On a cold autumn morning during the final days of March, the civil war in Australia’s east came to its bitter, violent conclusion.

In a panic, the regime holding power in the capital had fled during the night, leaving the country’s political establishment in ruins. When the dying echoes of conflict at long-last faded to silence, a nation lay divided and broken - cast into the shadows of a future uncertain.

Nobody, least of all Beijing nor its servant JSAC (Joint Special Advisory Cabinet) government nested in Canberra could have imagined their political stranglehold over the continent could be shattered, nor the speed with which it happened.

Only a week earlier, the JSAC government's powerful SADR paramilitary forces fighting in the country's east had been preparing to seize a key victory in their bloody campaign to finally capture the Eastern Cities Republic.

This fledgling nation-state, known colloquially as the Esterlands, claimed for itself a modest patch of earth in northern New South Wales, spanning from the Eastern Highlands to the sea. In just a decade, what began as little more than a scattered cluster of foundational refuge settlements developed with astonishing pace to form a close-knit collective of 'free-standing' towns refusing to legitimize what it claimed to be an agency of foreign power occupying the capital.

Bolstered by a coalition of powerful allies from the West and reinforced by a steady stream of skilled domestic migrants disenchanted with an increasingly compromised Australian government, the Esterlands soon remained the final obstacle preventing Beijing's domination over the Asian-Pacific under pretence of its Grand Unification Strategy.

Rejecting Canberra's demands to renounce all political affiliations with its allies and allow its reabsorption into the national fabric, the ECR - for its defiance - earned itself a near-decade of savage warfare throughout which it had persevered at great cost.

Yet despite the tremendous sacrifices made through years of conflict, SADR forces had ultimately manoeuvred themselves into a position from which to crush the Esterlands' western-most stronghold of Harburg.

Fiercely defended by the 7th militia legion [7-Lgn], this notorious fortress city in the mountains had endured nearly six years of brutal siege warfare in holding their enemy at bay, and for good reason. Harburg, due to the critical nature of its geography, was the very lynchpin of the ECR’s survival.

The gruelling siege had proved an immense frustration for the JSAC government, whose inability to capture Harburg had been seen as a humiliating loss of face, while the morale of its SADR forces was being ground down to the heel. Worse still, each year the war dragged on saw crippling foreign sanctions take their toll on the nation’s economic stability.

It was no secret that Beijing - by then diving into recession with its own military engaged in three separate conflicts - was losing patience, setting JSAC ministers a strict deadline in which to break the ECR’s neck. Its mandate made clear that no compromise over the territory’s sought-after independence would ever be considered. The rogue state would return to the mainland’s governance - if not by choice, then by force.

With that deadline looming, the underwritten consequence of failure drove SADR commanders to pursue increasingly reckless strategies. Out of sheer desperation, they opted to pull in all task-groups nationwide in a bold manoeuvre to launch a third and final major offensive against Harburg and its holdout 7-Lgn.

Known as the August-Dread Offensive, this eight-month battle pushed the city and the resolve of its citizens beyond limits thought possible.

John Cosh, chief commander of all ECR legions, could do nothing but hold his own lines as SADR forces threw their combined weight against Harburg’s besieged defences. Week by week, inch by bloody inch, the enemy pressed in, capturing key strategic points until poised to break 7-Lgn’s final stand at the Mar.

It was this murderously deadlocked battlefront which for many had come to symbolise the raging struggle for geopolitical supremacy between the West and the expansionist agenda of Beijing.

With the ECR’s three other combat legions already fully engaged across the length of its borders, the fall of Harburg would break open a new western battlefront that Cosh could not hope to hold long with the resources at his disposal.

Coalition analysts predicted the Esterlands - without Harburg protecting its flank - would likely survive no longer than eighteen months before being overwhelmed.

On March 18th, with SADR troops awaiting the greenlight to attack, JSAC Chief Executive, Tammy Li, offered Harburg’s defenders one final chance to surrender the city peacefully. They openly called on John Cosh to convince 7-Lgn in laying down its arms to avoid what would surely be a needless massacre.

