Twenty-three hours had passed since the operation began, and while entire units were still displaced or even missing, a sufficient number of turians and krogan had made it to the staging areas to begin the next phase of the operation. Communications with operation headquarters on the Defender over Nanus was suboptimal, but field commanders already had standing orders which they could work with in the event Admiral Coronati or General Resvirix could not be reached. Combat operations for FORWARD FLAME would commence in five hours, a full Palaven day since the Indomitable jumped into the area of operations and kickstarted the campaign to retake the turian homeworld.
The commissioned officers would have preferred that their men take advantage of these five hours to get as much rest as possible, but there was too much excitement all around for such to be possible. For the enlisted, especially the newer replacements that had come in, there was a sense of accomplishment as everyone shared information and attempted to piece together what had happened in what was fast becoming a highly fragmented first stage of Operation: FORWARD FLAME. Given that many of the turians had jumped into battle with a great sense of desperation, the fact that they managed to survive not only a hilariously incompetent glider mass landing but also find any staging area at all seemed to offer a sense of resigned solace. With expectations of how well they could've performed rather low, the enlisted looked upon their misadventures across Palaven with more amusement than dismay. "Never have I seen a crowd of imbeciles so enthusiastically cheerful in boasting how badly they got lost on their own planet," mused [Service Chief] Gerik Ferandaris [of the 38th Heavy Infantry Legion, 77th Armored Division].
Of course, for the krogan who had already set up advance positions on Palaven days before FORWARD FLAME, the chance to rest as they stood relieved by turian reinforcements were welcome, and no krogan objected to the overenthusiasm of the Hierarchy's recruits.
For the commanders, however, there was little reason to celebrate. They were already nine hours behind schedule, and as far as they could tell, entire companies were still missing across several continents, either because they had gotten lost or killed. They managed to find some comfort in the fact that large numbers of turian infantrymen who were too far from their rendezvous zone elected to stay and support local units, as opposed to trying to find a way to their parent unit. As things stood, however, this promised to be the ultimate test of the flexibility of turian military doctrine, and how well the Hierarchy could cope with unexpected situations. Unit commanders tried to organize and reincorporate the misplaced men into their own battlegroups, but there were altogether too many combatants from too many units to try to make heads or tails out of the full roster, so those being reincorporated were simply told to obey the orders of whichever commanding officer was available at any given time.
On the matter of sleep and the krogan, it was highly unlikely in either case that the turians would be getting much sleep anyways, at least for those in Khronus. As turian and krogan alike continued to gather around Cerenys Stadium, the krogan warlords still waiting for the go-code to move out suddenly began to slam their massive hammers into the ground in rhythmic unison. Massive clumps of hardened metal, it was a weapon large enough to almost function as a rear shield when attached to the back of krogan armor, and nearly impossible to wield by anyone other than a warlord in heavily modified combat power armor. Many turians had considered it to be a highly impractical weapon given its size and weight, especially with the presence of fabrication technology, but that had never stopped the warlords from smashing anything in their way since the Rachni War, if not before.
The hammers coming down onto the ground in what looked like a violent swing, so practiced it seemed almost ritualized, caused nearly everyone at the Cerenys Stadium staging area to jump in alarm as it first began, a massive, overwhelming crack of metal thunder sounding like it came from everywhere at once. "Anyone within half a kilometer who claims that their testicles didn't jump a few centimeters or so into the air when those hammers came down is a damned liar," Gianthis recalled.
Eventually, the abuse of steel against earth went steady as it became almost something like the beat of a war drum, and the initial alarm passed. The 27th Provisional Army knew that Reaper forces were likely incapable of feeling fear, and thus the sound of unified warhammers would likely have no effect on their "morale". Nevertheless, it somehow managed to raise the spirits of the gathering turian-krogan army. "Fucking hammers," Optimi chuckled in her interview. "Impractical as all hell, but you can't help but to be impressed that you've got that much excessive power on your side, even if the krogan seem all too happy to abuse the ground with them for no reason at all." (Most of the veterans interviewed for Of Steels and Talons, both turian and krogan alike, could not recall ever knowing why the warlords started this episode with their hammers. To this day, despite plenty of goading and drinks, the surviving krogan warlords have remained almost coyly reticent on the matter.)
With the morale-raiser the latest in a chain of events that seemed to symbolize galactic solidarity between old racial archenemies, it was easy to be lulled into a false impression that a few weeks brought an end to turian-krogan tensions. Naysayers didn't have to wait long; while making preparations for the offensive phase of FORWARD FLAME, [Corporal Shari] Velius, stationed with the rest of the 18th Mountaineer Legion in the adjacent district of Langriss, witnessed an altercation between a group of turian resistance fighters and krogan soldiers that was quickly getting ugly. The turians accused the krogan of looting the bodies of the resistance dead, while the latter did not even bother to deny it, pointing out that those killed would not need mortal belongings anymore. Hierarchy officers had to forcibly break up the fight at the risk of bruised egos and actual bruises, trying to quarter the krogan army with the bulk of the 18th Mountaineer Legion and away from the Langriss resistance cells.
Rumors began to abound that the Reapers were flushing the planet's atmosphere with toxins to weaken the turian's capabilities to fight. These were, of course, rumors completely unsubstantiated by the HDI, especially since Admiral Cerivix couldn't make contact with ground forces to update them on developing situations. But, on the same vein, the HDI couldn't stop the rumors from spreading like a wildfire, and so the turians began to uniformly put on their helmets and activate anti-biochemical warfare protocols in their armor. It was decided that, at the very least, it protected turian lungs from all the ash and dust that had been kicked up into the atmosphere since the beginning of the Reaper War. The importance of this only seemed to be highlighted as Reapers began to set fire to areas on Palaven, particularly the areas the 27th Provisional Army was expected to advance on, most likely as a demoralization tactic. The smoke and ash being tossed into the atmosphere made the entire planet look like it was thrown into an eternal night, with heavy clouds reflecting hellishly orange flames on the ground. Each turian infantryman had their own mission clocks on their omni-tools, but not being able to see the Trebian sun through the entire day felt like a disorientating experience nonetheless.
