The cramped cargo bay of the Achilles had been Marine territory since Hunter Team had first come aboard those months ago, the sailors surrendering the space with mostly good grace. Now, however, there was an interloper - and Ash could see the tension in her team. The corvette barely had a medbay - it was really more of a first aid closet run by the Achilles' corpsman - and so Colonel Dracor Pacwanar had been put in the cargo bay, tended to by Ling and Okri.
Pacwanar had hardly been a disruptive guest, but Ash found herself playing buffer anyway. It wasn't every day a Hegemony Army colonel came aboard an Alliance warship. She'd spread her sleeping bad out between the rest of the MSOT and Pacwanar's stretcher, not entirely sure who exactly she was keeping an eye on.
He'd spent much of the trip asleep, recovering from his injuries. Both the doctor on Anhur and Ling had proested the batarian being moved onto the corvette - "Ma'am, if that eye gets infected there's only so much I'll be able to do for him," Ling had said, but the Spectre had insisted. Pacwanar was their guide, she'd pointed out. Without him they'd go into the batarian research facility blind.
Ash looked at her omnitool, unseeing. Normally she found the rise and fall of poetry soothing, a way to feel close to her dad and family no matter how far she wandered in the galaxy. Now, however, she found her eyes skipping over every second line. She thought of the last time she'd seen her dad, before the Geneva accident and before the closed casket funeral. They'd sat up together on the porch as the nearby star set over the tiny colony of Amaterasu and they'd talked for hours. About that now insignificant firefight she'd been in before the geth came to Eden Prime, about what she wanted to do in her career, how she felt about being a sergeant. He'd been so damned proud of her for reaching sergeant. She could imagine how ecstatic he'd be if he'd lived long enough to see her put on these silver bars.
Maybe she should've written a letter to her mother and sister or prepared - something. But that felt final, like inviting bad luck along for the ride. Ash liked to call herself a realist, others liked to call her a pessimist, but maybe this once she'd try out the optimism thing. Even Hernandez had restrained herself from commenting on the odds of what they were trying to pull off - a deep, unsupported special ops strike into the Hegemony, far beyond the reach of any cavalry. Hernandez could've begged out with that still healing shoulder of hers, gone home to her husband, but Ash knew she'd never convince the sergeant to stay behind.
Sarah's wedding was in a month. Ash was going to do her damnedest to be there.
Beside her, Pacwanar shifted on his cot until he was kneeling, grotesquely bruised face lifted to the ceiling. He was murmuring words to himself - and shaking three small chimes on a string until a clear sound rung through the cargo bay. Something about the way he held them reminded her of her mother counting rosary beads.
His head dipped, what was clearly a prayer ending, and saw that she was watching him.
"I keep with my people's religious ways, even if I am an exile," Pacwanar said stiffly, crossing his thick, furry arms across his broad chest. Before Anhur, she'd never met a batarian out of armour - or a batarian who wasn't shooting at her. "I know humans tend to the irreligious but it brings me both peace and purpose."
Ashley shrugged, "I'm not the irreligious type." She pulled out the chain around her neck, showing him the cross hanging beside her dogtags before she tucked them back under her uniform shirt. "Pray all you want."
He was silent for a moment, regarding her. "I have not read any human holy texts. I would like to, I think. Was that what you were reading?"
"Nah. I was reading poetry - Tennyson."
"A warrior?"
"No - I just like it." It was a bit more than that, but she wasn't going to spill her life story to this batarian.
He tilted his head in acquiescence. "I understand. I have read some of your military strategists. Sun Tzu, Clausewitz," he stumbled a little over the names, "This was permitted to me as a Noble Caste in the profession of arms - but human holy books, poetry, those were forbidden. You were the enemy - what did your cultures matter?"
Ash shrugged. "Poetry, prayer, stories - if you ask me that says a lot more about people than military theory."
"You may be correct."
"What were you praying about?"
He was silent for a long moment - and for that moment she worried she'd managed some spectacular foot in mouth. She didn't know the subleties of batarian facial expressions beyond the obvious like head tilting. They'd gone over the basics in her N5 training and she kept meaning to do the batarian languages course the Alliance offered - and encouraged SASOC officers to do - but there'd been so many qualifications she had to complete that it'd fallen by the wayside.
