Author's Note: Ok, sorry for the HUGE delay. I had stuff going on last weekend, then I got a bunch of new games, so I gave up and put it off til now. This is my story going back into a balanced state from chapter 2 being released so fast, chapter 7 gets released later. So, don't forget my profile updates daily on story progress, I've got a poll, and...that's it. Enjoy as always!

The job location was a two-tiered hanger, the ground floor a wide open space with some scattered supply crates while the 2nd level consisted of a walkway that lined the edges of the room. It too had a few objects that could easily be used for cover in the inevitable firefight.

I glanced around the room, my eyes taking in the surroundings. I immediately began coming up with an ambush plan, my years of combat experience going to work. If you can call gaming combat experience.

"Ok, well, it looks like the walkways up top are good sniping positions," I said. "The doors leading to the adjacent hangers up there could be a problem though."

"Yeah, people could come through them," Tillman said. "But for a beast like me, that won't be a problem." I heard Jake mutter something about Tillman's statement, but it was just muffled enough from his helmet that it was unintelligible.

"Is there a good place for a shotgun ambush," Alex asked eagerly. "I want to use my power weapon here!"

While Ricky pointed out good ambush points, A.K.A. places to hide from the bad guys, Timmy tried to discreetly move away from the group. He was intently focused on the area, looking for...something. Who knows what he was trying to find, he never really voiced his thoughts too much. He's quiet, and apparently a hand-to-hand combat master. Just like a ninja! Hey, ninja, that could be his codename.

Timmy sidled up next to a wall and began examining it. It looked like he was staring at a specific panel mounted to the wall. Timmy suddenly whipped out his pistol and fired four accurate shots at the corners of the panel. Everyone in the room flinched at the explosion of sound and stared at Timmy. We all watched the panel lean off the wall, then fall flat on the floor, revealing a crawlspace on the other side. Timmy holstered his gun on his waist, then crawled inside the opening.

"Umm...okkk," Jake said. "That was weird." Timmy poked his head back out into the room.

"There's a bunch of little passages down here I can crawl through," he said. "It looks like there are places I could come out through the floor from below, should I surprise our "friends" that way?" My mind was still distracted by how strange the situation was, but I managed to get a response out.

"Sure, I guess," I said. "That'd be good." With that, Timmy gave a curt nod and ducked back into the wall. The rest of us had our eyes blankly staring at the open part of the wall before we turned back to each other.

"Alright, when was the last time that guy saw a psychiatrist," Ricky asked.

"I second that," Alex announced.

"Ok, I admit it," I said. "That was a little odd-"

"More than a little," Evon interjected. I glared over at him, but it didn't do much with the helmets on.

"More than a little odd, fine. But it's a good strategy, who expects the enemy to come out from under your feet?" Tillman raised his hand and spoke.

"I do," he said. I took a guess at the reason he thought that.

"Too much Dead Space, huh," I asked. Tillman nodded his head. I went back to figuring out how we were going to handle this.

"Well, if we have the chance for an ambush," I said, "Then we should probably use it."

"We could all be up on the 2nd floor in a sniping position," Jake announced. "That'd work well, we could take 'em out like that."

"That could work, but what if they got us pinned down? I think we should have a few of us sniping and a couple down on the ground floor with assault rifles." I saw Alex's shoulders slump when I said that.

"Shotguns could be used as well," I said, mostly for Alex's benefit. His mood immediately brightened, as evidenced by his body language. That kid's going to get some sort of Zaeed/Jessie thing going on, I just know it.

"So those who want to snipe, head upstairs," I said. "Those who want to be in the action down here, stay here." Timmy poked his head out of the wall again. "Timmy, you can stay where you are if you want." He silently vanished into the wall again. I never knew that he was so weird, but then again, I'd only ever seen him in school.

