The 27th Provisional Army had taken tremendous amounts of casualties when the offensive push began on the second day of FORWARD FLAME, but as night fell and the mission timer moved into the third day, it was taking a true beating. The initial surprise had long since worn off, and the Reapers had a very good idea of the amount forces being dedicated across Palaven's districts. As such, Reaper capital ships and destroyers were dispatched with great precision across the planet to complement enemy ground forces in stopping the turian-krogan advance in its tracks.
It was a massive game-changer. Mission planners for FORWARD FLAME had accounted for the possibility that Reaper ships would be dedicated to intercepting the ground advance, but the only answer they had for it was to dedicate enough Hierarchy vessels in orbit to draw the bulk of Reaper ships away. Few other contingencies existed that were considered remotely effective. The 27th Provisional Army was simply meant to hunker down and wait out the bombardment until the resistance managed to detonate their warp bombs.
It was easier said than done. Already, the turian-krogan advance had been losing steam as Reaper reinforcements converged on the 27th, inflicting heavy casualties. Matters only became worse with the arrival of the ships, which tipped the balance of firepower severely in favor of the Reapers. The limited fire support provided by the sparse amount of gun batteries and gunships simply could not compare. Turians and krogan that took cover indoors were crushed as Reapers easily toppled entire skyscrapers on them, burying and crushing them. Those who fled outdoors were evaporated by streams of molten metal accelerated at a respectable fraction of the speed of light. Nowhere was safe.
A general order of retreat was given, with the affected divisions of the 27th Army quickly falling back to escape the destruction as everything around them began to crumble, melt, and evaporate into dust and ash. Some of the more defiant attempted to lay traps and ambushes for the ground advance that followed every bombardment from the Reaper capital ships, but even when they managed to survive the firestorm, their attempts at slowing the Reaper advance were simply destroyed by overwhelming enemy firepower.
FORWARD FLAME in its entirety might have been a colossal failure in light of the developing circumstances, but the Hierarchy was very lucky in this regard; the spontaneous compromise between Coronati and Resvirix allowed for the 3rd and 13th Fleets to begin its bombardment of hotspots across Palaven, and while electronic tracking and communications were still nearly impossible, the frigates in low-orbit had little problem in spotting the massive Reaper capital ships trudging across the ruins of Palaven. Hundreds of mass accelerator rounds descended from the skies, each shell carrying the kinetic power to evaporate a third of a Cipritine city block. Every direct impact against a Reaper's kinetic barrier creating a massive shockwave that felt as if the world itself was sharply being torn asunder. The great procession of frigates and the firepower that followed – while not as wantonly destructive as the Reapers' own weapons – forced the capital ships and destroyers to refocus their attention on the Fleet, leaving their own ground forces to mop up the 27th Provisional Army, which was severely compromised but – to the woe of the Reapers – not at all broken. As soon as the Reaper ships turned their attention and firepower away from the groundside campaign, the turians and krogan quickly regrouped to prevent the enemy from mounting any kind of successful counterattack, although only after they themselves were running from the strike zones of their own orbital support.
This was easier said than done, as Reaper ground forces still carried the momentum, which they exploited to their fullest extent in their charge forward. This was made all the more difficult by the fact that Reaper forces were beginning to severely outnumber the turian-krogan force, which had been whittled down by the heavy fighting and bombardments. Using narrowband communications, unit commanders split their divisions into two so that while half of the 27th Provisional Army engaged in a slow, fighting retreat against the Reaper advance, the second half would make a half-kilometer sprint to the rear and use the valuable time their comrades were buying by coordinating with the resistance to erect defensive positions, a proverbial wave breaker against the tide.
The defending force was immediately set upon by massive waves of Marauders and Cannibals, with the only source of relief being that the Ravagers that had harassed the turian-krogan advance from long-range for so long could not keep up at the speed that their close-range counterparts marched at. This meant that, at least for a while, the 27th could expect little in the way of rocket bombardments. But this was, of course, of little comfort for those on the frontlines, as rows and rows of Marauders and Cannibals advanced with their guns blazing, showing very little intent of slowing their advance at all. Once again, the Hierarchy found its tactics being used against its soldiers, staring in the face of an inexorable advance of an overwhelmingly strong force, and the defenders were forced to retreat much faster than they would have liked.
Corporal Carrodi "Half-Jaw" Scradius, the turian who had gotten one of his mandibles torn off by a krogan commando who was spaced immediately thereafter by Urdnot Nakmor, was overwhelmed by a swiftly advancing throng of Cannibals that, to Optimi, "looked more like a wave of sewage from a floodgate than an advancing military force". Howling curses at the Reaper forces literally devouring him alive, Scradius disappeared under that wave, the muzzle flashes of his rifle flashing underneath that mass of quivering dead, cybernetic flesh before falling silent. That's it for the Half-Jaw, Optimi thought, until she suddenly heard an explosion behind her as she retreated, complete with Cannibal blood splattering across her armor. In a last act of defiance, Scradius had detonated all of his grenades on him, taking as many of the enemy with him.
