"So, what's so special about this bitch anyway?"
"What do you mean?" Miranda raised an eyebrow at the dark-skinned woman in front of her. As relieved as she'd been that the Illusive Man wasn't going to have her terminated, the months since her meeting with him had been filled with a long series of annoyances.
Right now, the chief among those annoyances was sitting next to her at the conference table wearing a tight black Cerberus uniform and an arrogant smirk. The operative she knew as Maya Brooks was ostensibly her second-in-command on this mission, but really, Miranda knew that she was there because the Illusive Man no longer trusted her to handle this assignment by herself.
Brooks, meanwhile, seemed to have doubts about the value of the whole enterprise. "I mean sure, Shepard's a skilled soldier," she explained, "But she's just one woman. Why is she worth all the trouble we're going through to get hold of her again?"
"I think if you had seen Shepard in action, you wouldn't be so quick to describe her as 'just a soldier,'" Miranda snorted, "But I still take your point. We don't fully understand it, but there's something special about her, something that even the Reapers recognize."
"You know how ridiculous that sounds? What makes you think the Reapers give a shit about Shepard?"
Bloody hell but she couldn't stand Brooks. The woman was a constant pain in the ass, always finding new ways to get under Miranda's skin, never accepting anything she was told. "Have you seen the file on the Collector attack on the first Normandy? It was not random. Shepard was the target. The Reapers, a species millions of years old that has destroyed countless civilizations, put out a hit on one person."
Brooks shrugged. "All right, if you say so. So we want her back on our team. But what about all this breeding nonsense? Why not just take a genetic sample from her and use it ourselves?" She gives Miranda a leering expression. "I bet you'd look good knocked up."
Miranda let that remark go by without comment. "Unfortunately, while I was able to alter Shepard's physiology so that she was capable of impregnating others, her new seed is relative unstable. It can't survive for any length of time outside of her body, meaning that we require a more hand's-on approach so to speak if we want her offspring."
Maya shook her head. "So you're saying that we're stuck on this assignment because your work on Shepard was substandard?"
With a snarl of frustration, Miranda stood, shoving her chair aside and grabbing Brooks by the shoulder. Maya tried to block her, but Miranda shoved her hand aside and slammed her subordinate against the white, metal wall of the conference room. Her forearm pressed against Brook's neck, and she could feel the fragile pulse of the woman's breath. It would be so easy to press just a little bit harder and crush her trachea, but that would be ill advised. Cerberus certainly gave their supervisors some leeway in dealing with troublesome subordinates, but if this "Brooks" was really the Illusive Man's new pet, killing her was out of the question for the time being.
"Now you listen closely to me," Miranda growled, her voice low and dangerous, "I know what you're doing on this project, but until the Illusive Man says otherwise, I am still in charge here." She increased the pressure slightly on Brooks' trachea. "And you will respect the chain of command."
She moved her arm back, but all she got from Brooks was more lip, her effort at intimidation clearly having failed. "And what if I don't?"
Miranda let Brooks go, but not without a final sneer. "Then you'll be reminded why you should." They'd been doing this dance for weeks now, and Miranda was nearing her breaking point. She just wasn't sure what she was going to do when she finally cracked but if she couldn't kill the woman, she supposed she'd just have to get creative.
Liara knew she should be getting more done, but over the last few months, she'd been having a surprisingly hard time concentrating on work. Intense horniness wasn't really a good excuse for not being able to focus on exploring the prothean archives here on Mars, but that didn't change the reality of her situation.
Before she had met Commander Shepard, Liara hadn't had any sexual experience outside of her own hand; she hadn't realized what she was missing out on. Shepard of course had changed all that, but after her lover had died, grief had overcome the asari's newly discovered desires. As much as she missed the intimacy they had shared, the woman she wanted to make love with had been gone and Liara hadn't had the heart to consider another partner.
Now it was different. Her body seemed to know that Shepard was alive and it craved the Spectre's touch more than anything, certainly more than the limited relief Liara could give herself. Most species found the pleasure achieved with a partner superior to that obtained by masturbating, but for the asari, the difference was especially sharp. While they could climax without the meld, it was simply not as satisfying absent the sharing of pleasure and love that the joining brought. Still, with Shepard being kept under house arrest on Earth by the Alliance, Liara had no choice but to make do as best she could.
A slim blue finger traced up her inner thigh, stroking over the especially sensitive scales that surrounded Liara's azure and clitoris. They were already slick, and when her finger ran over them, she murmured softly with pleasure. The Shadow Broker was desperate for more stimulation, and even though she knew that she couldn't get what she really wanted that way, she still couldn't bring herself to stop.
Her fingers pressed down against her scales, slowly making their way to her clit. When she finally arrived, a shock of pleasure ran through her body, and she closed her eyes, trying to imagine she was somewhere else. Liara traced small circles over the shaft of the clit, and as she did, the cramped little room the Alliance had given her on Mars started to fade away.
