Troopers In Armor: Vampire Virus

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Corbin took the hit with grace, using the moment to roll her body over the back side of his fist. She took half a second to bounce back from the blow, but then darted between his legs and used her agility as a strength, wrapping her body around his left tricep and bicep muscles, intending to get him in a headlock by climbing up his body as if it were a tower.
 
"Oooh! Where'd ya go?" Brahl said humorously, just barely able to see Corbin as she quickly dodged his blow and nimbly slipped behind him. As she began her attempt at wrapping him in a headlock, Brahl grasped one of her arms, tugging her off of him and softly tossed her back in front of him. "Comin' at ya!" he yelled, swinging his tree of a leg at her in the form of a roundhouse kick.
 
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She dropped her body flat on the floor, the roundhouse kick striking her chest.
But suddenly her agile and calm demeanor changed, she got up swiftly and...
Sunk her teeth into Brahl's leg. And it wasn't a gentle bite, it was a very hard and stout bite. She began brutally trying to claw and beat at his kneecap when the officer from before actually put a noose on her neck and began pulling her away from Brahl's body.
She attempted to bite at the officer, but he slapped her;
Hard enough to cut her cheek.

"Sorry to break your win streak Brahl, We'll take this as a tie. She can't fight for a while...at least not a friendly. You probably put a minor fracture on her ribs. Her...infected...genes take over and she tries to bite everyone...sorry. On the plus side, your skin is so thick I doubt that her teeth penetrated or hurt"

Corbin was beginning to snap back to reality, but she was starting to drool slightly and her canines were exposed- revealing fangs similar to what the early stages of infection looked like.

"Sorry brother...I can't always control that...usually that's a good thing" she said, genuine distress in her voice.
 
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Paza slips a hand under Bhral's arm, hefting the large alien up and helping support his weight in case the leg injury was worse than it appeared. "Easy up, big guy," the scout said, though his eyes were trained on Corbin. Bhral's girth dwarfed Paza's lithe frame, and completely hid where the scout's hand had returned to his holstered sidearm.

"Are you all right, Commander?" He asked evenly.
 
"I think my ribs are cracked or at least hurt pretty bad. That was a helluva kick...sorry about that" she said, forcing herself to stand erect, even though she grimaced a little when stretching herself out straight.
She went to the wall and set up a notification to just meet in her room early- she didn't give a shit at this point.
The notice also said
Gear up, pad up, armor up, load up and be ready to move when coming to my room
 
Ustaga arrived at the sparring ring right before the commotion started, when Corbin bit Brahl. She stood off to the side of the doorway, peeking in, as she saw the girl latch onto her opponent's leg. She tensed up, intently keeping her eyes on the fight. What was the girl doing?

She overheard the officer talking to Brahl. Infected? The girl was infected? Why did they allow her to be here, then? She was sick! She could get them all infected, or worse, killed! She watched as Corbin resumed to normal. But Ustaga couldn't help but notice the human still had that vile look on her face, like she wasn't quite fully in control of her body just yet.

She kept still and quiet outside of the room, not wanting to draw any attention to herself. She made a mental note to not get on Corbin's bad side.
 
Corbin passed by Ustaga, her head low and biting her bottom lip slightly to ignore her torso pain.
Just gotta suck it up she told herself, walking back to her room.
She began jamming an old metal anthem and started loading her magazines. One click...two click...eleven click....thirty two click....
Just over and over again.
Once the last mag was loaded, she slammed it into her battle rifle. Then, pulling the engagement lever, removed the magazine.
"Never forget that extra one in the chamber..." she said to herself, before putting the magazine back in her pistol grip. Then she took off all of her clothes. She was hoping to do this fast before any of her troops walked in and discovered her scars and asked about them or before they saw that she did not wear bra's most of the time because of how useless they usually are for physical training and such. But her boot clamps decided 'Fuck you' today and weren't automatically clamping over her socks.
 
Joseph Lancaster was really not what one would term a 'social' being. Oh, sure, he enjoyed the camaraderie of soldiers as others did, but that was for the most part in the field. When he was back at base and had his own quarters and nothing good to really be talking about, he kept to himself. He would exercise and train, and occasionally spar with others, and Zersephine would meet him for meals and downtime, and for 'intellectual games' he always lost. But Joseph Lancaster did not make friends, not really. He held the cards close to his chest, after all, as the saying went - he knew too well what it was like to get too close and have everything torn away in the blink of an eye, in the pat pat pat of rifle fire or the bearing of fangs.