The Reapers didn't simply leave the staging areas be. Many Reaper battlegroups had managed to regroup, beginning a ground assault on various staging areas before the 27th were ready to move out. The crossfire was intense, with Ravagers first bombarding the area, providing covering fire as Cannibals charged ahead to soak up hits and allow Marauders to move into flanking positions. Still, the 27th fluidly exploited their terrain advantage as the turians and krogan quickly got to work. In every instance, turian-krogan forces concentrated fire on the approaching enemies from higher positions and reinforced barricades, with the heavy guns tearing opposing forces to shreds. Air support from surviving gunships was readily available, as was artillery fire. Cheers from the defenders came up across the planet as enemy fire was swiftly silenced, although unit commanders were certain that the Reapers were simply testing the 27th Provisional Army, and found themselves more worried about precisely how many more of these large battlegroups the Reapers probably had.
By the end of twenty-eight hours, a full Palaven day, the 27th Provisional Army, a mix of battle-hardened, highly-motivated turian and krogan forces, were fully ready to move out to retake their designated territories, supported by millions of resistance fighters across the planet. Entire legions began to march out of their staging areas, armed to the teeth, a stream of steel flowing through the ashes of a war-torn homeworld. Ekyriat recalled the scene as she and Smirian, still manning their undermanned defensive position, watched columns of turian and krogan infantrymen march past towards the flames on the horizon, awed at the greatest military mobilization groundside they had ever seen in their lifetimes.
In spite of the odds, there was a great sense of confidence in the men. "We didn't do half bad yesterday," Ferandaris encouraged his buddies even as they marched into the fray, working to quell their feelings of anxiety, "and that was just a regrouping maneuver. Now that we're actually going on the offensive, we're going to kick ass."
No long periods of rest could be afforded for the special operations teams that were still making their way across Reaper-controlled territories across Palaven, however, still crawling their way to the staging areas where resistance forward teams were waiting to deliver the payload. There was little room for error, so Ravakian proceeded as slowly as the circumstances would allow. Blackwatch snipers continued leapfrog surveillance tactics a block ahead of the team proper, remaining hidden and relaying intelligence back to 2nd Platoon, allowing Ravakian and Helsrang to strategize their approach on a block-by-block basis. It involved much endurance, discipline, and – above all – patience. "I was surprised to see the krogan not bitching at the fact we were taking it nice and slow, safe," Helsrang recalled. "But I suppose having a lifespan in the range of a thousand years doesn't get you worked up over things."
By contrast, the forward element of the 49th Reconnaissance Legion involved in SLENDER SCALPEL was beginning to worry that they were behind schedule. They had to take a length detour after realizing that their initial infiltration route was saturated with Reaper forces, apparently one of the enemy's staging areas. The detour forced them to cross district lines into Langriss District, the area of operations for the infiltration element of the 18th Mountaineer Legion, which also had units trying to smuggle warp bombs to resistance forward teams. Commander Paratid ordered the 49th to hold up and hole into a nearby building to catch a breath, which would give him some time to reassess how they were going to get back on track now that a detour had waylaid them into a completely different district.
Hunkering down in the ruins for concealment and cover, the turians and krogan began to break out rations as they caught a quick break. Tiredly, Siritii looked the scene over, and couldn't help but find a great deal of humor in about four dozen turians and krogan hunkered down in close quarters, resting right next to a few warp bombs. "Setups for a joke don't get more bizarre than this," he observed. A service chief thought it'd be really funny to pass the krogan dextro rations without actually telling them. Siritii sharply told her to knock it off. "Not on this operation," he growled.
Lookouts spotted movement in the distance, causing the 49th to tense and immediately take defensive positions. Like every special operations unit involved in SLENDER SCALPEL, they were caught in a situation where they feared having to take out any Reaper unit at all. It had long been confirmed that each and every individual Reaper unit was being tracked by command-and-control protocols on each Reaper capital ship, and that even a stealth kill was enough to alert the enemy to friendly positions, just by virtue of an allied unit going offline. As such, the forward element of the 49th felt extraordinarily helpless, knowing that defensive positions were necessary, but also knowing there would be grave consequences for the entire operation across Palaven with no recourse should any of the infiltration teams be detected.
Short glimpses of movement in the distance betrayed a slow, methodical approach that contrasted to the lightning-fast assaults Reaper forces favored to overwhelm the enemy. Paratid suspected that the unknown units in the distance were in fact turian, and sent a runner in the form of Corporal Nithus Heltii to ascertain the situation. It was a calculated risk; should the unknown units actually be Reaper forces, and should Heltii be detected, the enemy might assume he was a lone straggler lost in the landings of FORWARD FLAME as opposed to part of an infiltration effort targeting Reaper capital and processing ships.
The 49th collectively held its breath as Heltii ran down the ruined streets and disappeared within the debris, their guns aimed down the urban corridor. Only after three minutes did he finally return with another turian, Operations Chief Lonn Syphiat, who indicated that the rest of the forward element of the 18th Mountaineer Division was just a block away, also attempting to smuggle their precious cargo to the local resistance. Keeping their respective teams hidden in cover, a few back-and-forth exchanges via runner finally allowed the 49th and the 18th to come to an arrangement: The two forward infiltration teams would proceed together further down the district, with the 18th walking the 49th to an alternative path where the latter could return to their original area of operations. Now the 49th had to help minimize their profile and avoid detection for two forward teams, but at least they weren't as lost as they were before.
As far as 2nd Platoon, E Company, Blackwatch was concerned, there were few navigational problems. The intelligence compiled for Khronus District was highly detailed, and the infiltration team had no detours to make, taking advantage of several underground routes existing in the form of surviving tunnels or cave-ins of buildings and city blocks. Emerging from one of these underground routes, 2nd Platoon found itself at the bottom of what was effectively a crater from Reaper bombardment, the platoon having emerged from the half cluttered with the ruins of metropolitan buildings. Making their way to the edge of the crater where there was cover involved covering nearly fifty meters of open ground, but the snipers providing overwatch detected no enemy forces. Ravakian ordered her rifleman to make the dash towards the crater's rim, where the terrain was more defensible, and where they could provide a base of fire when the krogan followed while carrying the warp bombs.