Finally Pacwanar spoke, "When Sansokk cut out my eye, my soul was divided. This eye," he touch his face just beside the now-empty socket - hidden behind dressings, courtesy of the Anhur hospital, "represents the part of the soul that is held in the mind. There are rituals I must go through, to reunify my soul. If I do not, when I die I will wander the grey lands for eternity."
That didn't sound like fun.
"I'm sorry," she said awkwardly.
"Don't be. I wasn't your doing, and I have chosen this path of my own volition."
"I'm thankful you did. If we succeed, we're saving a lot of lives - human and batarian." Once, like a lot of young, dumb grunts, Ash had itched for war with the Hegemony. The entire seventies had felt like they'd been standing on the edge of that conflict, only for the Alliance government to turn the other cheek after atrocities like Mindoir and Elysium - or so it'd felt like back then.
He dipped his head, his tone turning dry, "It is good yu aren't quite the half-soul monsters the priests and commissars say you are."
"Thanks, I think," she raised an eyebrow, "you and the Hegemon - you were friends." It was weird thinking of the Hegemon Ra'elok, who'd ordered the burning of Mindoir and the Skyllian Blitz, as a person with friends.
Pacwanar's expression darkened, "Yes. There was a time I would've done anything for him. But I cannot watch the galaxy burn so he can be king of the ashes."
…poetic. She didn't know what to make of this guy. He wasn't what she'd expected of a batarian military officer.
"Lieutenant?" When she looked up, Senior Master Chief Chung, the Achilles' buffer, was standing over them, carefully blank gaze bouncing in between her and Pacwanar, "The Spectre is requesting your presence - and the batarian."
"Roger. Sūn!"
"She didn't say anything about Sūn," Chung interjected.
"If she has something to say to me, she can say it to him," Ash said shortly. Sūn and her had their occasional differences, but it wasn't like she kept many secrets from him. She couldn't keep Sūn in the dark. She couldn't do this by herself. It just wasn't how the 103rd worked.
Ash brushed past Chung, Sūn and Pacwanar on her heels. The batarian's breathing came out raspy and rough when they climbed the stairs to the comm room, through the warren-like grey corridors, and she found herself shortening her strides.
Spectre Saen Maetok and Lieutenant Broudier were waiting for them. Maetok's eyes touched on Sūn but she didn't say anything.
"Please take a seat. I trust you've all read the OPORD Lieutenant Williams put together? Good. We will be in the Tolorak System within three hours. We will infiltrate the system using the IES and land here on Okran - it is a heavily forested and lightly populated, while being within striking distance of the research facility. We will then rendezvous with Sons of Akhato, an anti-Hegemony resistance group in this sector."
"No shooting our allies," Ashley interjected. Calling the rebels allies was perhaps a bit of a stretch - they took the Alliance's money and guns because they needed it, not because they particularly trusted humans.
"That would be preferable," Maetok blinked those large, liquid eyes, "They will be assisting us - once we're in position, they will begin diversary attacks on the local garrison and the outer defences of the facility, while we infiltrate the base on foot. Our primary objective is to locate the dark energy super-weapon and destroy it. Secondary objectives are to retrieve any available intelligence on said project and the Reapers, especially regarding the extent of their influence on the Hegemony government."
"Are we certain destroying the weapon will end the project itself?" Sūn asked.
"Ra'elok is paranoid," Pacwanar rasped. In the dim light his face looked sunken in, his three eyes flinty, "He hid the project where he thought no one would find it - and all of it is focused there. Destroy the weapon, the research and kill or capture the scientists, and you put the Hegemony back ten years at least."
Sūn frowned, "What happens to the rebels after the mission?"
Maetok just looked at him. "Don't be naive, Master Sergeant."
He looked at Ash, eyebrows furrowed, "Ma'am…"
"You know we can't pull them out, Tyler," she said gently. She regretted it, but it was necessary. "If they don't help us, we're not getting anywhere near the weapon and we both know it. And if we don't end this project now, we all know the consequences."
The other Marine glanced at the Spectre. "Do I even want to know how you convinced them?"
"Do your job," the salarian's voice was cool and flowing. Guiltless. "And let me do mine."
