Raid on Little Rock
From FABT
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 The Normandy Squad engages the YMIR mech outside Veetor's office.
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4 August 2185 CE | ||||||||||||||||
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Cerberus-Migrant Fleet victory
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- Prazza'Sal: "This place is too quiet. Where did all the people go?"
- Tali'Zorah: "A good question."
- — Exchange between Prazza'Sal and Tali'Zorah just after the 12th Explorer Platoon's arrival in Little Rock.
The Raid on Little Rock was a set of intervening, and later conjoining, military operations conducted by the Migrant Fleet Marines and Cerberus in the colony of Little Rock on Freedom's Progress mere hours after the colony was abducted by the Collectors that took place during the Collector campaign. Veetor'Nara, a quarian pilgrim, chose to spend his pilgrimage amongst the locals of the Little Rock settlement on Freedom's Progress, helping them as a technician and engineer, eventually even being put in charge of the colony's small force of security mechs in regards to their repair and maintenance. When the colony was attacked by the Collectors, Veetor, driven by fear and anxiety, locked himself in his office and carefully monitored the Collector's progress through surveillance footage, making sure to save it to his omni-tool even as the Collectors themselves wiped any evidence of their presence. Veetor, delirious with unbridled fear and terrified the Collectors would return for him, stayed locked in his office and reactivated the entire mech force (which had been in maintenance mode when the attack began) and reprogrammed them to shoot anything on sight, with only Veetor identified as a friendly: he then set the colony's sole YMIR mech to guard his office. Meanwhile, back on the Migrant Fleet, they received word of the colony's disappearance and, with Veetor potentially in trouble, the 12th Explorer Platoon under Tali'Zorah was deployed to extract him. Not long after, a recently resurrected Commander Shepard, acting on intelligence provided by the Illusive Man, deployed with a Cerberus two man team to the colony to investigate its disappearance and find any evidence of those behind it.
Three hours after the colony's disappearance, the 12th Explorer Platoon arrived and subsequently deployed, fanning out to search the colony and locate Veetor. Early on Tali'Zorah and the platoon's commander, Prazza'Sal, were uneasy regarding the lack of people and evidence of a struggle, but remained focused on their mission to retrieve Veetor as quickly as possible, wanting to exfil before Alliance officials arrived, as they were trespassing on Alliance territory. Splitting into three teams, the platoon fanned across the colony, and ultimately encountered Veetor's commandeered mech forces, although only a few marines would be injured and they would begin avoiding the mechs as much as possible. As their grid search narrowed in, Shepard arrived with his team only a klick north of the quarian landing zone, and began their own investigation, combing the town for any signs of human life and evidence of who was involved, also running into Veetor's mechs. 20 minutes after their arrival, Shepard's team came across a squad led by Tali, taking both parties by surprise and leading to a brief standoff before Tali and Shepard, recognizing his each other, diffused the situation. Despite tensions between Cerberus and the Migrant Fleet, Tali was able to rein in her subordinates and arranged for the two teams to work together in order to reach Veetor, as their interests were now aligned: the quarians needed to extract Veetor, and Veetor is the only living witness of the abduction. One of the squads successfully locates Veetor and relays this to the rest of the platoon when they link up (however, due to their haste to rescue the pilgrim, they failed to perform a full reconnaissance of the area and fail to notice the YMIR mech) with Tali leading her men along the right flank to clear the way while Shepard's team clear out the left. However, despite Tali's orders to work with Cerberus, Prazza'Sal stages a mutiny, citing Tali's actions as treason, and takes full command of the platoon, leaving Tali behind as they raced ahead with the goal of getting to Veetor first and exfiltrating with him before Cerberus knew what was happening. However, due to the poor reconnaissance from before, Prazza unknowingly leads his platoon into an open area. Whilst able to clear out the few mechs in that area, Veetor sets his YMIR loose on them, leading to a massacre. Prazza was the first killed, and as Tali raced to catch up with them, followed closely on the left flank by Shepard and his team, the rest of the platoon was torn to pieces, with only a handful of injured marines managing to make it to cover whilst the rest were shredded in the open by the YMIR's autocannon and rockets. Tali arrived moments before Shepard's team, and while she cared for the wounded, reassuming command of what was left of her obliterated unit, Shepard's squad took to eliminating the YMIR. Shepard's squad were able to successfully neutralize the YMIR and all remaining mech forces in the area, briefly interrogating a terrified Veetor shortly after where he identified the Collectors as the abductors. Despite attempts by Miranda Lawson to press for Veetor to be taken back to Minuteman Station to be interrogated by Cerberus, Shepard agrees to hand him back to Tali with the promise they share any and all intelligence Veetor has on the Collector abduction. Shortly after, Tali departs for the Migrant Fleet with the wounded and Veetor, while Shepard and his team shortly thereafter exfil back to Minuteman Station to debrief, with Alliance authorities arriving two hours later to investigate and secure the site.
The joint operation remains the only time in history that Cerberus and the Migrant Fleet, however briefly, worked in close tandem with one another in a ground operation. The operation was successful, with both sides achieving their assigned objectives to varying degrees of success. While finding and exfiltrating Veetor'Nara safely, the platoon suffered 86% casualties due to Prazza'Sal's actions, with the platoon leader and 26 men of the 30 killed in action. Initially six marines survived the massacre, but one died of their extensive injuries on Freedom's Progress and the other on the way back to the Fleet, leaving only four total survivors from the platoon, plus Tali. As promised, the intelligence gleaned from Veetor's omni-tool proving the Collectors' involvement was passed onto Cerberus, although only at Tali'Zorah's insistence, as Han'Gerrel was hesitant to provide information to an avowed enemy of the quarian people, only allowing it when Tali vouched for Shepard personally. For Cerberus, the operation was a complete victory: it confirmed the Illusive Man's suspicions that the Collectors were behind the abductions, finally giving Cerberus an enemy to fight. On top of this, it was enough to convince Shepard to assist Cerberus in running a counteroffensive to stop the Collectors at all costs, and effectively ended the first phase of the Collector campaign, beginning the second.