The plan proposed for Operation: SLENDER SCALPEL was audacious, complicated, and daring. This was probably why Coronati rebuked it on principle, along with many other principles that revolved around Risithi proposing the operation plan to the strategy meeting.
Coronati's displeasure was not entirely unsympathetic, putting aside his prejudice towards Risithi. His taste for audacious, complicated, and daring plans had long since soured after three unsuccessful instances of such conducted by the navy, the Fifteen-Minute Plan, IRON HAMMER, and WHISKEY CORRIDOR. Insofar as he could tell, High Command was taking away resources that could've gone to the navy, and giving them to the army so that they could replicate a recipe for failure with fewer resources.
The basic outline of the strategy was a simultaneous, planetwide ground assault led by turian military forces, a diversion that would allow krogan commandos to stay clear of Reaper attention and pass of warp bombs to resistance cells across Palaven. These bombs would then be smuggled into Reaper capital ships, and be detonated simultaneously, allowing for turian military forces – which would be acting as a diversion until that moment – to be reinforced by krogan commandos and retake swathes of territory on Palaven that no longer had ship support. This entire ground campaign would be supported by turian fleet action, not only limited to deploying turian troops back onto Palaven from the atmosphere, but also keeping orbital Reaper ships occupied, preventing them from turning their attention to the key objectives groundside.
Despite his reservations, Coronati could agree on Risithi on several strategic points. First, the navy was not going to contest the Reapers fleet in a fair fight, not with the situation as it stood at the moment. In almost every orbital engagement, the turians had been outmaneuvered and outgunned despite outnumbering the enemy, made especially evident with WHISKEY CORRIDOR when they tried to isolate individual Reaper vessels. Risithi's suggestion was that they would have to settle for individual results that would fall short of what the navy could accomplish, but with proportionately less costs; the accumulation of these operations would hopefully make a dent in the Reaper war effort all while keeping losses relatively low. And although it wasn't precisely Coronati's preferred priority target, he could also understand why Risithi designated groundside Palaven to be the most important theater of battle at the time of planning. The admiral considered Menae and Nanus to be of greater logistical importance in terms of war materiel, but acknowledged that an operation on Palaven would slow the harvesting of turians on the planet, thereby freeing up reinforcements that could be relocated to more important theaters of war.
What Coronati heatedly objected to, however, was the fact that Risithi's strategy was a complicated multi-phase, simultaneous, clandestine operation planetwide that would involve the navy, the army, the resistance, and the krogan. The Hierarchy's record at black operations wasn't as stellar as that of the Salarian Union, but it wasn't nonexistent or pitiful; nevertheless, the turians historically did not have much experience in planetwide special operations simply because they historically never had enough special operations outfits available at any one time in any one place to carry it out. The only instance that even came close to resembling an operation on this scale in recent history was the insurgency on Taetrus, which was less ambitious than what Risithi was proposing by several orders of magnitude. It was hoped that the slack would be picked up by the turian resistance and krogan commandos, which Coronati found to be offensively unrealistic, given that the resistance was generally considered to largely be a stopgap measure to stall the Reapers until the army could dispatch troops to liberate Palaven region-by-region, and krogan commandos were traditionally considered to be as discreet as the vorcha were traditionally considered to be intelligent.
Putting them altogether in a single planetwide plan without prior experience or training between the groups involved was outrageously foolish, argued Coronati. He went as far as to threatening to withdraw the support of the fleet altogether, which would've necessitated the potentially embarrassing intervention directly from High Command, if not Victus himself. But Resvirix supported the strategy if only because it gave him the bulk of available Hierarchy resources, [Director of Hierarchy Defense Intelligence] Vice Admiral [Ptolemus] Cerivix agreed if only because he felt sidelined by the navy not using the HDI to maximum potential, and Urdnot was just as happy dedicating krogan troops groundside on Palaven as he was having his commandos return to Tuchanka. Captain Ixius was a traditional ally, but she was at the meeting largely because it took place on her ship, which afforded her room to speak that nevertheless would be drowned out by all the rank everyone else pulled. That left Coronati alone in his dissent, and while the plan's supporters eventually agreed on a compromise with the admiral, it was clear to everyone that the essence of SLENDER SCALPEL would move forward.
Furthermore, Coronati was furious at what he considered to be political maneuvering behind his back. If Cerivix and Resvirix's easy approval of Risithi's strategy had not been enough of an indicator, the fact that the vice admiral hinted he already had HDI assets in place and that the general had already been organizing ground forces in orbit was telling. The army and the HDI, Coronati reasoned, had been keeping information from him since even before WHISKEY CORRIDOR, and he believed (not entirely incorrectly) that Cerivix and Resvirix had signed off on Risithi's strategy long before the special consultant had arrived on the Example. The strategy meeting, therefore, was a farce, and only being held because they needed to sell the idea collectively to Coronati and get his navy.
Risithi's strategy for SLENDER SCALPEL may have been the most practical given the circumstances, but it was unable to skirt several serious shortcomings when it came to keeping in step with reality. The first was that they had no system of delivery. It was clear that any bomb had to be delivered by ground personnel, which the strategy meeting concurred would be best achieved through the turian resistance. That being said, although Cerivix indicated that the situation was "developing in a positive direction", it still meant the rest of the strategy was being concocted while the key component remained an uncertainty, to say nothing of HDI's reluctance to admit strains between their liaisons and resistance cells groundside. The second was that they did not have enough transports to ferry a minimum amount of troops groundside. With virtually all offensive ground operations stalled, shuttles and other forms of trans-atmospheric transportation had long been repurposed for logistical operations and ferrying supplies. SLENDER SCALPEL, despite being an operation given the highest of priorities, could only take so many before the entire turian fleet came to a standstill due to lack of supplies. Similarly, VI simulations of multiple runs using what transports they were promised to ferry the amount of troops needed to carry out the operation did not show optimistic results, as many of the shuttles would already be shot down in the first run.
Risithi proposed a daring alternative to the second problem: Gliders. The Blue Suns had been using them for some time for operations requiring a certain degree of stealth in atmospheric infiltrations, where traditional flight with no exothermic engines would defy electronic and thermal scanners. They were launched from cruisers and dropped into the atmosphere in pods, where they would eventually deploy into lightweight, individual gliders. The Blue Suns had adopted them out of necessity due to their unconventional tactical doctrine, but the Hierarchy had not used them for several centuries. This necessitated several specialists from the former having to coach officers from the latter, an arrangement that was not particularly well-received. Hierarchy soldiers were not particularly amused at taking instructions from mercenaries and entering the atmosphere in what was essentially an unshielded single-man pod with wings inside. The motto that planners tried to circulate amongst the enlisted – "our fathers flew into battle with these centuries ago" – comforted no one.