The room lapsed into uneasy silence before Gabriel broke it, rubbing a hand through his hair. "It says I should wait until the designated time - and then leave. I just - are you sure about that?"
He was looking at Ash, his eyes all too earnest and pained.
"You can't let the batarians get their hands on the IES, Gabe," she told him, and then looked between him and Sūn, "C'mon guys! It's too fucking late to back out now. We're committed, we have to see this through. You with me or not?"
One of Shepard's inspiring speeches it was not.
"I go where you go, Lieutenant," Sūn said, an echo. "With your permission, ma'am, I will make sure our guys are locked and loaded."
"Make sure everyone has familiarised themselves with the map the Colonel provided," she nodded.
She was halfway to the door, the others filing out, when Gabriel caught her arm.
"What," he asked, voice low and hissed out, "am I supposed to say to your mother if I leave you behind?"
When Ash looked up, anger already sparking in her chest, he was looking at her with those blue eyes and she could almost see his goddamn broken heart. It would've been so fucking simple, so much easier to love him. The anger trickled away into something like sympathy. He was a much more gentle person than she was. "It won't come to that."
"You wouldn't have put it in the order if you thought it wasn't a possibility," he pointed out.
"I have to think of the big picture," she gently pulled her arm free, "and like I said. It's too late for us to back out now."
She walked off and he let her go.
The forest was thick but with little underbrush, blue-green trunked trees - or whatever they were - towering above Ash's head. Okran was an industrial world, covered with sprawling complexes of factories that pumped out, among other things, armoured vehicles and munitions for the Hegemony military. But there were still these pockets of wilderness, clinging to the mountains and valleys. All the better for Hunter Team and friends. The Hegemony wouldn't be expecting an Alliance incursion this deep into their territory, but there was still a sizeable garrison on world - and one that didn't exactly have its feet up.
Thanks to their new buddies, the Sons of Akhato.
The Marines had arrived at the rendesvous first, setting up a quick perimeter. There was little joking now - even Jaz was serious, everyone scanning their sectors and communicating in hand signals. They had cloaks but Ash didn't want to waste their suit batteries this early on. The forest was full of the soft sounds of alien wildlife - chittering, clear tones of unfamiliar birdsong - but they were still and silent.
The Sons of Akhato arrived on foot. They were in battered hardsuits or even just vests, carrying rifles and ML-77 rocket launchers, and their faces were wary and skittish, like hunted animals. Given what the Hegemony did to its dissidents she couldn't exactly blame them.
Their leader, a scarred batarian with a dull green complexion and eyes that jumped around so much that it made Ash feel vaguely sick, came towards them, his hands clenched around his rifle. His top eyes flicked to Pacwanar and then away. Ash had 'borrowed' a suit of batarian armour from the Anhurians and told the Colonel to leave his helmet on during the operation. She didn't have a doubt that the Hegemon had put a price on his head.
Honestly, it was pretty fucked that he was even on the mission. He was hurt and Ling had protested stringently. But Maetok had insisted and Pacwanar had refused to ask to be left off the mission.
Noble idiot, and that wasn't something she'd ever thought she'd say about a batarian.
"Saen," The scarred batarian said, and she wasn't sure if his tone was exactly welcoming, "It's been a long time."
"It has. Are you and your men ready?"
The batarian glanced over his shoulder at his fellows, "Yes. The pieces are in place. And what we discussed?"
The salarian had painted over the Spectre symbols on her armour, like all the identifying marks had been removed from Hunter's armour, and her facial expressions were hidden by the glossy black of her visor. "Don't you trust me?"
He grunted. "Trust a Spectre? Never."
"You'll get what you want," Maetok assured. Beside Ash, Sūn shifted uncomfortably.
"Good."
"Williams, this is Sorag Rafkah, leader of the Sons of Akhato on Okran. Rafkah, this is Williams."
Ash held out a hand to shake but he ignored it. "Alliance."
He said that like it was a dirty word.
"…yeah."
A quiet exchange took place, the Marines handing out night vision filters and explosive satchels to be used against the garrison and local comms stations.
"Come with us," Rafkah's voice was flat and cold, like a sheet of metal rolling out, "We will show you the facility."
