Belial War

> “
> “Fuck this shithole.”
>
>
> — *Cpl. Jideofor Okafo to Spc. Hakim Ellis during the Battle of Nazarayaan, Operation *Righteous Force*, c. 2663*
>
>
>

## Belial War

The final hours of the Battle of Amal during Operation Righteous Force, c. 2666

### Date

October 3 2663 — June 29 2673 (9 years, 8 months, 27 days)

### Result

Coalition victory* Return of the pro-Coalition Belial government
* Criminalization of the UFAB party
* Collapse of the Belial economy, beginning of Coalition subsidization
* Ongoing Belial insurgency in space and on land
* Intensification of the War on Terror

Units involved|  Coalition Forces Authority* Interstellar Coalition Terrestrial Army
* Interstellar Coalition Space Navy
* Interstellar Coalition Marine Corps

The **Belial War** was an independence conflict that lasted from October 3rd, 2664 to June 29th, 2673 between the Coalition of Congressional Republics and the Free Stellar Republic of Belial (and later insurgent forces, particularly the modern Belial Free Fleet). Due to the hardiness of the Belialites in regards to their public anti-Coalition sentiment and their combined preparation for an independence uprising, the war lasted for almost nine years in total and led to the deaths or injuries of nearly five million combatants and almost ten million civilians; this was from a combination of direct combat, starvation, dehydration, and pandemics. It is considered to be one of the key criticisms against the Coalition military and government due to the CCR's mishandling of humanitarian aid, purported violations of human rights, and deliberate strategic decisions that led to "attrition on all sectors of Belialite society".

The war was fought on two key fronts: the space front, where the Belial Free Republican Navy waged a guerilla war across the entirety of the Belial system against naval elements of the Coalition Forces Authority (chiefly the Interstellar Coalition Space Navy), and the terrestrial front, where the Belial Free Republican Army engaged in a protracted planetwide defense (and later insurgency) against invading ground force elements of the Interstellar Coalition Marine Corps and the Interstellar Coalition Terrestrial Army.

## Background

The Belial system was colonized in 2408 after terraformation of Belial Prime, two centuries after the end of the first Planet Rush and as a part of a new limited colonization initiative. Due to the inability to source enough water to the system from local astral bodies, the world of Belial Prime was much drier than what colonization standards normally permitted. However, its colonization was facilitated through investitures by multiple megacorporations that sought to mine the world for its detected deposits of gold and platinum for manufacturing purposes.

The first immigrant populations that arrived to Belial were mainly unemployed Hyperians and Terrans, with a later wave of Arabic immigrants that sought space away from the growing colonies to practice their various denominations of Islam in relative isolation from the dominance of technology. Even so, these groups would all inevitably fall into dependence of the multicorporate government that loomed over them, with a true civilian government only coming to power in 2463 under Coalition mandate.

Despite a noncorporate administration now in effect, little changed for the population of Belial Prime. The openings of several new mines and quarries across the breadth of the desert world meant even more of an influx of migrants and temporary workers, which brought strain to the water and food infrastructure of the planet by 2470. This, in turn, formed an immigration crisis that began to further stain the reputation of the operating megacorporations and the Coalition with the Belial people, and although such a crisis of infrastructure and immigration would inevitably be resolved, this sentiment would only build further.

By the 2500s, Belial became a major source of gold and platinum for markets in the northern Frontier, thanks to the Belial Board of Cooperating Interests. This board, a continuation of the old Belial corporate government, was also extracting profits through controlling various import and export bodies throughout the Belial system, including having sway over the importation of advanced equipment and luxury items from the Core. This left much of the lower class of the Belial star system without appliances and technologies that even the homeless enjoyed on advanced worlds such as Hyperion, whereas allowing the corporate elites that existed in orbit and throughout the space of the Belial system to still gain access to such a market. This began the first growths of a sense of Belial identity, tying it with an rise of left-wing economic sympathies with the lower class population.

