[i]A collaboration post with [@Jeddaven].[/i] [b][i]Zone Rouge 10[/i], French Guyana[/b] A convoy of two trucks, splattered with mud and red dirt splashed through the rutted roads of an increasingly thick jungle. The first vehicle, taking a turn into a sudden hole, jolted forward and overcorrected. Its front right wheel landed with a heavy thud into a wet pit of mud, before the driver hit the accelerator and floored the engine. With a high-pitched roar, the diesel engine ramped up the acceleration before forcing the wheel out of the hole. Luckily for the troops in the back, a nylon troop strap kept them from falling over the tailgate of the vehicle while they rattled around. It was another few minutes of arduous driving before the trucks reached their destination: a well-worn turnaround point with the ruts of dozens of previous patrols worn into the soft muddy ground. From each truck a squad dismounted, heavy with the dozens of kilograms of gear they wore. The Legionnaires were not kitted like regular French soldiers, instead wearing powered suits dubbed the [i]Combinaison pour environnement dangereux[/i]. The CED, made of advanced thermoplastics and bearing an integral environmental control system, was hardened against the hazards of an Anomalous Zone. Unlike the Legionnaires in Algeria, troops operating in Guyana and overseas expeditions in Vietnamese jungles had to work dismounted. The CED combat suit protected them against most of the Zone’s toxic effects. “Line up! Final checks!” someone shouted with an air of authority. The last man out of the truck was [i]Adjutant-chef[/i] Leon d’Avout, who had affixed his CED suit’s helmet and was now running an internal diagnostics check on his systems. Underneath the motorcycle-like visor on the armored helmet, an eyepiece ran green lines of code down the screen before flashing “ACTIVÉ” and bringing up the navigational, environmental, and health statuses in the corner of his vision. He then keyed the radio in his suit and sent a broadcast to his squad: “Caiman 1, this is Caiman 1-7, I want a radio check.” In return, he received a sequence of responses from his team. They all affixed their helmets and adjusted the web gear over the top of their CED suits. One by one, [i]Adjutant[/i] d’Avout had them hold out their sensitive items. He checked off the list as he went: night vision optics, thermal sights, the long range radio, ammunition and grenades, spare batteries and marking devices, and the NLC artifact cases that two members of the squad wore in lieu of assault bags. D’Avout was professionally efficient, tapping each item with his gloved hand and muttering its name while cross referencing it with the checks he had done before they left. This was only to make sure nothing had fallen out of the back of a truck on the movement. “Okay, Caiman 1, you’re all set,” he called over the radio. He then switched the channel over to the other squad’s net: “2-7, 1-7: you all ready to step off?” The other [i]adjutant[/i], a slightly more junior Legionnaire from Niger by the name of Rafini, acknowledged: “Yes, we’re good, call it up.” D’Avout nodded at him and turned to watch the truck drivers show him thumbs up out of the window. He returned the gesture and waved them off, so they stepped down on the engines and sputtered off. D’Avout was splashed by mud as the trucks sauntered off back down the rugged jungle road they came. Underneath the CED suit, he paid no mind and instead directed the long-range radioman to turn his back and give him the cord. Without an open ear for the handmic, d’Avout had to plug the cord into a special outlet on his own radio receiver to be able to talk. Cumbersome, but necessary until the engineers were able to figure out a better way to coordinate the radios. “Caiman 6, this is Caiman 1-7. Request to start patrol at 13:42 hours, over.” The garbled affirmation of his commander came over the radio in reply, distorted by the sound of the jungle. They would need to change the settings once they got further into the Anomalous Zone to increase the power through the radio interference that the NLCs emitted, but that required precious energy. CED suits needed periodic energy charges, which were often dropped by French helicopters for patrols if they stayed out longer than their intended durations. Any extra power requirements, such as running the radios for long periods of time, would put them in dangerously short supply. D’Avout headed to the start of the trail, marked by a handwritten sign warning them that they were about to enter a [i]Zone Rouge[/i], a Red Zone. “Caiman 1, Caiman 2,” he announced over the local radio, “Move out.” [b][i]Zone Vermelho[/i], Amapá, Brazil[/b] "Ah! Listen, Chen! I