Shanxi campaign
From FABT
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 Clockwise from top left: Fighters of the Second Fleet engage in a deadly dogfight with turian fighters as both sides struggle for orbital supremacy during the First Battle of Shanxi; turian occupation forces round up civilians and captured prisoners in New Xi'an following the end of the First Battle of Shanxi; Alliance marines of the 1st CEF advance during the Liberation of Shanxi; Jack Harper captures a turian prisoner and interrogates him during the Occupation of Shanxi.
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Date: |
10 November - 21 December 2157 CE |
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In orbit around and on Shanxi / 23 Ursae Majoris / Local Cluster |
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Outcome: |
Strategic Alliance victory
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Territorial changes: |
Turians take control of Shanxi, but lose it when the Alliance liberate the colony |
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- "Don't ever let them forget Shanxi!"
- — Party motto of Remember Shanxi.
The Shanxi campaign was the main military engagement of the First Contact War that served as the central conflict of the war. Shanxi, before the war began, was the Alliance's most heavily developed frontier colony, effectively serving as a major terminus port for the Alliance colonization fleets exploring deep space for humanity: it was also the main port-of-call for the 16th ACF prior to its ill-fated voyage to Relay 314, where it was virtually annihilated at the Relay 314 Expedition incident by a turian patrol. As such, Arthur Williams, the commander of the 1st Alliance Army that served as the garrison of the planet, rightly guessed that Shanxi would be the next human target to be attacked due to its proximity to Relay 314: once news of the massacre reached Shanxi, followed by the general call for mobilization, Williams requested reinforcements and began training his own troops to prepare for an imminent attack, using what limited intel he had on their new enemy to prepare the colony. The Second Fleet, under the command of Fleet Admiral Kastanie Drescher, was dispatched to Shanxi as part of the requested reinforcements, while Drescher personally led a detachment to gather intel on the Relay 314 Patrol: whilst there, she also destroyed the enemy force, snatching a small victory against the alien aggressors.
The turians, however, were only galvanized. Responding to the destruction of their patrol, the bulk of the Twelfth Fleet quickly invaded and secured the Starry Steppes cluster, before discovering Shanxi and launching its assault against the planet. Despite Drescher's initial success, her ships were left totally helpless against the superior turian dreadnoughts, who were able to snipe the Alliance ships before they even entered the effective range of the Alliance's ships. Knowing she could not hope to beat the superior turian fleet, Drescher deployed her only carrier to screen the retreat of her forces and to harass the turian dreadnoughts, although she would not be aware until after the battle that she had unknowingly exploited a weakness neither the Alliance nor turians had expected, her fighters and bombers able to put three dreadnoughts out of action while forcing another to retreat. Despite this, the Second Fleet was ultimately defeated, with the turians securing control over Shanxi's orbit. The terrestrial phase of the battle lasted four days, with the turians very quickly gaining air superiority and taking control of the surrounding areas, then using their orbital dominance to destroy every single holdout the Alliance troops sought refuge in. Knowing the turians could continue this strategy with impunity, Williams was forced to surrender, bringing an end to the first battle of the Shanxi campaign. Williams and his men were kept as POWs, while the turian ground forces quickly solidifed their occupation of the planet. Priority was given to interrogating human prisoners, principally Williams (as they were quick to recognize him as someone of importance in the Alliance military), attempting to interpret enough of Williams' language to successfully translate it. The turians were unsuccessful in their attempts, as English proved far too complex and variable a language for their translators, leaving the turians and their human prisoners to grunt and bark at each other in their foreign languages, each unable to understand the other.