For over one hundred years did this socioeconomic system persist, with Belial eventually having new colonies arise as trade nodes between the outer and inner star system in places such as Belialstone. The overall population of the Belial star system — with many living on Belial Prime — grew to as much as two billion, with the carrying capacity straining against the price of imports and the minute agricultural infrastructure existent on the still-dry world. In 2635, the first official "anti-Coalition" political party would be recognized (with much chagrin to the stellar government) under the Union for the Freedom and Autonomy of Belial (UFAB). UFAB stated that its directive was not independence from the Coalition of Congressional Republics, but rather large-scale autonomy akin to Astralland where Belial would be free to dictate its own dealings with megacorporations and the rest of the marketplace of humanity.

UFAB would be defeated in the first round of elections that it participated in for the year 2639 for presidency, but found significant gains in Belial's legislature and local governing bodies. Being a big-tent organization of religious groups, socialists, hardline communists, and planetary identitarians, UFAB was internally instable and was checked from gaining further power through a series of incursions by the Coalition's Security Intelligence Network and the intelligence apparatus of the Belial government; even so, it gained significant power by 2655 and began a series of events that would lead to the outbreak of war.

## Pre-war events

### 2657 elections and the Amal riots

In 2657, snap elections were held under Coalition supervision as a result of corruption within the government, caused by meddling from the Belial Board of Cooperating Interests. While the Coalition maneuvered to addressed the overstepped boundaries caused by the corporate board, support for the UFAB movement surged, leading them to win a majority in the congress of Belial's government and in several subdivisions of its territory. However, the president was not from the UFAB party, and instead was a pro-Coalition candidate. The leadership of UFAB immediately decried the event as a result of direct meddling from either the Coalition or the corporations that controlled the economy of the star system, causing a gridlock between the legislature and the executive branch to occur.

Mediators from Earth were dispatched to the Belial system to begin bilateral negotiations between the two branches. However, their arrival was also accompanied by the arrival of a mechanized division from the Interstellar Coalition Terrestrial Army of the Coalition Forces Authority, who were sent in as an "assurance of peace" between the fractious parts of the Belial government. Being garrisoned near the capital city of Amal, they were met with a fierce local outcry due to further straining the local water and food supply in addition to reported "harassment" of locals.

Riots soon broke out in Amal as a result of the presence of Coalition troops, with police and soldiers mobilized under the Belial section of the Combined Member National Subcommand preventing large groups of civilians from approaching the CFA's newly constructed Ritz Aerospace Field. Nevertheless, this outbreak of violence was capitalized upon by the UFAB, who pushed through a bill that was meant to be vetoed - the Coalition Expulsion Order.

### Veto of the expulsion order and raising violence

As expected, President Abdul Fattaah al-Pashia vetoed the order, which reached the public through a failed information quarantine and lead to several more riots breaking out across the surface of Belial Prime. al-Pashia requested the Coalition government to send additional forces to garrison the planet, but Secretary-General George Mildred Faulkner denied the request due to the chance of aggravating a full-scale colonial rebellion. Instead, Faulkner promised aid in the form of equipment and materiel shipments, in addition to a secretive slush fund of several billion notes that would allow al-Pashia to hire private military contractors and security forces.

During this time, UFAB attempted to impeach President al-Pashia, but met with failure due to the Belialite Supreme Court ruling such a politically motivated action as reprobate and unconstitutional.

In 2658, the first private military contractors began arriving on Belial from corporations such as Idyllia Defense Solutions and Kanetomi's *Keibikaisha*, supplementing efforts for keeping order on the streets in addition to guarding several locations belonging to the executive branch of government. Through 2658 and into 2660, several incidents occurred between these groups and rioting civilians, including the death of 12 rioters from machinegun fire by a Kawatomi combat walker.

By 2660, the violence and resentment had broken into space, with several groups of Belial ship and station crews refusing to attend to Coalition government craft nor corporate vessels and passengers. Minor colonies within Belial were also beginning to gain separatist sentiments, including a severe riot breaking out on Belialstone that paralyzed the local economy for a month as a result of worker's strikes.