By the time it became necessary for High Command to evaluate SLENDER SCALPEL and the progress made on it, Ixius – a not-so-casual observor of the holo-conference held with High Command – was almost certain that there was no way the turian brass would sign off on the operation, even if it was backed by an admiral, a vice admiral, and a general. Somewhere along the lines, she had hoped that Risithi, the main architect of the plan and therefore the person responsible for explaining the gist of it to High Command, had become a bit more subtle and diplomatic than the average turian after spending so much time away from the Hierarchy. She found herself distressingly disappointed when Risithi ended up being as blunt as any other turian in his explanation: Drop troops across Reaper-controlled territories planetwide in gliders that have not been used conventionally in centuries, have them cover krogan commandos arriving in shuttles so they can infiltrate into said territories and hand off explosive munitions to the turian resistance, and have the turian resistance smuggle said munitions into individual Reaper ships on the ground despite the fact that HDI still had no idea if the resistance was actually capable of such.
In her book Soldiers of the Cause, war historian Stephanie Richie provided what was possibly the most accurate sentiment in Ixius' mind by the time the holo-conference was over: "Only a military executive body that had been humiliated for weeks; that had tried every conventional, orthodox, and reasonable method available to them; that discovered the very existence of their civilization on the brink of collapse; that had found itself in the final straits of desperation; would pay any heed to an outlandish, costly, and questionable strategy being offered by a mercenary with no experience in planet-scale, joint-services operations."
With the HDI having set up resistance cells at key battlegrounds worldwide for SLENDER SCALPEL, Achtus found himself saddled with new tasks and new responsibilities. Among these responsibilities was the collection of intelligence on Reaper forces across as much of Khronus as possible. This included troop capabilities and movements, Reaper ship activity, population displacement. Everything that could be recorded and analyzed, the resistance collected. This was easier said than done, as the majority of the resistance were fighting Reaper forces nearly nonstop to prevent the enemy from gaining ground, to ensure that these reconnaissance missions were possible.
And as if Achtus needed any more pressure, Khronus was the capital of Carratine District, and it fell upon the local resistance cell to collect intelligence from neighboring cities in Carratine before passing it along to Nillin. In the event personally handing off intelligence was not possible, a communications antenna nine kilometers south of their headquarters was the fallback option. The Reapers had not destroyed the antenna, as the position had been deemed indefensible by the Hierarchy and abandoned before the Reapers could turn their attention to it. Achtus had ordered the resistance to steer clear of the area to prevent the enemy from taking notice of the dormant antenna in case the backup option was ever needed.
Given [Miridi] Kylonis' background, Achtus tasked her for leading the project of finding a way to smuggle materials – and, if possible, agents – into Reaper camps. She had been serving time for smuggling weapons in-and-out of Hierarchy space for years, so Achtus figured it was time to put those skills to use.
Getting into the camps was ridiculously simple, as one simply had to surrender. The question, however, was how to get in with the materials desired, and how to get out. Long-term observation of the camps had kept the resistance informed of several aspects of the plan. Like many campaigns of perpetual genocide in the history of the galaxy, the Reapers permitted their prisoners to retain some of their belongings, a form of false reassurance that they might survive the ordeal, a psychological setup that would make their prisoners less likely to rebel instead of fight for their lives. Omni-tools, radios, and communications devices, however, were confiscated and destroyed to ensure no one transmitted images or videos of conditions inside the camp. Some weapons, the resistance had observed, had actually been permitted, presumably under the assumption that those who retained them would not be actually capable of doing much damage to the occupying forces anyways. This theory fit well with the fact that the Reapers considered their soldiers to be disposable, and that a self-regulating "guard unit" could enforce the peace and snoop on fellow prisoners far more easily than their own Marauders, especially with the aid of indoctrination.
Assuming that they were going to smuggle bombs into the Reaper camps, however, Kylonis would have to find a way to get explosive materials into enemy-controlled territories. This meant, at the very least, they were going to have to test how strictly the Reapers enforced security measures over belongings brought into the camps. The plan was divided into three parts. Team One would focus on creating an exfiltration path out of the camp while Team Two would focus on finding a way to infiltrate the camp without being discovered. Meanwhile Team Three would test how well the Reapers screened the belongings of surrendering individuals. Kylonis had determined that the best way to smuggle a bomb in would be to do so in inconspicuous components, which would then be assembled on-site. Therefore, before proceeding with the bombing campaign, they would first need to figure out what materials they could safely get into the camps by surrendering. To do so, Kylonis waited for Team One to complete their task before having Team Three "surrender" at random intervals, each of them carrying random objects that resembled the inconspicuous components common bombs could be broken down to. Once Team Three completed their tasks, they would then rendezvous with Team Two inside the camp, and escape the camp through the route Team One had prepared in advance. If Team Three remained within the camp for more than six hours, then they would be considered contaminated by indoctrination and lost.
Kylonis' project turned out fairly interesting results, particularly on the part of Team Three. Some of it was fairly obvious, with automatic and high-power weapons being confiscated and destroyed, leaving most turians who bothered to bring weapons with them light, outdated handguns. Intact explosives were out, as grenades and charges were taken away. Several knives were permitted, although monomolecular swords were predictably out. It was the mundane items that gave the resistance some humor, however. Betting pools had been organized beforehand for most ridiculous item confiscated and not-confiscated. [Xiphis] Portillis won the "confiscated" betting pool with a bottle of spine treatment gel for male turians. "The Reapers have this thing against being pretty, I guess," he theorized. "No wonder the Marauders are so bloody ugly."
Portillis' lighthearted comments and the organized betting was a stark contrast to the survivability rate of those who volunteered or were selected for Team Three. Operational security was paramount, and that infiltration/exfiltration routes remained intact was deemed much more important than the survivability of resistance members. It was the kind of ruthless calculation made possible by hardened turians backed into a corner; even if the intel didn't make it back, having their infiltration/exfiltration routes intact meant the resistance could try again at a later date. Team Three kept their incursions manageable, but not many were able to make it out. Some were kept under watch and could not make the six-hour time window. Others were harvested before then. Survival rates amongst Team Three were as low as forty percent.
Reconnaissance teams did not fare much better in survivability despite being ostensibly less dangerous. On a squad-based level, enemy tactics were ruthlessly efficient but highly predictable, with virtually no variation or creativity amongst individual soldiers. On a strategic level, however, the Reapers were highly able strategists, and fluidly assigned, committed, and diverted their own assets with effortless efficiency. Between instantaneous communications between individual Reapers, their unparalleled processing capabilities, and their completely obedient soldiers, they could afford to change plans every second with little hindering them other than material concerns. The implementation of their strategies was limited only by their imagination, and Reapers were very imaginative. This necessitated near-constant surveillance on their activities, and near-instantaneous analysis of these strategies to keep up with the Reapers. This also meant that recon teams were often being outmaneuvered by their enemies. Most recon patrols venturing outside resistance-controlled territories didn't make it back.
