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Chapter Text

Select Excerpt from Of Steel and Talons: The Battle of Palaven by Arena Nyscirius (2214 CE Edition) (Edited for Human Reading)
Licensed to Kaidan Alenko Secondary School, Kithoi Ward, Citadel

Operation: WHISKEY CORRIDOR was, according to official press releases, a mitigated tactical setback, an operation that encountered significant obstacles before it was quickly scaled back in favor of other operations. In [Captain Irrena] Ixius' opinion, WHISKEY CORRIDOR was a complete disaster. It had been a daring, ambitious plan that had been chosen in favor of two other cancelled operations, PHANTOM SNOW, a highly coordinated and organized retreat from low-priority defensive positions on Menae so the fleet could bombard the Reaper forces overrunning the area, and STARDUST SONATA, a coordinated counterattack against skirmishing Reapers targeting the shipyards around Nanus.

Chapter Text

Combat operations for SLENDER SCALPEL began as the Hierarchy dreadnought Indomitable abruptly appeared from FTL into dangerously low orbit over Menae. Communications channels were instantly awash in rehearsed chaos as the turians tried to "figure out" why the Indomitable was two hundred kilometers off target, "learning" that the dreadnought was experiencing problems with its drive core. This was confirmed as sensors picked up erratic radiation readings from the ship. To assist the Indomitable, the dreadnoughts Illustrious, Meritocracy, and Vigilance and their respective task forces made a FTL jump to Menae, the subsequent blue-shifts easily detectable on sensors.

This was an orchestrated move that had not been previously rehearsed, but still well within the Hierarchy's capabilities. The objective was to draw as many Reapers away from Palaven's orbit as possible, which would allow for the four carriers, the Eternal, Example, Resolute, and Whirlwind, to reach the planet's atmosphere safely and deploy the troops. Castellus, standing as the executive officer on the Example's bridge, remained calm and poised, but he couldn't help by think upon how badly naval operations went over the past few months. "I was trying very hard not to think about how embarrassing it would be for all of us to go through all this trouble, only for the Reapers to ignore us completely and ruin our operation by doing precisely nothing," Castellus admitted.

But four dreadnoughts and their respective fleets – one "damaged", all of them together and immobile – were too tempting a target to ignore. Ever since analysts provided a four-to-one ratio advisory, dreadnoughts had been kept constantly mobile and out-of-reach from Reaper forces, their deployments kept strategic and precise. The asari had perfected the technique of ambushing straggling Reaper capital ships with "wolfpacks" of four dreadnoughts before disappearing just as quickly, and the turians were quick to adopt this new effective doctrine. For months, the wolfpacks had harassed Reaper capital ships to no end, and although the Reapers were aware of the possibility that this was all a ruse, to have four vulnerable dreadnoughts over Menae was simply an opportunity too rich to pass up.

The Reapers considered groundside targets on Palaven to be of low priority compared to the vulnerable dreadnoughts, and moved many ships from the planet's orbit on course to Menae. As many as thirty-five Reaper ships, at least four of them Sovereign-class, made a precise, coordinated FTL jump above the turian fleet, positioning themselves with the dreadnoughts caught between the Reapers and the surface of Menae, allowing for the Reapers to strike at turian defenses groundside even if they missed the dreadnoughts. It also kept pressure on the dreadnought fleet, suppressing them to a low altitude within Menae's gravity well, preventing the turians from escaping with a FTL jump. It was a perfect tactical decision on the part of the Reapers, which also meant it was predictable. The defenders on Menae were prepared for this exact situation, and instantly opened up with salvos from pre-zeroed ground-based anti-ship guns pointed at the Reapers. The turian fleet also warmed up its weapons and spread out, giving ground-based guns clearer shots at the enemy. Turian reinforcements began to arrive over Menae, which the Reapers answered with additional forces of their own.

With Reaper orbital presence diminished, fleet CIC on the Defender over Nanus finalized several spots where orbital defenses were weakest, allowing for the Eternal, Example, Resolute, and Whirlwind to deposit their troops at positions close enough to the 27th Provisional Army's respective drop zones. The carriers and a massive fleet escort, almost a hundred ships altogether to draw fire away from the carriers, made a coordinated FTL jump into Palaven's orbit. The carriers used conventional maneuvering to navigate their way to their designated areas while their escorts used the opportunity to engage in knife-fights with orbiting Reapers, a tactically horrendous decision motivated by the strategically prudent goal of keeping the four carriers safe.

While the Reapers had never ruled out the possibility that the Indomitable's drive core problems was a turian ruse, the fact that more reinforcements were dedicated to break Palaven's cordon than to reinforce the Indomitable confirmed the deception. However, the Reapers saw it as a strategic misstep on the part of the Hierarchy, and continued to prioritize the destruction of the Indomitable, along with the Illustrious, Meritocracy, and Vigilance. Troops transports were diverted to intercept turian ground forces; the Reapers had instantly identified that the carriers were the center of this operation, and knew that they would not be destroyed quickly enough to prevent a groundside landing. From their perspective, Reaper ground forces converging on their LZs would be sufficient to impair turian plans while the fleet focused on the supposedly much more important dreadnoughts. They had not yet truly understood the magnitude of SLENDER SCALPEL's primary objectives.

The Example was responsible for deploying more than fifty thousand infantrymen over flashpoints on the Taeradian continent, primarily Carratine District. To do so, it had to sail through kilometers of fire from all sides to reach an optimum altitude by which to deploy its complement of gliders and troop transports. For those in the hangar and at view ports, it was an unnerving experience, watching ships mere kilometers from each other and engaging each other in the upper atmosphere at close range, especially when most naval battles were fought at ranges in the thousands of kilometers. "I was standing at the portside viewport and staring out ships throwing everything they've got at each other, and suddenly the window is consumed by a metallic wall, and I jump backwards like a terrified pyjak, because a cruiser had just suddenly passed right by the carrier by a margin of maybe twenty meters. And if a ship half a kilometer long barreling past you without warning twenty meters away doesn't scare the piss out of you, nothing will."

But perhaps there was no more terrifying place to be on the Example than on the bridge, where Ixius and Castellus were given real-time briefs of how close they were to dying. "Our strategy when it came to avoiding Reaper weapons had really amounted to dodging at this point," explained the executive officer in our interview. "Our shields and hull couldn't withstand even a single direct hit from a capital ship, so it was really a matter of maneuvering faster than the Reapers could target you. Yet here we were, a massive, kilometer-long target sitting on the upper atmosphere of Palaven, barely moving as we prepared to spend fifteen minutes to deploy the ground forces, watching fire erupt everywhere in the form of disruptor torpedoes, mass accelerator rounds, magnetohydrodynamic bursts coming from and going to absolutely everywhere." Common sense in naval engagements often states that any carrier in mass accelerator range is a clear sign that something has gone very, very wrong. In this particular instance, the carriers being where they were supposed to be was actually very, very right, but this was little comfort to the carrier crews, conditioned to set off shrill alarm bells in their heads whenever a carrier was vulnerable.

But the Example did fine, and the task force's hundred-ship escort did an exceptional job at protecting the ships, despite the fact that they were practically the largest allied targets in orbit. The Example even managed to cut short its projected fifteen-minute timeframe for releasing its shuttles and gliders. "You'd think it'd take forever to deploy hundreds of shuttles and thousands of gliders from a single hangar," Vadim cackled, "but we learned a few tricks from the quarians and managed to clear them all out in about ten minutes." (When I suggested that someone who had never served on a carrier before might find ten minutes "unimpressive", Vadim scoffed and replied, "Right, because emptying a kilometer-long hangar full of shuttles and gliders most riders had never used before from a carrier at the right angle in the upper atmosphere while making sure people don't crash into each other or burn up during atmospheric re-entry is so fucking easy.")

Not all of the carriers were as lucky as the Example. A stray shot from a Reaper capital ship struck the Whirlwind, tearing its hangar apart before it could deploy the second half of its troops. From the bridge of the Example, Castellus had a clear view of its sister carrier as the image magnified on his console, watching the turian ship nine thousand kilometers away list and burn in Palaven's atmosphere. It began its fatal plummet towards the planet's surface even as bridge officers reported that there were almost no escape pod signatures coming from the Whirlwind. "The operation had barely started, and a random lucky shot from a Reaper tears through one of our four carriers and takes out half the ground troops being deployed from it," he thought in dismay. "What a way to start a mission!"

In the end, the last shuttles and gliders had swarmed out of the Example's hangar, and attack drones and fighters originally part of the Example's complement arrived from Nanus, electronically re-registering themselves to the carrier's CIC. With the battle over Palaven still inconclusive, Ixius decided to implement one of the predetermined exfiltration plans: As an attempt to navigate an FTL jump at knife-fight range within Palaven's atmosphere was too risky, the Example would attempt traditional navigation to skip across the planet's atmosphere to a point with less ships, where it would be possible make a much more risk-free FTL jump to safety. The Eternal and the Resolute, the latter of which had caught a glancing blow but was otherwise alright save a few compromised decks, also adopted this exit strategy, departing while watching shuttles and gliders streak across the atmosphere, making for the turian homeworld.

And thus did the allied force of the 27th Provisional Army, more than two hundred thousand turians and krogan who had desperately prepared for this very operation, hurl themselves into the darkness to reclaim Palaven.

In hindsight, the glider landings across Palaven could have gone worse than it had. The apparatus had been adopted out of both desperation and necessity, the timetable for SLENDER SCALPEL meant the turians had little more than a week to practice in them, and the shortage of available gliders during the preparations phase meant most turians only ever practiced in them once with unimpressive results to show for it. If the operation planners had been hoping for a last-minute miracle, they didn't receive it.

The glider had no obvious advantage over the shuttle. In theory, it was one of the better choices for a stealth aerial insertion, but with the fleet battle in orbit that was necessary to deposit the troops in the first place, ground-based anti-air weaponry had long been alerted to incoming forces, making stealth utterly impossible. It was true that each glider's minimalized electronic equipment meant that enemy targeting systems was dependent by necessity on the relatively unreliable spectroimagery feedback, especially as the landings were occurring just before dawn with minimal light, masked by all the atmospheric dust that had kicked up through the entire campaign. But this also meant that all the gliders were unshielded and could easily be destroyed with one or two well-placed anti-air shots, which began to saturate the skies of Palaven from the moment ground forces were deployed from the Hierarchy carriers.

Service Chief Optimi, who rode in a glider along with most of the 38th Heavy Infantry Legion, painted a picture of what it was like for the average infantryman once they were jettisoned from their carriers: "The drop itself was uneventful, save firepower that seemed to be going off everywhere as you entered the atmosphere. It feels awesome in a terrifying way, in the sense that you're weaving through shots meant to kill capital ships while you're sailing through space in a dinky glider. You didn't feel the tug of gravity, and it didn't actually feel like you were getting anywhere at first, although you were actually breaking the sound barrier. Even when we got into the atmosphere and began feeling air resistance, it all seemed okay because we were so high up and the surface was something that looked like it was something in the background, obscured by all the dust that had kicked up into the atmosphere, instead of something you'll go splat against really fast."

As they cleared the naval battle and entered the lower atmosphere of Palaven, the incoming turians experienced the next problem: Reaper ground-based anti-air guns. At first, it was the Hades cannons on the ground they had to steer clear of, although those shots were relatively easy to avoid given their sparse dispersal across the planet and the fact that they were primarily targeting orbiting Hierarchy ships. But once they reached low altitude, ground-based infantry weaponry such as rockets began opening fire, especially as the gliders deployed their wings, leveled out, and began to slow down to more manageable speeds.

"You also suddenly notice that the ground is a lot closer than before but still very much far below you," Optimi observed, "and you feel like relieving yourself in more ways than one."

Optimi had not been one of the turians to participate in the ill-fated glider exercise, and had no practical experience with the glider save the Blue Suns' training sessions. Blue Suns instructors had not taught the turians how to initiate evasive maneuvers in a glider. This was an intentional decision on the part of Risithi, and not without reason; he had correctly deduced that there was no way the turians could learn how to competently use a glider within the time available before SLENDER SCALPEL, and decided it was much more important to focus on instructing the ground forces on how to safely navigate to their designated landing zones. (There was also the consideration that gliders would not be able to outmaneuver anti-air guns meant to take out much-faster fighter craft anyways, and that any advantage that could be conferred by providing instructions on evasive maneuvers would only be marginal, resulting in a wasted effort at best.) However, as gunfire and rockets began to fill the vision of every turian infantrymen in a glider, the soldiers panicked and began to veer off into every possible direction in an attempt to dodge incoming fire. Some gliders turned too sharply, their occupants too accustomed to transports with mass effect drives to fully comprehend the consequences of aerodynamics, subsequently losing lift and dropping rapidly to the ground. Others began crashing into each other, with equally unpleasant results.

Local firebases began to deploy gunships to provide covering fire to the gliders. It's uncertain how much of a positive effect they actually provided, but Optimi did not appreciate their assistance. "A handful of gunships wasn't going to decrease enemy fire much," she summed it up, "and when somewhere around tens of thousands of incompetently-flown gliders are comically all over the sky, attempting to find a place to land without crashing into anything, you do not want a big gunship taking up valuable space." Optimi saw at least two turians crash into a gunship trying to maneuver through the flock of gliders, and another be blown away by the backwash of the gunship's thrusters.

As if the sky being saturated with fire and midair collisions were not problematic enough, another concern arose as the turians came close to their landing zones. With only several exceptions, most of the landing zones were located either in the mountains or in metropolitan population centers. This meant that, with few exceptions, almost every glider was forced to attempt to weave through a maze of either high-rises or mountains (or, in the case of the exceptionally unfortunate 29th Mountaineer Legion, both). Unlike the issue of deliberately not coaching ground forces on evasive maneuvers, this was an oversight on the part of the Blue Suns instructors, one that turian infantry paid for as they attempted to weave through great walls of steel and stone in contraptions they barely knew how to use. This was not helped by all the dust in the air from the destruction of Palaven's many cities, which hindered visibility kilometers out.

Carratine District was one of the most densely-populated metropolitan areas on Palaven, and Optimi found herself struggling to not crash unceremoniously into a building. There was no way she could really tell, but she thought that the glider in front of her was flying very smoothly, and she decided its occupant knew what he was doing, or at least knew more than her. The service chief tried to carefully trail that glider, figuring it was the safest option available to her in the absence of midair guidance, until a salvo of anti-air fire suddenly struck the glider in front, flash-melting its wings and sending the rider plummeting towards the streets below. Yeah, fuck that, Optimi thought, instinctively veering her glider away. Moments later, her glider barreled violently into the street before crashing into a derelict store.

[Corporal Jari] Deiethus [of the 18th Mountaineer Legion, 14th Homeland Division,] landed smoothly on the street just outside "purely by accident", although still off-target from his designated LZ. Having seen Optimi land only a short distance away, he unharnessed himself from the glider, collected his weapons, and moved over to where she had crash-landed, fearing the worst. When he found her, he burst into laughter; Optimi had crashed into a sex shop, and found herself tangled in the glider's ruined rigging and partially buried by a significant pile of dislodged adult toys.

"One word out of you," the service chief growled, "and I swear you'll get some of these up yours."

There was insufficient satellite coverage over Palaven, as the Reapers had knocked most of them out after successfully establishing orbital supremacy over the planet. This meant that the individual infantryman's omni-tool could not provide a precise location of where they were in Carratine District, or even confirm that they were in Carratine District at all. In theory, the Hierarchy ships in orbit could function as an alternative to the satellites, but between Reaper jamming and the Hierarchy naval tactical network awash with communications regarding the fleet battle, most of the turians were left to their own devices. Some of the reassembling turians managed to connect to surviving wireless networks, but such opportunities were few and far in between, given how thoroughly the Reapers had damaged infrastructure in enemy-controlled territories.

Optimi and Deiethus were not one of the lucky ones, and had no idea where they were. They finally managed to find a hint in the form of a nearby street sign as Optimi tried to unstrap herself from the glider and reacquire her weapons. Deiethus matched the street name to operational maps downloaded to their omni-tools prior to the operation, and finally managed to get a fix on their location, discovering they were in Roshea, within enemy territory instead of at assembly points behind friendly lines. Optimi was five kilometers from where she was actually supposed to land and reassemble, to say nothing of Deiethus, who was supposed to land in the next district over with the rest of the 18th in Langriss. Bitterly cursing their luck, they finally got Optimi out of her and her weapons out of the glider, just as the sound of engines roared high above them. "You look up," Optimi remembered, "and you see the shuttles flying overhead, carrying the special operations-capable personnel. You know, the guys who have rocket packs and drop pods to begin with. The bastards."

Urdnot Nakmor was swiftly reevaluating his initial appraisal of Palaven. When he was told his commandos would be taking part in the groundside operations on the turian homeworld, the krogan had expected entire swathes of the planet to be coated in abandoned wastelands after the turians turned tail and ran. Maybe even hoped for the planet to be in ruins, which would probably be a kick in the quad for the turians, seeing their world as desolate as Tuchanka.

As he looked out his shuttle, however, he realized that Palaven looked less like battleground, and more like a nasty drug trip. Gunfire, lasers, energy weapons, missiles, and other projectile weapons were fired so liberally, they looked like a solid stream of light and fire, and they came from almost every window of every building that Urdnot could see. What the krogan had failed to realize was that Palaven had been a densely populated planet and the homeworld of a Council race, and an absolutely disproportionate amount of civilians had stayed behind to form resistance cells where the military could not dispatch men. The amount of assault rifle and machine gun fire that poured out of a high-rise alone made the entire area look like the a fireplace. The Reapers responded in kind, putting their corrupted troops on every possible vantage point and firing back. It was the greatest instance of total war that the galaxy had to offer. With FORWARD FLAME now entering its most chaotic first phase, they had effectively kicked over the hornet's nest. So this is what a battle on Palaven looks like, Urdnot thought, reluctantly impressed.

Ravakian was not feeling impressed at all. Months ago, Palaven was an orderly, pristine city of silver and steel; now it was a warzone of the likes that the galaxy had never seen before. As much as the resistance cells across the planet were putting up the best fight they could hope to, Ravakian knew that every that each battle was systematically destroying fifteen thousand years of turian civilization.

If there was any solace she could take from the situation, it was that the gliders had moreorless cleared the way for them. It was a ruthless calculation aimed at sacrificing individual soldiers to maximize the survivability of the special operation teams, and the sky was so saturated with gliders and escorting gunships, it was difficult to pick out the shuttles from everything else in the air, and so their ride through the atmosphere was actually rather smooth, a far cry from the antics of the 27th Provisional Army. The majority of the shuttles made it through the cloud of anti-aircraft fire, managing to deploy their troops at their designated areas. It certainly helped that the teams actively took part in ensuring their landing was as safe as possible. As their shuttle came closer to the landing zone, Ravakian noticed that there were Reaper shooters on the rooftops which could still take potshots at turian shuttles and gliders.

Comparison between the Hierarchy's Blackwatch and the Alliance's N7 program were fierce. Extranet forums, news article comments, and entertainment holos frequently made comparisons between these two outfits, usually framed as "who would win in battle" between the two most prestigious special forces units the Turian Hierarchy and the Systems Alliance respectively had to offer. A good argument could be put forth that the N7 program developed grittier survivalist operatives, given the relative infancy of the relationship between humanity and mass effect technology. As a matter of honor and tradition, N7 trainees are often trained without the benefit of fleet support, omni-tools, or combat armor, a regime deliberately designed to provide the trainee with a harsh appreciation of the elements.

But the turians had the unquestionable edge in terms of technology and its usage. The Alliance had just short of three decades of experience with Citadel military technologies, and the doctrines involving their deployment either came from applied experience provided the short, sporadic, small-scale wars that the humans occasionally fought against batarians, or already-established doctrines laid out back the races that have been using the technologies for thousands of years, especially the turians, who have tested, refined, and updated their techniques for thousands of years since the Krogan Rebellions. Instead of having the shuttle slow so the gunners could direct fire accurately in the direction of enemy forces, Ravakian merely opened the hatch of the shuttle and had her snipers jump out more than a hundred meters above ground. With the judicious and expert use of their jetpacks, the infiltrators quickly glided their way from the moving shuttle to the rooftops of their landing zone, setting up overlapping fields of fire. Several staccato rifle craps later, and enemy shooters were no longer a problem, allowing Ravakian, Helsrang, Urdnot, and the rest of the task force to land.

Other shuttles across the planet improvised. The 49th Reconnaissance Legion was no Blackwatch, but Siritii and the marksmen on his shuttle provided adequate covering fire from open hatches as their craft found a safe place to settle down and for their passengers to disembark. Other shuttles went brute force and used their mounted guns to clear the area. The 97th Mechanized Legion requested and received an orbital bombardment on their landing zone, which initially sounded risky and wasteful, but ended up being a lifesaver when the 97th was concealed by the dust that kicked up from the blast.

With their passengers deployed, the shuttles went airborne once more, taking advantage of the last swarms of gliders to cover their escape back into space, where they'd theoretically rejoin with any other ship with hangar capacity to take them back to the moons in hopes of making a second run with more manpower and materials. In the meantime, turian-krogan special operations teams across the planet made quick checks of their bombs, ensuring it had not been damaged in the landing. Due to the nature of their payload, the special operations teams responsible for bringing the warp bombs to the resistance landed at strategically out-of-the-way areas. Theoretically, they were between friendly lines and Reaper camps, solidly in enemy territory. However, they were sufficiently removed from key strategic routes, areas where turian planners for SLENDER SCALPEL were certain would be the flashpoints for FORWARD FLAME. The hope was that their infiltration (if not their landing) would go relatively unnoticed, and that their path to resistance infiltration teams outside the Reaper camps would be sufficiently far away from the projected battles of FORWARD FLAME.

With the engineers confirming that the munitions were still good to go, the turian operators and krogan commandos quickly moved out in the direction of the designated rendezvous point with the resistance forward team. Ravakian had the unit separated into four groups, with two turian sniper teams on the rooftops and two turian-krogan ground teams below, moving in two lines of standard leapfrog maneuvers: One ground group and sniper group would move ahead, consolidate their position, and provide covering fire or overwatch for the other group as they moved up and ahead to repeat the pattern. In hindsight, Helsrang felt this was a flawed tactic. "Our mission was ultimately infiltration, not combat," he explained. "It was a good tactic up to a certain point, and splitting the group up into four with sniper overwatch helped reduce our profile. But this was largely a conservative combat maneuver that expected return fire, whereas what we were supposed to be doing should've been more along the lines of being fast and undetected. We were playing it safe the wrong way."

Helsrang's concerns were not frivolous. In theory, Reaper ground forces were networked, and the Reapers themselves could ascertain the position of enemy units by being informed that their units were suddenly going offline despite not being picked up by sensors. Therefore, the plan was purely to infiltrate enemy territory and rendezvous with the resistance forward teams, the infiltrators, without being detected and without having to fire a shot. The worry was that leapfrog maneuvers were not fast enough, put the unit into a mentality where they expected to shoot, and spread the across a fairly wide area.

But Ravakian's judgment was not tested for the first few hours of SLENDER SCALPEL, and the group was able to steer clear Reaper patrols, which were showing up at a bare minimum. Most of the enemy were too preoccupied with countering the early stages of FORWARD FLAME, and initially did not notice the turian-krogan special operations teams that were infiltrating their lines, a piece of good news in what was otherwise an embarrassing first phase to the campaign.

That was not to say that there weren't a few close calls. Siritii, moving along with the krogan-embedded 3rd Platoon, Delta Company, 49th Reconnaissance Legion, almost got blindsided by a Reaper patrol coming around the corner, and it was only by the swift reflexes of [Commander Zurik] Paratid that the unit was able to go prone just in time to remain undetected. It was more than just a close call, however; as Siritii looked up, he was suddenly terrified by an urge to break into laughter. Most of the operators and commandos managed to find sufficiently large objects to hide behind, but more than a few were caught in the open as they crossed the street, and they had to go prone and find whatever incline they had to minimize their visual profile. Or so was the theory, except the krogan, with their massive humps, literally stuck out with their large body mass. It was such an absurd and bizarre scene, watching the Reaper patrol miss several large armored humps sticking out on the street, that the urge to guffaw became greater with every passing second.

But the patrol ultimately passed, not having noticed 3rd Platoon down the street. Getting back on their feet, Siritii managed to kill the last few urges to laugh before moving over to the krogan commandos, and "gently suggested they stick closer to the sides". "This was hardly an isolated incident," Siritii recalled, "and other units also had problems with, well, krogan body mass. Again, we wondered who up in High Command ever came up with the wonderful oxymoron that was 'krogan infiltrator'."

Ekyriat awoke to Smirian shaking her roughly awake. Having been catching some shut-eye after another long patrol, Ekyriat had found a wall, slumped down against it, and slept, for luxury accommodations were in short supply ever since the Reaper invasion. She was a little too groggy to properly hear what Smirian was trying to say to her, but not too groggy to venture a few guesses as her gaze caught the sight out the window: Thousands and gliders, hundreds of shuttles, and dozens of gunships sailing through the air, as far as the eye could see. Khronus had been relatively dark over the last few days; the fighting had died down by Palaven standards as the Reapers focused on other priority objectives, which still meant there was always gunfire going off from window-to-window, building-to-building, street-to-street. The fires had long burned out, leaving Khronus in a relatively ashy darkness. Now, however, as the invasion kicked in in full, Ekyriat stared at the district light up again as gunfire, beams, and explosion coated the Khronus, replacing the sky. "That's one hell of a thing to wake up to," Ekyriat thought, even as she shook herself awake, checked the straps of her armor, picked up her rifle, and quickly moved out to make final operational checks. Operation: FORWARD FLAME had begun.

To maximize the operational security and secrecy of SLENDER SCALPEL, the resistance cells across Palaven were not informed as to the precise time the operation would begin, only that specific instructions be followed "once the time came". As the skies filled with gliders, gunships, and shuttles along with Reaper weapon fire, the resistance could tell that the time had come. Weapons were broken out, all the necessary equipment ready to support the next mass ground campaign.

The resistance cells across Palaven had two major objectives. The first was to support conventional forces in making a push across Palaven. Krogan armies had been landing in Palaven for days earlier, but they had largely established outposts deeper into Reaper territory, maintaining minimal contact with the resistance, a decision made due to fears of turian-krogan tension as well as operational secrecy for SLENDER SCALPEL, which the krogan non-commandos were not a part of. Essentially, as the turian ground force descended from the skies, the resistance had to reestablish logistical routes and holding positions, supporting the 27th Provisional Army as they regrouped at designated rendezvous points across the planet. Once staging operations were complete, the resistance would support turian components of the 27th in their push towards forward krogan outposts to link up with the krogan defenders; the turian-krogan army would then make a second push across Reaper territory. For the Khronus resistance cell, this responsibility was placed in the hands of Draxen Achtus.

In the meantime, Achtus' lieutenant, Derithi Gianthis, was responsible for Khronus component of the turian resistance's second objective: Making final preparations for SLENDER SCALPEL. For the Khronus cell, this necessitated all of Miridi Kylonis' teams to deploy in preparation for receiving, smuggling, and detonating incoming warp bombs. To expedite this process and limit detection, the teams were deployed to the secret staging area a kilometer outside the Reaper camp to make final preparations. This was to ensure that the smuggling team would be as ready to go as possible once the munitions made it to the staging area, freeing up the special operations teams delivering the payload to assist conventional forces in FORWARD FLAME.