Despite being weighed down by a ridiculous amount of equipment, the riflemen managed to cross the distance within ten seconds, setting up a base of fire right at the edge of the crater, peering over the edge and down the ruined streets of Khronus. Still no contact. 2nd Platoon chose to continue their cover-and-maneuver tactics, except the moment Ravakian began to lead her squads up onto their feet, over the crater's rim, and down the street, several Marauders suddenly appeared from inside some of the ruins ahead, having turned the corner themselves. They were apparently just a particularly large patrol that did not actually expect Blackwatch to be here, but had instantly detected their presence the moment both sides simultaneously established visual contact with each other.
It was not so much a tactical blunder as it was an unfortunate coincidence. The snipers on overwatch from their elevated positions had prioritized watching for mobile enemy units on the streets that could corner 2nd Platoon, and therefore could not see the incoming enemy forces moving through the block's lower levels obscured by the same ruins that had hidden 2nd Platoon. On the ground, both turian and Reaper forces had emerged from cover at the same time. This was still a situation that greatly favored the Reapers, however, as 2nd Platoon found themselves facing the possibility that their attempt at remaining undetected ruined, a possibility that could cause enemy forces to converge with overwhelming force and intercept their precious cargo.
But in the split-second it took for Blackwatch and Reaper forces to open fire on each other, Ravakian assessed the situation in the way seasoned, experienced commanders did, taking in the entire scenario in an instant glimpse even as she was instinctively raising her Phaeston to bear and dropping to a crouch. The krogan behind her were still making their way out of the skyscraper ruins, keeping them – and, perhaps more importantly, the warp bombs – out of the Reapers' line of sight. From the perspective of the enemy, Ravakian and the rest of 2nd Platoon were simply either turian stragglers or an advance scouting party penetrating relatively far into Reaper lines. In fact, that the Reaper forces couldn't see the krogan with them only served to enhance that perception, as reinforcements from Tuchanka caught so far outside Hierarchy staging areas might have incurred suspicion.
Blackwatch managed to get the first shots off as riflemen on the ground swiftly picked off the first of the enemy to have emerged from cover with bursts of rifle fire. Almost immediately, the precise shots were turning into a cacophony of rapid gunfire as enemy forces suddenly seemed to surge in from the ruins ahead of the turians, attracted to their presence. Blackwatch snipers, having no shot, quickly descended from the top floors of whatever building they were providing overwatch in, trying to get a better angle from which to put in some shots into the lower levels. Three seconds ago, the entire area had been quiet for hours; now, angry blue and red lines were crisscrossing across the street from the two ruined city blocks.
Certain that the rest of the platoon was putting down a sufficient base of fire, Ravakian pulled back and slid back down the ridge at the top of the inclined, taking cover and shooting back. She turned to the nearest NCO near her, found [Operations Chief Jacia] Navarian firing into the Reaper line right next to her. "Chief!" she shouted, grabbing Navarian by the shoulder. "Tell the krogan to get the fuck out of here and head for the RZ before the Reapers spot them! We'll play decoy and hold the line!"
Navarian nodded, slid down the incline towards the approaching krogan, who had heard the gunshots and were already climbing up from the ruins to assist. "This is one of those moments where you take a look and realize maybe Navarian wasn't the best call to make in hindsight," Fidellin laughed in an interview, recalling the moment he turned around to watch the turian operations chief move towards the krogan. In a way, Navarian was ideal for an infiltrator, being physically short for a turian, coming up at only one hundred fifty-nine centimeters. It made her ideal for concealing her profile or squeezing into spots taller infiltrators couldn't. It did not, however, make her ideal for stopping a line of krogan charging up the incline. "So you have this tiny turian running downhill trying to stop a bunch of krogan maybe twice her height, and you get this sense of dread, like watching a kid about to be run over by a truck, but you're also thinking about how hilarious it would be to watch it happen."
It didn't happen, thankfully. Although Navarian was short, the fact that she was coming down a hill gave her the elevation advantage needed to be spotted by the krogan commandos, who quickly stopped. One of them, however, apparently having missed the fact that his teammates had halted in their tracks, was still charging ahead. So Navarian did what no one expected her to do: She jumped and latched onto the krogan. There was no way she could've possibly tackled down a krogan, of course, except she was hanging onto his tail, being dragged along the ground as he ran, and it was only then that the krogan commando realized someone was trying to get him to stop, pausing just in time before he revealed his position at the top of the incline.
After getting Navarian to release the krogan's tail, the operations chief quickly told Urdnot that 2nd Platoon would hold the line and act as decoy, giving Malgus Company the chance to sneak off towards the rendezvous zone alone to meet up with Khronus resistance forward teams. The krogan retreated back into the ruins even as Ravakian began to move 2nd Platoon southwards, drawing the enemy away from the krogan and their mission-vital warp bombs. The direction was not random; aside from luring the Reaper forces away from the direction Malgus Company needed to go, mission maps showed that the ruins southward were more defensible, with few open spaces that would favor overwhelming enemy firepower, but not so concentrated that heavy fire would collapse the ruins on top of 2nd Platoon. Ravakian also deduced that it was likely an area that the 27th would attempt to control – therefore a good spot to hold for possible reinforcements – although without intimate knowledge of the 27th Provisional Army's mission plan or a line of communication with any of their commanding officers, this was only a deduction at best and hopeful thinking at worst.
It was one of the few ground campaigns in the Reaper War where the Hierarchy enjoyed the advantage of the initiative. The invasion of Palaven came as a surprise to the Reapers, and while their numbers still vastly outnumbered that of the 27th Provisional Army, they had been spread thin across the planet to counter local insurgencies, and needed more than a day to adequately regroup. The lack of capital ship support, with most Reaper ships bogged down with harvesting operations or in space, ensured that Reaper ground forces were insufficiently prepared to launch any coordinated offensive, even though the turian push forward was very much behind schedule.