Cosh, in a rare public response directed at the defiant fighters holding the Mar, instead delivered his iconic Make them Bleed speech.

His refusal to surrender led Tammy Li to appear live before the nation and refer angrily to Cosh as, "…a figurehead of the West’s idle fascination with 'last-stand martyrdom', one whose fanatical rhetoric leaves the hands of this government clean of any further blood spilled.”

She culminated her broadcast with the now-infamous quip, "Good luck, John, and see you on the gallows."

For Li, her final comment would prove ironically prophetic in the disruptive passage of history about to play out. An hour later, on Li's authority, SADR troops moved in to take the city.

On the morning of March 19, as foreign media outlets awaited news of Harburg's fate, the BBC - quoting a confidential government source - reported that an ‘anomalous event’ had occurred in the city, and that SADR’s hard-hitting 206th Regiment had suffered ‘catastrophic losses’ in their push to overrun the defences.

Despite the government’s hard-line policy of censoring any negative war-related news, Tammy Li took the unnatural step of addressing the BBC’s unconfirmed report. To the press, she conceded that a ‘significant setback’ had delayed victory in the east, but offered few other details besides claiming that SADR commanders were 'assessing their options to re-engage'.

This surprising - if only partial - candour was the first clear indication that whatever blow had been suffered in Harburg was of a scale upon which could not long be keep secret.

Within hours, news outlets began claiming that SADR force elements were in full retreat after having been routed in the field at Harburg - reports initially met with scepticism given their implausibility.

The media coverage then became so conflicting, it was near-impossible to understand what had actually happened. The situation on the ground was changing so rapidly that even trusted coalition sources were struggling to provide accurate, real-time information.

Only when U.K Prime Minister, Patrick Garvey, elected to brief a global audience did the first stream of confirmed facts begin to emerge, with the astonishing picture they painted one that elicited genuine disbelief.

Impossibly, 7-Lgn had broken through the siege-lines at the Mar, rolling over the top of SADR's disarrayed 206th Regiment, which had then been forced into a frantic, fighting retreat.

This carnage at Harburg and the sudden displacement of their troops left SADR commanders scrambling to shore up their western flank. With no other choice, they redeployed units from the frontlines at Cambria, Rostock and Balron to fill the gap - a move that stretched their remaining forces thin across the ECR's southern border.

It was this fatal mistake which gifted John Cosh the fortuity upon which he did not fail to capitalise, and what happened next is considered among the most defining events of the century, one that drastically shifted the balance of global power in the Asian-Pacific.

Before the dust had even settled at the Mar, Cosh launched the full might of his combat legions south beyond the Esterlands border in a switch-offensive blitzkrieg that experts claim could only have been orchestrated with prior knowledge of the outcome in Harburg.

With 7-Lgn now in the wild and rampaging through enemy lines to the west, Cosh rapidly overran SADR's forward operating bases at Tamsin Ridge and Kilrossy, driving his enemy south and moving on their divisional stronghold at Triesto. Here, his fighters began decimating a largely inexperienced reserve force which surrendered the base quickly, handing Cosh enough hardware to keep his war going another decade.

It was a devastating moment for the JSAC government. Having lost its strategic foothold in Australia's east, it now faced the humbling reality that war against the Esterlands could not be won without direct military intervention from Beijing - an unlikely scenario as breaching the Tasman Accord would draw the ECR’s Western allies into the fray and potentially ignite a global conflict.

Seeing her government's grip on power crumbling away, Tammy Li attempted to salvage credibility by defying Beijing's mandate, offering ECR leaders a full ceasefire under which terms for its independence could be secured. The offer was immediately accepted by the Esterlands leadership, with Cosh expected to hold his fighters at Triesto while negotiations proceeded.

This agreed upon ceasefire presented Li with the time and opportunity to address a parallel threat to her regime.

