(Fallon)

We're 30 million kilometers from Trappist-A's third planet and are using its shadow to cover our approach, I've been transferred to the Defiant for the first part of the mission. As the Carson and Defiant break away from the rest of the fleet, Manitoba and the relief fleet fall back to let the Indies do what they were designed to do. I can almost feel the ship vibrating as if it's excited to finally do something that is not escorting the fat Manitoba or a siege breaker. The crew is abuzz with activity as the pod heads meet in a conference room.

"Today's mission is an aid and smash run." Major Gomez says once we are all in our seats. As the sole combat controller assigned to this mission I am one of the only fleet arm guys in the room the rest are a marine force recon a team I have dropped with a few times before, A seal team all with master drop badges, and another Force recon team.

"Camelot has been hostile real estate for almost 80 years now. chances are you'll find some major settlement clusters down there, they've had plenty of time to dig in and make themselves at home." Behind him, the wall mounted holographic briefing screen cycles through a few renderings of our target planet. Unlike with the Lankies we don't just have a rough idea of where the population centers are but we can't just nuke the cities and leave. We have marines and resistance fighters on that planet and it wouldn't look too good if we just blasted them along with the UEC.

It takes about thirty minutes to suit up in a hostile environment battle armor suit, the HEBA suits are new hardware relatively speaking. They were designed for offensive missions on Lanky worlds and they are so stuffed with tech that regular old battle armor looks like a medieval suit of dented plate in comparison. Regular battle armor works on Lanky worlds too but their filtration systems are too small and get overwhelmed by a number of biological contaminants in the air. Lankies seed some type of pollen into the atmosphere to kick start their own version of agriculture.

This armor is less resistant to small arms fire than the standard infantry armor but more flexible and half the weight. The sensor package built into the helmet is advanced enough to navigate a starship, Infrared, Thermal imaging, millimeter wave radar, ultrasound. There's a built-in trauma kit and a super fast computer to tie all of the information streams together. Whoever designed the armor figured out that the visor is the weak spot in a helmet and that keeping one from forging up in a high CO2 world is an unnecessary energy expense. So the new helmets don't have visors, the lack of visible eyes combined with the little bumps for the helmets sensor arrays gives the wearer an insectoid appearance. So it took about 5 seconds after they released the first HEBA suits into the corps before someone coined the obvious nickname Bug-suits.

Bug suits are custom fitted to each wearer and hideously expensive the defense budget being what it is they are strictly limited issue. Only personnel with frequent business on Lanky wolds get one, Rainbow, Recon, combat control, Seals, Dropship pilots, and space born rescue specialists. All in all, there might be four thousand troops in the entire core with a fitted bug suit. They used to be strictly off limits for missions against the SRA because command didn't want the technology to fall into Russian or Chinese hands. We're not fighting the SRA anyway, we're fighting a new race and if our intel is correct and their technology is where we think it is they couldn't replicate it if they tried. I have a sort of love-hate relationship with my bug suit, It's very comfortable and the wealth of sensor input projected onto the inside of the helmet makes me feel almost omnipotent. On the other hand putting one on, as I'm about to head out into pony country.

"Suits all check out." The lieutenant announces.

"We are ready for business, weapons check please!" We all aim our weapons at the diagnostics target on the bulkhead and let the computers do the talking over the wireless network.

"Alright! Let's go mess us up some pretty ponies." The recon team is 5 troopers strong but we're all Rainbow consisting of LT Patters, SS Miles, Sgt heller, CP Lavoy, and PFC Forbes I am the sixth wheel on this particular wagon but nobody minds having me around because I carry the radios that call down the thunder if there is a need for it.

As we settle into the Blackfly stealth dropship I open the tactical feed in my helmets display. As I do this the interior lights of the drop ship turn red, On the feed the Blue triangles of the Defiant and Carson are only one thousand kilometers from the small pocket of 4 UEC ships around the planet the largest of which is maybe 250 meters and the smallest 100 meters. I bring up the external video feed to see what they look like, their ships obviously were made with aesthetics in mind, smooth curves with no right angles and the speckling of interior lights meaning windows. This would be bad news if we weren't in a stealth ship who's poly-chrome armor makes us almost invisible. As we slowly drift into an orbit I can see one of the ships with a zoomed in camera, I can't see many obvious weapons just some kind of turrets reminiscent of that on old battleships, and a kind of track on the outside running vertically and horizontally along the hull.