Tillman and Jake sprinted for the stairs to the upper level when I said for snipers to go upstairs. They began fighting for the spot with the most cover and viewing range, but it wasn't my problem. Alex unholstered his shotgun and looked at me, giving a silent confirmation that he wanted to be down here. Ricky made a move for the stairs, then stopped to think for a moment. It didn't take him too long before he began moving towards the stairs again, his decision made to stay as far away from the shooting as possible. Evon patrolled the outer area of the ground floor, trying to decide on the best place to be.

I shifted my focus to the minor squabble on the upper floor. Jake and Tillman were arguing over a well-protected area when Ricky walked into the midst of their argument and picked up one of the cargo boxes, carrying it over to a different location. The argument ceased and both Tillman and Jake watched Ricky walk away before they looked back at each other, then grabbed their own box and moved to another position. I smiled at their antics. Life should never get boring with these two around.

I noticed Alex staring me down still, holding his shotgun. I turned my head to face him.

"You know, that is really creepy."

"Where should I go," he asked. "It's too open down here." I looked around the room. He's right, there's practically no cover around here. Evon seemed to have just reached the same conclusion I had, and walked over to me.

"I think we should be on the upper level, then come downstairs when we need to," Evon said. "The wall that prevents people from falling off the side of the stairs makes good cover, and Alex is still close enough to the hanger floor to use his shotgun."

"That's not a half-bad idea," I mused. "We can do that. Let's get into position then." I jogged over to one of the sets of stairs to prepare myself for the upcoming battle.


It had been at least two hours since we had settled into our spots. It didn't occur to me when we got into position that we had to wait a couple of hours until our targets showed up, but that realization set in quickly. We couldn't leave the hanger just in case the dealers showed up early, so we were stuck in a hanger with metal floors and walls while wearing combat armor. There was almost nothing to do. The conversation had dried up a long time ago, so now, everyone was fiddling around with their omni-tools.

I flicked through some of the settings. This thing was incredibly complex, it was a good thing Zaeed had given us all a brief tutorial on how to work them. Except for Tillman, but from the way he was rapidly tapping icons, he seemed to know what he was doing. As I was in the middle of figuring out how to access the extranet, the little phone icon from before popped up on my screen. I looked at quizzically before touching it, wondering who was calling. Tillman's voice emanated from the omni-tool.

"Come over here," he said. "I have something to show you." I stood up and stretched my back, hearing a couple of cracks and pops. Sitting slouched up against a hard crate was really uncomfortable, especially so when you've been in that position for a couple hours. I looked around and saw an armored figure staring at an open omni-tool, but beckoning me over to him. I walked over in his direction. We really have to customize this armor, we all look the same. I crouched down next to Tillman.

"Whaddya need," I asked.

"Give me your arm," he said. Strangely enough, his voice came out of my omni-tool instead of his helmet. I slowly extended my arm out, a bit nervous about not hearing a sound out of Tillman's helmet. He grabbed my arm and furiously typed a sequence into my tool and doing who knows what else. A couple minutes later, he spoke again, but his voice was now coming through my helmet instead of my omni-tool.

"Pretty cool, huh," he asked. I reared back in surprise.

"What the...how is your voice coming out of my helmet?"

"I won't bore you with the details," he said with a dismissive wave of his hand, "But I rerouted the communication feed to go through your helmet speakers. I'm still working on activating and deactivating the external comms, but this would let us have our own private conversations in public places without anyone overhearing us once I figure everything out."

"Wow, that's pretty cool," I exclaimed.

"Yep! Only problem is people can link into our feed and listen in if they're good enough to do that, but I'm pretty sure I can find some program that'll warn us if someone tries."

"Tillman, that is awesome. Can you get the others to have a set-up like this?" He nodded.

"I can do it now if you want me to. I don't have anything better to do at the moment." I called everyone over, including Timmy, who took priority since he had the toughest hiding place.

In the middle of Jake's set-up, Timmy called us.

"We have a problem," he said. I tensed up. He's not stuck, is he?

"What is it," I asked.

"They're here." Everyone immediately scrambled back to their positions, ready for battle. We'd planned and practiced, we were completely ready for this.