found the French channel!" Adriano shouted, slapping his desk. The sudden movement shook his radio set, one of the few items of interest in an otherwise barren communications post - and the man behind him, clad in light body armour with a bulky pistol at his hip rushed over to his side soon enough, excitedly leaning down over his comrade's shoulder. A security robot, trundling about the building on a pair of wide, cushioning treads spun about to point its guns at him, only to quickly proceed onwards with a dismissive wave of his hand, a light of its 'face' blinking green in recognition. “Caiman 1, Caiman 2,” The voice crackled. “Move out.” "I think I recognize that voice... I've heard it before! Foreign Legion, right?" Adriano shrugged, noncommittal. "How much time do you spend listening in on Frenchmen to know that, exactly?" "...Fuck you, Adriano. I spend just as much time here as you do. At least it'll be interesting to listen to, eh? They're heading into Shitville itself, after all." Chen laughed, pulling up a chair. "I guess." Adriano replied, letting his shoulders slacken. "Poor fuckers. Someone has to do it, though." He continued, slowly ramping up the volume. [b][i]Zone Rouge 10[/i], French Guyana[/b] Their trek had gone on for what seemed like hours as they slowly crossed through kilometers of jungle territory. They marched across hills, through streams, and around gigantic jungle trees and ferns. Despite the crippling humidity and heat of the jungle, the French soldiers felt cool and comfortable in the environmental controls of their CED suits. Tubes of water ran across the bodysuit under their armor, chilled by a refrigerator next to the power packs on their backplates. It was a curious comfort that juxtaposed itself with the danger of the Anomalous Zone: one French colonel even called for the Legion to manually disable it on patrols for risk of the troops becoming “too comfortable and complacent.” D’Avout and the rest of the Legionnaires laughed off that armchair warrior’s suggestion. The pointman had been hacking away at the jungle overgrowth with a machete when he noticed a curious lightness to the blade he had just been struggling with. “[i]Mon adjutant[/i]!” he called out over the intercom. “I think we’re close!” D’Avout called the patrol to halt and kneeled down to the ground. The others in the patrol followed, finding pieces of cover and settling down into their short halt. The patrol leader jogged through the path that the pointman had slashed through the bush, finally arriving at the soldier in front. He had let go of his machete and was allowing it to float curiously out of his hand. The handle remained tied by a piece of paracord to a carabiner on the Legionnaire’s webbing: standard procedure for securing small objects around the gravitational anomalies. D’Avout nodded at him, and the pointman crept his way through the ferns until they arrived at the edge of the jungle. Ahead of them was a scene they had seen many times, but it was no less awe inspiring. Many years ago, a mysterious explosion had created a crater deep within the Guyanese jungle and shot pieces of earth into the air. The crater spanned almost two kilometers from edge to edge, and burrowed deep into the rocky ground. But atop the carnage, dozens of chunks of rocks ranging from boulders to small islands hung suspended in the air, as if by magic. The jungle had been cleared away by the blast and seemed unable to reclaim the dead and rocky ground surrounding the anomaly. It was the epicenter of their zone, and a place they could only travel to in small groups. Any attempt at flying in heavy machinery to exploit the phenomena here resulted in lost aircraft or malfunctioning technologies. “Caiman 2,” d’Avout called into his radio, “We’ve reached the recovery area. I am requesting a frontline trace of your location, over.” Caiman 2 could barely be heard over the static and interference. Radio chatter barely went a few hundred meters before it was cut out by the trees and jungle. They didn’t even dare take the radios into the crater, fearing they would be totally destroyed by whatever interference damaged the sensitive electrical components. “Caiman 1, -2. We are arriv- -east side- -rater now. Will confirm - sual identific-. Stand by.” Caiman acknowledged, taking a knee by the pointman. He scanned the blue skies and rocky terrain of the crater: it never failed to remind him of a surrealist version of the moon where the sky had been swapped with the earth’s. Through his intercom, he urged his patrol to move forward. They did, walking out through the jungle in awe at the scene ahead of them: in an orderly line, they formed a circle around