The tunnels smelled like refuse, stale sweat and forced sex. But over all of that was the smell of blood. It's sharp tang hovered heavy in the air, and clung to her armor where bits of human and batarian flesh stuck in grotesque rivulets. It was in her hair – her helmet had been crushed about fifteen minutes before, and was currently laying against a wall a short distance behind her – and smeared across her face. Only long hours of training kept her from curling up in a corner and weeping.
The tunnels smelled like Mindoir.
There was some satisfaction, however, in cutting down the batarians in front of her. It was tempered by the losses the teams had suffered. Over forty percent of the troops Kyle had sent into the bunkers had been wiped out.
In the day between when they'd discovered the tunnel entrance and when Kyle had finally given the order to move out, a batarian reconnaissance team had discovered evidence of their landing on the moon. Rather than hunting them down, however, they had shown more brains than Lillith was willing to given them credit for. They'd fortified the tunnels, and by the time the teams had come in, the place was a maze of traps. Over half of Kyle's team had died before they'd gone ten feet. Twenty percent of Havensworth's team had gone as well. Lillith had managed to save all but three of her own people in the initial entrance simply by shoving the lot of them back up the stairs before the tunnel had exploded.
She'd lost track of her kill count, and now just kept a list of her team's casualties. Casey was lying in a pool of blood twenty-six feet behind her.
She supposed that part of the reason her team had been doing so well was because there were so many N-graduates in it. Over half of them were. When they'd been deployed, she'd assumed they'd be broken up. She was the highest graded, but not the highest ranked, which had made her reluctant to take command. Kyle was supposed to have separated them, splitting them evenly for any ops. Instead, he'd grouped them together for reasons only he could know. Jealousy was the most likely idea, Shepard thought.
They rounded a corner and Shepard sent her drone out ahead. They followed the sound of screaming, and took out another group of batarians.
"This is Red leader to Blue leader, come in Blue leader," her comm squawked with Kyle's voice.
"This is Blue leader. Waddya want, Major?" she answered, her pistol sending a round between a batarian's two right eyes.
"Full retreat. We had to back out completely. You're to rendezvous back at base. We're going to have to take care of this another day."
"Negative, Major. We're almost done here."
"Those tunnel run for miles, Shepard. Get your team out of there."
Shepard overloaded an officer's shields and Jones took him out with a well placed shot to the neck. "I'm sorry, sir," Shepard answered over the perfectly clear channel, "but you're breaking up. Can you repeat?"
Jones glanced at her. She was only getting one half of the conversation, but from Lillith's tone she knew the younger woman was lying.
"I said get your sorry ass back to base, Lieutenant."
"I'm losing you sir. We'll meet you back at base when we're done here." She switched the comm off, and ran a batarian that was sneaking up behind Jones through with her omni-blade. "We're spreading out," she called to her team. "We don't have backup, so move carefully, move quickly, and don't leave a goddamned batarian standing. Slaves are secondary."
The batarians had been using some of their human slaves as shields. They pushed rows of young men, woman and children in front of them, shooting at the soldiers from between their heads. The terrified civilians had jerked with the sound of every round fired. Lillith had lost six men before she decided to stop worrying about civilian casualties.
Not a single soldier had died in her team while the batarians used that tactic again. Of the civilians, only one had survived. Discovering that the human wall wasn't working, the batarians had begun shooting though the slaves, to avoid exposing themselves.
"What did the major say?" Jones asked as the rest of the team flared out, half heading down the right tunnel, the rest following Shepard down the left.
"He said a lot of shit. I'm not going to leave this half done because he's an idiot, though."
"They'll court-martial you," Jones answered, eyes glued on the soft glow cast my the drone that bounced off the damp walls.
"They wanted the batarians dead, they'll have them dead. They can't court-martial me for following orders."
Jones eyed her critically, but didn't say another word. They sidestepped a canister rigged to explode, and Lillith shouted for someone to make sure that got defused. If they had to make a hasty retreat, she didn't want to get caught by it on the way back.
The sound of sobbing echoed down the hallway. It was interspaced with screams, high-pitched and painful. Silently, Lillith directed part of her remaining men to head across the t-junction they found themselves at, and then looked around the corner. The hall was empty.