"One express elevator to hell coming up!" With that said our drop ship is dropped from the docking clamps and we began to plummet toward the planet. I switch to the drop ships neural network to see what I can with the cameras and am a little disheartened to see that I can hardly see the drop ship at all in the camera thanks to the polychromatic armor. I do however see two flickers of light and see that the Defiant and Carson have launched their escorts of two stealth shrikes to go with us and the other two drop ships.

We set down 1 mile from where we were told the Resistance outpost was located. As we do so the Shrike tasked to be our support moved into a wide circling search pattern. Our displays begin lighting up with small red threat icons about 5 miles away.

"Let's move people." Patters say we get up and the drop ship begins to roll under some trees for cover.

As we move on we began to hear the sounds of wildlife and this shocks me to no end, No colony ship brings animals short of very small livestock and even then they only bring embryos. It is very expensive to transport one pound of stuff into space, that's why soldiers are only allowed a twenty pound bag. My chain of thought is interrupted when we see a red light pierce the night and flash in our direction, Instantly we bring our rifles to bear taking cover.

After a moment the light makes three circles in the air, and instantly we relax the LT lights his Indicator light and returned the greeting. We advance and what meets us is just sad, an old bearded man with what must be an 80-year-old PDW dressed in old Marine fatigues greets us with the biggest and most great full smile I have ever seen. Upon seeing the LT he delivers a week but proud salute one the LT returns half-heartedly.

"Staff sergeant Anton sir. I thought I would never see another NAC soldier as long as I have lived..." he begins before breaking into sobs we're about to aid him when he straightens up and waves his hand dismissively.

"No, no I-I-I'm ok this is just a moment I have dreamed of since I was a young man. Our outpost is this way, please." He then moves us into the camp where we see more old men and women as well as a few young men and women most of which look haggard and some look a little worse for the wear. But when they see us their eyes light up and they look at us like movie stars, one of the men who was wearing an old set of battle armor comes up to the LT and leads him away to a group of other men in battle armor.

As the LT is talking with a group of old men and women Lavoy and I go back to the Dropship and get out a large crate and move it into the camp. When we open it a small crowd forms around us as we reach in and take out the recon drones. The drones unlike the Bug suits, Blackflies, and Indie class ships, aren't made of polychromatic armor but instead, are coated with a radar absorbent material. Each one looks like a miniature version of a space ship about one foot long and tubular in shape, with a small fan in the middle. we activate the drones and link them to the Neural network of the Dropship before we begin tossing them into the night sky. They instantly begin spreading out with overlapping lines of sight doing what would take a squad days to do in a matter of minutes.

"Bingo." Lavoy exclaims as his computer transmits the data to our helmets feeds.

"Well, what do we have here?" The LT says before moving to a map that the Resistance had set up and circles a blank spot on the map about 12 miles from the small town.

"What does this symbol mean?" he asks as he brought up the image on his PDP and shows it to Anton who looks like he's about to have a heart attack.

"That is the mark of the Royal Guard that's bad. We have a team already in the main city to attempt to neutralize the royal but we didn't know they would send a platoon of them. The team we have are our best and I am afraid that even with the two M66 rifles they have they won't be able to hold them off." Anton says looking down.

"Don't worry sir we won't let that happen. We are here to make a little trouble before the assault. When and where."

"Here and it should already be under way. The last transmit ion we retrieved is that they were pinned down in the Colony Key." Anton says pointing a finger at a building on the map.

"Then let's move, Let's go make a loud distraction for teams 2 and 3."

=================================================================================

"For Humanity!" A human yelled before he jumped on top of a car taking two grenades and blowing himself up, taking four UEC troopers with him.

"Tartarus this is bold of them." A UEC Trooper named Glimmer star said as she raised her rifle over a car and fired into the security lot killing 2 humans wearing Changeling armor vests. The Humans had barricaded themselves into the colony key with the royal, somehow they had fooled most of the Royal guard out of the building and now the guards were about to go back in. Luckily the royal had at least two royal guards with her, both of which were unicorns and they had radioed that the royal was adding her magic to a shield to keep them safe and were moving to the escape shuttle.

"WB 1-1 Clear the parking lot and Make a hole in that building." The captain of the guard said

"Copy" the pilot of the cockatrice attack helicopter said as he moved into position.

"Everybody down!" Glimmer Star yelled before raising a shield around herself and a pegasus who was next to her. She could see the others being buffeted by the downdraft of the helicopter as it strafed the humans, before turning 90 degrees and firing two missiles into the side of the building showering them in derbies. They looked up to see a human screaming and on fire, in the middle of the burning portion of the building it dropped to its knees before pulling a pistol and shooting itself in the head. They heard the rotary blades of 4 more helicopters arriving before the Royal guard raised and leveled their weapons.

