to businesses not wanting to take the risk of property or financial development in areas with such a high mortality rate, and the cost of living on Omega plummeted, making the only reason to live there being desperation.
It wouldn't be until 2183 CE that action was finally taken to push back against the unquestioned tyranny of these criminal enterprises. Following the Eden Prime War and the sudden and unexpected death of Commander Shepard in the just as abrupt destruction of the Normandy, the Citadel Council and Systems Alliance together shut down the Normandy Squad, reassigning surviving Normandy crew and leaving the non-human crew to return to their lives, their fight effectively ended. Garrus Vakarian, fed up with the political scheming of the Citadel and what he saw as rampant corruption and ineptness within C-Sec, quit the latter and was preparing to return home to Palaven when he encountered a lone turian being chased by Blood Pack mercs who were hired by a loan shark on Omega to get their money back. Killing the mercs, Garrus took in the turian and listened to his story, where he decided his new purpose was to use the skills he had honed to do some good in the galaxy. The turian, named Lantar Sidonis, took Garrus with him back to Omega, where he saw firsthand the filth, decadence and rampant violence on the station and took action. Hunting down the loan shark, Garrus beat the man into releasing Lantar from his debt, and from that point forward enlisted Sidonis as his second-in-command in building a team to bring down Omega's big players. It was here that Archangel's Omega Squad was born, and from September 2183 CE, Garrus effectively declared war on Omega's gangs, refusing to rest until they were ousted from the station. By 2184 CE, Archangel's team was 13 men strong, their headquarters set up in an abandoned hotel in the Kima District, which Garrus had chosen because of its access to a series of tunnels that would allow them secret and discreet access to anywhere on the station without compromising their location. This 13 man team consisted of former mercenaries looking to atone, security consultants tired of playing by the rules, ex-cops who were fed up with bureaucracy like Garrus had been and ex-military personnel who were looking for a cause to fight for. They brought with them a wide variety of skill sets, Garrus utilizing all of them to the best of their ability to wage a precise and ruthless war against Omega's gangs. Starting off small, targeting small-time gangs and loan sharks, Garrus scaled his operation as his squad's capabilities grew, growing more confident with each success, and eventually starting tackling Omega's heavy hitters, including the PMCs such as the Blue Suns, Eclipse and Blood Pack, and even Omega's largest drug cartel, the Talons: no criminal was safe, except for Aria's syndicate (Garrus wouldn't risk taking her out until the rest were dealt with), and Garrus' team took no prisoners as their mission statement was to completely and utterly dismantle crime on Omega and protect its citizens from thugs and bullies.
Over the next few months, the team would enjoy success after success, each victory bring station-wide renown and infamy, and soon everybody on Omega knew about the team, despite their identities being a secret, and many citizens cheered them on. Shortly after the war started, a woman that Garrus saved from the Grim Skulls who were using her as a hostage to escape an ambush set by him and his team took to calling him an "Archangel", a nickname that stuck and became his official alias. The gangs, operating separately and not initially taking Archangel seriously, were targeted and harassed time and time again, their operations disrupted, shipments being intercepted and destroyed, their trade routes raided, key members assassinated or captured and beaten up, and their manpower shortened by constant ambushes. As they increased in frequency and Archangel only grew bolder with each success, the gangs gradually began to take him more seriously, especially when rumors spread throughout their ranks that their organizations weren't the only ones getting hit. Higher level organizations such as the Japanese Yakuza, Chinese Triads, the asari mafia and Talons brought in hitmen and bounty hunters to deal with Archangel's team, but they were ruthlessly dealt with as well, their bodies often turning up on the doorstep of the leaders of these groups with the message "better luck next time - Archangel". When this didn't work, PMCs were brought in, but these too proved inadequate, with one such battle becoming known as Archangel's Massacre when him and his team led six separate PMCs (Blue Suns, Midnight, Grim Skulls, Dread Battalion, Bull Sharks and Blood Pack) into a coordinated ambush involving crossfire, snipers, mines, fougasses, rockets and anti-air missiles, resulting in all six PMC forces being routed, with the Grim Skull, Bull Shark and Dread Battalion chapters on Omega being completely wiped out. When Archangel's team wasn't taking out heavy hitters, they were also cleaning out the lower echelons of the criminal underworld, such as rapists, war criminals, serial killers, pedophiles, and more: more often than not, Archangel would personally handle these assignments, drawing up dossiers on his targets and observing them for days before making his move, establishing a pattern of behavior he could act on. The way Garrus would kill his targets would often have a poetic touch to them: in the instance of the quarian serial killer Zel'Aenik nar Helash, a viral specialist who killed his victims by injecting them with a variety of lethal viruses and observing how they died, Garrus simply removed his mask and coughed on him, before proceeding to strip him naked and locked him in his cabin to slowly die of exposure.
