[b][i]Zone Rouge 23[/i], French Algeria[/b] A boot tapped on the metal floor to the rhythm of a ponderous drumbeat. Heavy, distorted guitar filled the air with raw and ugly notes. A singer, voice saturated with aggression and angst, sneered lyrics describing a heroin trip and suicide in no uncertain terms. The music played from a boombox that had been strapped to the top of a nearby weapons rack with a fraying green ratchet strap. For hours on end, the soldiers in the cramped cab of their patrol vehicle listened to CDs brought with them on their deployment. Along with bantering about anything and everything, it was their only entertainment as the machine crawled through kilometers of dark, grey landscape. Sixteen men in two vehicles made up the patrol. Each of the trucks, the term an understatement enough, was a massive twelve-wheeled armored vehicle. The massive cruisers trod gently over the terrain with gigantic, wheels regulated by a complicated pneumatic tire inflation system nested within the armored hull. The sleek, angular craft were outfitted for overland expeditions: inside their armored and angular frame were spaces for a cockpit, living quarters, compartments holding electronics and communications gear, sensors, an airlock, storage space, an airlock, and even a cramped toilet like a cross-country bus. They were covered in prominent antennas that swayed in the wind and bumpy terrain and cameras providing an almost completely surround-view of the windowless shell. Their frames were painted in a mottled grey-green scheme, a modification of standard camouflage to better fit the tones of an anomalous zone. On each of their sides, beside their hull numbers, a large and bright French flag had been prominently painted. One of the cruisers bore a large crane like a wrecker vehicle’s, stowed securely along the side. A remote-controlled turret duly swiveled atop it, a large ammunition box bolted to the side to ensure that the crew would rarely need to dismount for reloading. It carried with it a trailer that resembled a cab-less dump truck, a gigantic bin to store whatever could fit. The other was further festooned with more antennas, a radar covered in a cylindrical shell, and meteorology gear on a shelf that extended towards the sloped front to give more surface area to the already-crowded roof. This one carried a flatbed trailer, like a long-haul lowboy. Ahead of the patrol drove a much smaller craft. It appeared to be an armored remote-controlled vehicle, like a chunkier version of a Martian space rover. Equipped with a plethora of probes, manipulator arms, cameras, and scientific equipment, it had rolled carefully up to what appeared to be a series of cylindrical containers peeking out just above the ashen-grey surface of the zone. Inside the armored cruiser, a man sat in a padded chair and observed a bewildering array of CRT screens in front of him. His focus was on the central one, showing the grainy camera of the drone’s manipulator arm. He pressed forward gently on two joysticks, one to move the arm forward and another to angle a fork-like scraping device to touch the ground. Beside him, a TV labeled “GROUND PENETRATING RADAR” suddenly shifted its picture. Its complicated readout looked like the ebbing and flowing tides of a grey ocean. But as the operator nudged the drone forward, its display suddenly shifted to reveal four distinct sharp arrowhead-shapes at different points on the screen. A screen embedded into the wall above it, labeled “LANGIUM GASEOUS RESIDUE DETECTOR” displayed corresponding spikes above the background measurements. The operator began to lightly claw at the ground with his forked arm, slowly uncovering the glowing cylinders beneath. He had done this a thousand times and already had an idea of what he was finding before he could even get the spectrometer on another arm onto target. “[i]Mon adjutant[/i],” he called over the intercom, “We got some of those batteries.” From across the cockpit of the cruiser a tall man, wearing green camouflaged pants and a sweater bearing epaulettes bearing a gold bar bisected by a thin red line, came to look over the shoulder of the drone operator. The flickering light of the screens flashed across his oversized glasses as he reached out and tapped the camera monitor. “Yep, those are batteries. Run the laser and we will call our partner to pick it up.” The drone operator, a [i]caporal[/i], responded affirmatively and brought a second arm out with yet another control panel. This clunky setup was necessary for the vast array of equipment that these drones possessed. Once it was in position, the operator pressed a button to switch the monitor to the other arm’s camera, where a set of crosshairs was superimposed over the footage. He deftly maneuvered the laser to aim at the battery and begin its scan. Outside, the drone gave off a low hum as its pulsed laser quickly ionized a microscopic portion of the battery and an optical sensor analyzed its generated ions. After a few seconds of scanning, a flashing result appeared in the bottom of the screen: “NLC COMPOUND 141.” This information had already been transmitted to the other crawler, but the [i]adjutant[/i] gave a courtesy radio call to the other vehicle commander anyways. In a delicate maneuver, the command vehicle reversed slowly, its driver careful to keep the wheels straight on its carved-out path lest he jackknifed the trailer and they had to wait a few days for tow support. The crane vehicle drove forward and stopped beside where the drone had designated the NLC batteries with an infrared laser. The crane on the cruiser began to extend and swivel to where the batteries were located, now dug safely out of the ground by the drone’s claw. Everything about this was slow and deliberate. It took the crews almost an hour of painstaking maneuvers to control the massive vehicle and equipment’s movements. But they had finished: all four of the batteries were dropped into the trailer atop a treasure trove of other artifacts. “Good catch, continue patrol,” the [i]adjutant[/i] called out over the radio. The vehicles started their crawl again. Massive engines rolled the tires across sharp rocks and treacherous changes in elevation. Even a small ditch or bump could risk a rollover of the cruisers. The speaker inside was turned back up again, and the music continued to play. It was an atmospheric favorite of the soldiers, a complementary soundtrack to the dismal weather and alienated terrain that they saw day in and day out on their seven-day patrols. It was also a unique cultural quirk to the men who crewed the machines. Since The Visitation of 1961 and the subsequent exploitation of NLCs artifacts, France had given the uniquely dangerous mission to its traditionally most expendable forces: the Foreign Legion. The Legion