### Storming of the Presidential Palace and further negotiations

In early 2661, the Presidential Palace of Belial was stormed by a combination of rioters and unidentified gunmen wielding sophisticated combat technologies, breaking through the PMC and police cordons and leading to the hanging of President al-Pashia in the nearby square. As Amal quickly broke out into anarchy, the mechanized CFA garrison near the capital city autonomously retreated into the arid outback under the orders of Major General Leanid Bahuševic to prevent the risk of directly confronting and firing upon Belialites, abandoning the Ritz Aerospace Field in the process and leaving several caches of weaponry and vehicles ripe for the taking.

With the head of the executive branch gone overnight, the UFAB asserted direct government control through its legislative majority and suspended further elections. Secretary General Faulkner ordered a discreet information quarantine for outgoing information from the Belial star system and all ingoing traffic to be vetted, and gave the order for the CFA to begin preparations for the mobilization and movement of a task force in the event that this new Belial government would prove nonnegotiable.

The new leader of the Belial government was chosen by UFAB through legislative processes to be Awad Kohnstamm, christened as "provisional president" until the government was able to stabilize the domestic situation. UFAB also moved to crush the economic monopolies of the corporate board of Belial as it waited for the Coalition to make its move, leading to the nationalization of several industries and the relief of various minor colonies from logistical strains - for a time.

Coalition diplomats arrived in March of 2661, and were met with demands of significant autonomy. During their parley, diplomats Edward Garbacz and Fransien Stellinga proposed that Belial would enjoy subsidies from the Coalition government itself for key industries and a better economic environment for corporate investiture, but could not stop all corporate activity in the star system. The reasons for not being able to abort corporate activity in the system was due to the looming power of the Coalition Corporate Advisory Committee, who would otherwise reject any Coalition advances without some form of corporate support. These negotiations persisted until April, to which no mutual ground was found apart from the evacuation of the CFA garrison from the planet.

However, in late 2661, the UFAB underwent significant internal power struggles between its socialist-communist and religious-identitarian axes. Begrudgingly, President Kohnstamm and his loyalists in congress approved an increased CFA presence on the world as a means to guard key infrastructure in the event of a power play within the UFAB — this would prove to be a devastating mistake.

### Regarrisoning of Belial Prime

With the arrival of a peacekeeping force composed of twenty CFA divisions and an entire naval squadron composed of ten light warships and support vessels, UFAB cleaved apart, with Kohnstamm being murdered by socialist revolutionaries as he left the congressional building in January of 2662. His murder was the signal flare for Faulkner to order the CFA to begin direct interventions against socialist and communist elements in UFAB, with the idea to target the identitarians and religious factions when they were weakened by the infighting.

For six months, CFA troops were tasked with uprooting socialist and communist movements in the planet's vast deserts and arid plains, coordinating with local police and SUBCOMM forces under the control of Kohnstammite UFAB commanders. However, in July of 2662, an internal agreement was reached that united the UFAB once more and united the axes of the union against the Coalition. A new provisional president was selected: a socialist by the name of Houshang Blourian, who immediately moved to declare that all Coalition forces must once more leave the planet, with a deadline by the end of that year. With a resumed command over all SUBCOMM armies on the planet, UFAB also began the hidden mobilization of citizen militias in addition to opening talks with several mercenary groups such as the Hounds of Mera.

With SIN reports indicating increasing activity in direct treason to the Coalition, such as the hiring of the Hounds of Mera and communication channels opening with religious terrorist organizations such as al-Eamud, CFA central command began preparations for a direct attack against the Belial government. However, they were hamstringed by the defense committee in the General Congress of the Coalition, who warned that sudden action without proper intelligence nor alternative course would lead to a public disaster that could destabilize the entire Coalition.

