Liara and Ashley

Shepard scanned the room a moment before his eyes landed on the aquamarine-skinned scientist. She was the one most familiar with the Mako's communication technology and the probe. A logical choice. The high-orbit drop would be especially hard on an Asari raised in low gravity, but Liara could take it.

"Liara, I'll need you to come along. You have the best knowledge of the technology involved; will you be okay?"

"Yes, commander. Though I do not relish the thought, I will be ready."

Now he needed somebody who could have his back if a fight broke out, just not somebody who was likely to start the fight. He toiled a bit, knowing that bringing Ashley along likely meant a mission full of quiet bickering and resentment. But there was no getting around it, Williams was a capable but levelheaded gunner and her military training prepared her for high orbit drops.

"Williams, you too. Keep the weapons hot but maintain trigger discipline unless I give the order."

"Aye, sir. This isn't my first rough landing." Shepard caught the slight in the statement and only hoped Liara didn't. Williams was at T'Soni's throat harder than usual today for some reason. It wasn't that he thought Liara couldn't take the ****, he knew she could, he just wished she didn't have to.

The drop had gone as well as one could hope, at least by the standards of high-orbit Mako drops. In a mechanical process with the capability to make your lower jaw meet your pelvic bone, the best you could hope for was a process you wouldn't wish on most of your enemies. In Earth gravity, the sensation while in impact locks was still worse than taking a bullet. Shepard's line of work involved taking a few bullets, Shepard preferred that experience. In the moments before gravity fully kicked in, Shepard caught Ashley forming the sign of the cross out of the corner of his eye. When the gravity fully kicked in, Shepard would have too if he could move any muscle in his body. Liara's jaw quietly clenched against the composite mouthguard they were given to keep from shattering their teeth or biting through their tongues. Her face was a twisted struggle of attempted meditative serenity and the furrowed brow of intense stress. Shepard felt something intangible scrape against his mind, an invisible biotic hand brushing against his consciousness. Shepard let Liara's approach in, their minds briefly and blissfully intertwining and embracing. It was soothing, maybe close to as much for him as it was for her. She always did this when she was panicking.

The Mako landed like a bird getting hit by a rocket. Even in full lock with the impact compensation pushed to its maximum, it felt like his skeleton was trying to climb out through the top of his head. He felt Liara's mental embrace slide away as she tried to unscramble her own brains. It took him a moment to feel like a living human being again, but eventually, he popped the button on his harness and stood up. His legs quivered and every joint in his body seemed like it had been done a personal wrong by him, but he was in one piece. The girls slowly rose as well, groaning and grumbling the whole way. Before long, they set the Mako to moving.

The Mako inched along the wasteland-like surface of the red and grey planet. With each bump, rock, and dip the mechanics groaned and screamed. When designing equipment for space exploration, one often must design things with an absolute logical **** in mind. It is unfortunate, then, that nature does not often play by this same logic. On the main console of the Mako, the high gravity compensation readout proudly declared that it was only operating at 75% capacity. The shocks themselves sang a different tune. The Mako shrieked at a snail’s pace even with maximized power output. An hour passed. Then another. They were barely halfway.

The time passed slowly and tensely. There were instruments to read, adjustments to make, calibrations to perform. Every time the Mako groaned and bucked like the planet was trying to exorcise its passengers onto the baking surface, the cabin's atmosphere would grow especially tense for a moment before settling back to gentle paranoia. Under his breath, Shepard blessed the situation for keeping Liara and Ashley from going at each other's throats.

It seemed like a lifetime had passed before Liara croaked the words they'd been quietly begging to hear. "The beacon has entered optical range Commander."

Shepard sighed in relief and flicked a switch, causing the protective shield over the transparent alloy viewing screen to slowly rattle up. Instantly, the cabin was blasted by a wave of **** heat. The polymer alloy was graded to block out 99.9% of external heat sources, by Shepard's scientific reading that meant it was likely extremely fucking hot outside.

Inside a small crater on the blasted nickel surface of the planet sat a twisted hunk of shattered featureless metal. Any decorative painting or markings was long blasted away by whirling chemical wind and scorching sun. Around it there was only debris, no life could be seen for miles.

"So much for a rescue." Ashley murmured darkly.

"Liara, tell me what we're seeing here."

"It's an escape vessel commander, recorded as the Knight. Records say it's registered to commercial shippers, hasn't checked in anywhere in several months."

"How long has the beacon been active?"

"It reads as recently tripped commander, within the past week. It seems to have been activated automatically upon losing pressure when entering the atmosphere."

"I've seen enough, nobody survives that." Ashley interjected.

"If I may speak freely, Commander, for once I agree with Chief Williams." Liara added, eliciting a raised eyebrow from Ashley.

Shepard hesitated a moment, trying to stare a hole into the desiccated husk of the once teapot-shaped vessel. Every instinct in his body told him to pack up and go, but he resisted the urge.

"Liara, ping it back once, generic signal. If we don't get any response in a minute, we leave."

"Commander?" Liara responded, her usual humanitarianism starting to give way to her discomfort.

"Even on the fraction of a chance it's real we have a responsibility. If it's a trap, who better equipped to spring it than us?"

Liara paused, but quietly followed his orders. Though Shepard couldn't help but notice her readying the Mako's turrets as she did. The cabin was silent as the seconds ticked by slowly. Nobody dared speak for fear they would talk over some whisper-quiet plea or sudden alarm of danger. Sweat that had been running continuously down Shepard's neck was beginning to soak into the collar of his stiff military regulation uniform. As much as came from his tension, he had become acutely aware of how much the cabin was starting to boil.

