“A war is coming, I've seen it in my dreams. Fires sweeping over the Earth, bodies in the streets, cities turned to dust... retaliation.”
Paxton Fettel, First Encounter Assault Recon.

Silence. Silence and patience. These are the things that define him, now, the things that he has learned to cultivate in this prison they call a barracks. It is an amusing lie – he can smell their fear, smell the terror they have for him and what he is capable of.

He kneels alone in his room, his eyes closed. He is concentrating.

He is listening.

“Who are you?” he says aloud to nothing. “Why are you in my head? What do you want?”

Whatever he is listening to does not answer in words, not at first. There is a murmuring, a noise below the levels of comprehension most people have, and yet he can hear it.

“You are me,” he said, his eyes still closed. “We are one.”

The murmuring grows closer.

“Show me your pain,” he says.

Kill them.

“Make me understand.”

Kill them all.

And he screams…

David Elliot’s eyes shot wide open, his breathing panicked. It took him a minute to calm down and get his breathing under control, and when he had, he slowly sat up, before putting his head in his hands and trying to make sense of… whatever that dream had been.

Where was I? he thought. It felt…

Real. He didn't want to acknowledge it, but that was… exactly the word. Like he had been inside someone else’s thoughts.

He shook his head slightly, looking around the room and trying to distract himself.

The barracks he and his team were in were good quality – single beds, boxes and bedside tables for personal effects, the works. That was something at least. Not often a man could say that he even had a proper barracks anymore.

What time is it? he wondered, glancing at his bedside clock. 04.03, it blinked at him in nauseating neon blue. He grimaced: not long then, before someone would come and yell at him to wake up. Sergeant he may have been, but there was always a bigger arsehole above you, especially these days.

Should’ve just opened my damn bookshop, he thought irritably. Least then I’d be in charge of my own damn sleeping time.

“You look like shit,” True Grit, one of his squad, commented a few hours later in the mess hall. A green Unicorn stallion with a shaven mane, a couple of ugly scars and a battered shield for a cutie mark, Grit was one of those ponies for whom the military life was not as much of a shock to the system as it could have been.

“Thanks, mate,” Elliot said, rolling his eyes. “Nice to know.”

He’d managed to tidy himself up: tossing on his grey uniform fatigues and looking generally less like a complete pile of dogshit.

“Bad dreams again?” Sam Lake, another of his friends, asked. Sam was a clean-shaven blonde man, a seemingly permanent twinkle in his blue eyes.

“Yeah,” Elliot said quietly. “No idea what it was this time.”

“Can’t be a good sign,” True Grit said. “You sure you didn’t dip a loose strand of hair in potion or something?”

Elliot rolled his eyes. “Would I be standing here in one piece if I hadn't? Seriously, Grit, it’s just bad dreams. We’re in a war of annihilation, I think I’m entitled to a few.”

Next to Grit, a sturdy-looking Earth Pony stallion with a tower shield cutie mark and a massive scar on his throat nodded emphatically. He tapped the table.

“Yeah, I know, Hoof“ Grit replied, rolling his eyes. “But still.”

Steady Hoof, unable to speak due to the injury to his throat, simply shrugged.

“Lay off, Grit,” Elliot said quietly. “I’m fine. Honestly.”

“Yeah, so fine that Colonel Hex had his shrinks interview you,” Grit muttered under his breath.

Elliot scowled. “Hey, that was just -“

Before he could finish what he was saying, a man walked up to the group, clad in a white Kevlar vest. He looked at Elliot and frowned.

“Sergeant David Elliot?” he asked.

“Uh,” Elliot said, frowning at the unfamiliar uniform. “Yes?”

The man held out a small piece of paper. “You've been summoned. Colonel Harrison Munro wants to speak to you.”

Elliot frowned, before looking at the missive.

To Sgt. David Elliot, UN Taskforce.

You and your squad are requested and required to report to Colonel Harrison Munro, First Encounter Assault Recon, immediately upon receipt of this message.

Signed,
Col. Harrison Munro Snr.

“The fuck?” Grit said, reading the message over Elliot’s shoulder. “What’s ‘First Encounter Assault Recon’?”

“Colonel Munro will explain everything, gentlemen and gentlestallions,” the man said. “If you’ll come with me.”