### Operation Herald of Peace and the Belial Uprising

In January of 2663, after approximately six months after deliberation, the CFA was finally given authorization to commence a limited operation against the Belial government that would ensure the continuation of democracy and the end of terroristic threats emerging from the region. This mission, known as Operation *Herald of Peace*, would commence on the 27th of January and would involve the arrival of three additional naval squadrons and several more army divisions, including the garrisoning of minor colonies. President Blourian knew that a direct confrontation with the approaching force would lead to an unsustainable war, and so he and the rest of the UFAB leadership decided to spur a mass civilian response to the encroaching Coalition force in what would become the Belial Uprising.

The Uprising officially began on the 13th of March, 2663, with a massive crowd of civilians armed with military-grade rifles and armored technicals breaking past the deliberately low-manned SUBCOMM cordon separating Amal from the now-repopulated Ritz Aerospace Field. Storming towards the aerospace field's perimeter in the thousands, Major General Ale Joutsen of the 98th Hyperion Infantry Division gave the order to disperse warning shots, with the mob quickly passing over the minefield and resulting in several deaths as a result. With this mob briefly retreating, they returned in the form of barrel bombs and other improvised explosives being launched from within Amal itself, forcing the field's CIWS systems to intercept and resulting in a massive wave of panic spreading over the capital as the gunfire was seen for miles around.

Suicide drones were flown into the gate section of the airfield, detonating and allowing the mob to storm back into the area in force. The Battle for Ritz Aerospace Field begun as Joutsen was ordered from his superiors to prevent any further incursions into "CFA territory" resulting in the deaths or injuries of hundreds of civilians and several ICTA servicemen as they withdrew from the growing violence at the destroyed gate section. Although the civilians were repulsed, the Belial government in response ordered the CFA to retreat from major cities or "face dire consequences".

By the beginning of April of 2663, several CFA bases were being publicly surrounded by civilian militias, with multiple incidents occurring between CFA and militia forces. UFAB stated in May that if the CFA were not to leave the planet at once, they would face "extreme repercussions", with an undefined deadline. Meanwhile, terrorist and militia attacks ramped up in June through to August, with a naval skirmish between CFA corvettes and unidentified armed spaceships occurring near Belialstone in addition to the cruiser CFASC *Intrepid Spirit* sustaining heavy damage following a late-detected impact with an empty cargo ship near the orbit of Belial.

Operation *Herald of Peace* would fail as Faulkner was prevented by Congress from issuing a order for direct action against the government of Belial itself, as even though the ties it had with the violence were uncovered by SIN, any action would be seen as detrimental to public reputation. However, their desires for action would be answered on October 3rd, as the Belial government gave up on its discreet methods of expulsing the Coalition from its territory.

## History

### October 3rd, 2663; the beginning of the Belial War

At 12:01 a.m., October 3rd, 2663, the Belial government unanimously declared under a now all-UFAB legislature that the star system of Belial was now entirely independent from the Coalition of Congressional Republics, forming the Free Stellar Republic of Belial. They cited the failures of the Coalition for ending corporate hegemony over humanity and their encroachment on the sovereignty of the Belialite peoples as their *casus belli* for war.

The Belialite SUBCOMM armies, now rogue under the command of the Free Belial government, were immediately rechristened alongside the citizen militias as the Belial Free Republican Army (BFRA). The first opening attacks of the BFRA on Belial Prime were through the usage of MLRS strikes against CFA bases coinciding with conventional artillery barrages and airstrikes from BFRA air assets. In space, several suicide ships impacted themselves and their high explosive payloads into the midst of moored CFA vessels, damaging several warships and destroying the CFASC *South Carolina* in the process. The commander of CFA terrestrial and spatial forces within Belial Prime, Field Marshal Manesh Sopa, gave a system-wide alert to have all units enter defensive postures. He ordered Admiral Freja Damgaard, presiding commander of spatial forces, to ensure that the Belial Free Republican Navy did not gain control of the outer portion of the system's interplanetary highway system.

With this order, Damgaard called back all present naval forces to the gas giant of Apollo's Eye before organizing a multi-squadron counteroffensive.