d’Avout and similarly crouched down to face outwards. Within moments, a series of small figures appeared far away on the east side of the crater almost mirroring the actions of Caiman 1. A red flare shot out directly overhead of their position, arcing into the sky and shining bright against the clear daylight. D’Avout smiled underneath his CED suit’s darkened visor and withdrew a flare gun from a pouch on his own webbing. The bright orange pistol looked like a toy in the bulky glove of his hand. He pointed it to the sky and pressed down on the trigger, shooting a shining green reply with a dull popping sound. He called the patrol up to their feet and got them to work. “Alright, recovery personnel, take your sections and head in. We’re looking for those glowing rocks again. Remember the objective, each of you will be gathering at least fifty kilograms of samples in your protective cases. We’ll make it out with quite the haul today.” Two of the Legionnaires jogged up and dropped the toughboxes off of their backs to the ground. They opened up the NLC artifact cases with a series of hinges and locks along the side and opened them up. “One man pulls security while three carry rocks. Keep your weapons slung!” d’Avout ordered. “I’ll be weighing the boxes with my scale before we go, so no slacking,” he further deadpanned. From a pouch on his thigh armor, the patrol leader withdrew a simple hanging scale like the one used to weigh a big catch on an offshore fishing trip. They were tasked, simply, to acquire a certain amount of NLC-laced rocks to examine their properties in a lab. As the missions continued, the Legionnaires became quite adept at carrying large loads over long distances: the exoskeleton embedded within the CED suit helped quite a bit. The fact that fifty kilograms of NLC compound exerted a slight gravitational anomaly on the wearer’s back was also a lifesaver for the troops. In fact, many prefered to carry a case with fifty kilograms of rock over a standard pack: it felt like it was only twenty. “Time on target is thirty minutes. Let’s go!” [b][i]Zone Vermelho[/i], Amapá, Brazil[/b] “Those [i]sons-of-mothers[/i]...” Chen whistled, leaning back so far in his chair that it nearly toppled over. Adriano did nothing to stop him, aside from an admonishing sidelong glance, enough to startle his comrade into awkwardly righting himself. “Did you hear that static before they dropped out? I wonder what did it.” Chen continued, his query met with an exaggerated shrug from Adriano. “Who knows, these days. Could be an irregular lightning storm, some freak electrical anomaly... Maybe even one of those antigrav anomalies the eggheads have been scouring the whole fucking jungle for.” “Some, uh... Faster-than-light bullshit?” Chen asked. Adriano nodded, folding his arms over his chest. “It’s like magic, from what everyone’s been saying. Not really even moving faster than light, eh? You move the, uh... The void around the ship and kind of drag it along.” “Sounds like... I don’t even know what that sounds like. I don’t understand it.” “I don’t either.” Adriano laughed, shaking his head. With a grunt, he began to push himself up from his seat, stretching his arms high above his head. “...Well, it’s probably going to be a while before the Frenchmen get back into radio range, yeah? I’m going to go get us a couple coffees.” “I’ll let you know if anything goes horribly wrong, I guess.” [b][i]Zone Rouge 10[/i], French Guyana[/b] Collecting rocks was a physical event, only made harder by the bulky nature of the CED suits worn. Despite their environmental protection, the protective gear handled picking up and manipulating objects like winter mittens. Oftentimes bending over or squatting to pick up a heavy piece of NLC-infused rock was a struggle, not only ergonomically but mechanically as well. The powered exoskeletons’ servos whirred and whined as the Legionnaires picked up rocks and carried them to the collection point. Some of them were too large to fit in the cases, so one of the troops was tasked with breaking it down with a sledgehammer he carried on his back. As he hit the rock into smaller pieces, traces of gas exited the porous insides: they could only hope the air filters could block it out. It took just under the thirty minute target for the Legionnaires to collect the rocks. The carriers, nicknamed [i]les chevaux[/i] by their peers for their ability to carry large loads long distances, had the cases placed on their backs and took up a position in the middle of their formation. D’Avout had been supervising the process and checked the time displayed within his helmet. The timer had counted down to zero, and he withdrew his trusty flare gun again