By no means did this suggest that Reaper resistance was anything but ferocious. There were still enough enemy forces on the main line of resistance that the turian-krogan army had to arduously claw their way through their advance. From each theater across the planet, descriptions of combat with Reaper forces were generally uniform: Intense, nonstop house-to-house fighting across each and every street and block at a time. Tracers seemed to engulf the world, saturating the air as slugs whizzed by everywhere, the carnage increasingly obvious as the fighting moved into the close-quarters interior of Palaven's metropolitan ruins. The offensive push was arguably effective, but casualties were heavy as the 27th Provisional Army was caught in a deadly crossfire that seemed to offer no room for respite. Aside from the sound of gunfire coming from every possible direction, artillery strikes from rear guns manned by the turian resistance tried to soften up approaching enemy reinforcements. Such bombardments were infrequent given the limited amount of artillery pieces the resistance had to work with, but according to Optimi, "The infrequency of the shells landing made it difficult to dismiss as mere background noise, and only serve to remind us of the hell we had landed in."
Velius recalled wishing the 18th Mountaineer Legion had brought submachine guns instead. "Most of the fighting was done by kicking down doors and shooting through walls," she described. "There was a lot of shooting, but much of it was at a distance so close, most of us were coated from head to toe with enemy blood by the time we got down one city block. A lot of the gunfire came through the walls with no warning at all. They weren't even shots aimed at us, just general shots coincidentally passing through our general direction because that much gunfire was being thrown about. Every now and then, you'd get people cut down left and right from stray gunfire coming from nowhere, and there wasn't a thing you could do about it. With the amount of tracers and muzzle flashes you could see everywhere down the street and in the buildings, you know every single company was having that exact same problem. We were fighting through an infestation."
For the turians, this was a war very far removed from any conventional definition of military engagements. Turians, like most other military forces, were accustomed to engaging the enemy with precise bursts of assault rifle and sniper fire from a hundred meters away or more, often with heavy fighter and gunship support to soften up the opposition in the face of an advancing friendly line. This was particularly difficult to pursue because Palaven was far too urban and tight for engagements to venture into the range of a hundred meters or more, because Reaper forces favored swarming conventional defenses with mid-to-close-range tactics, and because air and artillery support was distressingly sparse, in spite of tireless efforts from the turian resistance. These were hallmarks of the Reaper War that made conventional conflict look more like a human war vid than an actual sound fighting doctrine. The krogan, on the other hand, were quite comfortable with close-quarters combat, and showed no reservation in tearing up enemy forces along with the local scenery with their shotguns and heavy weapons.
The 38th Heavy Infantry Legion was one of the outfits that found themselves very much out of their comfort zones in all the fighting. Largely a collection of riflemen and engineers carrying heavy machine guns, anti-armor weaponry, and explosives, their role was generally to lay down a field of heavy suppressive fire from long range while taking out enemy armor. But there were few areas that permitted long-range engagements, forcing the 38th into tight quarters that were ill-suited to accommodate their heavy weapons.
Optimi, by contrast, was quite comfortable with urban house-to-house combat. Her last posting with the 38th was on Taetrus after the Vallum Blast, where hastatim squads were responsible for escorting disarmed civilians from urban population hubs to safe camps, and executing those who didn't. With hastatim qualifications, her experiences as part of the "Cremators" and the "Burial Agency" (derogative nicknames given to them by turian separatists, likely in fear) against Facinus sympathizers gave her an edge in close-quarters combat. The fact that she didn't have to worry about demanding the Marauders to disarm and await transportation was a plus, as she only had to point and shoot. It didn't stop occupational habits from coming up at unexpected and careless moments, though, and – to her embarrassment – she inadvertently shouted into a building her team was entering, announcing their entry and ordering any occupants inside to come out.
Three corporals behind her laughed at the slip-up. "What are you, ma'am? Hastatim?"
Optimi coldly glared back and answered, "Yes." The laughing stopped very quickly.
In spite of such doctrinal difficulties, early results from the initial offensive were good. The concentration of turian-krogan forces around each staging area allowed them to organize heavy offenses against relatively unsecured enemy positions. In conjunction with resistance forces, the 27th Provisional Army maintained a clean-and-sweep strategy, with the turian-krogan joint-army handling the brunt of the offensive, while the resistance would follow right behind them, eliminating Reaper stragglers missed by the 27th in the first push, and holding down logistical lines and defensive positions. Thermal clips, munitions, and heavy guns for fire support were brought in closer to the front block-by-block as the 27th advanced. Millions of turians supporting the 27th made their intent clear: No turian or krogan keeping his finger jammed on the trigger of his gun would ever want for thermal clips, ammunition blocks, rockets, or other munitions. The 27th ensured that the efforts of the resistance did not go to waste, ensuring that every thermal clip moved to the front was put to good use, although Reaper forces were able to answer with a heavy concentration of gunfire of their own.
At the rate shots were being discharged, ammunition blocks actually became an issue. In theory, an ammunition block could provide an infantryman with enough shots to last him days, given that the mass accelerator only sheared a grain off a metallic block, but so many turians and krogan were discharging their weapons virtually nonstop against the enemy that it took mere hours for them to have to replace the blocks. Almost universally, no infantryman had ever had to swap ammunition blocks while still in the middle of combat. Unit commanders remembered that there were a large number of replacements, and worried that the younger combatants might have trouble with something that – in more conventional circumstances – could have otherwise been the job of an armory officer. They went up and down the line to make sure that the younger combatants actually knew how to do so, and were relieved to find that the vast majority of them had little trouble beyond habitually trying to insert a new thermal clip instead in the heat of a firefight.
Having to swap ammunition blocks midway through an operation wasn't the only thing new to the turians. Velius had been providing suppressive fire for most of her squadmates for hours when her Phaeston suddenly jolted violently in her hand and began to smoke. Stunned, she thought that the Marauders now came equipped with the capacity to overload weapons. It took a few moments for Velius to eventually figure out that her rifle itself had overheated spectacularly. Thermal clips generally took care of excess heat from the energy generated from each shot, but small arms in general, even with thermal clips, were not designed to handle such nonstop gunfire. The tiny amounts of residual heat the thermal clips could not absorb had accumulated over hours of non-stop shooting, eventually melting the Phaeston's barrel.