[Yreen] Ekyriat and [Inthira] Smirian were pulled for scouting duty. For a scouting assignment, they had a fairly quiet sector by Palaven standards. North was close to Roshea County, where another cell was last reported to still have things under control. They had barely got there, however, when thunderous explosions caused them to dive for cover. In truth, the explosions were a full two kilometers away, but they had been so large that they seemed anything but far. The two watched in awe as several high-rises began to disappear from the horizon in the direction of Roshea. Smirian remembered that the resistance there had supposedly wired explosives onto several of their buildings as booby-traps against Reaper forces. She had expected it to be something along the lines of mining several different floors, not collapsing high-rises onto the streets. In spite of the destruction Palaven had suffered under the Reapers, watching those towers sink into the cityscape impressed her.
When the rumbling finally stopped, there was an eerie atmosphere of quiet, or at least a level of quiet that had not been heard by the Khronus resistance since the Reapers first landed on Palaven. Smirian speculated upon the possibility that the Roshea resistance cell had successfully ambushed Reaper forces in the area, and suggested they find another vantage point to confirm this. Ekyriat wasn't entirely keen on the idea nor optimistic about their chances, but agreed it could be something to report back to base, linking up new lines of communications and logistics with their comrades up north. They began making their way across Palaven's abandoned cityscape.
A Marauder spotted them from across the street and swiftly directed the fire of several Ravagers at them. Searing energy bolts chased after them, pelting their surroundings as Ekyriat and Smirian made a full retreat indoors towards the ruins of an office floor "with all the enthusiasm of two schoolgirls". The world exploded around them as what seemed like dozens of Ravagers concentrated their barrage at them, firing in distinctive salvos that shattered the cover they sprinted through into thousands of pieces of shrapnel. The two turians somehow managed to reach the other side of the building and jumped out through the window, landing clumsily on two stories below where they were safe from enemy fire, courtesy a building between them and the Ravagers. They ducked and covered until the sounds of incoming fire faded out. Somehow, save for a few scratches, they were entirely unharmed. The two looked at each other and grinned.
Their misadventure caused enemy reinforcements to start patrolling the area with greater vigilance, but a combination of caution and alacrity allowed them to avoid those patrols before they could be sent. They finally arrived at a high street overlooking the rubble of what had formerly been several high-rises, once majestic buildings having toppled into the chasms of Roshea's lower streets. The quiet was eerie; Ekyriat and Smirian crawled their way through to avoid detection while the former reconnoitered the streets below with her scope. If the two scouts had any expectations of a resistance victory in Roshea, however, they were bitterly and chillingly disappointed. Marauder hunt-and-kill teams were in the streets, patrolling the surviving walkways as they moved amongst the bodies of dead turians strewn across the area. Every now and then, the Marauders would come across a resistance fighter desperately clinging onto life, a situation the Marauders would swiftly remedy with a burst from their Phaeston assault rifles. And that was if the Cannibals didn't get to them first; Ekyriat decided against giving Smirian her scope.
Wordlessly, Ekyriat and Smirian snuck back to base. The Reapers held firmly onto Roshea.
General Resvirix brought in the 43rd Marine Division for the operation before they were shipped off to standby status in preparations to liberate Earth. This was, in almost everyone's opinion, one of the best decisions made by the brass since the conception of SLENDER SCALPEL. The 43rd was famed for interracial relations with the armed forces of other Citadel races, holding frequent joint-exercises with their allies. Their officers all had some level of diplomatic training, and their NCOs were considered to be much more patient and tolerant of non-turian combatants. Their arrival couldn't have happened sooner; the 43rd came onboard the Example, as well as accompanying carriers Eternal, Resolute, and Whirlwind, just days before the other krogan commandos of Arrae, Dranek, and Nith Companies arrived. Many amongst the newly arrived krogan were, if possible, even less fond of the turians than those of Malgus Company. Even the 43rd was pushed to the limits of their patience. "And if the 43rd was tempted to call it quits," Optimi said, "I probably would've shot the krogan bastards long ago." Thankfully, the new companies did not arrive onto the Example.
The 43rd arriving was, to the enlisted, a spot of good news in what was considered a stream of bad news. In accordance to preparation for SLENDER SCALPEL, on-ship fabricators had been producing as many gliders as possible, but it wasn't enough to accommodate the amount of turian troops projected to participate in the operation, all of them without any experience with gliders. The Hierarchy managed to give them Zerrion District, still completely under Hierarchy control, as a mock landing zone for practice, but said practice was also limited by the highly limited amount of shuttles available to ferry landed troops back onto the Example. Most turians only had a single chance; few had two. The single organized mass exercise ended in a disaster. Forty percent suffered some form of injury due to improper landing, sixty percent landed over five kilometers off-target, and half of those who landed off-target found themselves beyond the confines of Zerrion District, ending up instead in territories where the Hierarchy were contesting the Reapers. The only consolation the turians could derive from this was that, by tradition, a terrible dress rehearsal led to a great opening night.
News that the volus were now actively part of ground troops and special forces came in. Whoever had leaked the news probably intended it to have it raise morale at best, or to give everyone else a good laugh at worst. Instead, it served mostly to depress almost everyone on the Example. "It's all gotten bad enough where we have to count on the volus for ground troops?" Ordinix moaned. "Forget it, we don't have a salarian's chance on Tuchanka of winning this war."
Another fight between tense turians and krogans created the most serious harm to a belligerent since Murtinix. As the Example practiced aerobraking against Palaven's atmosphere in preparation for doing the exact same thing in SLENDER SCALPEL, a krogan gunnery chief tore off one of [Corporal Carrodi] Scradius' mandibles in a heated fight in the Example's hangar. Adrenaline numbed the pain, and Scradius was still trying to get at the jeering krogan and his comrades, nearby turians restraining Scradius more out of concern for the fact that he was bleeding profusely out of his face than any reluctance to watch the corporal tear the krogan apart. Ravakian and Helsrang were tense, their discipline intact but watching as red began to surface amongst the turians nearby. An escalation was all it needed for the situation to go from bad to worse, and for someone else to be killed.