The strategy, each turian and krogan knew, was a sacrificial play that bought time with manpower. It was difficult for anyone to imagine that the turian-krogan lines wouldn't break under this amount of abuse, a combination of bombardment and infantry assaults on the part of the Reapers. But the tide eventually ebbed, Reaper reinforcements thinning out and the intensity of enemy attacks weakening. This was primarily thanks to the overwhelming orbital bombardment provided by the 3rd Fleet above, which had managed to decimate much of the Reaper forces too close to the main line of resistance, particularly those that had been too close to the supporting capital ships. A workable defense suddenly seemed that much more possible, although this was not to say the Reaper assaults were no longer ferocious.
Communications between the 27th Provisional Army was finally reestablished with the 3rd and 13th Fleets, who in turn bounced the signal back to operational headquarters over Nanus. Aside from situation reports from the turians and krogan scattered across the planet being sent back to Admiral Coronati and General Resvirix, a line of communications meant that the 27th could now pinpoint precise areas that needed the immediate application of an orbital bombardment. Fleet communications were overwhelmed by a plethora of specific requests, hundreds of legions across Palaven asking for a tungsten slug delivered at terminal velocity to a specific position at the very least. What followed was a systematic rain of death; the frigates were not nearly powerful enough to down much of the Reaper ships, not even those recently retrofitted with Thanix cannons (although quite a few destroyers were damaged in the process), but they certainly burned away what would've otherwise been an unfaltering, unstoppable wave of Reaper ground forces that could've literally swept away the 27th.
The 77th desperately needed that kind of support, and after several minutes of having to wait for their turn to request orbital bombardment, was finally told that a fire mission was inbound in twenty seconds. With the kind of firepower the fleets were packing, the 77th made sure the 3rd Fleet understood that this was a danger close fire mission, and ordered everyone to fall back, clear the frigates' lines of fire, and duck and cover. [Operations Chief Maximus] Benessius [of the 38th Heavy Infantry Legion, 77th Armored Division], however, did not fall back or hunker down, and was still laying down suppressive fire at the front of the line. Hours earlier, an explosive salvo from a Ravager had detonated too close to his face; he could still see and insisted he could still fight, but aside from the scars the shrapnel left on his face that even the timely application of medigel couldn't fix, he was also temporarily deaf. He could barely hear the report of his own Phaeston, never mind the rest of his teammates yelling at him from behind barricades to fall back to a safe distance from the incoming bombardment.
A nearby krogan, Urdnot Bakar, was determined to make efficient use of the last few shots of his shotgun thermal clip before falling back, and was subsequently near Benessius when he noticed that the turian was still reloading and showing no signs of retreating. The krogan shouted at Benessius. There was no reply. He stepped closer, shouting louder this time; still no reaction. Not realizing that Benessius could not hear him and assuming the turian was a rookie lost in the adrenaline, Urdnot impatiently reached out with his arm and slammed Benessius across his chest in what almost resembled a clothesline, dragging the now-bewildered turian with him.
They didn't quite make it; coordinated shots from the turian frigates in orbit came down, a few of which were mass accelerator rounds, but the closest one from a Thanix cannon, the spear of energy splashing down a scant fifty meters away. The shockwave tossed and slammed Benessius and Urdnot to the ground, with the krogan on top. Fortunately for the turian, being pinned down by a ton of krogan and his heavy armor was a small price to pay, as Urdnot functioned as a bit of a blast shield from the heat wave that followed immediately after the shockwave. Fortunately for the krogan, the two had just cleared a small incline, so although he wasn't quite low enough for the heat wave not to instantly boil away the back of his heavy armor and quite a bit of his hump, most of the searing, superheated gas from the Thanix's impact washed right over him.
With the battlefield directly in front of them temporarily clear of surviving Reaper ground troops, a few turians jumped over their barricade to pull Benessius and Urdnot to safety. With his exposed back still smoldering, Urdnot – quickly evacuated to the rear for medical attention – let out a long, creative string of profanities that the turian real-time translators in earshot did somersaults just trying to keep up with the interpretation. Benessius, still deaf and confused, could only blink bewilderedly and shout, "What!?"
The good news was that their brief window of orbital support was becoming increasingly effective, and the Reaper ships were being drawn back to orbit. The bad news was that the heavy guns of the Reaper ships were swiftly replaced by swarms of Ravager rockets that rained down upon the 77th Armored Division's position from beyond their effective engagement range. Resistance batteries in the back attempted to answer with their own volleys of firepower as best as they could, but they were ridiculously outnumbered and outmatched. It wasn't nearly as unbearable as the Reaper magnetohydrodynamic weapons, which burned through absolutely everything, but every turian and krogan present still cursed heartily as they were forced to bunker down and endure an intense, nonstop shelling.