With Gianthis and Kylonis departing with their forward teams in preparation for SLENDER SCALPEL, the rest of the Khronus resistance cell began the on-site groundwork for FORWARD FLAME. Ammunition caches were brought out and deployed; airborne turian forces had brought their own supply, but given that there was no guarantee of how long the ground campaign was going to last, extra ammunition blocks and thermal clips were pulled out of cold storage. With the absence of communications relays, satellites, and wireless networks, antenna were brought out in an attempt to permit omni-tools to cut through Reaper jamming and countermeasures. Pre-designated logistical routes were established, lightly defended by armed resistance patrols expecting arriving troops to eventually help shoulder the burden. The idea was to provide the 27th Provisional Army a foothold until the better-equipped professionals could ease out the resistance, which was still fighting with outdated weapons and – in some cases – no kinetic barriers.

The rendezvous zones for Khronus District were centered around the Cerenys Stadium ruins, and so the Khronus resistance relocated the bulk of their operations to link up with the incoming command staff of the 27th, at least in theory. Armed buffer zones were defended to put some distance between increasingly aggressive waves of Reaper attacks, with Marauders and Cannibals leading the charge in an attempt to find weak links in the defenses. Turian infantrymen began to trickle in at a pace that was slower than the resistance appreciated seeing. Even more distressing was watching groups of soldiers march into the stadium, only to ask for directions for a faraway rendezvous zone because they botched their landings. "I had a squad of ten turians arrive together and come up to me for directions," Achtus recalled, "and I had to point them nine different ways. Nine, not ten, because one of them was supposed to be here at Cerenys, but didn't even realize he had arrived. And his relief was short-lived, because while he thought he was late, he soon looked around and found out he couldn't find any of his buddies."

As the resistance was kept on a need-to-know basis, neither Ekyriat nor Smirian really knew what the 27th Provisional Army's grand strategy was, nor how badly their landing had gone. It didn't take too long for them to figure it out, however. They and dozens of other resistance groups began to push out towards tactical points along major routes around the rendezvous zones with the intention of creating stationary defensive points that would suppress Reaper incursions while keeping the incoming infantrymen safe. As the resistance began to push out along the routes to expand their area of influence, however, the costs of the Hierarchy landing became increasingly evident. Fresh turian bodies near wrecked gliders showed where infantrymen had crashed after being shot down or having barely survived midair collisions. It spoke of the grim reality of having to implement gliders on such short notice, a desperate measure simply to get the 27th Provisional Army on the ground, no matter the cost.

Of course, the resistance had no idea beforehand that this was how the 27th would be landing on Palaven. Taking a closer look at a wrecked glider, Ekyriat was stunned that the contraption had no mass effect drive or any obvious means of self-propulsion. "Who the fuck convinced them to land in one of these?" she declared aloud, mistaking it for some sort of flimsy, poor-designed drop pod. "The krogan?"

Setting up defensive positions was relatively easy. Turian infantrymen were everywhere and keeping Reaper forces engaged, meaning the resistance had little trouble or confusion getting where they needed to go. In most cases, the defensive positions were little more than a mounted machine gun and perhaps a rocket launcher with makeshift barricades set up on a street corner. In some cases, however, the widespread direction of Khronus was so sufficiently severe that obvious tactical positions were not possible, to say nothing of the shortage of conventional military weapons. Ekyriat and Smirian found themselves equipped only with a Revenant and two Phaestons, and were forced to lie prone in a crater stuck in the middle of the street, covered only by two flanking machine guns fifty meters to the rear.

Orders were not to fire unless absolutely necessary; the idea was to provide the amassing 27th Provisional Army with cover fire, not to mount a serious resistance (which would be the job of the 27th). Therefore, it was supposed to be in everyone's best interest for the major routes in Khronus to elude attention. If all went well, turian forces would go unhindered and unnoticed along these defended streets and back to Cerenys Stadium or any other rendezvous zone.

It was difficult to say that things were going well, though. Although there was no organized mass Reaper counterattack yet, a steady flow of enemy squads harassing Khronus' major streets still kept both the resistance and the 27th on their toes. Furthermore, as more and more infantrymen began to make contact with the resistance on the established routes, both sides began to get a clearer picture of precisely what was going on. None of the news was particularly flattering, almost all of it embarrassing. It seemed like four out of five turians were nowhere near where they were supposed to be, while two out of five seemed completely lost, asking for directions. Still, it didn't seem quite so bad, at least until a corporal from the 153rd Mechanized Legion ran over to Ekyriat and Smirian's position, hit the ground, and asked where the rendezvous site in Nirivis District was.

Ekyriat and Smirian stared, dumbstruck. Nirivis was two districts over; they had no idea how this guy landed in Khronus. Notifying the corporal of their location and pointing him in the right direction, the two resistance fighters watched as the corporal swore bitterly, ran off in the direction of Nirivis, and was promptly killed by a trio of Ravager fire that had zeroed on him perfectly.

Ekyriat turned to Smirian and stated the obvious: "This isn't going well, is it?" Realizing that there wasn't much else they could do about it, the two shrugged and returned their focus back to providing suppressive fire for the regrouping 27th Provisional Army.

Corporal Loriq Ordinix was beating himself up despite the fact that the shuttle he was on landed precisely where it was supposed to be. This was because he had gotten onto the wrong shuttle on the Example, and instead of delivering warp bombs along with the rest of the 52nd Reconnaissance Legion, he found himself preparing to storm Reaper positions alongside the 163rd Assault Infantry Legion. It was impossible to try to find a way to rejoin his unit at this point, with the 163rd staging in preparation for FORWARD FLAME at Palaven's South Peaks. If there was any solace he could derive from this, it was that – as opposed to most of the ground troops for FORWARD FLAME – he rode aboard a spare shuttle afforded to the 163rd, and his trip groundside was uneventful.

Reception to his presence was mixed. Like many other units across the 27th Provisional Army, the 163rd Assault Infantry Legion was saturated with replacements who – while well-trained – were relatively inexperienced and had seen few real battles. Therefore, there were a number of those in the shuttle who looked upon Ordinix with a degree of awe, a rifleman from the 52nd, which, while not Blackwatch, was certainly special operations-capable. Others were worried about the fact that Ordinix was still coughing his lungs out. And there were those who doubted the competence of anyone who managed to climb into the wrong shuttle on the eve of what was likely the single largest turian military campaign in history.

Elements of the 163rd were managing to land at Firebase Arterius, which had largely been abandoned and neglected through much of the war, but had recently been reactivated by a krogan forces using it as a rear battery position, setting up old-fashioned and cannibalized artillery guns. ¹ The krogan were barely holding onto the position by the time the first troops began to arrive at the firebase, as while they had the high ground, the krogan were also cut off from contact with the resistance, and Reaper forces seemed to be unfazed by the uphill climbs necessary to carry out the assault on krogan positions. Being among the first to arrive at Firebase Arterius, the 163rd Legion relieved krogan forces so they could brief unit commanders on the developing situation.

Firebase Arterius' perimeter defense guns had been destroyed when the turians abandoned it and decided to not leave resources to the enemy. The batteries the krogan had commandeered and cannibalized weren't precisely practical for defending against enemy attacks either. This necessitated engineers to erect new heavy turrets along the walls of the firebase to compensate. They needed space to work, however, meaning fireteams had to leave the relative security of Firebase Arterius and push Reaper forces back just enough so the engineers could set up guns without having to worry about getting shot at.

Contrary to the state of Firebase Arterius, much of the South Peaks had seen ferocious fighting in the Palaven campaign. Elements of the turian resistance had fallen back to what was thought to be more defensible terrain, only to discover that the tireless Reapers did not seem to be impeded by topographical concern. By the end of the second week of the war, turian military forces had been evacuated from the entire area as High Command deemed the South Peaks indefensible and of little strategic value. The krogan army had reactivated Firebase Arterius largely to provide long-range bombardment support on the city of Paeridia at the eastern foot of the mountain range. The krogan offensive had failed, however, leaving krogan forces isolated and under fire; FORWARD FLAME would theoretically reconnect Firebase Arterius with the rest of the resistance's logistical network, with turian elements in the South Peaks being the defensive tip of the spear until then. They would then launch a joint effort to retake Paeridia, hopefully accomplishing together what neither the turians nor the krogan could do alone.

A side effect to the fighting across the South Peaks meant that local topography was irrevocably changed; intense shelling and bombardment had caused entire mountains to shape and topple, making old maps obsolete. The krogan, having defended Firebase Arterius for days, had a rough idea of the avenues of assault the Reapers were using, but turian fireteams needed to move out beyond the firebase's walls, survey and reconnoiter enemy positions, and find out more about what was happening further down the mountain. Ordinix was put in one of the fireteams of the 163rd. "This was a couple of privates and another corporal," Ordinix recalled, "and suddenly, I've got three kids asking me for orders despite – or because – I'm from the 52nd." Despite having no experience with leading fireteams, the corporal didn't want to embarrass himself or let down his new comrades, and gave the order to stay close and move out.

The fireteams moved out, warned by the krogan that the Reapers "don't give two fucks about terrain advantage" on their way out. Ordinix and his fireteam moved towards their assigned sector, expecting to have to hold it for roughly half an hour while defensive guns were set up. They had hardly gotten fifty meters down the mountain when they found rows of Dragon's Teeth set up along and beneath the cliffs, tucked safely out of Firebase Arterius' fields of fire, along with several piles of bodies – some turian, but mostly krogan – that were presumably being prepared for conversion into husks. The position had been abandoned by the enemy for some reason, but it still unsettled the fireteam, knowing that these were tools by which the enemy converted their own, and that the Reapers had set up a forward outpost so close to Firebase Arterius. Ordinix radioed in his findings, and received permission to destroy the Dragon's Teeth and flash-cremate the bodies, made possible by explosives and incendiary ammunition.

As if that wasn't unsettling enough, a private next to Ordinix suddenly pointed further across the mountain. The corporal stared as small bonfires burned across the mountain, dozens of pinpricks of light and bursts of explosions lighting up the mountain's peak. His fireteam was not the only one that found abandoned Reaper positions with Dragon's Teeth and piles of bodies.

This was disputably the first mistake headquarters at Firebase Arterius made. The intention was to deny the Reapers the use of Dragon's Teeth or friendly deceased, especially when they were so close to the firebase. But while the Reapers, at this point, realized that this was a full-scale ground assault, they were still assessing where to deploy the bulk of their forces. The bonfires and explosions that simultaneously burned beneath Firebase Arterius attracted the attention of the enemy. The Reapers had previously decided to simply leave the cut-off krogan defenders to wither within Reaper-held territory after successive failed attempts to take Firebase Arterius with ground troops, at least until a Reaper capital ship could be spared to simply bombard the firebase and its krogan defenders.

Few of the turian fireteams made it to their designated sectors as enemy forces intercepted them enroute. The Reaper ambush was remarkably efficient despite fighting from lower ground; as Cannibals began to move up the more obvious mountain paths, soaking up attention and damage from the turian fireteams that decided to bunker down, human Husks scaled the mountain cliffs and blindsided the turian defenders. Marauders, taking advantage of the turians having to engage in melee with the Husks, followed shortly afterwards, levitating over cliffs and achieving excellent flanking positions. Ordinix found himself having to fight off closing Husks while trying to find cover between two overlapping fields of fire between Marauders and Cannibals.

Back at Firebase Arterius, headquarters was being bombarded with sudden reports that the mountain, previously a relatively quiet position, was suddenly swarming with enemy troops. Individual fireteams thought they were being swarmed by the enemy when they were, in fact, simply caught between efficiently overlapping fields of fire. Their subjective reports ensured that headquarters could not get a complete picture of the situation, leading to the assumption that the enemy force was vastly larger than it really was, and that turian positions were being completely overrun. Tactical retreats were haphazardly ordered as Firebase Arterius' batteries bombarded the mountain it was on. Friendly forces, unable to displace without making themselves vulnerable and caught on narrow mountain paths with little room to maneuver, were caught in the bombardment area. The 163rd corporal in Ordinix's fireteam got caught in one of the blasts, and was subsequently thrown off the mountain, plummeting to his death.

This haphazard bombardment, a misguided attempt to cut losses, lasted until reinforcements from the 18th Mountaineer Legion were able to provide a better picture for headquarters. The batteries fell silent as mortars replaced them, more manageable explosive rounds zeroing in on the advancing enemy as the 18th and the 163rd began a systematic leapfrog tactical retreat back up to Firebase Arterius, one fireteam providing cover fire for the other fireteam pulling further back up the mountain. The mortars kept enemy ambushers from pursuing further up the mountain, or so the turians thought, allowing the Ordinix to relax as the two fireteams began a more casual jog up the mountain path. Therefore, the only warning they received was a sudden scream from the 18th Mountaineer Legion's service chief as a Brute ambushed them and opened its attack by crushing the service chief under its massive claw.

"So here we were," Ordinix said, "two fireteams blindsided by a Brute that had shown up out of nowhere that fire support had missed, and we're all trying to figure out which way to run, which cover to hide behind, how to shoot it dead with no room to maneuver, when Corporal [Lerrin] Vazanti [of the 163rd Assault Infantry Legion] suddenly reappears above the Brute, jumps down, and plunges a fifteen-centimeter serrated blade into its head."

The blade, a ceremonial ancestral weapon Vazanti carried with him as a good luck charm, plunged deep enough through the Brute's skull and into its brain to permanently terminate its cognitive functions. It fell forward, dead, allowing Vazanti to smoothly get off the Brute's shoulders and remark in a self-satisfied manner, "And the bastards always thought it was a good idea to try to confiscate this from me."

The fireteams exercised greater caution as they fell back to Firebase Arterius, sustaining no further casualties, just in time for the engineers to finish setting up perimeter defenses. For now, they just needed to defend their position and wait for the rest of the 27th Provisional Army to catch up.

¹ Following Saren Arterius becoming a rogue Spectre in 2183, an exceptionally long debate unfolded as to whether or not the firebase's name should be changed. Opponents of the change contended that the firebase was named after the family of distinguished military leaders and not just after Saren, whose services to the galaxy could not be denied even in the face of his eventual fate; proponents contested that the Arterius dynasty was at least partially responsible for causing Saren to go rogue, and challenged claims that the firebase was not named after Saren.

The opening hours of FORWARD FLAME were possibly the most pivotal moment for turian-krogan conventional forces. If the Reapers were able to wipe out the 27th Provisional Army before positions could be consolidated and presence sufficiently dispersed across the planet before Reaper forces could zero in on their positions, then the entire campaign would be another massive failure. Turian forces could handle Reaper ground forces, but they had virtually no answer against enemy capital ships. Therefore, the responsibility was upon the 3rd and 9th Fleets to draw as much attention away from the planet as possible, as one more Reaper ship trying to focus on a dreadnought was one less Reaper ship focusing on the ground campaign.

Having caught on FORWARD FLAME's true intent, the Reapers nevertheless prioritized targeting Hierarchy vessels. For the ground campaign, the Reapers could swiftly replenish their numbers, but the same could not be said for their spaceworthy vessels. This accumulated in more than two hundred ships fighting in low orbit over Palaven, with the three surviving carriers caught right in the middle of the crossfire. The result was reminiscent of Coronati's Fifteen-Minute Plan and the opening hours of conflict in the Trebia System, except it was much larger in scale and far less coordinated. Dozens of Hierarchy ships found themselves swarming in between Reaper formations, unacceptably closer than any capital ship has reason to be with an enemy vessel, where they found themselves with an unexpected and forgotten advantage. While Coronati's Fifteen-Minute Plan had previously been heavily berated for diverting resources to a daring raid near the mass relay that could've been used to defend Palaven instead and thereby possibly prevent a prolonged ground campaign in the first place, a forgotten detail amidst all the criticism was that the Fifteen-Minute Plan had confirmed the Hierarchy's ability to outmaneuver the Reapers at close-range, largely due to the great mass of each individual Reaper ship. At knife-fight range, ships of the 3rd and 9th Fleets found themselves navigating around the blind spots of Reaper ships, giving them free chances to take pot shots with mass accelerators and disruptor torpedoes. Reinforcing Reaper ships stayed at medium range in an attempt to pick off Hierarchy vessels from outside the "furball", but such suppressive fire was limited in effectiveness due to concerns over friendly fire.

Caught in the middle of the furball, the bridge crew of the Example was barely aware that such an advantage existed. "No matter what advantage we enjoyed," Castellus remarked, "there was little comfort to be had in trying to maneuver a kilometer-long vessel that was more hangar than guns and armor through what felt like a cloud of capital ships attempting fighter maneuvers." The acrobatics the ship was pulling also played hell with the Example's artificial gravity, which somehow managed to compensate for the spins the bridge was putting the carrier not meant for them through, but only barely. No crewmember of the Example interviewed failed to bring up how the ship rocked and spun and threatened to pull out the deck from under them from the inside.

The bridge collectively held their breath – or, in some cases, calmly hyperventilated – as hulls of dozens of starships, some of the Reaper ships dwarfing even the Example, brushed uncomfortably close to the carrier. At one point the ship "jumped" violently, a sharp lurch as it tried to brush past a Reaper ship, and Castellus was almost certain that the entire carrier would be torn into two in the next second. Thankfully, the shields took the brunt of the impact, deflecting their respective masses just enough for both vessels to brush past each other with just some dents in the armor.

Navigation wasn't the only problem the 3rd and 9th Fleet faced. In theory, they enjoyed the advantage of maneuverability over the Reapers, but they were still caught in orbit around Palaven with a dense concentration of firepower. The turians were not immune to friendly fire either, and although the Reapers were large targets, trying to align the guns on large starships while weaving between enemy ships was hardly an easy venture. It worked out decently for frigates and carriers, ships that were more reliant on disruptor torpedoes that could be launched from a wide variety of angles. For dreadnoughts like the Vigilant of the 9th Fleet, however, this meant trying to align their main mass accelerator with their targets was nearly impossible. ² Ixius and Castellus did what they could to guide the Example through the fighting with a steady hand. "We had learned very quickly that complex, daring raids didn't work very well against the Reapers," explained Castellus, justifying their lack of creative tactics in the campaign, "as they tended to outthink us very quickly. In space, it was better to stick with the basics, cover the fundamentals, and hope that would be enough."

It still meant that the ships were all wading through a sea of fire. "Looking out any viewport on any vessel caught in the fighting," Vadim declared, "seeing all the mass accelerator rounds and disruptor torpedoes and Reaper beams lighting up the black, and you can't help but wonder how the fuck you're not dead five minutes ago." That they were fighting in the upper atmosphere arguably made it look even worse, as fires and explosions burned with smoke and ash, giving that entire portion of space a hellish glow.

Even as he relayed orders to the bridge crew, Castellus felt unbearably tense, always expecting their maneuvers to just come an angle short, expecting them to crash into a ship twice their size, expecting them to be gutted by a shot – from their enemies or their allies – that would gut the Example instantly. Ixius, by contrast, seemed as icy calm as she always did, something that her executive officer felt was surreal, at least until he noticed just how tightly her fingers were clenched upon the armrests of the bridge's hot seat. "Strangely enough," Castellus observed, "I think that was the one moment throughout my entire career with her that I realized I really respected her, that one very personable reaction." Then, wryly, "It was probably also the moment where I really wanted to run for the restrooms."

Whatever advantage the 3rd and 9th Fleets enjoyed, however, it was largely a reprieve from what would've otherwise been a one-sided slaughter. Reaper forces were still converging on their location, prioritizing Hierarchy ships above all else, and their position left them far from support that simply could not be extended so far from Menae and Nanus. Ship commanders were insistent that the staying would be a waste of good ships, which left operation headquarters in a bit of a conundrum. Communications with forces planetside were difficult enough as was. Even when the Hierarchy had ships relatively close to Palaven itself, it was difficult trying to maintain communications with the squad of Migrant Fleet Marines that had gone to repair and reactivate Communications Relay 227. With the fleet ready to withdraw from Palaven's orbit now that the 27th Provisional Army had been deployed planetside, Coronati felt that there was no more reason to risk dozens of ships and thousands of lives to get into a ship-to-ship slugfest with the Reapers.

Resvirix disagreed vehemently; pulling the fleet out from low orbit was almost certainly mean a tentative end to communications between operational headquarters over Nanus and the ground forces on Palaven, thus depriving Army Command of being able to maintain operational control of FORWARD FLAME. He insisted that maintaining a continued naval presence above Palaven was vital to the ground operation, not only in terms of communications groundside, but also orbital strikes and air support that the 27th had been briefed on before deployment. To the general, the solution was to send more ships, the 12th or the 13th Fleet in their entirety, into the fray to help support the fleets' holding positions. But the ships were ultimately Coronati's, and he insisted the 27th Provisional Army were prepared to make autonomous, independent decisions if cut off from Nanus, a circumstance operation planners had anticipated and prepared for.

For the 3rd and 9th Fleets, orders for a tactical retreat were a godsend. Eager to disengage, regroup, and resupply, the fleets began to pull back to Nanus, fully aware that they would have to make strafing return trips eventually to provide orbital strikes for ground forces. But having been entangled with Reaper positions in low orbit, Hierarchy ships faced great navigational hazards in their retreat to Nanus. Excluding the eleven ships that had been destroyed trying to deploy the 27th Provisional Army to Palaven (including the carrier Whirlwind), another seven ships were shot down trying to move out of Palaven's low orbit.

² A popular rumor that persisted in the Hierarchy Navy was that Admiral Lantiar and the Vigilant were deliberately placed in the middle of the heavy fighting, instead of with the rest of the command staff in orbit over Nanus, as a direct result of his responsibility over the fiasco that was Operation: WHISKEY CORRIDOR. While the likely explanation was that he had personally volunteered for the duty to redeem himself of his previous shortcomings, a popular theory that the brass has since failed to dissuade amongst the enlisted was that High Command in general and Coronati in particular had specifically placed Lantiar there as punishment for his failures. Lantiar himself has since been silent on the issue.

Twenty-three hours had passed since the operation began, and while entire units were still displaced or even missing, a sufficient number of turians and krogan had made it to the staging areas to begin the next phase of the operation. Communications with operation headquarters on the Defender over Nanus was suboptimal, but field commanders already had standing orders which they could work with in the event Admiral Coronati or General Resvirix could not be reached. Combat operations for FORWARD FLAME would commence in five hours, a full Palaven day since the Indomitable jumped into the area of operations and kickstarted the campaign to retake the turian homeworld.

The commissioned officers would have preferred that their men take advantage of these five hours to get as much rest as possible, but there was too much excitement all around for such to be possible. For the enlisted, especially the newer replacements that had come in, there was a sense of accomplishment as everyone shared information and attempted to piece together what had happened in what was fast becoming a highly fragmented first stage of Operation: FORWARD FLAME. Given that many of the turians had jumped into battle with a great sense of desperation, the fact that they managed to survive not only a hilariously incompetent glider mass landing but also find any staging area at all seemed to offer a sense of resigned solace. With expectations of how well they could've performed rather low, the enlisted looked upon their misadventures across Palaven with more amusement than dismay. "Never have I seen a crowd of imbeciles so enthusiastically cheerful in boasting how badly they got lost on their own planet," mused [Service Chief] Gerik Ferandaris [of the 38th Heavy Infantry Legion, 77th Armored Division].

Of course, for the krogan who had already set up advance positions on Palaven days before FORWARD FLAME, the chance to rest as they stood relieved by turian reinforcements were welcome, and no krogan objected to the overenthusiasm of the Hierarchy's recruits.

For the commanders, however, there was little reason to celebrate. They were already nine hours behind schedule, and as far as they could tell, entire companies were still missing across several continents, either because they had gotten lost or killed. They managed to find some comfort in the fact that large numbers of turian infantrymen who were too far from their rendezvous zone elected to stay and support local units, as opposed to trying to find a way to their parent unit. As things stood, however, this promised to be the ultimate test of the flexibility of turian military doctrine, and how well the Hierarchy could cope with unexpected situations. Unit commanders tried to organize and reincorporate the misplaced men into their own battlegroups, but there were altogether too many combatants from too many units to try to make heads or tails out of the full roster, so those being reincorporated were simply told to obey the orders of whichever commanding officer was available at any given time.

On the matter of sleep and the krogan, it was highly unlikely in either case that the turians would be getting much sleep anyways, at least for those in Khronus. As turian and krogan alike continued to gather around Cerenys Stadium, the krogan warlords still waiting for the go-code to move out suddenly began to slam their massive hammers into the ground in rhythmic unison. Massive clumps of hardened metal, it was a weapon large enough to almost function as a rear shield when attached to the back of krogan armor, and nearly impossible to wield by anyone other than a warlord in heavily modified combat power armor. Many turians had considered it to be a highly impractical weapon given its size and weight, especially with the presence of fabrication technology, but that had never stopped the warlords from smashing anything in their way since the Rachni War, if not before.

The hammers coming down onto the ground in what looked like a violent swing, so practiced it seemed almost ritualized, caused nearly everyone at the Cerenys Stadium staging area to jump in alarm as it first began, a massive, overwhelming crack of metal thunder sounding like it came from everywhere at once. "Anyone within half a kilometer who claims that their testicles didn't jump a few centimeters or so into the air when those hammers came down is a damned liar," Gianthis recalled.

Eventually, the abuse of steel against earth went steady as it became almost something like the beat of a war drum, and the initial alarm passed. The 27th Provisional Army knew that Reaper forces were likely incapable of feeling fear, and thus the sound of unified warhammers would likely have no effect on their "morale". Nevertheless, it somehow managed to raise the spirits of the gathering turian-krogan army. "Fucking hammers," Optimi chuckled in her interview. "Impractical as all hell, but you can't help but to be impressed that you've got that much excessive power on your side, even if the krogan seem all too happy to abuse the ground with them for no reason at all." (Most of the veterans interviewed for Of Steels and Talons, both turian and krogan alike, could not recall ever knowing why the warlords started this episode with their hammers. To this day, despite plenty of goading and drinks, the surviving krogan warlords have remained almost coyly reticent on the matter.)

With the morale-raiser the latest in a chain of events that seemed to symbolize galactic solidarity between old racial archenemies, it was easy to be lulled into a false impression that a few weeks brought an end to turian-krogan tensions. Naysayers didn't have to wait long; while making preparations for the offensive phase of FORWARD FLAME, [Corporal Shari] Velius, stationed with the rest of the 18th Mountaineer Legion in the adjacent district of Langriss, witnessed an altercation between a group of turian resistance fighters and krogan soldiers that was quickly getting ugly. The turians accused the krogan of looting the bodies of the resistance dead, while the latter did not even bother to deny it, pointing out that those killed would not need mortal belongings anymore. Hierarchy officers had to forcibly break up the fight at the risk of bruised egos and actual bruises, trying to quarter the krogan army with the bulk of the 18th Mountaineer Legion and away from the Langriss resistance cells.