"When are they going to get inside the room," Evon asked.

"They are inside," Timmy replied. I frowned.

"Um, no, they're not," I said. "How long have you been down there?"

"When I said we have a problem, I meant it. They're in the hanger, just not this one." Everyone froze instantly. So much for being completely ready.

"What do you mean they aren't in this hanger," Jake asked nervously.

"I can hear them in the hanger next to us," Timmy said. "I know it's them because I heard a ship land, then voices talking about red sand, which is what we're after." My face paled.

"You mean that they aren't coming in here," I squeaked. "Ever?"

"Nope. I can get right underneath them and pop out though, the passageway leads right under their feet." I looked at my friends assembled in front of me, and their helmeted heads turned towards me. I could tell we were all thinking the same exact thing. Oh. Crap.

"We need to go," Alex stated. "Now." I nodded frantically.

"Yeah, yeah," I said quickly. I pointed towards the door to the next hanger. "Tillman, Jake, Ricky, through there. Timmy, you get right under them, and you two-" I pointed to Evon and Alex. "You're with me." I turned and started jogging to the ground floor exit, forcing Evon and Alex to catch up to me.

"Where are we going," Evon asked.

"We're gonna walk in the front door," I said confidently. "See what happens." Underneath the helmet though, I was as nervous as hell. Our plan was in ruins and we were going into hostile territory with no information as to enemy strength or positioning. This is gonna be fun...


I keyed the door access and strolled inside the now open door, Evon and Alex on my six, weapons drawn. Alex had his shotgun out, Evon with an assault rifle. I immediately started to analyze the situation the moment I walked in the door.

There were seven to eight soon-to-be hostiles grouped around a small ship. Half that number was offloading cargo while the other half was standing guard. The guards bristled when the three of us walked in the room.

"The hell are you in here for," one of them asked. "You should turn around right now before I blow your head off." The people unloading cargo stopped what they were doing and drew some pistols off their belts, sensing a fight. It was kind of obvious there'd be one. The men spread out around the center of the room, far enough apart from each other so a grenade wouldn't injure all of them, but close enough to the center of the room that Timmy would be a threat. If that's where he'd even pop out. I glanced up at the walkways above quickly. Hopefully, the three friends I had up there were in position and ready to shoot. It wasn't like I could ask if they were set up.

"You have to the count of three before we shoot," a guard said. They readied their assault rifles. Guess it's time to go all "action movie" on these guys.

"Ok," I said. "You have two options." The guards lowered their weapons slightly. Good, I've got them distracted.

"Option A: You give us the red sand, and we walk out of here quietly, no questions asked. Option B: I make you give us the red sand." The men in front of me all glanced at each other, then burst into laughter when they looked back to me. I stood impassively as they stood laughing. The one who had been speaking was the first to calm himself.

"You know," he said. "I think I'm going to go with option B, just so I can see you fail miserably." I shrugged.

"Your call," I replied. With that, a panel in the exact middle of the room's floor was sent flying skyward, Timmy leaping out of the opening and grabbing a guy by the neck, snapping it instantly. The men took aim to fire at Timmy's sudden appearance when a sniper round penetrated the kinetic barrier and helmet of another guard, causing the dealers to panic. I drew my assault rifle as Alex and Evon opened fire and spread out towards some cover.

Evon used the dividing wall between the stairs to the second floor and the rest of the room for protection while Alex ducked behind a couple of boxes, blindfiring his shotgun. I rushed forward, firing on full auto, spraying bullets everywhere. I noticed the 3 snipers up top were actually using their scopes and taking this seriously instead of trying to do stupid things like no-scoping.

The dealers were on the retreat, backing away towards whatever cover they could find. Once they managed to get behind some boxes, we all realized they were pinned down. As long as we didn't do anything stupid, we had this in the bag.

