Battle of Srixin

[History, War]

 Preamble
Winter 3316; After the destruction of the Chroniode during the Battle of Yomi against the last stand of Droch'ah in the hostile undergrounds of the Yomi planet, and the consequent distortion created on the dimensional continuum, several small gateways began to appear everywhere, connecting our dimension to a foreign parallel dimension in which a deviant version of our own history existed.

A new menace

 This parallel dimension was, at the time, controlled by a hegemonic faction known as Unification (counterpart of the Fusion clan in our dimension), who was recovering from a cruel war against its mortal enemy, Xeon, who attempted to take over Unification's galaxy. Unification, believing that Xeon was supported by agents from our own dimension, then attempted to finish their work eradicating all Xeon trace from our world.

 Beach-head

 The Unification Army had gathered Intel by infilrating the pirate organizations and was able to start their First Offensive against our dimension by invading a wide sector in the Illyrian doman.

Unification's Blitzkrieg

 Applying the old doctrine that the old Terra Axis forces used during the second great war in the pre-digital era, Unification developed lightning attacks launched from unexpected gates against neuralgic points of great tactical importance.

 Unification kept the advantage of surprise through their spear attacks, devastating facilities and outposts before the defenders could even react. It was only a matter of time before they controlled a wide sector of the Hegemony.
In their desperation, the Illyrian Hegemony, whose forces had been overrun by the Unification's Army, once again hired the services of mercenary clans. At this time, many of them were already fighting the Unification forces, as they that the galaxy they knew was destined to be destroyed.

 After several months of intense fighting, Unification acquired control over a wide ground. With several worlds now under their control, the focus of the fighting progressed through the gateway configuration towards the planet Srixin.

 Prior to Srixin, the edge of the war was totally under Unification's control, but things were close to changing... 

Srixin, a break point

The gateways don't have a direct connection to each other, they are linked in an apparent ly chaotic pattern. As many links have been lost since their inception by the Forerunner Civilization, there is a meta-geography, with virtual frontiers and corridors configured by the deployed gateways in service.

 Regarding the gateway configuration in the Illyrian Hegemony sector controlled by the Unification Army, Srixin happened to be a knot of communication, essentially a bottleneck, which was indeed a colossal stroke of luck for our defences.

 This meant that if the Mercenary clans could keep the Srixin field under their control, they could break the Blitzkrieg Unification strategy and get a unique chance to deliver a definitive blow to the Unification Army, stopping them before they could get a stable foothold into our galaxy.

Into the furnace

Srixin's environment also gave an advantage to the Allied Forces, as the Unification Army was unaware of the ecology of the planet. Srixin's surface is almost completely covered by the Bomag's gluevines plantations, an extremely volatile and highly flammable plant.

 The mercenary clans knew this information thanks to the Direct Action Group reports and made the most of the situation. By favouring the bottleneck and the flammability of the plantations they turned the battlefield into a giant furnace by using the plasma weapons delivered by the Illyrian Novum Dolorum factories.

 The sum of these factors, combined with a huge amount of luck, gave the mercenary clans the miracle they needed to send the invading forces fleeing back to their dimension, but not before both sides had suffered heavy losses.

 The battle of Srixin commenced at the end of the year 3316 and finished with the last Unification forces retreat in March, 3317.

Related entries
(By GJ - 685605)