Rumors began to abound that the Reapers were flushing the planet's atmosphere with toxins to weaken the turian's capabilities to fight. These were, of course, rumors completely unsubstantiated by the HDI, especially since Admiral Cerivix couldn't make contact with ground forces to update them on developing situations. But, on the same vein, the HDI couldn't stop the rumors from spreading like a wildfire, and so the turians began to uniformly put on their helmets and activate anti-biochemical warfare protocols in their armor. It was decided that, at the very least, it protected turian lungs from all the ash and dust that had been kicked up into the atmosphere since the beginning of the Reaper War. The importance of this only seemed to be highlighted as Reapers began to set fire to areas on Palaven, particularly the areas the 27th Provisional Army was expected to advance on, most likely as a demoralization tactic. The smoke and ash being tossed into the atmosphere made the entire planet look like it was thrown into an eternal night, with heavy clouds reflecting hellishly orange flames on the ground. Each turian infantryman had their own mission clocks on their omni-tools, but not being able to see the Trebian sun through the entire day felt like a disorientating experience nonetheless.

The Reapers didn't simply leave the staging areas be. Many Reaper battlegroups had managed to regroup, beginning a ground assault on various staging areas before the 27th were ready to move out. The crossfire was intense, with Ravagers first bombarding the area, providing covering fire as Cannibals charged ahead to soak up hits and allow Marauders to move into flanking positions. Still, the 27th fluidly exploited their terrain advantage as the turians and krogan quickly got to work. In every instance, turian-krogan forces concentrated fire on the approaching enemies from higher positions and reinforced barricades, with the heavy guns tearing opposing forces to shreds. Air support from surviving gunships was readily available, as was artillery fire. Cheers from the defenders came up across the planet as enemy fire was swiftly silenced, although unit commanders were certain that the Reapers were simply testing the 27th Provisional Army, and found themselves more worried about precisely how many more of these large battlegroups the Reapers probably had.

By the end of twenty-eight hours, a full Palaven day, the 27th Provisional Army, a mix of battle-hardened, highly-motivated turian and krogan forces, were fully ready to move out to retake their designated territories, supported by millions of resistance fighters across the planet. Entire legions began to march out of their staging areas, armed to the teeth, a stream of steel flowing through the ashes of a war-torn homeworld. Ekyriat recalled the scene as she and Smirian, still manning their undermanned defensive position, watched columns of turian and krogan infantrymen march past towards the flames on the horizon, awed at the greatest military mobilization groundside they had ever seen in their lifetimes.

In spite of the odds, there was a great sense of confidence in the men. "We didn't do half bad yesterday," Ferandaris encouraged his buddies even as they marched into the fray, working to quell their feelings of anxiety, "and that was just a regrouping maneuver. Now that we're actually going on the offensive, we're going to kick ass."

No long periods of rest could be afforded for the special operations teams that were still making their way across Reaper-controlled territories across Palaven, however, still crawling their way to the staging areas where resistance forward teams were waiting to deliver the payload. There was little room for error, so Ravakian proceeded as slowly as the circumstances would allow. Blackwatch snipers continued leapfrog surveillance tactics a block ahead of the team proper, remaining hidden and relaying intelligence back to 2nd Platoon, allowing Ravakian and Helsrang to strategize their approach on a block-by-block basis. It involved much endurance, discipline, and – above all – patience. "I was surprised to see the krogan not bitching at the fact we were taking it nice and slow, safe," Helsrang recalled. "But I suppose having a lifespan in the range of a thousand years doesn't get you worked up over things."

By contrast, the forward element of the 49th Reconnaissance Legion involved in SLENDER SCALPEL was beginning to worry that they were behind schedule. They had to take a length detour after realizing that their initial infiltration route was saturated with Reaper forces, apparently one of the enemy's staging areas. The detour forced them to cross district lines into Langriss District, the area of operations for the infiltration element of the 18th Mountaineer Legion, which also had units trying to smuggle warp bombs to resistance forward teams. Commander Paratid ordered the 49th to hold up and hole into a nearby building to catch a breath, which would give him some time to reassess how they were going to get back on track now that a detour had waylaid them into a completely different district.

Hunkering down in the ruins for concealment and cover, the turians and krogan began to break out rations as they caught a quick break. Tiredly, Siritii looked the scene over, and couldn't help but find a great deal of humor in about four dozen turians and krogan hunkered down in close quarters, resting right next to a few warp bombs. "Setups for a joke don't get more bizarre than this," he observed. A service chief thought it'd be really funny to pass the krogan dextro rations without actually telling them. Siritii sharply told her to knock it off. "Not on this operation," he growled.

Lookouts spotted movement in the distance, causing the 49th to tense and immediately take defensive positions. Like every special operations unit involved in SLENDER SCALPEL, they were caught in a situation where they feared having to take out any Reaper unit at all. It had long been confirmed that each and every individual Reaper unit was being tracked by command-and-control protocols on each Reaper capital ship, and that even a stealth kill was enough to alert the enemy to friendly positions, just by virtue of an allied unit going offline. As such, the forward element of the 49th felt extraordinarily helpless, knowing that defensive positions were necessary, but also knowing there would be grave consequences for the entire operation across Palaven with no recourse should any of the infiltration teams be detected.

Short glimpses of movement in the distance betrayed a slow, methodical approach that contrasted to the lightning-fast assaults Reaper forces favored to overwhelm the enemy. Paratid suspected that the unknown units in the distance were in fact turian, and sent a runner in the form of Corporal Nithus Heltii to ascertain the situation. It was a calculated risk; should the unknown units actually be Reaper forces, and should Heltii be detected, the enemy might assume he was a lone straggler lost in the landings of FORWARD FLAME as opposed to part of an infiltration effort targeting Reaper capital and processing ships.

The 49th collectively held its breath as Heltii ran down the ruined streets and disappeared within the debris, their guns aimed down the urban corridor. Only after three minutes did he finally return with another turian, Operations Chief Lonn Syphiat, who indicated that the rest of the forward element of the 18th Mountaineer Division was just a block away, also attempting to smuggle their precious cargo to the local resistance. Keeping their respective teams hidden in cover, a few back-and-forth exchanges via runner finally allowed the 49th and the 18th to come to an arrangement: The two forward infiltration teams would proceed together further down the district, with the 18th walking the 49th to an alternative path where the latter could return to their original area of operations. Now the 49th had to help minimize their profile and avoid detection for two forward teams, but at least they weren't as lost as they were before.

As far as 2nd Platoon, E Company, Blackwatch was concerned, there were few navigational problems. The intelligence compiled for Khronus District was highly detailed, and the infiltration team had no detours to make, taking advantage of several underground routes existing in the form of surviving tunnels or cave-ins of buildings and city blocks. Emerging from one of these underground routes, 2nd Platoon found itself at the bottom of what was effectively a crater from Reaper bombardment, the platoon having emerged from the half cluttered with the ruins of metropolitan buildings. Making their way to the edge of the crater where there was cover involved covering nearly fifty meters of open ground, but the snipers providing overwatch detected no enemy forces. Ravakian ordered her rifleman to make the dash towards the crater's rim, where the terrain was more defensible, and where they could provide a base of fire when the krogan followed while carrying the warp bombs.

Despite being weighed down by a ridiculous amount of equipment, the riflemen managed to cross the distance within ten seconds, setting up a base of fire right at the edge of the crater, peering over the edge and down the ruined streets of Khronus. Still no contact. 2nd Platoon chose to continue their cover-and-maneuver tactics, except the moment Ravakian began to lead her squads up onto their feet, over the crater's rim, and down the street, several Marauders suddenly appeared from inside some of the ruins ahead, having turned the corner themselves. They were apparently just a particularly large patrol that did not actually expect Blackwatch to be here, but had instantly detected their presence the moment both sides simultaneously established visual contact with each other.

It was not so much a tactical blunder as it was an unfortunate coincidence. The snipers on overwatch from their elevated positions had prioritized watching for mobile enemy units on the streets that could corner 2nd Platoon, and therefore could not see the incoming enemy forces moving through the block's lower levels obscured by the same ruins that had hidden 2nd Platoon. On the ground, both turian and Reaper forces had emerged from cover at the same time. This was still a situation that greatly favored the Reapers, however, as 2nd Platoon found themselves facing the possibility that their attempt at remaining undetected ruined, a possibility that could cause enemy forces to converge with overwhelming force and intercept their precious cargo.

But in the split-second it took for Blackwatch and Reaper forces to open fire on each other, Ravakian assessed the situation in the way seasoned, experienced commanders did, taking in the entire scenario in an instant glimpse even as she was instinctively raising her Phaeston to bear and dropping to a crouch. The krogan behind her were still making their way out of the skyscraper ruins, keeping them – and, perhaps more importantly, the warp bombs – out of the Reapers' line of sight. From the perspective of the enemy, Ravakian and the rest of 2nd Platoon were simply either turian stragglers or an advance scouting party penetrating relatively far into Reaper lines. In fact, that the Reaper forces couldn't see the krogan with them only served to enhance that perception, as reinforcements from Tuchanka caught so far outside Hierarchy staging areas might have incurred suspicion.

Blackwatch managed to get the first shots off as riflemen on the ground swiftly picked off the first of the enemy to have emerged from cover with bursts of rifle fire. Almost immediately, the precise shots were turning into a cacophony of rapid gunfire as enemy forces suddenly seemed to surge in from the ruins ahead of the turians, attracted to their presence. Blackwatch snipers, having no shot, quickly descended from the top floors of whatever building they were providing overwatch in, trying to get a better angle from which to put in some shots into the lower levels. Three seconds ago, the entire area had been quiet for hours; now, angry blue and red lines were crisscrossing across the street from the two ruined city blocks.

Certain that the rest of the platoon was putting down a sufficient base of fire, Ravakian pulled back and slid back down the ridge at the top of the inclined, taking cover and shooting back. She turned to the nearest NCO near her, found [Operations Chief Jacia] Navarian firing into the Reaper line right next to her. "Chief!" she shouted, grabbing Navarian by the shoulder. "Tell the krogan to get the fuck out of here and head for the RZ before the Reapers spot them! We'll play decoy and hold the line!"

Navarian nodded, slid down the incline towards the approaching krogan, who had heard the gunshots and were already climbing up from the ruins to assist. "This is one of those moments where you take a look and realize maybe Navarian wasn't the best call to make in hindsight," Fidellin laughed in an interview, recalling the moment he turned around to watch the turian operations chief move towards the krogan. In a way, Navarian was ideal for an infiltrator, being physically short for a turian, coming up at only one hundred fifty-nine centimeters. It made her ideal for concealing her profile or squeezing into spots taller infiltrators couldn't. It did not, however, make her ideal for stopping a line of krogan charging up the incline. "So you have this tiny turian running downhill trying to stop a bunch of krogan maybe twice her height, and you get this sense of dread, like watching a kid about to be run over by a truck, but you're also thinking about how hilarious it would be to watch it happen."

It didn't happen, thankfully. Although Navarian was short, the fact that she was coming down a hill gave her the elevation advantage needed to be spotted by the krogan commandos, who quickly stopped. One of them, however, apparently having missed the fact that his teammates had halted in their tracks, was still charging ahead. So Navarian did what no one expected her to do: She jumped and latched onto the krogan. There was no way she could've possibly tackled down a krogan, of course, except she was hanging onto his tail, being dragged along the ground as he ran, and it was only then that the krogan commando realized someone was trying to get him to stop, pausing just in time before he revealed his position at the top of the incline.

After getting Navarian to release the krogan's tail, the operations chief quickly told Urdnot that 2nd Platoon would hold the line and act as decoy, giving Malgus Company the chance to sneak off towards the rendezvous zone alone to meet up with Khronus resistance forward teams. The krogan retreated back into the ruins even as Ravakian began to move 2nd Platoon southwards, drawing the enemy away from the krogan and their mission-vital warp bombs. The direction was not random; aside from luring the Reaper forces away from the direction Malgus Company needed to go, mission maps showed that the ruins southward were more defensible, with few open spaces that would favor overwhelming enemy firepower, but not so concentrated that heavy fire would collapse the ruins on top of 2nd Platoon. Ravakian also deduced that it was likely an area that the 27th would attempt to control – therefore a good spot to hold for possible reinforcements – although without intimate knowledge of the 27th Provisional Army's mission plan or a line of communication with any of their commanding officers, this was only a deduction at best and hopeful thinking at worst.

It was one of the few ground campaigns in the Reaper War where the Hierarchy enjoyed the advantage of the initiative. The invasion of Palaven came as a surprise to the Reapers, and while their numbers still vastly outnumbered that of the 27th Provisional Army, they had been spread thin across the planet to counter local insurgencies, and needed more than a day to adequately regroup. The lack of capital ship support, with most Reaper ships bogged down with harvesting operations or in space, ensured that Reaper ground forces were insufficiently prepared to launch any coordinated offensive, even though the turian push forward was very much behind schedule.

By no means did this suggest that Reaper resistance was anything but ferocious. There were still enough enemy forces on the main line of resistance that the turian-krogan army had to arduously claw their way through their advance. From each theater across the planet, descriptions of combat with Reaper forces were generally uniform: Intense, nonstop house-to-house fighting across each and every street and block at a time. Tracers seemed to engulf the world, saturating the air as slugs whizzed by everywhere, the carnage increasingly obvious as the fighting moved into the close-quarters interior of Palaven's metropolitan ruins. The offensive push was arguably effective, but casualties were heavy as the 27th Provisional Army was caught in a deadly crossfire that seemed to offer no room for respite. Aside from the sound of gunfire coming from every possible direction, artillery strikes from rear guns manned by the turian resistance tried to soften up approaching enemy reinforcements. Such bombardments were infrequent given the limited amount of artillery pieces the resistance had to work with, but according to Optimi, "The infrequency of the shells landing made it difficult to dismiss as mere background noise, and only serve to remind us of the hell we had landed in."

Velius recalled wishing the 18th Mountaineer Legion had brought submachine guns instead. "Most of the fighting was done by kicking down doors and shooting through walls," she described. "There was a lot of shooting, but much of it was at a distance so close, most of us were coated from head to toe with enemy blood by the time we got down one city block. A lot of the gunfire came through the walls with no warning at all. They weren't even shots aimed at us, just general shots coincidentally passing through our general direction because that much gunfire was being thrown about. Every now and then, you'd get people cut down left and right from stray gunfire coming from nowhere, and there wasn't a thing you could do about it. With the amount of tracers and muzzle flashes you could see everywhere down the street and in the buildings, you know every single company was having that exact same problem. We were fighting through an infestation."

For the turians, this was a war very far removed from any conventional definition of military engagements. Turians, like most other military forces, were accustomed to engaging the enemy with precise bursts of assault rifle and sniper fire from a hundred meters away or more, often with heavy fighter and gunship support to soften up the opposition in the face of an advancing friendly line. This was particularly difficult to pursue because Palaven was far too urban and tight for engagements to venture into the range of a hundred meters or more, because Reaper forces favored swarming conventional defenses with mid-to-close-range tactics, and because air and artillery support was distressingly sparse, in spite of tireless efforts from the turian resistance. These were hallmarks of the Reaper War that made conventional conflict look more like a human war vid than an actual sound fighting doctrine. The krogan, on the other hand, were quite comfortable with close-quarters combat, and showed no reservation in tearing up enemy forces along with the local scenery with their shotguns and heavy weapons.

The 38th Heavy Infantry Legion was one of the outfits that found themselves very much out of their comfort zones in all the fighting. Largely a collection of riflemen and engineers carrying heavy machine guns, anti-armor weaponry, and explosives, their role was generally to lay down a field of heavy suppressive fire from long range while taking out enemy armor. But there were few areas that permitted long-range engagements, forcing the 38th into tight quarters that were ill-suited to accommodate their heavy weapons.

Optimi, by contrast, was quite comfortable with urban house-to-house combat. Her last posting with the 38th was on Taetrus after the Vallum Blast, where hastatim squads were responsible for escorting disarmed civilians from urban population hubs to safe camps, and executing those who didn't. With hastatim qualifications, her experiences as part of the "Cremators" and the "Burial Agency" (derogative nicknames given to them by turian separatists, likely in fear) against Facinus sympathizers gave her an edge in close-quarters combat. The fact that she didn't have to worry about demanding the Marauders to disarm and await transportation was a plus, as she only had to point and shoot. It didn't stop occupational habits from coming up at unexpected and careless moments, though, and – to her embarrassment – she inadvertently shouted into a building her team was entering, announcing their entry and ordering any occupants inside to come out.

Three corporals behind her laughed at the slip-up. "What are you, ma'am? Hastatim?"

Optimi coldly glared back and answered, "Yes." The laughing stopped very quickly.

In spite of such doctrinal difficulties, early results from the initial offensive were good. The concentration of turian-krogan forces around each staging area allowed them to organize heavy offenses against relatively unsecured enemy positions. In conjunction with resistance forces, the 27th Provisional Army maintained a clean-and-sweep strategy, with the turian-krogan joint-army handling the brunt of the offensive, while the resistance would follow right behind them, eliminating Reaper stragglers missed by the 27th in the first push, and holding down logistical lines and defensive positions. Thermal clips, munitions, and heavy guns for fire support were brought in closer to the front block-by-block as the 27th advanced. Millions of turians supporting the 27th made their intent clear: No turian or krogan keeping his finger jammed on the trigger of his gun would ever want for thermal clips, ammunition blocks, rockets, or other munitions. The 27th ensured that the efforts of the resistance did not go to waste, ensuring that every thermal clip moved to the front was put to good use, although Reaper forces were able to answer with a heavy concentration of gunfire of their own.

At the rate shots were being discharged, ammunition blocks actually became an issue. In theory, an ammunition block could provide an infantryman with enough shots to last him days, given that the mass accelerator only sheared a grain off a metallic block, but so many turians and krogan were discharging their weapons virtually nonstop against the enemy that it took mere hours for them to have to replace the blocks. Almost universally, no infantryman had ever had to swap ammunition blocks while still in the middle of combat. Unit commanders remembered that there were a large number of replacements, and worried that the younger combatants might have trouble with something that – in more conventional circumstances – could have otherwise been the job of an armory officer. They went up and down the line to make sure that the younger combatants actually knew how to do so, and were relieved to find that the vast majority of them had little trouble beyond habitually trying to insert a new thermal clip instead in the heat of a firefight.

Having to swap ammunition blocks midway through an operation wasn't the only thing new to the turians. Velius had been providing suppressive fire for most of her squadmates for hours when her Phaeston suddenly jolted violently in her hand and began to smoke. Stunned, she thought that the Marauders now came equipped with the capacity to overload weapons. It took a few moments for Velius to eventually figure out that her rifle itself had overheated spectacularly. Thermal clips generally took care of excess heat from the energy generated from each shot, but small arms in general, even with thermal clips, were not designed to handle such nonstop gunfire. The tiny amounts of residual heat the thermal clips could not absorb had accumulated over hours of non-stop shooting, eventually melting the Phaeston's barrel.

A dumbfounded engineer right next to Velius stared at the spectacle, declaring, "I have never seen a gun do that in the past two years since they introduced those clips."

The heavy fighting did see increased turian reliance on krogan manpower. The natives of Tuchanka came far more heavily armored, and were biologically more capable of shrugging off gunfire due to redundant biological systems and regeneration. "You can't really say when or how it started happening," Optimi commented, "and it wasn't like we actually stopped for a minute and butted heads on how to do this. But we eventually got comfortable – without really having to sit down and figure it out – with the krogan being on point, breaching an area while the turians cleared it from just a few steps behind. They soaked up the hits because they could, and we picked off the enemy because we could." The improvised team dynamic and the unspoken, instinctive understanding of each species' strengths and weaknesses seemed to surreally form a quiet sense of camaraderie that seemed to go unnoticed by the rank-and-file when no one pointed it out, but nevertheless led to a highly functional joint-army that was steadily taking back turian ground block-by-block across the planet.

Still, fourteen hours after the first offensive push began, turian-krogan casualties had mounted well into five digits, with the injured and killed amongst the turian resistance suspected to be significantly higher despite staying behind the main line of resistance. For an offensive force that was formally 270,000 strong (accounting for the units that did not escape the Whirlwind's destruction in orbit), the 27th Provisional Army now had serious concerns about how much longer they could sustain a mass offensive, and at what point they were going to have to dig in and minimize casualties for just long enough to patch up the wounded and possibly find replacements on the frontlines from the resistance.

Unlike the rest of the 27th Provisional Army, the turians and krogan stationed at Firebase Arterius did not take part in the initial strikes against Reaper positions. This was not because the battlegroup were less capable, but because their position was highly unfavorable. The Reapers had already known Firebase Arterius to be a major krogan position when the krogan had tried to support the fighting in Paeridia from the firebase, and had the area surrounded with a large amount of Reaper forces well before Operation: FORWARD FLAME. The reinforcements were also relatively limited, meaning the turian-krogan position was very much an outnumbered king-of-the-hill. Isolated from the resistance and the rest of the 27th, the commanding officers in the area decided the best course of action would be to preserve manpower and continue with defensive operations until the 27th had pushed far enough to link Paeridia, the South Peaks, and Firebase Arterius with the rest of the allied positions.

The unexpected lull across the South Peaks happened because the Reapers were still in the process of ascertaining the enemy order of battle. The difficulties in procuring accurate intelligence were due in part because FORWARD FLAME was an unprecedentedly large operation that overwhelmed coherent attempts to put an accurate number on the turian-krogan force. A major contribution, however, was made from the machinations of Vice Admiral Cerivix and the rest of the senior HDI staff, who had long operated under the assumption that the Reapers were easily cracking their encryption algorithms, and so enforced a degree of communications discipline previously considered impossible for an army and operation of such a size. Mission-critical data was kept off communication channels whenever possible, and operation-specific codes were shared beforehand by intelligence officers briefing commanders in person, instead of transmitting such information through narrowband ship-to-ship communiques. This ensured that even if the Reapers were eavesdropping, they would gain very little actionable intelligence.

The result was a coordinated but ultimately less-than-optimal redistribution of Reaper ground forces across Palaven. In a way, the Reapers' strategic brilliance was used against them, and as such, they were unwilling to dedicate manpower on an uninformed offensive save the occasional scouts attempting to gather intelligence. The Reapers knew that the turians and the krogan had a large but outnumbered fighting force on Firebase Arterius, but between the knowledge that the enemy was in a fortified position and the lack of knowledge of just how large the turian-krogan force was, the Reapers simply chose to quarantine the firebase. The containment strategy, which had been enforced ever since the krogan failed to take Paeridia, would be enforced until enough ground forces could be rerouted to the area to crush the turian-krogan defenders, which – until proven otherwise – the Reapers were assuming to be as numerous as Firebase Arterius could possibly host.

This meant that, almost surreally, the defenders of Firebase Arterius were on garrison duty. For some, this was a blessing, as the krogan were entrenched into a fortification with turian reinforcements, and from their elevated position, they watched – rather than endured – the carnage unfolding kilometers away where the 27th was making its gradual planetwide push. For some, however, it was an exercise in boredom. Most of the turians with expectations of serious combat, and while many were anxious at the idea of putting themselves in grave danger, the idea that they were occupying a "rest position" while the rest of the 27th Provisional Army was fighting tooth and talon across the planet was "frustrating". The only real action most of the turians saw was from establishing perimeter security shortly after landing. Now, aside from taking potshots at Reaper scouts, it was largely quiet.

Despite being relatively safe, the lull was somewhat torturous to much of the reinforcements. "No one wants to risk death," explained Ordinix, "but the idea that more than 25,000 of your buddies are out there fighting the good fight while you're stuck up here waiting for a logistical line to be established is more than a little frustrating." His fireteam was growing increasingly restless at the officer's decision to stay put until the strategic situation improved, and while Ordinix remained the good team leader by keeping the younger members of the 18th in check, he admitted, "There was no other place I wanted to be more than beside the 52nd Reconnaissance Legion, trying to deliver the warp bombs to the resistance and taking down the Reapers from the inside."

The original krogan defenders decided to help liven up the mood and alleviate some boredom by coming up with increasingly creative ways to deal with the occasional Reaper team reconnoitering and testing Firebase Arterius' defenses, as well as the unseen quarantine much further down the mountain. The turians found themselves fascinated with many of the krogan weapons, much of which seemed a little crude and far removed from conventional firearms technology, but was nevertheless a great source of amusement. A favorite amongst the turians was the Graal spike thrower, a gun that quite literally launched large flechettes through the air, with grisly results, not unlike the Kishock harpoon gun. The turians – far more accustomed to standard, "efficient" weapons that accelerated a small grain of metal at an enemy – were amused at what they considered a rather primitive weapon, but there was no arguing against the results. Borrowing krogan weapons, the krogan laughed at the turians struggle at aiming a weapon with a much lower muzzle velocity than they were used to, while the turians laughed at the highly messy results each flechette did to a Marauder or Cannibal when it actually landed on-target.

The description of "handheld artillery" was not entirely off-the-mark, and from behind excellent cover the enlisted took turns at haphazardly sending another spike flying towards the next Reaper reconnaissance team. The challenge and difficulty of using the spike thrower at range swiftly turned into a game for turians with few other ways to pass the time. Soon enough, basic flechettes were being complemented with explosives, and much enjoyment was had when Cannibals swarmed in towards a corpse to transform the biomass into armor, only for the remote explosive embedded into the corpse to destroy anyone nearby. "Our positions weren't assailable," remarked Ordinix, "but they were good enough. From atop the firebase's walls, we enjoyed every soldier's dream of shooting without great fear of being shot in return."

Other methods were utilized as a compromise between killing Reapers forces and killing time. With no serviceable vehicles left at Firebase Arterius, the enlisted commandeered now-obsolete combustible fuel barrels and sent them rolling down the mountain. Turians and krogan alike were elated at the comical sight of the occasional barrel catching a Marauder, Husk, or a Cannibal that wasn't quick enough in the face, rolling both down the mountain. Sharpshooters shot at barrels that had descended into a crowd of Reaper ground forces, catching everyone nearby in the subsequent blast. Someone had the bright idea of simply pouring fuel down the mountain and setting it on fire, creating what effectively amounted to small rivers of flame flowing downwards.

Someone grabbed hold of crates full of grenades, and activated their proximity fuses before rolling them all down the mountain. What followed were more explosions than was sanely necessary. "But, quite frankly," Ordinix admitted, "none of us gave two fucks." Everyone was far too busy looking for the next creative, entertaining way to unleash havoc upon their foes until they could carry out a "proper" offensive. The NCOs justified all of this with the fact that most of the resources involved in the hijinks were either obsolete or in abundance. Furthermore, it was inflicting casualty upon the Reapers while keeping morale up. Unit commanders chose to turn a blind eye to the silliness, which continued until a captain came up to check up on what was causing all the explosions. He then proceeded ferociously chew everyone out for causing a scene and attracting undue attention. Apparently, the commissioned officers had not forgotten that their most recent venture with explosives – attempting to destroy the Dragon's Teeth scattered across the perimeter of Firebase Arterius – had gone over badly, and they had no intention of attracting more Reaper attention by setting off even more detonations.