Scradius wasn't a green replacement, but he had just about had it with the war in general and the krogan in particular. The stress was making discipline almost impossible to enforce, and breakdowns were becoming increasingly frequent. This was especially evident where communications were concerned. Despite the fact that blackouts were becoming increasingly common, whether it was to free up bandwidth for military transmissions or because the Reapers were systematically destroying communications infrastructure, officers and soldiers began to underperform as they took time and energy to hoard communicators and computers, attempting to contact or at least ascertain the fates of their loved ones, with tech officers rarely reporting the offenders, assuming they weren't also complicit in unlocking the communications channels to begin with. With the threat of instant death via Reapers hanging over everyone's heads, there was no penalty or punishment the officers could implement that would dissuade the turians from skirting communications regulations. ² "It's easy to get a turian to die for the cause," noted Optimi, "but it's harder for her to get family and friends to do it."
Back in the hangar bay, Scradius was still missing a mandible and still trying to tear the throat out of the offending krogan. Urdnot happened to be going amongst the commandos, and appeared in the midst of things, calmly demanding an explanation. Helsrang doubted that the commando leader heard anything intelligible in what amounted to a shouting contest amongst every turian and krogan in range, but the sight of furious turians, jeering krogan, Scradius missing a mandible, and the missing mandible in the hand of one of the Malgus commandos explained everything Urdnot needed to know. Urdnot ordered the commando to chip off a piece of the plate on the commando's head as compensation. The latter talked back, emboldened by his supporting comrades. Urdnot stressed that this was not negotiable. The commando chose to crush the mandible under his foot.
"What happened next was the most fantastic headbutt I have ever seen from a krogan," Helsrang recalled the moment. "The sound was so loud and so sharp, everyone around suddenly took a step back in shock, and I was almost certain one, if not both, of the krogan had cracked their head plates." The offending commando was instantly on the ground, where Urdnot punched him again, stunning him, before cracking a piece off the commando's head plate and tossing it before Scradius' feet, who barely had the presence of mind to pick it up.
The Malgus leader then proceeded to drag his victim across the hangar even as his surroundings went deathly quiet, everyone realizing that something was happening but unable to make reasonable sense out of it. Still stunned and in a daze, the commando sporadically tried to struggle, but Urdnot simply smashed the man's face in every time that happened, reducing his reptilian features to a bloody splash. Finally, having made his way across half the hangar bay, Urdnot tossed the offender into a lower maintanence airlock, and wordlessly spaced him.
"I suspect that Urdnot Nakmor had problems with the asshole long before," speculated Helsrang years later, "and was using him as an example to definitively demonstrate what happens to people who try to countermand his authority, and maybe to people who try to disrupt the fragile cooperation we had." Regardless, he found himself impressed by how Urdnot dealt with insubordination.
Urdnot wasn't done. Moving to a nearby console and shoving aside the turian who had been manning the controls, the commando leader zoomed in one of the Example's cameras at the spaced krogan, had the VI track the man-turned-atmospheric-projectile, and put the video feed on one of the hangar's large overhead displays. Turians and krogan alike watched in silence as the victim, clearly still alive and flailing, began to enter Palaven's atmosphere, turning into a shooting star as the air began to ignite around him and immolate him. Krogan were naturally tougher than most other races, but atmospheric reentry was a fairly heated affair. Had his suit been properly sealed, there might have been a miniscule chance the krogan commando could survive the intense friction against Palaven's atmosphere, but this was not the case. His kinetic barriers visibly shorted out in a flash, followed shortly afterwards by the intense heat swiftly immolating the commando into ash before there was nothing left to burn up in the atmosphere. By the time the show was over, Urdnot had managed to cross the hangar, returning to where the altercation had taken place.
He stopped right in front of Scradius, before the watching eyes of turian servicemen and krogan commandos still trying to make some sense out of this. "Do we have a problem here?" Urdnot asked the turian corporal.
Scradius was still shocked and dazed, and the adrenaline was beginning to make way for the pain, but he stood his ground and steadily replied, "Not anymore, sir." The commando leader grunted in approval and stomped off.
From that day onwards, any and all instances of turian-krogan violence stopped onboard the Example.
² Except certain death. During the Battle of Palaven, Captain Jadichus Orendor of the Integrity authorized his Marines to summarily execute any turian who broke regulations. The summary execution of four servicemen on the destroyer almost pushed tensions and resentment past the boiling point, until Orendor was relieved of duty by his executive officer, Carudas Solidis.
As promised, Nillin returned to Khronus with demolitions experts. These men and women were responsible for instructing resistance members in specific roles of the operation about how warp bombs worked, what their major components are, how to handle one with care, and how to assemble one together. The shortage of warp bombs in Palaven space meant the warp bombs that would be used for the operation themselves would have to be flown in from out-system after being triple-checked, as the Hierarchy was not willing to risk the success or failure of SLENDER SCALPEL on the possibility that even one of their bombs might be a dud. In the meantime, the demolitions team intended to train the Khronus resistance with model components of the bombs in question.
The basic idea was to smuggle in parts of the warp bomb piece-by-piece at an ideal size. Too large and conspicuous, and the Reapers might realize something was up; too small and complex, and it would take forever to rebuild with all the other parts of the bomb inside the Reaper ships. Having discussed the results of smuggling items into Reaper camps via surrender with Kylonis' teams, the demolition specialists were fairly certain that the arming device itself could be separated into five easy-to-carry parts that were easy to conceal, easy to mistake for harmless hardware, and easy to reassemble quickly. But the most difficult part was smuggling in the element zero required for the warp bombs. It was the core of the explosive, the kind of material that would set off all sorts of bells and whistles at spaceport security; now they had to find a way to smuggle that into a Reaper, which was likely far more advanced that a commercial security scanner.
Achtus had Kylonis knock heads with the demolitions experts, sharing what the smuggler's team had already learned in terms of smuggling things into Reaper camps with Nillin's people. It took a little improvising and a bit of ingenuous engineering, but the brainstormers eventually managed to reduce the warp bomb down the six decently small components, bar the element zero, which would instead be smuggled in through infiltration routes instead. The HDI agent later pulled Achtus aside and informed him that the Khronus resistance cell was very much ahead of the other cells in terms of preparations, that her experts had learned a great deal from Kylonis' team, and that whatever the two sides work out here was likely to form the template that the demolitions experts will share with the rest of the resistance and HDI.
Specific details of the plan were eventually formed. Each Reaper camp would have three teams of infiltrators, one "surrendering" and two sneaking into the confines (requiring that the Khronus cell find a second infiltration/exfiltration route). All three teams will be carrying a set of bomb components, but only the two infiltration teams would be carrying the element zero that formed the core of the warp bomb, as it was decided there was no way surrendering forces could get it into the camps without them being confiscated (and the HDI feared detection of element zero would instantly reveal the resistance's objective to the Reapers). Once inside, all resistance infiltrators would eventually converge inside the Reaper ship, shooting their way in and holding positions if they had to, where hopefully enough components for a warp bomb for at least one bomb were smuggled in instead of intercepted.
