First Antarctic War

"The truth is much more complicated than you think."

This article is written from a Lore perspective. It contains spoilers and different reference materials might be contradictory.

The First Antarctic War (第一次南极战争) is a conflict waged between the Antarctic Union and the Union of Rossartrism Nations Coalition between September 2089 and 2094. It was the first large-scale conflict to take place after World War Three and involved the subjects of the Three Goddesses project. Codename: Bakery Girl takes place during this war.

Background

The Coalition initially entered a peaceful collaboration with Hollow City in the aftermath of World War Three, but tensions eventually built up between the two governments, culminating in 2078 when several countries left the Coalition to form the Antarctic Union with Hollow City.

Widespread discrimination against Antarctican citizens in Coalition countries led to the initial burst of violences of July 2089, when young Antarcticans living in a fringe country of the Coalition threw rocks at Coalition police officers who had locked down their homes, prompting the officers to use lethal force. Other Antarcticans in the city started a riot, and soon large-scale conflicts erupted between Antarcitcan citizens and radical Coalition groups in other Coalition fringe countries. The Coalition military intervened to suppress and arrest the Antarcticans, to which the Union replied by staging its own military intervention.

Union advantage

In September 2089, the Union military launched operation Snake Killer, a preemptive strike in Coalition territory in an effort to protect its citizens. At the time, the Coalition thought nothing of the war declaration as they considered a nation of only 30 million people to be incapable of posing any threat.

This proved devastating: during the first year of the conflict, military applications of Collapse Technology and the novel strategies it permitted (large-scale strategic strike capabilities, highly precise “Great Dragon” fire control radars, and high speed acquisition and processing of intelligence) enabled the Union military to make up for their lack of numbers and carve a bloody path in the Coalition armies.

The most powerful ordnance of the Union was the Antarctica Rockwell Corp NB-90 Material Transporter, a strategic mesospheric vehicle propelled by four sets of P&W NP-4073 nuclear turbojet engines. Embarking “Great Dragon” radars and microwave carriers to move collapsed matter and relay transmissions, it acted as an effective command and forecast center for ground troops while maintaining total aerial superiority. These shuttles were able early in the war to accurately locate and predict the movements of Coalition fleets moving to blockade Antarctica, enabling multi-tracking low-orbit guided missiles to strike their targets with devastating accuracy. In the field, the Union troops were deployed in small infantry groups supported from the air by “Trolley” gunships, wiping out Coalition forces several hundred times their numbers.

However, the Union did not dedicate its troops to deep assaults in Coalition territory, instead focusing in protecting its expansive coastline and trying to appease foreign affairs. This stance saved the Coalition from one-sided devastation. The Union could not secure a firm advance in Coalition territory due to random saturation bombardments on their transfer bases by large quantities of long-range guided missiles, but also refused to launch counter-attacks deep in enemy territory to neutralize these strikes, and the war became a stalemate.

It was painfully clear to the Coalition that Collapse Technology was necessary for them to rival with the Union, and the ongoing moratorium on relics site research was lifted as investments in theoretical physics increased. To hasten critical discoveries to less than a year, the Coalition decided to use the most direct method at their disposal: activate the relics and reverse-engineer them. This would require a complete genetic sequence from a specimen of the unknown civilization. Since the end of the Three Goddesses project in 2085, the Coalition had been in control of hybrid subject Noel and the Union in control of Lunasia, but neither could activate relics. Both factions had been searching for the missing third subject Jefuty, and the Coalition now needed her more than ever.

Operation Bakery

In 2092, the Coalition found traces of Jefuty in the old territory of Poland and tracked her down to the Caucasus, near Teberda in Russia. The intel was quickly intercepted by the MID, the intelligence department of the Union, which launched operation Bakery. Using intel gathered by bribing the Coalition Major Beria, the MID dropped eight agents from its External Missions Department Section Three on site, led by Captain Carl Mintfield with the mission to make contact with Jefuty, and the person with her, and bring them to the Union. Extraction of the objective would be conducted by the TASA Razor team, supervised by Colonel Kampfe. The other person with Jefuty was a brainwashed Noel, deployed by the Coalition under the alias Lige to track Jefuty. The Union task force conducted early reconnaissance and surveillance on the objective 20 miles west of Teberda, confirming Jefuty's location.

However, Beria was a double agent and the MID units were ambushed. Mintfield and some of his men managed to flee, and one agent named Mendo was saved by Jefuty herself. Jefuty's objective was to ensure the fight between the Union and Coalition would continue, and use the chaos to disappear. Lige had been gruesomely killed by a tank during the assault, but she had in fact survived due to her special DNA and the assistance of her "father". Jefuty guided Mendo to Razor team, taking advantage of the fact that neither the amnesiac Mendo nor Razor team (who had not be informed of the nature of Bakery's objective) could identify her.