The captain's concerns turned out to be prophetic. A passing Reaper capital ship began to bombard Firebase Arterius with its magnetohydrodynamic weapon, instantly melting much of the equipment and defenses set up around the defensive position. Turian and krogan alike rushed for cover in the subterranean sections of the firebase, hoping that meters of mountain above them would shield the allied forces from such a devastating weapon. Fortunately, the Reaper had barely paid attention to Firebase Arterius, merely attacking it while passing by to deal with the much more pressing threat of the rest of the 27th Provisional Army and their massive offensive. The attack simply coincided with a flyby, ending just as quickly as it had started. Still, a mere thirty seconds of bombardment ensured that casualties skyrocketed to over a hundred turian and krogan wounded and dead.

Ordinix barely managed to jump into the firebase's interior when a magnetohydrodynamic burst struck more than thirty meters away, but even with his shields activated, he managed to feel the extreme heat from that distance, "as though half my face suddenly melted away". He found a safe spot deeper inside the structure, and slumped against the wall next to a krogan who had similarly evacuated inside. The pain on the side of his face was excruciating, but as his fingers came up to check on the wound, Ordinix was at least mildly relieved that his face did not actually melt, although half of it certainly felt a little raw.

The krogan right next to him commented that they were being stupid and that they should never do that again, to which Ordinix agreed. "Totally fucking worth it, though," the krogan added with a shit-eating grin.

"Damn straight," concurred Ordinix.

Reaper capital ships engaging the 27th Provisional Army was a mixed blessing to the special operations forces still sneaking their way into enemy-controlled territories. In many of the operators and infantrymen was the fear that the primary objective of SLENDER SCALPEL – the destruction of as many Reaper ships as possible – would be greatly diminished, if not neutered, by the number of enemy ships that were now engaging Hierarchy ground forces in direct combat, therefore out-of-reach by the advance teams of the turian resistance. On the other hand, now that the fighting had started in earnest, it afforded the infiltration teams a greater margin of error, as a turian-krogan team caught this deep behind enemy lines was less likely to incur suspicion, at least in theory.

This didn't stop the teams from being as careful as possible, however. The forward element of 18th Mountaineer Legion guided their counterparts from the 49th Reconnaissance Legion through the detour, allowing the former to finally leave Langriss, returning to their original AO. Having taken such a roundabout route, conventional wisdom suggested that the 49th haul ass and make their way as quickly to the rendezvous point as possible, but given that the legion had exhausted itself with the detour and had only a rush to look forward to if they were to remain on schedule, Paratid ordered the forward infiltration element to hole into the local ruins to rest up and catch a bit of sleep. Most of the turians and krogan were hyped up on stims, and some matched to catch a quick wink or two from occasional half-hour stops, but such was hardly enough to mitigate the fact that they had been marching and crawling for the last forty-five hours through what was effectively a mortal hell.

Fighting kilometers to their rear made sleep difficult, a constant reminder that the rest of the 27th Provisional Army was buying them time and attracting the bulk of Reaper attention so they could sneak behind enemy lines and deliver their payload. Constant gunfire and explosions rattled through the entire afternoon, signs that the fighting was getting closer. A straggling turian gunship that had flown too far past the main line of resistance attempted to lower altitude to minimize its radar profile, but it was too late to hide itself in the urban jungle of Palaven before a Reaper capital ship, passing by on its way to stop the 27th, fired a magnetohydrodynamic burst at the gunship almost casually. The shot was spot on, sending the gunship plummeting in flames down onto the street the 49th had bunkered down in before it exploded upon landing.

This sent the entire 49th scrambling for their weapons as everyone, turian and krogan, took up defensive positions and tensely waited for a possible attack that ultimately did not come. The Reapers had shot the gunship out of the sky, but aside from the wreckage falling onto the legion's infiltration element, no further casualties were taken, nor any enemy attack mounted. The Reapers did not seem to have noticed the 49th at all, and did not bother to check up on survivors from the gunship. Indeed, when Siritii told ordered his subordinates to check for survivors after nearly five minutes of pointing their guns down the streets, they confirmed that the turian flight crew inside had most likely been killed even before the gunship hit the street.

As the collectively sighed a breath of relief, Siritii realized he was in for more bad news when discovered that the gunship had, in fact, killed Commander Paratid. Having been running on stimulants for more than a day and a half without sleep, he and several others had tried to catch some sleep inside an abandoned café. When the gunship had come crashing down, it came down at an angle that crushed the entirety of the small establishment before its fuel tanks detonated just as an extra measure, ensuring no one inside survived.

"Zurik had been with the 49th since the beginning," wrote Siritii with a hint of bitterness in recollection in his own book, Miracle Workers. "The lieutenant commander was something of a legend. He was there in the sieges of Pelvark and Roniae, at the forefront of Operation: PALE CROSSFIRE. On Menae, he personally ran through a throng of Reaper ground forces to manually detonate faulty explosives before running right back to get back into the fight. The noncoms of the legion were ready to testify to his insane bravery and just as insane competence. Turians don't come better trained than the Old Bastard. Yet as much of a hero he was, Zurik was killed as the legion stopped somewhere they thought to be safe to take a breath, his death a merely a stray afterthought of Fate, who thought dropping a gunship on him when no one expected it would be funny."

As it turned out, the crash had managed to kill not only Paratid, but the staff lieutenants who acted as the forward element's executive officers. With most of the senior officers dead, the survivors quickly took a tally of the remaining officers before realizing that Siritii was the ranking turian officer on the team. Lieutenant Tarquin Siritii, normally not one given to profanities, reacted as rationally as anyone in his position would, providing a deadpan reply: "Oh, fuck."

With the officers dead and the element short on time, Siritii decided that they had no more time or manpower to spare, and ordered the 49th to leave their current position as soon as possible. No sooner had the forward element evacuated from their rest positions did the structures behind them begun to collapse, the fighting and the gunship having weakened the structural supports of the local buildings, sending tons of steel plummeting down, crushing and caving in the streets. Had Siritii not canceled their rest and moved the element out of the buildings, most of them would have been crushed, and their mission would have been a failure. Taking advantage of the dust that had picked up from the collapse, the 49th remained hidden on their way towards their rendezvous point.

In Carratine District, Urdnot Nakmor had made the most out of the chance Blackwatch had given Malgus Company. His men itched for a fight, but he ensured that they kept their bloodlust in check until they completed their primary objective. For extra motivation, Urdnot reminded his commandos that most of their weapons were ill-suited for anything outside close-range fighting, and close-range fighting was a terrifically horrible idea when the company was carrying warp bombs meant to take out an entire Reaper capital ship. Malgus Company behaved. (Technically, the warp bombs being carried by all infiltration elements across Palaven had been deactivated and dismantled prior to the operation to prevent premature detonation, and to save the resistance the time to dismantle the warp bombs into pieces they could smuggle into the Reaper camps. Urdnot, having known this, tactfully neglected to mention this detail to his men.)

By no means was sneaking across kilometers of the ruins of Palaven an easy task, especially when it was done with very little rest across two Palaven days. By the time night fell, however, Malgus Company finally reached their rendezvous point, an abandoned factory where the turian resistance smuggling team in Carratine District was supposed to be meeting them. Night had already fallen for the second time since SLENDER SCALPEL began, which allowed for the resistance to sneak up onto them, guns shouldered, and confirm that the incoming krogan were not, in fact, Reaper Brutes. Among the resistance smugglers were Achtus and Kylonis, both of whom had joined the smuggling team to see the resistance's efforts through. Achtus expressed surprise; he had thought it would be turians who would be delivering the warp bombs to his door.

"Your boys got stuck in a pile of shit to make sure we could get this to you," grunted Urdnot, passing the warp bombs over to the resistance, "so you'd better make it fucking count." Kylonis assured the krogan that her teams had been practicing for days to perfect this exact operation, and that they would see things through to the end. With their primary objective concluded, the Malgus Company pulled out from the area to rejoin the advance of the 27th Provisional Army, decreasing the chances of the resistance smuggling teams being discovered. Operation: SLENDER SCALPEL, at least in Khronus, was over for the special forces operators.

That didn't mean they were out of danger, however. Even if one discounted the dangerous trek Malgus Company needed to make to return to friendly lines, 5th Special Operations Group Blackwatch's 2nd Platoon was still stuck in a firefight, caught behind Reaper lines and trying to draw attention away from Malgus Company. For almost a full day, as Reaper forces tried to triangulate on their exact position on box 2nd Platoon in, Ravakian led the enemy on a chase, fully utilizing hit-and-run tactics while keeping Blackwatch moving at full speed. The result was not unlike a run-and-gun battle, which normally would be highly discouraged by conventional wisdom, had the Hierarchy's premier special operations unit cared more about conventional wisdom. Converging Reaper forces always attempted to give chase, only to realize that the turians had broken their cordon long before the Reapers had a chance to close it.

Ravakian's tactics was not an attempt at heroics. While it was true that she was ready to sacrifice 2nd Platoon if it meant the Reapers would never notice Malgus Company, much of her concerns were much more pragmatic. Caught behind enemy lines with no support, 2nd Platoon was severely outnumbered, benefitting only from the fact that they were the best the turians had to offer, and performed exceptionally even when mobile. Determined to remain a distraction and a thorn at the Reapers' side in Khronus, Ravakian denied the Reapers any advantage they may have had with numbers, masterfully chaining together a series of tactical retreats that left pursuing Reaper units vulnerable to guerilla attacks and incapable of flanking 2nd Platoon.

But such tactics could only last so long, and while 2nd Platoon remained highly effective during daytime, by the time night fell, the Reapers had finally reorganized their ground forces sufficiently to counter the threat posed by the 27th, and the increased Reaper presence in Carratine District meant a tactical retreat in any direction ultimately fell into a Reaper defensive position. Ravakian had 2nd Platoon fall back into a more defensible position, hiding in the Wesitria Shopping Complex and maintaining a fluid defensive position that involved denying the Reapers access into the buildings, and then whittling them down with hit-and-run tactics when breakthrough was achieved, as the 27th in Carratine District – specifically the 77th Armored Division – were only believed to be only kilometers away.

A full day of repairs and resupplies over the shipyards of Nanus helped bring much of the 3rd and 9th Fleets back to combat effectiveness. This was good for General Resvirix, who finally managed to convince Admiral Coronati that the 27th Provisional Army needed immediate support in the form of orbital bombardment. Communications were still down, but distance and atmospheric interference made it difficult to ascertain details, telescopes and cameras over Nanus could confirm that the fighting had gotten fierce enough that Reaper capital ships were moving in to support their own ground troops by bombarding the 27th.

With the 3rd Fleet having completed more of its repairs and resupplies than the 9th, Coronati sent the 3rd and the 13th Fleets to make the attack run. Both fleets would separately make their independent flybys over intersecting orbits that would include the airspaces of most of the planet's hotspots. Dreadnoughts and cruisers would be at the vanguard of the flyby, acting as a shield and scoring as many shots on defending Reaper ships as possible, accompanied by fighter and drone support from the carriers defended by the 12th Fleet in the rear. The vanguard would clear the way for the frigates taking up the rear, which would conduct a low-orbit flyby and concentrate its guns groundside, bombarding Reaper ground forces with a combination of mass accelerator rounds and Thanix discharges.

The need for such a daring strategy was not inspired from bravado, but from increased complications for the fleet in naval operations. The Reapers had increased their orbital presence, clearly intending to bar the Navy and further passage around Palaven in an attempt to the operational commanders from the ground forces planetside, with the long-term strategy of whittling down the numbers of the 27th through a campaign of attrition. This made accurate bombardment from even hundreds kilometers away difficult, to say nothing of thousands expected from extreme range bombardment, and a mass accelerator rounded that landed on the 27th was worse than one not being fired at all; any closer and the Reapers would simply start counter-sniping before the frigates could begin firing.

This meant that the frigates – chosen over dreadnoughts and cruisers because their bombardment yields were much lighter, acting as tactical weapons to support the 27th instead of strategic ones that would impair the advance – would need to skim the breathable atmosphere of Palaven. Communications with ground forces were still severely jammed, and while the fleet could've used spectroimagery and thermal scanning to identify ground forces from orbit, a day and a half of nonstop fighting had kicked up even more dust and smoke into the atmosphere, making it difficult for the fleet's cameras to penetrate the black veil that had settled over Palaven. Furthermore, the raging fires and the fact that much of the combat involved house-to-house fighting indoors made thermal imaging sketchy as well. Fleet commanders hoped that the proximity would create a better picture of the area of operations, and possibly even restore some semblance of communications, leading to more accurate and effective fire support. But this meant that the frigates required support, and a combination of dreadnoughts and cruisers were necessary to both distract the enemy and shield the frigates from enemy guns.

In theory, pre-designated targets had been selected well in advance for bombardment, supposedly along the main line of resistance, deep enough behind enemy lines to ensure that the 27th Provisional Army would not be caught in the blasts, but also close enough to the actual fighting to function as support for the turians and krogan engaged in what was fast becoming the most intense battle in the history of galactic warfare. But this was not a true substitute for coordinates from friendly forces on the ground, which was why it was vital for the frigates to go just deep enough into Palaven's atmosphere, where communications of the 27th would hopefully be able to reach the fleet.

A massive, coordinated set of FTL jumps brought the 3rd and 13th Fleets dangerously close to the Reaper positions, the turians hoping that they could gain the advantage by sneaking into the enemy fleet's blind spot, thereby denying the Reapers a massive clue as to the Navy's true intent. Two separate processions of ships began a slingshot orbit around Palaven, with the dreadnoughts and cruisers drawing enemy aggression and firing upon as many ships as possible. The fleets entered immediately into medium-to-knife range, with fighter and drone support from carriers thousands of kilometers away engaged in dogfights and strafing runs. Ships sacrificed shields for combat capacity immediately after dropping out of FTL, knowing that most Reaper ships could gut any Hierarchy ship with a direct hit of a magnetohydrodynamic burst.

Despite this brute force method, the Reapers were far more prepared for a turian fleet incursion, and responded with overwhelming force. The planet's orbit became a killzone as Hierarchy and Reaper firepower broke upon the brunt of their respective fleets, ships of all classes burning through Palaven's atmosphere. Losses were staggering, with destroyed dreadnoughts and cruisers swiftly tallying up to the dozens within minutes. No engagement in the history of the galaxy had ever seen so many heavy ships taken out in a single engagement, especially within so short a time. Aboard the Example, Castellus watched the carnage from seventy thousand kilometers away even as he attempted to coordinate fighter support from the bridge. "We knew it was a necessary misappropriation of the fleets and its ships, but all the same, we all felt as if we were witnessing the greatest naval disaster in the history of the Hierarchy."

The brute force assault by the 3rd and 13th Fleets was both a distraction and a temptation for the Reapers, who sought to burn down the heavyweights of the Hierarchy Navy. This was a sound long-term strategy, but in the short-term, they neglected the frigates, the vital component for the Hierarchy's long-term strategy, which managed to slip into Palaven's atmosphere, unmolested by the Reaper's orbital defense force. Hundreds of frigates formed two great lines in a slingshot orbit around the planet, preparing to rain death upon Reaper forces below. And while spectroimagery and thermal imaging were still far from optimal, the sight of Reaper ships firing upon the 27th Provisional Army across different areas of operations gave the frigates a very good idea as to where to begin directing their fire.

The 27th Provisional Army had taken tremendous amounts of casualties when the offensive push began on the second day of FORWARD FLAME, but as night fell and the mission timer moved into the third day, it was taking a true beating. The initial surprise had long since worn off, and the Reapers had a very good idea of the amount forces being dedicated across Palaven's districts. As such, Reaper capital ships and destroyers were dispatched with great precision across the planet to complement enemy ground forces in stopping the turian-krogan advance in its tracks.

It was a massive game-changer. Mission planners for FORWARD FLAME had accounted for the possibility that Reaper ships would be dedicated to intercepting the ground advance, but the only answer they had for it was to dedicate enough Hierarchy vessels in orbit to draw the bulk of Reaper ships away. Few other contingencies existed that were considered remotely effective. The 27th Provisional Army was simply meant to hunker down and wait out the bombardment until the resistance managed to detonate their warp bombs.

It was easier said than done. Already, the turian-krogan advance had been losing steam as Reaper reinforcements converged on the 27th, inflicting heavy casualties. Matters only became worse with the arrival of the ships, which tipped the balance of firepower severely in favor of the Reapers. The limited fire support provided by the sparse amount of gun batteries and gunships simply could not compare. Turians and krogan that took cover indoors were crushed as Reapers easily toppled entire skyscrapers on them, burying and crushing them. Those who fled outdoors were evaporated by streams of molten metal accelerated at a respectable fraction of the speed of light. Nowhere was safe.

A general order of retreat was given, with the affected divisions of the 27th Army quickly falling back to escape the destruction as everything around them began to crumble, melt, and evaporate into dust and ash. Some of the more defiant attempted to lay traps and ambushes for the ground advance that followed every bombardment from the Reaper capital ships, but even when they managed to survive the firestorm, their attempts at slowing the Reaper advance were simply destroyed by overwhelming enemy firepower.

FORWARD FLAME in its entirety might have been a colossal failure in light of the developing circumstances, but the Hierarchy was very lucky in this regard; the spontaneous compromise between Coronati and Resvirix allowed for the 3rd and 13th Fleets to begin its bombardment of hotspots across Palaven, and while electronic tracking and communications were still nearly impossible, the frigates in low-orbit had little problem in spotting the massive Reaper capital ships trudging across the ruins of Palaven. Hundreds of mass accelerator rounds descended from the skies, each shell carrying the kinetic power to evaporate a third of a Cipritine city block. Every direct impact against a Reaper's kinetic barrier creating a massive shockwave that felt as if the world itself was sharply being torn asunder. The great procession of frigates and the firepower that followed – while not as wantonly destructive as the Reapers' own weapons – forced the capital ships and destroyers to refocus their attention on the Fleet, leaving their own ground forces to mop up the 27th Provisional Army, which was severely compromised but – to the woe of the Reapers – not at all broken. As soon as the Reaper ships turned their attention and firepower away from the groundside campaign, the turians and krogan quickly regrouped to prevent the enemy from mounting any kind of successful counterattack, although only after they themselves were running from the strike zones of their own orbital support.

This was easier said than done, as Reaper ground forces still carried the momentum, which they exploited to their fullest extent in their charge forward. This was made all the more difficult by the fact that Reaper forces were beginning to severely outnumber the turian-krogan force, which had been whittled down by the heavy fighting and bombardments. Using narrowband communications, unit commanders split their divisions into two so that while half of the 27th Provisional Army engaged in a slow, fighting retreat against the Reaper advance, the second half would make a half-kilometer sprint to the rear and use the valuable time their comrades were buying by coordinating with the resistance to erect defensive positions, a proverbial wave breaker against the tide.

The defending force was immediately set upon by massive waves of Marauders and Cannibals, with the only source of relief being that the Ravagers that had harassed the turian-krogan advance from long-range for so long could not keep up at the speed that their close-range counterparts marched at. This meant that, at least for a while, the 27th could expect little in the way of rocket bombardments. But this was, of course, of little comfort for those on the frontlines, as rows and rows of Marauders and Cannibals advanced with their guns blazing, showing very little intent of slowing their advance at all. Once again, the Hierarchy found its tactics being used against its soldiers, staring in the face of an inexorable advance of an overwhelmingly strong force, and the defenders were forced to retreat much faster than they would have liked.

Corporal Carrodi "Half-Jaw" Scradius, the turian who had gotten one of his mandibles torn off by a krogan commando who was spaced immediately thereafter by Urdnot Nakmor, was overwhelmed by a swiftly advancing throng of Cannibals that, to Optimi, "looked more like a wave of sewage from a floodgate than an advancing military force". Howling curses at the Reaper forces literally devouring him alive, Scradius disappeared under that wave, the muzzle flashes of his rifle flashing underneath that mass of quivering dead, cybernetic flesh before falling silent. That's it for the Half-Jaw, Optimi thought, until she suddenly heard an explosion behind her as she retreated, complete with Cannibal blood splattering across her armor. In a last act of defiance, Scradius had detonated all of his grenades on him, taking as many of the enemy with him.

The strategy, each turian and krogan knew, was a sacrificial play that bought time with manpower. It was difficult for anyone to imagine that the turian-krogan lines wouldn't break under this amount of abuse, a combination of bombardment and infantry assaults on the part of the Reapers. But the tide eventually ebbed, Reaper reinforcements thinning out and the intensity of enemy attacks weakening. This was primarily thanks to the overwhelming orbital bombardment provided by the 3rd Fleet above, which had managed to decimate much of the Reaper forces too close to the main line of resistance, particularly those that had been too close to the supporting capital ships. A workable defense suddenly seemed that much more possible, although this was not to say the Reaper assaults were no longer ferocious.

Communications between the 27th Provisional Army was finally reestablished with the 3rd and 13th Fleets, who in turn bounced the signal back to operational headquarters over Nanus. Aside from situation reports from the turians and krogan scattered across the planet being sent back to Admiral Coronati and General Resvirix, a line of communications meant that the 27th could now pinpoint precise areas that needed the immediate application of an orbital bombardment. Fleet communications were overwhelmed by a plethora of specific requests, hundreds of legions across Palaven asking for a tungsten slug delivered at terminal velocity to a specific position at the very least. What followed was a systematic rain of death; the frigates were not nearly powerful enough to down much of the Reaper ships, not even those recently retrofitted with Thanix cannons (although quite a few destroyers were damaged in the process), but they certainly burned away what would've otherwise been an unfaltering, unstoppable wave of Reaper ground forces that could've literally swept away the 27th.

The 77th desperately needed that kind of support, and after several minutes of having to wait for their turn to request orbital bombardment, was finally told that a fire mission was inbound in twenty seconds. With the kind of firepower the fleets were packing, the 77th made sure the 3rd Fleet understood that this was a danger close fire mission, and ordered everyone to fall back, clear the frigates' lines of fire, and duck and cover. [Operations Chief Maximus] Benessius [of the 38th Heavy Infantry Legion, 77th Armored Division], however, did not fall back or hunker down, and was still laying down suppressive fire at the front of the line. Hours earlier, an explosive salvo from a Ravager had detonated too close to his face; he could still see and insisted he could still fight, but aside from the scars the shrapnel left on his face that even the timely application of medigel couldn't fix, he was also temporarily deaf. He could barely hear the report of his own Phaeston, never mind the rest of his teammates yelling at him from behind barricades to fall back to a safe distance from the incoming bombardment.

A nearby krogan, Urdnot Bakar, was determined to make efficient use of the last few shots of his shotgun thermal clip before falling back, and was subsequently near Benessius when he noticed that the turian was still reloading and showing no signs of retreating. The krogan shouted at Benessius. There was no reply. He stepped closer, shouting louder this time; still no reaction. Not realizing that Benessius could not hear him and assuming the turian was a rookie lost in the adrenaline, Urdnot impatiently reached out with his arm and slammed Benessius across his chest in what almost resembled a clothesline, dragging the now-bewildered turian with him.

They didn't quite make it; coordinated shots from the turian frigates in orbit came down, a few of which were mass accelerator rounds, but the closest one from a Thanix cannon, the spear of energy splashing down a scant fifty meters away. The shockwave tossed and slammed Benessius and Urdnot to the ground, with the krogan on top. Fortunately for the turian, being pinned down by a ton of krogan and his heavy armor was a small price to pay, as Urdnot functioned as a bit of a blast shield from the heat wave that followed immediately after the shockwave. Fortunately for the krogan, the two had just cleared a small incline, so although he wasn't quite low enough for the heat wave not to instantly boil away the back of his heavy armor and quite a bit of his hump, most of the searing, superheated gas from the Thanix's impact washed right over him.

With the battlefield directly in front of them temporarily clear of surviving Reaper ground troops, a few turians jumped over their barricade to pull Benessius and Urdnot to safety. With his exposed back still smoldering, Urdnot – quickly evacuated to the rear for medical attention – let out a long, creative string of profanities that the turian real-time translators in earshot did somersaults just trying to keep up with the interpretation. Benessius, still deaf and confused, could only blink bewilderedly and shout, "What!?"

The good news was that their brief window of orbital support was becoming increasingly effective, and the Reaper ships were being drawn back to orbit. The bad news was that the heavy guns of the Reaper ships were swiftly replaced by swarms of Ravager rockets that rained down upon the 77th Armored Division's position from beyond their effective engagement range. Resistance batteries in the back attempted to answer with their own volleys of firepower as best as they could, but they were ridiculously outnumbered and outmatched. It wasn't nearly as unbearable as the Reaper magnetohydrodynamic weapons, which burned through absolutely everything, but every turian and krogan present still cursed heartily as they were forced to bunker down and endure an intense, nonstop shelling.

Ferandaris was among those who were ordered to make the half-kilometer sprint back to the resistance to set up barricades while the others bought them time. Without the immediate worry of Reaper capital ships toppling ruined buildings on their defensive positions, he attempted to direct the resistance to bring up barricades to a corner window, which provided an excellent overwatch position over two streets Reaper ground forces could come down from. A stray, random shot from a Ravager came in, sailing perfectly through the window and detonating against the wall. Ferandaris was violently thrown to the other side, while the resistance fighter with him was instantly killed as the explosion removed her head and shoulder.

Ferandaris' vision filled with dark spots as the world around him rung in his ears. Aware he was hit but still too disorientated to really try to make much of it, he tried to pull himself up, make sense of the chaos, barely hearing the shouts of the rest of the 38th Heavy Infantry Legion to take cover and return fire. Slowly, the service chief realized in his daze that both of his legs had been blown off right below the knee by the blast, but strangely, he could not feel pain or any real sense of panic. His fatigues were pooling blood in an unholy mess, and he was falling into shock. Ferandaris looked further down, saw no evident damage in the area of his crotch, which – to his dizzied mind – was evidence enough that his testicles remained whole and functional. Okay, he thought to himself with a surreal sense of relief and affirmation despite the fact that he was half-dead and missing his legs, my manhood's still there, I still want to live. A resistance medic came up to him, starting to patch him up and reassuring Ferandaris that he'd be alright just as the turian began to pass out.

The timely dedication of the 3rd and 13th Fleet, despite massive losses on the part of the Navy, was pivotal in ensuring that the 27th Provisional Army was not completely overrun. However, combat-ineffective casualties were now up to nearly fifty percent, with most of the offensive force being barely able to continue fighting. The resistance did what they could to recover and patch up the wounded, but it was not nearly enough to address the manpower shortfalls that the Reaper counterattack had inflicted upon the 27th. With only more Reaper destroyers and capital ships to look forward to if they pressed forward towards the enemy camps, the offensive phase of FORWARD FLAME was temporarily but effectively stalled, and would remain so until the objectives of SLENDER SCALPEL were complete. Until then, the 27th were expected to hold the line with what troops they had remaining.