Which was why, upon receiving his assignment via notice board, and observing his new Commander, Joe felt almost like going a little AWOL and denying orders.

As they ate together, Zersiphine had filled him in one everything he needed to know about their new situation. As much as she could possibly tell him with what little information lower level soldiers were given, anyway. Even Zersiphine didn't get much more than he did, despite her outranking and outsmarting him. He always listened to her when she spoke, even if it appeared he didn't, and she knew this - it was something Joe was glad for when she started explaining their Commander's . . . unique situation. After that, observing her in the mess hall when she and her Deetrit buddy starting causing a commotion was just a formality. Joe was only glad he was far enough away in their secluded little corner of the mess that he didn't have to bother standing for her entrance.

Despite the warnings he'd received in Zersiphine's information, and despite his better judgement, Joe threw the remains of his meal away and followed Corbin to her sparring match. He wanted to see this person - if she was truly human anymore - in action, in combat. What he got was more than he expected, and Joe left the small audience that had gathered the second the noose came out, retreating very, very rapidly to his own quarters and just trying not to hurl. He was going to be working with that? And for what? To have her go insane at the stimulus of pain which was practically a requirement in battle and get himself detained for killing his own commanding officer?

Zersiphine came to retrieve him, after too long, and found him hunched against the small counter in the bathroom, hanging a bit over the toilet like he might lose his lunch at any second. Her human companion put on a brave face, as he was wont to do, and she could only pretend that she actually believed for one second he was 'okay' like he said he was. They had to go and meet their new Commander now, as the summons had said, and even though Joe made a show of smiling, it felt wrong. Zersiphine knew that the human was resilient, and now that he'd gotten to see the fate that lay before them and knew what he was up against he would steel himself and bear through it - but one thing was clear. He was going to need her now more than ever.

Together, with Joe slightly in the lead as if to prove his point of being fine, already, stop asking, they made their way to the quarters of one Commander Corbin Durazo.
 
Corbin hurried along with getting her armor on, actually able to get her entire torso and arm panels on before her boots felt like snapping together.
She narrowed her eyes, and pushed with all of her might to get the stupid things to latch. Suddenly, a chunk of half decayed bone crunched from a gear and the boot snapped shut, cutting a piece of her palm.
"FUCK YOU BOOTS!" she shouted, gripping her hands pretty hard. She was lucky she didn't have her gloves on, or her suit would have been breached.
She leaned down, and investigated the chunk of bone that had been lodged in a gear or pinion nut or something. Gently lifting it, she could tell it was from an infected she probably killed on Gorath- a common practice among some of the special forces was to stomp on a lone infected and use it's body parts down the line to startle others out of hiding. The bone probably came from some one of the infected she had killed and broken it's arms off afterwards. The whole idea is to throw limbs, bones, fingers, teeth, or something less horrifying from the environment to make a lot of racket in an area ahead or away from you. The infected would almost always ignore their eye perception in favor for their hearing (if given equal distance from the targets).
With a satisfied smile, she moved around her "furniture" to make it more accommodating for a debrief. Then she realized- she had nothing to really debrief them on other than 'We were told to leave early and investigate some weird shit'
Slightly agitated, she sent a request out for a debrief packet to have something to inform her team on.
Now, Corbin never gets scared when in battle. Or when performing silent assassinations or even get scared when she is hurt. But she nearly jumped out of her skin when literally five seconds after sending the request, a hard record in a Manila envelope slid under her door.
She briskly opened the door- only to see...a cute girl having a smoke break with a Vargoth. Both were privates or FNGs and likely wouldn't be trusted with classified documents.
She opened the envelope, and began reading.
TS Blaine

Documentation is classified. Exposure of documents to those not deemed trustworthy will result in court martial and/or torture.
--------------------------------------
Target is a civilian structure. Your team will be deployed very soon after debrief. Your mission is to locate all information about what was discovered by the civilian scientist and access the off world distress beacon and destroy it.
• All infected civilians are to be terminated
• All injured or recently infected civilians are to be terminated
• All living and or otherwise healthy civilians are to be terminated
• Set high-grade explosives and destroy the civilian structure
--------------------------------------

Stamped,
Admiral Karloff
It took Corbin a few solid minutes to digest what she had read- an order to kill healthy civilians had happened before but that was when the idea was to save the civilian populace. This planet had nothing in the ways of colonization and it probably didn't have that many "civilians" on it in the first damn place. The fact they wouldn't tell her anything beyond this made her uneasy. It felt like a black op with a few burner soldiers to keep credibility down.
 