Ferandaris was among those who were ordered to make the half-kilometer sprint back to the resistance to set up barricades while the others bought them time. Without the immediate worry of Reaper capital ships toppling ruined buildings on their defensive positions, he attempted to direct the resistance to bring up barricades to a corner window, which provided an excellent overwatch position over two streets Reaper ground forces could come down from. A stray, random shot from a Ravager came in, sailing perfectly through the window and detonating against the wall. Ferandaris was violently thrown to the other side, while the resistance fighter with him was instantly killed as the explosion removed her head and shoulder.
Ferandaris' vision filled with dark spots as the world around him rung in his ears. Aware he was hit but still too disorientated to really try to make much of it, he tried to pull himself up, make sense of the chaos, barely hearing the shouts of the rest of the 38th Heavy Infantry Legion to take cover and return fire. Slowly, the service chief realized in his daze that both of his legs had been blown off right below the knee by the blast, but strangely, he could not feel pain or any real sense of panic. His fatigues were pooling blood in an unholy mess, and he was falling into shock. Ferandaris looked further down, saw no evident damage in the area of his crotch, which – to his dizzied mind – was evidence enough that his testicles remained whole and functional. Okay, he thought to himself with a surreal sense of relief and affirmation despite the fact that he was half-dead and missing his legs, my manhood's still there, I still want to live. A resistance medic came up to him, starting to patch him up and reassuring Ferandaris that he'd be alright just as the turian began to pass out.
The timely dedication of the 3rd and 13th Fleet, despite massive losses on the part of the Navy, was pivotal in ensuring that the 27th Provisional Army was not completely overrun. However, combat-ineffective casualties were now up to nearly fifty percent, with most of the offensive force being barely able to continue fighting. The resistance did what they could to recover and patch up the wounded, but it was not nearly enough to address the manpower shortfalls that the Reaper counterattack had inflicted upon the 27th. With only more Reaper destroyers and capital ships to look forward to if they pressed forward towards the enemy camps, the offensive phase of FORWARD FLAME was temporarily but effectively stalled, and would remain so until the objectives of SLENDER SCALPEL were complete. Until then, the 27th were expected to hold the line with what troops they had remaining.
The heavy casualties the 27th sustained meant that, by necessity, vacancies had to be filled with resistance fighters. Although they numbered in the millions across the planet, most of them were too young or too old for full military service, some of them were disabled, and – in almost all cases – they lacked even the most basic military hardware such as kinetic barriers or even combat armor. The resistance did what they could by removing armor from the severely wounded infantrymen and giving them to the resistance fighters moving up to the main line of resistance (both to maximize resource usage and to make it easier for resistance doctors and surgeons to operate on the horribly wounded), but this ultimately meant those reinforcing the front were using damaged equipment with little to no training, some of which didn't even fit properly. Still, volunteers streamed in as the full weight of the price the 27th was paying made it to the aid stations in turian-held positions, determined to make up quality with quantity.
In most cases, resistance fighters were eager to get to the front, not necessarily because of a love of battle or even an eagerness for sacrifice, but because staying in the rear areas were suffocating. The resistance was no stranger to mass casualties over the course of the Reaper War, but the latter half of the Battle of Palaven had seen the turians resort to guerilla tactics, translating to limited effectiveness against the enemy but almost limited mass casualties. The charge of the 27th, however, meant a surge in the wounded. Two days had gone by, the number of wounded across the planet had already reached tens of thousands. In Carratine District alone, even the most conservative estimates of the wounded that managed to be transported to the rear medical areas at the start of day three were easily over nine thousand, far outstripping the resistance's capability of administering medical aid. The resistance had to triage the wounded and prioritize them by the severity of their injuries and the chances they would survive. Three out of every five wounded evacuated from the frontlines wouldn't make it to the rear medical areas. Two out of every five wounded that reached the rear wouldn't survive. Two out of every five wounded wouldn't even have a medic available for them within an hour of being wounded and evacuated.
The aid areas were hell, usually massive stretches of agony, blood, guts, and death. The Bosh'tet Express had helped restock the Hierarchy's medical supply, and the 27th had offloaded most of the medigel and painkillers to the resistance. The problem, however, was circulation: The amount of wounded coming in far outstripped the number of available medical volunteers who could administer first aid. As well-trained and tough as the turians and krogan were, limbs blown messily off were both psychologically terrifying and physically excruciating, and screams echoed unendingly through wherever the resistance had space to settle the wounded, most of whom were dead and dying. "It was demoralizing," Gianthis recalled. "Even if it meant you were out fighting against the Reapers, you just wanted to get away from the assault on your senses: The rotting smell, the screams, the sight of mangled flesh everywhere. You couldn't stand it. So eager were the volunteers to get away, to pick up a rifle and fight, that we had to demand some of the cell stay."