The Occupation of Shanxi lasted the length of the war, but it wasn't entirely inactive. Only a few days into the occupation, Jack Harper was able to successfully lead a prison breakout at the POW camp they were being held at, allowing them to wage a resistance campaign against their occupiers. While Harper was able to capture several turian prisoners, including an intelligence officer, his efforts to glean information from them proved entirely unsuccessful, as the aforementioned language barrier made both attempts to gain information, and the prisoner's attempts to give that information, entirely fruitless. In the end, the turians would lay a trap for Harper and his men, eventually leading to their recapture. Aside from this brief resistance, the Occupation of Shanxi went by uninterrupted, the turians keeping tight control of the human populace. The turians would remain in control for much of the conflict. Once in control of Shanxi, what databanks the turians found that the Alliance garrison hadn't destroyed allowed them to triangulate what they thought was the location of humanity's homeworld, as yet unidentified. With orders directly from the Primarch to deploy the Twelfth Fleet to the human home system, homing that their previous defeat over Shanxi, followed by their show of force in their own home system, would force the humans to the negotiating table and bring a quick end to the conflict before the asari and salarians discovered what was happening. The Primarch emphasized that time was of the essence, and ordered the immediate deployment of the fleet. Septimus immediately assembled his fleet, leaving behind a token force to protect against an Alliance counterattack and leaving Aegubus Terculus, commander of the ground forces, in command of the occupation while he was gone. However, despite the expectations about what to do expect of human resistance, the turians were resoundly defeated in the Battle of Charon, losing just over a hundred ships before being forced to retreat back to Shanxi. The Primarch was astonished by the defeat, realizing finally the extent of their foe, but refusing to commit to a full mobilization until Septimus proved the task was insurmountable, as the Twelfth Fleet was still able to escape the battle with two thirds of their forces intact.
But the victory had given the Alliance a huge morale boost. Drescher's observations at the Battle of Charon were used at the start of the battle, with the turian forces being immediately assailed by thousands of fighters and bombers launched from nine carriers that overwhelmed the dreadnoughts and their escorts, allowing the Alliance dreadnoughts, inferior though they are, to dominate the battlefield. Their triumph proved the turians could not just be defeated, but defeated decisively in a victory that matters. Armed with this knowledge, and Alliance public opinion strongly behind their armed forces, Joseph H. Garrong boosted Alliance troop numbers with hundreds of volunteers from each of Earth's nation's militaries, and pitched several bold strategies for going on the offensive. In the end, it was Garrong's plan to retake Shanxi, codenamed "Operation Ragnarok", that was approved and given the go ahead. By 19 December, Garrong's forces were fully mobilized at Earth, with an additional day given to go over planning and account for reconnaissance of the turian defenses at Shanxi using UAVs. Finally, on the 21 December, the Shanxi campaign entered its final phase when Operation Ragnarok launched, with the Alliance First Fleet, Second Fleet and Third Fleet launching a surprise assault on the Twelfth Fleet before it got a chance to form for battle.
During the battle, the Alliance First Fleet used its carriers to punch a whole through the turian line so that their troop transports could get past, allowing the 1st Colonial Expeditionary Force to land in force without issue. Over the course of eight hours, the 1st CEF besieged the settlement of New Xi'an, forcing the turian to give up their hold on the city and for the 1st CEF to liberate several POW camps, with the prisoners immediately picking up weapons and joining with their brothers in helping fight the turians. Within another four hours, the turians gave up the rest of their territorial possessions rather than simultaneously fight off a military assault and pacify the civilian population, falling back to their original landing zone and their camp. Turian artillery was successful in stalling the Alliance ground assault, with Armiger Legion special forces outflanking the 1st CEF and eliminating several armoured vehicles before being countered and forced back by a unit of marines led by N7 Alec Ryder consisting of Tadius Ahern and William D. Shepard with David E. Anderson coordinating them. The Armiger infiltration was successfully repelled with one of the Armiger operators being killed, with the turians put on the defensive for the rest of the battle. Meanwhile, in orbit, the battle was not going any better, with Septimus unsuccessfully attempting to find solutions to nullify the Alliance's carrier tactics. With his dreadnoughts left useless and unable to control the pace of the battle, Septimus attempted to obliterate the carriers themselves by sending forward his cruisers and battleships, hoping to collapse the Alliance forward line and eliminate their carriers. Instead, Garrong and Singh and Netanyahu's fleets pull back, bringing Septimus' ships further and further in before Drescher sent in her carriers, outflanking the turian ships with her fighters and bombers and destroying most of them before they could withdraw. Still hoping to salvage the battle, Septimus committed his reserves to attack Drescher's rear, and while he temporarily regained the initiative, Garrong committed his own reserves to counter this move, pushing the Twelfth Fleet back. Seeing that it was a losing battle, Septimus immediately deployed dropships to the surface to get Terculus and his men off the surface. Once this was done, Septimus ordered a full retreat and withdrew with the remainder of his fleet back through Relay 314. Like Charon, it was yet another decisive victory.
