Face To Face

0959 Hours, September 24th, 2553
Maizefield Square, New Belgrade
Gilgamesh Free State, Gilgamesh, Alpha Chandra System
"Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty, so that we may defend our Gilgameshan institutions, and prepare ourselves for the long period of peace, which must sometime come. Happy Independence Day."
Clapping his hands alongside other Gilgameshan citizens, Lee Oliver sat in one of the prefabricated bleachers on the eastern side of Maizefield Square. Looking across from himself, he saw him. Marshal Edward Garan, leader of the Gilgamesh Free State, smiling and waving to the citizens of New Belgrade who had come to attend their Independence Day parade. As an ONI deepcover agent, it wasn't anything new for him to see the men he worked against in secret, but this time felt different. He usually felt nothing, sometimes a bit of hatred for those he worked against, but this time, he felt a sense of foreboding. Not that he was in any particular danger, but something else, that things weren't going to go as planned for the UNSC with regards to the Free State.
He jumped as the applause quieted and the booming sounds of a military band snapped him out of his internal mulling. Looking up, he saw the first delegations of the Gilgamesh Free Army marching onto the square to pass before their leader. Quickly whipping out his Chatter, he held it nonchalantly, scrolling through ChatterNet pages and looking up every so often to see if there were any vehicles or weapons of particular interest on display this time. While there didn't initially seem to be any, there was something different about the troops marching. 
Some sections of troops still had the old skeletal 'Colt Blasters', mainly what looked like the regular infantrymen, in their dress uniforms of rifle green, but then the so-called 'little green men' came onto the square. The band faded away for a moment, and then the air was filled with the discordant blasts of the unit's trumpeters and booms of their drummers, followed soon by the claps and jubilant yells of the crowd. Gone was the arm-swinging ceremonial march of the regular troops that had preceded them. These men, in full combat gear, ran past the reviewing stand in a high-stepping high-cadence run, rifles grasped in hand. MA5 series. Oliver's stomach sank. Not only were they MA5 series, but they were C and D models. Oliver quickly swiped to his camera and took several photos, as were many other civilians. MA3As and Confetti Makers? That was normal. But modern small arms? That was something else. He had heard the Free State had hired some help from reckless chatter between soldiers on the streets, but he didn't expect that it was this extensive.
He kept his camera out, filming as more troops marched down the square. If the rifles were anything to go by, this parade was going to be one full of surprises. He heard a voice of some sort coming from the loudspeakers set up behind the spectator bleachers, probably narrating what unit was parading before them, but Oliver could barely hear whatever it was saying over the tramping of the boots of the troopers on parade, the applause of the crowd, and the, to him, obnoxiously loud trumpeters of the men running on parade. And he didn't care. It didn't matter what the unit was, his superiors only cared about what they were putting on display.
Soon enough, the little green men faded, as did the trumpet blasts, and the military band struck up once more. Formation after formation of infantrymen turned the corner onto the reviewing path, each one carrying their standard in some form. The first ones in the line carried their square banner erect, a white square with a pattern of a green cross on it, and on the side he saw, a number within a golden wreath in the center of the cross. The formations that came behind it were more conventional, carrying a swallow tailed guidon flag with numbers or letters on it. The formations behind what were presumably the unit's color parties carried the standard MA3A rifles, but the color parties themselves? More MA5s. 
As the tramping of boots began to fade away, Oliver began to hear instead the sounds of a low rumble, and the military band transitioned to another march as a great stir occurred among the spectators, with people looking around each other at the next formation, and children being lifted onto the backs of parents to see what was coming. Standing up on the tips of his toes and looking up the square, Oliver saw what all the new commotion was about. 
Tanks. A massive formation of them. Lifting his Chatter up, he began snapping as many photos as he could as they approached. These were nothing like the Firecrackers he had seen on Mamore. The first lines were the outdated M707 Main Battle Tank, a 120mm cannon-armed machine, a low-profile tank with sloped armor that had gone out of service back in the 2490s and ended up in the scrapyards. Or so they were supposed to. But it was just like the colonial military to sell them off to the highest bidder in exchange for money, to help them in their bid for so-called independence, or both.