Ash gestured for her Marines to move out and fell into step beside Maetok, Rafkah on the Spectre's other side. Night was falling as they walked, leaves and twigs crunching under foot, following the serpentine roll of the ridgeline above. The sky was a riot of reds and yellows as Tolorak, the star for which the whole system was named, dipped towards the horizon. Lengthening shadows followed them.
After a good twenty minutes walking, Rafkah led them to a rocky outcropping ontop of the hill line they'd been followed. Ash and Maetok followed him out, scuttling behind cover - and there it was, about a kilometre away. The research facility holding a weapon not like anything the galaxy had seen before. At least, not since the Battle of the Citadel.
It had been built close enough to the nearby town of Ufrask for logistical simplicity, but far enough away to discourage casual observation. It was a single large, low building surrounded by a tall wall overlooked by guard towers and a few blocks of prefabs. Barracks and garages for the scientists and guards? The forest nearby had been cut away, leaving only bare dirt and bladed grass. She watched as a single batarian IFV made a slow circuit - a vehicular patrol - dust churned up by its wheels.
She raised her rifle. A thick fingered hand came down on the barrel. She barely resisted the instinct to smack Rafkah right in the face for that.
"Hands off," she hissed lowly.
"It's not time to shoot," he retorted.
"Have you people never heard of recon? I'm a sniper, not a trigger happy idiot. Hands. Off."
He grimaced and released the Saber. "I don't know you. Or your competencies."
"Well, count yourself lucky. Last guy who tried to grab my rifle ended up with a bullet in his head." She knelt behind one of the rocks and looked through the scope again. There were a total of ten evenly spaced guard posts, each with two men in them, and a machinegun pit on the main gate. Inside she could see moment. Foot patrols.
Noting everything she could, she then scrambled back towards the rest of the MSOT, Rafkah and Maetok following. Sūn and Pacwanar quickly joined them. After a few muttered words from Maetok, Rafkah and the other Sons of Akhato melted away into the forest - rejoining the other rebels staging for their diversionary attacks.
"We've got about a klick of open terrain to cross to get to their wire," Ash told them, voice pitched low, "About a platoon is my guess, at least one IFV. We'll approach from the south-west where only one of those towers can see using the cloaks, after our friends here launch their attack. Doesn't look like any concertina wire has been placed, so we'll kill the sentries and climb it. Chou, I want one of your little friends watching over the wall when we're getting over it."
She got nods in replies.
"Remember. Move fast, hit hard, don't fuck up."
Ash laid on her stomach in the dirt, Saber cradled in her arms, distant gunfire cracking over the hills. The rebels had gotten their attack off to an explosive start, putting three ML-77 rockets into the patrolling IFV. The base echoed with the blaring of an alarm. Now Ash looked through the scope of her rifle at one of the sentries. He was shifting from foot to foot, body language screaming anxiety and glancing in direction of the ongoing firefight.
Beside her stretched out Brains, the Korean Corporal as quiet as she was, his figure obscured by the cloak - but lit up in an outline of blue by her HUD, a measure to make sure cloaked soldiers didn't lose where friendlies were. Mun was usually a pointman, but with Lewandowski…gone, he was the second best shot in the team. His Valkyrie was aimed at the other sentry.
She breathed and gently squeezed the trigger twice. The batarian's shields shattered and then he dropped. Beside her Brains fired a split second after she did, his Valkyrie burst taking the top off the other sentry's head.
She rose to her knees and signaled for the others to move. Chou's little recon drone buzzed up and over the wall. Sūn led Charger's Raiders forward and in short order they'd heaved themselves up and over the perimeter wall.
In the distance there was a rumble of mortar fire.
It felt callous, but God did she hope the Sons of Akhato lasted long enough for their team to complete their mission. The rebels had been fighting the Hegemony for years and deserved props just for surviving, but guerillas in an open fight with conventional troops? Shit.
Next was Hernandez and her element, then finally Ash and Brains followed. When her feet hit the dirt on the other side of the perimeter wall, there was another dead batarian in Hegemony Army armour. One of her Marines had stuck a knife through the vulnerable neck of his hardsuit, down through the join of shoulder and neck. Best way to stab a batarian if you got the angle right and went behind the sternum, right into the heart. Humans, it was better to stab upwards into the heart from behind, if they weren't wearing armour, sideways into the neck and into the skull if they were, but the batarian skull was heavy and shaped differently.