Timmy was using the man he had killed when he attacked as a meat shield, inching towards the nearest box he could take cover behind. He reached a tall, upright crate and dumped the body on the floor, drawing his pistol to begin shooting. He poked his head out and almost got it shot off, so he pulled back and looked in my direction. I took the hint and laid down some covering fire with assault rifle bursts to keep the enemy suppressed so Timmy could use his ninja skills to take a guy out. As I was shooting, Timmy peeked around the corner and found a guy who was shielded from my bullets, but was open to his own line of fire.

I watched Timmy out of the corner of my eye. He poked his head around the corner, then took aim with his pistol and fired a single shot. I saw a body fall down, dead from a headshot. That guy is a total sharpshooting ninja. Unbelievable.


Jake kept his eye to his rifle's scope. These guys were tricky, they knew there were snipers up top and were keeping their heads down accordingly.

"So, you going to try for a no-scope," Tillman asked. Jake ignored him. This was too important to be joking around. Bullets suddenly began pinging off the crate right next to Jake. He ducked back down, as did the other two snipers.

"Damn," he exclaimed. "That was unexpected!"

"No kidding," Ricky said. "I'll just stay down here so I don't, you know, die." Jake looked over the edge, only to have to duck down again as bullets ricocheted around him.

"I think we're done sniping," he said. "I'm going downstairs." He rushed over to the nearest stairs, head down the whole way. Tillman glanced over at Ricky briefly, then hurridly followed Jake. Ricky let out a sigh.

"Figures they leave me here all alone..."


I finally had to crouch down beneath a container. The bullets gravitated towards anybody left out in the open, which is normal, I suppose. Alex was looking a bit antsy when I glanced over at him. I don't think he managed to eliminate anyone yet, so I guess it was time...

"Alex," I shouted. He looked over at me. I lifted my gun to aim down the sights and looked back towards him. Somehow, he figured out my meaning and nodded silently. I stuck my gun out over the top of my cover and opened fire, providing covering fire for Alex.

Alex rushed forward with his shotgun at the ready. He performed a combat roll as he moved towards the enemy. He got close enough to one of the dealers, but Alex didn't have time to bring his weapon to bear before he was gunned down. Alex quickly dropped to the floor and slid under his target's legs, pointing his shotgun towards the ceiling as he did so. When Alex had his gun's barrel right under the guard, he fired. The force of the bullets hitting in such a small cluster actually flung the man a few feet into the air before he dropped back down, dead.

Alex then quickly aimed his weapon towards another enemy a few feet away and fired again, killing the guard. Alex's shotgun had come close to overheating by this time due to firing twice in quick succession, so he was forced to take cover. Unfortunately, there wasn't any nearby. He grabbed one of the dead bodies close to him and pulled it on top of him to protect himself. That's not a bad idea actually...

I saw Jake and Tillman come down the stairs and around the corner before they rushed up towards me.

"Hey," I breathed.

"Jake looked at me for a second before answering.

"Hi," he said. "We almost done here?"

"What," I asked playfully as bullets whizzed over my head. "You don't enjoy being shot at?"

"No, not really!" I shouted over to Timmy.

"How many left?" Timmy held up three fingers, then went back to whatever tactic he was using.

"Ok, we got three guys left," I said to Jake. "If we rush them, we should bring 'em down fast." Jake looked a little nervous about the prospect of this, but oh well. I placed a hand on his shoulder.

"Come on, it'll be fun!" I got ready to stand up and shoot. I looked over at each Alex and held up three fingers, then gave him the move up signal. I held up my three fingers again, then lowered them one by one. 3...2...1! I stood up and rushed forward, firing with wild abandon.

"LEEROY JENKINNNNSSSS," I shouted as I ran past Alex who was in the process of standing up. The rest of my friends opened fire, carefully avoiding Alex and I as they moved up as well. The remaining guards were shocked to see a group of lunatics on a suicide charge, and didn't fire surprisingly. I gunned a dealer down with my assault rifle, then dropped to the floor to keep myself from being shot in the back. Evon hit a guard in the leg, causing him to drop while Jake brought his rifle scope to his eye and nailed the last guy in the chest, dropping him to the floor.

