Primarch Adrien Victus wanted to shoot something, but everything seemed to have withdrawn to the beam. With the beam so fortified, Stiletto One was back in contact with Ground Control. There was no more point to radio silence, and turians notoriously disliked long spans of radio silence.

Ground Control had confirmed that mixed assets had reached the beam, and that was why the Reapers had reinforced it. The mixed assets, furthermore, were holding the Citadel, and doing it in such a way that while the Reapers were airdropping ground forces onto the Citadel, they had to drop them in the Wards. The allied assets were, so far, able to hold the transitions from the Wards to the Presidium closed, meaning the allied assets were much safer than one might have expected. Apparently, a contingent of krogan got through to the beam, which was why the Reapers had suddenly fortified it so heavily as to leave most of London empty…

Victus nearly screamed in simple shock as half a dozen Reapers descended out of the clouds. He'd gotten accustomed to the small big ones knocking around the city, but these were the big big ones, Sovereign- or Harbinger-class big ones. They immediately began crawling over the city like hand walking on their fingers, knocking down any buildings that were in the way. From the sky, from unseen ships above, a barrage of laser cannon fire began to fall.

"Get down! Get out of here!" Victus shouted, following his Stiletto team in a mad dash to get off the upper level and down to the street. It looked to him like the Reapers had finally lost patience and were ready to level London and all the organics infesting it—waste not mindsets be damned.

"Ground!" Victus barked. "We've got Reapers knocking over the city! Orbital bombardment and ground units!"

"Affirmative, One," Garrus answered, sounding chilled to the very bone. "Citadel reports incoming Reaper air traffic. I think they're done playing."

It struck Victus that if the Reapers weren't sending flagships retake the Citadel but chose to bombard Earth instead…either they were running scared or had finally had enough of this organic bullshit.

Victus and his team reached the street without their building behind collapsing on their heads, then dashed for cover, alleyways, side streets, anything that would get them out of sight. It had already been confirmed that the Reapers were using the Alliance's locators to isolate targets. Thankfully, turians didn't use personnel-identifying locators. Still, his team had discarded them as soon as the news broke.

"Recommendations, Ground?" Victus asked, shivering at the sound of the bombardment, knowing that he could run or stay put—it would probably end the same way.

"Don't come back to base. There's concern they might try collapsing it with us inside."

Victus wanted to ask what they were going to do about that, but knew better. That wasn't something to be discussed on any channel just now. It might tell the Reapers where to kick for greater effect.

-J-

Jack hadn't realized how much she hated small spaces until she and her kids were supposed to keep one from collapsing. Well, from being collapsed. Apparently, the Reapers had lost their collective temper and didn't seem to care if they'd be months digging bodies out of the rubble, as long as their supremacy was put back beyond question.

It looked to her like the big mecha-squids were losing their shit because for once the organics were holding their own. She didn't know who had done what, but clearly whatever the Citadel teams were doing was scaring the Reapers shitless.

She hoped that was the case. It was easier to hold up the ceiling—and she felt it every time a Reaper laser impacted the street above—when she could concentrate on her satisfaction that the Reapers had been put over a barrel and all they could do was wait.

Mechanical sons of bitches.

All the Resistance's leadership structure had coalesced into as small a space as possible, while she and her kids raised barriers to hold up the ceiling so the Reapers couldn't bury them all. The idea of being buried alive was especially repulsive to her, not the least because Eezo kept flaring and cowering, disliking how crowded it was. There was no real way to reassure the varren—

Several people screamed as a laser suddenly cut through the ceiling in one of the tunnels leading away from this particular hub, glaring maliciously red and causing the power grid to fail. Fortunately, nothing critical was running on any kind of public grid, but on portable generators, which kept on working.

"It's nothing!" she barked, eying the hole through which water, debris, particulate matter, and a weird slurry-like mud of concrete and water now filtered. "Just keep holding! And you all keep doing whatever the hell you're doing!" she added to the Resistance's personnel.

Still, the knowledge that the Reapers really could punch their way down into here?

…was that what they were doing? Opening up holes so the reinforcements they were repackaging and reloading could be dropped in? She knew from the Resistance that the Reapers didn't really transport their ground unit more than once. But they'd changed tactics and there were several flagships elsewhere doing just that: picking up their ground troops and repackaging them for airdrop. It was one of the things the Resistance had been counting on for this battle, and the Reapers had just decided to change the rules by changing tactics.

Jack flinched as another laser punched another hole in the other tunnel, this time a much bigger hole…and this time admitting several husks, who looked around curiously.

Ferrets, she thought bleakly as gunfire tore through the husks. Ferrets sent in after rabbits.

She closed her eyes, forced herself to focus on holding up the ceiling. If that Reaper was sighting in on a target, the next shot would be directly overhead. Jack gritted her teeth tightly, bracing for the impending impact.