Mendo, Jefuty, Mintfield and the MID survivors would later try to infiltrate Beria's base and were confronted by Noel, who carried out her father's order to bring him Jefuty out of spite against her "sister" who had abandoned her when she was killed. TASA moved to dispatch reinforcements and extract the target and Union troops, but the Coalition army also moved in to secure Jefuty for themselves. Multiple field armies launched counterattacks on the eastern war front to keep Union units pinned down, three mechanized divisions including Assault Artillery platforms were deployed to put Teberda under lockdown and special forces units moved in to assault the Union troops barricaded in an abandoned church, while most fighters and electronic warfare aircrafts in the northern sector were dedicated to intercept Union close air support. The Union could not use long-range firepower because of the risk to kill the objective, and dispatched a Trolley aircraft to conduct the extraction. Two hours into the fight, the Union troops managed to thin the Coalition assault forces enough for Jefuty and Mendo to make a break and kill Beria. However, Jefuty also left the Union troops, leaving them no choice but to break through the encirclement and evacuate the region without their objective. Jefuty later fell into Coalition hands.

Operation Kindle

Two years later, MID used their agents within the Coalition to locate Jefuty in a heavily guarded black site called the Bear's Den, a large research facility built in a relics site which the Coalition had been trying to activate. The Union launched operation Kindle to recover her on July 11th, 2094. Colonel Kampfe of TASA was put in charge of the mission and took measures to not underestimate the enemies and secure reliable intelligence to avoid a repeat of Bakery's failure. Kindle would be led by TASA and not MID. The Bear's Den had been known to the Union, but no prior operations had been approved due to the lack of intelligence on its actual layout. The risk to infiltrate without clear intelligence was taken nevertheless when launching Kindle.

A mixed Union battle group established a five-kilometer perimeter around the base and used electronic warfare to cut all communications between the Bear's Den and the rest of the world and hamper their air defense systems. Ground forces rushed in the base from the main road, wiping any opposition with air support. Meanwhile, five detachments of TASA paratroopers were dropped over the site, but two transport craft were downed by anti-air defenses. One survivor of these crashes was Mendo, the former MID trooper that made contact with Jefuty during Bakery, and he found by chance a secret entry into the base. While the ground forces and TASA eliminated all resistance from outside and inside the base, Mendo found Jefuty, but also Noel, as well as mass-produced clones of the test subjects created with the intention to use their genetic data in later Tactical Dolls generations. Mendo moved in to secure the original subjects, recover all possible intelligence and destroy the facility.

However, the rescue operation failed when TASA forces were intercepted by elite Coalition defenders, and Mendo and the subjects were forced deeper into the site instead, relying on Jefuty and Noel's superhuman abilities to destroy all opposition while Coalition forces hesitated to harm them. Outside the base, a large number of Coalition troops forced the Union to retreat. The commander of the Bear's Den outfitted a task force with AA-03 assault platforms to take down Mendo, but this proved dangerous as the heavy firepower used deep inside the relics site breached the base's ionic containment field, filling the base with Collapse Fluid particles. The non-augmented Coalition troops immediately turned into ELIDs and a temperature buildup similar to the one that occurred during the First Beilan Island Incident began. With a potential new apocalyptic event on their hands, the higher commands of both factions agreed to collaborate and stop the buildup. The Coalition authorized the Union to launch a modified XK-3 Pluto III long-range ballistic missile from one of their NB-90 Material Transporter, to dump its molten plutonium core over the site and evaporate the Collapse Fluid particles. The troops within the complex did not receive the retreat order due to Collapse Fluid interference and kept fighting until the missile released its payload, melting the base to 70 meters underground. All parties still inside the base, including Jefuty and Noel, were considered MIA since their whereabouts were unknown.

Conclusion

Kindle was a heavy price to pay for both sides. The Coalition had lost their most important research base, and the Union had lost most of its elite TASA troops as well as a large number of troops and ordnance. The Coalition had no more means to close the technological gap with the Union and feared their long-range strikes capabilities after seeing a Pluto III missile in action. Furthermore, authorizing an enemy missile to cruise into Coalition airspace was a death sentence for the career of the current Coalition head of government, and their replacement proposed to enter peace talks. Two months later, ceasefire was negotiated in Singapore.

The Coalition recognized the legal status of the Union, and the Union lifted its blockade of Coalition countries. The uneasy peace would last 18 years before the Second Antarctic War of 2112.