The heavy casualties the 27th sustained meant that, by necessity, vacancies had to be filled with resistance fighters. Although they numbered in the millions across the planet, most of them were too young or too old for full military service, some of them were disabled, and – in almost all cases – they lacked even the most basic military hardware such as kinetic barriers or even combat armor. The resistance did what they could by removing armor from the severely wounded infantrymen and giving them to the resistance fighters moving up to the main line of resistance (both to maximize resource usage and to make it easier for resistance doctors and surgeons to operate on the horribly wounded), but this ultimately meant those reinforcing the front were using damaged equipment with little to no training, some of which didn't even fit properly. Still, volunteers streamed in as the full weight of the price the 27th was paying made it to the aid stations in turian-held positions, determined to make up quality with quantity.

In most cases, resistance fighters were eager to get to the front, not necessarily because of a love of battle or even an eagerness for sacrifice, but because staying in the rear areas were suffocating. The resistance was no stranger to mass casualties over the course of the Reaper War, but the latter half of the Battle of Palaven had seen the turians resort to guerilla tactics, translating to limited effectiveness against the enemy but almost limited mass casualties. The charge of the 27th, however, meant a surge in the wounded. Two days had gone by, the number of wounded across the planet had already reached tens of thousands. In Carratine District alone, even the most conservative estimates of the wounded that managed to be transported to the rear medical areas at the start of day three were easily over nine thousand, far outstripping the resistance's capability of administering medical aid. The resistance had to triage the wounded and prioritize them by the severity of their injuries and the chances they would survive. Three out of every five wounded evacuated from the frontlines wouldn't make it to the rear medical areas. Two out of every five wounded that reached the rear wouldn't survive. Two out of every five wounded wouldn't even have a medic available for them within an hour of being wounded and evacuated.

The aid areas were hell, usually massive stretches of agony, blood, guts, and death. The Bosh'tet Express had helped restock the Hierarchy's medical supply, and the 27th had offloaded most of the medigel and painkillers to the resistance. The problem, however, was circulation: The amount of wounded coming in far outstripped the number of available medical volunteers who could administer first aid. As well-trained and tough as the turians and krogan were, limbs blown messily off were both psychologically terrifying and physically excruciating, and screams echoed unendingly through wherever the resistance had space to settle the wounded, most of whom were dead and dying. "It was demoralizing," Gianthis recalled. "Even if it meant you were out fighting against the Reapers, you just wanted to get away from the assault on your senses: The rotting smell, the screams, the sight of mangled flesh everywhere. You couldn't stand it. So eager were the volunteers to get away, to pick up a rifle and fight, that we had to demand some of the cell stay."

The great news out of what seemed to be a slew of bad news was that what districts the resistance managed to secure were generally locked down tight, enough for shuttles to begin safely ferrying supplies and troops between friendly territory without gunship escorts. The relative aerial security over such districts allowed resistance cells across the continents to begin transferring their wounded to areas where there were more medics or less wounded. Two days of repairs had allowed lines of communications to be reestablished between the resistance cells. Although they were still unable to communicate with Nanus without the presence of the 3rd and 13th Fleets, status updates between most of Palaven's theaters – at least when they were on the same continent – were clear and rapid. Losses were severe and disheartening, but everyone had a far better idea where all of the 27th Provisional Army's divisions were standing across the planet.

Communications across the turian resistance alerted the Khronus cell that there was a turian cruiser, the Stalwart of the 13th Fleet, inbound on a crash landing. They took a glancing hit in orbit, and while the ship barely survived, it wasn't going to make higher orbit. Carratine was one of the districts the cruiser was projected to pass through and possibly even crash in, which was confirmed as the burning wreck streaked across the air, leaving smoke and flaming debris in its wake. From where he was trying to organize the entire local resistance from Cerenys Stadium, Gianthis watched as half a kilometer of blazing steel streaked above him at low altitudes, trailing smoke. As the Stalwart came down on Khronus, escape pods began ejecting from the ship's hull. The cruiser had been lucky; combat damage had taken down its drive core and most systems, but more than seventy percent of the crew survived and made it to the escape pods.

Most of the escape pods were coming down over Carratine District, which – after two days of fighting against Reaper forces in the area – was now largely held solidly by the turian-krogan force. However, with the Reaper counterattack causing FORWARD FLAME to stall, and the state of the 27th Provisional Army's defenses still fluid and uncertain, the crew of the Stalwart was in danger of being swiftly descended upon by Reaper strike teams making it past the 77th Armored Infantry Division. Word went out: Gianthis wanted the resistance to get to the evacuees before the Reapers did. As the 27th was busy regrouping, this freed up many resistance fighters tasked with clean-up operations in the Provisional Army's wake, who were re-tasked with recovering the crew of the Stalwart.

The evacuees weren't terribly difficult to find, as the escape pods had activated their beacons, and communications were fluid, ensuring that even if resistance teams couldn't get to them in time, the Stalwart crew knew in which direction they needed to start running. Overall, the resistance wasn't horribly worried, knowing that all Navy personnel, even bridge officers, had to clock in a good amount of firearms and hand-to-hand combat training every year, so even without a cruiser, they were far from helpless. The resistance's role was largely to provide cover from an already-established defensive position and bring the survivors up to speed. Still, the crewmembers were unanimously grateful to see friendly faces supporting their withdrawal to Cerenys Stadium.

Among the ruins of Khronus, the resistance discovered a surprise: One of the search parties found an asari justicar having taken refuge in the ruins, claiming to have been on Palaven since the beginning of the Reaper War, and having made guerilla attacks on Reaper forces since then. "We had no idea how an asari justicar got stranded on Palaven for so long without us knowing about it," [Antoli] Vranikius admitted. "Not that we were complaining." His group folded the justicar into the search parties and continued to search for survivors from the Stalwart. The justicar quickly proved her worth as they converged on an escape pod, which had crash-landed into a residence complex necessitating the turians to clear the building room-to-room. The squad had the drop on a patrol of four Cannibals, but before they could stack up against the door and prepare to pepper the enemy with gunfire, the justicar was already one step ahead of them. "She steps in, handgun out," regaled Vranikius, "bang, bang, bang, bang, and suddenly four Cannibals are dead on the ground before the rest of us even had a chance to scratch our balls, headshots in each. You don't get to shoot like that until you've spent the better part of a millennium doing just that."

Ekyriat and Smirian were also out looking for survivors, having been rotated away from providing fire support for the 27th. Two days of fighting had severely changed the topography of their hometown, and unbeknownst to them, they were a little lost, drifting away from the direction in which the Stalwart crashed, and away from the trail of escape pods jettisoned across Carratine. As they moved across the upper streets, the ground caved in, sending both resistance fighters sliding and sprawling inelegantly down an incline to the block's lower levels. Eventually, they managed to hit a lower floor, crashing their way to a stop.

Groaning, Smirian tried to pick herself up, only to find herself on top of a turian corpse, having decayed for months; he was likely a casualty from the early weeks of the war. "Sorry, pal," she murmured as she got back up.

The ruins were too dark and damaged for Ekyriat and Smirian to really discern where they were, and they were far more concerned that there weren't any survivors down here, so they needed to get back up to the block's upper levels. They remained careful as they swept through the area for an exit, although not exceedingly so; it was likely that any Reaper forces would've likely converged on them after the ruckus they made tumbling down here. As they passed through the area, however, Ekyriat noticed something interesting: A crate nearby marked with the faded symbol of military-grade heavy weaponry. Calling Smirian over, the two opened the crate to find two dozen nearly-identical weapons inside. The two resistance fighters, both of whom had served as frontline infantry in the past, did not recognize the weapon or its configuration. Neither had any engineering or mechanical experience; the design influences were unmistakably turian, but they lacked anything remotely resembling a mass accelerator. The two couldn't even tell if the weapons were meant to be assault rifles or shotguns despite being of the correct size, although the lack of a scope precluded the possibility of a sniper rifle.

Ekyriat and Smirian did not know it yet, but they had stumbled across the remains of a research lab leased to the Security Research Assay Division, one of the Hierarchy's primary military applications research and development organizations. The two resistance fighters did not know it yet, but they had picked up prototypes of a line of experimental fission weapons christened the Whitelight, a turian weapon reverse-engineered from the Reaper Blackstar. The Hierarchy had assumed SRAD's field office in Khronus to have been lost in the Reaper invasion, but little did they know that the facility had not caved in completely. Of course, oblivious to the fact that they now had a crate of ridiculously powerful fission weapons in their hands, Ekyriat and Smirian looked at each other, shrugged, decided that the Whitelights looked like they were weapons, and hauled them back to resistance.

When they finally got back to Cerenys Stadium, the first thing that tipped them off about their find was the element zero sensors set up around the stadium, which went off as they passed one by. Engineers and weapons technicians came over to check up on the weapon, and although none of them were remotely familiar with the Whitelight program, all preliminary analyses told them that this was a ridiculously powerful fission weapon. Gianthis commended the flabbergast Ekyriat and Smirian for their find, promised to have the weapons distributed to as many districts as possible, and told the two to get some rest. Taking a look at each other, Ekyriat was still a little dumbstruck as she asked Smirian, "Now how the fuck did that happen?"

"Word came down from division headquarters that Admiral Coronati had finally pulled his head out from a salarian's cloaca," Ordinix remembered, "and that he was finally dedicating pretty much every fleet he could to enter the fray, like he should've done since day one. The Navy finally got around to being useful instead of being just glorified chauffeurs."

This is not fair to Admiral Coronati or the Hierarchy Navy, or even High Command. This observation was easy to make in hindsight, but it omitted the fact that while Coronati commanded the 3rd Fleet, and while command of the 9th, 12th, and 13th Fleets had been loaned to him, he was ultimately beholden to High Command. Both Coronati and High Command believed that they could not put all their eggs in the same basket, and that not every fleet in the Trebia System should be dedicated to supporting FORWARD FLAME. However, they disagreed on just how many fleets should be given for Coronati for the operation. Coronati had argued for six fleets at the minimum to support the invasion, but High Command had only given him four, promising him more only if SLENDER SCALPEL succeeded, thereby justifying the exploitation of a narrow window to secure territories of the homeworld. Therefore, Coronati had to make do with what he was ultimately given, and planned his strategies cautiously when it came to the survival of his ships.

High Command did not give Coronati the amount of fleets he requested due to several reasons. First, FORWARD FLAME was not the only operation being executed in the Trebia System; aside from ongoing ground battles on Menae, High Command was overseeing three other major operations aimed at retaking high-value targets in preparation for a war that could last for years. Second, while he would eventually be vindicated, Coronati's performance in the opening weeks of the Reaper War failed to impress certain members of High Command, who felt any more fleets given to him would simply be a waste of resources.

Perhaps most importantly, however, Coronati failed to impress upon High Command that SLENDER SCALPEL and FORWARD FLAME were operations meant to either make or break the Hierarchy in the Reaper War. Biographers of the admiral tend to portray this episode as a moment of political savvy, with Coronati downplaying the colossal risks of the joint-operations to prevent High Command from killing the plan in terror. Most military historians, however, point out the massive changes in operational security during the Reaper War, especially the mindset that the less any single individual or body in the chain of command knew, the better. This was because the HDI became intensely paranoid of possible indoctrinated moles in the Hierarchy's command staff, and successfully implemented an administrative-bureaucratic system in which a voluntary informational blackout was imposed on virtually every level of the military. The brass remained willfully oblivious to how units on the ground prosecuted their objectives, and commanders learned not to ask for the status of other units unless it was of dire importance. The Hierarchy had always adhered to a need-to-know basis when it came to operational security, but this became enforced to its logical extreme during the Reaper War, with Cerivix insisting that any good turian commander would choose the best course of action possible even with minimal information, so details could be safely omitted in the interest of operational security.

All of this ultimately accumulated with High Command not being entirely informed of the scale of SLENDER SCALPEL and FORWARD FLAME until T-plus seventy-two hours. On one hand, sending the 3rd and the 13th Fleet on their strafing runs around Palaven's orbit had reestablished communications groundside and given operational commanders over Nanus a far better picture of how the invasion was progressing. With some very intense convincing on the part of General Resvirix, Coronati understood that all the progress and sacrifices they have made would ultimately be meaningless if the ground forces were overrun, which would deal a crippling blow to the Hierarchy Marines from which it could never recover, and finally dedicated the 9th and 12th Fleets into battle over Palaven to reinforce the 3rd and 13th. This action alone alerted High Command, who finally began to fully comprehend the scale of SLENDER SCALPEL and FORWARD FLAME, the steep costs under which the operations had been launched, and the fatal consequences of an impending failure. One holoconference with the Defender later, and High Command finally gave Coronati all the ships he needed without fatally compromising the defenses of other high-value targets that required naval defenses, such as Menae and Caelax. In other words, the Hierarchy – ultimately realizing it would never have another chance to call if they did not succeed here – was putting all of its chips into the bet. The entire campaign had reached the make-or-break phase.

Day three of FORWARD FLAME was sixteen hours in, and while a massive forward push was out of the question, the new defensive line set up by the turians and the krogan ensured that their positions on the ground would not be easily overrun. The 3rd and 13th had done their utmost to lure enemy ships away from the planet, and Coronati's commitment of the 9th and 12th Fleets – with promises that others fleets would soon be joining the action – helped alleviate certain worries and provide a much needed morale boost to the troops to the ground. This gave the 27th Provisional Army the chance they needed to dig in, regroup, and reassess their situation.

As things stood, the situation remained grave: Wounded and dead amongst the 27th were over forty percent, and while gaps were being filled by the resistance and soldiers who insisted their wounds "weren't that bad", the stark reality was that the Hierarchy had met overwhelming force with overwhelming force, and even then – without knowing that, from a cynical perspective, they were bait to draw attention away from SLENDER SCALPEL – their offensive was ultimately blunted by an enemy that outnumbered and outgunned them. Many legions had become entirely combat-ineffective; some had disappeared in the fighting altogether. Word was that several battlegroups had been lucky enough to be spared massive casualties and massive enemy retaliation, but these legions were far and few in between.

At the same time, however, even with the success of SLENDER SCALPEL still a highly uncertain variable with no guarantees, turian-krogan forces had made very impressive gains over seventy-two hours of fighting. The surge in manpower had allowed the 27th to retake and reactive defensive positions that had been neglected by the Reapers. Reaper forces had been pushed out of many cities that had once been at the edge of resistance influence prior to FORWARD FLAME. In a few cases, Reaper camps were surrounded by turian-krogan forces that had pushed forward and beyond, each camp and their processing ships and destroyers the last bastion for local Reaper ground troops in the area. Strategic deployment of allied forces allowed enough key strategic centers to be taken, and thus tentatively labeling certain districts as under Hierarchy control.

Ultimately, however, everyone understood that these gains were temporary. This was applicable even to the infantrymen on the ground, who were not even aware of SLENDER SCALPEL's existence but otherwise expected some kind of trump card to complement FORWARD FLAME. The Hierarchy had performed admirably alongside their krogan allies, and despite the heavy casualties, they had results to show for their efforts. But these results came not due to the vast superiority of the 27th Provisional Army, but because the Hierarchy had been afforded the rare opportunity of the initiative, forcing the Reapers into a state of reactiveness instead of proactiveness, a state that certainly didn't last long. Most armies in all-out interstellar war required weeks to carry out counteroffensives due to delays in strategy meetings, repurposing of units, and the reestablishment of logistical lines; the Reapers had already began striking back against turian-krogan forces by day two across almost all theaters.

Almost every available Hierarchy fleet was committed to FORWARD FLAME, which provided invaluable contributions to staving off further Reaper counterattacks on the ground. This was good news for the 27th, as it provided hours of continuous orbital support on demand. For the Navy, however, it was a highly unwelcome development, as it meant continued engagement against Reaper ships. "No one was opposed to providing much-needed support to our ground forces," explained Castellus, "but we suffered no delusions, knowing that we were being shoved into the meat grinder at the expense of the Army and the Marines."

The Reapers did not expect such an aggressive advance, but neither were they unprepared for it. Turian reinforcements to the 3rd and 13th Fleets already engaged with Reaper forces in orbit were seen largely as a nuisance, although it opened up a separate front in space. While the 3rd and 13th Fleets were engaged in an orbital support campaign that necessitated close- and medium-range combat with the Reapers, reinforcing fleets relied on medium- to long-range tactics in an attempt to creating flanking positions against the enemy. ³ This required very precise positioning on the part of the reinforcing fleets; High Command gave permission to fire mass accelerator rounds at the Reapers even if Palaven was right behind them, but also demanded that all ships double-check their calculations to ensure that the rounds landed nowhere close to territories held by allied forces.

For the Example, however, the help may have come too late. With two more maneuverable and more heavily-armored Reaper destroyers taking shots at the carrier, the ship was slowly being torn apart piece-by-piece. Ixius managed to temporarily throw off her pursuers and their targeting by breaking into an irregular orbit, skimming Palaven's atmosphere and executing a slingshot around the planet. Even so, however, with all the combat they had seen since being thrown into two massive fleet battles over Palaven, it was clear to Castellus and the rest of the crew that "the Example, like the rest of the 3rd Fleet, was on its last legs".

³ In the later months of the Reaper War, middle- to long-range tactics were favored by most fleet commanders, even those who commanded dreadnoughts. As Reaper weapons were consistently more accurate with targeting capabilities outstripping those of even the most advanced Council ships, extreme-range tactics to "strike without being struck" had largely become obsolete. As such, being able to land hits on the Reapers was considered to be of greater importance than attempts to dodge their fire; fleets engaging the enemy were well-aware that traditional methods of evading enemy ordinance were largely useless against Reaper ships.

Elements of the 77th Armored Division could hear distant gunfire being exchanged approximately two kilometers deep into Reaper territory. This was somewhat unusual because the 77th was at the front of the allied position, situated right on the main line of resistance; if anything, if there was any gunfire, they were the ones that should've been shooting. As things stood, however, their positions were relatively quiet as offenses on both sides temporarily died down as a result of orbital bombardment from their respective fleets. The 77th and the resistance were not engaged in any shootouts on the scale of the initial allied offensive, although it still did not do anything about the fact that it sounded like some kind of battle was breaking out almost two kilometers inside the enemy position.

The gunfire was easy to ignore at first, especially since everyone assumed the Reapers had caught onto turian stragglers who could not keep up with the retreat. It was a shame, but the 77th was in no position to launch any rescue operations for a handful of infantrymen who had been too slow. But when the gunfire continued for hours, looking like they had moved across a kilometer in the meantime, the men started to get interested, wondering who could possibly be stuck on the wrong side of the main line of resistance for so long and still remain alive, never mind shooting.

Word was relayed up and down the 77th before it was learned that the unit caught behind enemy lines was 2nd Platoon of Blackwatch, which had holed up in the Wesitria Shopping Complex just under two kilometers away. They had evaded enemy attempts to surround them for hours, drawing them away from Malgus Company when the krogan were tasked with bringing warp bombs to the Khronus resistance cell alone; now, however, they were forced into a static defense in the shopping complex, caught in a shootout without support from the logistical network of the resistance. Despite being only at platoon strength, they had held out so far, their opposition relatively weak due to having thrown off most of their pursuers and supporting orbital strikes from the fleets above. Still, this precarious balancing act could change at any time; enemy reinforcements, combined with limited thermal clips with no good source of replenishment, could cause 2nd Platoon to be overwhelmed in an instant. High Command wanted 2nd Platoon extracted; the 77th could only spare the 38th Heavy Infantry Legion, which still had enough combat-effective infantrymen to carry out a rescue operation with support from resistance replacements.

In the vein of most rescue operations, the 38th sought a compromise between speed and stealth, and so fought their way to shopping complex through the interior of Khronus' ruins, which the turians and krogan bitterly recalled to be the same ruins that they had previously fought and retreated through over the past day. Large numbers of resistance teams trailed behind them, setting up temporary defensive positions meant to cover a rapid retreat by the 38th once they had linked up with Blackwatch 2nd Platoon, effectively functioning as a highway that would slow the enemy down while the actual active military personnel rushed back to the main line of resistance. Gunfire was far less consistent with this advance; although pockets of stiff Reaper resistance still existed and bogged down the advance, combat was not nearly as intense as the second day of FORWARD FLAME. By any sane standard, it was still heavy urban fighting, but by the standards of this operation, it was almost quiet.

Almost amusingly, enemy fire was not the greatest concern of the 38th. Heavy fighting and fleet bombardments on both sides had reduced much of the area to rubble, and while some buildings still miraculously stood, they were ultimately in grave danger of collapsing on not only itself, but the turian and krogan infantrymen forced to sneak their way through both to prevent easy detection and easy shots. Just as ironically, it provided the 38th with unexpected shortcuts, as weakened walls could be torn down by hand to reveal more efficient passageways, provided that engineers attached to the legion could first ascertain that clawing down the wall ran a minimum risk of bringing the entire building down on the teams struggling to get to Wesitria.

Other times, the allied forces did not actually need to deliberately create new paths for passageways to appear of their own accord. Optimi was on point with a mish-mash of another dozen turians and krogan, including Deiethus, while trying to look for possible entry points into the next building over. Without even touching anything, the wall in front of her suddenly crumbled, and Optimi found herself staring face-to-face with a Marauder with an assault rifle leveled right at her face while her own Phaeston was docked to the back of her armor. Without thinking, she jumped forth to shove the enemy's assault rifle away, but the Marauder grappled on, both combatants struggling over control of the weapon. Looking over the Marauder's shoulder, Optimi could see that, like her, her opponent wasn't alone: A squad of other Marauders and Cannibals were in the room beyond the hole in the wall, their assault rifles also shouldered and ready to fire at the service chief's squad in the other room. Struggling right in the only pathway between the two rooms, Optimi and the Marauder she was grappling with blocked any possible gunfire from both sides.

Optimi could tell that, in the long term, her muscles weren't going to outmatch the Marauder's augmented melee capabilities, and she didn't want the enemy getting the drop on her squad, so she screamed, "Shoot through me!" She was convinced that the fields of concentrated fire would rip through the shields of both herself and the Marauder, and the team that fired first would tip the balance of the firefight completely in the favor by virtue of close-quarters firefight dynamics. But her turian teammates hesitated, the necessity of the suggested action hindered by camaraderie and every ingrained instinct against friendly fire. On the other side, the Marauders and Cannibals were unconcerned about friendly fire, but were awaiting results from probability calculators on the ongoing wrestle and the impending shootout.

Hailot Enka of the Krogan Army, however, did not hesitate. He raised his assault rifle and squeezed off a highly accurate three-round burst. The first two shots cracked Optimi's shield, and the third drilled through her armor, making a clean pass…and striking the Marauder on the other side in the head, not enough to penetrate its barriers, but enough to cause both grapplers to lose balance and crash onto the ground in their struggle. Startled into realization by Hailot's shot, the allied squad fired their weapons first. Optimi – thrown off-balance by being shot in the shoulder and weighed down by a similarly off-balance Marauder – was already dropping to the ground, allowing for the mass accelerator rounds from the allied squad to pass safely right over her.

From there, it was a turkey shoot, the squad taking the initiative and getting the drop on the Reapers, who failed to return fire quite quickly enough to save themselves from being cut down by a hail of gunfire. With the engagement over in a matter of seconds, Hailot walked up to Optimi and terminated the still-struggling Marauder on top of her with another three-round burst, even as the rest of the squad made sure the next room was clear and truly silent. "You still breathing?" the krogan asked the turian on the ground.

Optimi was, not that it brought her much comfort. "Couldn't you have shot me where it hurts fucking less?" she groaned after a string of expletives. She was shot, her armor was splattered with even more Reaper blood, and she was in quite a bit of pain courtesy of a hole drilled through her shoulder, but she was alive. "Dammit, I think I'm fucking missing a lung."

The krogan laughed, pulling the service chief back up on her feet. "Hey, that's what redundant organ systems are for, right?" Optimi refrained from informing Hailot that turians had no such thing.

Despite having to navigate through convoluted ruins, engaging in several shootouts much of the way through, the 38th eventually established visual contact with the Wesitria Shopping Complex, watching as a small but steady flow of Reaper reinforcements joined the cordon of the buildings Blackwatch was holed up in. Narrowband communications was set up with Command Ravakian inside, who had expected the 77th to be close by and was quickly appraised for the updated tactical situation. No one knew whether or not Malgus Company had actually managed to deliver their warp bombs to the Khronus smuggling teams just yet, but given Blackwatch had crossed practically twelve kilometers on foot over more than a day just to keep Reaper attention away from the krogan commandos, Ravakian felt that further hit-and-run operations would be useless; at this point, Malgus Company had either succeeded or failed in their objectives regardless of the continued actions of 2nd Platoon.

Heavy coordinated fire erupted simultaneously from almost every company of the 38th Heavy Infantry Legion, focusing on one specific side of the Reaper cordon. This weakened enemy presence just enough for Blackwatch to slip out the side, rush past the broken Reaper lines, and join the 38th before Reaper ground forces – catching onto allied tactics – focused on a monodirectional counteroffensive. With Blackwatch recovered, all units began to retreat across a defensive highway the resistance had been holding down behind them. Their timing was almost perfect; more Ravagers had been brought in from rear positions, who began an artillery bombardment of the retreating turians and krogan, bathing the Wesitria Shopping Complex with enough explosions to bring the buildings crashing to the ground just as the turian special forces operators managed to slip out. "With all the enthusiasm of asari schoolgirls," Optimi remarked, "we started running in the other direction, now that we had the resistance to cover what was basically a two-kilometer sprint with explosions going off all around us." Despite taking heavy losses, the resistance defenders nevertheless were able to pull off a coordinated tactical retreat that stalled enemy attempts at a ground counteroffensive, allowing Blackwatch and the 38th to safely return to allied-controlled positions.

The rescue operation was a major success for the forces in Carratine District in general and Khronus in particular. Not only was Blackwatch successfully extracted from a highly dangerous situation, the foray of the 38th into Reaper positions gave the commanders of the 77th Armored Division a much better idea of what fighting forces remained amongst the enemy in their area of operations. Defenses were shored up accordingly; unit commanders were not confident enough to engage in further daring offenses, but at the very least, they believed the enemy would need to bring in much more reinforcements before attempting another coordinated mass offensive.

With her fatigue exacerbated by previous injury, Optimi could barely breathe by the time she returned to the main line of resistance and came to a stop, requiring resistance medics to bring her a respirator. She didn't care overmuch, however, nor did most others of the 38th. "There was a quite a bit of cockiness in the air. The average serviceman isn't immune to a little hot air when they end up rescuing the Hierarchy's premier special ops outfit." (Blackwatch survivors, of course, coolly denied they ever needed to be rescued, maintaining that the 77th Armored Division had simply engaged in "reinforcement action" that "assisted in alleviating an irksome burden".)

For the 49th Reconnaissance Legion, the good news was that they managed to make it to their designated rendezvous zone at T-plus seventy-nine hours. They were two hours behind schedule compared to what was considered the optimal deadline, but still technically within SLENDER SCALPEL's margin of error. The bad news was that there was no one there to meet them.

This was worrying because the resistance had already deployed their smuggling teams just before the 27th Provisional Army began landing troops on Palaven, meaning there was no good reason as to why there was no one to meet them at the RZ. Siritii nevertheless ordered his men to dig in and wait, maintaining radio silence and general darkness for an hour. Search parties were sent out in the second hour to look for the resistance smuggling team just in case, and to ascertain their fate if something had happened to them. Siritii even double-checked the maps to make sure that the forward element of the 49th was actually where it was supposed to be, not lost. But after three hours, with all search efforts fruitless and the legion as alone as they were since they had arrived, Siritii realized that he was stuck in the highly awkward position of having mission-critical warp bombs with no one to hand them off to.