"MOVE!" Captain Shining Armor yelled raising a shield around himself. Glimmer shield got up to secure the perimeter of the building with her head leader giving her orders. She glanced up in time to shout out a warning as a strange weapon was poked out of a window and after a hollow thump the Cockatrice went up in an explosion so massive it sent most of them sprawling on the ground.

"Cowards!" One of the Helicopter pilots yelled over the radio before racking the window and the immediate area around it with cannon fire and firing a missile directly into the window where the ordnance had come from. In front of Star landed a melted, twisted piece of something that she was sure used to be some part of the building.

"RG!" A human yelled before one of the Royal guards blew his chest to bits with a shotgun. Two of them moved right killing two humans with no armor and just clothes.

'SCCCCCCCCRRRRRReeeeeeeeeee!' Almost as one everypony wearing a radio wrenched the radio from their ear. As it ended another began as before there was a deafening boom as an orange fireball that lit up the night sky as all of the Cockatrice gunships exploded followed by a defining crack.

"What in Celestia was that!" a Pony behind a car yelled before there was a sound like a zipper and the pony, the griffon and the squad next to them all exploded in a shower of meat as tiny explosions that tracked the pavement. The large crowd of onlookers began screaming and began to scatter as more troopers, royal guard and armored vehicles began exploding. There was a loud whooshing noise over the roof...

"EVERY PONY INSIDE! WE CAN’T TAKE ANOTHER STRAFE LIKE THAT!" The trooper captain yelled. The other troopers caught up with the Royal guard inside as they reached the Rotunda.

"Captain what is going on in there!?" Shining armor yelled as they all heard the reports of their own weapons from outside as the music changed to something very bass heavy and about rainbows. So the humans in the crowd grew a spine how surprising.

"Spread out! Hunt down those cowards!" Shining armor yelled leading his Royal guards ahead leaving the guards behind in the rotunda and after 20 seconds two cylinders came through the skylight.

"Smoke!" Somepony yelled before there were two blinding unholy loud bangs in front of them. She tried to raise a shield in time but there wasn't time she tripped over something and fell on her back as she watched what looked like 6 humans with a strange bug-like armor coming from the skylight. One of them landed next to her before the horse reports of their strange rifles added to the cacophony.

==================================================================================

(Fallon)

"Let's move! Fallon, Forbes Find the Asset!" LT says as we move onward. Flash bangs and smoke wouldn't do anything to someone in even regular battle armor, for flash bangs our visors would darken to protect us from the flash and cut our hearing to protect our ears. As for Smoke, unless it’s polychrome smoke we just have to change to one of the various vision modes.

As I pass I look down and see that the ponies actually looked just like anthropomorphic ponies with weird proportions making them have a kind of human facial structure. Forbes and I enter a room only for Forbes to be blast off his feet from the right, I turn and put a burst into a befuddled pony with gold brushed armor with an archaic shotgun.

"Son of a bitch!" Forbes yelled as he gets back to his feet picking up his M66 and loading a grenade into the launcher and pointing his weapon at me. I dive to the right and a gold brushed Royal guard's chest explodes from a point blank 40-millimeter buckshot round. He gives me a thumbs up before helping me to my feet and I pat him on the back.

"You ok?" I ask over the squad channel

"Ya man, just got the wind knocked out of me. Can you believe these jokers? Marching around out there like they're on fucking parade or something." He laughed before our heads up displays began lighting up with red threat icons.

"Let’s go."

The two of us move out before eventually coming across a group of 3 human and surprisingly 1 insectoid resistance members. One of them is wearing partial battle armor consisting of the chest piece and leg armor, and firing an M66. We skid to a stop beside them before adding our newer firepower to the line.

"What have you got!" I yell before pulling a grenade and slamming it into my breast plate to prime it and throwing it around the wall.

"Who are you guys? Never seen that kind of gear before!" The partially armored woman yelled as she reloaded her M66.

"Were the ones you called for." I yell before loading a frag into my grenade launcher and launching it down the hall.

"Tartarus that's some sick gear you guys have got. Anyway we have the Royal pinned down. They can't move but we can't get any crosser." she said.

"Let us handle that. LT We have met up with some Resistance fighters and have the Package pinned down." I say over the suits comm-suite.

"Roger get the package." I nod my head.

"Hold them here. Wait one minute then throw this into the room." I say to the woman giving her a flash bang. She gives me a look, before Forbes and I move into an adjacent room and blew out the window. We both activated our suits stealth sweat and we partiality blended into the night environment as we ascended to the roof one floor up.