Elliot and Sam exchanged a glance, and then Sam shrugged.

“Duty calls, mate,” he said.

Elliot just sighed. “Ours not to reason why, Sam.”

They stood, and Hoof and Grit followed suit.

“Anyone else got a bad feeling about this?” the latter muttered.

“Don’t even,” Elliot said. “Let’s just go.”

They want her. He will not let them have her.

Bad enough that she has been kept imprisoned for a lifetime, bad enough that she has been kept from him and he from her. But now, for servants of an alien power to try and harness her…

It. Will. Not. Stand.

He kills. He kills the guards. He kills the elite guards. With a thought, his men, his Replica, kill more. He feels them, moving through him, through his mind.

They say they know you. They say you made them.

He tears what knowledge he needs from the flesh of his prisoners, and he knows enough. Enough to know the name of those trying to take her from him again.

The PER. The Solar Empire. Ponies.

He is not worldly enough to know the absurdity of alien equines trying to destroy the world, and even if he were, he would not care. Instead, he memorises tactics from the minds of others he takes prisoner. He learns.

He will know how to take them all.

“So what do you think this is about?” Sam asked as they strode toward a nondescript building, one of many similar buildings in New York city. They’d left Steady Hoof by the APC, waiting for them.

“No idea,” Elliot replied. “All I know is, this bloke calls us in and he has the authority to do it. That means we shut up in there, Sam.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Sam said, grinning slightly. “All I know is, this is fuckin' irregular.”

“What about this war isn't irregular?” Elliot asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Will you two stop bickering?” True Grit snapped. “Sam, has it occurred to you that this isn't altogether that irregular? We might just be being called in for new orders.”

“New orders from some bloke none of us have ever met,” Sam said, raising an eyebrow. “Come on, Dave, the guy asked for us personally. Doesn't that strike you as odd?”

“A little,” Grit admitted with a wry grin. “None of us are that important. Still, there's no reason to keep going on about it.”

“Hey, all I'm sayin' is that this is weird,” Sam said. “This isn't gonna be a normal mission – I can almost fuckin' guarantee it.”

“We'll find out soon enough,” Elliot said tiredly. “We're here.”

They reached the doors of the office, the words H. Munro, Colonel printed on them in bold letters. Elliot knocked on the door smartly.

“Come in!” a deep voice with an American accent called out from inside.

With a final look at True Grit and Sam, Elliot opened the door and he and his team entered the office of H. Munro.

The room was sparsely decorated: a plaque on a wall commemorated “Harry Munro Jnr”, with a picture of a man younger than either Sam or Elliot in a uniform not unlike the one the soldier who’d summoned them had worn. Other than that, there were no personal effects to speak of. The office was almost aggressively austere, which seemed to fit Munro himself.

He was a pale but hearty looking man in his late forties, slightly gone to seed but seemingly mostly as strong and combat-built as he would have been in his youth. Steadily encroaching baldness seemed to be encroaching against his widow’s peak, giving his hair an angular look that was almost impossible not to notice. His smart uniform was black, with a white patch on his jacket, the letters F.E.A.R printed on it in small letters.

He was on the phone, and held up a single hand to forestall them.

“Colonel Gardner, may I remind you – yes, I’m aware that there are Spader-HLF operating near Fairport, but the HLF Have Armacham guns and equipment, not Replica.” He sighed. “Colonel – no, Colonel, I’m well aware. Yes.” He paused, and then his expression hardened. “May I remind you, Colonel, that we are of equal rank. Threatening me won't cut it. Let me be clear: I have been given operational authority both in my dealings with the Spader-HLF and in my dealings with Armacham. Armacham have requested my assistance, and if the Spader Loyalists are there, that makes this doubly my purview. If you want to complain to our superiors, you are more than welcome, but until then, butt the fuck out or I will snap you back so hard you’ll wish you were on Omaha in ‘44, and I know a man who can make that happen. Am I clear?” He let out a breath. “Fine. Have fun doing that, bye.”

He out the phone down, and let out a long sigh.

“Apologies for that, gentlemen,” he said, “just having a disagreement with Colonel Gardner. He’s been pushing me for months.”

“Uh, no problem, sir,” Elliot said.