The great news out of what seemed to be a slew of bad news was that what districts the resistance managed to secure were generally locked down tight, enough for shuttles to begin safely ferrying supplies and troops between friendly territory without gunship escorts. The relative aerial security over such districts allowed resistance cells across the continents to begin transferring their wounded to areas where there were more medics or less wounded. Two days of repairs had allowed lines of communications to be reestablished between the resistance cells. Although they were still unable to communicate with Nanus without the presence of the 3rd and 13th Fleets, status updates between most of Palaven's theaters – at least when they were on the same continent – were clear and rapid. Losses were severe and disheartening, but everyone had a far better idea where all of the 27th Provisional Army's divisions were standing across the planet.
Communications across the turian resistance alerted the Khronus cell that there was a turian cruiser, the Stalwart of the 13th Fleet, inbound on a crash landing. They took a glancing hit in orbit, and while the ship barely survived, it wasn't going to make higher orbit. Carratine was one of the districts the cruiser was projected to pass through and possibly even crash in, which was confirmed as the burning wreck streaked across the air, leaving smoke and flaming debris in its wake. From where he was trying to organize the entire local resistance from Cerenys Stadium, Gianthis watched as half a kilometer of blazing steel streaked above him at low altitudes, trailing smoke. As the Stalwart came down on Khronus, escape pods began ejecting from the ship's hull. The cruiser had been lucky; combat damage had taken down its drive core and most systems, but more than seventy percent of the crew survived and made it to the escape pods.
Most of the escape pods were coming down over Carratine District, which – after two days of fighting against Reaper forces in the area – was now largely held solidly by the turian-krogan force. However, with the Reaper counterattack causing FORWARD FLAME to stall, and the state of the 27th Provisional Army's defenses still fluid and uncertain, the crew of the Stalwart was in danger of being swiftly descended upon by Reaper strike teams making it past the 77th Armored Infantry Division. Word went out: Gianthis wanted the resistance to get to the evacuees before the Reapers did. As the 27th was busy regrouping, this freed up many resistance fighters tasked with clean-up operations in the Provisional Army's wake, who were re-tasked with recovering the crew of the Stalwart.
The evacuees weren't terribly difficult to find, as the escape pods had activated their beacons, and communications were fluid, ensuring that even if resistance teams couldn't get to them in time, the Stalwart crew knew in which direction they needed to start running. Overall, the resistance wasn't horribly worried, knowing that all Navy personnel, even bridge officers, had to clock in a good amount of firearms and hand-to-hand combat training every year, so even without a cruiser, they were far from helpless. The resistance's role was largely to provide cover from an already-established defensive position and bring the survivors up to speed. Still, the crewmembers were unanimously grateful to see friendly faces supporting their withdrawal to Cerenys Stadium.
Among the ruins of Khronus, the resistance discovered a surprise: One of the search parties found an asari justicar having taken refuge in the ruins, claiming to have been on Palaven since the beginning of the Reaper War, and having made guerilla attacks on Reaper forces since then. "We had no idea how an asari justicar got stranded on Palaven for so long without us knowing about it," [Antoli] Vranikius admitted. "Not that we were complaining." His group folded the justicar into the search parties and continued to search for survivors from the Stalwart. The justicar quickly proved her worth as they converged on an escape pod, which had crash-landed into a residence complex necessitating the turians to clear the building room-to-room. The squad had the drop on a patrol of four Cannibals, but before they could stack up against the door and prepare to pepper the enemy with gunfire, the justicar was already one step ahead of them. "She steps in, handgun out," regaled Vranikius, "bang, bang, bang, bang, and suddenly four Cannibals are dead on the ground before the rest of us even had a chance to scratch our balls, headshots in each. You don't get to shoot like that until you've spent the better part of a millennium doing just that."
Ekyriat and Smirian were also out looking for survivors, having been rotated away from providing fire support for the 27th. Two days of fighting had severely changed the topography of their hometown, and unbeknownst to them, they were a little lost, drifting away from the direction in which the Stalwart crashed, and away from the trail of escape pods jettisoned across Carratine. As they moved across the upper streets, the ground caved in, sending both resistance fighters sliding and sprawling inelegantly down an incline to the block's lower levels. Eventually, they managed to hit a lower floor, crashing their way to a stop.
Groaning, Smirian tried to pick herself up, only to find herself on top of a turian corpse, having decayed for months; he was likely a casualty from the early weeks of the war. "Sorry, pal," she murmured as she got back up.
The ruins were too dark and damaged for Ekyriat and Smirian to really discern where they were, and they were far more concerned that there weren't any survivors down here, so they needed to get back up to the block's upper levels. They remained careful as they swept through the area for an exit, although not exceedingly so; it was likely that any Reaper forces would've likely converged on them after the ruckus they made tumbling down here. As they passed through the area, however, Ekyriat noticed something interesting: A crate nearby marked with the faded symbol of military-grade heavy weaponry. Calling Smirian over, the two opened the crate to find two dozen nearly-identical weapons inside. The two resistance fighters, both of whom had served as frontline infantry in the past, did not recognize the weapon or its configuration. Neither had any engineering or mechanical experience; the design influences were unmistakably turian, but they lacked anything remotely resembling a mass accelerator. The two couldn't even tell if the weapons were meant to be assault rifles or shotguns despite being of the correct size, although the lack of a scope precluded the possibility of a sniper rifle.