"Let’s show these resistance guys how it's done." Forbes said as we attach our lines and repel from the roof. We move to where the red cones of the hostiles predicted positions are on our HUDs and plant two breaching charges on the wall. We move away from the charges before we hear the bang of the flash bang.

"Breaching!" I yell as we blow the charges creating two holes in the wall as we swung into the room.

As we enter I catch a glimpse of pink to my left as Forbes guns down one of the dazed Royal Guards before I land and the computer un-clips my repel line. I see that my opponent is too close for me to bring up my rifle, so I do the only thing that comes to mind and use the split second to hurl my M66 into the chest of the guard knocking it off guard. I slam into her like a missile hitting a ship and picking her up off of her hooves before pivoting and slamming her down into a desk. I see movement on her back before I lean to the left to avoid a head but and knee her in the stomach before drawing my knife and plunging it into the side of her head. Her hand comes up to weakly grope at my hand as I move to grasp the grip with my other hand and twist with a sickening crunch before kicking the dead pony from my knife.

"Bitch." I say as I clean my knife on the now identified wing and re-sheath it before picking up my M66.

"How dare!..." The pink thing began before receiving a savage right hook from Forbes knocking her out cold.

"Shut up." he says.

"Viper six to Viper one Asset secure." I tell the LT.

"Copy that Viper six Move to the roof for ex-fill."

"Copy. Let's move Forbes let’s pick up our new friends." I say getting a nod as we move passed the Resistance fighters, the woman in partial battle armor places a ring on the things horn and binds its wings. We move onto the roof to await ex-fill when after maybe 20 seconds the rest of the squad come running up the stairs looking only a little mussed.

"Oh joy the Asset's waking up." SS Miles says as we see the Pink thing begin to stir.

"Who? What are you?" The thing demands. Before the door burst open and five royal guards came onto the roof, one of them with purple and brushed gold armor carrying an elaborately decorated assault rifle speaks first as we all raise our rifles.

"FREEZE! You have five seconds to lay down your weapons filthy creatures and humans." He shouts as his horn glows and a purple shield appears around his people.

"Shining Armor!" The package yells.

"Those things have Princess Cadence!" A guard yells as one of the resistance members pushed her down. we hear the sound of rotor blades and we looked up to see 4 helicopters raise around us. We're bathed in searchlights and we can see one helicopter that looks civilian in make if the lack of guns were anything to go on.

"5...4...3...2..." He begins before there's a series of booms in the direction of the UEC military base. Even from here I can see the Railgun rounds streaking down from the sky like meteors. Then there's a much closer boom as the helicopters around us exploded as the Shrike makes its pass destroying the offending helicopters and vanishing into the night at supersonic speeds.

"Cut'em down!" The LT yells bringing the Royal guards attention back to us as our M66's chatter there hoarse reports shattering that shield almost instantly and shredding anything behind it. when the firing stops we see the one known as Shining armor struggling to his hooves with bullet holes in his body and a thin purple glow around him.

"AP!" The LT yells as we load Armor piercing shells into our grenade launchers. We raise our weapons and fix him in our aiming ladders as he struggles to raise his weapon. As soon as he raises the weapon we all fire our grenades at once and when they hit he explodes in a shower of gore.

"Damn, that's gross." Heller laughs out whipping an eye off of his armor as the Blackfly moves into position and lowers the ramp. As The Ramp lowers we see that the hold is almost full of Humans in various states of degradation, some look beaten, whipped, malnourished, and others just look haggard and tired.

"We have the Intel, we weren't able to get much but we got some." the LT says as I send a secure burst transmission to the Defiant in orbit. We get in and the Blackfly begins fly off before the ramp is even closed.

"Hold on people strike package inbound." I say as we see the Admin Key explode as a Railgun round slammed into it before more begin slamming down in the area around it.

"Hoorah." Forbes says from my left as the tail ramp closes and we disappear into the night.

After we drop off the resistance fighters and refugees and are on the way back to the Ddefiant. I spend a few solitary minutes in the back of the drop ship surveying the destruction I've called down upon the unsuspecting Aliens in that settlement. I'm not religious, I doubt I ever was despite my mom's efforts to get me into the embrace of the mother church back in Pittsburgh when I was young. I do know my bible however, I recall the book of exodus the versus telling of the angel of death passing through Egypt at night killing all the firstborn children. Sparing only the houses with the mark of lambs blood on the door posts, In a way, I am an angel of death as well. The god I serve is even more vengeful and merciless than the god of Israel. I'm the one who marks the doorposts in the night, we pass over none.

Author's Notes:

Sorry for the wait here a long chapter to make up for it.

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