Assault (Red vs Blue)

1: Information Station

1: Information Station

Present Day: The Mother of Invention (Primary freelancer facility/aircraft)

The week had seemed to drag on forever. Everyone on Squad One had long since gotten tired of going through old files. Tex knew she had. Files on Charon Industries, the Insurrection, and even Project Independence had been pulled out from the vaults. The Director had assigned the entire team the task of taking notes on every single file he had on the subject. Though where everyone else had gotten the work load shared with someone else, Tex had been singled out to work on her own.

For some odd reason, she'd been selected to specifically look into Malcolm Hargrove's personnel file. Not to mention the files on the Administrator and the Adviser. The Director almost assigned trying to dig up information on the mercenaries to her as well, but Tex had put a stop to that one pretty quick. Receiving special assignments wasn't what she wanted this time around. She didn't want the Director's special treatment. So when he'd told her not to share her findings with the rest of the team, she did the exact opposite. When everyone else was talking about what they'd found, Tex shared her information as well. It was an act that was luckily keeping her on the team's good side — more specifically, Carolina's good side. Tex wasn't looking to start a rivalry with her again.

"This week could not go by any slower," Washington complained as he and York joined the rest of the team in the mess hall.

"I know. If I have to read another one of those fucking files, I'm gonna lose my mind. I can't take this anymore," York said as the two of them took a seat at the table with their food.

"It should just be another day or two of this," Carolina told him. "Besides, you'll be going to Chorus today. You'll get a break."

Tex sighed, picking at a piece of toast on her tray. "I wish I was up for heading to Chorus. My turn in the rotation isn't until the end of the week."

CT looked at her. "If we were allowed to trade days, I'd gladly switch with you. I've actually fallen behind with going through the files. I could use the extra days to work."

"I'm actually behind, too," Wash admitted as he took a bite of his breakfast. "As much as I like seeing the guys, I almost don't wanna go this time. But I'm also set to meet with the lieutenants today, so I guess I don't have much of a choice."

"That's what you get for being real buddy-buddy with Kimball," York told him. "Now you get to pull double duty."

"Most of us are pulling double duty," North pointed out. "Wash technically is doing triple duty."

"Yeah, that's right. How many different jobs do you have right now?" York mused. "Let's see . . . There's your normal freelancer tasks, then there's helping Kimball out with things, and still checking in on the Reds and Blues. So yeah, three different jobs. Way to go, buddy."

Washington groaned and rested his head on the table. "I'm getting too old for this crap. I should be getting less busy; not more busy by the day."

South made a face at him. "Oh, relax. You're not that old. And we've all been twice as busy before. You can handle it."

"Are we sure about that?" Wyoming asked.

As everyone else continued the light banter, Tex lost herself in thought. It'd been almost a week since she'd last been to Chorus — it'd been almost as long since she'd last radioed anyone there, too. With having to go through the files and training, she'd gotten distracted. Too distracted. And whether Tex wanted to admit it or not, she missed being in contact with the morons. Their pointless bickering was always a welcome distraction from the much bigger, more complicated issues. At times, she wished the idiots were still in Blood Gulch. Or, at the very least, even somewhere like Valhalla. It was someplace for her to escape to when she didn't feel like dealing with freelancer business for a while.