For the 49th Reconnaissance Legion, the good news was that they managed to make it to their designated rendezvous zone at T-plus seventy-nine hours. They were two hours behind schedule compared to what was considered the optimal deadline, but still technically within SLENDER SCALPEL's margin of error. The bad news was that there was no one there to meet them.
This was worrying because the resistance had already deployed their smuggling teams just before the 27th Provisional Army began landing troops on Palaven, meaning there was no good reason as to why there was no one to meet them at the RZ. Siritii nevertheless ordered his men to dig in and wait, maintaining radio silence and general darkness for an hour. Search parties were sent out in the second hour to look for the resistance smuggling team just in case, and to ascertain their fate if something had happened to them. Siritii even double-checked the maps to make sure that the forward element of the 49th was actually where it was supposed to be, not lost. But after three hours, with all search efforts fruitless and the legion as alone as they were since they had arrived, Siritii realized that he was stuck in the highly awkward position of having mission-critical warp bombs with no one to hand them off to.
Without many choices available to him, Siritii risked the interception of a narrowband line of communications back with the resistance, trying to figure out why the resistance smuggling team was not where it was supposed to be. The resistance leaders back in the staging areas were just as perplexed. "Well, I have a package that needs to get to its destination," Siritii told the other end of the line, "and I sure as hell am not lugging it all the way back."
The resistance contacted the 13th Fleet, who in turn bounced the signal all the way to the Defender over Nanus, where Coronati updated Cerivix. HDI mission planners quickly knocked their heads together, and sent the bad news back to Siritii: They needed some of the 49th to sneak their warp bombs into the Reaper camp in place of the resistance smuggling team.
This was among the many instances where HDI paranoia over Reaper indoctrination worked against the Hierarchy. Due to fears of moles inserted into the command structure, High Command had implemented a need-to-know basis for both the operational and command sections of the war effort. This meant that both HDI and local resistance leadership were willingly oblivious of the exact routes that the resistance smuggling teams had charted out in the district. Without knowledge of those routes, an attempt to infiltrate the Reaper camp with little time or support was close to impossible. The method left available to the 49th with the highest chance of success was to implement the resistance's secondary plan: Surrender to Reaper forces while carrying concealed components of the warp bomb.
Cerivix chose not to inform the 49th that their chances of success were unimpressive, even if their way into the Reaper camp was technically the "safest". While the turians were expected to be led into the processor ships either way, simulations had nevertheless projected a very high chance that the turian smugglers would have to fight their way into their chosen ships to ensure that the components for each bomb went where they were supposed to go, and then maintain a defensive position inside the Reaper for just long enough for them to reassemble and then detonate the bomb. This was why each resistance smuggling team also had to find their infiltration and exfiltration routes, so that weapons and extra fighting men could be transported to waiting "prisoners of war" inside the camp. Volunteers for the suicide mission from the 49th would not have this support, would likely be stripped of their weapons upon "surrendering", and needed to resort to on-site procurement in what was effectively a prison camp.
Siritii broke the bad news to his men, and asked for volunteers. The HDI staff had advised a total of twelve-to-eighteen smugglers; less and each volunteer would carry more bomb components than were reasonable, more and the infiltration effort would be that much more conspicuous. Eventually, a team of eighteen was formed, who immediately set out to work practicing how to assemble the warp bomb, allotted only an hour to commit everything to memory when the resistance smuggling teams were given days. (To their advantage, most of the volunteers were engineers who were trained and certified to handle the latest in munitions, but few of them handled weapons of mass destruction on a monthly basis either.) Last messages were recorded; everyone in the 49th knew that this was the last time they were seeing these eighteen men and women, and wanted something to remember them by.
Siritii had the snipers of the team scout out the area around the Reaper camp to find optimal sniping positions. The plan was for the smuggling team to get as close to the Reaper ships as possible before making a charge for their targets. At that moment, the 49th would begin providing sniper support from a kilometer out, taking out nearby perimeter guards as quickly as possible, not only so the smugglers would have clear path to the ships (or at least as clear as would be reasonably possible), but also so that they could take enemy Phaestons from Marauder corpses. Siritii fully expected return fire from Ravagers, if not the Reaper ships themselves, so he decided to have the snipers be spread out across as wide an area as possible, limiting the effectiveness of enemy guns and ensuring the 49th could provide cover fire for as long as possible. The snipers would then stay on station for five minutes – the approximate time expected for the smuggling team to assemble and detonate the bomb inside – before pulling back, where the rest of the 49th and their krogan complement would have already secured an exfiltration route to begin the long journey back to rejoin the 27th Provisional Army.
At T-plus eighty-three hours, with the 49th cutting it very close to the deadline and trying to improvise as desperately as possible, all teams quickly moved into place. Even as the suicide team surrendered in three separate groups to Reaper forces (two of the groups had either scrubbed off unit insignias on their armor or removed their armor completely to hide the fact that all three "separate" groups were from the 49th), Siritii personally had his snipers move into their positions, forming a large, half-kilometer-long arc, ready to take down targets once it was time to move. Meanwhile, the "surrendering" turians took advantage of their remaining time to acquaint themselves with their surroundings, interrogate long-time prisoners (while being wary of possible indoctrinated moles), and map out the area in preparation for their assault.
A mere ten minutes before T-plus eighty-four hours, the suicide team had positioned themselves close to their respective Marauders, and provided a signal – a double fist-pump into the air – that the snipers of the 49th a kilometer away were waiting for. Close to twenty sniper rifles fired at once, and, instantly, the Marauders around the turian suicide team were down. As turian snipers continued to lay down long range fire on Reaper ground forces that were still trying to ascertain the situation, the suicide team had already picked up the weapons of the eliminated Marauders and turned them on the enemy. At least for the first few seconds, the eighteen turians made a charge for three Reaper ships unopposed, gunning down anyone in their way. Better yet, the gunfire had sent the camp population into action. Turian prisoners, either encouraged or terrified by the sudden outbreak of combat in the camp, suddenly began making a break for it, some running all over the place, others trying to riot against their captors.