Meanwhile, the CFA assets present on Belial Prime were being encircled and massacred en masse by the BFRA. Surrendering units were being put to the wall as the BFRA's militia arms rampaged through enemy barracks and habitats, sacking bases and airfields in the process as more professional units coordinated themselves to armored offensives over the open desert. Orbital defense batteries had begun to open fire on CFA assets still within orbit, bringing down the CFASC *Absolute Fury* who had not received Damgaard's order for retreat. By the end of the day of October 3rd, over sixty thousand CFA troops had been killed through direct action or execution, with the remaining having been dispersed or surrendered to more merciful units of the BFRA.

The swift destruction of the Coalition's presence on Belial Prime was seen as a miracle to the Free Belial public, and as a disgrace to the Coalition. Faulkner, enraged by the events, lampooned the SIN for failing to give proper notice to the total uprising. He ordered for a battlefleet to muster by the end of the week in preparation for a new plan that was being formulated within the Citadel by CFA strategists.

As the Coalition scrambled to respond to the situation, information began to leak out from the Belial system throughout the rest of human space. This resulted in renewed naval attacks from the Meran Confederate Armed Forces and sowed the seeds for later insurrections in the Tupã star system. Several protests broke out across Tellus, Earth, Mars, and Hyperion as a result, shouting for the Coalition government to approach the situation diplomatically rather than militarily. The General Congress of the Coalition announced an emergency convention at 5:00 a.m. in the Central Headquarters of the Coalition, with the vote showing overwhelming support for a military response. Several stocks collapsed for corporations that had - or claimed to have - a firm grip in Belial, with the Coalition Corporate Advisory Committee posting an official notice to the Coalition government that assets must be recuperated from the star system at all costs, as the gold and platinum that flowed from the system were too valuable to ignore.

### Phase 1: **Operation *Righteous Force*** (2663 — 2666)

The mission that CFA strategists would create was christened Operation *Righteous Force*. The operation would be overseen by a new commander, Field Marshal Sirisimran Jhinjar, and would utilize over two hundred warships and 3 million men from all branches of the CFA (in addition to several megacorporations offering logistical support) in order to crush Free Belial in one swift stroke. With Admiral Damgaard struggling to maintain her forces' positions in the outer periphery of the Belial System, Operation *Righteous Force* would launch on the 31st of October, 2663, having this phase of the war informally gain the moniker of the *Halloween War* as a result.

Enshrined in command structure as the Joint Task Force of the Belial Liberation, or JTF-BL, the combined force warped into the system at 6:00 a.m. Twenty warships under the command of the Interstellar Coalition Marine Corps were tasked with establishing an evacuation cordon for Damgaard's forces to retreat through, while the rest of the combat-able ships were split into two ninety-ship task forces and directed to liberate the upper and lower hemispheres of the Belial star system, respectively.

#### The Spacefront, October 31st, 2663

The BFRN, anticipating a numerically superior foe, decided to utilize autonomous drones and space traps to whittle down the incoming CFA space forces. Task Force Alpha, under the command of Hyperian Moises Yaptinchay Ilagan, first converged on the planet of Haza to rid it of the token enemy presence within orbit; they instead faced a flurry of missile fire from its moon, destroying the CFASC *Sojourning Soul* and *Gaius Octavius Caesar*, in addition to autonomous drones that damaged several frigates. A BFRN battlefleet consisting of twenty five light ships warped behind Task Force Alpha as they were assaulted from the front by drone and missile fire, utilizing cutters to quickly launch stealth missile and torpedo fire into the rear of the formation. This lead to the significant damaging of the task force's command ship, the CFASC *Unyielding Sun* and the destruction of three CFA corvettes in exchange for four enemy cutters.

The intelligence departments of the CFA immediately rang the alarm upon the end of this skirmish, as BFRN vessels involved were noted to be using state-of-the-art cloaking technology that "ghosted" them from most electromagnetic sensors. The warning would come too late to Task Force Beta, however, as their attempted assault to liberate the space around Belialstone would end in catastrophe.