We stood with our guns still raised, aiming towards where the enemies were for a few moments before lowering our guns.

"That went pretty well," Alex said.

"Yeah, we did that very nicely," Evon agreed. "Nobody got hurt too."

"Really," I asked. "That's a relief, I thought that maybe...where's Ricky?" Everyone started looking around. There were only six of us down on the ground floor. Oh no. Please don't have been hurt.

"Was he hit," I asked Jake and Tillman. "Where'd you guys leave him?"

"He was upstairs," Tillman said. "He never came downstairs with us..." The moment I heard the word upstairs, I began hurrying over to the stairs. I rushed upstairs and found Ricky lying on the floor. I literally ran over to him and crouched next to him. Please be alive, please be alive... I rolled him over and recieved a punch to the face. I stumbled backwards onto my rear.

"God dang it, Ricky," I exclaimed. "What was that for?" He sat up and stretched before facing me.

"Sorry," he said with a yawn. "Fell asleep." I looked at him in disbelief.

"Fell asleep? Really?" Ricky nodded and stood up. "How did you fall asleep in a firefight," I asked.

"I can fall asleep in English class," he stated simply. I thought about that for a moment. That actually makes sense, surprisingly. I heard Timmy yell upstairs.

"Hey, found something!" Ricky grabbed my hand and pulled me to my feet, then we both walked back downstairs.

"So, whaddya got for me," I asked as Timmy had the top half of his body almost upside down in a crate. He straightened up and turned around, tossing me a bag filled with a red powder.

"This is what we were looking for, right," Timmy asked. "Red sand?" I looked more closely at the red powder. Red...check. Sand-like powder...check.

"Yep, we got it," I said. "Is it all in that container?" Timmy nodded and pulled out a couple more bags. I told everybody to take one in order to bring it all back to Aria.

"All right," I said, once everyone had a bag. "Let's go."


Anto walked up behind Aria.

"I've got a merc group here to see you, ma'am," he said. "Said their name's Dead Echo." Aria didn't even bother turning around.

"Never heard of them."

"The leader said he's got something for you. His name's Thunder." Aria turned around, her eyes widened in surprise.

"By all means then, send them up."

I strolled up to Aria, my hands free from carrying bags of red sand. I had given my bag to Evon to hold so I didn't look like an idiot as I talked to Aria.

"Well, well," she said. "You actually are as good as you say."

"Better," I stated. "You sent us to the wrong hanger, but we still managed to complete the mission." Aria's gaze hardened, and she turned to look at Anto.

"You said the information was accurate," she said coldly. Anto stared her down for a few seconds before turning away, unspeaking. Aria's eyes narrowed before she turned back to me.

"I'll deal with him later. But for now..." She snapped her fingers together and a few people came forward and took the bags away from my friends.

"Business," she said. "I believe 3,000 credits is sufficent payment, especially the sand will go for at least double that." I nodded respectively.

"That's just fine," I said, accepting her offer. It wasn't like the money mattered anyway, we had enough. Aria nodded curtly.

"Good. Now, I'll request that you leave. If I need you again, I'll let you know." I nodded again.

"Whatever you need." Then a thought occured to me. "Before I leave, would it be possible to spread word of our services? We aren't exactly as well known as, say, the Blue Suns." Aria thought this over for a moment before agreeing.

"I think that's reasonable," she said. "If someone comes to me with a problem, I'll direct them to you. In some cases at least."

"Thank you," I said, then turned to leave. I walked down the stairs of Aria's hangout with my friends.

"So...what now," Ricky asked.

"Well, we should probably get some supplies," I said. "Food or stuff like that, then head back to the Fury and relax. We have the time to do that."

"Yeah, let's do that," Jake said. "I'm kinda tired from the fighting."

"Ok, let's go then," I said, and we headed back to the Fury.


