Two Days Ago…
The first indication Maya Brooks had that something was wrong was the darkness in her cabin. Before she could wonder what why the lights hadn't turned on though, one of her wrists was grabbed, a strong hand bending it behind her back.
"Hello, Maya." Miranda's voice was low, practically a growl.
"What do you want?", Brooks hissed. Miranda didn't frighten her. The woman couldn't kill her and they both knew it.
"We're going to be on Mars in two days." Miranda twisted Brook's wrist slightly, eliciting a satisfying yelp from her nemesis. "And this mission is going to be a great deal more difficult than you seem to realize. Getting in past the Alliance, retrieving the data, capturing the asari, and getting out of the system before the Reapers block our access to the relay is not going to be a simple task."
Instead of replying, Brooks twisted her lithe body, using her left leg to sweep out Miranda's feet. The operative released her grip as she fell and Brooks spun around and dropped on top of her. She positioned herself on the taller woman's torso, and before Miranda could stop her, Brooks had hold of her wrists. "I know your plan, Lawson. Don't you worry your vapid little head any; I'll be ready for any surprises. As you can see, I always am."
Ignoring the smaller woman's taunts, Miranda wrenched one of her legs far enough free to bring it up and kick Brooks in the back. While she was distracted, the operative got her arms loose and before Maya could try and reestablish her grip, Miranda summoned a light biotic pulse that caught her clean in the face.
"You're good," Miranda said coldly, turning the lights she had overridden on with a gesture. "I'll give you that. But you underestimate your opponents and you don't play well with others, neither of which is helpful to this mission."
Though Maya's head was swimming, through the haze, she could feel Miranda's hand running up and down her tight, black uniform, appraising her curves. All right, she thought to herself, it that's where Miranda was taking things, then fine, she could work with that. "Really? You'd be surprised how well I can play with others," she teased the operative.
Miranda smirked to herself. Brooks had taken the bait. "Show me."
Shaking her head clear of the effects of the biotics, Maya rolled up to a sitting position and grabbed Miranda's face in her hands. Her kiss was fierce but Miranda didn't yield an inch, and when she'd had enough, she pulled Maya's head back roughly, exposing her vulnerable neck. She bit the tan skin there before running her tongue over the mark that her teeth left.
Brooks groaned slightly at the mixture of touches and Miranda ripped open her shirt, unconcerned with preserving the buttons when she did. Beneath it, Brooks hadn't bothered with a bra and Miranda traced her finger along the bottom of one of the pert brown tits that was now exposed to her sight. Maya sighed, and Miranda took a dark nipple between her fingers, pinching a little at first before caressing the tip more gently. It hardened up nicely under her touch, and Miranda enjoyed the feeling of control, of making the normally difficult woman respond to her ministrations.
Maya moaned, a little more than she meant to. Miranda might have been insufferably arrogant, but she did know what she was about, and Brooks found herself enjoying her attentions. No harm in that mixing business and pleasure, she supposed as Miranda switched breasts.
Just as she started to get into what Miranda was doing though, the operative abruptly stopped. Brooks raised an eyebrow, and Miranda laughed. "There you go, just like always, forgetting who's in charge. I thought you were going to prove how good you were."
Brooks' reply oozed sex. "Indeed I was."
Miranda stood up and unzipped her cat suit, letting it fall onto the hard floor before sitting down on Brooks' leather couch. "So prove it."
Looking at Miranda sitting there on her sofa, Maya couldn't deny that the operative's body was magnificent. Firm, full breasts barely contained by her lacy black bra, a well-toned stomach, long, athletic legs, and all accentuated by that imperious stare. Even in her underwear, she still looked like a queen.
Still, Brooks was confident she could get the best of her. A spoiled brat like that, who'd never faced any real adversity, would be easy to manipulate. Miranda already believed most of the world wanted her, and if playing a little kiss and tickle convinced her that Brooks was one of those people, well, there were worse ways to pass the time.
Brooks started walking towards her ostensible leader, but Miranda stopped the woman sharply. "No. On your hands and knees."
Miranda watched with a pleased smile as Brooks dropped to the ground and crawled towards her. While she certainly enjoyed the sight of the arrogant woman prostrating herself, that wasn't the real reason for her smirk. There was no way someone as tough and arrogant as Brooks would really give in so easily. No, what was important was that Maya thought Miranda believed she was beaten.
