Operation: TREBUCHET

Operation: TREBUCHET was the Unified Earth Government's military response to the numerous civilian uprisings in the Outer Colonies known as the Insurrection. Spanning over ten years and encompassing multiple planetary systems, Operation: TREBUCHET involved numerous Marine units and many vessels from the UNSC Navy in an attempt to bring the dissenting Insurrectionists in line, effectively crushing all resistance to the Earth's authority in the Outer Colonies. Beginning in 2513 with a large, armed uprising in the Eridanus system, it was one of the largest and farthest reaching operations known to have been conducted by the UNSC in its long history. With the beginning of the Human-Covenant War in 2525, Operation: TREBUCHET was temporarily suspended.

At first the aggressive response was widely accepted, however, as the fight dragged on and the theater of operations expanded, the continuing operation became extremely unpopular with the human civilian population. Operation: TREBUCHET eventually became the central conflict for Earth's premiere fighting force, the United Nations Space Command, only being ended with the massive genocide that followed with the Human-Covenant War.

Background
In June of 2494, Insurrectionist forces took over Eridanus II and established their own secessionist government in the wake of the coup d'état. Equipped by defectors from the Colonial Military Administration, the rebels performed a well-planned and efficiently executed campaign of city bombings, political assassinations, and kidnappings. These attacks heavily impacted Eridanus II's shipping industry. Meanwhile, the rebels amassed a fleet of vessels from the CMA. The Eridanus Government officially requested aid from the United Nations Space Command in December of the same year.

In January of 2496, UNSC forces finally responded to the government's requests and began their campaign to retake Eridanus II, deploying a battlegroup to engage the makeshift Insurrectionist defence fleet. The UNSC successfully regained control of the world, at the cost of four destroyers. Despite the UNSC's best attempts at removing the entrenched rebellion, the Office of Naval Intelligence failed to discover the location of their base, Eridanus Secundus. This hollowed-out asteroid would remain a safe haven for Insurrectionists for another three decades.

Beginning
In 2513, fighting broke out in the Eridanus system, particularly at Eridanus II and the space around it, as rebels supporting the system's breakaway from the UNSC built a small navy of civilian craft and attempted to take over the system. The disorganized Eridanus rebels were brought together by the UNSC turncoat Colonel Robert Watts.

The UNSC responded harshly, sending a fleet of destroyers and carriers to the system to combat the rebel fleet. The resulting battle pitted the UNSC against at least one hundred smaller rebel craft. The UNSC forces defeated their rebel counterparts with little difficulty.

Meanwhile, a ground campaign was fought on Eridanus II, as units from the 9th Marine Expeditionary Force were sent to the planet in force, hoping to capture leaders of the secessionist movement and pacify the population. One of these units, the 1st Battalion of the 21st Marine Division commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Ponder, was involved in a disastrous mission to try and capture a rebel leader — the second-in-command — in Elysium City. When the rebel threatened to kill himself and his own daughter with a grenade, Ponder realized the man was bluffing. Unfortunately, an attached sniper drew an opposite conclusion and shot the rebel. The rebel pulled the grenade's pin out on reflex, which ended in the leader's family being killed and Ponder wounded and demoted.

During the space battle, the rebels were routed and the remnants of their fleet fled into the asteroid belt to their base Eridanus Secundus. They would continue operating as pirates, raiding craft traversing the Eridanus system.

2524
By 2524, the war had taken over a million lives, the majority of which being civilians. Meanwhile, Colonel Watts had created more rebel installations on planets throughout human space.

Fighting continued, now in the Inner Colony system of Epsilon Eridani. A Marine battalion was posted at the industrial and populous colony world of Tribute, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Aboim and supported by the corvette and air support from AV-14 Hornets. The battalion attempted to put a stop to rebel bomb makers. Two special warfare squads, led by Staff Sergeants Avery Johnson and Nolan Byrne, were involved in disastrous operation in June. Although the rebel bomb makers were found and executed in a bomb shop in a struggling industrial town on Tribute, a truck lined with the bombs escaped to a Jim Dandy restaurant in Casbah City. When ordered to shoot the rebel with the bombs, Johnson's hesitation led to the rebel detonating her explosives. Three members of Byrne's team, as well as thirty-eight civilians, were killed. Byrne was critically injured in the explosion and Johnson was lightly wounded. Byrne and Johnson are pulled from the system, and later sent to Harvest.

In the meantime, the Insurrectionists resort to bolder, more deadly tactics, such as the bombing of a civilian liner in orbit over Reach. The terrorist attack was listed as an accident by the Office of Naval Intelligence.

2525
The last known operations involved the SPARTAN-II soldiers in 2525. A team of five SPARTAN-IIs were dispatched and to infiltrate the rebel base at Eridanus Secundus and capture Watts, the rebel leader. They succeeded in doing so, crippling but not destroying the rebel infrastructure in the Eridanus system. The remaining insurgents chose to remain silent at the asteroid base following the raid, even when Eridanus II was glassed by the Covenant in 2530. Shortly afterward, the Spartans and a team of Orbital Drop Shock Troopers were sent to halt a rebellion on Jericho VII for over 131 days.

The operation was abruptly concluded with the start of the Human-Covenant War after the disastrous first contact at Harvest. With the onset of the new war, Operation: TREBUCHET was temporarily suspended but not terminated.

Aftermath
Though scattered Insurrectionist activity continued for a long time, the rebel threat was rapidly decreased when the genocidal Covenant destroyed most Outer Colony systems, glassing planets and killing every human they encountered. In the meantime, many of the rebels, seeing that the UNSC offered the only real protection against the overwhelming Covenant force, ceased to resist, and either submitted to the UNSC's control or hid themselves away from both UNSC and Covenant attack. Some groups of rebels survived free of UNSC control for as long as 2552. The majority simply continued their daily lives without interfering with the UNSC. Others even decided to offer dealings with the UNSC. However, it transpired that some were traps.

The rebel base in the Eridanus system was marked for further attack, but for some reason, likely due to the greater threat the Covenant posed, it was left alone and mostly forgotten until 2552 when Vice Admiral Danforth Whitcomb and a small crew including the artificial intelligence Cortana and several Spartans (including all but one of the team that attacked the base) returned looking for repairs. After being convinced to help by a Covenant attack, the rebels repaired the Ascendant Justice-Gettysburg to operational status, but the two ships were too badly damaged to be fully repaired before the Covenant returned. The UNSC forces were forced to abandon the rebels and the base and the rebels have been presumably destroyed.

By April 2553, Operation: TREBUCHET had been suspended for nearly thirty years, though the Venezian militia still believed the Office of Naval Intelligence was willing to continue it. This led to the militia creating a large weapons pile-up and even capturing the Pious Inquisitor in the event that they needed to defend Venezia from the operation.

List of appearances

 * Halo: The Fall of Reach
 * Halo: First Strike
 * Halo: Ghosts of Onyx
 * Halo: Contact Harvest
 * Halo Wars
 * Halo: Evolutions - Essential Tales of the Halo Universe
 * Dirt
 * Halo: Fall of Reach
 * Boot Camp
 * Halo: Mortal Dictata