At last, he deemed he'd seen enough, Shepard flicked the switch to re-shutter the viewport. The cabin cooled immediately, though not as much as he would have liked. He punched in the drop zone's coordinates and leaned back in his seat with a sigh. He touched a finger to his earpiece.

"Shore Party to Normandy."

"Joker here, what's the status?"

"Alarm autotripped, if anybody survived the crash, they died a week ago at least."

"Well, not for nothing commander but I got some bad news of my own." The comms buzzed.

"How much worse can the situation get?" Liara asked nervously.

"There's a sun storm coming in about an hour, that whole planet is going to be blasted with radiation."

"You had to ask." Ashley sighed.

"How bad is it Joker?" Shepard said, paying the girls no mind.

"The Mako will be fine but the Normandy can't take that ****, we'll be at a safe distance if we burn at full for most of that time, but that means you guys need to come back ASAP."

"We can't make LZ in that time Commander, we're too slow." Ashley said, a twinge of panic beginning to creep into her tone.

"Then, we are to be stuck here?" Liara added, panic already fully overtaking her tone.

"We can't make that Joker, get the Normandy to safety and come back for us."

"I can take her down there and make an in-atmosphere grab, I've locked on your signal."

"Too risky Joker, the atmosphere will crack the Normandy like an egg. If we burn the engine low we can hold out for longer than it'll take for you to get back."

There was a long silence, finally, Joker responded sounding defeated "Aye aye commander, we'll be back in orbit as soon as we can, but it may be a while."

The crew of the Mako trudged the vehicle back toward the landing zone in defeated silence. It was around halfway to the location where they intended to deploy the beacon that they heard a noise like a thunderclap, followed by the Mako's instruments going fuzzy and then dead. For a moment they sat in the pitch black, silent as the grave. Then the emergency lights kicked in. The cabin switched to life-preserving capabilities only. The temperature rose.

Shepard couldn't sleep, it wasn't even the heat anymore. It no longer mattered if his eyes were opened or closed, his mind was filled with nearly exposed bodies. Ashley always walked around in her sports bra and form-fitting shorts, soaked in sweat. He could make out every crease of muscle in her toned form, her tight ass was always in his face, he was starting to think she was doing it on purpose. She would lounge around with her legs spread, fanning herself lazily. She'd had her hair tied up long enough that it was starting to get ratty, but she had those pouting lips, always slightly parted. Their water was all filtered and re-filtered body moisture so eventually she's given up on conservation and she'd sometimes pour it on herself openly to cool down.

Liara was almost worse, she was plumper, more luscious, big tits straining against her undersized tube top and panties hugging her ass. Shepard caught Ashley taking looks constantly, at first it was pure jealousy, but it quickly just became shameless. She would spend most of each day meditating on the floor, then get up to move and start jiggling with every movement. When her top got wet enough, he could swear he could make out dark nipples poking out against her baby blue skin.

They would try to sleep, always in shifts as there was only one single bunk, but the heat was overbearing. Other times they would try to pass the time with conversation, but they quickly ran out of things to talk about. Ashley was a hero for a day when she revealed a deck of cards she kept in her personal things, but any game they tried to play they would need to teach Liara the rules first, and then they were two humans against a biotic Asari. Losing was frequent and each game only raised suspicions more.

Around the second day, Ashley had approached Liara during meditation and seemed **** enough for anything to do that she'd asked Liara to teach her some of the basics. For almost a full hour they'd sat in silence together, Liara floating slightly off of the ground and Ashley trying her best not to squirm and fidget. When Liara reached out to Ashley with her mind to guide her, Ashley had stormed off. She claimed Liara had "felt up her brain." Liara, for her part, insisted that Ashley's brain was nothing to write home about.

They were fighting more often; Shepard was breaking them up less. He had his own problems to deal with. It was impossible to do anything in the Mako without the other two knowing, even without one of them being a psychic. The bathroom was big enough to stand in and not much else. There was no shower, there was no private bunk. Shepard realized how much he'd started taking these things for granted. He had a well-fitted pair of boxer-briefs, a thin sleeveless shirt, and nowhere to hide the increasingly frequent tents he was pitching. The girls had to know, there was no way they didn't. Ashley was starting to get more physical with him than she usually did. Cutting a little closer when she passed him in the tight midsection of the Mako, tracing her fingers down his arm to get his attention, all kinds of little gestures.

Liara in her own way subtler was trying to tell him something. She'd switch between laughing too hard at his jokes to completely fumbling everything she was saying around him. At times he'd feel her mind gently brushing against, intangible hands on his body faintly. She would embrace his mind, then start to push herself inside, when their minds truly touched, he could feel waves of hormones crashing inside of her. As shy as she was, there was a fire inside her. He would dream about her, probably because she wanted him to. Dreams of them alone on some romantic getaway interspersed with scenes of them pounding and pawing at each other with **** fury, fucking like they had something to prove to each other. He always woke from these dreams with his hands shaking, his cock straining against his clothes in agony. She always looked at him innocently afterward, expression blank like a baby animal. But her eyes always betrayed her. They were almost taunting, reminding him of what they both wanted.

How much he or any of them slept was hard to say. In rare moments where Liara or Ashley was in the back trying to sleep Shepard would be left alone with the other, they'd act like there were checking consoles or filling out datasheets while they fucked each other with their eyes. As much as all of them wanted nothing more to slide away to a quiet shower with their hand or somebody else's head between their legs, the bunk was ten feet from the main console where the two waking crew members worked. Every sound traveled, nobody dared to do what they were all thinking of.

It was only a matter of time before somebody made the first move.