Without many choices available to him, Siritii risked the interception of a narrowband line of communications back with the resistance, trying to figure out why the resistance smuggling team was not where it was supposed to be. The resistance leaders back in the staging areas were just as perplexed. "Well, I have a package that needs to get to its destination," Siritii told the other end of the line, "and I sure as hell am not lugging it all the way back."

The resistance contacted the 13th Fleet, who in turn bounced the signal all the way to the Defender over Nanus, where Coronati updated Cerivix. HDI mission planners quickly knocked their heads together, and sent the bad news back to Siritii: They needed some of the 49th to sneak their warp bombs into the Reaper camp in place of the resistance smuggling team.

This was among the many instances where HDI paranoia over Reaper indoctrination worked against the Hierarchy. Due to fears of moles inserted into the command structure, High Command had implemented a need-to-know basis for both the operational and command sections of the war effort. This meant that both HDI and local resistance leadership were willingly oblivious of the exact routes that the resistance smuggling teams had charted out in the district. Without knowledge of those routes, an attempt to infiltrate the Reaper camp with little time or support was close to impossible. The method left available to the 49th with the highest chance of success was to implement the resistance's secondary plan: Surrender to Reaper forces while carrying concealed components of the warp bomb.

Cerivix chose not to inform the 49th that their chances of success were unimpressive, even if their way into the Reaper camp was technically the "safest". While the turians were expected to be led into the processor ships either way, simulations had nevertheless projected a very high chance that the turian smugglers would have to fight their way into their chosen ships to ensure that the components for each bomb went where they were supposed to go, and then maintain a defensive position inside the Reaper for just long enough for them to reassemble and then detonate the bomb. This was why each resistance smuggling team also had to find their infiltration and exfiltration routes, so that weapons and extra fighting men could be transported to waiting "prisoners of war" inside the camp. Volunteers for the suicide mission from the 49th would not have this support, would likely be stripped of their weapons upon "surrendering", and needed to resort to on-site procurement in what was effectively a prison camp.

Siritii broke the bad news to his men, and asked for volunteers. The HDI staff had advised a total of twelve-to-eighteen smugglers; less and each volunteer would carry more bomb components than were reasonable, more and the infiltration effort would be that much more conspicuous. Eventually, a team of eighteen was formed, who immediately set out to work practicing how to assemble the warp bomb, allotted only an hour to commit everything to memory when the resistance smuggling teams were given days. (To their advantage, most of the volunteers were engineers who were trained and certified to handle the latest in munitions, but few of them handled weapons of mass destruction on a monthly basis either.) Last messages were recorded; everyone in the 49th knew that this was the last time they were seeing these eighteen men and women, and wanted something to remember them by.

Siritii had the snipers of the team scout out the area around the Reaper camp to find optimal sniping positions. The plan was for the smuggling team to get as close to the Reaper ships as possible before making a charge for their targets. At that moment, the 49th would begin providing sniper support from a kilometer out, taking out nearby perimeter guards as quickly as possible, not only so the smugglers would have clear path to the ships (or at least as clear as would be reasonably possible), but also so that they could take enemy Phaestons from Marauder corpses. Siritii fully expected return fire from Ravagers, if not the Reaper ships themselves, so he decided to have the snipers be spread out across as wide an area as possible, limiting the effectiveness of enemy guns and ensuring the 49th could provide cover fire for as long as possible. The snipers would then stay on station for five minutes – the approximate time expected for the smuggling team to assemble and detonate the bomb inside – before pulling back, where the rest of the 49th and their krogan complement would have already secured an exfiltration route to begin the long journey back to rejoin the 27th Provisional Army.

At T-plus eighty-three hours, with the 49th cutting it very close to the deadline and trying to improvise as desperately as possible, all teams quickly moved into place. Even as the suicide team surrendered in three separate groups to Reaper forces (two of the groups had either scrubbed off unit insignias on their armor or removed their armor completely to hide the fact that all three "separate" groups were from the 49th), Siritii personally had his snipers move into their positions, forming a large, half-kilometer-long arc, ready to take down targets once it was time to move. Meanwhile, the "surrendering" turians took advantage of their remaining time to acquaint themselves with their surroundings, interrogate long-time prisoners (while being wary of possible indoctrinated moles), and map out the area in preparation for their assault.

A mere ten minutes before T-plus eighty-four hours, the suicide team had positioned themselves close to their respective Marauders, and provided a signal – a double fist-pump into the air – that the snipers of the 49th a kilometer away were waiting for. Close to twenty sniper rifles fired at once, and, instantly, the Marauders around the turian suicide team were down. As turian snipers continued to lay down long range fire on Reaper ground forces that were still trying to ascertain the situation, the suicide team had already picked up the weapons of the eliminated Marauders and turned them on the enemy. At least for the first few seconds, the eighteen turians made a charge for three Reaper ships unopposed, gunning down anyone in their way. Better yet, the gunfire had sent the camp population into action. Turian prisoners, either encouraged or terrified by the sudden outbreak of combat in the camp, suddenly began making a break for it, some running all over the place, others trying to riot against their captors.

The Reaper ships had yet to ascertain why eighteen turians were making a break right towards them. Deciding that the "mutineers" could be handled by Marauder guards on the ground, the Reapers instead designated the faraway snipers as priority targets, and began to fire off shots from their magnetohydrodynamic weapons. On Siritii's helmet HUD, his snipers began to wink out one by one as the Reaper ships identified vantage points from which the turians were making long-range shots and taking them out. Yet casualties were decidedly minimal; by spreading out his forces, Siritii ensured that the Reapers were wasting shots meant to take out dreadnoughts on isolated snipers. Long-range cover fire for the suicide team remained effective.

But even with some of the Hierarchy's best snipers as backup, the suicide team was ultimately eighteen men on the wrong end of far too much enemy manpower and firepower. Reaper ground forces were firing indiscriminately into the crowd to regain control of the situation, and while the turian suicide bombers did their best to stay low, they were taking casualties. Those who had to remove their armor to maintain the conceit that each surrendering group was unrelated to each other were the first to be cut down by enemy gunfire, and although the turians moved as quickly as they could, casualties went up and down the line, and as their numbers whittled down to a dozen, it was clear that none of them were going to make it to their objectives without making hard choices. Through his scope, Siritii could see Sergeant [Lerrin] Kejian have the remaining members of the suicide team gather behind cover. Kejian, with no communications with Siritii and knowing he was going to have to call the shots unilaterally, informed the team of the change of plans: Instead of targeting three ships, the team would have to target only one. The four fastest members of the team would make a break for the closest Reaper ship while the remaining eight held their positions and kept enemy forces off their backs for as long as possible.

Passing the final four with the components for two warp bombs, Kejian and the remaining eight holed up and unloaded as much ammunition as they could, as if the spirit of Palaven would not accept them if they died with spare thermal clips. The four bombers made a mad dash for the closest Reaper ship, which happened to be a capital ship; perhaps due to gross overconfidence, the Reaper assumed that the turians had been grossly misinformed of what was inside a Reaper, running blindly into its maw. One of the bombers was killed enroute and another fatally injured, but the three turians that managed to make their way into the ship still had enough components for one full bomb.

In the meantime, Kejian and his team were taking fire from every direction. Even with snipers unflinchingly and liberally killing off as many Marauders as possible without any consideration for stealth, the defensive position of the remaining eight turians was only meant to last several minutes, not longer, as a sacrificial bait to draw enemy attention away from the bombing team. Under the threat of being swiftly overwhelmed, Kejian had three of his men begin to assemble the remaining components they had, enough for a single warp bomb. As the decoy turians were whittled down one by one, the Reaper capital ship suddenly realized upon closer examination that the decoy team was arming a warp bomb, and came to the conclusion that the suicide team that had managed to make it into the ship likely had another one. The Reaper ship shifted targeting priorities to the team already inside the ship. It was a fatal miscalculation; in its frenzy to prevent the turians already inside from assembling their bomb, the decoy team had just enough breathing room to finish assembling their own warp bomb, which they detonated immediately.

For a weapon of mass destruction, the blast of a warp bomb was considered "contained". But however "contained" it was, it was ultimately still a weapon of mass destruction. A massive element zero explosion detonated in the center of camp right in front of the Reaper capital ship, a great cloud of light with a blast radius of more than one hundred meters. It was a faulty detonation – the implosion components had probably been misaligned, unsurprising given the bomb was assembled in a hurry while under fire, leading to a diminished explosion – that was devastating nevertheless. In an instant, the decoy team and the army of Reaper ground forces around them, as well as hundreds of turian prisoners caught in the blast, disintegrated into molecules, torn apart by mass effect forces. When the light finally subsided, a massive crater in the center of the camp was all that remained, as well as the Reaper capital ship it had been detonated in front of. As expected, despite some damage, the Reaper's shields had largely withstood the detonation.

But even as Siritii gave the order for his snipers to pull out and fall back along their exfiltration route, the lieutenant knew he didn't need to be overly concerned. The blast had taken out any hope of Reaper ground reinforcements boarding the capital ship in time to stop the last three turians who had managed to smuggle themselves and their final warp bomb aboard. And unlike the previous explosion, the next detonation would take place inside the shields.

Due to the nature of the operation, the expected downtimes in communication, and the necessity for stealth, protocols for the ultimate detonations in SLENDER SCALPEL were outlined very strictly after much discussion between the resistance, the HDI, the Navy, and the Army in the days leading up to the operation. Without communicating with other cells or even the 27th Provisional Army, the resistance was expected to simultaneously smuggle and detonate all warp bombs into Reaper capital ships, destroyers, and processor ships across the planet. All of this was necessary to ensure that the Reapers would never catch onto the true objective of SLENDER SCALPEL; the worst thing that could happen was the Reapers taking countermeasures by drastically increasing camp security or – even worse – simply have the ships take off beyond the reach of the turians.

In the highly unlikely event that consistent, encrypted communications were safe and possible with Nanus, operational headquarters would be able to coordinate amongst the different resistance cells and – depending on the progress of the 27th Provisional Army – finalize the deadline by which all smuggling teams needed to have their warp bombs in place and ready for detonation. It was not expected to happen, and ultimately did not happen, meaning resistance leaders across the planet fell back to secondary protocol, with a predetermined deadline of T-plus eighty-four hours – three full Palaven days – following the commencement of Operation: FORWARD FLAME. The eighty-four hour deadline was not random, but the best estimate High Command, mission planners, and VI simulations could provide as to the latest reasonable timeframe before the 27th Provisional Army would become combat-ineffective. If the 27th could not make the final push to secure swathes of territory across Palaven and reinitialize defensive infrastructure, then the entire point of SLENDER SCALPEL would have been lost.

As the hours counted down to T-plus eighty-four hours, smuggling teams across the planet began to assemble their warp bombs, checking and double-checking each component before producing a full product, then disassembling them again in preparation for smuggling. With everything on the line, no one was willing to leave anything to chance, and each warp bomb received the closest thing to a guarantee for detonation as possible, short of actually detonating the device. By design, warp bombs were not high-yield explosives, especially when compared to fission devices or other weapons of mass destruction. Rather, they were relatively controlled bombs that tore apart mass at a molecular level, not unlike the warheads for anti-ship torpedoes. This guaranteed staggering amounts of destruction over a surprisingly small range. Of course, this was of no comfort to the resistance smuggling teams, who handled each component of the warp bomb with utmost care.

Nevertheless, smuggling the bombs inside the ship was a necessity; although even the highly-hardened armor of Reaper ships were ultimately vulnerable to warp munitions, months of ship-to-ship combat had long since proven that even shells from a dreadnought's mass accelerator couldn't penetrate a Reaper capital ship's shields. Only from inside a ship could a team of ground-based turians do catastrophic damage to a Reaper ship. The detonation would cause little in the way of collateral damage, as the blast would largely be contained. Nearby ground forces within the Reaper camps, as well as the turian prisoners themselves, were likely to be caught in the blast, but ultimately, most of the existing infrastructure that had survived the Reapers' purge would remain intact, at least when compared to an orbital bombardment from a dreadnought, which would not only cause unneeded collateral damage, but also be less effective against a Reaper vessel.

Finally, with the time closing in on T-plus eighty-two hours, the teams were deployed to their staging positions. The resistance would have an hour moving to their respective positions first, with one team faking their surrender to the Reapers and being escorted into the confines of the enemy camp (hopefully while still in custody of their disassembled warp bomb components), while the smuggling team carrying secondary sets of warp bomb components and making their way through the infiltration route into the Reaper camp undetected.

In Khronus, Achtus and Kylonis watched silently from afar as the last pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place. They were not providing sniper support for what was otherwise a much quieter operation, one of many taking place across the planet, but by no means were they any less tense than anyone else involved in SLENDER SCALPEL. From their vantage point, they could barely see the infiltration teams rendezvous covertly with the "surrendering" turians, passing off the mission-critical element zero and concealed weapons, equipping the suicide bombers for the last leg of their mission, and the last and most valorous moment of their lives. With as little commotion as possible, the Khronus smuggling teams exfiltrated from the Reaper camp while the bombing team inconspicuously filed into the lines of turian prisoners, both those being indoctrinated in capital ships and those being melted down in processing ships.

All across Palaven, resistance fighters quietly got to where they needed to be, right until the final moment when they revealed their weapons and started shooting, taking out all nearby enemy soldiers, giving them just enough room for them to swiftly assemble their warp bombs in preparation for detonation. Initially treated as isolated incidents of panicked resistance, the Reapers suddenly became alarmed as they realized this – all of this – was a coordinated, simultaneous attack on their ships. But it took them minutes to confirm multiple coordinated attacks, deduce that the resistance cells were attempting to destroy them from the inside, seal off their ships to prevent further infiltration, and call for ground reinforcements to eliminate the bombers; by then, the vast majority of resistance suicide teams were already in place, on their respective ships, with their bombs. For the Reapers, it was already too late, for when it came time for the turians to make the ultimate sacrifice, they did not hesitate.

At T-plus eighty-four hours, resistance suicide teams across Palaven simultaneously triggered the detonators for their warp bombs.

The Example was on the dark side of Palaven at T-plus eighty-four hours.

In the minutes of reprieve they had from pursuing Reaper destroyers, the bridge crew of the damaged carrier watched in stunned silence as, against the darkness of their homeworld, plumes of brilliant light began to expand at scattered points across the planet, each a blindingly bright explosion taking out massive Reaper ships. Each pinprick of light manifested with a margin of error measured only in seconds, a chain of explosions like fireworks against the night sky. In more ways than one, it was a beautiful sight to behold, especially since Ixius and Castellus had been among the few officers in the 3rd Fleet to know of Operation: SLENDER SCALPEL, having hosted many of the strategy meetings aboard the Example. To them, each sparkle against the darkness of Palaven was a newfound ray of hope.

"Our carrier was crippled, the ship was falling apart, Reaper destroyers were catching up," related Castellus, "yet we were standing there, breathless, standing there just for that one moment to witness that beautiful testament, a promise that the Battle of Palaven was about to turn in a very different direction."

Unfortunately for them, the bridge crew did not have much time to admire the scenery. The Example was still trying to outrun two Reaper destroyers hot on its aft, firing off alternating shots from their magnetohydrodynamic weapons. Skimming the atmosphere, Ixius was able to throw off Reaper targeting by a bit, using Palaven's magnetic field. But the planet's magnetic field was too weak to seriously affect enemy accuracy, and although the Example managed to avoid a chain of direct hits, shots were still glancing across the carrier one-by-one, the ship given a horrendous shutter every time it was hit. Systems were rapidly being disabled one-by-one; communications were down, weapons were unresponsive, and navigation barely had enough power for the carrier to respond to commands at all. It would only be a matter of time before the Reapers caught up to a range where long-distance targeting would become irrelevant, and they would slice the Example into pieces.

Ixius' plan was to turn the Example towards the rest of the fleet so other ships might take a shot at their pursuers. It was a risky maneuver – there was no guarantee that enemy ships in the orbital engagements would not also take the chance to target the Example – but the carrier was not a vessel meant for ship-to-ship engagements, and that it had been caught flat-footed in its attempt to provide long-range fighter and drone support to the fleet meant there were only hard options available. Plowing for the general melee occurring over the Taeradian continent, the Example once again sent out a general distress call, requesting assistance.

Eight thousand kilometers away, the [dreadnought] Gauntlet of the 18th Fleet answered the call. Initially providing long-range fire support for the 13th Fleet, it was situated far enough from the general melee in orbit, but positioned at an angle obtuse enough to align its mass accelerator with the Example's aft with microbursts of its thrusters. Its weapons were ready to take out the destroyers trailing the Example; the Gauntlet just needed the carrier to come around the curvature of the planet just enough for the dreadnought to place its shots.

Receiving telemetry data from the Example, the Gauntlet actually fired its shots into Palaven's atmosphere before ever actually seeing the Reaper destroyers, or even the Example itself. As the gunnery officers of the dreadnought already knew where the Reaper destroyers were without actually establishing a line of sight, they dropped both tungsten shells dangerously close to Palaven itself. Upon entering the atmosphere, both shells had their initial velocities reduced by approximately a sixth, whereupon the planet's gravity pulled both shells into a slight turn around Palaven. Thus, with four shots, the Gauntlet was able to hit and decimate two Reaper destroyers around the curvature of the planet; by the time the enemy vessels finally showed up on the dreadnoughts cameras, they were already burning wrecks floating into space.

But the Gauntlet was not the only ship using that tactic. A Reaper capital ship did not have telemetry data on the Example's precise position after the destroyers trailing it were destroyed, and it focused more on the pressing threat of the Gauntlet than the damaged carrier that was an Example, but the carrier was still conveniently within the Reaper's field of fire as it came around the curvature of Palaven. Alerts went off on the Example's bridge; the Reaper had locked onto the carrier and was preparing to fire its weapon on a strafing flyby.

Using Palaven's gravitational field, Ixius dipped the Example downward towards the planet's surface, a sharp drop that barely allowed the ship to dodge the shot, the burst of molten metal skimming against the Example's hull instead of landing a direct hit. The carrier jolted violently nevertheless; Ixius slammed her head against her console upon impact, creating a gash across her forehead. But with that maneuver and the acceleration in velocity, the Example managed to skim right past the Reaper capital ship and outside its field of fire. The Reaper, indifferent that it had missed a dying carrier, allowed the Example to drift away as it focused its firepower on the Gauntlet instead.

But the carrier had escaped instant death only to delay the inevitable by mere minutes; the Example had made a seven hundred meter drop into the planet's atmosphere, caught deeply in Palaven's gravitational field, and while this was not necessarily a problem under normal conditions, the carrier's element zero core was already severely damaged, and could not produce the power necessary to break its degrading orbit and escape Palaven's gravitational pull.

With the Example sinking into the planet's atmosphere with no chance of maintaining its orbit, Captain Irrena Ixius gave the order to make for the escape pods and abandon ship.

On the ground, Reaper forces – from Marauders to Cannibals to Ravagers to destroyers to capital ships – momentarily stopped. The simultaneous destruction of so many Reaper ships at once corrupted their network and subsequent processing power. Although the Reapers had learned from Sovereign's failed attack from the Citadel and implemented countermeasures preventing the destruction of their assets from generating what was effectively a network feedback loop, there was no real way they could reasonably expect so many of their capital ships, destroyers, and processor ships to be destroyed in an instant. The result was the Reaper equivalent to confusion, a state all allied forces committed to the campaign were all too eager to exploit. Some Reapers remained functional and unaffected, but many more were momentarily paralyzed.

From where the Defender was orbiting Nanus, Coronati could see the explosions. This was confirmed seconds later by data being streamed in from the fleets over Palaven. From operational headquarters, new briefing packets made in preparation for the success of SLENDER SCALPEL were sent, bounced off the fleet and to every turian and krogan in communications range. Even while new operational protocols were being established for FORWARD FLAME, Resvirix was petitioning High Command to send all available ground units and material in the Trebia System to Palaven before the once-in-a-lifetime window closed.

On the ground, the 27th Provisional Army was still not entirely sure what was happening. All they could be certain of was that warp bomb explosions were happening far away, Reaper ships were suddenly disappearing from the horizon, and enemy ground forces suddenly seized up and stopped in their tracks. All too happy to take advantage of the unexplained phenomenon, the turians and krogan opened up with their own volley of firepower, crossing the main line of resistance and engaging the Reaper ground forces. With the enemy incapable of retaliating or even defending themselves, they were little more than targets in a shooting gallery of the most trained military force in Citadel space and some of the toughest allies in the galaxy.

New orders confirmed what the 27th Provisional Army had suspected but didn't dare to actually believe: A combination of special operations groups and resistance teams had pulled off a planetwide, top-secret operation accumulating in the simultaneous destruction of Reaper ships, with preliminary figures on destroyed vessels being measured in the dozens, and still rising. Operational headquarters gave orders to push as far forward as possible, to fight for ground to the last man. With Reaper ships down and their anti-air capabilities with them, authorization was given for shuttles to initiate a mass invasion of Reaper-held territories. Gunships, tanks, and armor vehicles were broken out from underground storage, having previously been kept hidden and deactivated due to how quickly they were lost to Reaper ships shooting down any mechanized target that moved.

In spite of heavy casualties having been sustained over three days of nonstop fighting, Day Four of FORWARD FLAME saw the high point of morale, with the turians and krogan realizing that they were suddenly not just holding their own, but actually winning. Practically everyone still combat-effective – turian, krogan, commando, soldier, engineer, resistance – dropped everything and moved onto the offensive, taking advantage of a window that could close at any time. Even those who were barely combat-effective were looking to get some of the action; despite the fact that her not-fully-treated shoulder was still in pain from where Hailot had shot her, Optimi – having been recuperating in the rear medical area following their successful extraction of Blackwatch – was already picking up her rifle for the chance to get back into the fray. A resistance medic protested, insisting that she needed to rest.

"And miss out on this?" declared Optimi. "Fuck that."

The sudden mobilization of troops could only be described as massive, rivaled only by the opening hours of FORWARD FLAME. All the resources Palaven could have – not just the resources that could be afforded – were thrown forward for this all-or-nothing push. Thousands of shuttles took off across the planet and swarmed the air, flying deep into Reaper territory, escorted by hundreds gunships that also flew air support for the thousands of armored vehicles plowing the way through the ruined roads of Palaven, complemented by the inexorable march of turian soldiers, resistance fighters, and krogan warriors alike, numbering into the millions.

Above, the Hierarchy had committed every fleet in-system not already burdened with the barebones defense of essential sites to Palaven, hundreds of turian ships moving in for the kill. Even from the ground, troops could see the angry slashes of weapons across space, hundreds of ships bombarding each other with mass accelerator rounds, torpedoes, hypervelocity molten metal. On the ground with the 18th Mountaineer Legion, Velius and her squad watched in awe as the husk of a Reaper capital ship, destroyed by a hail of dreadnought attacks, plummeted towards Palaven in freefall. Turian and krogan alike let out a string of amazed profanities as two kilometers of Reaper capital ship drew a burning scar across the atmosphere at stunning speeds before finally disappearing into the horizon where it crashed just shy of a hundred kilometers away, accumulating in a massive explosion blossoming against the darkness of the night sky. Despite the distance, Velius swore the planet beneath her feet shuddered violently from the impact anyways.

"Today's weather forecast for Palaven," rumbled a krogan in mirth. "Expect regions to experience raining Reapers."

Having been confined to Firebase Arterius for more than a week, the krogan at the South Peaks were all too eager to finally get back into the action after days of just sitting out doomsday. Some morale had been raised when they came up with increasingly creative ways to kill time and Reaper ground forces; with the chance to beat back the enemy, they were positively ecstatic. While turian infantrymen professionally made precise preparations to establish a path down the mountain to link up with the rest of the 27th, the krogan were already moving ahead. With unbelieving awe, the turians watched as just under one hundred krogan infantrymen – each weighing up to a ton when encased in full armor – charge down the mountain despite the fact that some of the mountain's inclinations got as steep as forty-five degrees. From there, the massive reptilian soldiers unleashed a barrage of assault rifle strobes, shotgun blasts, running headbutts, warhammer strikes, and even flying tackles against any enemy foolish enough to get in their way. "Until you've seen a platoon of krogan plow their way down a mountain at a dead sprint," declared Ordinix, "you have not seen a krogan charge."

Infantry action was not the only thing Firebase Arterius had up its sleeve. Without fear of immediate retaliation from Reaper ships, the engineers unveiled salvaged battery pieces that the krogan had cannibalized and put together (which turian engineers had then did some maintenance work on to make them more serviceable) for the Paeridia campaign that had previously been hidden underground for just a moment such as this. From atop the South Peaks, turian engineers dropped heavy tungsten shells onto enemy positions below. Twenty battery pieces serviced a bombardment radius of almost sixty kilometers, and the gun crews, having established communications with the rest of the 27th Provisional Army, were soon taking requests for fire support.

Firebase Arterius was not the only place that saw the allied forces breaking out the big guns. The shuttle network that had been established when the 27th secured defenses around friendly territory had helped transport men and material across allied territory; among its cargo in the last twenty-eight hours were the prototype Whitelight weapons that had been uncovered from the ruins of a SRAD laboratory in Khronus. Between the limit on how many resistance cells were available and a small number of cells that had failed to deliver warp bombs to their targets, and there were still a small handful of Reaper ships close to the main line of resistance that needed to be taken out by other means. Although an infantry assault on a Reaper seemed to be complete and utter suicide, many of the enemy ships were experiencing major shield malfunctions, and Whitelights were considered to be heavy weapons rated for anti-fortress capabilities.

As the effective range of the Whitelights were still uncertain – and they certainly could not be tested in the field – ground forces needed to get as reasonably close to the Reaper as possible, preferably right under them, before firing. As such, it was only logical that the Whitelights be given to the krogan, who could get close by soaking up a ridiculous amount of punishment. Needless to say, no one was more enthusiastic about a job involving a handheld weapon of mass destruction than the krogan themselves. (Turian engineers did not take very long before giving up on trying to convince the krogan that the Whitelights were not "nuclear shotguns".)

The krogan tasked with this mission were given joint-turian-krogan escorts and various forms of transportations, including armored vehicles and shuttles. Velius was appointed as one of the escorts, riding on a shuttle alongside other turians and krogan, one of whom enthusiastically carried a "nuclear shotgun". The approach towards the Reaper vessel ahead was nerve-wracking; the vessel was not entirely disabled, and was already beginning to fire upon approaching shuttles and armor. But apparently it had yet to recover from the previous data corruption, because many of its shots were off-target, a stark contrast to the usually frighteningly accurate fire associated with Reaper ships. The shuttle got just close enough to the Reaper – close enough to make missing almost impossible, but not so close that the shuttle could get caught in the ensuing blast – before the shuttle door opened, giving the krogan a clear shot with his Whitelight at the Reaper. Velius braced one hand against the doorframe while her other hand latched onto the krogan to stabilize him in case the weapon had massive recoil. (She admitted in her interview: "It was a stupid thing to do – how the hell was I supposed to help brace a one-ton krogan? – but it felt right at the time.")