The Reaper ships had yet to ascertain why eighteen turians were making a break right towards them. Deciding that the "mutineers" could be handled by Marauder guards on the ground, the Reapers instead designated the faraway snipers as priority targets, and began to fire off shots from their magnetohydrodynamic weapons. On Siritii's helmet HUD, his snipers began to wink out one by one as the Reaper ships identified vantage points from which the turians were making long-range shots and taking them out. Yet casualties were decidedly minimal; by spreading out his forces, Siritii ensured that the Reapers were wasting shots meant to take out dreadnoughts on isolated snipers. Long-range cover fire for the suicide team remained effective.
But even with some of the Hierarchy's best snipers as backup, the suicide team was ultimately eighteen men on the wrong end of far too much enemy manpower and firepower. Reaper ground forces were firing indiscriminately into the crowd to regain control of the situation, and while the turian suicide bombers did their best to stay low, they were taking casualties. Those who had to remove their armor to maintain the conceit that each surrendering group was unrelated to each other were the first to be cut down by enemy gunfire, and although the turians moved as quickly as they could, casualties went up and down the line, and as their numbers whittled down to a dozen, it was clear that none of them were going to make it to their objectives without making hard choices. Through his scope, Siritii could see Sergeant [Lerrin] Kejian have the remaining members of the suicide team gather behind cover. Kejian, with no communications with Siritii and knowing he was going to have to call the shots unilaterally, informed the team of the change of plans: Instead of targeting three ships, the team would have to target only one. The four fastest members of the team would make a break for the closest Reaper ship while the remaining eight held their positions and kept enemy forces off their backs for as long as possible.
Passing the final four with the components for two warp bombs, Kejian and the remaining eight holed up and unloaded as much ammunition as they could, as if the spirit of Palaven would not accept them if they died with spare thermal clips. The four bombers made a mad dash for the closest Reaper ship, which happened to be a capital ship; perhaps due to gross overconfidence, the Reaper assumed that the turians had been grossly misinformed of what was inside a Reaper, running blindly into its maw. One of the bombers was killed enroute and another fatally injured, but the three turians that managed to make their way into the ship still had enough components for one full bomb.
In the meantime, Kejian and his team were taking fire from every direction. Even with snipers unflinchingly and liberally killing off as many Marauders as possible without any consideration for stealth, the defensive position of the remaining eight turians was only meant to last several minutes, not longer, as a sacrificial bait to draw enemy attention away from the bombing team. Under the threat of being swiftly overwhelmed, Kejian had three of his men begin to assemble the remaining components they had, enough for a single warp bomb. As the decoy turians were whittled down one by one, the Reaper capital ship suddenly realized upon closer examination that the decoy team was arming a warp bomb, and came to the conclusion that the suicide team that had managed to make it into the ship likely had another one. The Reaper ship shifted targeting priorities to the team already inside the ship. It was a fatal miscalculation; in its frenzy to prevent the turians already inside from assembling their bomb, the decoy team had just enough breathing room to finish assembling their own warp bomb, which they detonated immediately.
For a weapon of mass destruction, the blast of a warp bomb was considered "contained". But however "contained" it was, it was ultimately still a weapon of mass destruction. A massive element zero explosion detonated in the center of camp right in front of the Reaper capital ship, a great cloud of light with a blast radius of more than one hundred meters. It was a faulty detonation – the implosion components had probably been misaligned, unsurprising given the bomb was assembled in a hurry while under fire, leading to a diminished explosion – that was devastating nevertheless. In an instant, the decoy team and the army of Reaper ground forces around them, as well as hundreds of turian prisoners caught in the blast, disintegrated into molecules, torn apart by mass effect forces. When the light finally subsided, a massive crater in the center of the camp was all that remained, as well as the Reaper capital ship it had been detonated in front of. As expected, despite some damage, the Reaper's shields had largely withstood the detonation.
But even as Siritii gave the order for his snipers to pull out and fall back along their exfiltration route, the lieutenant knew he didn't need to be overly concerned. The blast had taken out any hope of Reaper ground reinforcements boarding the capital ship in time to stop the last three turians who had managed to smuggle themselves and their final warp bomb aboard. And unlike the previous explosion, the next detonation would take place inside the shields.
Due to the nature of the operation, the expected downtimes in communication, and the necessity for stealth, protocols for the ultimate detonations in SLENDER SCALPEL were outlined very strictly after much discussion between the resistance, the HDI, the Navy, and the Army in the days leading up to the operation. Without communicating with other cells or even the 27th Provisional Army, the resistance was expected to simultaneously smuggle and detonate all warp bombs into Reaper capital ships, destroyers, and processor ships across the planet. All of this was necessary to ensure that the Reapers would never catch onto the true objective of SLENDER SCALPEL; the worst thing that could happen was the Reapers taking countermeasures by drastically increasing camp security or – even worse – simply have the ships take off beyond the reach of the turians.
In the highly unlikely event that consistent, encrypted communications were safe and possible with Nanus, operational headquarters would be able to coordinate amongst the different resistance cells and – depending on the progress of the 27th Provisional Army – finalize the deadline by which all smuggling teams needed to have their warp bombs in place and ready for detonation. It was not expected to happen, and ultimately did not happen, meaning resistance leaders across the planet fell back to secondary protocol, with a predetermined deadline of T-plus eighty-four hours – three full Palaven days – following the commencement of Operation: FORWARD FLAME. The eighty-four hour deadline was not random, but the best estimate High Command, mission planners, and VI simulations could provide as to the latest reasonable timeframe before the 27th Provisional Army would become combat-ineffective. If the 27th could not make the final push to secure swathes of territory across Palaven and reinitialize defensive infrastructure, then the entire point of SLENDER SCALPEL would have been lost.