It was a sound plan with several strong risks. A major question was whether or not surrendering forces could smuggle bomb components in. They were the team that had the safest chance in, so the question was whether or not six small pieces of a warp bomb was truly sufficient to get past Reaper forces accepting a turian mass "surrender". This consideration of caution was made despite the fact that if neither of the two infiltration teams could get in with the required element zero to detonate the warp bomb, they were screwed anyways. Nillin needed members amongst the resistance to test if they could smuggle these six components into camp without them being taken away by the Reapers, and also the Reaper ships itself. Achtus asked for volunteers, stressing that those who still had legal dependents, such as children, were barred from submitting their names.
No one pretended that this wasn't a one-way trip. Kylonis' Team One might've been able to exfiltrate the infiltration team responsible for testing the possibility that bomb parts could be smuggled into a Reaper ship, but Nillin insisted that letting the Reapers know about the infiltration/exfiltration path was not worth the risk, while Kylonis stated the unlikelihood of being able to leave a Reaper ship once the team actually went inside. There was the expectation that anyone who made it into a Reaper ship would not be allowed back out again. Nillin went a step further: Volunteers facing imminent capture should commit suicide – preferably by high explosive, to ensure lethality and to destroy any evidence that was their bomb components – to deny the Reapers any intelligence on the plan, a consideration made in no small part due to the HDI's perpetual paranoia about Reaper indoctrination. There was a very serious fear that captured resistance members would be indoctrinated and spill the entire plan.
The infiltrators not being able to leave the Reaper ships, however, meant that if resistance scouts could not visually confirm it, the only way an infiltrator could get word out as to whether or not they succeeded was by radio. It would have to be a strong, encrypted, narrowband transmission to a specific, pre-determined location to cut through Reaper jamming. That risked revealing resistance positions at headquarters, however, so it was decided that the scouts would be a proxy. Infiltrators would radio a code to confirm the success or failure of their infiltration attempt to scouts maintaining overwatch from a distance, with "diamond" for success and "blue sky" for failure; "kitchen" was code for the infiltrators deeming it impossible for the assembly and detonation of a warp bomb inside a Reaper ship to occur, hopefully followed by an explanation of why. The scouts, in turn, would launch a flare, blue for success and red for failure, to relay the answer to resistance leaders waiting for the signal kilometers away, hopefully before Reaper forces pinpointed receiving end of the transmission and sent hunt-and-kill teams. To allay suspicions during the operation proper, for the three days that the resistance spent making preparations, resistance members fired off flares of all colors at random intervals two hundred meters away from the camp. Unsurprising, this attracted fire from Reaper forces every time, but the turians hoped the Reapers would become "used" to this phenomenon and assume it was for some entirely different purpose.
In the meantime, it was demolitions training for the resistance. Some of them were certified explosive technicians, but most of those in the resistance had long since been rotated out of active duty after their tours of duty, and they have never seen the latest, state-of-the-art bomb models the technicians brought in. It was three days of studying manuals, reading (and, in a few cases, re-reading) the theoretical principles of warp bombs, and tinkering with the bomb components themselves. Nillin's people insisted that the resistance be able assemble and disassemble the bomb blindfolded; Smirian thought it was just old-fashioned drill instructor nastiness until Nillin reminded the resistance members participating in the exercise that they had no idea what conditions inside the Reaper ship would be like, so it was best to assume the worst.
The resistance was told that the actual warp bombs would be delivered to them by ground forces currently in orbit during Operation: SLENDER SCALPEL, and that the military would have to depend on the resistance to deliver the payload, with the former not having had the same experience with sneaking ordinance to Reaper camps. Despite this, the resistance infiltrators responsible for smuggling in the element zero that would be the core catalyst for the bomb wasted little time in drawing straws to see which unfortunate soul got to carry around the radioactive, combustible material.
Three days after Nillin brought her demolition experts in, it was time for the Khronus resistance to test whether or not bringing a bomb aboard a Reaper ship was actually possible. Ten volunteers were selected to make what was almost certainly a suicide run. They were given their last meals, which didn't amount to much, given the food available at the time. Smirian recalled that the volunteers ended up eating quite a bit of beans, aged meat, and junk food. "It was still better than the processed shit the rest of us stomached, though," she admitted. "So it seemed like a luxury at the time."
Most of the volunteers took their impending deaths with a relative degree of calmness. Part of it came from fighting this war, the idea that they were already dead. Still, as Achtus made rounds between the volunteers, he couldn't help but notice there was a lot of quiet, introspective moments, a lot of deep breaths inhaled and exhaled, a lot of nervous, scared trembling. "There was a lot of pent-up stress inside," Achtus explained. "There is no dishonor in dying for the cause, but few would actually wish to die in such a way." When it came time for them to march off, every resistance member they passed stood at attention and saluted, honoring their sacrifice to come.
To minimize the presence of clues and to ensure the infiltrators retained their radios, the volunteers were smuggled in via Team Two's infiltration path instead of surrendering to Reaper forces. Scouts in nearby buildings provided overwatch, prepared to receive a success- or failure-code from the infiltrators once they were inside the Reaper ship. It was tense for everyone involved, but Achtus felt that the anxiety was greatest for those who remained at resistance headquarters, who had absolutely no way of telling how the mission was going and when results were coming in.
After what felt like an unending number of hours of waiting and staring at the Khronus cityscape, the resistance finally spotted what they were looking for, a blue flare launched from a building from the direction of the Reaper camp. The building was instantly destroyed by a Reaper magnetohydrodynamic weapon, killing everyone inside, resulting in an operation with virtually no survivors (unless one accounted for Team Two, who delivered the volunteers into the infiltration route). Despite this, there was a great sense of relief that something was finally going right as Nillin saw it appropriate for her and her experts to move on from Khronus and oversee progress amongst the other resistance cells. The Khronus resistance still had to continue collecting intelligence in preparation to sending them off to waiting orbiting forces, but – for the most part – the preparations groundside were completed. Now, it was up to the ground troops in space to get their game together before they could take the fight to the Reapers.
"The quarians," Optimi declared in my interview with her in 2189, "are the most glorious bosh'tets in the galaxy. I wouldn't necessarily want them beside me on a ground assault, but I sure wouldn't mind having them replacing our admirals, because they're very good at flying and planning."
