Eagle's Fall

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The Battle of Shanxi. The first conflict between humans and turians. A war fought between the forces of the Global Defense Initiative and the Turian Hiearchy, a war that set the stage for GDI's future relations with the Citadel Council.

Outnumbered and outgunned, GDI troops dig in and pray their foxholes don't become their graves, continuing to resist the turian invaders, holding out for relief.

This is Eagle's Fall, a loose prequel to the Command & Conquer/Mass Effect fusion that is Renegade.

Written by Char Nobyl, Eagle's Fall is a gripping account of the Battle of Shanxi, with GDI replacing the Systems Alliance.

Tropes used in Eagle's Fall include:

• Amazon Brigade: Captain Pelayo's Zone Raiders, and an Asari commando squad.
• Badass: A lot of them, but most prominently Specialist Locke, a GDI commando, who kills a biotic Asari commando single-handedly, while being hit with Warp.
• Badass Army: GDI's troops are depicted as this; despite being formed from rag-tag groups of survivors, with a poor logistics supply, GDI resistance forces nonetheless make the invasion painful for the turians.
• Boring but Practical: GDI uses conventional treads on tanks, instead of mass effect antigrav systems like Turian tanks. This allows them to carry bigger guns will less recoil and stability issues, and allocate more power to the railguns.
• Break the Cutie: Alice, the little girl in Chapter 2 who watches a GDI sniper die before her. By Chapter 7, the sheer fatigue of the war has left her drained of all emotion, which may have played a part in her mother committing suicide. And she doesn't even realise it.
• Chekhov's Gun: Mammoth tank callsign "Inferno", which appears early on and then is sidelined due to the risk of orbital strikes; it returns to combat in the endgame.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Lance Corporal Ulrich Kastner, shown in Chapter 2 as a close friend of both Specialist Reese and PFC (later Sergeant) Findlay, disappears without fanfare in the same chapter. Chapter 8 reveals he was captured by Nod and transformed into one of the new Marked of Kane.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Aleena, Wasea and Zaeed Messani.
• Ensemble Darkhorse: Specialist Locke, natch. How popular? Peptuck has confirmed he will appear in Renegade.
  • He's Just Hiding
• Eye Scream: Locke removes an eye from a Nod scientist, for both torture and because there's a camera implant recording everything she sees.
• Gambit Pileup: A lot, but most particularly with Nod black ops types, who are observing the conflict and taking notes.
• Oh Crap: Locke tends to invoke this in people.
• More Dakka: The Grinder .50cal machinegun, which has finally replaced the old M2 HMG. It's powerful enough that it can kill a turian light tank.
• Screw Destiny: A Nod commando team engages Locke, using probability calculator augmentations to "see" into the future. Except that Locke is so badass, he lives when he's supposed to die.
• Shout-Out: Quite a few:
  • Sergeants Salem and Rios, who continue to be bros.
  • Tychus Findley is a Zone Trooper.
  • Captain Pelayo commands a force of Zone Raiders.
    • There's also an Orca pilot who goes down while providing CAS; Pelayo and her Zone Raiders rescue him, in a callback to when her original version was rescued.
  • One of the turian commanders is named Artanis.
  • Don't forget the colonel named Joson.
• Tank Goodness: GDI continues to use Mammoth tanks. It's also deconstructed somewhat: Mammoths outgun and outmass turian tanks, but are large enough to be easily targeted for orbital strikes.
• Time To Step Up, Sergeants: All of the senior officers of Frank Company were little more than Sergeants or even Privates. Phillip Dante steps up the most, as he goes from Staff Sergeant to acting Captain because every other officer in his company had died in the initial bombardment by the turians.