The First S.P.E.A.R. OF ORION Colony

by Silver Centurion

Deployment

"Wow..." Blackburn muttered as he pounded his clip into his assault rifle.

"I know, I don't get it either, but if Thorne is willing to defect, even temporarily, then it must be something big." Corde said as a small tv monitor turned on in a corner of the dropship and the USIF pilot's masked face appeared.

"Commander. We're prepped for take-off. General Stone has ordered that we be sent in first, so I suggest we get a move on." the pilot said before the screen flashed back to black.

"Well, looks like we're going in deep...again." Blackburn said as the dropsip's engines roared to life and the bay doors opened.

"Corde, you know anything about the planet we're being deployed on? I mean I know you told us Thorne's already got men on the ground but have you gotten any word from him detailing the planet?" Matthews said as he leaned his sniper on the wall of the dropship.

Corde sat and thought for a few seconds before responding. "No, I don't really know anything about this planet. I even checked on the latest USIF and even the latest ARM maps. It's not there. To be honest I-" Corde was interupted as a large explosion shook the dropship.

"Well, looks like the orbital engagement's begun." Blackburn said in a slightly peppy tone. He was known for loving the heat of battle after all.

The monitor in the corner of the dropship flashed on once again. " First-Recon, Burn-In altitude reached. GO!GO!GO!" the pilot said as the dropship's cargo doors opened revealing a lush green forest below.

"Let's do this!" Blackburn said as he fastened his weapons and jumped out the dropship first. Matthews simply stared before shrugging and jumping out himself. Corde then proceeded to jump out and follow his team as they plummeted to the ground in their black USIF armor.

"Hit the brakes!" Blackburn said over his com as he spread his arms and legs and slowed significantly. The others followed his example and did the same. The 3 soldiers floated slowly down into the trees before Blackburn, then Matthews, and finally Corde, landed with a loud crack as they shattered the earth beneath them.

As corde regained his stance he could see Blackburn leaning against a large tree and Matthews crouching down, as if trying to hear something like a hunter would. Blackburn ceased to lean on the tree as he pulled out his shotgun and shouldered it at a bush that had just moved.

The 3 soldiers fell deafly silent as they quietly approached the the living bush. Matthews was the closest to the bush to begin with so he was the one who inevitably had to confront it. And he did as he snapped his sniper on his back and pulled out his handgun with one hand and grabbed a large branch on the bush. In a split second he ripped it out of the ground fully and saw what was hiding behind it. Nothing.

"Huh, coulda sworn I saw something move..." Matthews said as he holstered his handgun and placed the bush back in its rightful place.

"C'mon, we have to meet up with Echo squad." Corde said as put away a holopad and he gestured to the north, which was nowhere in particular in the huge forest.

The other 2 soldiers gave nods of approval as they shifted into overdrive and First-Recon's boots thudded against the ground rapidy towards Echo squad.

As the 3 large metal men cut a path through the trees, branches deflecting and snapping against their armor, a small creature that may have been equine, not quite, but close, crawled out of the uprooted bush to reveal its dark grey stripes and light grey coat. Its mowhawk flew backwards as the strange creature sailed in the opposite direction of the metal men.

Corde snapped to a halt as he came into a clearing. Matthews and Blackburn stopped a few feet in front of Corde as they beheld the gruesome sight. Half a dozen SPEAR soldiers in pristine white aegis armor lay scattered around a large swampy area. Most of the deceased soldiers still clung to their weapons... even the ones that were no longer whole. Yes it was true, some of the men had been ripped in half, their guts strewn about what was left of their bodies.

"My god..." Matthews muttered just loud enough for his squadmates to hear. As if on que Blackburn noticed a large reptillian corpse slowly sinking into the muck.

"You think that might be what did the trick?" Blackburn said as he gestured over to the slowly dissappearing corpse. The other men just remained silent, already accepting the overgrown lizard as the cause of the SPEAR forces' deaths.

"Alright... Matthews take a note on this, we'll get in contact with command about it once we regroup with Echo, let's go." Corde said as matthews quickly scribbled something on a holopad and quickly fastened it to his belt as he and First-Recon continued to Echo's location.

The 3 soldiers ran through the dense forest in silence for a few minutes before Mtthews, who was at the rear of the group stopped in his tracks as he raised his sniper to a tree where he thought he had seen something move. 'C'mon, now you're seeing things.' Matthews thought to himself as he was quickly falling behind the group.

Suddenly a gunshot rang out somewhere ahead of where Matthews was and he turned in the direction of the sound only to see the endless spraw of trees. "Shit..." Matthews said as he began to run back to his squad.