A dumbfounded engineer right next to Velius stared at the spectacle, declaring, "I have never seen a gun do that in the past two years since they introduced those clips."
The heavy fighting did see increased turian reliance on krogan manpower. The natives of Tuchanka came far more heavily armored, and were biologically more capable of shrugging off gunfire due to redundant biological systems and regeneration. "You can't really say when or how it started happening," Optimi commented, "and it wasn't like we actually stopped for a minute and butted heads on how to do this. But we eventually got comfortable – without really having to sit down and figure it out – with the krogan being on point, breaching an area while the turians cleared it from just a few steps behind. They soaked up the hits because they could, and we picked off the enemy because we could." The improvised team dynamic and the unspoken, instinctive understanding of each species' strengths and weaknesses seemed to surreally form a quiet sense of camaraderie that seemed to go unnoticed by the rank-and-file when no one pointed it out, but nevertheless led to a highly functional joint-army that was steadily taking back turian ground block-by-block across the planet.
Still, fourteen hours after the first offensive push began, turian-krogan casualties had mounted well into five digits, with the injured and killed amongst the turian resistance suspected to be significantly higher despite staying behind the main line of resistance. For an offensive force that was formally 270,000 strong (accounting for the units that did not escape the Whirlwind's destruction in orbit), the 27th Provisional Army now had serious concerns about how much longer they could sustain a mass offensive, and at what point they were going to have to dig in and minimize casualties for just long enough to patch up the wounded and possibly find replacements on the frontlines from the resistance.
Unlike the rest of the 27th Provisional Army, the turians and krogan stationed at Firebase Arterius did not take part in the initial strikes against Reaper positions. This was not because the battlegroup were less capable, but because their position was highly unfavorable. The Reapers had already known Firebase Arterius to be a major krogan position when the krogan had tried to support the fighting in Paeridia from the firebase, and had the area surrounded with a large amount of Reaper forces well before Operation: FORWARD FLAME. The reinforcements were also relatively limited, meaning the turian-krogan position was very much an outnumbered king-of-the-hill. Isolated from the resistance and the rest of the 27th, the commanding officers in the area decided the best course of action would be to preserve manpower and continue with defensive operations until the 27th had pushed far enough to link Paeridia, the South Peaks, and Firebase Arterius with the rest of the allied positions.
The unexpected lull across the South Peaks happened because the Reapers were still in the process of ascertaining the enemy order of battle. The difficulties in procuring accurate intelligence were due in part because FORWARD FLAME was an unprecedentedly large operation that overwhelmed coherent attempts to put an accurate number on the turian-krogan force. A major contribution, however, was made from the machinations of Vice Admiral Cerivix and the rest of the senior HDI staff, who had long operated under the assumption that the Reapers were easily cracking their encryption algorithms, and so enforced a degree of communications discipline previously considered impossible for an army and operation of such a size. Mission-critical data was kept off communication channels whenever possible, and operation-specific codes were shared beforehand by intelligence officers briefing commanders in person, instead of transmitting such information through narrowband ship-to-ship communiques. This ensured that even if the Reapers were eavesdropping, they would gain very little actionable intelligence.
The result was a coordinated but ultimately less-than-optimal redistribution of Reaper ground forces across Palaven. In a way, the Reapers' strategic brilliance was used against them, and as such, they were unwilling to dedicate manpower on an uninformed offensive save the occasional scouts attempting to gather intelligence. The Reapers knew that the turians and the krogan had a large but outnumbered fighting force on Firebase Arterius, but between the knowledge that the enemy was in a fortified position and the lack of knowledge of just how large the turian-krogan force was, the Reapers simply chose to quarantine the firebase. The containment strategy, which had been enforced ever since the krogan failed to take Paeridia, would be enforced until enough ground forces could be rerouted to the area to crush the turian-krogan defenders, which – until proven otherwise – the Reapers were assuming to be as numerous as Firebase Arterius could possibly host.
This meant that, almost surreally, the defenders of Firebase Arterius were on garrison duty. For some, this was a blessing, as the krogan were entrenched into a fortification with turian reinforcements, and from their elevated position, they watched – rather than endured – the carnage unfolding kilometers away where the 27th was making its gradual planetwide push. For some, however, it was an exercise in boredom. Most of the turians with expectations of serious combat, and while many were anxious at the idea of putting themselves in grave danger, the idea that they were occupying a "rest position" while the rest of the 27th Provisional Army was fighting tooth and talon across the planet was "frustrating". The only real action most of the turians saw was from establishing perimeter security shortly after landing. Now, aside from taking potshots at Reaper scouts, it was largely quiet.
Despite being relatively safe, the lull was somewhat torturous to much of the reinforcements. "No one wants to risk death," explained Ordinix, "but the idea that more than 25,000 of your buddies are out there fighting the good fight while you're stuck up here waiting for a logistical line to be established is more than a little frustrating." His fireteam was growing increasingly restless at the officer's decision to stay put until the strategic situation improved, and while Ordinix remained the good team leader by keeping the younger members of the 18th in check, he admitted, "There was no other place I wanted to be more than beside the 52nd Reconnaissance Legion, trying to deliver the warp bombs to the resistance and taking down the Reapers from the inside."
The original krogan defenders decided to help liven up the mood and alleviate some boredom by coming up with increasingly creative ways to deal with the occasional Reaper team reconnoitering and testing Firebase Arterius' defenses, as well as the unseen quarantine much further down the mountain. The turians found themselves fascinated with many of the krogan weapons, much of which seemed a little crude and far removed from conventional firearms technology, but was nevertheless a great source of amusement. A favorite amongst the turians was the Graal spike thrower, a gun that quite literally launched large flechettes through the air, with grisly results, not unlike the Kishock harpoon gun. The turians – far more accustomed to standard, "efficient" weapons that accelerated a small grain of metal at an enemy – were amused at what they considered a rather primitive weapon, but there was no arguing against the results. Borrowing krogan weapons, the krogan laughed at the turians struggle at aiming a weapon with a much lower muzzle velocity than they were used to, while the turians laughed at the highly messy results each flechette did to a Marauder or Cannibal when it actually landed on-target.