As the hours counted down to T-plus eighty-four hours, smuggling teams across the planet began to assemble their warp bombs, checking and double-checking each component before producing a full product, then disassembling them again in preparation for smuggling. With everything on the line, no one was willing to leave anything to chance, and each warp bomb received the closest thing to a guarantee for detonation as possible, short of actually detonating the device. By design, warp bombs were not high-yield explosives, especially when compared to fission devices or other weapons of mass destruction. Rather, they were relatively controlled bombs that tore apart mass at a molecular level, not unlike the warheads for anti-ship torpedoes. This guaranteed staggering amounts of destruction over a surprisingly small range. Of course, this was of no comfort to the resistance smuggling teams, who handled each component of the warp bomb with utmost care.
Nevertheless, smuggling the bombs inside the ship was a necessity; although even the highly-hardened armor of Reaper ships were ultimately vulnerable to warp munitions, months of ship-to-ship combat had long since proven that even shells from a dreadnought's mass accelerator couldn't penetrate a Reaper capital ship's shields. Only from inside a ship could a team of ground-based turians do catastrophic damage to a Reaper ship. The detonation would cause little in the way of collateral damage, as the blast would largely be contained. Nearby ground forces within the Reaper camps, as well as the turian prisoners themselves, were likely to be caught in the blast, but ultimately, most of the existing infrastructure that had survived the Reapers' purge would remain intact, at least when compared to an orbital bombardment from a dreadnought, which would not only cause unneeded collateral damage, but also be less effective against a Reaper vessel.
Finally, with the time closing in on T-plus eighty-two hours, the teams were deployed to their staging positions. The resistance would have an hour moving to their respective positions first, with one team faking their surrender to the Reapers and being escorted into the confines of the enemy camp (hopefully while still in custody of their disassembled warp bomb components), while the smuggling team carrying secondary sets of warp bomb components and making their way through the infiltration route into the Reaper camp undetected.
In Khronus, Achtus and Kylonis watched silently from afar as the last pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place. They were not providing sniper support for what was otherwise a much quieter operation, one of many taking place across the planet, but by no means were they any less tense than anyone else involved in SLENDER SCALPEL. From their vantage point, they could barely see the infiltration teams rendezvous covertly with the "surrendering" turians, passing off the mission-critical element zero and concealed weapons, equipping the suicide bombers for the last leg of their mission, and the last and most valorous moment of their lives. With as little commotion as possible, the Khronus smuggling teams exfiltrated from the Reaper camp while the bombing team inconspicuously filed into the lines of turian prisoners, both those being indoctrinated in capital ships and those being melted down in processing ships.
All across Palaven, resistance fighters quietly got to where they needed to be, right until the final moment when they revealed their weapons and started shooting, taking out all nearby enemy soldiers, giving them just enough room for them to swiftly assemble their warp bombs in preparation for detonation. Initially treated as isolated incidents of panicked resistance, the Reapers suddenly became alarmed as they realized this – all of this – was a coordinated, simultaneous attack on their ships. But it took them minutes to confirm multiple coordinated attacks, deduce that the resistance cells were attempting to destroy them from the inside, seal off their ships to prevent further infiltration, and call for ground reinforcements to eliminate the bombers; by then, the vast majority of resistance suicide teams were already in place, on their respective ships, with their bombs. For the Reapers, it was already too late, for when it came time for the turians to make the ultimate sacrifice, they did not hesitate.
At T-plus eighty-four hours, resistance suicide teams across Palaven simultaneously triggered the detonators for their warp bombs.
The Example was on the dark side of Palaven at T-plus eighty-four hours.
In the minutes of reprieve they had from pursuing Reaper destroyers, the bridge crew of the damaged carrier watched in stunned silence as, against the darkness of their homeworld, plumes of brilliant light began to expand at scattered points across the planet, each a blindingly bright explosion taking out massive Reaper ships. Each pinprick of light manifested with a margin of error measured only in seconds, a chain of explosions like fireworks against the night sky. In more ways than one, it was a beautiful sight to behold, especially since Ixius and Castellus had been among the few officers in the 3rd Fleet to know of Operation: SLENDER SCALPEL, having hosted many of the strategy meetings aboard the Example. To them, each sparkle against the darkness of Palaven was a newfound ray of hope.
"Our carrier was crippled, the ship was falling apart, Reaper destroyers were catching up," related Castellus, "yet we were standing there, breathless, standing there just for that one moment to witness that beautiful testament, a promise that the Battle of Palaven was about to turn in a very different direction."
Unfortunately for them, the bridge crew did not have much time to admire the scenery. The Example was still trying to outrun two Reaper destroyers hot on its aft, firing off alternating shots from their magnetohydrodynamic weapons. Skimming the atmosphere, Ixius was able to throw off Reaper targeting by a bit, using Palaven's magnetic field. But the planet's magnetic field was too weak to seriously affect enemy accuracy, and although the Example managed to avoid a chain of direct hits, shots were still glancing across the carrier one-by-one, the ship given a horrendous shutter every time it was hit. Systems were rapidly being disabled one-by-one; communications were down, weapons were unresponsive, and navigation barely had enough power for the carrier to respond to commands at all. It would only be a matter of time before the Reapers caught up to a range where long-distance targeting would become irrelevant, and they would slice the Example into pieces.
Ixius' plan was to turn the Example towards the rest of the fleet so other ships might take a shot at their pursuers. It was a risky maneuver – there was no guarantee that enemy ships in the orbital engagements would not also take the chance to target the Example – but the carrier was not a vessel meant for ship-to-ship engagements, and that it had been caught flat-footed in its attempt to provide long-range fighter and drone support to the fleet meant there were only hard options available. Plowing for the general melee occurring over the Taeradian continent, the Example once again sent out a general distress call, requesting assistance.
Eight thousand kilometers away, the [dreadnought] Gauntlet of the 18th Fleet answered the call. Initially providing long-range fire support for the 13th Fleet, it was situated far enough from the general melee in orbit, but positioned at an angle obtuse enough to align its mass accelerator with the Example's aft with microbursts of its thrusters. Its weapons were ready to take out the destroyers trailing the Example; the Gauntlet just needed the carrier to come around the curvature of the planet just enough for the dreadnought to place its shots.
