Thessian Fallout
From FABT
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 View of a nuclear detonation on Thessia caught by the Dominion cruiser Las Vegas as it passes over the horizon.
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7 November 2215 CE | ||||||||||||||||
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Decisive Dominion victory
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- "The Dominion made sure to record it live so every asari in the galaxy could see it. I watched as nuclear hellfire consumed the very planet asari civilization calls its cradle. They ruthlessly cleansed the surface and reduced our cities to ashes, accomplishing what even the Reapers had failed to do. Any asari unlucky enough to be on the surface and survived those first few hours would have been met with a miserable, slow death. That's how they won. By ensuring we'd never rise again."
- — Red Star describing her experience on the day Thessia was bombarded.
The Thessian Fallout, also known as the Thessian Cataclysm and the Destuction of Thessia, bitterly called by surviving ex-asari military personnel as the Battle of Thessia, and codenamed Operation Trinity by the Dominion military, are names given to the actions of the Dominion 7th and 8th fleets that led to the orbital nuclear and antimatter bombardment of the surface of Thessia at the end of the Post-Apocalyptic War, effectively ending the Skyllian Front of the war, leading to the final capitulation of the remaining New Council forces only days later and was directly responsible for the final collapse and dissolution of the Asari Republics. Occurring in the tail end of the Dominion's Operation Pale Mare, the Thessian Fallout was the culmination of a years long campaign that began in late 2214 CE to push into New Council territory and conquering the individual systems of the New Council powers: by the time of the Fallout, the Turian Hierarchy and Salarian Union, along with several minor species, had already surrendered, whilst the Tuchankan Military Confederacy had been isolated, cut off and placed under siege, leaving the Asari Republics to fight the Galactic Dominion on their own as they closed in on the asari's home systems. The asari continued to fight inch by inch for every planet and system, but were gradually pushed back to Thessia until October 2215 CE, where only a handful of systems plus Parnitha remained in asari control. Prior to the Fallout, a last desperate naval battle would be fought between the remnants of the asari navy and the Dominion 6th, 7th and 8th fleets only a few billion kilometers from Thessia, which led to the complete destruction of the asari navy, with only six battlegroups managing to retreat back to Thessia and form one last desperate defense while the planet prepared for a planetary invasion.
With a memorandum from the asari government in Armali ordering non-compliance with Dominion forces and to "fight to the bitter end", the asari military had already begun preparations to enact Plan Indigo even before the Navy's defeat at the Second Battle of Parnitha, which had merely been a delaying action to buy their surface forces time to prepare defensive positions, evacuate civilians from the major cities, evacuate all government and high-ranking military personnel to Fort Befzenos, bring online their ground-based nuclear and antimatter arsenals, program planetary cannons and anti-aerospace installations, and more. Despite the desperate situation with the asari navy in space, which had been rendered combat ineffective, and with no allies to call upon, the asari command was confident that lessons had been learned from the last time Thessia was invaded by a foreign military force, and they were prepared to resist the Dominion invasion every step of the way, hoping to fight them to a stalemate and ultimately force them to negotiate a truce: victory was accepted as impossible, and survival and preservation of the Asari Republics was what remained on the government's agenda. The New Council, which had made Armali its capital ever since the fall of the Citadel years before, was also evacuated to Fort Befzenos, despite their high political status being rendered defunct. At least forty asari armies (one hundred thousand troops each), with at least twelve being fresh armies raised via a draft and only within the last few months, gave the asari ground forces a manpower pool of at least four million, and they were dispersed across the planet, designated to hold key cities and military installations with only one objective: hold off and stall the Dominion advances for as long as possible. The twelve fresh armies were trained in Dominion shock-and-awe tactics and other strategies on short notice, hoping to counter them with guerilla actions in order to negate the Dominion's reliance on air dominance and mass mechanized assaults. The asari's superiority in biotics was also hoped to give them an advantage, with a planet consisting of 8.4 billion angry biotics thought to be enough to make life hell on the Dominion armies and bog them down in a nasty war of attrition. In the end, all of it was only meant to buy time and force the Dominion to concede enough to agree to a truce, allowing the Republics some wiggle room to negotiate a surrender where the Asari Republics was preserved and, it was hoped, even become a part of the Galactic Dominion.