The description of "handheld artillery" was not entirely off-the-mark, and from behind excellent cover the enlisted took turns at haphazardly sending another spike flying towards the next Reaper reconnaissance team. The challenge and difficulty of using the spike thrower at range swiftly turned into a game for turians with few other ways to pass the time. Soon enough, basic flechettes were being complemented with explosives, and much enjoyment was had when Cannibals swarmed in towards a corpse to transform the biomass into armor, only for the remote explosive embedded into the corpse to destroy anyone nearby. "Our positions weren't assailable," remarked Ordinix, "but they were good enough. From atop the firebase's walls, we enjoyed every soldier's dream of shooting without great fear of being shot in return."
Other methods were utilized as a compromise between killing Reapers forces and killing time. With no serviceable vehicles left at Firebase Arterius, the enlisted commandeered now-obsolete combustible fuel barrels and sent them rolling down the mountain. Turians and krogan alike were elated at the comical sight of the occasional barrel catching a Marauder, Husk, or a Cannibal that wasn't quick enough in the face, rolling both down the mountain. Sharpshooters shot at barrels that had descended into a crowd of Reaper ground forces, catching everyone nearby in the subsequent blast. Someone had the bright idea of simply pouring fuel down the mountain and setting it on fire, creating what effectively amounted to small rivers of flame flowing downwards.
Someone grabbed hold of crates full of grenades, and activated their proximity fuses before rolling them all down the mountain. What followed were more explosions than was sanely necessary. "But, quite frankly," Ordinix admitted, "none of us gave two fucks." Everyone was far too busy looking for the next creative, entertaining way to unleash havoc upon their foes until they could carry out a "proper" offensive. The NCOs justified all of this with the fact that most of the resources involved in the hijinks were either obsolete or in abundance. Furthermore, it was inflicting casualty upon the Reapers while keeping morale up. Unit commanders chose to turn a blind eye to the silliness, which continued until a captain came up to check up on what was causing all the explosions. He then proceeded ferociously chew everyone out for causing a scene and attracting undue attention. Apparently, the commissioned officers had not forgotten that their most recent venture with explosives – attempting to destroy the Dragon's Teeth scattered across the perimeter of Firebase Arterius – had gone over badly, and they had no intention of attracting more Reaper attention by setting off even more detonations.
The captain's concerns turned out to be prophetic. A passing Reaper capital ship began to bombard Firebase Arterius with its magnetohydrodynamic weapon, instantly melting much of the equipment and defenses set up around the defensive position. Turian and krogan alike rushed for cover in the subterranean sections of the firebase, hoping that meters of mountain above them would shield the allied forces from such a devastating weapon. Fortunately, the Reaper had barely paid attention to Firebase Arterius, merely attacking it while passing by to deal with the much more pressing threat of the rest of the 27th Provisional Army and their massive offensive. The attack simply coincided with a flyby, ending just as quickly as it had started. Still, a mere thirty seconds of bombardment ensured that casualties skyrocketed to over a hundred turian and krogan wounded and dead.
Ordinix barely managed to jump into the firebase's interior when a magnetohydrodynamic burst struck more than thirty meters away, but even with his shields activated, he managed to feel the extreme heat from that distance, "as though half my face suddenly melted away". He found a safe spot deeper inside the structure, and slumped against the wall next to a krogan who had similarly evacuated inside. The pain on the side of his face was excruciating, but as his fingers came up to check on the wound, Ordinix was at least mildly relieved that his face did not actually melt, although half of it certainly felt a little raw.
The krogan right next to him commented that they were being stupid and that they should never do that again, to which Ordinix agreed. "Totally fucking worth it, though," the krogan added with a shit-eating grin.
"Damn straight," concurred Ordinix.
Reaper capital ships engaging the 27th Provisional Army was a mixed blessing to the special operations forces still sneaking their way into enemy-controlled territories. In many of the operators and infantrymen was the fear that the primary objective of SLENDER SCALPEL – the destruction of as many Reaper ships as possible – would be greatly diminished, if not neutered, by the number of enemy ships that were now engaging Hierarchy ground forces in direct combat, therefore out-of-reach by the advance teams of the turian resistance. On the other hand, now that the fighting had started in earnest, it afforded the infiltration teams a greater margin of error, as a turian-krogan team caught this deep behind enemy lines was less likely to incur suspicion, at least in theory.
This didn't stop the teams from being as careful as possible, however. The forward element of 18th Mountaineer Legion guided their counterparts from the 49th Reconnaissance Legion through the detour, allowing the former to finally leave Langriss, returning to their original AO. Having taken such a roundabout route, conventional wisdom suggested that the 49th haul ass and make their way as quickly to the rendezvous point as possible, but given that the legion had exhausted itself with the detour and had only a rush to look forward to if they were to remain on schedule, Paratid ordered the forward infiltration element to hole into the local ruins to rest up and catch a bit of sleep. Most of the turians and krogan were hyped up on stims, and some matched to catch a quick wink or two from occasional half-hour stops, but such was hardly enough to mitigate the fact that they had been marching and crawling for the last forty-five hours through what was effectively a mortal hell.
Fighting kilometers to their rear made sleep difficult, a constant reminder that the rest of the 27th Provisional Army was buying them time and attracting the bulk of Reaper attention so they could sneak behind enemy lines and deliver their payload. Constant gunfire and explosions rattled through the entire afternoon, signs that the fighting was getting closer. A straggling turian gunship that had flown too far past the main line of resistance attempted to lower altitude to minimize its radar profile, but it was too late to hide itself in the urban jungle of Palaven before a Reaper capital ship, passing by on its way to stop the 27th, fired a magnetohydrodynamic burst at the gunship almost casually. The shot was spot on, sending the gunship plummeting in flames down onto the street the 49th had bunkered down in before it exploded upon landing.