and removed a shell from a nearby pouch. He popped the break-action pistol open with the smoothness of an actor and inserted the blue-ringed flare. His communication to the other team was instantly recognizable: a blue flare soared across the sky. Already in movement order, the Legionnaires departed the objective. None of them looked back upon the otherworldly scene far more fitting to an alien world than Earth: they had seen it all before, many times. All they could do was put one foot in front of the other and return home. They marched for another hour through the jungle, through the path that they had cleared on the way in. The day turned to dusk, and soon enough the Legionnaires found themselves in darkness. It was the most difficult part of the day for the men as they switched on the sickly green scopes of their night-vision devices. Looking through a narrow tube with no depth perception, they trudged more carefully. They were upon the patrol before the soldiers could even react. One significant downside to the CED suit was that the exterior audio collection was never as sensitive as the human ear. A young Legionnaire by the name of Dimitri Zabrowski was first: at the rear of the patrol, he simply disappeared into the shadows. The man in front of him turned his head to look at where a garbled thumb had come from, and found only a trail of blood. “Halt! Halt!” he called over the squad intercom. Instantly, everyone stopped and faced outwards into the jungle. D’Avout turned his head just enough to see a dark shape lunge forward from the shadows and knock him to his back. He shouted, hitting the ground with a painful thud while he wrestled with the figure atop him. Instinctively, he swung a pugilistic hook at the thing pinning him to the jungle floor and made contact. The opponent, an animal of some kind, fell to the ground and d’Avout spun away while reaching for the sidearm buried deep in a holster along his thigh. While he fumbled for the safety release on the flap, he saw what he feared: a jaguar, colored sickly green, with muscles rippling grotesquely along its rotting hide and fur. The predator stared at him with eyes of sheer hunger, bloodstained teeth bared. D’Avout pushed his hand out as the creature lunged at him again, colliding with the jaguar and blunting its advance. His right hand made purchase on the holster’s flap and he withdrew a revolver to point in its face. There was no hesitation as he fired off three shots, each one impacting the jaguar’s face and blowing it clean off. Greenish-red blood and brains splattered across his CED suit. To his left, d’Avout saw another one of the mutants clawing into the softly-armored undersuit of a Legionnaire’s belly. He pointed his handgun at the scene, firing wildly into the brush. No hit, but the jaguar turned its attention to the shooter. Leaving its prey, it came to attack the now-kneeling squad leader. D’Avout was ready for this one: he took the jaguar in stride as it pounced on him, knocking into its face with his powered fist. The animal collapsed to its side, scrambling to recover from the haymaker until d’Avout turned the tables on it instead. The Frenchman fell right on top of the mutant predator, wrestling with it until he got his hands around its head. D’Avout squeezed, his servos providing all the pressure he needed to crush the jaguar’s head into a bloody pulp between his palms. Now momentarily able to stand up, d’Avout reached for the bullpup rifle that had been slung to his back during the initial ambush. As he engaged it in his hands, the pointman in front of him concluded his own duel with a mutant: similarly unable to reach his weapon, the man had disemboweled a jaguar in mid-leap with the machete tied to his webbing. An arc of blood and entrails landed onto the jungle floor as the creature yelped and flailed. Gunshots were now starting to echo throughout the jungle as the Legionnaires shot at the moving silhouettes in the jungle. D’Avout scrambled towards the bloody figure who was laying on the ground clutching his stomach, desperate to find the victim. It was his radio operator, mortally wounded and shakily attempting to apply a self-aid sealant bandage to his wound. “Goddammit, goddammit,” he cried over the intercom. “I need your radio!” d’Avout shouted into his mic as he grabbed the connector cable from the manpack radio on his back. He put his hand on the radioman’s shoulder as he plugged in, as if that could comfort him from the severe bleeding. D’Avout wasn’t sure if the man could even feel his gesture through the thick shoulder armor plates of the CED suit. He called up on the radio regardless: “2, this is 1! We’ve been hit… We need help!” There