Ekyriat and Smirian did not know it yet, but they had stumbled across the remains of a research lab leased to the Security Research Assay Division, one of the Hierarchy's primary military applications research and development organizations. The two resistance fighters did not know it yet, but they had picked up prototypes of a line of experimental fission weapons christened the Whitelight, a turian weapon reverse-engineered from the Reaper Blackstar. The Hierarchy had assumed SRAD's field office in Khronus to have been lost in the Reaper invasion, but little did they know that the facility had not caved in completely. Of course, oblivious to the fact that they now had a crate of ridiculously powerful fission weapons in their hands, Ekyriat and Smirian looked at each other, shrugged, decided that the Whitelights looked like they were weapons, and hauled them back to resistance.
When they finally got back to Cerenys Stadium, the first thing that tipped them off about their find was the element zero sensors set up around the stadium, which went off as they passed one by. Engineers and weapons technicians came over to check up on the weapon, and although none of them were remotely familiar with the Whitelight program, all preliminary analyses told them that this was a ridiculously powerful fission weapon. Gianthis commended the flabbergast Ekyriat and Smirian for their find, promised to have the weapons distributed to as many districts as possible, and told the two to get some rest. Taking a look at each other, Ekyriat was still a little dumbstruck as she asked Smirian, "Now how the fuck did that happen?"
"Word came down from division headquarters that Admiral Coronati had finally pulled his head out from a salarian's cloaca," Ordinix remembered, "and that he was finally dedicating pretty much every fleet he could to enter the fray, like he should've done since day one. The Navy finally got around to being useful instead of being just glorified chauffeurs."
This is not fair to Admiral Coronati or the Hierarchy Navy, or even High Command. This observation was easy to make in hindsight, but it omitted the fact that while Coronati commanded the 3rd Fleet, and while command of the 9th, 12th, and 13th Fleets had been loaned to him, he was ultimately beholden to High Command. Both Coronati and High Command believed that they could not put all their eggs in the same basket, and that not every fleet in the Trebia System should be dedicated to supporting FORWARD FLAME. However, they disagreed on just how many fleets should be given for Coronati for the operation. Coronati had argued for six fleets at the minimum to support the invasion, but High Command had only given him four, promising him more only if SLENDER SCALPEL succeeded, thereby justifying the exploitation of a narrow window to secure territories of the homeworld. Therefore, Coronati had to make do with what he was ultimately given, and planned his strategies cautiously when it came to the survival of his ships.
High Command did not give Coronati the amount of fleets he requested due to several reasons. First, FORWARD FLAME was not the only operation being executed in the Trebia System; aside from ongoing ground battles on Menae, High Command was overseeing three other major operations aimed at retaking high-value targets in preparation for a war that could last for years. Second, while he would eventually be vindicated, Coronati's performance in the opening weeks of the Reaper War failed to impress certain members of High Command, who felt any more fleets given to him would simply be a waste of resources.
Perhaps most importantly, however, Coronati failed to impress upon High Command that SLENDER SCALPEL and FORWARD FLAME were operations meant to either make or break the Hierarchy in the Reaper War. Biographers of the admiral tend to portray this episode as a moment of political savvy, with Coronati downplaying the colossal risks of the joint-operations to prevent High Command from killing the plan in terror. Most military historians, however, point out the massive changes in operational security during the Reaper War, especially the mindset that the less any single individual or body in the chain of command knew, the better. This was because the HDI became intensely paranoid of possible indoctrinated moles in the Hierarchy's command staff, and successfully implemented an administrative-bureaucratic system in which a voluntary informational blackout was imposed on virtually every level of the military. The brass remained willfully oblivious to how units on the ground prosecuted their objectives, and commanders learned not to ask for the status of other units unless it was of dire importance. The Hierarchy had always adhered to a need-to-know basis when it came to operational security, but this became enforced to its logical extreme during the Reaper War, with Cerivix insisting that any good turian commander would choose the best course of action possible even with minimal information, so details could be safely omitted in the interest of operational security.
All of this ultimately accumulated with High Command not being entirely informed of the scale of SLENDER SCALPEL and FORWARD FLAME until T-plus seventy-two hours. On one hand, sending the 3rd and the 13th Fleet on their strafing runs around Palaven's orbit had reestablished communications groundside and given operational commanders over Nanus a far better picture of how the invasion was progressing. With some very intense convincing on the part of General Resvirix, Coronati understood that all the progress and sacrifices they have made would ultimately be meaningless if the ground forces were overrun, which would deal a crippling blow to the Hierarchy Marines from which it could never recover, and finally dedicated the 9th and 12th Fleets into battle over Palaven to reinforce the 3rd and 13th. This action alone alerted High Command, who finally began to fully comprehend the scale of SLENDER SCALPEL and FORWARD FLAME, the steep costs under which the operations had been launched, and the fatal consequences of an impending failure. One holoconference with the Defender later, and High Command finally gave Coronati all the ships he needed without fatally compromising the defenses of other high-value targets that required naval defenses, such as Menae and Caelax. In other words, the Hierarchy – ultimately realizing it would never have another chance to call if they did not succeed here – was putting all of its chips into the bet. The entire campaign had reached the make-or-break phase.