Receiving telemetry data from the Example, the Gauntlet actually fired its shots into Palaven's atmosphere before ever actually seeing the Reaper destroyers, or even the Example itself. As the gunnery officers of the dreadnought already knew where the Reaper destroyers were without actually establishing a line of sight, they dropped both tungsten shells dangerously close to Palaven itself. Upon entering the atmosphere, both shells had their initial velocities reduced by approximately a sixth, whereupon the planet's gravity pulled both shells into a slight turn around Palaven. Thus, with four shots, the Gauntlet was able to hit and decimate two Reaper destroyers around the curvature of the planet; by the time the enemy vessels finally showed up on the dreadnoughts cameras, they were already burning wrecks floating into space.
But the Gauntlet was not the only ship using that tactic. A Reaper capital ship did not have telemetry data on the Example's precise position after the destroyers trailing it were destroyed, and it focused more on the pressing threat of the Gauntlet than the damaged carrier that was an Example, but the carrier was still conveniently within the Reaper's field of fire as it came around the curvature of Palaven. Alerts went off on the Example's bridge; the Reaper had locked onto the carrier and was preparing to fire its weapon on a strafing flyby.
Using Palaven's gravitational field, Ixius dipped the Example downward towards the planet's surface, a sharp drop that barely allowed the ship to dodge the shot, the burst of molten metal skimming against the Example's hull instead of landing a direct hit. The carrier jolted violently nevertheless; Ixius slammed her head against her console upon impact, creating a gash across her forehead. But with that maneuver and the acceleration in velocity, the Example managed to skim right past the Reaper capital ship and outside its field of fire. The Reaper, indifferent that it had missed a dying carrier, allowed the Example to drift away as it focused its firepower on the Gauntlet instead.
But the carrier had escaped instant death only to delay the inevitable by mere minutes; the Example had made a seven hundred meter drop into the planet's atmosphere, caught deeply in Palaven's gravitational field, and while this was not necessarily a problem under normal conditions, the carrier's element zero core was already severely damaged, and could not produce the power necessary to break its degrading orbit and escape Palaven's gravitational pull.
With the Example sinking into the planet's atmosphere with no chance of maintaining its orbit, Captain Irrena Ixius gave the order to make for the escape pods and abandon ship.
On the ground, Reaper forces – from Marauders to Cannibals to Ravagers to destroyers to capital ships – momentarily stopped. The simultaneous destruction of so many Reaper ships at once corrupted their network and subsequent processing power. Although the Reapers had learned from Sovereign's failed attack from the Citadel and implemented countermeasures preventing the destruction of their assets from generating what was effectively a network feedback loop, there was no real way they could reasonably expect so many of their capital ships, destroyers, and processor ships to be destroyed in an instant. The result was the Reaper equivalent to confusion, a state all allied forces committed to the campaign were all too eager to exploit. Some Reapers remained functional and unaffected, but many more were momentarily paralyzed.
From where the Defender was orbiting Nanus, Coronati could see the explosions. This was confirmed seconds later by data being streamed in from the fleets over Palaven. From operational headquarters, new briefing packets made in preparation for the success of SLENDER SCALPEL were sent, bounced off the fleet and to every turian and krogan in communications range. Even while new operational protocols were being established for FORWARD FLAME, Resvirix was petitioning High Command to send all available ground units and material in the Trebia System to Palaven before the once-in-a-lifetime window closed.
On the ground, the 27th Provisional Army was still not entirely sure what was happening. All they could be certain of was that warp bomb explosions were happening far away, Reaper ships were suddenly disappearing from the horizon, and enemy ground forces suddenly seized up and stopped in their tracks. All too happy to take advantage of the unexplained phenomenon, the turians and krogan opened up with their own volley of firepower, crossing the main line of resistance and engaging the Reaper ground forces. With the enemy incapable of retaliating or even defending themselves, they were little more than targets in a shooting gallery of the most trained military force in Citadel space and some of the toughest allies in the galaxy.
New orders confirmed what the 27th Provisional Army had suspected but didn't dare to actually believe: A combination of special operations groups and resistance teams had pulled off a planetwide, top-secret operation accumulating in the simultaneous destruction of Reaper ships, with preliminary figures on destroyed vessels being measured in the dozens, and still rising. Operational headquarters gave orders to push as far forward as possible, to fight for ground to the last man. With Reaper ships down and their anti-air capabilities with them, authorization was given for shuttles to initiate a mass invasion of Reaper-held territories. Gunships, tanks, and armor vehicles were broken out from underground storage, having previously been kept hidden and deactivated due to how quickly they were lost to Reaper ships shooting down any mechanized target that moved.
In spite of heavy casualties having been sustained over three days of nonstop fighting, Day Four of FORWARD FLAME saw the high point of morale, with the turians and krogan realizing that they were suddenly not just holding their own, but actually winning. Practically everyone still combat-effective – turian, krogan, commando, soldier, engineer, resistance – dropped everything and moved onto the offensive, taking advantage of a window that could close at any time. Even those who were barely combat-effective were looking to get some of the action; despite the fact that her not-fully-treated shoulder was still in pain from where Hailot had shot her, Optimi – having been recuperating in the rear medical area following their successful extraction of Blackwatch – was already picking up her rifle for the chance to get back into the fray. A resistance medic protested, insisting that she needed to rest.
"And miss out on this?" declared Optimi. "Fuck that."
The sudden mobilization of troops could only be described as massive, rivaled only by the opening hours of FORWARD FLAME. All the resources Palaven could have – not just the resources that could be afforded – were thrown forward for this all-or-nothing push. Thousands of shuttles took off across the planet and swarmed the air, flying deep into Reaper territory, escorted by hundreds gunships that also flew air support for the thousands of armored vehicles plowing the way through the ruined roads of Palaven, complemented by the inexorable march of turian soldiers, resistance fighters, and krogan warriors alike, numbering into the millions.