For two years, Archangel and his team would be brutally effective in making life a misery for criminals on Omega, stirring fear and paranoia within their ranks as top leaders became unable to walk outside their own homes out of fear they'd be next. Drug and weapons-smuggling in the open ceased, and the amount of shipments to Omega decreased substantially, hemorrhaging credits that cost the syndicates on Omega big time, draining them of resources. However, things changed once Garrus started targeted the top leaders of the three major PMCs on the station. In the case of the Blue Suns, Garrus had targeted their leader, Krefin Tarak, for assassination, waiting outside his home one day with a sniper rifle where he planned to shoot him on his way to work: Tarak however, suspecting something was off, was able to duck in time for Garrus' shot to miss and quickly called for backup, forcing Garrus to retreat: he would never get another chance, as Tarak quickly moved his family off Omega and back to Khar'Shan, and quickly became relentlessly paranoid, refusing to leave his house without at least a full company and a convoy of armoured vehicles to escort him, and burying himself in his revenge, his personality shifting to bitter and angry, often taking out his anger on his subordinates. For the Blood Pack, Garrus' team attempted to lure Weyrloc Garm into an ambush, and while it succeeded initially, Garm proved a stubborn adversary, his regeneration abilities unlike anything Garrus had seen in a krogan before, allowing them to tank shot after shot put into him and keep fighting, and this game of cat-and-mouse would continue long enough for reinforcements to arrive. Garrus soon turned into prey, and while Garm pursued him for several hours afterwards, he eventually lost him. While none of these incidents on their own were particularly noteworthy, and operations for Archangel's squad would continue unimpeded, they were enough to achieve the unthinkable: the Blue Suns and Blood Pack joined forces, with Garm and Tarak agreeing to a tenuous alliance between them to take down Archangel and rid themselves of his menace. Being a highly skilled negotiator, Tarak also brought the Eclipse to the table, and together the tripartite of PMCs formed what became known as the Kima Alliance, an alliance which was agreed would not extend beyond the immediate goal of dealing with Archangel, and would dissolve once the issue was addressed. The agreement was arranged in secret, as such that only Jaroth, Garm and Tarak knew about it, and Archangel and even Aria T'Loak were none the wiser. Working together, Tarak devised a plan to bring down Archangel's squad from the inside by capturing one of their members and torturing them into giving up the location of their base.
The Blue Suns were able to capture Sidonis, and through advanced interrogation techniques that Tarak learnt from the Feksogar, was able to force Sidonis into giving up the base and, through further application, agree to set bait to lure Archangel away to a fake lead while they ambush and kill his squad, all in return for letting Sidonis live and booking passage for him off Omega. Sidonis agreed and set the bait, contacting Garrus about a fake meeting between Blood Pack in the Kenzo District. Once away, the Eclipse deployed comm jammers and the Blood Pack and Blue Suns suddenly attacked the HQ with support from Tarak's Mantis gunship, the Blue Scimitar. Taken by surprise, Archangel's team was almost immediately overwhelmed and most killed within minutes, with only a handful of survivors left behind to taunt Archangel when he returned. Wanting to make Archangel suffer, Garm insisted they pull their forces back to allow the turian commander to return and see their handiwork, right before the Kima Alliance cut off all exits and boxed him in: Tarak compromised and allowed this. This proved to be a mistake, as seeing the last of his team die and learning of Sidonis' betrayal, who contacted him and confessed as he left the station out of guilt, Garrus was only filled with more anger and conviction, and as the criminal alliance launched their assault across the bridge, Garrus got to work, tapping into secret ammo reserves kept for emergencies and tearing the mercs apart, dealing heavy enough casualties that the mercs abandoned the assault, withdrew and waited for more men to be brought up before they tried again: when the second and third assaults were repulsed with similar results, Tarak dismissed any attempt to force their way across and ordered his troops to dig in and hopefully starve him out. Garm viewed this as a coward's strategy and insisted they finish Archangel soon, and so Tarak compromised by coming up with a plan to find alternative routes into the hotel, and beginning a campaign to hire freelancers to bolster their weakened manpower. The Kima Siege lasted a week and a half, and 5,600 mercenaries died during this time, including 760 freelancers: finally coming up with a plan to sneak demo teams inside and have the Blood Pack use the tunnels Archangel's team had used as a back door, Tarak put his plan into action by opening up with a freelancer assault: unfortunately for him, the Normandy Squad had masqueraded as freelancers in order to recruit Archangel, and massacred the freelancers once they were inside and joined Archangel in the defense. In the resulting struggle, Archangel was mortally wounded by a rocket from Tarak's Blue Scimitar that almost killed him, but in the process Tarak would subsequently be killed when his gunship was destroyed, and both Garm and Jaroth had died over the course of the assault. Most of their remaining manpower was used up in the siege, and their losses were devastating.
Despite the results of the Kima Siege, the mercs had achieved somewhat of a pyrrhic victory, as Archangel subsequently disappeared and was believed to be dead (he actually was extracted by the Normandy Squad, recovered and went on to fight in the Collector campaign), and his war on crime ended with his death. Despite this, the trail of destruction left in his wake was enormous, and the Blue Suns, Eclipse and Blood Pack leadership had been crippled and much of their remaining forces killed in the siege, leaving them with little to defend their turf. Ironically however, the Talons would ultimately profit from Archangel's efforts, quickly filling in the power vacuum left by the weakened PMCs who had once dominated Omega and carving up a bigger piece of the local drug trade, quickly making the single most powerful drug cartel in the Terminus Systems. The Kima Alliance was shattered, with evidence that they were planning to overthrow Aria T'Loak once Archangel was dealt with, which was only known to Tarak and Jaroth at the time, and one which was never acted upon, although a similar plan would later be enacted in the following months, only to fall by the wayside with the Cerberus invasion of Omega in late 2185 CE. With all the PMCs decimated, they were left unable to oppose the invasion, and were quickly wiped out, ousted or surrendered in short order.