Instead, Liara was back on the Normandy, and the bed wasn't the narrow, hard thing she was really laying on, but the expansive, soft one in the captain's cabin of the SR-2. She dipped a single digit inside her azure, and for a moment, she could almost believe it was Shepard touching her. It was Shepard's practiced finger that probed inside her azure, Shepard who found the perfect spot along her inner walls to make her clench down around the digit.
Feeling her own wetness, Liara added a second finger and gasped at the increased fullness in her azure. As she stroked herself, she called to mind the image of Shepard's face in front of her, of her pale, freckled features framed by red locks of hair, of her green eyes burning with lust as she fingered the asari.
In her mind's eye, Liara looked down Shepard's beautiful, toned body, and saw her long cock throbbing with need between her legs. "Go on," Liara whispered, "I'm ready. I want you inside me." She pushed a third digit into herself, the tight entrance to her azure stretching around her fingers. She tried to imagine that it was Shepard's shaft filling her, and even though it didn't feel the same, when she ground her palm against her clit and started to thrust inside herself, she could almost imagine that she was making love with her commander.
The asari's other hand went to her breast, massing her stiff, blue nipple, and she bit down on her lip to stop herself from crying out and disturbing her neighbors in the adjoining rooms. Need, though, was overtaking her, and Liara sped up her thrusts, trying to imagine Shepard's weight on top of her, to feel the wet sensation of her tongue running along Liara's neck as they fucked. She moaned at the thought, no longer able to contain her pleasure, and with a low whisper of her lover's name, she peaked, her azure pulsing around her thrusting hand even as the fantasy faded.
She couldn't pretend anymore. Without the meld, without feeling Shepard's pleasure alongside her own as she climaxed, without her commander's love echoing in Liara's thoughts, the Shadow Broker knew that she was alone. Her shudders ceased and Liara wiped her hand clean before getting up from her bed and making her way back to her terminal. That hadn't been what she craved, but hopefully her solo session would buy her a little peace of mind to get some work done. She and the other researchers at the archives had begun to find hints of some kind of prothean device, a weapon on a scale Liara had never seen before, and despite the fact that the throbbing between her legs hadn't entirely subsided, she had to get back to work.
The burst from her Avenger went right into the yawning maw of the Reaper creature and blew out the back of its head in a spray of ichor. It toppled to the ground dead, joining the growing pile of such corpses on the ground in front of the Spectre. Unfortunately, what those things lacked in toughness they made up for in numbers and as she fell back behind the fallen chunk of concrete that was serving as makeshift cover, Shepard was starting to become concerned.
"Anderson!", she barked as her former CO emerged from cover long enough to put two pistol rounds into a Husk that had been rushing at his position behind a pile of rubble. "Where the hell is the Normandy?"
"Why?", he teased her, "You getting tired already, Shepard?"
"Not at all, sir." In spite of the horror surrounding them, a small part of her felt good about being back in action after months of being forced to wait and worry. With a practiced motion, she popped up, firing a concussive shot that knocked down a couple of Cannibals before she finished them off with assault rifle fire. "Just worried about the ammunition situation. Running a bit low over here. What about you?"
A shot from one of the creatures further away slammed against her shields and as the impact shock ran down her arm, she dropped out of their line of fine. "Suckers pack a punch, don't they?"
"Anderson!" When he didn't answer, she looked over to see two more Husks grappling with the admiral and with a primal battle cry, Shepard launched herself in his direction. Another blast from the Cannibals sent a wave of pain through her torso, but her shields held and she kept stride, crashing omni-blade first into one of the Husks, opening it from torso to neck. Anderson managed to force the other one off of him, throwing it to the ground before finishing it off with a headshot.
Shepard yanked him to the ground ahead of the expected Cannibal fire, but it never came. From high above, a wave of destruction fell in front of them as the Normandy descended from the sky on the Reaper forces like a gleaming bird of prey.
She shouted, "Let's go," to Anderson, and the two of them dashed across the broken landscape together as a ramp lowered from the ship and Ashley appeared at the entrance to the shuttle bay.
"Welcome back, Shepard", Lt. Williams told her as she fired bursts from her assault rifle at the surviving enemy troops.
"Thanks." In spite of their past differences on Horizon, she was glad to see Ashley again, especially now.
"Shepard." She looked back to see that Anderson was paused on the other side of the gap leading to the Normandy's ramp.
"Come on," she shouted. The situation was deteriorating rapidly and they needed to leave.
He shook his head. "I'm not going. You saw those men back there. There's a million more like them and they need a leader."
"We're in this fight together," she protested.
"It's a fight we can't win," he replied. "Not without help. We need every species, and all their ships, to even have a chance at defeating the Reapers. Talk to the Council. Convince them to help us."