Dead bodies invited attention, but the guards would be distracted, hopefully.
There, a door like Pacwanar had said there would be on this side, leading deeper into the facility. Charge got the door open in short order with one of his many tricks - a lock breaking program he swore by - and the Marines filtered into the building. The corridor was long and thin, claustrophobic with twelve Raiders, a batarian and a Spectre in it.
"Where?" Maetok hissed at Pacwanar.
The batarian pointed up the corridor, "Deeper. There's a hangar of sorts, where the weapon is being built. There will be checkpoints, scanners."
Charger patted his webbing. "I got solutions for those."
Ash imagined some of said solutions included explosions.
The far door opened - and Ash heard the sudden stutter of a conversation coming to an end. She expected to hear the dulled retort of gunfire courtesy of the suppressed M-11 pistols her Marines were carrying. But nothing came.
She burst into the room, her own M-11 raised.
Two men stared at the sudden appearance of armed people in their checkpoint. Two human men, with slave collars around their necks. Charge began to say something but then -
"Intruders! Intruders in the facility!" one shrieked into his omnitool. He died a moment later when Maetok shot him in the chest. The other scrambled for a rifle left leaning against the wall and Ash's own pistol rose, almost without through, and put a bullet through his skull.
"Fuck me," Molina summarised.
Maetok whirled on Charger, "They're chipped, wheel break you! Chipped or brainwashed!"
"They were slaves, I can't just-"
"They are the enemy," The Spectre snarled. "And you will kill them-"
"Enough!" Ash snapped, cutting off the burgeoning argument, glancing between the furious Spectre and the shame-faced sergeant. "We don't have time to argue about this. They know we're here now, so we better fucking move it. Go on!"
In the next room, the batarians were waiting for them. Gunfire met them as the Raiders pushed in from the doorway. She could barely think to look around the room - a mess hall of some kind, overturned benches and tables - for the way her shields shrieked as they depleted. "Flash em!"
Hernandez reacted quickest and tossed out a flashbang, followed by two more from Molina and Kouvelis. They went off in sheets of brilliant light and the six batarians at the other side of the mess hall screamed and staggered, disorientated. Then, it was more like an execution than a firefight.
"I'm hit," Brains gasped out, after the gunfire ceased, "but I'm okay. Just a graze, I can keep going."
"Slap some medigel on it and let's keep going," Ash told him.
"Does anyone hear that?" Corpsman Okri asked.
She heard it. The sound of scrambling, low groans twisting from another corridor. Her stomach dropped.
"Oh, fuck me, husks!" Jaz called out. Ash dropped her Saber, letting it hit her chest solidly, and grasped for her shotgun. The door slid open and it boiled with husks, with grasping hands and soulless eyes and gaping mouths like soundless screams. These ones were batarians, deformed and swollen from the change, four eyes blazing with blue light.
They fell as Hunter Team opened up, ripped to shreds, but the behind them came more, clambering over the dead heedlessly. Ash fired, fired - but they were crashing into the team, getting all mixed up with her Marines, and there was nowhere to go. She couldn't direct them, she couldn't - she could only try to stay alive. Her shotgun shrieked, heatsink full, but there was no time to reload. A husk lunged at her, clawed hands reaching for her.
Ash smashed at its head with the butt of the Crusader with desperate, frantic strength. Its head caved in like a rotten fruit. As soon as it dropped another was throwing itself at her. She drew her sidearm and shot it in the legs, and then in the head when it fell.
Silence.
Fuck. Fuck, she hated fighting husks. Hated how it got under her skin like nothing else did, hated how she heard those groans sometimes when she slept.
Someone was crying. She turned. Okri, on his knees. A blue-armoured figure was still on the ground, helmet visor caved in and neck at an unnatural angle, dead husks pulled off and piled haphazardly aside.
"Doc," Okri gasped, as he tugged at the other man's armour, trying to get down to the chest so he could do compressions. "Doc, man, c'mon."
Her eyes were drawn to the biosigns displayed in her HUD. Hospital Corpsman Second Class Xu Ling was a flat blue line. She felt cold all over. Ling, who'd been on the Normandy before she'd stepped aboard, always coolly professional, always coolly determined to bring Marines home alive.