"Take them off," she snapped when Brooks knelt before her, and the shorter woman reached up and slid down Miranda's expensive black underwear. Beneath them, the operative was shaved and wet, and Maya wasted no time getting to work. Bending over, she parted Miranda's folds with her fingers while her tongue started tracing up and down the hard ridge of her clit.
Miranda sighed happily as Brooks ate her out, absent-mindedly fondling her own breasts through her bra as the tremors of pleasure radiated out from her clit. From the skillful way her tongue hit the sweet spots, the operative could tell hers was hardly the first pussy Maya had serviced. "Very good," she purred, her voice dripping with condescension. "I knew that mouth of yours had to be useful for something other than back talking your betters."
Brooks replied by nipping at her the pale skin of her inner thigh and Miranda closed her fist around a handful of the woman's black hair, giving it a sharp yank. "Now, now," she chastised her, "You were doing good there. You wouldn't want to ruin all your hard work by showing a little cheek."
Maya opened her mouth to apologize, but Miranda gave her hair another tug. "I don't need to hear you talk. Just get back to it." Brooks did has she was told, but as she sucked on the hard point of Miranda's clit, she smiled to herself. Let the little princess think she was getting the best of her. She'd learn otherwise soon enough.
Though the helmet protected her face from the dust storm that they were struggling through, Shepard could still barely see more than 10 feet in front of her face. "Kinda makes this thing useless," she muttered to herself, looking down the Indra sniper rifle cradled in her arms.
Still, she appreciated what the gun represented. She had found it next to the weapon's bench, along with a note from Liara addressed to her hoping that she could make use of it. Her lover had kept faith that she would return to command of the Normandy, and now Shepard needed to repay the gesture by finding the asari before it was too late.
Nobody at the Alliance base had answered their hails when their ship had landed on Mars and so now she, Ashley, and James were making their way there on foot through this goddamn dust storm and she was trying her best not to panic.
She never panicked. Not in combat at least. She could take care of herself, and even if something happened to her, well, when she joined the Alliance, she knew the risks. This was different though. This was Liara. The Shadow Broker had brought her back from the brink of a nervous breakdown nine months ago and if something had happened to her, Shepard didn't know what she was going to do.
"Look up ahead, Commander." The storm had largely passed them by while she'd been worrying and looking in the direction James indicated, she could see a squad of armored troopers. They didn't seem like they were Alliance though, and she pulled up her sniper rifle, using the scope to give herself a clearer look. Through it, she could make out the insignia on the armor.
"Cerberus." Shepard held the trigger down and the trooper toppled over, caught in a hail of rounds from the automatic sniper rifle that ripped through his armor like it was made of old cheese. She'd test-fired it on the ship before they landed, but she was impressed anew with Liara's gift.
Taking their cues from her, James fired off an explosive shell that landed in the midst of the Cerberus troopers and Ashley followed up with an incendiary grenade. Shepard, meanwhile, covered the area with her new toy, sending bursts of armor-piercing rounds screaming into anyone able to get clear of her teammates' explosives. The small squad of Cerberus personnel attempted to return fire, but they were outclassed and taken by surprise. A couple of stray shots tested James' shields, but Cerberus never stood a chance.
Not more than a minute later, she and her people were standing over a pile of enemy corpses along with those of several freshly dead Alliance soldiers.
"Putas!", James cursed, looking at the dead friendlies. Some of the Alliance soldiers hadn't been killed in battle. Instead, they had surrendered, only to be forced to their knees in the dirt and shot once each in the back of the head.
Ashley shared his frustration. "What the hell does Cerberus want here anyway, skipper?" Her tone was accusatory and Shepard didn't appreciate it, especially not right now.
"What exactly is that supposed to mean, Ash?"
"I mean, you used to be with Cerberus and I was wondering if you know what they're doing here on Mars?"
"I used to be with them?!", she sputtered angrily. "I may have worked with Cerberus, but I was never with them. Not like that. Do you know what they did to me? What they planned to do with me?"
The lieutenant replied to her outburst with a puzzled "No," and Shepard realized a second too late that not only did Ashley have no idea what she was talking about, she really didn't want to explain it to her. Liara may have helped her to accept what had been done to her body, but the thought of having it out in the open was still mortifying to the commander.
Maybe an incomplete truth would suffice. "When they brought me back, they did… experiments on me, really messed up stuff."