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As Dorazo left the mess, the commotion died down and the whispering began. Paza was left to his own thoughts about the matter. Dorazo was certainly a new one for him. He never had an infected commander before. His own experiences with the infected were like most others: violent, bitter, and painful. Dorazo seemed somewhat in control, though, but Paza had spent too much time ahead of a unit, alone, unaided, and up against infected to be anything but wary around the volatile commander. He suspected his hand would be leaping to its holster a lot on this mission.

Paza made his way down the Blaine's corridors until he arrived at Dorazo's quarters. He saw that some of the other members of the squad were on their way as well and spotted two he had not yet met nearing. He identified them as Lancaster and Zersiphine, recalling the squad info posted on the board. He waved to catch their attention. "You two also part of this unit? Leon Paza, nice to meet you."

He jerked a thumb toward Dorazo's door. "Here's hoping she doesn't get all of us killed."
 
[Corbin dropped her body flat on the floor, the roundhouse kick striking her chest.
But suddenly her agile and calm demeanor changed, she got up swiftly and...
Sunk her teeth into Brahl's leg. And it wasn't a gentle bite, it was a very hard and stout bite. She began brutally trying to claw and beat at his kneecap when the officer from before actually put a noose on her neck and began pulling her away from Brahl's body.]


Looking down impassively at the now-feral Corbin as she gnawed at his leg, Brahl grunted, unphased. Having dealt with much worse infected behavior, this was nothing more than a bit of entertainment for him. The carapace plates on his leg resisted her clamping jaws with ease, allowing him to receive the bite unscathed. He had heard tell of this girls light exposure to the virus. Now he got to see its effects in action. With the eyes of a specialist, Brahl studied her behavior and took some quick mental notes on the situation. First, he looked at her eyes. They were glazed and black, indicating stage one physical response. However, her veins were not distended or blackened, and therefore her body was not under the full influence of the sickness. Inwardly, he sighed with relief at this. That meant their biggest concern would be keeping a leash handy.

[Paza slips a hand under Bhral's arm, hefting the large alien up and helping support his weight in case the leg injury was worse than it appeared. "Easy up, big guy," the scout said, though his eyes were trained on Corbin. Bhral's girth dwarfed Paza's lithe frame, and completely hid where the scout's hand had returned to his holstered sidearm.]

Although he didn't need any assistance, Brahl accepted Paza's aid, still watching Corbin as she was dragged away. "I'm fine, friend. Thank you." he said kindly, albeit in a bit of a flat tone. Patting the scout on the back, Brahl jogged to the edge of the ring and leapt nimbly over the ropes, clearing them with ease. Landing with a resounding thud, the Deetrit glanced back to the scout. "Allow me a moment to get suited up, and I'll meet you at briefing."

As he suited up, the special forces officer examined his leg. The carapace plate was slightly cracked where she had bitten him. Sighing and making various clicking noises that might have been curses, Brahl reached into his Hunter armors on-board storage. Inside was his field response kit, containing various useful items he had compiled for battle. Rummaging for a moment, the Deetrit pulled out a vial with some sort of glowing gel inside. Popping the lid with practiced speed, Brahl dipped a finger in and slimed the material over his damaged leg plate. On contact, the goop hardened, filling the cracks. Satisfied, he place the vial back into it's storage unit. Now fully geared, he looked up at the notice on the wall.

Gear up, pad up, armor up, load up and be ready to move when coming to my room

"Affirmative." he said, smiling. He had only one stop left before he would arrive in briefing. The armory. After all, he wouldn't be much use without his pride and joy. Passing through the sparring room door and into the corridor, Brahl navigated his way to the weapon containment facility. Scanning the numbered weapons covering the wall, he let out a little "Aha!" and retrieved his JRIGL. Patting it lovingly, the Deetrit placed it into the built in weapon mount on his back. He was now ready to roll. A pair of novitiate officers saluted him as he left the armory, making his way towards the briefing room.