In space, the Dominion 6th fleet disengaged to support a ground invasion of Lucen, leaving the 7th and 8th fleets to continue the advance towards Thessia after they finished off stragglers from the space battle and picked up escape pods containing survivors to hold as POWs. Within minutes they arrived over Thessia, with the 7th leading the way and immediately engaging a vanguard force of the 117th Reconnaissance Flotilla, quickly destroying the enemy force and forcing the five remaining asari battlegroups to retreat to the other side of the planet, although they would return to launch hit-and-run strikes on Dominion carriers as they attempted to commence air strikes on the surface. However, the commander of the operation, Imperial Admiral Cao Lingxin, received orders from Dominion High Command on Epitaph Station to cease all preparations for invasion and cancelled the planned Operation Saber, the invasion of Thessia, in favor of the activation of Operation Trinity, which Lingxin and the commanders of the 7th and 8th fleets were distributed detailed briefs on. As such, for the next two days, the Dominion fleet secured their positions and did nothing, allowing the asari military on the ground to become further entrenched while the remnants of the asari fleet monitored the situation and observed Dominion fleet movements. Drafted by Fleet Admiral Awarnach Stanford, and approved by Summus Imperator Alonso Carretero, Trinity called for the mass deployment of the Dominion's nuclear and antimatter arsenal in the Parnitha system to commence a thorough and complete glassing of the surface, leaving nothing unscatched and eradicating all life on the planet while the 7th and 8th fleets imposed a blockade that stopped anyone trying to escape. Stanford's proposal was initially regarded with disgust, but Carretero eventually approved it after the catastrophe of the Fall of Palaven, where Dominion forces, while victorious, had suffered significant casualties during the invasion and thus could not suffer a repeat of such losses on Thessia, leading to Operation Saber's cancellation and replacement by Trinity. Stanford also proposed broadcasting live footage of the event from ships in orbit to remaining asari worlds in the hopes of hastening their surrender and that of the krogan, allowing the Dominion to shift focus to their final adversary, the Titan Covenant. In the end, in spite of expected pushback from the Dominion Senate (which is why they were not consulted or informed, and they learned of the operation during the broadcast), Trinity was finally approved by High Command and the immediate redeployment of nuclear and antimatter weapons to the Parnitha system began.
By 6 November 2215 CE, one hundred and sixty-two satellite-based launch platforms had been deployed in positions around the planet, heavily protected by Dominion capital ships and patrols, each satellite loaded with either 50 nuclear OSBMs (orbit-to-surface ballistic missiles), each containing a 120 megaton yield, or 15 antimatter OCBMs. A stealth coating on the satellites meant the asari fleet never picked up on what the Dominion was doing, believing their fleet movements were simply preparation for an impending planetary invasion, first establishing a blockade to establish complete global coverage. While much of the bombardment would be carried by nuclear and antimatter weapons, the fleet was also set to join the bombardment, using energy projectors and other directed energy weapons to fire at the surface of the planet, ensuring total coverage of every landmass, striking areas that were lucky enough to be unaffected or having survived the nuclear and antimatter bombardment. The operation began at 4:00am on 7 November 2215 CE, beginning with an opening bombardment from the 7th and 8th fleets on key cities such as Armali, Kurinth, Nevos, Hyetiana, Illium, and so on. The bombardment was said to be so intense that even asari forces on the ground, under penalty of heavy casualties, were forced to withdraw to positions further inside the city. Finally, by 7:00am, the initial bombardment ended, leading the asari to believe an invasion was imminent: whilst most evacuations had been completed at this point, many government personnel had not yet evacuated the capital, including a few New Council members, wanting to stay and fight until finally being convinced to leave via transport as the invasion was believed to be starting soon: as such, this transport was only just departing Armali when, at 7:10am, the Dominion commenced their horrific nuclear and antimatter assault upon the planet. The next two hours on Thessia were hell, with every major city being hit by several nuclear and antimatter munitions, followed by military installations and smaller population centers. Anywhere that could contain asari populations were hit, and the countryside, where asari civilians had been evacuated as it was believed they'd be far from the front, became a trap as nuclear weapons hit these areas, wiping out millions of civilians at a time. The transport carrying the government of the Republics, including several New Council officials, was caught in the explosion of a nearby nuclear blast, downing their transport somewhere along the eastern seaboard of the Pesconoi continent, killing most of them and leaving the survivors to slowly die from intense radiation exposure and horrific burns. The glassing of the planet was said to be so intense that to Dominion crews on their ships above, the planet looked to be "one giant light bulb". Ravenous firestorms and wildfires caused by nuclear detonations ravaged what was left untouched, and antimatter warheads detonating over the Pesconoi continent landed nearby with several nukes, causing an intense fireball that ruptured the ozone directly above it, caused earthquakes felt an entire continent away, and wiped out 18 million people in an instant. Fort Befzenos was compromised by the EMP of a nearby nuclear shockwave, leading to the base being flooded and destroyed and resulting in the deaths of most of the surviving asari government and military high command. By the time the bombardment finally ceased at 9:14am, it was said the Dominion crews stood in silence, with even the asari crews onboard their ships watching helplessly as their planet was eviscerated and obliterated from space, horrified by what they were seeing.