was rapidly deployed with the bare minimum of equipment and understanding to scout the anomalous zones that were rapidly appearing in French colonial possessions. Many of them died, often horrifically, as they were exposed to the horribly scarred environment and mutated creatures before protective gear had time to develop. It was these sacrifices that led the Legion to stand up its own training and research organizations: the tactics and technology that were now commonly used across the globe to operate more-or-less safely in the anomalous zones had been developed by Legionnaires and initially taught at Legion troop courses. Even their cruisers had been developed by the Panhard Company based on exacting specifications produced by Legion reports and intelligence. The [i]caporal[/i] exited his chair, which was locked into the ground to reduce rollover injuries, and leaned up against his control panel. The man’s uniform nametag read “Zalewski.” He had been a refugee from Communist Eastern Europe, his family smuggling him to the West when he was only a small child in the 1970s. Many of the men in his unit had similar stories. They were criminals, refugees, people in hiding from spouses or the bank, or even Francophiles who wanted a chance to serve in what they saw as the world’s greatest country. Charles Zalewski had nowhere else to go after he could never hold more than a job as a waiter in a small town in Alsace. His lack of ID documents hampered his ability to even go to university. “I’m ready to go home…” he mused absent-mindedly as he reached for a steel cigarette case in his cargo pocket. In front of a sign explicitly prohibiting smoking in the vehicle, he lit a match and inhaled deeply. The crew had long since disabled the smoke detectors and the cruiser’s air filtration system was sufficient enough to get most of the smoke out. “Home?” deadpanned another member of the crew. Jacques Dumont, a [i]Légionnaire[/i] who had fled Quebec after his resistance cell had been decimated by American airmobile troops, turned back to see Zalewski smoking by his control station. “Base is not home.” He cocked his head and thought about it for a second: “Well, on second thought, maybe it is to you, commie. Shitty rations, a creaky bed, and plenty of rats to chase out. Must be just like Mother Russia or wherever you came from.” Zalewski chuckled and tossed a crumpled-up piece of paper at him. “At least I can speak French the way they taught us, not like your fucking speech impediment. Your mother must have drank a lot with you in her.” “The only thing I’m excited for right now is coming off shift. I am exhausted,” said the third soldier. Another [i]caporal[/i], this one German. He had changed his name to Patrick von Möller, and often convinced people that he was another Alsatian much like where Zalewski had initially settled in France. Von Möller never quite talked about where he had come from, only vague references to street gangs in West Berlin. The rest of the unit had hypothesized about it, and joked with him about running from a crime lord, but von Möller would just shake his head and redirect the conversation. He checked his watch, a surprisingly expensive Swiss timepiece that bore years of wear and tear. Probably stolen. “Thirty more minutes. Then I can sleep.” “Just don’t jerk off too loud, and don’t finish everywhere,” sternly instructed the [i]adjutant[/i] as he returned through the hatch leading towards the bathroom in the back of the cruiser. [i]Adjutant[/i] Gerard Lemas was the only Frenchman aboard, and had come to the Legion from a conventional unit like most senior NCOs and officers. He was the highest-ranking non-commissioned officer in the platoon, and the current patrol commander on this week’s foray into the anomalous zone. Despite his slender frame and big glasses, he exuded an air of strict paternity. Plenty of people had mistaken him for a logistician or a computer programmer before he flashed them his green beret with a harsh stare. He would dress them down appropriately if they mistook him twice. “You share that bunk with Hollande, and he has to sleep in your pool of degenerate children.” “Yes, [i]mon adjutant[/i],” was the only thing that von Möller could muster. He looked back at his dashboard and instruments, knocked out of the conversation. The low hum of the cruiser’s engine and the grunge music were the only sounds for a few moments, until Dumont started chuckling. Like a contagion, Zalewski and von Möller joined him. Lemas cracked a faint but noticeable smile, and went back to his station. Largely surrounded by radios and a computer with a pixelated satellite map of the zone, he studied their route. Their path had taken them out and back in a cloverleaf-pattern to maximize their chances of finding NLC artifacts. It had been a good haul, but that only meant more time preparing paperwork and offloading the material when they returned to base. He had already gotten a head start on the forms, each artifact required at least a dozen or so forms in a series of three-ring binders stacked lazily across the small amount of desk space that he had. Some of them were thicker than others, depending on the perceived hazard of the material. The song changed again, the CD repeating back to the first track in its playlist. It had been like this for three days now. Someone had to tell Dumont, the resident DJ, to bring more disks next time. Von Möller had been banned from the boombox after slipping a “best hits of polka” disk into the collection for one patrol. That lasted about three minutes before Lemas had taken the CD and made them sit in silence for a few days: he then taped it to a green “Ivan” target on the rifle range for their next qualification and ensured that it was forever destroyed. The cruiser patrol continued, Zalewski returning to his drone station to prepare it for the next operator. Before they knew it, their shift was over. Four of their colleagues appeared through the door, bleary-eyed and freshly woken. Their leader, a slightly subordinate NCO, went to Lemas’s desk to receive the shift change brief. The others milled around in the passageway until the leaders were done, long since numbed to the routine ordeal. At their [i]adjutant[/i]’s beckoning, the Legionnaires turned over their positions to their counterparts. “Anything cool happen?” Zalewski’s counterpart asked as he took the seat and quickly reviewed the screens. “We found like, some batteries and stuff. Might have run over a creature, not sure what that bump a while ago was.” “Ah,” his replacement replied disinterestedly. They were all ready to be done with their patrol. Zalewski rubbed his eyes and stubbed out his cigarette on the ashtray next to his console while his replacement bid him a farewell: “Well, I’ll see you soon. Take care.” “You too.”