Above, the Hierarchy had committed every fleet in-system not already burdened with the barebones defense of essential sites to Palaven, hundreds of turian ships moving in for the kill. Even from the ground, troops could see the angry slashes of weapons across space, hundreds of ships bombarding each other with mass accelerator rounds, torpedoes, hypervelocity molten metal. On the ground with the 18th Mountaineer Legion, Velius and her squad watched in awe as the husk of a Reaper capital ship, destroyed by a hail of dreadnought attacks, plummeted towards Palaven in freefall. Turian and krogan alike let out a string of amazed profanities as two kilometers of Reaper capital ship drew a burning scar across the atmosphere at stunning speeds before finally disappearing into the horizon where it crashed just shy of a hundred kilometers away, accumulating in a massive explosion blossoming against the darkness of the night sky. Despite the distance, Velius swore the planet beneath her feet shuddered violently from the impact anyways.
"Today's weather forecast for Palaven," rumbled a krogan in mirth. "Expect regions to experience raining Reapers."
Having been confined to Firebase Arterius for more than a week, the krogan at the South Peaks were all too eager to finally get back into the action after days of just sitting out doomsday. Some morale had been raised when they came up with increasingly creative ways to kill time and Reaper ground forces; with the chance to beat back the enemy, they were positively ecstatic. While turian infantrymen professionally made precise preparations to establish a path down the mountain to link up with the rest of the 27th, the krogan were already moving ahead. With unbelieving awe, the turians watched as just under one hundred krogan infantrymen – each weighing up to a ton when encased in full armor – charge down the mountain despite the fact that some of the mountain's inclinations got as steep as forty-five degrees. From there, the massive reptilian soldiers unleashed a barrage of assault rifle strobes, shotgun blasts, running headbutts, warhammer strikes, and even flying tackles against any enemy foolish enough to get in their way. "Until you've seen a platoon of krogan plow their way down a mountain at a dead sprint," declared Ordinix, "you have not seen a krogan charge."
Infantry action was not the only thing Firebase Arterius had up its sleeve. Without fear of immediate retaliation from Reaper ships, the engineers unveiled salvaged battery pieces that the krogan had cannibalized and put together (which turian engineers had then did some maintenance work on to make them more serviceable) for the Paeridia campaign that had previously been hidden underground for just a moment such as this. From atop the South Peaks, turian engineers dropped heavy tungsten shells onto enemy positions below. Twenty battery pieces serviced a bombardment radius of almost sixty kilometers, and the gun crews, having established communications with the rest of the 27th Provisional Army, were soon taking requests for fire support.
Firebase Arterius was not the only place that saw the allied forces breaking out the big guns. The shuttle network that had been established when the 27th secured defenses around friendly territory had helped transport men and material across allied territory; among its cargo in the last twenty-eight hours were the prototype Whitelight weapons that had been uncovered from the ruins of a SRAD laboratory in Khronus. Between the limit on how many resistance cells were available and a small number of cells that had failed to deliver warp bombs to their targets, and there were still a small handful of Reaper ships close to the main line of resistance that needed to be taken out by other means. Although an infantry assault on a Reaper seemed to be complete and utter suicide, many of the enemy ships were experiencing major shield malfunctions, and Whitelights were considered to be heavy weapons rated for anti-fortress capabilities.
As the effective range of the Whitelights were still uncertain – and they certainly could not be tested in the field – ground forces needed to get as reasonably close to the Reaper as possible, preferably right under them, before firing. As such, it was only logical that the Whitelights be given to the krogan, who could get close by soaking up a ridiculous amount of punishment. Needless to say, no one was more enthusiastic about a job involving a handheld weapon of mass destruction than the krogan themselves. (Turian engineers did not take very long before giving up on trying to convince the krogan that the Whitelights were not "nuclear shotguns".)
The krogan tasked with this mission were given joint-turian-krogan escorts and various forms of transportations, including armored vehicles and shuttles. Velius was appointed as one of the escorts, riding on a shuttle alongside other turians and krogan, one of whom enthusiastically carried a "nuclear shotgun". The approach towards the Reaper vessel ahead was nerve-wracking; the vessel was not entirely disabled, and was already beginning to fire upon approaching shuttles and armor. But apparently it had yet to recover from the previous data corruption, because many of its shots were off-target, a stark contrast to the usually frighteningly accurate fire associated with Reaper ships. The shuttle got just close enough to the Reaper – close enough to make missing almost impossible, but not so close that the shuttle could get caught in the ensuing blast – before the shuttle door opened, giving the krogan a clear shot with his Whitelight at the Reaper. Velius braced one hand against the doorframe while her other hand latched onto the krogan to stabilize him in case the weapon had massive recoil. (She admitted in her interview: "It was a stupid thing to do – how the hell was I supposed to help brace a one-ton krogan? – but it felt right at the time.")
The shot seemed underwhelming at first. The Whitelight spun up an impressive charging cycle, complete with spinning components and glowing lights that seemed like it would be the start of something truly awesome. When ready however, the Whitelight discharged what seemed to be an underwhelming speck of light at the Reaper vessel with absolutely no recoil. But just as the occupants of the shuttle tried to take a closer look at the weapon to see if it was broken, the speck of light made contact with the Reaper ship, which could not recharge its shields fast enough. The effect was nothing short of devastating: The "speck of light" was ultimately a gravitational singularity that reacted volatilely when it made contact with a solid object, in this case the hull of a Reaper destroyer. The result was a massive, glowing hole in the ship as mass effect fields wreaked havoc upon the nuclear forces holding atoms together, effectively changing the ship's chemical composition and turning the formidable ship's hull into only so many sparkling atoms. With practically half of its mass missing and all of its primary systems gone, the Reaper destroyer wasted no time in toppling over and falling silent.
After a moment of stunned silence at the result, the krogan casually tossed aside the spent Whitelight and voiced what everyone thought in that shuttle: "Krogan kills Reaper in shuttle. With some help from friends."
Velius and the other turians were too thrilled at the result to debate the fine details. They were only more thrilled when they learned that all of this was occurring across the planet in a ferocious counterattack, as if the spirit of Palaven itself was exacting its revenge on the Reapers, complete with interest. "Bastards were always thinking about what they could do to us," observed Optimi. "Bet they never wondered what we could do to them."