was no reply. “2!” shouted d’Avout, keying the radio with an aggressively white-knuckled grip, “Where the fuck are you?” Around him, the sounds of chaos could be heard even in the CED suits. Gunfire and shouts over the radio. Wounded men, perhaps Zabrowski, were screaming on the radio. D’Avout ordered his team leaders to find out what was going on and consolidate into a circle. The patrol medic was now able to take a break and look at the casualties around him: slashes, bites, gored organs, but most importantly the contamination seeping slowly but surely into fresh wounds. His aid bag was ripped open on the dirt of the jungle, bandages and tourniquets ready to administer followed by autoinjectors of morphine and NLC poisoning antidotes. The patrol leader fumbled again for the maps in his pouches to determine what was going on. It was an overflow of information: the laminated map of the jungle, stained with blood. The readout on his wrist that displayed an eight-digit positioning coordinate derived from a constellation of French global positioning satellites far above the ground. A protractor that guided him to the exact point in their lone grid square. A black dry-erase marker that marked their exact position. A quick calculation of how many kilometers they were from their evacuation point. They were alone and too far away. The predators in the dark were only becoming more numerous as the fauna of the jungle sought their prey. D’Avout keyed in the radio again, crying simply: “Any station this net, who’s out there?" [b][i]Zone Vermelho[/i], Amapá, Brazil[/b] Adriano nearly jumped out of his chair at the sound of the voice, scrambling to put on his headset. The Frenchmen had been quiet for quite some time - had something gone wrong? "This is Outpost Sete." He said, in heavily Portuguese-accented English. "We are hearing you loud and clear." [b][i]Zone Rouge 10[/i], French Guyana[/b] “[i]Mon Dieu! Dieu merci![/i]” exclaimed d’Avout to himself, hearing the garbled voice of someone. They spoke English. He composed himself and ducked down his head while another rumble of automatic fire sprayed across the defensive circle. Someone had stood up, holding his belt-fed squad automatic weapon by the carry handle, and shot a burst of fire into the bushes just meters ahead of them. A creature yowled in pain in the distance - the bushes rippled as a mutant took off in a dead sprint. The patrol leader struggled to think who could be speaking to them in English as a grenade’s explosion washed over him with pressure that felt like being punched in the face. He came to the conclusion: the Brazilians. They were fifty kilometers from the border. Somehow their radio signals were coming in clearer than their home base’s. “Outpost… Sete?” he said, trying to acknowledge their call sign. He thought he had the right one, but it was hard to tell through all the fighting. “We are a French Foreign Legion element located at…” he checked his notes on the map, slowing his voice down to a slow and methodical chant of the grid coordinates: “Charlie Kilo… Four-two-two-one, Three-six-six-one.” He struggled to remember the English word for a break in the message. It had been a long time since NATO had resolved itself into OTAN, swapping the primacy of English for French. His grasp of the language was rudimentary at best. He didn’t even know what the medical evacuation procedure of the Brazilians consisted of. Fearing he would lose Outpost Sete in translation, d’Avout tried the best he could in broken English: “Uh, interruption. We have two hurt. We need evacuation, [i]très rapide.[/i] Please respond, over!” [b][i]Zone Vermelho[/i], Amapá, Brazil[/b] “Ah, yes, we... Oui! Compris!” Adriano replied. Loudly thumping his fist against his desk, he quickly switched to his native Portuguese, yelling over the din of buzzing jungle insects and electronic equipment. “Chen! Hey! Forget the fucking coffees!” He barked, abruptly leaping up from his seat, only to be nearly dragged back down to earth by the sudden whiplash of his headset’s cable. “What is it, Adriano? Are you peeping on the Frenchmen again?” Chen snapped back, stepping back into the monitoring station with an entirely uncaring roll of his eyes. His expression quickly changed, however, the moment he saw the panicked expression on Adriano’s face, ceramic mugs loudly shattering on the ground, spilling hot coffee onto his shins. Fastening his headset back into place, Adriano did his best to stumble his way through the French tongue. He’d earned a little, but only just enough to stumble through the most basic conversations. “Charlie Kilo, ah... Four-two-two-one, Three-six-six-one. We send, uh... Helicopter, it gets there