 
Joe was mere feet from the door when someone intercepted them, and he did his best to hold back a displeased grimace because he was supposed to be friendly to soldiers in arms and he should probably get to know who would be watching his back. Leon Paza. He sounded familiar, and part of Joe's brain wanted to label him a Scout, but he couldn't be sure without researching, or at least asking his companion.

"I am Zersiphine." She said,voice soft and melodic, and inclined her head to the new human in greeting. "This is Joseph Lancaster. A pleasure to meet you."

Joe nodded and shook the man's hand because it was only polite. "Here's hoping she doesn't lose her shit and kill us herself." . . . No one had ever accused Joe of having a sunny personality.
 
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A light breeze of misty aerosol hissed as the door to Corbin's room unlocked for her team.
She ran by what she was going to tell them.
'no reinforcements. No allies. No rescuing survivors. Destroy a "structure" and retrieve data'
The mission still didn't feel right...so she began thinking...quite intently...whatever they weren't telling her, the 'structure' probably could.
After a few seconds of mulling over what to say, she pulled up her fists, popped her knuckles and twisted her neck around from both sides to pop her neck. She hoped loosening up a little might make her more pleasant to be around. To be fair, most of her attitude came from the fact that she can't be fired. It's about a 3 thousand UC annual difference between the highest rank a special forces soldier could be, and given her physical state she couldn't ever get higher than that anyway. In fact, the only reason she is special forces is because of that 'patient zero strain'. Where as most people have to be extraordinary to be special forces, special forces training (after being recycled once) made her special. After taking the moments to reminisce, she opened her U-mail from her access pad. But... Empty. No one wrote her anymore. Sure she was emotionally gruff, temperamental and made distasteful jokes, but she really was, at the core of it all, lonely. No one gave a shit about her back on Titan, she knew that. All the people that did, are dead.
 
Ustaga had read the notice and did as it said, aquiring some lightweight armor and a quick moving sword from a room stockpiled full of gear. She held the blade in her hands, looking it over multiple times. Then she pointed it at the opposite wall, as if challenging some invisible enemy. She knew she had to get comfortable with using a weapon quickly. If she couldn't even swing a sword correctly what use would she be on the battle field, other than to get away really quickly?

A little smile appeared on her face. She liked the feel of the sword in her hands. It gave her a sense of power, belonging, like maybe she was going to help her race--and perhaps others--by being helping exterminate the virus that had taken so many lives. She swung the sword slowly a few times, first one handed, then two handed, to get a better feel for the weapon. She'd have to get used to it eventually.

A Deetrit had exited as she entered. She recognized him from the fight earlier, and figured they were probably in the same unit. When she was finished getting all of her stuff she followed the Deetrit to their Commander's room.
 
Now, Corbin was completely ready for her team to enter. Including a few chairs for them and a concrete cinder block for the Deetrit to sit on. She had decided to not inform them of the kill on sight order for the healthy civilians- odds are they were all dead anyway. She figured the part about them not having any back up or reinforcements or resources probably wouldn't bode well with them.
 
Customary greetings over, Joe preceded Zersiphine into the room as he usually did. He couldn't get it out of his brain that her species was much more fragile, despite her relative safety inside the armor they both wore. It was perhaps a leftover shred of chivalry for him, or the few scraps of protective car that hadn't quite been torn away from him, so she never stopped him. Once inside, Joe looked around, cautiously, taking in his surroundings, and let Zersiphine have a chair. He stood almost at attention behind her, armored and armed, helmet tucked under one arm, and didn't take any perceived offers to sit.

"Commander." He said stiffly, with only a nod in her general direction for greeting. Zersiphine would scold him later on, but he rather pointedly did not salute.
 
Commotion, and all sorts of goings on bustled around Brahl as he marched through the facility, following the variously placed directional E-Pad arrows that were leading him to the briefing room. Glancing to and fro, the Deetrit didn't pay anyone much attention. Occasionally, he would nod if he was spoken to, but not much past that. He was always a fairly reserved creature, and this particular day was no exception to that fact. Passing a staircase that led to the experimentation wing, Brahl heard the sharp sound of an elevator arriving on his floor. Doors hissing open, the elevator revealed a squadron of 5 humans, who immediately proceeded to stride cockily into the corridor.