The shot seemed underwhelming at first. The Whitelight spun up an impressive charging cycle, complete with spinning components and glowing lights that seemed like it would be the start of something truly awesome. When ready however, the Whitelight discharged what seemed to be an underwhelming speck of light at the Reaper vessel with absolutely no recoil. But just as the occupants of the shuttle tried to take a closer look at the weapon to see if it was broken, the speck of light made contact with the Reaper ship, which could not recharge its shields fast enough. The effect was nothing short of devastating: The "speck of light" was ultimately a gravitational singularity that reacted volatilely when it made contact with a solid object, in this case the hull of a Reaper destroyer. The result was a massive, glowing hole in the ship as mass effect fields wreaked havoc upon the nuclear forces holding atoms together, effectively changing the ship's chemical composition and turning the formidable ship's hull into only so many sparkling atoms. With practically half of its mass missing and all of its primary systems gone, the Reaper destroyer wasted no time in toppling over and falling silent.

After a moment of stunned silence at the result, the krogan casually tossed aside the spent Whitelight and voiced what everyone thought in that shuttle: "Krogan kills Reaper in shuttle. With some help from friends."

Velius and the other turians were too thrilled at the result to debate the fine details. They were only more thrilled when they learned that all of this was occurring across the planet in a ferocious counterattack, as if the spirit of Palaven itself was exacting its revenge on the Reapers, complete with interest. "Bastards were always thinking about what they could do to us," observed Optimi. "Bet they never wondered what we could do to them."

A carrier like the Example was a kilometer-long and generally carried a complement of more than fifteen thousand servicemen. To accommodate the inclusion of the flight teams and units of the 27th Provisional Army, the carrier's crew for this operation had been reduced to a skeleton minimum of eight thousand, little more than half the usual crew. The carrier was also designed to accommodate evacuation procedures as well as possible; like any other competent military force, the Hierarchy expected each soldier to give their lives if necessary, but worked to retain excellent talent if that necessity was not present.

Still, having eight thousand servicemen evacuate a massive, burning carrier that was swiftly losing altitude was a tall order. Engineering squeezed out as much power as they could from the mass effect core, knowing that the ship was going down and that safety guidelines in regards to overtaxing the reactor could probably be ignored at this point. Even then, VI projections revealed that, at its current rate of descent, the Example would make a crash landing in less than ten minutes. Barely-responsive navigational systems could only alleviate so much of the strain. Even with artificial gravity to compensate, the Example had altogether far too much mass for anyone still inside to survive a crash landing. Entire decks were on fire from the previous Reaper attacks; with the ship entering the atmosphere and fire control systems severely compromised, there was no way to extinguish the flames. Some decks had gone dark from the damage, others had been ripped out of the carrier entirely. All were factors in preventing an orderly evacuation of the Example, a set of horrible circumstances within another set of horrible circumstances. It was all too clear that not everyone would be able to evacuate the carrier in time. Hundreds could easily be left behind.

Ixius fought for time anyways, trying to get as many turians off the burning carrier as possible. Even as the Example seared its way across the atmosphere, she squeezed power out of the mass effect core to rotate the carrier one hundred and eighty degrees while maintaining its trajectory, a move with two purposes. First, to buy extra time for the Example. As carriers were never meant to operate within an atmosphere, aerodynamics was never a concern for its structural design. By coincidence, the hull of the carrier was so shaped that "falling backwards" actually decreased drag, adding an extra minute onto the estimated time before the Example would crash. Second and more importantly, however, it turned the carrier's forward-facing hangar away from the brunt of the atmosphere's air resistance. This allowed many of the crew to escape through the hangar through means other than escape pods and shuttles; servicemen could attempt to flee the carrier via glider or even jetpacks without being buffeted by winds that were reaching twenty thousand kilometers per hour, the approximate speed at which the Example was making its disastrous re-entry.

Castellus made it a point to emphasize Ixius' capabilities: "It was the first time in the entire history of the Hierarchy that a turian ship of this size was forced to execute an atmospheric evacuation. We don't train for this specific scenario, because we never think it would ever happen, reasonably or otherwise. None of us had any experience, any precedents to work off, any scenarios to reenact. Yet within minutes, the captain had somehow figured all this out – aerodynamics on a vessel that usually doesn't touch an atmosphere, using the hangar on a vessel that usually never sees air resistance – and she does it on a dying ship that's burning, falling into pieces, plummeting towards a planet, and operating at only twenty percent power."

One by one, escape pods detached themselves from the ship and rocketed to safety. Castellus was relieved that, even with such an unprecedented situation, the turians remained calm and ensured the evacuation went as orderly as possible; turians having already strapped into their escape pods would launch until their pods were either at full or near-full capacity, as to prevent the carrier from running out of pods while much of the crew still remained on board. Doing the math in his head, Castellus figured that – assuming all pods were either at full or near-full capacity – around thirty percent of the crew had evacuated in the first four minutes. He was far too busy trying to work out last-minute navigational calculations to check, but he also assumed that servicemen close to the hangar were also evacuating via shuttles, leftover gliders, jetpacks, and other impromptu instruments of flight.

The Example was scattering millions of projectiles in its wake. Aside from debris that was swiftly being torn off its already-damaged framed by Palaven's atmosphere, there were also escape pods, shuttles, gliders, and jet-pack equipped turians kicking off from the plummeting carrier. There were, of course, also turian bodies being thrown into the air, stripped from the ship along with decks they had perished in. Conditions inside the carrier were atrocious, with fires burning everywhere and the vessel shuddering violently; even with as much power as possible being diverted to artificial gravity at the expense of systems such as weapons and life support, it was difficult for anyone to remain upright on their feet. In many cases, turian servicemen had to crawl on the ground to get anywhere, pulled along by their compatriots stationed across the carrier's decks, pulling the evacuees around corners, trying to expedite the evacuation.

Eight minutes in, with only three minutes to spare until collision, Ixius extended the evacuation order from only non-essential personnel to every single person on the ship, including the bridge crew. Swiftly, the bridge officers began to file out in an orderly fashion to the nearest escape pods. Ixius herself stayed behind; she maintained that someone needed to make last-minute adjustments to navigation for the Example to maintain the closest thing to a stable orbit as possible, buying the carrier's crew valuable time to abandon ship before it would crash onto the surface. Castellus offered to take her place, but Ixius assured Castellus that she had no intention of martyring herself "if reasonably possible", and she needed someone on the ground to coordinate survivors. With circumstances as dire as they were, the executive officer wanted to wish his captain good luck, but ultimately decided better against it, instead saying, "See you on the ground."

As the only remaining bridge officer, Ixius consolidated all of the bridge's controls to the captain's console at her seat. Theoretically, the captain's console had access to all of the ship's systems, and could control the vessel by one's lonesome. In reality, this was largely just a formality: Even with VI support, there were by far too many systems and subsystems for a captain alone to make coherent course corrections for a stable orbit once a kilometer-long ship had entered a planet's lower atmosphere, never mind fly a carrier that was doomed to crash on the planet.

Ixius was not planning to fly the Example, or even to attempt to bring the carrier into a more stable orbit. The bridge crew had done their part, and any further navigational tricks Ixius could offer wouldn't help the situation at all. With the Example's last moments, however, her captain wanted to bring her down somewhere specific, and – with enough power for last-minute emergency maneuvers – there just happened to be a paralyzed Reaper capital ship in the carrier's flight path.

Glancing at her readouts, Ixius could tell by the number of escape pods having left the carrier that approximately eighty percent of the crew, including the bridge officers, had "officially" abandoned ship; she knew it was optimistic thinking, but she hoped that the remaining survivors had "unofficially" evacuated via unconventional means through the hangar. With the clock counting down and no way to ascertain how long it would take for the Reapers to recover, Ixius deliberately aimed high in case the Reaper attempted to escape into orbit at the last second. Unknown to the captain, in an attempt to expedite its recovery from what was basically a systematic failure in the form of a massive feedback loop, the Reaper had locked down its quantum infrastructure on data processing, thus leaving it almost entirely blind to the outside world. Logically, it was a reasonable risk; the Reaper was aware of the turian resistance suicide teams, but all signs pointed to the fact that it was not a target of SLENDER SCALPEL, and further reasoning confirmed that it was deep enough into Reaper territory to not be in immediate danger of a turian-krogan counterattack. Therefore, by the time the Reaper realized there was a kilometer-long carrier three kilometers away, hurtling in its direction at more than a thousand kilometers per hour, it was already too late for last-second maneuvers or engaging shields.

Even with much of the ship's frame stripped away by the atmosphere, the Example was still just over thirty-seven hundred metric kilotons of mass that slammed into a Reaper at almost eleven hundred kilometers per hour. The collision itself had the kinetic energy of forty kilotons of TNT, more than the full force of a round from a dreadnought's main mass accelerator. For a Reaper capital ship that only barely began to bring its barriers back online, it was the knockout punch.

Both massive vessels exploded and fractured into massive fragments, spilling giant pieces of burning wreckage in the direction of the Example's trajectory. From his still-airborne escape pod, Castellus could see the death of the Reaper and his carrier from almost twenty kilometers away. "No one said anything, but the bridge crew observed an unspoken moment of silence as we watched the flames engulfed the last pieces of our ship. It was not the fate we wanted for the Example, but it's the best death we could give any vessel, and one final gift from the crew to the Battle of Palaven."

As the Example had minimal control over how it fell down into Palaven, many of the evacuees had been jettisoned from the carrier over Reaper-controlled territory. Fortunately, for most of these crewmembers, they were close enough to the main line of resistance; when the 27th Provisional Army continued its inexorable push forward in an attempt to retake as much territory on Palaven as possible, many of the Example's crew were picked up by shuttles and armored vehicles that took them back to the rear for medical attention and debrief. Castellus, having ejected from the Example particularly deep into Reaper territory along with the bridge crew, had to wait for hours for any shuttle to arrive, but they, too, were ultimately found and brought back to the rear for some well-earned rest.

Word came down from High Command that all reinforcements that could possibly be spared were on their way down to Palaven. "It's just like the brass to commit forces only after lunatics like us have done all the work," observed Vranikius. The news, however, was ultimately overwhelmingly welcome. While the 27th Provisional Army was enjoying successive tactical victories against Reaper forces, they were stretching themselves dangerously thin, given their remaining numbers. Even with the resistance swelling up their ranks, they were highly vulnerable to a counterattack should Reaper forces manage to recover and regroup. Fortunately, it was not something that needed to be tested, as the mobilized reinforcements were able to reach Palaven before such a catastrophe happened, ensuring that the joint-operations ended on a high note.

The mobilization in response to the success of SLENDER SCALPEL and FORWARD FLAME was nothing short of amazing. With so many Reaper ships destroyed, the enemy had lost orbital supremacy, and the Hierarchy now regained control of almost half of Palaven's airspace. This allowed thousands of large troop landers, normally very vulnerable targets, to safely ferry reinforcements from Menae and Nanus to relieve the 27th, a massive ground force made up of the 1st Palaven, 7th, 16th, and 24th Armies that stood at half a million strong. With logistical and transportation lines reestablished both on turian-held territories on Palaven and in space, the reinforcing turians had little problem in picking up where the 27th left off, securing massive swathes of territories where Reaper forces had descended into chaos.

While reinforcements concentrated on capturing territories that the 27th could not, turian and krogan forces involved in the first three days of the operations focused on bringing Palaven back online. Engineering legions injected themselves full of stimulants and worked tirelessly to rebuild planetary defenses. Prefabricated facilities and defenses were lifted off factories on and over Menae and Nanus, then dropped from orbit onto specific sites on Palaven. Massive ground-to-space batteries were brought back online, complete with new layouts and algorithms that maximized their effectiveness against Reaper ships, all of which were based off data gained from months of bitter experiences. Firebases – many of which had been reduced to a flat, empty graveyard of ashes – were reactivated within days. Continental communications and fiber-optic lines were reestablished.

Units of the 27th, even those who were not engineers, helped picked up the slack wherever they could, despite the fact that they were all fatigued from days of nonstop fighting. Their spirit and morale, however, nevertheless managed to keep them going, and no turian complained about performing menial physical labor for engineers working on bringing everything back online. The krogan were also surprisingly unreserved in offering assistance. Jorgal found himself impressed by the turians: "Where a krogan could barely be bothered to pick up after his own messes, the turians – despite months of exhausting warfare – wasted no time or effort in cleaning away the mess, rebuilding all that had been damaged, and bringing everything up to militaristic perfection."

Orders came down from operational headquarters: In recognition of their valiant efforts, Resvirix was ordering that the entirety of the 27th Provisional Army regroup at their nearest firebases. While critically vital engineering work would continue, all legions in the 27th – turian or krogan – were to be relieved of combat duty for at least three days, and for them to consider this period to be official R&R. While a burning Palaven was normally not anyone's first choice for a vacation spot, turians and krogan across the 27th agreed that they wouldn't rather be anywhere else. As such, they kicked back and enjoyed their well-earned rest, allowing the rest of the Hierarchy to finally catch up.

The reclamation of Palaven would continue for days as the reinforcing armies continued to press on the attack. However, at least for the 27th Provisional Army, SLENDER SCALPEL and FORWARD FLAME were finally over.

Ninety-seven warp bombs had been prepared for SLENDER SCALPEL. Out of the ninety-seven, ninety-one reached their destinations and detonated on-target. The sacrifices of the men and women who accomplished the impossible came at a heavy cost: Most of the prisoners in the Reaper camps did not survive, caught in the blast of the warp bomb and the subsequent explosion of the Reaper ships.

The detonations allowed for a systematic purge of an astounding number of Reaper ships in the Trebia System as the enemy order of battle fell into disarray, their network caught in a feedback loop that made them vulnerable for just long enough. By the end of the fourth day of FORWARD FLAME, the 27th Provisional Army destroyed an additional thirteen Reaper ships, while the combined fleets of Palaven destroyed twenty-three and damaged far more.

The accomplishment was not without its staggering costs. Due to the chaotic circumstances, no accurate figure for casualties exists, but the 2193 official estimate on deaths sustained over the four days of SLENDER SCALPEL and FORWARD FLAME was over one million, a figure that does not include the number of turian prisoners that were killed in SLENDER SCALPEL, caught too close to the warp bombs when they went off. Eighty-seven ships were destroyed, with hundreds more severely damaged. Of the dead, Resvirix said in a press release, "Whatever they were in life, their deaths had no equal. They are worthy of joining the spirit of Palaven itself."

But the result could not be overstated. While swathes of territory on Palaven beyond the reach of the Hierarchy and the resistance still remained solidly in Reaper control, the turians achieved a parity that had never been accomplished since the Reapers began their ground invasion. For the first time since the invasion began, the enemy as a whole had to sit and wait for reinforcements, deprived of the necessary resources to attack a regrouped and rebuilt Hierarchy military force. With the severely diminished Reaper presence, military traffic between Palaven, Menae, and Nanus was restored, and the Hierarchy quickly began reorganization and resupply operations, getting every unit where they needed to be. Infrastructure and defenses were swiftly restored planetside now that the turians had a chance to catch a breath, taking into consideration the lessons they had learned over the months of the Reaper War. Morale soared across the Trebia System, and when the first major waves of Reaper reinforcements finally arrived in-system three days later, Palaven was once again a fortress, daring the enemy to break themselves against its walls.

With morale teetering dangerously at the brink of collapse after the Fall of Thessia, news of SLENDER SCALPEL and FORWARD FLAME's success massively boosted resolve and confidence across the galaxy. An impossible decisive military victory against the Reapers broke headlines on every news network everywhere; when Nos Astra Broadcasting – while not the first to break the story – aired the news with the headline "Miracle at Palaven", the name caught on, with networks across the galaxy using it to describe the miracle that had occurred. The story of turians, krogan, and quarians working together and destroying so many Reaper ships with nothing but superior planning and daring was embellished with every telling. No one was under the delusion that they were suddenly winning the war, or that the same trick could be pulled off twice, but it nevertheless defeated the belief that the Reapers were invincible, or that they were all but unassailable without being terrifically outnumbered and outgunned.

Just as importantly, the Miracle at Palaven was an astonishing story of cooperation among unexpected parties at an unexpected time. While the cure of the genophage involved turian and krogan forces on Tuchanka, and while the end to the Geth War involved quarian and geth forces over Rannoch, both victories resulted in the destruction of only one destroyer respectively, and were largely considered the side effect of a greater crisis. The Miracle at Palaven was considered the first successful joint-military campaign that saw mass destruction of the enemy's naval forces, involving three different races that had previously held each other in great contempt. As special forces strike teams saw increased need to diversify their recruitment pool, the slogan "Remember Palaven" transformed into a tale of how the galaxy was strongest when it was united in spite of – or perhaps because of – their differences.

Primarch Victus offered perhaps the greatest praise when his office passed on a message to the parties involved in the Miracle at Palaven: "Although we are separated by the eternity of time and the infiniteness of the universe, our very existences – mere motes against the great fabric of reality – came together against unfathomable odds, came together in a brief and lucid moment of our fleeting lives, and accomplished the impossible. The galaxy is a better place because all of you have come together. Know that wherever you go, you've earned the right to hold your head high, for Palaven calls you a brother."

At the recently-reactivated Firebase Ekyrius, Helsrang tended to several wounds he had sustained through the course of the joint-operation. Blackwatch had pulled back to the firebase as the Hierarchy entrenched themselves into defensive positions, where Ravakian debriefed 2nd Platoon and ordered mandatory rests for everyone; she wanted everybody to be one hundred and fifty percent ready when they next had to move out again. None of Helsrang's injuries really needed immediate medical attention, but as the executive officer for Ravakian, he wasn't willing to chance his wounds to possible infection that would take him out of the battle.

Familiar voices attracted Helsrang's attention, and the lieutenant looked up to see Urdnot Nakmor debrief Malgus Company; they, too, had survived SLENDER SCALPEL, and were airlifted back to Ekyrius after being located and extracted. The debrief was of the usual krogan bravado: Loud laughter, loud profanities, and loud boasts of what they've managed to accomplish, punctuated only by loud celebratory shotgun blasts into the air. Under any other circumstances, Helsrang – like any other turian – would've considered the display unsightly, unprofessional, and undisciplined; this time, however, he couldn't find it within himself to be bothered.

Eventually, the debrief was over, and Malgus Company scattered to mingle with the rest of the 27th Provisional Army for some very well-deserved rest. Urdnot, in the meantime, came over and sat down next to Helsrang, uncorking a flask of ryncol and taking a gulp. Recognizing the lieutenant, the krogan offered the turian a drink. "No, thanks," Helsrang refused the offer. "Dextro, remember?"

Like soldiers, Urdnot called Helsrang a pussy, to which the lieutenant replied with a succinct "fuck off". The two then enjoyed a moment of rest and quiet as engineers around them continued to rebuild and upgrade the defenses of Firebase Ekyriat.

It was only after several moments of this quiet that Helsrang finally nudged Urdnot in the shoulder. "Hey, pal," said the lieutenant, summarizing the sentiment of every turian on Palaven. "Thanks for taking my planet back."

Chapter Text

=16=
After the End

The men and women who fought for Palaven in its greatest moment of need numbered in the billions, from every turian and krogan in active service, to those who fought in the resistance, to the many who answered the Hierarchy's call for aid. Official estimates of the death toll on Palaven alone range from 1.3 billion to 1.7 billion; one out of every four persons on the planet perished. No one made it out of the war unscathed. Lives were destroyed in more ways than one; everyone lost friends, comrades, loved ones. When the dust finally settled and the war ended, everyone picked up the pieces the best they were able to try to rebuild what had been lost.

With transportation kicked back to pre-mass relay FTL travel, friends and family were separated by vast distances. In spite of great uncertainty as to the fate of loved ones, turian and krogan alike worked towards rebuilding Palaven to the best of their abilities. Although not native to the planet, the krogan were treated as brothers-in-arms, and experienced no shortage of food or shelter over the year they spent stranded on the turian homeworld. When the mass relay network was finally restored in 2188, everyone was anxious to return home, and immediately set out to do so.

The Reaper War changed everyone it touched, some for the better, others for the worst. For many, it brought about a newfound appreciation of life. Having come so close to death, many married and started new families as soon as possible. Others embarked on lifelong dreams they've always thought could be postponed until later. But many were also devastated in the aftermath of the war. Post-traumatic stress disorder became distressingly common, as did suicide attempts. Brothers- and sisters-in-arms stood together and did what they could for each other.

But for those who fought in the Battle of Palaven, there remained a lingering connection, the recognition of the fact that fate had somehow brought them altogether in this theater of war. It was a permanent mark of greatness on their lives, regardless of whether they were turian, krogan, or quarian. They had all stood together in trying times despite their differences, and became a part of something much greater than they could have imagined. The victory they earned was made possible only by their invaluable, valiant sacrifices, a triumph that forged a very special bond that shall be shared between each and every veteran until the end of their days.

Demetrius Risithi was placed under arrest for disclosing the ultimate objective of SLENDER SCALPEL – the destruction of the Reaper ships by the turian resistance with smuggled explosives – to the krogan commandos, against the orders of Coronati and Cerivix. Confined aboard the Defender, he survived the Reaper War, but faced an unusually prolonged (by turian standards) court-martial after the war, due in no small part to Coronati and Cerivix's influence. He was eventually found guilty of insubordination and deliberate mishandling of classified materials, but was acquitted of all charges by Primarch Adrien Victus; however, he was ultimately denied official recognition of his role in strategizing the Miracle at Palaven. This did nothing to encourage any newfound loyalties to the Hierarchy, and Risithi disappeared as soon as the mass relay network was reestablished, presumably to rejoin the Blue Suns. He was eventually found dead at a remote outpost on Amaranthine in 2202, presumably killed by a mercenary raid.

In 2205, HDI Director Vice Admiral Nillin Zerindus (no relation to deceased HDI Agent Nillin who coordinated with the Khronus resistance cell) reopened the Risithi prosecution after significant lobbying from several krogan commandos involved in the Miracle at Palaven, who insisted the special consultant's decision to disclose classified information saved lives on the ground. Although his charges were never cleared, Risithi was posthumously given official recognition for the tremendous role he played in the Miracle at Palaven.

Telana Cyrion, who lost a leg from a Reaper attack on the Example and was subsequently evacuated by the Bosh'tet Express, was one of the first turians to arrive on Rannoch since it was repopulated by the quarians. The planet and its residents left a lasting impression on her; she wrote of her first experience of seeing Rannoch from the ground: "A homeworld unpopulated for centuries, free of industry and overcrowding and pollution, Rannoch was beautiful even for a turian half-delirious with infection and pain. In less sensitive moments and on the verge of losing my own homeworld, I wondered how the quarians could've ever let it go."

Cyrion didn't quite get her post-Express combination of beach, fruit drink, and fawning quarian girls, at least not all at once. When the mass relay network was reestablished, Cyrion was found – to the surprise of no one who knew her well – to have married a quarian girl, Lan'Ittil vas Nurenjal, during her stay on Rannoch. She got a geth-made prosthetic leg and returned to Palaven just long enough to sort out personal post-war errands. She then teamed up with Ittil and volus entrepreneur Orus Bint to found Cyrion-Bint Construction, transporting resources from turian space to assist in the reconstruction in quarian space.

Today, Cyrion-Bint Construction is one of the largest private construction firms on Rannoch, making Cyrion one of the richest turians alive. She was the Special Consultant on Quarian Relations to the Hierarchy Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 2195 to 2197, and still remains a key figure on the Council on Quarian-Turian Relations. Despite her hectic agenda, she still managed to make time for an interview for this book. And, sure enough, Cyrion invited me to her beach villa on Rannoch, provided fruit drinks as refreshments, and had our interview under the watchful eyes of a loving quarian wife to "make sure [Cyrion] gets all the details right and doesn't go on an ego trip".

Not everyone came out of the war with happy endings. Lonn Syphiat survived the war, but struggled with severe emotional scars afterwards, having lost most of his friends and all of his family. With almost no emotional support, he began a chain of alcohol and drug abuse, resulting in his demotion and being drummed out of the 18th Mountaineer Legion in 2187. He cut what few ties he had and disappeared.

When Cyrion returned to Palaven in 2188, she made it a priority to find Syphiat. Horrified at the stories told by the 18th Mountaineer Legion of her friend's post-war downward spiral, Cyrion spent months trying to track Syphiat down. When they finally reunited at a bar on Oma Ker, he broke down and cried. He was a wreck, an alcoholic working odd jobs on the turian colony with no permanent residence or stable income. Cyrion spared little expense in trying to get her longtime friend set back up, inviting Syphiat to join her on Rannoch to help run Cyrion-Bint Construction.

It was the last time Cyrion saw Syphiat; if she had hoped her efforts would bring her friend back to the galaxy, her hopes were dashed when news arrived that Syphiat had committed suicide mere months after her visit. He had no living family, so Cyrion took it upon herself to make funeral arrangements, a private affair with what few mutual friends they had left in the 18th Mountaineer Legion. Cyrion provided the epitaph on Syphiat's plaque: "Remembered by friends and comrades at his most honorable, the sacrifice he made for Palaven."

Jari Deiethus, promoted to service chief after the war, never truly accepted the state of affairs after the conflict and how things concluded. Having lost so much to the Reapers, he became intensively politically active despite his status as an enlisted turian. Increasingly vocal against rebuilding the galaxy alongside his former enemies, he believed that a blanket pardon for what the Reapers had done was completely unreasonable, and believed it was the responsibility of the galaxy to carry out the Reaper War to the very end, until every last Reaper was exterminated.

Deiethus was eventually found guilty of insubordination and poor conduct, and demoted back to corporal. It was roughly around this time that he became a sleeper agent for the Martyrhood, [a galactic anti-Reaper extremist group categorized as a terrorist organization by the Citadel Council,] and was responsible for a number of undisclosed security leaks. Deiethus managed to elude the suspicions of investigators due how public he had become at that point, making public appearances at press conferences, public committees, and extranet shows, equating the post-war peace to appeasement and capitulation to a power " merely deigning to allow the galaxy to exist". The turian intelligence community kept him off a list of suspects for years simply because it seemed infeasible for such a high-profile figure to be an effective terrorist or mole.

Eventually, in 2199, the HDI managed to procure substantial proof behind Deiethus' terrorist relations, and he was tried and found guilty of aiding and abetting a terrorist organization, subsequently sentenced to death. A rescue attempt for him and other terrorist inmates was made by the Martyrhood a day before Deiethus' execution; while the rescue was initially successful, Deiethus himself was found dead in an alley on the same day, having bled out from wounds he sustained during the rescue.

Maximus Benessius continued to serve alongside the 38th Heavy Infantry Legion as peacekeepers in the aftermath of the Reaper War, keeping the peace amongst turians and krogan after the destruction of the mass relay network. When the reconstruction of Cipritine Hill Services Academy commenced, Benessius applied for and earned a position as drill instructor in the Hierarchy's foremost military academy. He opted not to remove the scars across his face that had been inflicted by exploding Ravager ordnance, which served to consolidate his reputation as one of the most fearsome instructors at Cipritine Hill.

