Siege of Suen
From FABT
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Suen / Maskim Xul / Ninmah | ||||||||||||||||
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Strategic Tuchankan victory
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- "The final year of the Rachni Wars was fought over Suen, the rachni homeworld. Their empire was shattered, their worlds seized and nests razed, their fleets obliterated and scattered like cosmic dust. They put up a valiant fight until the very end, and for this our old foe must be respected. The siege carried on for a long time, until finally they were weak enough for our forces to strike. And just like that, our year-long siege was concluded in just one night. The Starsinger was struck down, and the great purging that followed was but a glorified hunt. The rachni were no more, and our empire was born."
- — A krogan historian in regards to the siege.
The Siege of Suen, also known as the Battle of Suen (52-53), was a lengthy planetary siege of the rachni homeworld Suen, capital of the First Rachni Collective, that took place in the last year of the Fourth Rachni War and served as the final military engagement of the Rachni Wars, with the siege beginning on 21 May 52 CE and concluding on 11 July 53 CE. After four devastating conflicts that had left the galaxy reeling and bloodied, the First Rachni Collective was on its last legs by 51 CE, with huge swaths of its territory being conquered by the Tuchankan Empire, the newest state actor to take part in the Rachni Wars, and by far the most successful. The rachni had lost the ability to plan and launch successful counteroffensives after the Defiance of Maroon Sea in late 49 CE, where a significant portion of its remaining naval power was smashed by the krogan at the Battle of Geofaphus, leaving it unable to adequately defend its hive worlds from further attack. What was left of the rachni navy was recalled to Suen, and their fleet yards at Clobaka, Alformus and Suen attempted to rebuild their weakened fleets. By late 49 CE, the krogan had retaken the rest of the territory lost to the rachni and had returned Council territory to their pre-Rachni Wars borders. In December, Operation Bloodrage began the krogan's invasion of rachni space, starting with Kepler Verge and expanding in two directions: one to the north to cut off and surround the rachni home cluster of Ninmah, while the other swept through the rachni territories to the east, and conquered them one by one. While a new fleet was assembled by the rachni, the destruction of their fleet yards at Alformus and Clobaka forced them to be withdrawn to Suen, negating whatever effect thay may have had, and essentially surrendered what was left of their interstellar possessions in order to make a last stand at Suen. Of this, the Starsinger of the First Collective seemed determined to make a show of force, assembling what forces remained to her in defense of the rachni birth world.
Finally, by 52 CE, the Pylos Nebula and Teestez Yu Nebulae had fallen, and Ninmah was surrounded. The Ninmah offensive saw some of the bloodiest fighting of the war, second only to the Battle of the Teestez Yu, with the rachni fighting tooth-and-nail for every last scrap of territory they had. In the end however, the rachni were finally pushed back to their last bastion: Suen. At this point, many rachni queens wanted to attempt surrender, but the Starsinger, either out of madness or a realization that the krogan would slaughter them anyway (and if Singer of the New Dawn is to be believed, was driven by Sovereign's indoctrination to continue fighting to deliberately ensure her species was wiped out), ignored these pleas and chose to fight to the death. As such, the rachni on the surface of Suen retreated beneath the surface to survive the inevitable krogan orbital bombardment, and the rachni fleet prepared for one final battle. At the Battle of Maskim Xul the last rachni ships were destroyed, spelling the end of the rachni navy, and the krogan fleet immediately blockaded Suen to prevent any rachni from escaping. However, one rachni queen had defied the wishes of the Starsinger to fight to the last rachni, and had preserved one ship of the fleet to transport a clutch of eggs, one of them a queen, into the unknown to ensure the survival of her species. This queen, known only as Singing Transcendence, would later die in defense of her Starsinger. However, her actions undoubtably preserved the rachni species, and allowed for their resurgence many millenia later, and their participation in the Reaper War.
With the remaining fleet destroyed, the rachni dug in for a siege. While the krogan attempted many landings, each one was met with the same ferocity, each either being shot down or descended upon the moment they landed. This was a tactic the rachni had adopted during the infamous G;qel campaign, where the rachni had furiously held onto the planet Hell and managed to defeat multiple krogan offensives before finally being pacified. This tactic the rachni planned to use, not to win, but to inflict as many casualties as possible. The krogan wisened up to this however, and withdrew their assault and got ready for a long siege. While the battles to pacify Teestez Yu had lasted two years, the Siege of Suen survived only one, although it was a long year. Further attempts were made by the Citadel Council to intervene and organize peace talks between the krogan and rachni, both the salarians and asari horrified at the lengths the krogan had gone to deal with the threat, but the krogan weren't interested and the rachni made no response to these overtures. In the end, the siege was finally broken when Nartak Shiagur led a battalion of krogan troops on a surprise assault into the Core of Purity, the main nest of the rachni, and managed to infiltrate deep into the nest and locate the Starsinger, Symphonic Exalted. Shiagur herself personally killed the Starsinger after prolonged battle, in which her battalion held off the hundreds of brood warriors, and even queens, who practically threw themselves at the krogan in an attempt to save their Starsinger. An extremely rare and extinct breed of rachni known as Rachni Hivemongers were also reported to have been involved, a subspecies of rachni native to Suen who never left the presence of the Starsinger. Such sightings were never confirmed however, and due to them being entirely extinct, it's not likely any confirmation will ever be had. Whatever the case, the rachni threw everything they had at Shiagur's troops, including the theorized Hivemongers, but in the end, the Starsinger was slain and rachni resistance devolved into chaos. The subsequent Purging of Suen, in which the krogan siege forces hunted down the remaining rachni and cleared them out, brought an end to the war, and to the rachni species...at least for several millenia, and finally brought peace to the galaxy for the first time in just over fifty years.