A carrier like the Example was a kilometer-long and generally carried a complement of more than fifteen thousand servicemen. To accommodate the inclusion of the flight teams and units of the 27th Provisional Army, the carrier's crew for this operation had been reduced to a skeleton minimum of eight thousand, little more than half the usual crew. The carrier was also designed to accommodate evacuation procedures as well as possible; like any other competent military force, the Hierarchy expected each soldier to give their lives if necessary, but worked to retain excellent talent if that necessity was not present.
Still, having eight thousand servicemen evacuate a massive, burning carrier that was swiftly losing altitude was a tall order. Engineering squeezed out as much power as they could from the mass effect core, knowing that the ship was going down and that safety guidelines in regards to overtaxing the reactor could probably be ignored at this point. Even then, VI projections revealed that, at its current rate of descent, the Example would make a crash landing in less than ten minutes. Barely-responsive navigational systems could only alleviate so much of the strain. Even with artificial gravity to compensate, the Example had altogether far too much mass for anyone still inside to survive a crash landing. Entire decks were on fire from the previous Reaper attacks; with the ship entering the atmosphere and fire control systems severely compromised, there was no way to extinguish the flames. Some decks had gone dark from the damage, others had been ripped out of the carrier entirely. All were factors in preventing an orderly evacuation of the Example, a set of horrible circumstances within another set of horrible circumstances. It was all too clear that not everyone would be able to evacuate the carrier in time. Hundreds could easily be left behind.
Ixius fought for time anyways, trying to get as many turians off the burning carrier as possible. Even as the Example seared its way across the atmosphere, she squeezed power out of the mass effect core to rotate the carrier one hundred and eighty degrees while maintaining its trajectory, a move with two purposes. First, to buy extra time for the Example. As carriers were never meant to operate within an atmosphere, aerodynamics was never a concern for its structural design. By coincidence, the hull of the carrier was so shaped that "falling backwards" actually decreased drag, adding an extra minute onto the estimated time before the Example would crash. Second and more importantly, however, it turned the carrier's forward-facing hangar away from the brunt of the atmosphere's air resistance. This allowed many of the crew to escape through the hangar through means other than escape pods and shuttles; servicemen could attempt to flee the carrier via glider or even jetpacks without being buffeted by winds that were reaching twenty thousand kilometers per hour, the approximate speed at which the Example was making its disastrous re-entry.
Castellus made it a point to emphasize Ixius' capabilities: "It was the first time in the entire history of the Hierarchy that a turian ship of this size was forced to execute an atmospheric evacuation. We don't train for this specific scenario, because we never think it would ever happen, reasonably or otherwise. None of us had any experience, any precedents to work off, any scenarios to reenact. Yet within minutes, the captain had somehow figured all this out – aerodynamics on a vessel that usually doesn't touch an atmosphere, using the hangar on a vessel that usually never sees air resistance – and she does it on a dying ship that's burning, falling into pieces, plummeting towards a planet, and operating at only twenty percent power."
One by one, escape pods detached themselves from the ship and rocketed to safety. Castellus was relieved that, even with such an unprecedented situation, the turians remained calm and ensured the evacuation went as orderly as possible; turians having already strapped into their escape pods would launch until their pods were either at full or near-full capacity, as to prevent the carrier from running out of pods while much of the crew still remained on board. Doing the math in his head, Castellus figured that – assuming all pods were either at full or near-full capacity – around thirty percent of the crew had evacuated in the first four minutes. He was far too busy trying to work out last-minute navigational calculations to check, but he also assumed that servicemen close to the hangar were also evacuating via shuttles, leftover gliders, jetpacks, and other impromptu instruments of flight.
The Example was scattering millions of projectiles in its wake. Aside from debris that was swiftly being torn off its already-damaged framed by Palaven's atmosphere, there were also escape pods, shuttles, gliders, and jet-pack equipped turians kicking off from the plummeting carrier. There were, of course, also turian bodies being thrown into the air, stripped from the ship along with decks they had perished in. Conditions inside the carrier were atrocious, with fires burning everywhere and the vessel shuddering violently; even with as much power as possible being diverted to artificial gravity at the expense of systems such as weapons and life support, it was difficult for anyone to remain upright on their feet. In many cases, turian servicemen had to crawl on the ground to get anywhere, pulled along by their compatriots stationed across the carrier's decks, pulling the evacuees around corners, trying to expedite the evacuation.
Eight minutes in, with only three minutes to spare until collision, Ixius extended the evacuation order from only non-essential personnel to every single person on the ship, including the bridge crew. Swiftly, the bridge officers began to file out in an orderly fashion to the nearest escape pods. Ixius herself stayed behind; she maintained that someone needed to make last-minute adjustments to navigation for the Example to maintain the closest thing to a stable orbit as possible, buying the carrier's crew valuable time to abandon ship before it would crash onto the surface. Castellus offered to take her place, but Ixius assured Castellus that she had no intention of martyring herself "if reasonably possible", and she needed someone on the ground to coordinate survivors. With circumstances as dire as they were, the executive officer wanted to wish his captain good luck, but ultimately decided better against it, instead saying, "See you on the ground."
As the only remaining bridge officer, Ixius consolidated all of the bridge's controls to the captain's console at her seat. Theoretically, the captain's console had access to all of the ship's systems, and could control the vessel by one's lonesome. In reality, this was largely just a formality: Even with VI support, there were by far too many systems and subsystems for a captain alone to make coherent course corrections for a stable orbit once a kilometer-long ship had entered a planet's lower atmosphere, never mind fly a carrier that was doomed to crash on the planet.
Ixius was not planning to fly the Example, or even to attempt to bring the carrier into a more stable orbit. The bridge crew had done their part, and any further navigational tricks Ixius could offer wouldn't help the situation at all. With the Example's last moments, however, her captain wanted to bring her down somewhere specific, and – with enough power for last-minute emergency maneuvers – there just happened to be a paralyzed Reaper capital ship in the carrier's flight path.