Optimi was referring to the Bosh'tet Express, so named because Admiral Han'Gerrel vas Neema of the Heavy Fleet allegedly called the quarian captains of the Civilian Fleet proposing the plan before the Admiralty Board "crazy bosh'tets" (whether it had been in praise or in ridicule is a matter of heated debate amongst servicemen of the present day Rannoch Home Fleet, as Admiral vas Neema refuses to clarify to this day). News of an end to quarian-geth hostilities came a mere three days before Migrant Fleet signatures suddenly began to appear in-system. The vessels were ships from the quarian Patrol Fleet, and they were escorted in by a fleet of geth warships that fought off Reaper stragglers. The quarians took advantage of their skills in navigating unconventional stellar routes to avoid the Reapers from the Trebia mass relay to Palaven; for centuries, quarian ships were often intercepted by patrol ships on main traffic routes simply for being quarian, so their captains had long since mastered the ability to swiftly navigate detours to avoid patrols. In the Reaper War, this became a highly coveted ability as the need to skirt around Reapers became ever more important.
Using a combination of traditional navigation, precise FTL jumps, and impossible daring, the quarians accomplished in several hours what the Hierarchy failed to do with two days of WHISKEY CORRIDOR: A complex and temporary but highly effective and elusive logistical line was established between the Trebia mass relay and Palaven, as well as several smaller mass relays near the system to prevent overreliance on a single path that could easily be cut off. This was done despite the fact that the ships of the Patrol Fleet were largely civilian frigates and freighters converted to military use, heavily outdated, and being held together more by prayer than by bolts. To their credit, many key components of their ships had been replaced with highly advanced geth parts, but they were almost universally all using the same ships that were often centuries old, and not all ships had been retrofitted with a mish-mash of geth parts by the time the Bosh'tet Express started.
The geth stayed behind to keep the path in and out of the Trebia mass relay open for as long as possible by harassing the Reapers (a decision made to prevent an organic-synthetic incident from shattering the already-fragile alliance), while the quarians rushed their way for Palaven. Communications were established; the quarians would maintain a fast, rapid, and steady stream of ships from the Skyllian Verge to Palaven to help evacuate turian civilians and wounded to safety, but the ship captains needed immediate docking clearance with all turian space stations, shipyards, and vessels to load evacuees. In an unprecedented show of alacrity even for the usually decisive Hierarchy, docking clearance was given at all sites within the minute.
The assistance of the quarians was, as far as the turians were concerned, a godsend. Hospitals, clinics, medical centers, triage sites, and shelters across Palaven, Menae, and Nanus were ridiculously overpopulated with the wounded, and the Hierarchy barely had any more ships to spare to evacuate their injured anywhere else. The Citadel also had little space left, forcing turians to take care of their own in refugee shelters at the docks. Many of the civilians had evacuated to orbital facilities where evacuation would be much easier than from the surface of Palaven, but they had been stranded there, overpopulating space stations and shipyards because the navy had no ships to spare. The quarians, however, showed up with the largest fleet in the galaxy. Their expertise in space management ensured that they packed as many turians as possible into their ships in relative comfort. Although they possessed outdated medical equipment, the quarians were reputed to take hygiene and medical matters far more seriously than any other race due to their weakened immune systems. Reaper activity in the Perseus Veil was low, Rannoch had no shortage of space, and those being evacuated comforted themselves with the promise of fresh dextro food in quarian space, rumored to be in short supply on the Citadel.
Turian-quarian cooperation was insanely efficient. Turian aerospace traffic controllers arrayed available turian warships into optimal mass docking formations and cleared the docks and hangars of their vessels and installations, and both sides quickly kept track of which ship or facility still had casualties, which of those ships or facilities had an available dock, hangar space, or airlock the moment it was free. Other turian ships were given the order to buy time for the Bosh'tet Express and to defend the logistical line at all costs, alternating positions as more warships freed up. Minutes before docking, quarian crews electronically sent waiting turian teams with blueprints of their most common ship classes and diagrams of how to most efficiently stow evacuees on those vessels. Crews on both sides established routes on turian ships and installations upon which evacuees would be transported to the quarian vessel, ordered everyone else to stay clear, then forwarded maps of the routes to the next docking quarian vessel. The quarians gave the evacuees concise, competent orders, and the turians obeyed instantly without complaint. Their naturally pragmatic social attitudes complemented each other perfectly.
In the hangar of the Example, turians and quarians alike worked as a well-oiled machine. Crews not involved with the evacuation watched in awe as the quarians jumped from their ships the moment they landed or docked, running alongside turian escorts to the medical bay and anywhere else they stored their wounded as every turian from the lowliest serviceman to Captain Ixius herself gave them the right of way without fail. Doctors and medics on both sides quickly exchanged medical files and supplies, while volunteers kept to their right sides and rushed past each other with gurneys and supply carts, occupied or otherwise. The quarians astounded the turians in how the former were able to swiftly stack more stretchers in the Example's elevators than the latter have ever thought possible without stressing any of the patients, and then un-stack and unload them just as quickly. When the crewmembers of the first quarian ship to dock with the Example realized they were going to have to wait for the carrier's elevators to come back up after carrying the first batch of injured down to the hangar bay, they declared it was "too slow" and made for the staircases and maintenance accessways instead. The turians were no slouches, and by the time the third quarian ship docked with the Example, they were keeping up with the quarians.
Turian ships fought harder like never before. Castellus recalled the feeling: "We were all pushing ourselves to our utmost, probably even more than during Operation: WHISKEY CORRIDOR. As soon as the quarians took our casualties, we rushed the Example to the fray, in front of Palaven, in front of Menae, in front of Nanus, wherever we were needed so we can give everyone in the back some time. There was a real sense of hope, the first ever since the war started. If there was a chance to buy the Bosh'tet Express just one more minute so they could evacuate another ten thousand turians, by the spirits, we were going to take it."
To Siritii's surprise, there was no shortage of quarian children amongst the relief workers. Many of the children, with no real attachment to their recently reclaimed homeworld of Rannoch, decided that sticking with their families was more important, and volunteered on the Bosh'tet Express. Quarian parents had to ask the turians to refer to the relief effort as "the Keelah Express" or simply "the Express" in front of the kids. One soldier forgot about that, and was instantly treated to a crowd of quarian children around him cheerfully shouting "Bosh'tet! Bosh'tet!" until a quarian adult came along and scolded them.
But the children were volunteers first and foremost, and they pulled their weight alongside the adults. As Siritii passed by the medical bay when the quarians were evacuating the severely wounded aboard the Example, he watched as a turian medical assistant handed one of their wounded to a team of a quarian woman and two children. The patient was lying on a gurney, a pilot having suffered severe burns and looking like she was in shock and in pain. As the turian assistant transferred relevant medical records to the quarian woman via omni-tool and gave some last minute details on the patient's status, both children began to change the pilot's bandages after expertly applying medigel, dextro-based antibiotics, and painkillers. One of them, a girl, began to softly sing what Siritii suspected to be a quarian lullaby beside the turian's ear. By the time the three carted their evacuee away, Siritii thought the pilot looked like she was at peace.