Matthews was not allowed to regroup as he was grabbed from behind, thrown into a tree and was disarmed as his shields flaired. Mattews quickly scrambled to his feet as he was regaining his vision, and tried to get behind cover to no avail. He was quickly seized again by what appeared to be a SPEAR soldier. From what Matthews could make out through his blurry vision, the soldier was wearing badly damaged aegis armor, with dings and dents all over it. Beyond that was anyone's guess through Matthews' vision.

The large SPEAR soldier picked up Matthews off the ground and raised him to his crimson visor, while he took Matthews' pistol out oh his holster and raised it to his head. Matthews, dangling from the soldier's hand and with a gun to his face was running out of options. All Matthews could think to do at this point was try to reason with the soldier.

"Look, man, just put me down, and you and I can go on our meery ways alright?"

The stone faced soldier just stood their, motionless, until he finally spoke. "Where is my squad? Do you know where they are soldier?" The SPEAR soldier demanded.

"No, I don't but if you let me go I can -" Matthews was silenced with a swift blow to the face, which knocked his helmet off as it bounced away from him. Matthews soared through the air for a few seconds until he came to a stop a few yards from the soldier, as his back hit a large tree trunk.

"The you are of no use to me..." the soldier said as he pointed his pistol at Matthews' forhead. "Now die..." the soldier said before a loud gunshot rang out.

'I'm... alive?' Matthews thought as he opened his eyes to see a large hole in the soldier's head that was gushing blood. The SPEAR soldier fell to his knees as he feebly tried to raise the gun to Matthews once more. Mtthews, seeing he wasn't out of the woods, scrambled up, and ran over to the nearly dead man, and tackled him to the ground. Matthews pinned the man and confiscated the gun as he waited for him to bleed out.

Corde cam running out of the forest with Blackburn right behind him shouldering his assault rifle and firing on something. The two soldiers gave eachother a nod that signaled everything was fine... but it wasn't. Just as Matthews thought the soldier had ceased to exist, and let go of one of his arms, a large metal knife came sailing towards Matthews' face. The knife made contact with the soft gellationous mass of Matthews' eye as the knife dissappeared inside First-Recons's sniper.

Blood began to spurt out of the eye as the SPEAR soldier released the knife and went limp. Matthews quickly fell over and became just as lifeless as his enemy. Corde, upon seeing the SPEAR soldier try to assault Matthews had tried to run over and help, but couldn't as his energy shields flaired from a shotgun blast, and he was forced to take cover.

"He's dead ain't he!" Blackburn said as he poked his head out from cover to unleash a stream of bullets into the dense forest.

Corde quickly brought up the sniper's vitals. KIA. "Yea, he's gone! Fuck!" Corde said as a grenade came to a stope beside him and exploded before he could react. The blast sent Corde flying until he landed on his back, his sheilds down and his armor compromised.

"Corde!" Blackburn said as he tried to rush over to Corde's aid. Blackburn was stopped short as a sniper round impacted his leg and he just barely managed to roll behind cover before another bullet impacted his previous location.

A hail of gunfire was now ripping the little cover Blackburn had left to shreds. And then... it stopped.

Corde, now unconsious, still lay in his defensless position as Blackburn wondered what the hell was going on. This question would soon be answered as a slow but steady thud of feet gout louder and louder until a mech rounded the corner of Blackburn's cover, and slowly turned to him.

"Aw hell no..." Blackburn said as the barrels of the gatling guns started to turn. Blackburn tried to limp away from the mech, but was quickly picked up by the hulking machine and had 3 gatling gun barrels pressed against his helmet.

'Well, this is it...' Blackburn thought to himslef as he braced himself for death. It never came. Instead two loud 'stabbing' sounds could be heard, like metal cutting metal, followed by the mech's eyes going dark and it falling backwards, releasing Blackburn as it fell.

The section 8 soldier rolled, and then came to a stop a few feet from the mech. Blackburn slowly rose to his feet and beheld two badly damaged SPEAR soldiers unleashing hell on their comrades. One was going around blasting them in the face with a shotgun, the other was doing the same, except with a sniper rifle. The experienced soldier just stood in disbelief as one by one, all twelve of the 'enemy' SPEAR soldiers fell.

Blackburn tried to approach his shotgun, and then Corde , while the enemy was occupied... with itself. Blackburn was able to limp over to his shotgun and pick it up, using it like a cane almost. He quickly hurried over to Corde who was beggining to come to, and started to drag him away from the action. he didn't get far. The gunfire quickly died down, and Blackburn knew he had only a few seconds left to get himself and Corde to safety before those SPEAR maniacs targeted them next.