She remained skeptical. When in the hell had the Council ever been any use? "What if they won't listen?"
"Then make them listen!", he insisted. "Now go, that's an order."
"I don't take orders from you anymore, remember?"
The admiral reached into his pocket and tossed a gleaming metal object at Shepard. She caught it, and when she looked into her palm, she saw that she held a fresh set of dog tags. "Consider yourself reinstated," he snapped. "Commander. You know what you have to do."
"I'll be back for you," she promised, "And I'll bring every fleet I can." She turned to board the Normandy, but not before adding more softly, "Good luck."
"You too, Shepard," he replied, throwing her a final salute as the ship started to ascend.
He was right about them needing help. As the Normandy gained altitude, she could see more clearly the broader panorama of the destruction the Reapers were wrecking on Earth. Everywhere, buildings collapsed, ships burst into flames, and more people than she could possibly track or save fled for their lives. She had seen the visions of the Prothean extinction, had known what their enemy was capable of, but it wasn't the same as this. The world was coming to an end right in front of her eyes, and if she couldn't find some help, nothing anyone did here on Earth was going to make a damn bit of difference.
The Citadel was a good start; the Council's resources were essential if they were going to have a chance of surviving this war, but it wasn't going to be enough. This had happened before. The Reapers won. Every time they'd won. Sure, she'd stopped Sovereign from letting the galaxy be hit by surprise two years earlier, but that wasn't going to be enough of an advantage. Prothean technology had been more advanced than even the asari's, and they'd still fallen to the Reapers. They'd need more, but looking at the hell outside, she couldn't imagine what could be enough to turn the tide.
As she walked through the shuttle bay, Shepard shook her head. She couldn't think that way. They weren't dead yet, and until they were, she had to believe that there was hope. Besides, there were people depending on her to lead them, and if she didn't keep faith, neither would they.
People like James Vega. The burly soldier walked up behind her, his heavy boots echoing in the empty space, his head clearly filled with questions. "What the hell's going on? Where's Anderson?", he demanded. "Where're we going? Hey!"
She turned and replied simply, "We're leaving."
"Leaving?", he asked incredulously.
Ashley stepped over from one of the workbenches where she'd been adjusting her rifle. "What's going on?"
"Anderson wants us to go to the Citadel, get help for the fight," she told the two marines.
"Bullshit!", Vega exclaimed. "He wouldn't just order us to leave."
"He can see what's going on," she answered. "Without help, this war's already over.
"Than you can drop me off at the nearest depot," James insisted, "Because I'm not leaving.
Enough, she thought to herself. What she knew of James, she liked well enough, but right now his attitude was verging dangerously close to insubordination. "Stow it, Lieutenant," she snapped. "You don't want to go, we get it. But this isn't a democracy. We're going to the Citadel. You want out, you can catch a ride back from there."
He made a frustrated gesture and turned away, but before either of them could say more, a familiar voice broke in over the comm. "Commander."
"Joker?", she asked, relieved to discover that another of her old friends was there with them. "That you?"
"Alive and kicking," her pilot replied, "Got an emergency transmission from Admiral Hackett for you."
She was glad to hear the old admiral was still in the fight. So many had already fallen. "Patch it through."
Hackett's image appeared on the nearby video unit, but both his face and voice were blurred by static. "Shepard… sustained heavy losses… Reaper force was overwhelming… no way we can defeat them conventionally…"
"Anderson's already ordered me to the Citadel to talk to the Council," she informed him.
"First I need you to… Alliance outpost on Mars… Before we lose control of the system…"
She saluted. "Yes, sir." She suspected she'd be making her own decisions most of the time in this war, but there was something comforting about the chain of command in a terrible moment of uncertainty such as this.
Hackett continued. "Been researching the prothean archives… Doctor T'Soni… May have found a way to stop the Reapers… The only way to stop them… Contact soon… Hackett out."
The call disappeared from the screen, but Shepard remained standing in front of the comm unit, slack jawed. Ever since the Reaper attack started, she hadn't let herself think about where Liara was or what she might be doing, trying to stay focused on the task in front of her. Now, the woman she loved, the woman her heart (along with a few other body parts) ached for was almost within her reach, in danger, and might have some way to win this war. In her entire life, Shepard had never wanted to be anywhere so badly as she wanted to be on Mars right then.
Hey, the author here with a few notes:
1) I'm using a generic fem-shep, but to write combat scenes, I needed her to have a class and I decided on Soldier.
2) The last section kept to canon in most places, which I'm normally a stickler for, but since Shepard's, ahem, modifications, trashed that, I made some other changes, notably dropping that stupid kid getting killed and Brooks and Miranda's different roles. More alterations will turn up on Mars.
3) The version of asari sexually I'm using here is slightly different than my normal headcanon, but I felt it fit this story better.
Anyway, hope everyone is enjoying the story and keep reading and reviewing.