"Okri," Sūn laid a hand on Okri's shoulder, but the younger man shrugged him off.
"We have to keep moving," Maetok said impassively.
"Fuck you!" Okri snarled, "Cold bitch!"
There was a tense silence among the Marines, something ugly and wrathful bubbling up. Did Maetok realise? Did she even care?
"We have to continue the mission," Ash's voice snapped the tension like a breaking rubber band and regret was heavy in her chest, "Activate his beacon and we'll come get him when we're ex-filtrating." The cold, hard truth was that Okri could try to revive Ling, but his goddamn skull was crushed, and they just didn't have the time. And they couldn't carry his body with them.
"But-" Chou began.
"You heard the boss," Sūn said, "Let's get moving, now!"
She didn't look at Jaz. She didn't want to know what she'd see in his eyes.
After that a dark grim energy took over the Raiders. There were no further hesitations when faced with the enemy - chipped slave or husk or batarian. They punched through the guards, relentless.
And Ash didn't let herself think about Xu Ling or his body, left alone in a dark room full of corpses. She could feel the shape of it - the grief to come, the wound left behind. Another one. Another one while she was still alive.
"Holy shit."
They escaped from the dark, nightmarish corridors into the main hangar, the guards dead or dying. The cavernous room was full of metal - boxes, monitoring equipment, constructions supplies - and in the middle loomed the reason they were here. The weapon. It was at least three hundred metres long, a long thin barrel surrounded by rings and bulges for purposes she didn't understand, and unholy mating of batarian design and Reaper influence. How did you generate dark energy and then direct it?
Well, wasn't up to her to know that, only to destroy it.
There wasn't much time for goldbricking anyway. "Let's set up these charges and get the fuck out of here."
"On it!"
Ash took a knee and the chance to slot a new heatsink into her rifle.
"Boss," Chou jogged over, face drawn behind her visor, "we have a whole lot of incoming according to my scans. At least two platoons. I think they've driven off the rebels."
Which meant the enemy were now both aware of the true threat and free to act on it with their whole strength. Wonderful.
"Sūn!" she shouted, rising to her feet.
"Charges are set," her team sergeant told her, something like satisfaction playing over his face, "They'll definitely destroy the weapon and the labs."
"Then let's go get Ling and get out of here." Once they were at a safe distance, Kouvelis would trigger the bombs, and this whole facility would die in fire.
"No."
The word cut through her thoughts like a knife. She turned to face Maetok, met her dark, glossy eyes. "What do you mean, no?"
She could feel it. The bubbling up of the temper she'd tried so goddamn hard to keep a rein on while working this operation. She'd taken Maetok's jabs, her tests, her orders, what the fuck now?
"The main labs are just up those stairs. We can accomplish our secondary objective."
"Are you deaf?" she demanded harshly, "We have a half company coming down on us, and we already have casualties."
"I'm not asking, Lieutenant," Maetok said sharply.
"Yeah, fuck this." Sūn stepped forward, shaking his head, "I don't give a fuck you're a Spectre. We're her team, not yours." A few of the Marines nodded in agreement.
The loyalty was gratifying, humbling, especially when she wasn't sure she deserved it right now.
"We need to know the extent of their research and the Reaper influence on the bataians," Maetok said sourly, clearly not used to rebellion, "This is our only chance to do so."
Ash, for a moment, wished Shepard was there. The woman she'd known in 2183 had always seemed to have all the answers. It was so much harder when you were the one making the hard calls.
"Boss?" Jaz was beside her, eyes brown and trusting.
"I'll go with the Spectre and retrieve the intel. The rest of you, stay here and prepare get out of here. If we're not back in fifteen minutes, get out of here and make sure those bombs go off."
The Marines didn't like that order, but when she looked at Sūn he nodded. Perhaps he could see it on her face. If this had to be done, she'd do it herself. She wouldn't get another Marine killed in her place.
"Come then," Maetok said irritably, and Ash followed her. They climbed the stairs two at a time, human and salarian. The upper floor was really just office space - now deserted, holo screens still lit up.
"Their main server room," Ash remarked, her translation software lighting up with a translation for the sign on the wall.