With nearly all SADR forces having been deployed to the Esterlands in support of the August-Dread Offensive, insurgent groups across the country had begun operating far more brazenly as a result. Regional government offices were being firebombed, internal cyber-attacks were on the increase and a number of ranking political collaborators had even been assassinated in broad daylight.

Canberra had been prepared for this temporary consequence of course, but trusted that victory at Harburg would come swiftly enough to restore order and crush these mounting insurgency actions before they became destabilising.

The promised quick victory had not occurred however, and now civil unrest was reaching heights not seen since the William Oakey riots a decade earlier. Even dismissing the Esterlands war going wrong in every feasible way, the nation was a powder keg in the throes of ignition.

For weeks prior, growing demonstrations railing against the authoritarian JSAC regime had been underway in major cities, only to escalate into full-on riots in the wake of Cosh's victory at Triesto.

Whereas Li's brutal put down of the William Oakey riots had largely cemented her grip on power and crushed all dissent against her regime, this new storm was sweeping across the country with near-unstoppable force as Li's failure to muster a capable response simply fed the flames of revolt and drew thousands more into the streets.

Unfortunately, what might have otherwise been remembered as an inspiring rebellion against tyranny took a decisively nasty turn when ultranationalist groups among the rioters began turning their aggression on local Chinese communities, commonly blamed for the nation's spiral into an oppressive state. Nowhere was this backlash more prevalent than in Sydney.

Home to a population nearing eight-million, almost fourteen percent of the city's inhabitants boasted Chinese heritage, with over three-hundred thousand of those having migrated in from China throughout the occupation era. It was this most recently established demographic in particular that drew the mob's anger.

Accused of bypassing standard migration processes under auspices of the government's controversial Bilateral Expedited Migration Scheme (BEMS), BEMS migrants had shouldered every accusation possible since JSAC's rise to power, from displacing the local workforce, through to serving as Beijing's pawns in supplanting the native population with loyalist citizens.

These fears, having run rampant through Australian society for decades now supplied the high-octane fuel extremist groups wielded to invoke even greater mayhem in Sydney.

In response, JSAC ordered that refuge-zones be established, one within the inner city and a second at the airport, both to serve as temporary sanctuaries until the riots could be quelled.

Local security forces quickly found themselves overwhelmed by the scale of the task and sheer numbers of protesters, so JSAC ordered SADR units falling back from the Esterlands to redeploy to Sydney and provide additional protection.

Throughout the city, protesters were soon clashing with security forces at the barricades to the refuge-zones, leaving dozens dead or wounded - the unsurprising result of tasking heavily-armed and battle-traumatised soldiers to face off against aggressive civilian rioters.

These killings only saw the mob incited to greater anger. Uncountable thousands swarmed through the streets, calling for an expulsion of BEMS migrants and demanding the JSAC government step down immediately, all to such frenzied chants as 'Time to go, Generation Overthrow! '

Witnessing the pandemonium unfold from Triesto, Cosh realised he would never again catch JSAC at such great disadvantage. In a bold snap-decision, he embarked on a course of action for which neither the Esterlands' leadership nor their coalition allies were prepared.

At nightfall on March 23, Cosh speared his forces out of Triesto in a furious push on Canberra. Panic ripped through the city when news of his advance spread, many doubtless recalling his chilling threat from years prior to 'hang every traitor from Canberra to the Quay.'

There was no last line of defence between Cosh and the capital. Nearly all remaining SADR units had been diverted to Sydney, and local security forces were drastically ill-equipped to face down the onslaught of his battle-hardened legions.

JSAC was advised by National Strategic Command to abandon the city and relocate to establish a temporary powerbase elsewhere, but it quickly became apparent that no course of action would leave the government intact.

Remarkably, several top-tier JSAC ministers elected quite simply to flee the country altogether - a desertion that quickly led to a cascading breakdown of the political hierarchy and the resulting mass exodus of the federal government. This included many native collaborators responsible for running the dreaded national security apparatus.