It dawned on Shepard suddenly that they hadn't encountered any resistance since they'd split. She checked her comm, and radioed the other team.
She got no reply.
"Fuck it, Kipling, answer me!" she hollered into the comm, disregarding all protocol. There was just static on the other end. "Shit," she murmured, and looked down the hall again. She could see movement in one of the windows. The hall was lined with glass cages, like at a zoo, and she saw a collection of species held inside them. Asari, turian, human. A handful of batarians, even. "Kipling, last chance, a-hole. Status report."
She met Jones' devastated stare as she got only more static.
"I think we're on our own," she whispered, not letting any of the non N-grads hear her. She didn't trust them not to panic.
"Listen to Kyle, Lil. Let's get out of here."
"Let's try to get these guys out if we can. Hold the tunnel," she said, then louder, "Gently, with me."
It was quick work to release the prisoners, killing the two in the far cell with a young asari. Opening the doors didn't even set off an alarm. She smelled a trap, but she ignored it. They'd get these people out, and make a second push after they were safe. Her comm crackled as she reached the last door.
"Pard...this...Kip...suc...way," it stuttered brokenly.
She had no idea what he was saying, but she knew Kipling's voice even under all the static. "Kipling, you jerk!" she sighed with relief as she led the shivering asari with a broken arm and a biotic supressor around her neck back toward her team.
"Can't...out. Rock...fer...nic. Vo...soon. Kip...t"
"That better be that you're on your way. We're going to be just passed the dead-end with the open cages. You'll probably see Gently, I'm sending him back with some civilians. Send your wounded with him. Hurry up, Kipling."
"They're okay?" Jones asked as Gently headed back the way they'd come with the dozen former slaves and the team continued on down the tunnel.
"Seems like it. Can only hear one word in ten I think."
"Well, at least there's that."
The tunnel opened up into a large room. A half-dozen large, steel doors circled it. She didn't have enough people, even if Kipling rejoined her, to cover them all. She ran a hand through her hair, wincing as the dried blood stuck in her fingers.
She motioned for her team to spread out. They'd have to move methodically – and quickly – to avoid being slaughtered like the others. She walked slowly around the chamber, running gloved fingers over the carvings in the walls. They were crude, and very recent. During sensitivity training way back in the weeks following basic, she'd been forced to sit through the art, culture and history of all known major alien players. Asari paintings, Turian music, Salarian sculpture – all of it had been paraded before her with a brief overview of their respective modes of government and death rituals. On the last day, almost as an afterthought, they'd had a two-hour lesson on the batarians. They didn't know much, the quirky, overeager instructor had told them. The hegemony stifled creative thinking, limited citizens access to any outside source. All art, music and theater was approved by the government before ever being seen by the populace.
But, the man had continued, they had some knowledge of it from bunkers and holds outside the government's domains. Slavers brought with them the culture of their parents, and in low moments when they weren't out killing humans just for the fun of it – that was Lillith's take on it anyway – they carved and painted scenes from their homes.
This was what was on the walls here. Simply drawn images of batarians in fields of some blue corn-like vegetable, children playing in evening light of two setting suns. It wasn't the sort of crude drawing she would have normally associated with the monsters she remembered from Mindoir, the monsters she had fought time and again for the Alliance. She wiped Casey's blood from her cheek, where it was beginning to congeal, and wrote crudely, what she thought of the paintings.
"Shepard?" Jones said, coming up behind her. "I think there are families here."
"Families don't get out of batarian space," Shepard answered, drawing an image to go with her quick sentence. This was in batarian blood, wiped from her armor.
Jones tapped her shoulder, and handed her a toy – a small truck, from the looks of it. Wheeled, like some places on Earth apparently still used, and like most toy cars still were. This one had a small batarian driver in civilian clothes inside, and batarian writing along the side of the truck bed.
As Lillith spun the truck in her hands, a door at the far end of the room opened. A woman, batarian, but clearly female, walked out of it, and stopped dead. A dozen weapons were suddenly pointed at her, and her arms went up, her four eyes blinking quickly.
Lillith saw a spray of blood from the woman's head.
She heard the woman's scream as she watched the body, already dead, crumple to the floor.
She smelt ozone.
She felt the warmth of her gun in her hand.