The end of the Shanxi campaign caught the turians completely by surprise, as they had been expecting a primitive, inexperienced and technologically inferior foe due to assessments about their technology and track record for winning battles against them. His back-to-back defeats at Charon and Second Shanxi effectively ended an otherwise distinguished career for Septimus Oraka, who was forced into quiet retirement to downplay his failures: however, Septimus held no bitterness towards the humans like much of the turian brass, instead harbouring respect for Garrong and the Alliance's military prowess, saying that one day 'it'll be the humans peacekeeping the galaxy, I can see it.' After these defeats, the Primarch gave the order for full-scale mobilization, having the Tenth and Eleventh fleets begin to assemble and for 60,000 marines to prepare for a second assault on Shanxi. Before this continuation of the Shanxi campaign could happen however, the asari and salarians became aware of the situation and intervened, with the Turian Hierarchy being sharply criticized for waging what was seen as a secret war with a first contact species. As such the Primarch had the military stand down, and the asari sent a peace delegation to Shanxi to properly welcome them into the galactic community and smooth over the delicate situation. Despite Garrong's insistence they couldn't be trusted, the asari delegation was invited to Arcturus Station to meet with the prime minister. The Alliance public was so awed and dazzled by the idea of a larger galactic community that opinion swayed towards acceptance of this deal, and so an Alliance delegation was sent to the Citadel to bring about a formal end to the First Contact War and to officially unveil themselves to the wider galaxy.
The Shanxi campaign is considered one of the most famous military engagements in human military history, and has a long-standing legacy. Politically, many pro-human and anti-alien political ideologies use Shanxi as a symbol of galvanization for their constituents, with parties such as Terra Firma and Rememver Shanxi utilizing it as part of their platform of isolationism from galactic astropolitics and humanity's need to remain fully self-reliant. Militarily, Shanxi is a symbol of pride amongst the armed forces, as it is often cited as proof that they could overcome any obstacle, defeat any enemy. During the Skyllian Blitz, much of the Alliance propaganda material referenced Shanxi, the most famous of which being the slogan, "death from above won back Shanxi, it'll avenge Mindoir.' The Alliance Navy also uses Shanxi as a point of pride, especially in its (accurate) claims that it single-handedly revolutionized the way naval warfare was waged, with the newly introduced carriers managing to overthrow dreadnoughts as the dominant player in space. The Turian Hierarchy were the first to embrace the carrier into their military philosophy, with the salarians coming shortly after. The asari embraced it as well, as it fit with their 'hit-and-run' style of waging war: overnight, the dreadnought was no longer the top dog in naval combat. However, the most long-lasting legacy of Shanxi was the resentment. For nearly 30 years, the Hierarchy and Alliance remained tense, reluctant allies. Trade flourished between the two powers, and while neither was interested in finishing what they started (mostly because the humans soon found a new enemy in the batarians), neither was particularly willing to forget their skirmishes anytime soon, especially with the Alliance being reluctant to forgive them. It wouldn't be until the Reaper War that much of this resentment evaporated, and after the war, both powers even shared peacekeeping responsibilities, even after the Alliance was dissolved and replaced with the Systems Coalition. Despite this, Shanxi would always remain a bitter point for humanity, and one they would never forget, even hundreds of years on, arguably becoming one of the most important and iconic symbols of human perseverence in all of their history.