At Canberra airport, jets shuttling away the absconding JSAC ministry could be seen taking off through the night, with Tammy Li among the last of her cabinet to depart.

Cosh entered the city early the next morning, encountering only light resistance from some local security elements not yet even aware the government had deserted. By late afternoon, his forces were in complete control of the capital, and the eyes of the world watched him lower the JSAC colours from the iconic flagpole at Parliament House.

With the political victory in hand and the promise of peace now within reach, Cosh turned his focus to ending to all further hostilities. In the absence of an official government to treaty with, he made contact with the Chinese ambassador, who'd remained in-country even while the nation's leadership had fled.

With an open channel to Beijing, Cosh's initial attempt at trying to broker an armistice was rebuffed, as the Chinese political regime refused to negotiate with a man they openly denounced to the world as 'a violent radical and usurper of Australia's democratically-elected government.'

It started to go wrong for Cosh at that point. Beijing claimed that to protect dual-citizen BEMS migrants under siege in Sydney, it had the right to circumvent protocols regarding formal military involvement established by the Tasman Accord.

As if to challenge dissent from the international community, three naval ships - two frigates and one amphibious transport carrying a large contingent of PLA marines - broke away from the Chinese fleet supporting a maritime boundary clash north of Indonesia and began steaming south.

Although uncertain if the Chinese government would commit to such action, Cosh was searching for a peaceful way to resolve the crisis before security forces in Sydney - now reinforced by SADR units - could dig in deeply enough to hold out for reinforcements. His greatest fear was the city becoming ground-zero for a military counter-attack, leading eastern Australia into large-scale conflict.

The resolution to his predicament arose soon after Cosh learned that retreating elements of the 206th Regiment were entering Sydney, having battled their way south from the lines at Harburg.

Dogging their heels each step of the way was 7-Lgn, now commanding an auxiliary force drawn from 5-Lgn out of Ashton Gate. Cosh sent orders to hold beyond the city, his hope being that the legion's presence and reputation alone would be sufficient in compelling all remaining JSAC loyalists to stand down.

Cosh, however, had made one critical error.

When the siege-lines around Harburg were shattered at the Mar, it had unleashed a legion whose fanatic battle for survival had deeply scarred the minds and bodies of its fighters to the very core. Fuelled by a toxic mixture of pain, grief and rage, six long years of savagery at SADR's hands were not going to be dismissed for a peaceful resolution.

Ultimately, Cosh had failed to account for the exceptionally intimate brand of hatred spawned between 7-Lgn and its counterpart enemy who had spent the war entrenched beyond the Mar.

That enemy, SADR's formidable 206th 'Siege-Breaker' Regiment, were now trying desperately to regroup with their comrades in Sydney before the inevitable arrival of 7-Lgn, who were close behind and bitterly determined for their war not to end without a final reckoning.

Inside the city refuge-zone, over three-hundred thousand BEMS migrants - learning of the battle about to arrive on their doorstep - no longer considered waiting out the riots a viable option. Fearing that a legion assault would turn its aggression on civilians, they now began trying to escape the city by any means possible.

Harbour traffic had been all but shut down due to the protests, but some private maritime operators began moving evacuees south down the coast. At the airport, major civilian air-carriers had ceased all flights amid reports that anti-air weaponry had been deployed in the field, although some small regional operators kept flying despite the risk.

Tens of thousands packed within the airport barricades began fighting for limited numbers of flights going south to Wollongong and Melbourne - cities whose local leaders were offering further refuge.

Then, in the early hours of March 25, the 7-Lgn vanguard was seen entering the city outskirts. They rapidly began engaging rear-guard elements of the 206th, and within hours, running gun-battles were erupting across Sydney as the legion's main force arrived.

Under orders to hold out for reinforcements yet lacking any cohesive command structure, SADR forces soon found themselves being pushed back towards the harbour under a withering 7-Lgn onslaught.

