Voodoo Patrol

Prologue

"It's horrible out there!" The crew chief looked over at Saki and smiled as the sabre-gull aerodyne bucked suddenly, snow whirling dizzyingly beyond the body "You Infanteers should be glad you're going Sunside, it'll be just like home!"

"Ah fuck that" Saki's fire team leader moaned "It's a fucking voodoo patrol. This sucks." The section at least had plenty of room in the mostly empty, helicopter, even in power armour the nine of them were rattling around in a space designed for twice as many.

"You can that shit Beth." the squad leader growled "We've got a job to mission and we're gonna do it." the tall Red stood and looked across her command "Besides, we do not leave people in zombie land."

"Affirmative Boss" Beth returned, looking chastened. She looked at Saki "Hey, Gi, you ready for this? Suit checked and everything? Just cause you're a violet doesn't mean you want to get any Zombie Plague spoors on you."

"Uh, yes corporal." Saki ran another check on her suit "I'm all set." she felt a twinge of resentment. Just because she'd only recently completed drop school (after a year in the regular infantry) the rest treated her like she was a raw recruit.

"For your sake I hope so" the sergeant whose name was Michelle Ji smiled "Everyone run final system check and button up. We're approaching the terminator." Saki pressed a mental button and her suit's visor shut, the armour momentarily expanding then contracting as it checked its seals. Saki looked over her telltales then gave a thumbs up as her turn came.

"Hold onto your seats, we're approaching the sun line!" the crew chief whooped as the aerodyne flew into the solid wall of clouds ahead. The engines howled as they fought to keep the aircraft stable then. The sky around them grow steadily lighter, the craft jerking around all over the place in the wind shear then suddenly shot out into blue sky. A massive bank of clouds appeared bellow, and the aerodyne began to head into it.

"You all know the drill when we hit dirt." the sergeant looked around them. "If you see someone in New Mercian armour, they could still be a zombie, control your fire, but don't risk yourselves if you see holes, got it?"

There was a chorus of affirmatives as the VTOL continued its descent, dropping through the clouds and into rain, the doors sliding open and the heavy multi-barrelled cannons on either side slid into position.

"We're landing about three hundred metres from the last reported position. Stay alert, if something happened to them, it could have been near here." Ji reported, her armour shimmering over into the strange broken white and green camo this area mandated.

This was a hell of a mission for your first time in drop troops Saki thought. They were being sent in to search for a New Mercian ground patrol sent into the zone to check and if necessary replace the various leave behind sensor packages that customarily monitored the contaminated zone for European troop movements. They could have airdropped more probes, but such aircraft movement could be tracked from across the border. Plus it was risky to fly an aircraft through the terminator, even with modern equipment and the best flight training. A team in power armour on the ground had a much easier time, or at least, were far more expendable than a multi-million pound aircraft. This patrol however had missed three check ins, and it's beacon had vanished off satellite. So a search party was sent.

The VTOL didn't touch the ground, instead hanging a two metres above it, and the team leapt clear, their armour taking the impact as they rolled up to kneeling, guns aimed around in an all around defence, the two spider like heavy weapon drones deployed at the centre of each arc Ji looked over at the sensor operator next to her "Yune, anything?"

The sensor operator looked around, the sensor turret on her shoulder traversing "Scope's clear, it's a balmy twenty centigrade, radiation level about five-rems an hour." Each member of the squad had their own slightly suite of sensors, but the data was assembled on the sensor specialists helmet, giving her more ability to play around with sensor input in ways that a normal infanteer wasn't trained for.

Saki didn't know what she'd been expecting but not this, the area was muddy and icy, with large trees poking out from the steaming dirt. Her boots crunched on remaining ice, even as rain pooled all around her. In the distance a massive clearly artificial spire was visible, poking up onto the horizon, glowing through the fog on thermals. "What's that?" Saki asked.

Beth chuckled "That's the arcology, you can see it through the clouds because it's hot. The nuclear strike breached a couple of the fission piles they had running it, it's still hotter than the baseline even ten years on."

Sergeant Ji looked up at the tower then shook her head "Alright, let's get this done. Form up in formation two, we're moving to the last reported position of that patrol." a virtual beacon snapped into being ahead. The squad formed up and moved forward, weapons tracking with their eyes as they sloshed through the saturated ground. Saki was reassured by the presence of the VTOL in the near distance, manoeuvring so to be close enough to support, but not give away their position by hovering over them.

Saki was on the right of the formation, watching her sector as they moved, rifle raised, seeing no movement on her scope or detector, she was concentrating so hard she almost jumped when she heard Yune say: "Wait, hold up." The squad halted "Got something up ahead on motion detector. Can't see it on thermals, but this rain's washing them out." A virtual blip appeared on Saki's HUD, and she aimed down her scope at it... through the murk she could see a dark figure standing up ahead.

"Contact, boogie." she said, her scope automatically designating the figure, outlining him in a yellow, unknown, possibly hostile.

"Beth, move up with your team, drone two, deploy with them." Ji's voice was quiet, tense "I'm gonna try radioing it." there was a beat, and the figure straightened and looked in their direction.

"Roger!" the drone sounded inordinately cheerful, its multi-cannon spinning gently as it moved up to backstop the infantry. Saki slipped forward, touching the unsafe button near her weapons trigger, then pressing a switch on the gun's pistol grip, dialling her rounds for internal explosives. "Be careful, it seems like it heard me radio, could be a friendly."

A tarmac road lead off ahead, with an abandoned and rusted bus laying across it. In the centre of the road stood a figure. It looked like a man from the height, age uncertain from behind, mostly covered in a rain coat. Saki frowned his body temperature was lower than it should be, but that could just be a thermal control layer in the coat, or the rain water everywhere. "Hello?" she asked aiming her rifle "Can you hear me?" her armour faithfully relayed her voice, as it did all sounds.

The figure turned and Saki saw its face was a mass of tumours. It held a tire iron in one hand, and as it saw Saki turned howled and charged at her. Saki saw its mouth open showing long jagged metal teeth, and fired. There was a loud crack and the round struck the zombie in its centre of mass, making a hole the size of a fist, then a pop and a fountain of gore exploded out of the zombies back as the round exploded. The creature collapsed over in two pieces.

And then the motion detector began to ping, movement, all directions. Saki saw dark figures charging through the trees, some holding clubs or other makeshift weapons, their flesh blotchy and silver in patches "CONTACT!"

"Fire at will! fire at will!" Ji yelled, and everyone cut lose, rounds blasting through trees and the bodies of attackers as the small team sought to hold back the sea of attackers threatening to close over them. . .