Brahl grunted wearily. Rough and tough by appearance, they were all looking hatefully at him; and he knew why. These wonderful gentlemen were part of a unit that specialized in killing alien infected. Why? Simple. Because they were completely, unequivocally PREJUDICE against aliens of all kinds, which made them extremely effective at dispatching non-humans. Though they were kept in check by the governing laws of the solar system, they didn't hesitate in taking every chance they got to abuse and mistreat any alien they came in contact with. Whether infected or friendly.

The group bee lined straight for the Deetrit, positioning themselves aggressively in a circle around him. Brahl stopped in place, looking around with a tired expression. The leader stepped a little closer to him combatively, dwarfed instantly by the aliens size.

"I see they forgot to spray for pests..." the leader said, spitting with disdain at Brahl's feet. The gooey saliva splattered onto the Deetrit's boot. The rest of the group laughed. At least, until Brahl reacted. With a low, throaty rumble, Brahl grabbed the leaders head with his massive hand and lifted him several feet off the ground. Reminiscent to throwing a baseball, he then chucked the fellow about 15 feet down the hall. The crunch of broken bones was vaguely heard as the man hit the wall. The rest of the group immediately trained their weapons onto him, locking and loading. Brahl simply laughed at this, holding his hands up.
 
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"Anyone seen our Deetrit pal? Eh, no mind." she pretended to not notice the lack of a salute.
"I had no way to determine who was going to be in my squad, mind you. In fact I didn't even know I was going in with a squad as usually I'm in a battle group with other special forces. No one else is in here yet, and since you two are the first I'll divulge only a few bits of the mission, that way it's not total silence in here. We are tasked with going into planet Veescher before anyone, save a few scout teams. We will be going off onto an area obsolete from the rest of the fleet. In other words, it'll just be us out there" she said, trying to break that news gently. If someone was bit, they couldn't afford to really out them down until they "had to". Every gun was needed and without any scientist or engineers assigned to their team...it would be hard to do any sort of searching or investigating in a timely manor.
 
Paza settled into a chair as Dorazo debriefed the squad. A solo operation into the heart of infected space, with only a few other scout teams? That sounded like a surgical strike force to his ears, having been placed in that situation in the past as scout himself. The question, of course, was what the scalpel coming after them was going to cut.

He raised a hand. "Commander, when you say 'just us out there,' do you mean 'no backup?' That sounds kind of fishy to me. I've never been on Veecher, but I've heard about it. We all have. The home of the Virus, a world full of sentient infected. I mean, we've all fought the zombie-like ones running around like mad dogs on a dozen other worlds, both human and alien, but if these Veecher infected can THINK...it just seems like we're just a LITTLE under-gunned for an operation on the Virus homeworld."
 
They were the scouts.

Joe was not a recon agent, had never quite needed to be, given for the larger part of his military career he'd come as a package deal with one. But Luther was gone now, and there was always a new scout assigned that was more practiced than he would be, despite the length of his term. Even with that in mind, Joe knew very well what the Commander's lightly put words meant. It meant they were going in alone and nearly blind. It meant they were very well going there to die.

The faint sound Zersiphine made under her breath told Joe she knew it too. The Zerath wasn't one that took very kindly to any sort of touching, but standing as close as he was, it was easy for Joe to just put a hand on the back of her chair, fingers curling around the plastic until it all but creaked under the strain of his grip. It was a telling sign for their future when she leaned purposely back against it so that her shoulder rested against his hand. He would have her back and she would have his, and that was the only definite thing they could count on anymore.

"It means we're the death scouts," Joe cut in when Paza spoke up, a bitter edge to his voice and his eyes narrowed at Corbin as if it were all her fault. For all he knew, it was. "And you should kiss your ass goodbye just in case." He wasn't an idiot, and neither, he suspected, were any of the others in the room. They were being sent on a suicide mission in hopes a few squads of sacrificed soldier ants would lend enough intel for a bigger operation. Their little ragtag group had just draw the short straw, and that was that.
 
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