Day three of FORWARD FLAME was sixteen hours in, and while a massive forward push was out of the question, the new defensive line set up by the turians and the krogan ensured that their positions on the ground would not be easily overrun. The 3rd and 13th had done their utmost to lure enemy ships away from the planet, and Coronati's commitment of the 9th and 12th Fleets – with promises that others fleets would soon be joining the action – helped alleviate certain worries and provide a much needed morale boost to the troops to the ground. This gave the 27th Provisional Army the chance they needed to dig in, regroup, and reassess their situation.
As things stood, the situation remained grave: Wounded and dead amongst the 27th were over forty percent, and while gaps were being filled by the resistance and soldiers who insisted their wounds "weren't that bad", the stark reality was that the Hierarchy had met overwhelming force with overwhelming force, and even then – without knowing that, from a cynical perspective, they were bait to draw attention away from SLENDER SCALPEL – their offensive was ultimately blunted by an enemy that outnumbered and outgunned them. Many legions had become entirely combat-ineffective; some had disappeared in the fighting altogether. Word was that several battlegroups had been lucky enough to be spared massive casualties and massive enemy retaliation, but these legions were far and few in between.
At the same time, however, even with the success of SLENDER SCALPEL still a highly uncertain variable with no guarantees, turian-krogan forces had made very impressive gains over seventy-two hours of fighting. The surge in manpower had allowed the 27th to retake and reactive defensive positions that had been neglected by the Reapers. Reaper forces had been pushed out of many cities that had once been at the edge of resistance influence prior to FORWARD FLAME. In a few cases, Reaper camps were surrounded by turian-krogan forces that had pushed forward and beyond, each camp and their processing ships and destroyers the last bastion for local Reaper ground troops in the area. Strategic deployment of allied forces allowed enough key strategic centers to be taken, and thus tentatively labeling certain districts as under Hierarchy control.
Ultimately, however, everyone understood that these gains were temporary. This was applicable even to the infantrymen on the ground, who were not even aware of SLENDER SCALPEL's existence but otherwise expected some kind of trump card to complement FORWARD FLAME. The Hierarchy had performed admirably alongside their krogan allies, and despite the heavy casualties, they had results to show for their efforts. But these results came not due to the vast superiority of the 27th Provisional Army, but because the Hierarchy had been afforded the rare opportunity of the initiative, forcing the Reapers into a state of reactiveness instead of proactiveness, a state that certainly didn't last long. Most armies in all-out interstellar war required weeks to carry out counteroffensives due to delays in strategy meetings, repurposing of units, and the reestablishment of logistical lines; the Reapers had already began striking back against turian-krogan forces by day two across almost all theaters.
Almost every available Hierarchy fleet was committed to FORWARD FLAME, which provided invaluable contributions to staving off further Reaper counterattacks on the ground. This was good news for the 27th, as it provided hours of continuous orbital support on demand. For the Navy, however, it was a highly unwelcome development, as it meant continued engagement against Reaper ships. "No one was opposed to providing much-needed support to our ground forces," explained Castellus, "but we suffered no delusions, knowing that we were being shoved into the meat grinder at the expense of the Army and the Marines."
The Reapers did not expect such an aggressive advance, but neither were they unprepared for it. Turian reinforcements to the 3rd and 13th Fleets already engaged with Reaper forces in orbit were seen largely as a nuisance, although it opened up a separate front in space. While the 3rd and 13th Fleets were engaged in an orbital support campaign that necessitated close- and medium-range combat with the Reapers, reinforcing fleets relied on medium- to long-range tactics in an attempt to creating flanking positions against the enemy. ³ This required very precise positioning on the part of the reinforcing fleets; High Command gave permission to fire mass accelerator rounds at the Reapers even if Palaven was right behind them, but also demanded that all ships double-check their calculations to ensure that the rounds landed nowhere close to territories held by allied forces.
For the Example, however, the help may have come too late. With two more maneuverable and more heavily-armored Reaper destroyers taking shots at the carrier, the ship was slowly being torn apart piece-by-piece. Ixius managed to temporarily throw off her pursuers and their targeting by breaking into an irregular orbit, skimming Palaven's atmosphere and executing a slingshot around the planet. Even so, however, with all the combat they had seen since being thrown into two massive fleet battles over Palaven, it was clear to Castellus and the rest of the crew that "the Example, like the rest of the 3rd Fleet, was on its last legs".