"I decided right then and there that the quarians had the best children in the galaxy," the lieutenant stated flatly.
The turians weren't the only ones fond of quarian children. Perhaps the genophage cure and the subsequent promise that they could have children again played some psychological role, but the krogan were notably much better-behaved when the children volunteers were around. While helping with supply runs across the hangar, Vadim gaped at an unbelievable sight: A massive, ugly, heavily-scarred krogan commando happily giving a piggyback ride to four laughing quarian children at once. "That krogan probably would've tried to murder me," Vadim lamented, "but I should've snapped a picture first thing, because when I told the guys back in my platoon, no one believed me."
Operations Chief Cyrion was one of the wounded the quarians were evacuating from the Example. As she was being carted to a waiting quarian ship that would take her to the relative safety of Rannoch, Syphiat was there to walk her to the hangar. "You better take care of yourself, Telana," he called after his sister-in-arms as they loaded her gurney onto the quarian shuttle. "Spirits know I'm going to have to pull your weight on Palaven."
Cyrion grinned despite the pain. The fight was over for her, and the Reaper War would end before she recovered. "I'll be lounging on a beach on Rannoch, with a fruit drink in hand while cute young quarian girls fawn over me," she declared. "I think I've got it made."
Syphiat asked the quarian doctor taking Cyrion away to take care of her. The doctor assured him that quarians treated medical matters "with grave seriousness", and promised that Cyrion would be fine. Syphiat remained in the hangar to watch the quarian ship leave the Example for the "Expressway", feeling conflicted as he finally turned around and walked back to his quarters. He was immensely relieved that Cyrion was going to be alright and felt a great weight being lifted off his chest, but there was also a rather final realization that everyone from the old days was gone, and now he was alone.
With roughly eighty percent of all evacuees and casualties around Palaven's orbit and on Menae and Nanus evacuated, the quarians eventually had to end the Bosh'tet Express when geth warships and their Heavy Fleet reinforcements reported that they could only keep the Reapers at bay from the Trebia mass relay for another hour. With little fanfare or fuss, Patrol Fleet Vice Admiral Rion'Vael vas Orlani informed Hierarchy High Command that they needed to terminate operations, that their evacuees would be transported to safety, and that the Migrant Fleet would provide further support to the Hierarchy as soon as possible. The last docked quarian ships were loaded, and they disappeared back through the Trebia mass relay as quickly as they had appeared before anyone could thank them, leaving behind a small contingent of Migrant Fleet Marines and their transports to assist with operational security.
The Bosh'tet Express accomplished a feat never before seen in the history of the galaxy: In twenty-eight hours [of a standard Palaven day], around ten thousand quarian ships (two out of three ships of the Patrol Fleet, with several volunteers from the Heavy Fleet), some of them cruisers but most of them frigates and freighters, ferried out fifteen million turian civilian evacuees and military casualties. In most cases, a quarian crew filled their ship with an average of three hundred evacuees – most of them wounded and in need of careful assistance to even move them – from a turian ship or installation before undocking in just twenty minutes. Most ships made five runs back and forth in total, a handful managed six.
The success of the Bosh'tet Express wasn't restricted to numbers alone. "You could not believe what twenty-eight hours of the Bosh'tet Express did for us," Siritii explained. "Morale was soaring. Not only were ships and stations everywhere sudden free of the disheartening sight of more casualties than we could possibly treat, there was the knowledge that our comrades were safe and in good hands. Popular opinion of the quarians changed overnight in the Hierarchy. Yesterday they were filthy vagabonds cheating the rest of us, now we were universally raising glasses to 'the best bloody bosh'tets in the whole damn galaxy, may their air filters remain forever clean'." ³
As they watched the last of the quarian ships leave Palaven, [Lieutenant Arius] Sevihierax remarked to Siritii, "A bunch of malnourished quarians does in a day what a turian spaceport staff does in a week. I think we just leveled the playing field."
³ In 2188 CE, all quarians who participated in the Bosh'tet Express were awarded Silver Wreaths, the second-highest Hierarchy award that can be legally granted to non-citizens during wartime. Except for the children volunteers. They were awarded Orders of Trebia, the highest Hierarchy award that can be legally granted to non-citizens during wartime, marking the first time any quarian or non-adult was given the honor.
The Bosh'tet Express was invaluable to the war effort, but it was a support operation, and it didn't change the fact that the strategic goal remained the successful execution of SLENDER SCALPEL, which by nature was an offensive operation. The planners had ironed out as much of the plan as was reasonably possible for an operation of this scale. Vice Admiral Cerivix confirmed that, bar last minute operational complications, the resistance could smuggle the warp bombs into Reaper ships. Issues of operational security came up, with the vice admiral insistent that individual units be given information on a need-to-know basis, which was as little as possible. This prevented possible indoctrinated moles from piecing together the whole puzzle. Risithi protested against this, arguing that knowing what they were responsible for and what was at stake would encourage the soldiers to fight harder, but he was rebuked by Coronati, who berated him for thinking turians wouldn't die for the cause or fight any harder because orders did not come with explanations.
To the common infantryman, the finalized version of the operation was presented as Operation: FORWARD FLAME. According to their briefing, turian and krogan troops would begin a simultaneous, full-scale assault on key areas of Palaven, expanding from territories that were both still held by the resistance and in close proximity to relatively intact strategic assets. The primary objective of the operation was to reach and hold designated points of their respective areas of operations, eliminate any anti-air threats, and defend all positions while engineers could be transported planetside to repair and reactivate major defense infrastructure, allowing the turians to retain custody of their major weapons and defenses, including automated turrets and ground-based anti-ship cannons. Secondary designated points further into Reaper territory – notably where the Reaper ships themselves were – were to be captured as well "should the opportunity arise". This, of course, was the actual primary objective; assuming SLENDER SCALPEL succeeded and the bombs detonated inside the Reaper ships, the turian-krogan main force were to move into those areas immediately and hold them.
Coronati refused to rule out the possibility of air support, but did stress that they would not be widely available. The carriers involved in the operation, the Eternal, Example, Resolute, and Whirlwind, had cleared out most of their fighter craft to accommodate the landing troops for SLENDER SCALPEL, meaning fighter and gunship support would have to be rerouted from Menae and Nanus, a difficult proposition at best. Orbital bombardment from capital ships was possible, but would be limited to very small time windows; the Reapers still had orbital dominance of Palaven, and although the Hierarchy navy was successfully finding chinks in their defenses from time-to-time, all orbital bombardment action by available capital ships was likely to be limited to quick strafing runs.