about... Seven minutes, fast as it can go. Has room for twenty. We have...” He paused, glancing behind him. Chen was already gone, the distant sound of his shouting no doubt rousing the helicopter crews from their bunks. “Medics!” He barked, letting out a sigh of relief. “We send, ah... Medical workers?" The stomping of feet alerted Adriano to an approaching column of men. Narrowly managing to push himself to his full height as the helicopter crew stormed through, patting the pilot on the shoulder as he passed by. "Hey!" He shouted, speaking much more comfortably in his native tongue. "Try not to crash on the way, eh?" "Fuck you too, asshole!" Afonso hollered back, making his way to his steed as quickly as his legs could carry him. The helicopter had been purchased from the French little more than a year or two, but was heavily modified to fit the needs of the unreal South American jungle; a pair of miniguns mounted on each side of its vaguely diamond-shaped hull, coupled with a third rear-mounted heavy machinegun and supercharged engines. In anomalous zones, speed and firepower were far more important for Brazilian helicopters than fuel capacity. Hauling himself into the cockpit, it didn't take long for the rest of Afonso's crew to follow. One by one, they filed into the metal beast - and then, they were off, his copilot firmly settled into place beside him. Pre-flight checks were blown through in far less time than procedure necessitated, but then again, rescuing a squad of Foreign Legionnaires from a mutant horde was hardly a common occurrence. Most of the time, they were just Brazilians. Outpost Sete quickly began to recede into the distance beneath them, a tiny helicopter landing pad that narrowly managed to double as a landing post. It didn't take long for the insignificant structure to be swallowed up by the seemingly endless expanse of the mutant jungle, the helicopter speeding off into the distance. For the next several miles, there was little but green, and the cleared section of jungle around the French-Brazilian border. It was night-on impossible for Afonso to distinguish one stretch from the other, aside from the rare break in monotony provided by the occasion half-alien thing scattered here-and-there. In some places, trees simply refused to grow, and for little apparent reason - in others, titanic toadstools displaying all manner of sickly colour took the place of the tree canopy. Minutes passed with little exchanged other than the occasional dry quip, punctuated by a 'fuck you' here and an 'eat shit' there. If not for the urgency of their mission, Afonso questioned if he might fall asleep, and he was certain that Andreia might be thinking the same. The anomaly, thankfully, was much more difficult to avoid spotting. From quite some distance, he could see boulders and thick clouds of dust hovering in mid-air, in flagrant defiance of what nearly every scientist on earth once thought possible. Briefly wondering if the French hoped to help Brazil's academics with their barely-comprehensible nonsense, he glanced sidelong at Andreia - with an antigravity anomaly, he'd need to keep all his attention on keeping his helicopter in the air. It'd be her job to direct the gunners. As they came closer, he had no doubt the Frenchmen could see them approaching. Shortly after they passed a kilometer of distance, Tomas and Maria opened fire - the buzzsaw-like din of twin miniguns cut across the jungle, spewing streams of hot lead in the direction of the inhuman shapes pointed out to them by the helicopter's powerful sensor suite, sweeping along the treeline. The sound of the helicopter's blades slowed to a dull, rhythmic thud as Afonsa brought it ever closer to the treeline, but the reduced noise was quickly replaced by the sound of dozens of wildly firing gun, then the low staccato of the rear-facing heavy machinegun. Hydraulic rescue lines fell toward the forest floor from one opened door, and from the other came an heavy, metal anchor, smashing through the overgrown canopy to the underbrush below. [b][i]Zone Rouge 10[/i], French Guyana[/b] The machinegun fire had been too close for comfort, with dozens of tracer rounds sweeping mere meters away from the French patrol like a laser beam illuminating the ground. Small brush fires in the undergrowth began to ignite, giving light to the scene of French soldiers firing at the mass of mutated creatures. “Okay! We have the helicopter here!” shouted d’Avout through his intercom. “Light up the area! Spark the flares!” Each Legionnaire maintained a kit of three red flares, much like the ones in a car’s breakdown kit. One after the other, while their colleagues covered them, bright red flames sparked