Reaper War: The Valkyrie Seed

He was stuck between the mortal realm and heaven where a war was revving up. It seems as everyone is using him for their own agenda, with the ultimate goal of getting into the Asgard. I do think the book could have been tightened up slightly, and it would be a cleaner read. Also, Riding has a tendency to use the same word in a paragraph. I would like to see him mix it up. That might only bug me though.

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Good fortune favors the prepared mind… and arsenal. Unfortunately, the diversity of equipment sources meant our allies ran into hardware and software incompatibilities. These brave men and women have been fighting beside you and, in doing so, have gone above and beyond normal duty. Because their units were not properly tracked, they fought without pay and sometimes without proper training, equipment, even rations. It is a mark of their character that these warriors took the grave task set before us and stuck it out through sheer determination.

It is time to honor their service. A volunteer task force has fabricated the necessary hardware and is rolling out compatibility software. When these installations are complete, these soldiers will benefit from being properly equipped and combat-ineffective troops will get off the bench. It is with great pride that I announce that we stopped a galaxy-wide Cerberus offensive. They expected surprise and speed to be on their side. They had neither, and they quickly discovered who had the superior force. You thinned their ranks and made our command and control structures safer.

Since no small number of my colleagues were their targets, I offer my personal thanks. When an assassin dies, his target lives. When thousands of assassins die, their leadership loses a major strategic option. That is the blow you have dealt. It will take Cerberus time to recover from losing their elite Phantom soldiers, time we do not intend to give them.

Captured Phantoms are being interrogated to help us crack down on more Cerberus cells and sleeper agents. The intelligence we won today will be critical in the battles we face tomorrow. Regrettably, we cannot stomp Cerberus out all at once, not yet. Our primary focus must be on the Reapers. But had we not won today, we would be hard-pressed to defend our colonies and homeworlds. That means everything to the friends, families, and fellow citizens for whom we are fighting.

Cerberus defectors have verified key intel on Reaper banshees to help provide us a vulnerability to exploit. Banshees are created from a specific kind of asari that cannot be replaced quickly, so we are diverting forces to focus on an all-out banshee extermination effort. This task is an onerous one, and many of you are right to dread contact with these particular foes, but rest assured that we are prepared to reinforce your battalion with reserves. The vorcha want in, and as soon as they complete combined-arms training with our technically-skilled personnel, we will let them loose.

It is with great regret that I must announce the withdrawal of forces from several colonies in asari space. Reinforcing them proved untenable.

Rest assured that we too are learning from this conflict. Already, we are implementing plans to supply our forces with a better arsenal so that, when we next meet the enemy, they are ours. Until your next deployment, keep calm and carry on.

• Introducing Vocabbusters Cartoon Vocabulary for the SAT;
• N7 Operations;
• .
• Reaper War: The Valkyrie Seed by Noah Riding.
• The Hornets Nest.

We will pay the Reapers back soon enough. Fighting is a way of life to the vorcha. Right now, they are just what this galaxy needs. Integrating so many vorcha has not been easy, and it is here that we must note the quarian contribution. Many quarians on their Pilgrimage actually refused the summons of the Migrant Fleet in order to serve against the Reapers. We assigned them the task of educating the vorcha in combined-arms operations against mechs and hardened targets. There is no better time to aim these warriors at the enemy. A Cerberus military outpost code-named Project Phoenix has defected to the Alliance in full, bringing with them inestimably valuable intelligence.

Their project director said that, when he looked at Cerberus, he saw its ugly past: When he looked at the Alliance, coordinating races from all corners of the galaxy to stop the Reapers, he saw the future. Vorcha and allied reinforcements have landed on nearly all of the occupied homeworlds, in sufficient numbers to allow us to extract important data about Reaper invasion tactics.

The next time the Reapers try to take a homeworld, they will find us ready and waiting. As for the status of the resistance on these planets, we remain hopeful. Every time a processing center is bombed, every time a detention camp is liberated, we delay the Reapers and give organics time to regroup. This breathing room is essential to win the long war, and to give hope to the galaxy at large. The Reapers, of course, did their best to test that claim.

They recognized this supply route through the central Terminus Systems and dispatched destroyers and troop transports to eliminate what they thought was a soft target. The space assets came through, but that is to take nothing away from the ferocity and skill of the ground troops on these planets. When the Reapers landed, intent on turning those colony worlds into new sources of husk creatures, they met their match.

A captured planet in our rear echelon would have meant facing shortages of critical materials or pulling additional assets from major fronts to compensate. Our strategists say we dodged a bullet—in my opinion, we stopped it cold. There is an old human expression: We have spent much time in recent weeks planting seeds. We recruited, we trained, we defended, all in the hopes that, sometime soon, we would have enough breathing room to mobilize against the enemy on a grand scale.

Over the past few days, we did just that. We sought a way to defeat a numerically superior ground force with little loss of life, but there was no sure strategy to adopt.

When we innovate, our enemy adapts. Take inspiration in that. I know it is discouraging to fight for alien real estate when we have not yet taken the battle to your own homeworld.

Operational secrecy prevents me from saying exactly when we will deploy and in what strength. All I can say to those who are waiting is one word:. Frankly, I would not be surprised if this message goes unread until tomorrow due to excessive celebrating. You have struck the Reapers where they are strongest and lived to tell the tale.

Credit goes to you, to those shuttle pilots who retrieved your teams, and to the many personnel who supported and planned the missions. But I also want to speak to some of what you may be seeing in the media soon. Eventually, it will be public knowledge that we had operations on Earth, retrieving data and personnel necessary for the military and economic well-being of the galaxy.

This success will bring hope to billions of people. It will also enrage some of them. Be prepared for the tough questions — when are we starting our full-scale assault? Why retrieve this helium-3 magnate but not another one, or save my loved ones?

See a Problem?

Who are you to play God? There are no good answers to these questions. The reality is, the Reapers have almost every conceivable advantage — numbers, firepower, technology — and we make do with what we have. We strike and retreat because facing the foe head-on would be a disaster. Nowhere is this truer than at Earth. We have started to give them a death by a thousand cuts. Take heart in this, celebrate, and relax tonight. With N7 troops engaging the enemy, the Resistance was able to lure a Reaper destroyer into a kill zone and bring it down.

They were able to retrieve portions of its memory databases before withdrawing from the battlefield.