Task Force Beta's push under the command of Admiral Marc Weichselbraun was met with the bulk of the BFRN force; the enemy having formed a front echelon of hastily converted q-ships that drew in enemy fire. However, the rear echelon was composed of a small core of eight elite battlecruisers mounted with c-frac spinal cannons, and a further eight battlecruisers were adrift in deep space utilizing advanced stealth technology to remain silent until the enemy arrived.

As Task Force Beta warped into a lagrange point near the planemo, they were immediately beset upon by a flurry of missiles, point defense weapons, and explosive munitions from the q-ships that assembled near Belialstone. Although these ships were chewed through by the Coalition warships, these vessels themselves began to fall one by one from detected c-frac shots originating from behind the horizon of the planet. A CFASC battleship, the *Fist of Neptune*, had its reactor compartment pierced and subsequently underwent a supercritical detonation that destroyed the two nearby frigates of the CFASC *Battle Unending* and *Angelic Kiss*. In total, twelve Coalition warships were destroyed by this initial onslaught, with a further ten being crippled or destroyed by the engagement of the hidden BFRN battlecruiser section.

Although Alpha was able to wrest control over Haza with notable casualties, Beta was unable to properly approach Belialstone and instead forced the enemy to warp away through deliberate targeting. It would not be until the next day that the space around the planemo could be secured.

When the two battles were over, the CFA was left in a state of utter confusion. For all of this time, the Belial government showed no economic or industrial capacity on land or in space to be able to produce advanced stealth technologies nor state-of-the-art battlecruisers; all intelligence prior to *Righteous Force* had pointed towards an ill-equipped and small navy bolstered by civilian ships conscripted into service. SIN was ordered by Faulkner to directly investigate the situation, and revealed months later that the origins of these new ships were most likely a result of black market dealings between an unknown megacorporation and the Belial government in preparation for the strikes against the Coalition.

#### The Planetfront, November 3rd, 2663

On November 3rd, a reinforced Task Force Alpha was ordered to seize the space over Belial in preparation for the landing of army and marine ground units while Task Force Beta underwent more dedicated repairs near Apollo's Eye from mobile space platforms. Under light anti-orbital battery fire, Alpha was able to counterbattery most isolated anti-orbital positions with effect and allow for the opening of interatmospheric corridors over the Najesh plain and Rakshasa mountains. Task Force Gamma was composed of the ground units of the operation, and was split into two army groups: the Northern Belial Army Group (NORTHBAG) under the command of General Nicolas Parasca and the Southern Belial Army Group (SOUTHBAG) under the command of General Jonathan Narváez. Each army group was composed of fifty divisions, ranging from armored to mechanized divisions alongside complemented air support. The plan for the groundfront was to independently operate along the northern and southern hemispheres, conquering major cities and infrastructure such as water and agricultural complexes and to force the Free Belial government into submission.

Immediately however, did the ICTA and ground elements of the ICMC face resistance, primarily through anti-air and anti-space networks of missiles and electromagnetic guns previously cloaked from recon scans through advanced cloaking nets. Several spearheads composed of D/CF-24 and D/CF-24G Icarus airborne destroyers were damaged or destroyed as a result of these hidden networks, forcing the temporary abatement of landing operations as the CFA began to mobilize its special forces contingents; this included elements of the marine Force Reconnaissance (FORECON), naval Special Atmospheric Task Force (SATAFOR), and army Airborne Reconnaissance (AIRCON). These elite units were able to discern by November 6th the location of hundreds of potential targets for surgical strikes, leading to a renewed limited orbital bombardment and return of invading army and marine forces that successfully landed in the Najesh and Rakshasa regions by the 7th, with landing operations completing by the 8th.

Sagan Digranto would serve in the SATAFOR's direct insertions to locate and destroy Belialite anti-air and anti-space emplacements as a part of his final tour.