“Now then, Sergeant Elliot, Mr Grit, Mr Lake,” Munro greeted each of them in turn. “It's good to finally meet you. I'm Harrison Munro, First Encounter Assault Recon.”

“Sir,” Elliot replied stiffly. True Grit just nodded.

“Forgive the somewhat clandestine nature of your summons, gentlemen and gentlestallion,” Munro continued, with a nod to Grit, “but it was important we keep this somewhat hush hush. The mission we are about to discuss is classified at top levels. In fact, there are certain high ranking officials in the PHL who were never privy to what I'm about to tell you.”

“Certain officials?” Sam repeated. “All due respect, sir, but what the hell does that mean?”

“What it means, Mr Lake,” Munro said with a wry smirk, “is that beyond them sanctioning 'actions deemed fit to help save the human race', not even Lyra Heartstrings herself knew about what I'm going to discuss with you. I think it I would prefer to keep it that way.”

True Grit blanched. “Lyra didn't know about this? But the PHL was her creation, she was the head of it. Why wouldn't she know?”

“There are always things you keep from the head of an organisation if you think it prudent,” Munro said blandly. “This is one of those things. Now tell me gentlemen, what do you know about Armacham Technology Corporation?”

“They're a weapons company, right?” Elliot asked slowly, still confused by the fact that Lyra Heartstrings had been kept in the dark about... something. “They help make all sorts of experimental stuff: the Hammerhead flechette penetrator, the Type 12 laser weapon...”

“How'd you know that?” Grit asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Got bored, thought I might want to buy something more shooty,” Elliot shrugged.

“You're right, of course, Sergeant,” Munro said. “Armacham in the public eye focus on producing weapons of that sort. Advanced, powerful things, to be sure, but not why we are interested in them.” He smiled wryly. “At the outset of the war, certain UN and PHL operatives – including myself – were approached by Armacham agents with overtures toward a particular purchase.”

“What sort of purchase?” Elliot asked.

“Soldiers, Sergeant,” Munro said. “If the project was successful – and it was already in the last stages of development when Armacham approached us – it would give humanity a large army of highly trained, heavily armed, efficient and most importantly, expendable soldiers. Our answer to the Newfoals.”

“What were they, robots?” Sam asked.

“No, Mr Lake,” Munro said. “Clones. The official term was 'the Replica program': these soldiers are essentially grown 'blanks' that answer to a single commander that controls them via psionic and telesthenic power.”

“Psionic what now?” Sam asked. “Isn’t that like those stupid tests you do in school, seeing if you can guess what’s on the other kid’s card?”

Munro’s smile seemed a little strained at that.

“Sorry, back this little story up for the confused pony here,” True Grit said, frowning in confusion at the turn the conversation had taken. “What's ‘psionic power’?”

“It’s the posh term for psychic stuff,” Elliot said quietly. “When you’re a kid, some schools run tests on you to see if you’ve got it. Whether you can ‘see’ what’s on some other kid’s card, or maybe guess what colour crayon a teacher is holding.”

“Indeed,” Munro said quietly.

“But… that’s magic,” True Grit said, now sounding even more confused. “I thought humans couldn't do magic.”

“We can’t, generally,” Munro said. “But certain individuals have the gift. There was a project ATC was involved in requiring work with psionics. They were trying to create a psychically receptive army of clone soldiers, controlled by a single psychic commander.”

“Sorry, what?” Grit asked. “Could you dumb that down a little more for the poor lost Unicorn, sir?”

“A single commander could control an entire army of psychic clones with his mind,” Munro explained. “Receive real-time telemetry from the battlefield, make decisions without them being lost in translation.”

“I take it something's gone wrong with this project if we're being called in,” Elliot guessed.

Munro sighed and folded his hands on the table in front of him. “I received information from Armacham early this morning. The prototype commander, a man – in the loosest sense of the word – named Paxton Fettel, has gone rogue, apparently in response to a series of PER terrorist attacks in the Fairport area. The entire battalion of prototype Replica have gone rogue with him.”

“Jesus,” Sam whispered. “An entire battalion... no telling what he might be able to do with that kind of force.”

“He's fighting PER and Newfoals, you said?” True Grit asked. “Is it sticking to that?”

“I'm not aware of the situation to that level of detail,” Munro said, frowning. “We can hope so.”

