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
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The Miracle at Palaven
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.