Dolls of the Red Zone(Girls Frontline)

Chapter 26 - Excursion

The following night was chaotic for X-Lab to say the least, Springfield of course was being upgraded and outfitted with the necessary equipment to operate in red zones. Nako was at her side the entire time, despite the fact she should probably be sleeping since the upgrades didn't end until after midnight. 

Haz actually got to bed early in preparation for the red zone op, she knew everyone had to be on top of their game if they wanted to get out alive. Ayako though surely didn't get to sleep early, quite on the contrary, she spent the entire night and early morning working on her own EW equipment. Without Kimiko present she'd have to handle what would normally be her job, which included getting space to transport data and some reformatting for field ops. 

In the end, Springfield and Nako both got just above four hours of sleep, Haz got seven, and Ayako didn't get any, much to the annoyance of SOP who wanted to cuddle, but she couldn't know about what X-Lab was about to do. 

Now what Ayako hadn't told Persica was that X-Lab proper wasn't actually in a red zone, it was just on the border of a black zone, so she had taken the liberty of preparing MILSPEC Hazmat gear for herself and the rest of her team. Despite being extremely shielded to collapse radiation, dolls don't last very long in black zones without protection and Ayako didn't want to carry any of it back to G&K. 

She planned to leave most of the gear in the zone when they left, the only things they wouldn't leave would be easier to manage, like weapons and clothes inside their Hazmat gear. Persica couldn't know her team was going into a black zone, a red zone was already a stretch, but this wouldn't get approved in her wildest dreams. 

So eventually 0600 rolled around and a specially modified helicopter was waiting on the pad, all the painted-on markings had been stripped off in favor of an all-black color scheme. Both the pilot and co-pilot were outside the helicopter putting on their own decontamination gear when X-Lab all showed up together. 

Each member of X-Lab carried a large duffel bag of equipment they didn't want getting seen, Hazmat gear, Geiger counters, all the indications of this operation being deeper into the radiation than planned for. Each doll boarded the helicopter and waited for it to get airborne, they would wait until then to put on their gear. 

Ayako shared a word with the pilot and co-pilot after they got and in and finished their pre-flight checks.

Ayako: I'm about to brief my team, anything I say you didn't hear. 

Pilot: What was that?

The pilot answered with a slight chuckle, muffled quite heavily by the gas mask he was wearing, but Ayako still found it amusing. And so the helicopter started spinning up and soon left the ground.

Ayako: Alright, listen up, Persica's briefing got some things wrong, first things first, we're not going into a red, we're going into a black zone, it's serious business. Springfield you're not familiar with this kind of stuff, but you'll pick it up, just stay behind us so you don't get fried by any particularly intense radiation. 

Ayako made sure to look into Springfield's eyes when she spoke, she needed her message to get across, it may be grim but it was necessary. 

Ayako: Our primary objective is locating Kimiko but Persica also wants data from X-Lab servers. Electronics may stop functioning at random from radiation, means we're probably going to be radio silent for the entire op, we've arranged an exfil at 0500 tomorrow if we can't radio early, we miss that and we're on our own. On top of that, I've made the personal objective to recover what I can of 005, most importantly her software and EW module if everything is still intact. Questions?

Springfield: Aren't we all shielded from radiation, why do we need the Hazmat gear?

Ayako: Shielded, not immune, black zones are very intense, plus we're in Epiphyllum flowering season.