This sent the entire 49th scrambling for their weapons as everyone, turian and krogan, took up defensive positions and tensely waited for a possible attack that ultimately did not come. The Reapers had shot the gunship out of the sky, but aside from the wreckage falling onto the legion's infiltration element, no further casualties were taken, nor any enemy attack mounted. The Reapers did not seem to have noticed the 49th at all, and did not bother to check up on survivors from the gunship. Indeed, when Siritii told ordered his subordinates to check for survivors after nearly five minutes of pointing their guns down the streets, they confirmed that the turian flight crew inside had most likely been killed even before the gunship hit the street.
As the collectively sighed a breath of relief, Siritii realized he was in for more bad news when discovered that the gunship had, in fact, killed Commander Paratid. Having been running on stimulants for more than a day and a half without sleep, he and several others had tried to catch some sleep inside an abandoned café. When the gunship had come crashing down, it came down at an angle that crushed the entirety of the small establishment before its fuel tanks detonated just as an extra measure, ensuring no one inside survived.
"Zurik had been with the 49th since the beginning," wrote Siritii with a hint of bitterness in recollection in his own book, Miracle Workers. "The lieutenant commander was something of a legend. He was there in the sieges of Pelvark and Roniae, at the forefront of Operation: PALE CROSSFIRE. On Menae, he personally ran through a throng of Reaper ground forces to manually detonate faulty explosives before running right back to get back into the fight. The noncoms of the legion were ready to testify to his insane bravery and just as insane competence. Turians don't come better trained than the Old Bastard. Yet as much of a hero he was, Zurik was killed as the legion stopped somewhere they thought to be safe to take a breath, his death a merely a stray afterthought of Fate, who thought dropping a gunship on him when no one expected it would be funny."
As it turned out, the crash had managed to kill not only Paratid, but the staff lieutenants who acted as the forward element's executive officers. With most of the senior officers dead, the survivors quickly took a tally of the remaining officers before realizing that Siritii was the ranking turian officer on the team. Lieutenant Tarquin Siritii, normally not one given to profanities, reacted as rationally as anyone in his position would, providing a deadpan reply: "Oh, fuck."
With the officers dead and the element short on time, Siritii decided that they had no more time or manpower to spare, and ordered the 49th to leave their current position as soon as possible. No sooner had the forward element evacuated from their rest positions did the structures behind them begun to collapse, the fighting and the gunship having weakened the structural supports of the local buildings, sending tons of steel plummeting down, crushing and caving in the streets. Had Siritii not canceled their rest and moved the element out of the buildings, most of them would have been crushed, and their mission would have been a failure. Taking advantage of the dust that had picked up from the collapse, the 49th remained hidden on their way towards their rendezvous point.
In Carratine District, Urdnot Nakmor had made the most out of the chance Blackwatch had given Malgus Company. His men itched for a fight, but he ensured that they kept their bloodlust in check until they completed their primary objective. For extra motivation, Urdnot reminded his commandos that most of their weapons were ill-suited for anything outside close-range fighting, and close-range fighting was a terrifically horrible idea when the company was carrying warp bombs meant to take out an entire Reaper capital ship. Malgus Company behaved. (Technically, the warp bombs being carried by all infiltration elements across Palaven had been deactivated and dismantled prior to the operation to prevent premature detonation, and to save the resistance the time to dismantle the warp bombs into pieces they could smuggle into the Reaper camps. Urdnot, having known this, tactfully neglected to mention this detail to his men.)
By no means was sneaking across kilometers of the ruins of Palaven an easy task, especially when it was done with very little rest across two Palaven days. By the time night fell, however, Malgus Company finally reached their rendezvous point, an abandoned factory where the turian resistance smuggling team in Carratine District was supposed to be meeting them. Night had already fallen for the second time since SLENDER SCALPEL began, which allowed for the resistance to sneak up onto them, guns shouldered, and confirm that the incoming krogan were not, in fact, Reaper Brutes. Among the resistance smugglers were Achtus and Kylonis, both of whom had joined the smuggling team to see the resistance's efforts through. Achtus expressed surprise; he had thought it would be turians who would be delivering the warp bombs to his door.
"Your boys got stuck in a pile of shit to make sure we could get this to you," grunted Urdnot, passing the warp bombs over to the resistance, "so you'd better make it fucking count." Kylonis assured the krogan that her teams had been practicing for days to perfect this exact operation, and that they would see things through to the end. With their primary objective concluded, the Malgus Company pulled out from the area to rejoin the advance of the 27th Provisional Army, decreasing the chances of the resistance smuggling teams being discovered. Operation: SLENDER SCALPEL, at least in Khronus, was over for the special forces operators.
That didn't mean they were out of danger, however. Even if one discounted the dangerous trek Malgus Company needed to make to return to friendly lines, 5th Special Operations Group Blackwatch's 2nd Platoon was still stuck in a firefight, caught behind Reaper lines and trying to draw attention away from Malgus Company. For almost a full day, as Reaper forces tried to triangulate on their exact position on box 2nd Platoon in, Ravakian led the enemy on a chase, fully utilizing hit-and-run tactics while keeping Blackwatch moving at full speed. The result was not unlike a run-and-gun battle, which normally would be highly discouraged by conventional wisdom, had the Hierarchy's premier special operations unit cared more about conventional wisdom. Converging Reaper forces always attempted to give chase, only to realize that the turians had broken their cordon long before the Reapers had a chance to close it.
Ravakian's tactics was not an attempt at heroics. While it was true that she was ready to sacrifice 2nd Platoon if it meant the Reapers would never notice Malgus Company, much of her concerns were much more pragmatic. Caught behind enemy lines with no support, 2nd Platoon was severely outnumbered, benefitting only from the fact that they were the best the turians had to offer, and performed exceptionally even when mobile. Determined to remain a distraction and a thorn at the Reapers' side in Khronus, Ravakian denied the Reapers any advantage they may have had with numbers, masterfully chaining together a series of tactical retreats that left pursuing Reaper units vulnerable to guerilla attacks and incapable of flanking 2nd Platoon.