The massive swarms of protesters, having initially hailed the legion's arrival, now vanished from the streets in their thousands, terrified of being caught in the vicious crossfire.

Having avoided much of the insurgency-driven bloodshed experienced throughout the country during occupation, it is with some irony that Sydney, in these final hours, would briefly become the most violent place on earth.

Hearing the battle edge steadily closer, the civilian population inside the refuge-zone began to panic. A crush began to occur at the harbour as it soon became clear the number of evacuation vessels was woefully inadequate.

For Beijing, there had been no true contingency for this scenario. The JSAC government had fled, SADR regiments in the field were in complete disarray and it could not divert the resources necessary to effect any kind of mass evacuation in time.

As such, the breakout of conflict in Sydney forced their seeking of an emergency session with the U.N and the ECR's PaCC (Pacific Coalition Command) allies, both of whom were cautious about committing third-party troops to an already complex and explosive situation.

In what was perhaps the first real sign of acceptance that its vicarious stranglehold over the continent was over, Beijing finally agreed to treaty in return for the safe evacuation of its citizens and to grant asylum to all foreign SADR force-elements. The three inbound Chinese naval ships, still days away, were ordered to return north as a condition.

Having agreed to terms, a PaCC naval force at harbour in the ECR's coastal base of Neilstown-on-Sea departed at once for Sydney while, from airbases across New Zealand, a massive air-wing took off across the Tasman; heavy-lift military aircraft laden with supplies and a moderately-sized U.N-led intervention force that would arrive before the naval fleet at dawn.

In Sydney meanwhile, 5-Lgn had flanked around the city to assault and seize the airport, clashing with SADR forces embedded there. To counter possible enemy air-support from the west, 5-Lgn began deploying the greatly feared Axion anti-aircraft weapon.

For the inbound coalition air-wing, Axion was a frightening new element to contend with.

With 5-Lgn facing fierce resistance, the battle for the airport had raged through the night and into the early hours of morning. It was absolute chaos on the ground, and lacking any direct line of communication to forces on either side, the pilots had no way of knowing who would hold the airport as they entered the nation's airspace, nor if they would be engaged in the fog-of-war.

Having passed the point of no return however, they had little choice but to proceed on mission and hope for rational heads on the ground to prevail. The Axion - a devastating weapon whose crucial role in the outcome of the war cannot be understated - could not be countered.

Despite being targeted several times while crossing the airspace threshold, the first aircraft piloted by exiled RAAF Wing Commander Michael Brinkley touched down at 6:47am. The U.N force quickly established contact with 5-Lgn, setting up an evacuation hub and taking control of SADR prisoners. The PaCC naval fleet arrived soon after.

Although the airport was now under control, intense fighting was still ongoing throughout the city, and the appearance of coalition forces did a great deal to calm the civilian masses still packed in around the harbour.

Shortly before 08:30am, the first outbound flights began departing. With the Axion threat stood-down, civilian airliners began flying in to assist the evacuation. At the harbour quay, a fleet of smaller naval ships had begun shuttling people offshore to an armada of waiting vessels ranging from frigates to cargo ships. Efforts would be hampered when rain and high winds set in before dusk.

Cosh, finally arriving in the city, is believed to have rendezvoused with 7-Lgn at some point shortly before midnight on March 26th.

It has often been debated how much control Cosh wielded over his young 7-Lgn commander, but coalition units on the ground reported that fighting in the city ceased at 1:20am, with the last SADR forces turning themselves over hours later to the protection of the Marine Expeditionary Unit providing overwatch at the Quay.

As the sun rose on March 27, over four-hundred thousand civilians in total and all remaining SADR forces had been lifted out of Sydney. It was an evacuation whose scale and speed eclipsed that of Dunkirk over a century beforehand.

When the final shuttle left from the Quay carrying the last contingent of disarmed SADR troops from the 206th, it passed through a gauntlet of several thousand legion fighters who had massed on both sides of the harbour to witness them depart.