Blackburn turned his head back quickly to see where he was going, and instead of just seeing trees he saw a SPEAR soldier clutchng his shotgun staring at him. The two just stood there for a few seconds in shock until another SPEAR soldier came rushing up in front of Blackburn, effectively sandwiching him between the two armed soldiers.

The 3 stood in silence for a few seconds until the soldier holding the shotgun said "Need some help?" Blackburn was once again dumbfounded. 'Did he just offer to HELP me?' Blackburn thought before slowly nodding, unsure of his choice.

Within a few seconds the SPEAR soldier had gotten out a medical kit and began to patch Blackburn up. Al the while the experienced major just sat and thought about what was going on as he observed the other SPEAR solder examining Corde. As soon as the SPEAR soldier was finished with organic tissue, he quickly put away his medical kit and began to repair the large hole in Blackburn's armor with his repair tool.

Finally after several uncoftoramble minutes the SPEAR soldier stood up and said " Well, that should do it, you're gonna be fine, but i'm not so sure about your friend he loo-" The SPEAR soldier was interupted by the groans of Corde as he awoke and sat upright.

"Corde! Don't freak out! They're... on our side." Blackburn said not sure of the last part.

Corde having already noticed the SPEAR soldier hovering over him took heed to his comrade's words. He didn't freak out. Instead he punched the soldier in the face.

"Fine. Whatever... Not like anything is gonna get any more normal the way this is going." Corde said as he stood up and walked over to Blackburn. "So, who are they?''

"I'm Jason you asshole." one soldier said as he recovered from the powerful blow.

"I'm Hector. Hey you wouldn't happen to have any music on your holopads would you?" Hector said hopeful.

The 2 section 8 soldiers just sared at eachother for a few seconds at the odd manner of the question.

"Uh, yea, I do have some music on my holopad..." Blackburn said as he handed a small holopad over to Hector, who quickly began scrolling through the short music list.

"Ugh... still no Yeezy, thanks anyways." Hector said in a dissappointed tone as he handed the holopad back over to Blackburn.

Blackburn was surprised that he hadn't taken hs holopad which contained secret USIF info. he had given it to Hector as a test. He had passed. Maybe these two were trustworthy... maybe.

Corde walked over to a tree and radioed Echo squad. "This is Corde. We need you to converge on our current position, we're down a man. Oh and by the way, apparently we have rougue SPEAR forces who appear to be friendly with us."

"Negative First-Recon. We're engaged. We're redirecting Delta to your position, don't bother contacting Foxtrot, all six of em' are KIA. Echo out." the soldier stated coldly over the com before it fell silent.

'Damn.' Corde thought as he realized they would have to wait even longer. Delta was over 5 klicks away. It would take them at least half an hour for them to reach Corde's position in the dense forest. Corde walked back over to the group of 3 men and sat down.

"Alright. We've got backup incoming, and I've told them you guys are to be trusted. I'm still not entirely convinced, but since Blackburn is, I'll at least give you two a try." Corde said in a commanding, yet unsure tone.

"Hm..... well, since you seem to trust us, I'll trust you too. Hector certainly seems to." Jason said as he gestured over to Hector and Blackburn who seemed to be talking.

Corde held his hand out to shake Jason's. Jason extended his arm and shook his hand firmly.

'Good man.' Jason thought to himself before retracting his arm.

"So, Jason is it? Why were you killing your own forces? And why are there only two of you left?" Corde asked abruptly, knowing SPEAR squads were at least 11 men strong.

"Well... you see we're not exactly part of the SPEAR OF ORION anymore." Jason said, gaining a weird look from Corde.

"What do you mean?" Corde asked curiously.

"It's a long story. How long until those reinforcements arrive?

Corde hesitated still having a bit of distrust towards them because of their 'previous' affiliation. But considering that they didn't kill him while he was asleep, Corde considered them trustworthy and replied, " 30 minutes."

"Alright... hey you two get over here it's fucking story time!" Jason yelled at Blackburn and Hector, who quickly crawled over to the two.

"What is it?" Blackburn asked.

"I already told you, its story time." Jason said silencing Blackburn.

"30 minutes right?" Jason asked.

"Yea." Corde replied.

"Alright, I can work with that."

---

Author's Note: I would just like to thank everyone who has read my story, and also for 1000+ views, I never knew I would become this popular. Anyways, I have scaled down the two wwek wait for a chapter, down to one. Most of the time. besides that I would also like to thank Nethelli who inspired me to write my own fanfics. Go check out some of his amazing works like Far From Home. And also Nethelli if you're reading this, yes, Luna is best pony. Have a good week everyone.

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[Imakidbanme]

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