alight and cast ghastly light on the trees and mutants in the distance. Growls and roars echoed throughout the jungle as the shadowplay of animals drew fire from the Legionnaire patrol. They were running low on ammunition, but able to conserve their fire to single shots as the Brazilian helicopter raked the vegetation with their high-powered weapons. Outside the contained environment of the CED suits, the rotorwash of the ever-descending helicopter whipped the trees and leaves around, creating a miniature storm of dirt and loose flora. Behind the patrol, d’Avout heard the sudden snaps and cracks of breaking branches and a pair of heavy thuds into the ground. He whipped his rifle around and shouldered it, finger on the trigger, only to see two bright yellow anchor-like devices suspended from metal wire ropes connecting to the body of the helicopter above. Each of them had a pair of small seats jutting out the edge. “Get the wounded onto the lifts!” d’Avout shouted frantically as he recognized them for what they were: rescue lifts designed to punch through the thick jungle canopies for remote evacuation. Under the rotorwash and scared off by the light of the flares, the mutant creatures circled hungrily around the perimeter of the patrol. They let out yowls and cries of hunger and raw animalistic ferocity. Legionnaires fired isolated shots into the darkness beyond their newly-safe zone while a man helped the medic drag the two casualties to the lifts. The wounded men clutched their open wounds, the bleeding stymied somewhat by field dressings and tourniquets. Their limp bodies were buckled into the seats on the lifts by the men who were able to hoist them in, and gear was secured to their chests by way of rope and bungee cord. D’Avout waved two troops to accompany them on the lifts. The four Legionnaires had been buckled in and one flashed a thumbs up to the helicopter above them. A Brazilian crewmember, the dark silhouette of his head poking out through a window in the helicopter, activated a winch that rapidly dragged the lift back up towards the side doors. For the Legionnaires on the lifts, the ground below them rapidly faded into darkness and was quickly obscured by the jungle’s vegetation. Only the flickering light of the rapidly-dimming flares could be seen from the cabin of the massive helicopter. D’Avout heard the crackling affirmation of the medic aboard the Brazilian aircraft that they had made it, and the lifts were again dropped down to recover the other four on the ground. The flares were dying out and the creatures approached closer, bravely testing the perimeter only to be beaten back by bursts of gunfire. D’Avout was down to his sidearm, firing indiscriminately before being forced to reload. He checked behind him, where the three remaining troops had buckled themselves in and were waiting for him. The patrol leader rushed his way to the lift, dropping down onto the metal seat and reaching for the seatbelt. He felt a jerk as the lift began to rise up, but not before noticing a figure leaping from the darkness. A mutated leopard came barrelling out of the jungle towards d’Avout, teeth bared in a vicious snarl. Immobilized in the restraints, the Legionnaire did the only thing he could: kick the leopard in the face. The exoskeleton-powered feet came up from underneath the creature’s jaw and connected with the mutant in mid flight. He felt only a little bit of resistance as his armored boot smashed through the skull and brains of the creature. Blood and gore exploded from the leopard’s head, coating d’Avout’s right leg in red: the lifeless body of the mutant landed in a crippled mass below as the lift raced towards the helicopter. The pair reached the cabin of the helicopter where d’Avout was pulled inwards by his fellow Legionnaires. The man fell backwards onto the deck of the cabin, his CED suit clanking against the aluminum plating. He rolled onto his stomach and took in the scene in front of him: a flight medic wearing a green nomex suit bearing a bright Brazilian flag on his shoulder was treating the two wounded troops in front of him. His other Legionnaires were seated down on either side of the cabin, clutching their weapons. A second Brazilian, her nametag obscured by a gunner’s harness, was crouched down next to d’Avout and trying to get his attention. “How many more? How many?” she asked, her accent difficult to hear over the whooping of the rotors. “Eight! Eight!” replied d’Avout through his helmet’s speakers. “Eight more, another patrol. Not with us!” “Not with you?” the Brazilian asked, concerned tone clearly obvious in her question. Her facial expressions weren’t visible under the flame-retardant hood she