A couple of weeks had passed since the job. We had spent most of it lounging around doing absolutely nothing. All we had was the television in the captain's quarters for entertainment on the Fury, we needed to go out and buy a games console some time. My friends and I had figured out the sleeping arrangements in our spare time. The captain's quarters was basically our relaxation room, nobody used it for sleeping. It was viewed as unfair if someone was allowed to use it, so we all just slept in the crew quarters.

Tillman had quickly become the resident tech expert in this universe. I was good with the things from our universe, but omni-tools and things like that boggled my mind. Tillman had latched on to them like ticks on dogs though. He was very proficient at interacting with the ship's systems, along with other things. He taught us how to have private comm links between each other so nobody could hear us talking, and he installed that program he talked about before into our suits.

Our suits allowed for a heads-up display which was like a basic version of an omni-tool. Tillman said he'd upgrade it eventually, but it was pretty cool for now. Everybody had purchased new clothing to fit in when we weren't in our armor, seeing as the clothes we had on us when we came here were too retro. My iPod and iPhone still worked surprisingly, and Tillman managed to get all my music from my iPod to my omni-tool, which sent the music through my helmet speakers. Combat would be a lot more interesting because of that. He hadn't quite figured out how to get my movies on my phone transferred, but I was confident he'd figure it out.

As of now, I was buried in the ship's database looking for info on how to fly the damn thing. There was no manual for the ship, it required "special training". The databases didn't have any information on this training though, so I was becoming more and more infuriated.

"This is unbelievable," I shouted to no one in particular. The bridge was empty except for me. "Another file locked down by this "Operations Network". You know what, I've had it, I'm going to see what this so-called Network is." I ran a search for it in the databases. It came back with a single result. I tapped the file and looked at it in detail.

"Ok, let's see here...status...offline, figures. Name...Tactical Reconnaissance Operations Network. Wait...no way. No way!" I took the first letters of each word and put them together. "T...R...O...N. TRON. Wow. Seriously, just...wow." Tron was an actual thing in this universe. That's...weird. I ran a search for Tron on the general extranet. It came up with all the normal results that it would have in my time. It was a character in the movie, blah, blah, blah. All that mattered was that Tron was on this ship. I double-checked the status.

"Offline," I thought aloud. "Let's see if I can get it online!" I searched the settings and found the activation icon, but big surprise, it didn't work. I just recieved a message telling me that the hardware was physically offline and needed to be reactivated from the "core".

"There's no computer terminals on this ship though! Well, except for here, but that doesn't count apparently..." An idea popped into my head. The ship seemed smaller on the inside than it did on the outside, so maybe... I pulled up two separate scans of the ship, one of just the outside frame, and another of the inside deck. I overlapped the two and discovered that from the looks of things, there should be a second deck to the ship below the first. But how would you get there? There's no stairs. And where are the weapons this ship has? They'd have to be on this hidden deck!

The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. If the weapons needed maintenence or "calibration"-I shuddered at that word. Poor Garrus gets some sort of love affair with those calibrations, I swear. But the weapons have to be somewhere, and we've been all over this ship and haven't found them. Hmm...I looked at my watch. Sheesh, 11:29? No wonder nobody else is around. Guess it's bedtime. I closed the screens I had opened up and headed off towards the crew quarters. Everyone else was already asleep when I walked in, the lights dim, so I was trying to be as quiet as I could. But of course my omni-tool rings.

Everybody was startled awake, and I hung my head in mock shame.

"Sorry," I said under the angry gaze of my friends. "Lemme just..." I answered the call after checking the number. I didn't recognize it, but that didn't surprise me.

"Dead Echo here," I said. A male voice replied.

"I have a job for you." I smiled, the lights automatically brightening and my friends shaking themselves out of their drowsy state to listen in.

"I'm listening..."

Author's Note: Good stuff, huh? Hopefully... Going to Disneyland in less than 12 hours, but I'll be back to get my next chapter up. It should be interesting, just as this one was. Hope you liked it, review as always. Make me happy.