Glancing at her readouts, Ixius could tell by the number of escape pods having left the carrier that approximately eighty percent of the crew, including the bridge officers, had "officially" abandoned ship; she knew it was optimistic thinking, but she hoped that the remaining survivors had "unofficially" evacuated via unconventional means through the hangar. With the clock counting down and no way to ascertain how long it would take for the Reapers to recover, Ixius deliberately aimed high in case the Reaper attempted to escape into orbit at the last second. Unknown to the captain, in an attempt to expedite its recovery from what was basically a systematic failure in the form of a massive feedback loop, the Reaper had locked down its quantum infrastructure on data processing, thus leaving it almost entirely blind to the outside world. Logically, it was a reasonable risk; the Reaper was aware of the turian resistance suicide teams, but all signs pointed to the fact that it was not a target of SLENDER SCALPEL, and further reasoning confirmed that it was deep enough into Reaper territory to not be in immediate danger of a turian-krogan counterattack. Therefore, by the time the Reaper realized there was a kilometer-long carrier three kilometers away, hurtling in its direction at more than a thousand kilometers per hour, it was already too late for last-second maneuvers or engaging shields.
Even with much of the ship's frame stripped away by the atmosphere, the Example was still just over thirty-seven hundred metric kilotons of mass that slammed into a Reaper at almost eleven hundred kilometers per hour. The collision itself had the kinetic energy of forty kilotons of TNT, more than the full force of a round from a dreadnought's main mass accelerator. For a Reaper capital ship that only barely began to bring its barriers back online, it was the knockout punch.
Both massive vessels exploded and fractured into massive fragments, spilling giant pieces of burning wreckage in the direction of the Example's trajectory. From his still-airborne escape pod, Castellus could see the death of the Reaper and his carrier from almost twenty kilometers away. "No one said anything, but the bridge crew observed an unspoken moment of silence as we watched the flames engulfed the last pieces of our ship. It was not the fate we wanted for the Example, but it's the best death we could give any vessel, and one final gift from the crew to the Battle of Palaven."
As the Example had minimal control over how it fell down into Palaven, many of the evacuees had been jettisoned from the carrier over Reaper-controlled territory. Fortunately, for most of these crewmembers, they were close enough to the main line of resistance; when the 27th Provisional Army continued its inexorable push forward in an attempt to retake as much territory on Palaven as possible, many of the Example's crew were picked up by shuttles and armored vehicles that took them back to the rear for medical attention and debrief. Castellus, having ejected from the Example particularly deep into Reaper territory along with the bridge crew, had to wait for hours for any shuttle to arrive, but they, too, were ultimately found and brought back to the rear for some well-earned rest.
Word came down from High Command that all reinforcements that could possibly be spared were on their way down to Palaven. "It's just like the brass to commit forces only after lunatics like us have done all the work," observed Vranikius. The news, however, was ultimately overwhelmingly welcome. While the 27th Provisional Army was enjoying successive tactical victories against Reaper forces, they were stretching themselves dangerously thin, given their remaining numbers. Even with the resistance swelling up their ranks, they were highly vulnerable to a counterattack should Reaper forces manage to recover and regroup. Fortunately, it was not something that needed to be tested, as the mobilized reinforcements were able to reach Palaven before such a catastrophe happened, ensuring that the joint-operations ended on a high note.
The mobilization in response to the success of SLENDER SCALPEL and FORWARD FLAME was nothing short of amazing. With so many Reaper ships destroyed, the enemy had lost orbital supremacy, and the Hierarchy now regained control of almost half of Palaven's airspace. This allowed thousands of large troop landers, normally very vulnerable targets, to safely ferry reinforcements from Menae and Nanus to relieve the 27th, a massive ground force made up of the 1st Palaven, 7th, 16th, and 24th Armies that stood at half a million strong. With logistical and transportation lines reestablished both on turian-held territories on Palaven and in space, the reinforcing turians had little problem in picking up where the 27th left off, securing massive swathes of territories where Reaper forces had descended into chaos.
While reinforcements concentrated on capturing territories that the 27th could not, turian and krogan forces involved in the first three days of the operations focused on bringing Palaven back online. Engineering legions injected themselves full of stimulants and worked tirelessly to rebuild planetary defenses. Prefabricated facilities and defenses were lifted off factories on and over Menae and Nanus, then dropped from orbit onto specific sites on Palaven. Massive ground-to-space batteries were brought back online, complete with new layouts and algorithms that maximized their effectiveness against Reaper ships, all of which were based off data gained from months of bitter experiences. Firebases – many of which had been reduced to a flat, empty graveyard of ashes – were reactivated within days. Continental communications and fiber-optic lines were reestablished.
Units of the 27th, even those who were not engineers, helped picked up the slack wherever they could, despite the fact that they were all fatigued from days of nonstop fighting. Their spirit and morale, however, nevertheless managed to keep them going, and no turian complained about performing menial physical labor for engineers working on bringing everything back online. The krogan were also surprisingly unreserved in offering assistance. Jorgal found himself impressed by the turians: "Where a krogan could barely be bothered to pick up after his own messes, the turians – despite months of exhausting warfare – wasted no time or effort in cleaning away the mess, rebuilding all that had been damaged, and bringing everything up to militaristic perfection."
Orders came down from operational headquarters: In recognition of their valiant efforts, Resvirix was ordering that the entirety of the 27th Provisional Army regroup at their nearest firebases. While critically vital engineering work would continue, all legions in the 27th – turian or krogan – were to be relieved of combat duty for at least three days, and for them to consider this period to be official R&R. While a burning Palaven was normally not anyone's first choice for a vacation spot, turians and krogan across the 27th agreed that they wouldn't rather be anywhere else. As such, they kicked back and enjoyed their well-earned rest, allowing the rest of the Hierarchy to finally catch up.
The reclamation of Palaven would continue for days as the reinforcing armies continued to press on the attack. However, at least for the 27th Provisional Army, SLENDER SCALPEL and FORWARD FLAME were finally over.