wore. “Where?” “No idea! Find them!” demanded the Legionnaire. He pushed himself off the ground to the sitting position, looking out the back of the ramp. He realized now that he was sitting next to the machinegunner who had been working the area below with heavy caliber automatic fire. He had an idea: still inside his pocket was the flare gun that he had used to get in touch with the second patrol earlier. He had one last shell for it. D’Avout drew it from its pouch, cocked it open, and pressed the last red casing into the breach. He fired it straight out the back of the helicopter, watching it arc across the sky. A few moments passed before, a few kilometers in the distance, another flare shot straight up in response. The bright red response brought a smile to d’Avout’s helmeted face as he pointed for the Brazilian crewmember. “There!” he said. “Our other men!” The woman nodded. "Afonso! O sinalizador! Há mais oito deles!" She said, shouting toward the cockpit, through which a pair of pilots could be seen side-by-side. "Eu vejo eles!" The pilot responded, and the helicopter began to turn, the din of gunfire quieting at it rose into the sky. The woman's name-tag was briefly revealed - Alinha - as she pushed herself back to her feet, scales the greenish colour of the jungle glinting in intermittent patches on her neck. D'Avout barely had time to contemplate the mutant before the helicopter stopped, and down went the jungle penetrators yet again. Even carrying nearly a dozen Legionnaires, the winches barely faltered, if at all. Within seconds, the helicopter was packed full of men in CED suits, though the newest arrivals had thankfully avoided serious injury. Blood lay on the floor in intermittent splatters, but by now, the pair of Brazilian worked more slowly, monitoring the injured, their bleeding stopped by hemostatic bandages and tourniquets. The machinegunner next to D'Avout slumped as the ramp he was firing out of pulled closed, remaining secure in his harness. His face was hidden behind the visor of his helmet, but his exhaustion, nonetheless, was palpable, his shoulders falling. He offered D'Avout a glance and a nod, but the rest of the ride passed mostly in silence, broken by the occasional briefly friendly conversation in broken English or French between the chopper's occupants; the atmosphere dangerously tense, maintained by briefly icy looks shared by the soldiers. The pilots raced back towards the border, pushing the controls of the helicopter as far as they would go. Yet they noticed something peculiar in the handling, something that had occurred with the arrival of the French soldiers onboard: the helicopter felt like it floated along ever so slightly, the stiffness and the exact control of the instruments replaced with an almost casual responsiveness like a car hydroplaning on a wet road. Mercifully, however, it didn't last much longer than a handful or two of minutes before the helicopter finally set down, lowering the ramp, a large air ambulance visible waiting on the adjacent helipad. Finally, the gunner next to D'Avout spoke up, pushing himself to his feet. "Hey!" He said, moving to place a hand on the Frenchman's shoulder, before he was able to leave the chopper. "Glad you guys are all alive, but... Sorry about all the paperwork in advance, eh? Bet this is going to be a bureaucratic nightmare." D’Avout pressed down on the metal clips that held the helmet attached to the neckpiece of his CED suit and clicked them open. A small hiss of pressurized air escaping from the suit was audible as the helicopter’s blades slowed down and the whine of the engine attenuated. He wiggled the helmet off, revealing a pale, classically handsome face bearing stubble and drenched in sweat despite the best efforts of the environmental cooling system. He smoothed out his long hair, flicking the sweat away onto the floor of the airfield as he watched the Brazilian medics rush stretchers towards the ambulances. “You two!” he barked, pointing towards the Legionnaires who had accompanied the wounded men on the ride. “Secure their weapons and sensitive items and then follow them! Don’t let them leave your sight.” They nodded, grabbing up the rifles of the wounded soldiers and handing their heavy backpacks of gear over to their colleagues in Caiman 2’s patrol before rushing out the back to flag down the Brazilian medics. D’Avout turned his back to the machinegunner who still stood on the ramp of the helicopter, watching for a moment as the Legionnaires hopped into the compartments and refused to leave their mates. “[i]Mon amis[/i],” he said solemnly as he turned his gaze back to the Brazilian, “I do not care about the paperwork right now.”