Although he was in his element in training the next generation of turians, Benessius was coaxed back into the 38th Heavy Infantry Legion in 2196. The unit was tasked to police the new Hierarchy frontier, which had become increasingly dangerous in the wake of the Reaper War. The legion began on a planet-hopping campaign to clear planets of pirates, outlaws, and remnants of the Reaper War, described as an "unsettling experience". After another six years of service, he finally rotated into the Reserves in 2202, got married, and got a job as a colony coordinator for the Hierarchy's effort to reclaim depopulated planets, which he maintains to this day.

Urdnot Bakar was critically wounded when attempting to save Maximus Benessius from an incoming orbital bombardment, where his heavy armor and hump took the brunt of the heatwave from a Thanix shot. Fortunately, the timely application of medigel and his own krogan regenerative capabilities ensured that he survived despite the disfiguration. Like virtually all krogan who came to Palaven's aid, he returned to Tuchanka almost immediately after the mass relay network was restored. Like virtually all krogan who were at Palaven, he got married almost immediately and started a large family.

Unlike virtually all krogan, however, he did not stay. When Cipritine Hill Services Academy reopened its gates following its reconstruction, it extended invitations to Tuchanka, and Clan Urdnot was keen on having their own people learn how to be effective command and administrative officers instead of just being combat specialists and team leaders. Urdnot volunteered, and returned to Palaven, where – to his amusement – one of his drill instructors was Maximus Benessius. "I saved his life," surmised the krogan, "so he got to make mine hell."

Successfully graduating from Cipritine Hill, Urdnot returned home, where he served as a commissioned officer for the Clans Coalition Government. His credentials made him a valuable commodity, as his administrative savvy helped addressed new logistical concerns that came with the new planetary government. He remains one of the core staff officers of the Krogan Army, busying himself with the organization of Tuchanka's armed forces. "Miss the kick of a shotgun in my hands," admitted Urdnot, "but it gets the job done." He remains regular contact with Benessius.

Urdnot Nakmor was treated as a war hero by the turians for his role in SLENDER SCALPEL. There was no shortage of locals willing to buy him a drink, and he promptly accumulated a long line of DUI charges until his return to Tuchanka when the mass relay network was restored. Immediately upon his return, he did three things immediately: Started a family, resigned as the commanding officer of Malgus Company, and joined the newly-formed Tuchanka Geological and Botanical Survey, co-organized with several special salarian interests. "Basically," Urdnot put it, "I became a gardener tending flowerbeds, and trying to grow plants and crops on a radioactive desert planet inhabited by thresher maws."

As one of the highest-ranking krogan in the Survey, Urdnot was soon making runs between the Citadel, Sur'Kesh, and Tuchanka in an effort to coordinate the revitalization of Tuchanka's ecosphere. He came surprisingly familiar with political leaders across the galaxy, and was quietly considered one of the most politically influential krogan alive, despite holding a post for an ecological agency that was considered semi-private. In 2199, he presided over the opening of the Grick Preservation Area, the first region on Tuchanka to officially be reforested. He also presided over the opening of the Katakog Ecological Zone in 2203, the first self-sustaining bio-ecosphere on the planet.

Urdnot has since become the deputy director for the Tuchanka Geological and Botanical Survey. He published his experiences with the Survey in the book Harvest Tuchanka; although it fell severely short of initial market expectations, its video game adaptation by the same name became a surprisingly popular bestseller in 2204, prompting several equally successful sequels. This, in turn, revitalized interest in the book the games are based on.

Jorgal Kurdu was one of the key officers with the Krogan Army, and remained in that capacity after the Battle of Palaven. As the chief commanding officer of the unit that rushed to the Migrant Fleet Marines' last known position after the Defense of Communications Relay 227, he was responsible for locating and collecting any surviving remains and effects of the quarian defenders. As such, after the mass relay network was restored, Jorgal was part of the turian-krogan delegation to Rannoch that returned the remains of the quarian Marines back to their homeworld in 2188.

Jorgal returned to Tuchanka after the mass relay network was restored, started a family, and continued to serve as a battalion commander. In 2191, he was tapped to be among the many high-ranking officers to reorganize and modernize the Krogan Army into a professional fighter force, given that the krogan had spent centuries fighting as a loose collection of mercenaries. By 2200, he was promoted to general, a position he holds to this day.

In 2203, Jorgal backed an unpopular proposal to form official clandestine krogan units, having personally witnessed the effectiveness of SLENDER SCALPEL and FORWARD FLAME. The measure was ultimately approved, and he was tasked to help reorganize and retrain the krogan "commando teams" into worthy special forces units. However, a highly embarrassing showing in the 2207 human-krogan military exercises showed that Jorgal still had his work cut out for him when it came to a still-maturing special forces unit. When questioned by the press in the aftermath of the exercises, Jorgal stated simply, "We're working on it."

Hailot Enka, like most other krogan, returned to Tuchanka at first opportunity, married, and had children. However, unlike most krogan, Hailot had no interest in remaining on Tuchanka; with the credits he had hoarded and looted from the Reaper War, he bought several ships from the Blood Pack mercenary group, convinced several of his relatives to follow him off-planet, and founded Hailot Freighter Services in 2190, a transportation firm that relocated industrial materials for reconstruction work across the galaxy. The endeavor became surprisingly profitable; with government security forces spread thin and opportunistic pirate raids becoming increasingly common, the idea of armed krogan crews manning mercenary freighters was appealing to parties that actually wanted their cargo to arrive safely at their destination.

For a krogan who left his roots and attempted entrepreneurship, Hailot was remarkably successful. By 2196, a merger with Ganymede Transportation made the resulting Raptor Freighter Corporation one of the major names in the industry, resulting in Hailot becoming one of the richest krogan alive. His children also spread across the galaxy, with some taking up the family business and liaised with planetary offices, while others returned to Tuchanka to assist the reconstruction of their ancestral home.

Hailot continues to co-administrate the Raptor Freighter Corporation, making periodic runs between Earth and Tuchanka, as well as many other spots across the galaxy. When not managing the family business and walking through boardrooms, he continues to personally train the security details employed under him. Outside of his professional life, Hailot has faithfully attended the Reaper War Remembrance Week biannually on Palaven.

Solana Optimi sustained gunshot wounds after calling for her allies to shoot through her in a firefight. She survived, but the lack of immediate treatment meant she was in and out of hospitals in the years that followed as complications from those wounds arose one by one. Her medical condition rotated her from combat soldier to armory officer, which Optimi reluctantly accepted but considered "a letdown" compared to the frontlines. She served the final years of her service as a close-range weapons instructor and close-quarters combat trainer to new recruits.

Optimi's career after active service was unusual for a turian, in that she swiftly burned through a long chain of jobs that didn't work out for one reason or another. They included but were not limited to security chief for a cargo transport company, radio commentator, dance instructor, bartender, mountain climbing instructor, and wilderness tour guide. In 2204, she ran for and was successfully appointed as the legislative representative for Aethon District on Palaven, purportedly admitting she had never actually envisioned herself in politics and expressing surprise she had actually received the appointment. After she finished her term in 2210, she opened her own restaurant, and has worked there as chef and owner since.

Optimi struck up an unusual friendship with Hailot Enka, the krogan who shot her through the shoulder, while he was stranded on Palaven. They maintained contact even after Hailot returned to Tuchanka and started his business; while in office, Optimi successfully sponsored the application of one of his sons into the Cipritine Hill Services Academy in 2206. She still keeps in touch with the Hailots, meeting up from time-to-time across the galaxy. Optimi's traditional greeting to her krogan comrade's family remains: "Have you shot that bastard in the shoulder yet?"

Gerik Ferandaris survived having lost both of his legs during Operation: FORWARD FLAME. He wanted to assist in the recovery of Palaven, but with a very long line of wounded who required cell regeneration surgery, and with very few surviving doctors or medical facilities on Palaven, Ferandaris ended up sitting out on the greatest reconstruction effort the Hierarchy had ever seen. Confined to a hospital bed with very little to do, he ended up composing letters to every contact on his omni-tool, trying to get in contact with them, reflecting on the devastating conflict, and relating to them in the war's aftermath. This was in spite of the fact that practically ninety percent of all persons on his contact list were unreachable either due to the chaos after the war, or the destruction of galactic communications infrastructure.

Despite initial medical complications – it had taken too long by the time Ferandaris finally had a shot at the cell regeneration surgery – the operation was a success. He returned to active duty in 2187, spontaneously married the nurse who had taken care of him, received a promotion to gunnery chief, and finally sent out all his letters in 2188. Fewer than a quarter of the intended recipients ever replied. Among them was an asari commando who recommended that Ferandaris publish the letters as a novel. Letters From Palaven was published in 2190 and sold decently well; a movie adaptation was released in 2194, which was universally panned and criticized for "having almost nothing to do with the source material".

Ferandaris divorced in 2195, remarried in 2196, and was promoted to staff lieutenant in 2204, a rank he holds to this day. He is currently tasked the [Council Symmetrical Forces], policing Council space with the peacekeeping fleets.

Like so many veterans across the galaxy, Shari Velius struggled with her experiences in the Reaper War. She was reunited with her daughter within months of the war's end, but while this provided her with a semblance of balance for the first few months, she fell into increasingly frantic mood swings as time went on. Despite reassurances from medical experts, Velius began to believe that she had been indoctrinated by the Reapers, made worse from recurring nightmares. Her daughter was remanded into her sister's custody for the girl's safety, which only served to worsen Velius' psychological state.

Velius attempted suicide in 2192 by shooting herself in the head, but botched the attempt. As she laid in a puddle of her own blood, her daughter arrived for a visit. Despite being shot in the head, Velius was lucid enough to register her daughter's frantic, hysterical attempts to keep her alive and contact emergency services. "There's something about watching your daughter break down and cry while you have a self-inflicted bullet hole in your head that makes you think, 'Spirits, no, I don't want to die. I still want to keep on living.'"

Velius managed to pull through, although she spent years recovering from the brain damage from her attempt. While recuperating, she began to self-study medicine, which led to her going enrolling into medical school in 2196 after making a full recovery. She graduated in 2199, and returned to the 18th Mountaineer Legion as a combat medic. She received an honorable discharge in 2205, and has since worked as a nurse on Palaven.

In the last days of the Reaper War, Inthira Smirian went on a patrol with a squad of resistance fighters, all of whom failed to report in or return. Labeled missing in action, she and her patrol were never found despite the efforts of her friends and family, even after the war, having effectively vanished into thin air. In 2190, the Hierarchy, as part of a policy to label all persons still killed in action three years or more after the Reaper War, officially "confirmed" Smirian to have died in the conflict.

Yreen Ekyriat was shot in the side in the last days of the Reaper War, and her need to recuperate from her injury what saved her from going on the same patrol that Smirian disappeared with. Ekyriat spared little effort and resources in trying to find Smirian after the war, even after Smirian's own family gave up on the search. When the Hierarchy officially labeled Smirian as killed in action, Ekyriat was "devastated". "There was no real sense of closure. She was my better half for all of the war, and suddenly she's just gone. Not even dead. Just…gone, an inconclusive state of limbo."

With the mental scars she had sustained through the war adding insult to injury, Ekyriat drifted in and out of depression, much in the same way she drifted in and out of various security jobs that often did not work out due to use of excessive violence. Eventually, she met and fell in love with an asari commando, who helped eased her through one of the most turbulent chapters of her life. They married in 2197, and Ekyriat eventually managed to get a human resources job for the Sirta Foundation on the Citadel.

Ekyriat still keeps in touch with the Smirians, as well as various friends and comrades from the Khronus resistance cell. However, she has since steadfastly refused to ever return to Palaven. "There are altogether too many nightmares haunting me there," she admitted, "and I've seen enough horrors to last me three asari lifetimes."

Despite her smuggler background, Miridi Kylonis' role in the Miracle of Palaven helped wipe the slate clean. She stayed on Palaven to assist with recovery and reconstruction along with the Khronus resistance, and stayed for a bit on Palaven. But once the Citadel was once again habitable in 2191, she managed to get the most logical job available to her: Deputy director of the Customs Division under the reorganized Citadel Security Services. Her tenure saw several major well-received overhauls of Citadel customs, and more than a few observers made wry remarks of how it took a veteran smuggler to lead C-Sec's campaign against smuggling.

In 2194, Kylonis was caught in a terrorist bombing when the Martyrhood targeted the office of then-Customs Division Director Zhang Wenlong. Although she barely survived the initial blast, she remained in critical condition for two days before being pronounced dead. Per her will, her body was cremated with full honors over her home planet of Taetrus.

As one of the leaders of the Khronus resistance cell, Derithi Gianthis was recognized and decorated for his involvement in the Battle of Palaven after the Reaper War. He helped supervise the reconstruction of his native Khronus District, and was reunited with his wife, who had also managed to survive the war, when she returned from Earth in 2188. Although he planned to spend the rest of his days peacefully in the Reserves, Gianthis was approached by the HDI, who wanted the talents that saw the Khronus resistance cell through the Miracle at Palaven. He became a consultant, and then later a trainer, on both leadership and clandestine activities for the HDI for several years, until he was finally talked into a more permanent position in 2194.

Much of Gianthis' activities with the HDI remain classified, although he acknowledged that he had been "coordinating operations" and "liaising with the [Council Asymmetrical Forces]". He remained with Defense Intelligence until he finally resigned and transferred into the reserves in 2205. He and his wife still live on Palaven with their two children.

Draxen Achtus lost his wife and his three children in the Reaper War. Despite having commanded the Khronus resistance cell, he spent the years after struggling to reassemble his life. The commitments and duties of his leadership, the responsibility over those he commanded, had been what had been keeping him together; when that was taken away, he slowly but surely fell apart. He moved away from Palaven in 2190. "Staying was torture," he admitted somberly. "There was nothing about the planet that failed to remind me about everything that went wrong with the Reaper War."

Despite efforts from his closest friends in the Khronus resistance cell, Achtus remained completely off the radar, and would've remained so had he not been caught trying to smuggle explosives into Palaven in 2204. He was captured alive, and medical experts discovered that he had inadvertently come into contact with a Reaper artifact at some point over the last thirteen years, resulting in a moderate level of indoctrination. Achtus was handed over to Hikaru-Ezekiel Pharmaceuticals for long-term anti-indoctrination treatment. He has since made a profound recovery, and was well enough to partake in interviews when visited at Hikaru-Ezekiel's Basel facility on Earth.

Due to irrefutable medical proof of his indoctrination, the Hierarchy dropped the smuggling charges against Achtus, and awarded him the Silver Wreath in 2207 for his role in leading the Khronus resistance cell through the Battle of Palaven.

At the heart of Carratine District on Palaven, there stands an array of statues twenty meters from the foot of Communications Relay 227. Laser-carved from blocks of metal imported from Rannoch in 2191, a dozen unmoving life-sized quarians stand tall and proud in front of plaques detailing each of their names and an explanation of their sacrifice that made the Miracle of Palaven possible. Today, the Defense of Communications Relay 227 is officially considered the opening operation of the Miracle at Palaven, and the relay itself is now the starting point of Reaper War Remembrance Week on the planet, both a formal event and tourist attraction that brings no less than a half a million quarians and geth to Carratine District each year.

Trinity survived the Reaper War and returned to Rannoch to assist in its reconstruction. In 2189, she was appointed by Admiral Tali'Zorah vas Normandy as the executive officer to a quarian-geth task force to dismantle the anti-geth Forefathers terrorist cell. She also testified before the Citadel Committee on Synthetic Sapience in 2191 before being appointed as Special Advisor on Organic-Synthetic Relations to the Rannoch Congress, a post she still holds. Unexpectedly, she managed to achieve extranet stardom in 2193 when she uploaded a video jokingly suggesting that she hoped to marry an asari. It became one of the most-watched videos on the extranet that year. June Lee of GAZE wrote, "Getting past the usual silly, vitriolic comments, […] one might eventually realize that 'Single Geth Looking For Good Asari' was perhaps – whether intentionally or otherwise – one of the most influential statements that brought a face and personality back to the tired and stalling debates on synthetic personhood."

A year after her role along with other geth in the Defense of Communications Relay 227 was disclosed to the general public, she accepted a guest speaking role for the 2197 Reaper War Remembrance Week on Palaven at the relay, and again in 2207. She avoided a direct answer when asked if she would accept an offer to come back in 2217, but organizers on Palaven seem optimistic about her return.

Loriq Ordinix had gone down to Palaven despite orders to stay due to a coughing fit he had developed, accidentally going down with the 163rd Assault Infantry Legion when he hopped onto the wrong shuttle. Having ignored the symptoms due to the pressing need of the Battle of Palaven, Ordinix collapsed as the war ended, where doctors discovered that he had caught a deadly strain of the Triteka flu. As it had gone untreated for weeks, it had developed to an advanced stage, necessitating that Ordinix undergo long-term treatment. With medical facilities across Hierarchy space ridiculously over-capacity, "long-term" turned out to more than a year and a half.

Ordinix reunited with surviving members of his family in 2189, and quickly married his childhood sweetheart. He also returned to the 52nd Reconnaissance Legion, where he was perplexed by his newfound fame as "the one who got on the wrong shuttle". For his trouble, he received a promotion to service chief, and continued serving with the 52nd as a non-commissioned officer. Ordinix briefly considered a career with research and development considering his experiences at Firebase Arterius during the Miracle at Palaven, but ultimately decided that spending hours figuring out increasingly ridiculous ways to kill Reaper ground forces did not a weapons designer make. He still remains with the 52nd, one of the oldest veterans of the legion to this day.

Tarquin Siritii was put on a fast-track and promoted to lieutenant commander for his role in the Miracle at Palaven. He continued to serve out the rest of his service with the 49th Reconnaissance Legion, which was tasked with reclaiming planets lost in the Reaper War. "It was a nerve-wracking experience," he admitted. "If fighting the Reaper War wasn't terrifying enough, going through the wastelands of once-familiar planets and looking out for swarms of indoctrinated turians certainly was." He eventually became a trainer for sniper-scout candidates as the 49th was being reconstituted with replacements, having been established as one of the legion's best marksmen.

His true passion, however, was with research and writing. As soon as the position became open, Siritii became the historian of the 49th Reconnaissance Legion in 2194. Being a Lithirimi [University] graduate, no one protested his changing of vocations, although more than a few regretted losing his guidance on sniping. A year later, with the blessings of the government, he published one of the first bestselling books on the Reaper War, Miracle Workers, an account of the Miracle at Palaven from the perspective of the 49th Reconnaissance Legion, adapted into a blockbuster holo in 2199.

Siritii was discharged to the Reserves in 2207 with the rank of major, married in 2209, and became a history professor at his alma mater in 2211, where he remains to this day. Some campus rumors say he occasionally provides consultation services to Hierarchy Defense Intelligence. Still a bestselling author on war history, he spends his time writing his next book when not teaching packed classrooms.

Torin Fidellin was among the few survivors of Blackwatch's 2nd Platoon to also take part in the Battle of Earth. His invaluable experiences on Palaven helped him survive the intense fighting on the human homeworld, which he had casually described as "mild, compared to Palaven". It did mean, however, that he was stranded on Earth for over a year when the mass relay network was destroyed. As the turian fleets in the Sol System awaited a chance to return home, Fidellin assisted in clandestine security operations along with Blackwatch, defusing tense situations that came with the militaries of different races stranded in an isolated system with no way to return home.

Returning to Palaven in 2188, Fidellin returned to Blackwatch's 2nd Platoon, where he had been sorely missed. He remains with the outfit to this day, although – as an active special forces operator – his activities continue to remain, naturally, highly classified.

Jacia Navarian survived the Reaper War, only to discover a year later that she had a terminal case of Raekita Syndrome. Her condition prevented her from continuing to serve with Blackwatch, although her squadmates all chipped in to ensure that her last days were made comfortable. She retired to a villa on Digeris, where she entertained guests from the "old days". Former comrades recalled that she was writing her memoirs on the Reaper War for publication, but she died before her work was completed.

Serona Ravakian survived the Miracle at Palaven and continued to direct Blackwatch operations groundside. Two days before the end of the war, however, she was killed instantly by stray Ravager ordnance that exploded in the tent where she and two other officers were sleeping. She was laid to rest almost immediately after the war, and every survivor of 2nd Platoon attended her funeral. She is survived by her husband and three children, all of whom made it safely through the Reaper War. Her oldest son is now a second lieutenant in Blackwatch.

Derlude Helsrang continued his service with Blackwatch, taking over as the commanding officer of E Company after Ravakian's death. His subsequent missions over several years involved "pacifying regions of turian space that had fallen into anarchy after having been cut off, and eliminating anti-Reaper terrorist cells that refused to recognize the war was over after that, especially the Martyrhood". Much of his activities and operations remain classified. In 2195, Helsrang was tapped to lead the operational arm of Blackwatch and promoted to major. Amongst his career highlights includes his presiding over the first Blackwatch-N7 joint-exercises between the Hierarchy and the Alliance in 2197. He married, divorced, then remarried and had two children.

Today, he's an executive officer to the Hierarchy Special Operations Command, a position that affords him a degree of protection when he's being critical of the Hierarchy deciding to declassify certain pieces of military information in 2196, including the identities of many Blackwatch operators, himself included. It was a move spurred on by the galacticism movement that saw other governments disclosing secrets as a sign of intergalactic union, one that Helsrang was loudly opposed to then and still loudly opposed to today.

"I get that the Hierarchy wanted people to be optimistic in the tough years after the Reaper War," he explained, "that publicizing their heroism was supposed to have good effect on morale. And, yeah, we didn't think there'd be as many people wanting payback against an operator compared to before the war. But you made these guys a promise that you'd keep them safe when they're done taking out your dirty laundry, and then you threw them in front of a truck when it was politically convenient. 'Less enemies' does not mean 'no enemies'." Helsrang concurs that the damage has been done, but disagrees that his being vocally critical no longer does any good. "People having done stupid things today doesn't mean they won't do stupid things tomorrow."

Lanus Vadim survived the evacuation of the Example, and remained with the Khronus resistance cell until the end of the war. "We were all trained in infantry combat, of course," he explained, "but High Command wanted to preserve experienced naval personnel instead of having them be part of dangerous ground ops. So, until then, we were shipmen without a ship." While the engineers were put to work on rebuilding Palaven's defenses and infrastructure in the aftermath of the Miracle at Palaven, Vadim was stuck doing security detail, which was "altogether a very uneventful job".

 Due to the state of the Hierarchy after the war, Vadim remained "grounded" for years, until he finally managed to jump at an opening on the cruiser Steadfast in 2190. With the former crew of the Example split up to different assignments, he couldn't afford to be picky, even though he would've liked nothing better than serving with old friends. Over the next few years, Vadim was involved in constant naval patrols across Hierarchy space to "deal with the remnants of the war". Eventually, he requested and received a transfer to the 85th Assault Infantry Legion tasked to the Steadfast. Although now part of the Hierarchy Marines, Vadim remains in contact with the former crew of the Example, and has been present for almost every reunion.

With Captain Irrena Ixius officially designated as MIA (and later KIA), Commander Patrus Castellus was the highest-ranked officer of the Example at the Reaper War's end, and subsequently took it upon himself to find the men and women who survived the evacuation of the Example. To this end, he volunteered for one of the least-pleasant post-war jobs: Personnel Resources. It was a highly depressing job that involved confirming who had survived or perished in the war, and somehow managing to inform the next of kin. Dealing with the consequences of a staggering casualty list was a heavy task, especially so on a daily basis. "But it meant I had resources to find out what happened to each and every member of the crew," Castellus explained, and this made him the pivotal key figure in eventually organizing subsequent crew reunions.

Castellus stayed with the navy even after he finished his service with Personnel Resources. He took up a lecturing and training position at the Cipritine Hill Services Academy in 2191, then went into administration at the Naval Staff Headquarters in 2201. As one of the most respected officers from the Example, he maintained contact with his former subordinates and continued to organize crew reunions until he was finally given his own command, the Indomitable, thereby stretching his list of responsibilities. Today he defends the Citadel along with the Hierarchy Sixth Fleet.

Among the interviewees, Castellus was among one of the most eager to "set the record straight". "The general public only remembers the turian special forces, the krogan commandos, and the resistance when they think of the Miracle at Palaven," he stated during an interview. "The story told is how the teams of ungentlemanly warfare got the bombs to the civilian resistance, who then detonated them inside the Reaper ships. Too often do they forget the contributions of Defense Intelligence, the 27th Provisional Army, and the Navy, including all the logistics and supply officers, mechanics, and medics who weren't involved in the fighting, but without whom the Miracle would have been impossible without. I only hope that the generations to come will remember these unsung heroes, who fought their battles with wrenches, prayer, and medigel."

By 2189, the Hierarchy had decided that any turian still registered as missing in action who had not reported back in had most likely died, and the government began the process of officially designating these persons as killed in action. Castellus learned that Irrena Ixius, captain of the Example, was officially receiving this designation; as her last executive officer, Castellus requested and successfully received permission to be the one to personally break the news to Ixius' family on Aephus. Much to his surprise, he found Ixius very much alive, living with her husband and children. She was crippled from the waist down from her wounds while making a disastrous last-second evacuation from the Example, but was alive and well. She had been recovered by a separate resistance cell hidden deep within enemy lines, and when she ultimately made a recovery, she had seemingly slipped through the cracks of a damaged, stumbling post-war Hierarchy bureaucracy. When told that she was "officially dead", Ixius wryly remarked, "I must have missed the memo."

News of Ixius' miraculous survival nearly three years after the fact reached as high up as Admiral Coronati, who offered her a promotion to rear admiral, an offer Ixius respectfully declined. She had had her fill with command, and the extensive wounds she had suffered up and down her body during the Miracle at Palaven ensured she would never walk under her own power again. She was rotated into the Reserves with full honors, the closest turian equivalent to an honorable discharge, although she didn't cut ties with the navy completely. She still attended reunions of the old Example crew, and the Hierarchy eventually convinced her to run some of the military shipyards over her home planet of Aephus in 2193. She received real treat in 2202, when her shipyards were tasked with building a new Ordarian-class carrier which High Command decided to christen the Example. Construction was completed in 2207, the same year Ixius resigned from her post. She participated in both the christening and commissioning ceremonies as special guest speaker. (Never one for speeches, Ixius tried to get Castellus to write them for her, a responsibility that the executive officer, thankfully, talked the captain back into.)

Ixius died in 2208 from health complications sustained during the Miracle at Palaven. Despite having retired into the Reserves, her funeral was attended by most of the surviving crew of the old Example, her subordinates at the Aephian shipyards, and Admiral Coronati.

In 2193, a journal entry of the late Rear Admiral Spaccis Palatine was declassified. Written in the aftermath of the Miracle at Palaven, his words resonate with every man and woman who fought in the Battle of Palaven: "Even after all this, I doubt we could truly win this war conventionally. That said, I wish to make one declaration, which I make in confidence: Never in the countless eons that the Reapers have existed, have they suffered a loss as catastrophic as this. Though they might burn Palaven to the ground in retaliation, it will still be the site of their greatest failure. With that alone, our greatest victory has been secured."