But such tactics could only last so long, and while 2nd Platoon remained highly effective during daytime, by the time night fell, the Reapers had finally reorganized their ground forces sufficiently to counter the threat posed by the 27th, and the increased Reaper presence in Carratine District meant a tactical retreat in any direction ultimately fell into a Reaper defensive position. Ravakian had 2nd Platoon fall back into a more defensible position, hiding in the Wesitria Shopping Complex and maintaining a fluid defensive position that involved denying the Reapers access into the buildings, and then whittling them down with hit-and-run tactics when breakthrough was achieved, as the 27th in Carratine District – specifically the 77th Armored Division – were only believed to be only kilometers away.
A full day of repairs and resupplies over the shipyards of Nanus helped bring much of the 3rd and 9th Fleets back to combat effectiveness. This was good for General Resvirix, who finally managed to convince Admiral Coronati that the 27th Provisional Army needed immediate support in the form of orbital bombardment. Communications were still down, but distance and atmospheric interference made it difficult to ascertain details, telescopes and cameras over Nanus could confirm that the fighting had gotten fierce enough that Reaper capital ships were moving in to support their own ground troops by bombarding the 27th.
With the 3rd Fleet having completed more of its repairs and resupplies than the 9th, Coronati sent the 3rd and the 13th Fleets to make the attack run. Both fleets would separately make their independent flybys over intersecting orbits that would include the airspaces of most of the planet's hotspots. Dreadnoughts and cruisers would be at the vanguard of the flyby, acting as a shield and scoring as many shots on defending Reaper ships as possible, accompanied by fighter and drone support from the carriers defended by the 12th Fleet in the rear. The vanguard would clear the way for the frigates taking up the rear, which would conduct a low-orbit flyby and concentrate its guns groundside, bombarding Reaper ground forces with a combination of mass accelerator rounds and Thanix discharges.
The need for such a daring strategy was not inspired from bravado, but from increased complications for the fleet in naval operations. The Reapers had increased their orbital presence, clearly intending to bar the Navy and further passage around Palaven in an attempt to the operational commanders from the ground forces planetside, with the long-term strategy of whittling down the numbers of the 27th through a campaign of attrition. This made accurate bombardment from even hundreds kilometers away difficult, to say nothing of thousands expected from extreme range bombardment, and a mass accelerator rounded that landed on the 27th was worse than one not being fired at all; any closer and the Reapers would simply start counter-sniping before the frigates could begin firing.
This meant that the frigates – chosen over dreadnoughts and cruisers because their bombardment yields were much lighter, acting as tactical weapons to support the 27th instead of strategic ones that would impair the advance – would need to skim the breathable atmosphere of Palaven. Communications with ground forces were still severely jammed, and while the fleet could've used spectroimagery and thermal scanning to identify ground forces from orbit, a day and a half of nonstop fighting had kicked up even more dust and smoke into the atmosphere, making it difficult for the fleet's cameras to penetrate the black veil that had settled over Palaven. Furthermore, the raging fires and the fact that much of the combat involved house-to-house fighting indoors made thermal imaging sketchy as well. Fleet commanders hoped that the proximity would create a better picture of the area of operations, and possibly even restore some semblance of communications, leading to more accurate and effective fire support. But this meant that the frigates required support, and a combination of dreadnoughts and cruisers were necessary to both distract the enemy and shield the frigates from enemy guns.
In theory, pre-designated targets had been selected well in advance for bombardment, supposedly along the main line of resistance, deep enough behind enemy lines to ensure that the 27th Provisional Army would not be caught in the blasts, but also close enough to the actual fighting to function as support for the turians and krogan engaged in what was fast becoming the most intense battle in the history of galactic warfare. But this was not a true substitute for coordinates from friendly forces on the ground, which was why it was vital for the frigates to go just deep enough into Palaven's atmosphere, where communications of the 27th would hopefully be able to reach the fleet.
A massive, coordinated set of FTL jumps brought the 3rd and 13th Fleets dangerously close to the Reaper positions, the turians hoping that they could gain the advantage by sneaking into the enemy fleet's blind spot, thereby denying the Reapers a massive clue as to the Navy's true intent. Two separate processions of ships began a slingshot orbit around Palaven, with the dreadnoughts and cruisers drawing enemy aggression and firing upon as many ships as possible. The fleets entered immediately into medium-to-knife range, with fighter and drone support from carriers thousands of kilometers away engaged in dogfights and strafing runs. Ships sacrificed shields for combat capacity immediately after dropping out of FTL, knowing that most Reaper ships could gut any Hierarchy ship with a direct hit of a magnetohydrodynamic burst.
Despite this brute force method, the Reapers were far more prepared for a turian fleet incursion, and responded with overwhelming force. The planet's orbit became a killzone as Hierarchy and Reaper firepower broke upon the brunt of their respective fleets, ships of all classes burning through Palaven's atmosphere. Losses were staggering, with destroyed dreadnoughts and cruisers swiftly tallying up to the dozens within minutes. No engagement in the history of the galaxy had ever seen so many heavy ships taken out in a single engagement, especially within so short a time. Aboard the Example, Castellus watched the carnage from seventy thousand kilometers away even as he attempted to coordinate fighter support from the bridge. "We knew it was a necessary misappropriation of the fleets and its ships, but all the same, we all felt as if we were witnessing the greatest naval disaster in the history of the Hierarchy."
The brute force assault by the 3rd and 13th Fleets was both a distraction and a temptation for the Reapers, who sought to burn down the heavyweights of the Hierarchy Navy. This was a sound long-term strategy, but in the short-term, they neglected the frigates, the vital component for the Hierarchy's long-term strategy, which managed to slip into Palaven's atmosphere, unmolested by the Reaper's orbital defense force. Hundreds of frigates formed two great lines in a slingshot orbit around the planet, preparing to rain death upon Reaper forces below. And while spectroimagery and thermal imaging were still far from optimal, the sight of Reaper ships firing upon the 27th Provisional Army across different areas of operations gave the frigates a very good idea as to where to begin directing their fire.