FORWARD FLAME was not a random operation created out of thin air. Rather, it was a Hierarchy war game simulation established after the Krogan Rebellions, in which Offensive Forces were to hypothetically retake territories on Palaven occupied by the Defensive Forces posing as krogan units. Key changes would be made to FORWARD FLAME to adjust for the fact that the Defensive Forces were now Reapers, not krogan, but the primary idea behind the deception was to occupy Reaper attention. HDI judged it very likely that the Reapers had long cracked significant parts of the Hierarchy's military data archives, meaning they likely knew about the original FORWARD FLAME simulation. If the Reapers were to intercept communications – and the HDI fully intended to facilitate that – indicating that the Hierarchy intended to put that exact scenario into action, and if a turian-krogan ground force was there to sell the illusion of enacting another full-scale conventional attack, then that would improve the chances of the special operations units responsible for handing off the warp bombs to the turian resistance. For purposes of operational security, the vast majority of military units on the ground would not be informed of SLENDER SCALPEL's actual objective or even its existence until thirty seconds before detonation.
The shuttle issue was barely mitigated. Coronati and Resvirix had moved heaven and earth to get the number of shuttles and landing craft necessary for the operation. The Bosh'tet Express had helped take a tremendous amount of priority tasks off the waiting list, but it didn't change the fact that shuttles and small craft had already been vastly overwhelmed by concerns revolving around logistical supply. As much as the planners of SLENDER SCALPEL were the architects of Palaven's defense, their rank and responsibilities did not override High Command's authority, and High Command could scarcely ignore the logistical needs all across turian space for a single operation. But Coronati and Resvirix had used every political trick in the book to "convince" enough transports to be diverted from logistical operations to support SLENDER SCALPEL, or at least promised that they would be available when the operation was carried out. They were still short on transports, but the bulk of available ground forces in orbit would at least be able to land, or at least attempt to do so.
More and more krogan were arriving in-system to assist with the general defense of Palaven. Not commandos, these were heavily armed, heavily armored frontline troops that would be operating independently from Arrae, Dranek, Malgus, and Nith Companies, accompany turian conventional forces to make a planetwide push as part of FORWARD FLAME (the irony of having krogan allies on a plan originally meant to fight a hypothetical krogan invasion was not lost upon SLENDER SCALPEL's planners, and they wisely decided to neglect mentioning the point). After being briefed by the krogan commando companies, they were then ferried to flashpoints planetside in preparation for FORWARD FLAME, where the turian main force would be joining them. Some of the krogan departed in shuttles, and the spacecraft that managed to make it back into orbit was instantly commandeered by Coronati for SLENDER SCALPEL. It didn't amount to much, however, as many of the krogan, having been transported to Palaven by ships belonging to the Blood Pack mercenary group, had chosen to land on Palaven instead by drop pod, a consideration likely made due to the fact that shuttles generally weren't designed to accommodate squads of krogan at once. Single-man pods were "shoved off" Blood Pack ships where they made swift drops into the atmosphere, an eezo core the only thing that stopped each drop pod in time before they became mass accelerator rounds.
The drop pods were as dangerous to the rider as they looked. Even before the Reaper War, death rates of krogan riding them tended to be as high as twenty percent, a number that shot up to thirty-five percent in the Battle of Palaven. Many of the pods came in too hot, sometimes literally; casualties were generally either the result of hitting the ground at supersonic speeds or not being properly shielded against atmospheric friction. But the drop pods required no individual training or disassembly. Unlike a glider, which required a turian to be trained in its usage before even thinking about harnessing themselves onto the contraption and finding a safe landing zone, a krogan simply needed to climb into a pod and hope the crew of the ship dropping the pod was having a good day. Whereas gliders required its occupant to unharness themselves before retrieving weapons and equipment from the glider's compartment, occupants of a pod entered and left with all their weapons and equipment on hand. The convenience of the drop pod caused more than one turian to wonder aloud why the Hierarchy did not have a similar vehicle. (The standard krogan response to this became "because you don't have a quad", to which a turian comeback went "at least we won't be losing ours".)
But a situation quickly arose. Vice Admiral Cerivix was contacted by the Khronus resistance cell through a quantum entanglement communicator at an abandoned research facility, which the resistance had taken a detour to access. The communications antenna that was meant to send groundside intel to the fleet was damaged, none of the resistance members were certified to make the necessary repairs, and the QEC they were using did not possess the bandwidth necessary to upload the massive intel packet before Reaper forces descended upon them. Usually, Agent Nillin would've been responsible for the handling of the intelligence, but she had fallen out contact, presumably remaining dark while her demolitions experts knocked heads with other resistance cells she was responsible for. (It was discovered after the war that Nillin was killed in action at this point in time.) Aside from the intel, the communications antenna was the designated asset that was responsible for broadcasting "leaked" turian strategic communications for all of the Carratine District, which Khronus was the capital of. The antenna being inoperable put the entire Carratine segment of SLENDER SCALPEL at risk.
If they had more time, Cerivix would've proposed that the upload be postponed until an engineering team accompanied a military escort could be ferried down to make repairs. They did not, however, have more time. The timetable for SLENDER SCALPEL had little margin for error, and the mission planners were still waiting on the resistance's vital intelligence on local enemy movements across the entire Carratine District for tactical details. The most practical option at this point was to fly in team to pick up a copy of the intelligence package, then return to the Example. This was a dangerous gamble at best, as VI projections of any shuttle attempting to successfully land on Palaven was distressingly low, never mind a return trip. Carratine District was simply too saturated with enemy AA emplacements. Landing a team outside Carratine District to meet up with the resistance would take too long, and would be no less dangerous. But Cerivix insisted the intel was vital, Resvirix agreed, and so turian fleet communications exploded as the navy attempted to find out who actually had available shuttles – which had not yet been given to the operation – to make the pickup.
The increased traffic attracted the attention of the detachment of Migrant Fleet Marines left with the fleet by the Bosh'tet Express, who were quickly appraised of the situation and volunteered for the job. As every Migrant Fleet Marine was a quarian, and every quarian was a technician, they reasoned that even if a return trip proved to be impossible, should a landing be achieved, an alternate strategy of repairing the communications antenna was very much feasible. But with the Hierarchy still unable to deploy their own ground assets and krogan allies quite some distance away, the quarians would be going in alone with no ground support, and only tentative backup from orbiting Hierarchy ships. Coronati promised that reinforcements would follow "as soon as possible", but emphasized that he could not say when this would actually be. But the quarians were not phased, so a rendezvous point between the quarians and the resistance was set at the communications antenna. On the Example, the turians began to grimly watch through the Example's cameras and satellite feeds as half a dozen quarian shuttles descended into Palaven's atmosphere, into hopelessly hostile territory.
Leading the team was Migrant Fleet Marines Staff Lieutenant Kal'Reegar.