Ninety-seven warp bombs had been prepared for SLENDER SCALPEL. Out of the ninety-seven, ninety-one reached their destinations and detonated on-target. The sacrifices of the men and women who accomplished the impossible came at a heavy cost: Most of the prisoners in the Reaper camps did not survive, caught in the blast of the warp bomb and the subsequent explosion of the Reaper ships.
The detonations allowed for a systematic purge of an astounding number of Reaper ships in the Trebia System as the enemy order of battle fell into disarray, their network caught in a feedback loop that made them vulnerable for just long enough. By the end of the fourth day of FORWARD FLAME, the 27th Provisional Army destroyed an additional thirteen Reaper ships, while the combined fleets of Palaven destroyed twenty-three and damaged far more.
The accomplishment was not without its staggering costs. Due to the chaotic circumstances, no accurate figure for casualties exists, but the 2193 official estimate on deaths sustained over the four days of SLENDER SCALPEL and FORWARD FLAME was over one million, a figure that does not include the number of turian prisoners that were killed in SLENDER SCALPEL, caught too close to the warp bombs when they went off. Eighty-seven ships were destroyed, with hundreds more severely damaged. Of the dead, Resvirix said in a press release, "Whatever they were in life, their deaths had no equal. They are worthy of joining the spirit of Palaven itself."
But the result could not be overstated. While swathes of territory on Palaven beyond the reach of the Hierarchy and the resistance still remained solidly in Reaper control, the turians achieved a parity that had never been accomplished since the Reapers began their ground invasion. For the first time since the invasion began, the enemy as a whole had to sit and wait for reinforcements, deprived of the necessary resources to attack a regrouped and rebuilt Hierarchy military force. With the severely diminished Reaper presence, military traffic between Palaven, Menae, and Nanus was restored, and the Hierarchy quickly began reorganization and resupply operations, getting every unit where they needed to be. Infrastructure and defenses were swiftly restored planetside now that the turians had a chance to catch a breath, taking into consideration the lessons they had learned over the months of the Reaper War. Morale soared across the Trebia System, and when the first major waves of Reaper reinforcements finally arrived in-system three days later, Palaven was once again a fortress, daring the enemy to break themselves against its walls.
With morale teetering dangerously at the brink of collapse after the Fall of Thessia, news of SLENDER SCALPEL and FORWARD FLAME's success massively boosted resolve and confidence across the galaxy. An impossible decisive military victory against the Reapers broke headlines on every news network everywhere; when Nos Astra Broadcasting – while not the first to break the story – aired the news with the headline "Miracle at Palaven", the name caught on, with networks across the galaxy using it to describe the miracle that had occurred. The story of turians, krogan, and quarians working together and destroying so many Reaper ships with nothing but superior planning and daring was embellished with every telling. No one was under the delusion that they were suddenly winning the war, or that the same trick could be pulled off twice, but it nevertheless defeated the belief that the Reapers were invincible, or that they were all but unassailable without being terrifically outnumbered and outgunned.
Just as importantly, the Miracle at Palaven was an astonishing story of cooperation among unexpected parties at an unexpected time. While the cure of the genophage involved turian and krogan forces on Tuchanka, and while the end to the Geth War involved quarian and geth forces over Rannoch, both victories resulted in the destruction of only one destroyer respectively, and were largely considered the side effect of a greater crisis. The Miracle at Palaven was considered the first successful joint-military campaign that saw mass destruction of the enemy's naval forces, involving three different races that had previously held each other in great contempt. As special forces strike teams saw increased need to diversify their recruitment pool, the slogan "Remember Palaven" transformed into a tale of how the galaxy was strongest when it was united in spite of – or perhaps because of – their differences.
Primarch Victus offered perhaps the greatest praise when his office passed on a message to the parties involved in the Miracle at Palaven: "Although we are separated by the eternity of time and the infiniteness of the universe, our very existences – mere motes against the great fabric of reality – came together against unfathomable odds, came together in a brief and lucid moment of our fleeting lives, and accomplished the impossible. The galaxy is a better place because all of you have come together. Know that wherever you go, you've earned the right to hold your head high, for Palaven calls you a brother."
At the recently-reactivated Firebase Ekyrius, Helsrang tended to several wounds he had sustained through the course of the joint-operation. Blackwatch had pulled back to the firebase as the Hierarchy entrenched themselves into defensive positions, where Ravakian debriefed 2nd Platoon and ordered mandatory rests for everyone; she wanted everybody to be one hundred and fifty percent ready when they next had to move out again. None of Helsrang's injuries really needed immediate medical attention, but as the executive officer for Ravakian, he wasn't willing to chance his wounds to possible infection that would take him out of the battle.
Familiar voices attracted Helsrang's attention, and the lieutenant looked up to see Urdnot Nakmor debrief Malgus Company; they, too, had survived SLENDER SCALPEL, and were airlifted back to Ekyrius after being located and extracted. The debrief was of the usual krogan bravado: Loud laughter, loud profanities, and loud boasts of what they've managed to accomplish, punctuated only by loud celebratory shotgun blasts into the air. Under any other circumstances, Helsrang – like any other turian – would've considered the display unsightly, unprofessional, and undisciplined; this time, however, he couldn't find it within himself to be bothered.
Eventually, the debrief was over, and Malgus Company scattered to mingle with the rest of the 27th Provisional Army for some very well-deserved rest. Urdnot, in the meantime, came over and sat down next to Helsrang, uncorking a flask of ryncol and taking a gulp. Recognizing the lieutenant, the krogan offered the turian a drink. "No, thanks," Helsrang refused the offer. "Dextro, remember?"
Like soldiers, Urdnot called Helsrang a pussy, to which the lieutenant replied with a succinct "fuck off". The two then enjoyed a moment of rest and quiet as engineers around them continued to rebuild and upgrade the defenses of Firebase Ekyriat.
It was only after several moments of this quiet that Helsrang finally nudged Urdnot in the shoulder. "Hey, pal," said the lieutenant, summarizing the sentiment of every turian on Palaven. "Thanks for taking my planet back."