"I will take the intelligence," the Spectre replied, "Guard the door."
Ash nodded and turned away, lifting her rifle to a ready position. Five minutes passed and then below her feet, the rumble of gunfire. She hit her comm immediately, "Hunter Seven, this is Hunter Six, sitrep, over."
"Hunter Six, this is Seven. In contact, platoon strength infantry, over," Sūn sounded like he was going for a stroll, damn him.
"Seven, Six. Get out of there, over." She and Maetok had cloaks, maybe they could sneak out. It wasn't the best exfil plan she had, but it was damned better than her Raiders getting pinned by eighty fucking batarian infantrymen. This wasn't a vid. No spec ops unit could survive that.
"Six, Seven. Negative. Your fifteen minutes isn't up, over." Sūn replied.
"Damnit, Tyler-" He'd closed the damn channel on her. She was going to kick his ass all the way back to fucking Sol!
Maetok glided out of the server room. Her eyes flicked over Ash, noting her agitation, "What's wrong?"
"They're engaging that goddamn company. We need to get down there, now!" She turned to go, only to be caught by Maetok's thin hand around her wrist. She was deceptively strong. "What?"
"We've got to get ourselves out of here," Saen's dark eyes were steady, "they'll be overwhelmed soon and us along with them if we don't leave now."
"You go then," Ash snapped, something close to hatred boiling up from her stomach, acrid-tasting, "Mission fucking complete. I'm going back for my people."
"I can't leave without you."
"What?" Of all the things she'd thought the salarian might say, that wasn't it.
"I wasn't just here for the intel or the weapon. I was here to evaluate you."
"You've got to be fucking kidding me." The floor shook with an explosion. "I'm going down there - to my Marines. You can do whatever the fuck you want."
She ran, armoured feet ringing against the stairs, fear rising in her like a tide. Eden Prime had taught that there were far worse things than death, and now she was staring that same old abyss in the face again. Not again.
When Ashley emerged onto the hangar floor, Saen Maetok was on her heels. The air was thick with gunfire and her Marines were pinned at the back of the hangar. There was no time to think. She raised her rifle and shot in the direction of the machine-gunner pinning her guys.
"Smoke grenades, now!" it was the Spectre who yelled, her voice carrying above the mayhem.
Ash fumbled for one and tossed it out. Smoke billowed out, thick and grey, blotting out the forms of the batarian soldiers. "C'mon! Move! Hunter, we are leaving!"
Okri was wounded, she realised, a patch of medigel plastered over his bloody leg, but before she could even think of ordering someone to pick him up, Colonel Pacwanar was there. With a grunt the stocky batarian lifted the human man up and put him over his shoulders.
"Run!"
She hoped that Ling was somewhere warm and kind. She hoped that he'd understand why they had to leave him here, with a burning super-weapon for a funeral pyre.
Codex Entry
Batarian Caste System:
The batarian Hegemony is an exceptionally stratified society, with every batarian belonging to a specific caste, with slavery a key component of said system. In the Hegemony, social status is incredibly important, with a person defined by who is above and below them in the social hierarchy. A child usually inherits their father's caste.
The batarian castes include:
The Noble Caste: the Hegemony's ruling elite, consisting of lords and royalty. Per tradition, Noble Caste batarians are forbidden from many jobs and make up the top officials of the Hegemony's government and military, with the military's officer corps populated almost entirely by the younger sons of noble families and most planets governed by nobility.
The Priest Caste: a caste which one can join, the priest caste is preoccupied with the national, polytheistic religion widespread across the Hegemony. While various batarian religions exist, the priest caste has in some ways become a propaganda arm for the batarian government, preaching social conformity and obeisance to one's social betters,
The Warrior Caste: provider of the majority of the Hegemony's forces, NCO corps and some officers. A warrior caste batarian may not necessarily join the military, but may work as police, commissars, security guards and mercenaries. Many high ranking noble caste batarians have what amount to private armies.
The Slave Caste: batarians born or sold into slavery and owned by batarians of other castes.
Casteless: to be casteless in batarian society is to be less than a person. Most batarians would prefer slavery over the loss of caste. Most alien slaves are considered casteless, giving batarian slaves status over said unfortunates.
