Siege of Canaan

The Siege of Canaan was the first move of an attempted Travesti invasion of the Southern Rim and the first major engagement to involve New Ossyrian Military forces, taking place on the small desert planet of Canaan in the Turin system, out in the northeast regions of the NOR. Lasting two years and costing millions of lives, the siege was an incredibly bloody affair that nevertheless proved both the fighting ability and pure, unrelenting stubbornness of the NOM, and is generally believed to have saved billions from a potential Travesti rampage across the south.
==The Battle==
===Day One's Annihilation===
On March 18th, 102 AF at 9:32 AM, subspace sensors on the OSS Sierra Nevada, as Appalachia-class battlestar leading a fleet of a dozen small NOM warships above Canaan, detected unusual disturbances on the edge of the Turin System. Along with two Cartwright-class destroyers, the OSS Dakota and the OSS Carolina, it approached the location of the strange readings for a proper inspection. At 9:39 the Sierra Nevada was instantly destroyed by a hyperspace window opening at a point in space the ship had been occupying. Thousands more windows opened nearby, and Travesti Dominion warships proceeded out; the Dakota and the Carolina were destroyed within thirty seconds, and in less than two minutes the other eight NOM vessels in orbit were wiped out as well with no survivors.
By 9:42 Travesti Mobile Fortresses were making landfall, catching the planet's 90,000,000 inhabitants and small garrison of only a hundred thousand combat troops completely off guard. The cities of Tel Aviv, Ariel and Holon, the three most populous on Canaan, were completely overrun by noon, and twenty percent of NOM ground forces lay dead across the planet's countryside. The remaining troops fell back to Dimona, a city along Canaan's equator fifty miles south of the rampage Travesti forces were on throughout the Northern Hemisphere.
A full-scale Travesti assault began at 2:49 PM, and very nearly broke through NOM defenses to take Dimona. Eight hours of desperate fighting finally forced the Travesti to pull back, regroup and attack again when their forces were rested and resupplied. The morale boost in NOM ranks that pushing back the assault produced was tempered by massive casualties; by 1:15 AM on March 19th, three entire hemispheres of Canaan had completely fallen, 50,000,000 civilians had been slaughtered, NOM forces were down to 38% strength and Dimona was the sole city still in New Ossyrian control.
===Week of the Bloody Skies===
On the second day of the the siege at 3:44 AM, a comm station deep inside Dimona finally managed to get a Quantum Entanglement Communicator working and establish contact with the NOR. Naval Lieutenant Marian Stelclaw, a young Leprede ex-mercenary and the highest-ranking officer left on Canaan, was relayed straight to Marshall Bellerose himself to explain the dire situation. The NOM's High Commander agreed with Stelclaw - immediate and brutal action had to be taken forthwith if they were to repel the Travesti.
Inthe space of a few days Bellerose rallied two-thirds of the entire New Ossyrian fleet, recalling from the Battle of Karsol just how critical sheer massive numbers would be if they wished to be victorious. On March 23rd, at 12:18 PM, a vast-scale counter-assault of more than 40,000 New Ossyrian warships began, setting off what became known as the Week of the Bloody Skies.
For seven straight days the NOM engaged the Travesti fleet, relying on outnumbering the enemy four to one and possessing some of the best military tech in the Southern Rim to survive. Even with those advantages, the space battle was catastrophically vicious; not until four days in die the NOM even manage to take part of Canaan orbit, and by the time the Travesti fleet was forced to pull out three days later, 35% of the entire New Ossyrian Stellar Navy had been destroyed, littering the planet below with millions of metric tons of debris.
===Two Year Stalemate===
===Operation Bluff Call and siege's end===
==Aftermath==
Category:Events
Category:Conflicts