While the CFA began large-scale land operations to capture the cities of Nazarayaan and Kosovei, the BFRA resorted to using its professional assets sparingly. BFRA commander Munjid el-Hussein became infamous for his tactics of using cities and settlements as "killing fields" for CFA troops, funneling them deep into militia-manned kill corridors while negating air support through the usage of autonomous mobile MANPAD droids and conventional emplacements. The BFRA conscripted men by the millions for the defense of their cities, and the SUBCOMM armies that the BFRA had at hand were kept in reserve to launch counteroffensives.

##### The Air War

Air superiority was initially difficult to achieve by the CFA. Although orbital support from gunships allowed ortillery to be used against ground targets, fast-moving and small air targets were harder to successfully hit through any form of kinetic strike. Laser equipment onboard these vessels were unable to fully damage Free Belial air vehicles due to the atmosphere dissipating most of the energy, leaving only CFA aerofighters and long-range AA missiles from space as the sole possibilities to negate enemy air.

Two army air corps and one marine air corps served in Operation *Righteous Force* under the Coalition, bringing the total amount of combat aircraft to nearly two thousand individual units. The bulk of the invading air force included assets such as the F-144 Vulture army and the F7M Corsair marine multi-role fighters, which engaged in combat with enemy air assets that included procured older models such as F-130 Urvogel fighters and Russian-made MiG-720T heavy fighters in addition to parasite craft. Belial forces also had a small amount captured F-144s and F7Ms from bases stormed prior to *Righteous Force*, in addition to a squadron of AI-controlled jet prototypes that were destroyed late into the air war at the cost of several squadrons.

Although Free Belial air assets were destroyed by the sheer numerical superiority and orbital support of Coalition air forces, they nevertheless inflicted a devastating disparity in damage to CFA air and ground units alike during *Righteous Force*. This was thanks to the employment of a mixture of cloaking technologies, veterancy of pilots, interbranch communication, and the utilization of destructive electronic warfare devices such as autonomous "pilotfrier" viruses and direct electromagnetic scrambling modules.

##### The Ground War

The ground phase of Operation *Righteous Force* began in full with the wresting of air control over Belial and the elimination of most installations that threatened landing operations in the Najesh and Rakshasa regions on November 9th. Units in the Northern Belial Army Group were ordered to establish a control cordon in the northern hemisphere of the planet, and likewise with the Southern Belial Army Group in the southern hemisphere.

By November 10th, CFATC units were being subjected to long-range conventional and nuclear artillery by Belial forces, creating several "death zones" of radiation and shrapnel for hundreds of miles near to the landing zones. However, ground units that donned CBRN-qualified power armor pushed through these death zones and reached major urban centers by the 12th of November, being harassed by artillery and hidden organic and cybernetic suicide units along the way. Several hundred Coalition personnel were injured or killed during these initial expedition operations.

#### Initial urban sieges

##### Battle of Nazarayaan

On November 12th, several forward divisions under NORTHBAG reached the outskirts of the city of Nazarayaan, which was host to a critical Belialite nuclear fusion power plant and several manufacturing industries. Since the power plant could not be fired upon from orbit in risk of nuclear disaster, and the wider city was off-limits to ortillery due to the civilian population residing within, General Parasca received orders from high command to mount an invasion of the Nazarayaan to wrestle it away from Free Belial control.

An opening salvo of precision air strikes and artillery bombardments, coordinated by space-bound observers, begun on the morning of November 13th, hitting designated critical areas of Nazarayaan such as fuel depots and vehicle pools. The city walls surrounding Nazarayaan was brought down by massive explosions of from saboteur charges in four areas following the encirclement of the city, with Coalition Army shock infantry formations and assault pioneers attempting to establish entry points beyond said walls...

The 118th Coalition Marine Division would also participate in the siege, of which Jideofor Okafo and Hakim Ellis would be a part of as their first combat operation in the ICMC. They would deploy via an airborne assault from hovercraft dispatched from nearby Marine D/CF-24 Icarus aerial warships.

##### Battle of Kosovei

One of the cities serving as a bulwark against Coalition attacks toward the capital city of Amal...