"Wait, Commander," James interrupted, perhaps having heard rumors from the medical personnel back at the base where she'd been interned, "Is it true that they…"
"You finish that sentence, marine," she snapped, "You'll be taking your meals through a straw." James shut up and she turned to the Alliance facility, barely visible in the distance through the sand. "You two listen to me because I'm only going to say this once. I have no idea what Cerberus is doing here but I'm damn sure going to find out and stop it. Any questions?" Cowed by this break in her usually friendly demeanor, neither of them said anything more. "Good. Now lets get moving."
Even nearly three years after the Geth attack on Therum, it still surprised Liara sometimes how quickly things could go bad. One minute, she had been in the midst of an ordinary day of research on Mars and the next, the reports of the Reaper invasion had started to pour in. The staff of the base had begun preparing for an evacuation, but before they could get very far along, bad had turned swiftly into critical.
Somehow, Cerberus forces had gotten inside their defenses without warning, and now, all that the Shadow Broker could do was try to get to the comm room before they found her. As bad as things were out there with the Reapers, the Alliance had to find the spare forces to send help to Mars. The plans for the prothean super-weapon in the archives might supply the only chance the galaxy had of winning the war, but not if they fell into the hands of Cerberus.
As she approached her destination, she was stopped short by the sound of voices, the kind filtered through a suit of combat armor. "Where is this blue bitch anyway?", one of them complained. "If we don't find her soon, Brooks will have our dicks in a vise."
"She's Shepard's girl, right?", the other leered. "That's gotta be a pretty tasty piece of ass."
Liara's blood ran cold. She had assumed Cerberus was here for the prothean data, but could they be after her as well? She knew the Illusive Man was no fan of hers, not after she had spoiled his plans for Shepard. His attack on her ship at Hagalaaz proved that his animosity had teeth, but with the Reaper invasion underway, would he really…. No. There was no time to worry about such things now. No matter what Cerberus' goals were, her priority had to be raising the alarm with the Alliance.
Liara waited until the footsteps grew slightly more distant before she made her move, ducking out from behind the corner and hurling a singularity at the two Cerberus troopers she saw. Caught by surprise, they found themselves floating helplessly in the air, barely having had time to register her presence before she raised up her pistol and fired a shot into each of them.
There was a third man though, and even as the first two were dropping to the ground dead, he rolled out from behind the corner at the other end of the hall, firing his assault rifle at the asari. She winced as the rounds smacked into her barriers, dropping to the ground to limit her exposure. The trooper seemed to think he had her, because he emerged from his cover, holding his rifle.
"Don't move, you fucking…"
Before he could get any further, she lifted a hand and caught him in a stasis field. Pulling herself up to her feet, she calmly put two bullets into his frozen head before darting into the communications room and closing the door behind her.
She had to move quickly before more Cerberus forces came to investigate the fighting and though, theoretically, she didn't have the Alliance clearance required to make outgoing calls from this facility, as the Shadow Broker, she had long ago learned how to bypass such restrictions. Her fingers flying over the terminal, she placed a call to Admiral Hackett, hoping that he wasn't dead or fled from the system yet. He had always trusted Shepard, and now, Liara would have to trust him.
Saying a silent prayer of thanks to the Goddess when Hackett's blurry image appeared on the screen, she launched immediately into her plea. "Admiral, Cerberus is here on Mars. I know how bad things are but I need you to send help. We can't evacuate on our own and the prothean weapon design…"
He stopped her mid-sentence. "Doctor T'Soni…" It was hard to hear his voice through the interference, but bits were still intelligible. "Appraised of… already… Shepard… En route from…"
The call faded out, but Liara had heard enough. Shepard was coming to Mars. In spite of everything else that was going on, she felt a surge of hope go through her at the news. Surely, her lover would find a way to get through the Cerberus forces and Liara just had to find a way to hold out until she got there.
Her first thought was to call Shepard to give the commander her location, but her attempt was of no use; either she wasn't here on Mars yet or the call couldn't get through all of the interference. Liara moved to the door, ready to find a better place to hide, but outside, she heard voices close by once more.
"Here are the missing troopers, but there's no sign of her yet, ma'am."
"Well, you better find that bloody asari and quickly. And remember, I need her alive." Goddess! Liara knew that voice. Thinking quickly, the Shadow Broker opened her omni-tool back up and entered a quick series of commands, whispering instructions through the connection. This time her message got through and she had to hope that it would be enough, because stuck in a comm room with Miranda Lawson looking for her, Liara was definitely in trouble.