Anya Tam
Sarna News
Anya Tam | |
|---|---|
| Personal | |
| Affiliation | Federated Suns |
| Career | |
| Rank | Major General[1] |
Anya Tam was the commanding officer of the Third FedCom RCT during the War of 3039.[1]
History[edit]
Major General Tam, serving in a force comprised of the Fifth Davion Guards and Third FedCom RCT, was dispatched to capture the Draconis Combine planet of Sadalbari in the War of 3039's first wave. The initial FedSuns landings met with mixed success: the Xantal garrison was routed and Tam's troops made significant strides in capturing Solus City, while the troops under Major General Thomas Davion thoroughly failed to neutralize the Combine's Origian garrison. For the next several days, matters on the planet remained deadlocked, with the Second Shin Legion's aerospace and VTOL assets preventing aerial bombardment and Major General Davion's cautious plan of action putting very little pressure on the enemy's soldiers. Eventually, the Second Shin's commander realized that Davion would never mount a major attack, and the resulting Combine counterattack on 26 April overran Davion's command center and resulted in the capture of both Davion and task force commander Marshal Vernon Cunningham.[1]
The loss of the task force's command center left Tam as the senior FedSuns officer on-world, with her first action being to approve Leftenant Colonel Jack Roberts' proposed counterattack. Roberts pushed hard against the Combine force in an effort to find holes in the enemy lines, with one such gap being discovered in the midst of a Shin Legion motorized infantry battalion. Roberts' push reached as far as the Shin Legion's headquarters, instigating a two day battle that left a third of the Second Shin Legion destroyed. While it was later discovered that Major General Davion had been transported off-planet, a liberated Marshal Cunningham officially promoted Roberts to colonel for his actions—despite Tam's insistence that he had exceeded his orders to force the Combine into retreat and thus deserved to be demoted.[1]
The battle for Sadalbari did not have a definitive conclusion during the first wave of the war, with the Second Shin's constant retreat preventing a final clash from occurring. While Tam transferred additional mechanized units to Roberts' pursuit force, a combination of bad weather and mountainous terrain gave the Second Shin the chance to hole up in the remains of a Castle Brian while waiting for relief.[1]
When the Combine's Seventh and Eighth Ghost Regiments counterattacked Sadalbari on 19 July, the Third FedCom was quickly pushed out of Solus City before hunkering down in the prepared defenses of the Origian Military Reservation. In response to Tam's calls for reinforcement, Cunningham dispatched Roberts quick reaction force to temporarily relieve the pressure on Origian. The Origian Military Reservation was lost on 26 July when the previously-isolated Second Shin Legion launched a surprise sub-orbital assault. Marshal Cunningham was enraged with his intelligence officers for failing to detect the Second Shin's ability to make such an attack and with the field commanders at Origian—aside from Roberts, whose QRF executed a rearguard action that saved the Third FedCom from destruction. Renewed attacks from the Ghost Regiments soon eliminated most of Roberts' unit and allowed the Combine to resume focusing on the Third FedCom.[2]
Cunningham attempted to send Tam reinforcements but, after two days of additional fighting, the Third FedCom became nonviable as a combat force. While Cunningham took the Fifth Davion Guards into the field to buy time, he replaced Tam with Leftenant General Dane Cooper and tasked Cooper and Roberts with reconstructing the Third FedCom from its scattered survivors. This effort was ultimately successful, but it was not enough to turn the tide of the battle and Cunningham's task force abandoned Sadalbari after receiving withdrawal orders on 14 October.[2]