At 9:30am, when Imperial Admiral Lingxin finally composed herself enough to send a reply to High Command requesting a status update on Trinity, her response was terse and to the point "it's done, damn you, it's done." As ordered, the entire bombardment had been broadcast to all remaining asari forces still fighting on the front, as well as surviving asari colonies. As expected, on 8 November 2215 CE the very next day, Epitaph Station received word from the asari that they were willing to agree to unconditional surrender: hours later, as the Battle of Lucen still raged on, the asari military finally surrendered, including the forces on Lucen, and the Skyllian Front was at an end: the remaining asari battlegroups over Thessia had already been captured by the Dominion 8th fleet, who were said to have put up no resistance: marines that boarded the ship to take their crews into custody said their asari crews looked "beaten, broken, nothing resembling life behind those eyes." The only word spoken was by a single asari captain, who merely asked "why?" as she was being taken away: other sources say she screamed "vengeance for Thessia!" while others say she was shot, but most historians agree that the latter didn't happen. With the signing of surrender terms on 10 November 2215 CE, the Asari Republics was formally dissolved, its military disbanded, and the Asari Occupied States were established in its place under direct Dominion rule. As for Thessia, there were no survivors: the total death toll reached 8.4 billion, making it the bloodiest and most horrific war crime in Dominion military history. The planet was utterly destroyed: firestorms raged for decades after the war had ended, oceans had boiled up and evaporated, and the eco system was irreparably annihilated, with no life recorded on the planet by 2217 CE. Due to the planet's eezo-rich core, the bombardment was so intense that it caused cracks to form in the planet's tectonics, leading to continents shifting and the sea level to rise worldwide, causing entire continents to disappear by 2230 CE. After the war, the Maginot Line would be formed in close proximity to Thessia, and a permanent Dominion military presence would exist over the planet, including mining facilities that would exploit its largely intact eezo reserves. The planet's destruction also brought a swift end to the Post-Apocalyptic War, with the Dominion and Covenant agreeing to a truce not long after Lucen's final surrender and a final Dominion offensive.
After the Dominion Civil War and the collapse of the Galactic Dominion, a war crimes tribunal was held on Epitaph Station and many of the members of Dominion High Command who were captured and had orchestrated the bombardment were tried and convicted for their involvement. Awarnach Stanford, often named the "architect of Thessia's nuclear holocaust", was killed at the Battle of Ming, and thus evaded capture, and Lingxin had retired and later committed suicide for her involvement in the bombardment, left mentally scarred by what she had seen. As for the asari themselves, the successor to the Asari Republics that emerged post-war, the Unified Asari Republics, would reclaim its lost territories, but Thessia was forever lost to them, permanently scarred and broken by the bombardment inflicted upon it. As such, the UGR has permanently banned all unlicensed travel and access to the planet, being completely sealed off and labelled a grave site by the OFFPRO indefinitely. Regardless, the event has permanently scarred asari civilization for centuries afterwards, depriving them of their homeworld and marking the darkest day in asari history.