³ In the later months of the Reaper War, middle- to long-range tactics were favored by most fleet commanders, even those who commanded dreadnoughts. As Reaper weapons were consistently more accurate with targeting capabilities outstripping those of even the most advanced Council ships, extreme-range tactics to "strike without being struck" had largely become obsolete. As such, being able to land hits on the Reapers was considered to be of greater importance than attempts to dodge their fire; fleets engaging the enemy were well-aware that traditional methods of evading enemy ordinance were largely useless against Reaper ships.
Elements of the 77th Armored Division could hear distant gunfire being exchanged approximately two kilometers deep into Reaper territory. This was somewhat unusual because the 77th was at the front of the allied position, situated right on the main line of resistance; if anything, if there was any gunfire, they were the ones that should've been shooting. As things stood, however, their positions were relatively quiet as offenses on both sides temporarily died down as a result of orbital bombardment from their respective fleets. The 77th and the resistance were not engaged in any shootouts on the scale of the initial allied offensive, although it still did not do anything about the fact that it sounded like some kind of battle was breaking out almost two kilometers inside the enemy position.
The gunfire was easy to ignore at first, especially since everyone assumed the Reapers had caught onto turian stragglers who could not keep up with the retreat. It was a shame, but the 77th was in no position to launch any rescue operations for a handful of infantrymen who had been too slow. But when the gunfire continued for hours, looking like they had moved across a kilometer in the meantime, the men started to get interested, wondering who could possibly be stuck on the wrong side of the main line of resistance for so long and still remain alive, never mind shooting.
Word was relayed up and down the 77th before it was learned that the unit caught behind enemy lines was 2nd Platoon of Blackwatch, which had holed up in the Wesitria Shopping Complex just under two kilometers away. They had evaded enemy attempts to surround them for hours, drawing them away from Malgus Company when the krogan were tasked with bringing warp bombs to the Khronus resistance cell alone; now, however, they were forced into a static defense in the shopping complex, caught in a shootout without support from the logistical network of the resistance. Despite being only at platoon strength, they had held out so far, their opposition relatively weak due to having thrown off most of their pursuers and supporting orbital strikes from the fleets above. Still, this precarious balancing act could change at any time; enemy reinforcements, combined with limited thermal clips with no good source of replenishment, could cause 2nd Platoon to be overwhelmed in an instant. High Command wanted 2nd Platoon extracted; the 77th could only spare the 38th Heavy Infantry Legion, which still had enough combat-effective infantrymen to carry out a rescue operation with support from resistance replacements.
In the vein of most rescue operations, the 38th sought a compromise between speed and stealth, and so fought their way to shopping complex through the interior of Khronus' ruins, which the turians and krogan bitterly recalled to be the same ruins that they had previously fought and retreated through over the past day. Large numbers of resistance teams trailed behind them, setting up temporary defensive positions meant to cover a rapid retreat by the 38th once they had linked up with Blackwatch 2nd Platoon, effectively functioning as a highway that would slow the enemy down while the actual active military personnel rushed back to the main line of resistance. Gunfire was far less consistent with this advance; although pockets of stiff Reaper resistance still existed and bogged down the advance, combat was not nearly as intense as the second day of FORWARD FLAME. By any sane standard, it was still heavy urban fighting, but by the standards of this operation, it was almost quiet.
Almost amusingly, enemy fire was not the greatest concern of the 38th. Heavy fighting and fleet bombardments on both sides had reduced much of the area to rubble, and while some buildings still miraculously stood, they were ultimately in grave danger of collapsing on not only itself, but the turian and krogan infantrymen forced to sneak their way through both to prevent easy detection and easy shots. Just as ironically, it provided the 38th with unexpected shortcuts, as weakened walls could be torn down by hand to reveal more efficient passageways, provided that engineers attached to the legion could first ascertain that clawing down the wall ran a minimum risk of bringing the entire building down on the teams struggling to get to Wesitria.
Other times, the allied forces did not actually need to deliberately create new paths for passageways to appear of their own accord. Optimi was on point with a mish-mash of another dozen turians and krogan, including Deiethus, while trying to look for possible entry points into the next building over. Without even touching anything, the wall in front of her suddenly crumbled, and Optimi found herself staring face-to-face with a Marauder with an assault rifle leveled right at her face while her own Phaeston was docked to the back of her armor. Without thinking, she jumped forth to shove the enemy's assault rifle away, but the Marauder grappled on, both combatants struggling over control of the weapon. Looking over the Marauder's shoulder, Optimi could see that, like her, her opponent wasn't alone: A squad of other Marauders and Cannibals were in the room beyond the hole in the wall, their assault rifles also shouldered and ready to fire at the service chief's squad in the other room. Struggling right in the only pathway between the two rooms, Optimi and the Marauder she was grappling with blocked any possible gunfire from both sides.
Optimi could tell that, in the long term, her muscles weren't going to outmatch the Marauder's augmented melee capabilities, and she didn't want the enemy getting the drop on her squad, so she screamed, "Shoot through me!" She was convinced that the fields of concentrated fire would rip through the shields of both herself and the Marauder, and the team that fired first would tip the balance of the firefight completely in the favor by virtue of close-quarters firefight dynamics. But her turian teammates hesitated, the necessity of the suggested action hindered by camaraderie and every ingrained instinct against friendly fire. On the other side, the Marauders and Cannibals were unconcerned about friendly fire, but were awaiting results from probability calculators on the ongoing wrestle and the impending shootout.
Hailot Enka of the Krogan Army, however, did not hesitate. He raised his assault rifle and squeezed off a highly accurate three-round burst. The first two shots cracked Optimi's shield, and the third drilled through her armor, making a clean pass…and striking the Marauder on the other side in the head, not enough to penetrate its barriers, but enough to cause both grapplers to lose balance and crash onto the ground in their struggle. Startled into realization by Hailot's shot, the allied squad fired their weapons first. Optimi – thrown off-balance by being shot in the shoulder and weighed down by a similarly off-balance Marauder – was already dropping to the ground, allowing for the mass accelerator rounds from the allied squad to pass safely right over her.
From there, it was a turkey shoot, the squad taking the initiative and getting the drop on the Reapers, who failed to return fire quite quickly enough to save themselves from being cut down by a hail of gunfire. With the engagement over in a matter of seconds, Hailot walked up to Optimi and terminated the still-struggling Marauder on top of her with another three-round burst, even as the rest of the squad made sure the next room was clear and truly silent. "You still breathing?" the krogan asked the turian on the ground.
Optimi was, not that it brought her much comfort. "Couldn't you have shot me where it hurts fucking less?" she groaned after a string of expletives. She was shot, her armor was splattered with even more Reaper blood, and she was in quite a bit of pain courtesy of a hole drilled through her shoulder, but she was alive. "Dammit, I think I'm fucking missing a lung."
The krogan laughed, pulling the service chief back up on her feet. "Hey, that's what redundant organ systems are for, right?" Optimi refrained from informing Hailot that turians had no such thing.
Despite having to navigate through convoluted ruins, engaging in several shootouts much of the way through, the 38th eventually established visual contact with the Wesitria Shopping Complex, watching as a small but steady flow of Reaper reinforcements joined the cordon of the buildings Blackwatch was holed up in. Narrowband communications was set up with Command Ravakian inside, who had expected the 77th to be close by and was quickly appraised for the updated tactical situation. No one knew whether or not Malgus Company had actually managed to deliver their warp bombs to the Khronus smuggling teams just yet, but given Blackwatch had crossed practically twelve kilometers on foot over more than a day just to keep Reaper attention away from the krogan commandos, Ravakian felt that further hit-and-run operations would be useless; at this point, Malgus Company had either succeeded or failed in their objectives regardless of the continued actions of 2nd Platoon.
Heavy coordinated fire erupted simultaneously from almost every company of the 38th Heavy Infantry Legion, focusing on one specific side of the Reaper cordon. This weakened enemy presence just enough for Blackwatch to slip out the side, rush past the broken Reaper lines, and join the 38th before Reaper ground forces – catching onto allied tactics – focused on a monodirectional counteroffensive. With Blackwatch recovered, all units began to retreat across a defensive highway the resistance had been holding down behind them. Their timing was almost perfect; more Ravagers had been brought in from rear positions, who began an artillery bombardment of the retreating turians and krogan, bathing the Wesitria Shopping Complex with enough explosions to bring the buildings crashing to the ground just as the turian special forces operators managed to slip out. "With all the enthusiasm of asari schoolgirls," Optimi remarked, "we started running in the other direction, now that we had the resistance to cover what was basically a two-kilometer sprint with explosions going off all around us." Despite taking heavy losses, the resistance defenders nevertheless were able to pull off a coordinated tactical retreat that stalled enemy attempts at a ground counteroffensive, allowing Blackwatch and the 38th to safely return to allied-controlled positions.
The rescue operation was a major success for the forces in Carratine District in general and Khronus in particular. Not only was Blackwatch successfully extracted from a highly dangerous situation, the foray of the 38th into Reaper positions gave the commanders of the 77th Armored Division a much better idea of what fighting forces remained amongst the enemy in their area of operations. Defenses were shored up accordingly; unit commanders were not confident enough to engage in further daring offenses, but at the very least, they believed the enemy would need to bring in much more reinforcements before attempting another coordinated mass offensive.
With her fatigue exacerbated by previous injury, Optimi could barely breathe by the time she returned to the main line of resistance and came to a stop, requiring resistance medics to bring her a respirator. She didn't care overmuch, however, nor did most others of the 38th. "There was a quite a bit of cockiness in the air. The average serviceman isn't immune to a little hot air when they end up rescuing the Hierarchy's premier special ops outfit." (Blackwatch survivors, of course, coolly denied they ever needed to be rescued, maintaining that the 77th Armored Division had simply engaged in "reinforcement action" that "assisted in alleviating an irksome burden".)