There was a long pause, finally punctuated by one word from Sam.

“Bollocks.”

“Armacham has requested assistance from the UN on this matter,” Munro continued, ignoring the comment. “As of now, you gentlemen are assigned to F.E.A.R and are tasked with investigating what's going on. If possible, resolve the matter without damaging Fettel. Otherwise, neutralise him and the threat the Replica pose. The last thing we need is another threat.” He looked from one of the individuals in front of him to the other. “Any questions?”

The three shared an uneasy glance at these words.

“Why us, sir?” Elliot asked, speaking for all of them.

Munro shifted in his seat. “The usual reasons one team is chosen over another, Sergeant. Your team’s mission successes are more than adequate, you’re available, and we’ve not got enough time to bring in specialists. Nothing exciting, I’m afraid.”

“Fair enough, I suppose,” Elliot said, still not feeling entirely comfortable with any of this.

“If that's all, Sergeant, your APC is waiting for you and the rest of your team should be there,” Munro said dismissively. “You set out for Fairport tomorrow. Good luck, Mr Elliot.”

Elliot saluted. A moment later, Sam and True Grit followed suit, and then all three exited.

“Well that was weird,” Grit said quietly.

“That's one way to put it,” Elliot said quietly.

“Of all the shit I expected,” Sam put in, “I never imagined that it'd come to being involved with this kind of bloody op. Replicas – fucking clone soldiers. What the hell, man?”

Elliot chuckled too, as did Grit.

“Yeah,” True Grit sighed. “Strange to hear that you humans might have something like magic.”

“I thought was just bullshit science, a fad from when we were kids,” Sam said, running a hand through his hair.

“Bullshit or not, we're working with psionics now,” Elliot said, rubbing a hand through his hair and trying to wrap his head around the idea. “Come on: we have an APC to get to.”

When they had left, Munro sighed, and picked up his phone, dialling a number he didn’t enjoy calling.

“Hello,” he said when the other end had picked up. “Yes, I’ve got them on the mission. You’re sure about this? I can have…” He paused. “Look, I don’t exactly trust this idea. We can’t afford for Fairport to blow up in our faces. I’d rather focus our efforts on getting Fettel locked down than -” He sighed as the person on the other end interrupted him. “Alright. I understand. I’ll let you know. Just… just let them do their jobs first, before you do this.” He paused. “Alright. And you’re sure you don’t want the First… right. Yes, I see.” He sighed. “Very well. I’ll keep you informed.”

He sighed again, and put down the phone. Frowning, he picked it up again, scrolled through his contacts, and found a particular number.

This is going to suck, he thought, dialling it. A moment later, the man on the other end picked up… except it was a woman’s voice.

“Munro,” she said. “This is surprising.”

“Hello?” Munro said. “Is that… you?”

“Colonel, I don’t even know how you got through to me-me, but I’m busy,” the irate voice said. “What do you -”

“Fairport,” Munro said, cutting the woman off.

There was a long pause. “David Elliot and his team.”

“That’s right,” Munro said. “I think I may need your help. Whichever you it is.”

“I think you might be right,” the woman replied. There was a pause. “I’ll be right there. Don’t let me know, he won’t know I’m around for another few months, your time, and he’ll get irritable.”

“Whatever you say, Doc,” Munro said with a bemused sigh.

“And don’t call me that,” she said irritably. The line went dead, and Munro put down the phone, sighing again.

This… is really going to suck.

Steady Hoof nodded as the group exited the building and approached their APC. Near them, an auburn Pegasus with a kite shield cutie mark similar to Grit's stood, and he saluted at Elliot as he arrived. Behind him was a sky-blue Unicorn with a white mane and a smile, a violin cutie mark on her flank. All of them were wearing uniforms unfamiliar to Elliot: black body armour with white kevlar segments, all of it presumably F.E.A.R standard equipment.

“Private Errant Flight, sir,” he said, grinning. “Late of the PHL, now assigned to your F.E.A.R unit.”

“Errant Flight?” True Grit said, eyes wide with surprise. A moment later he ran up and hugged the stallion. “Heck, man, I didn't know you'd be here!“

“Hell yeah!“ Flight said with a smirk. “Where else would I be? I got a call saying 'you're wanted for this mission' so I come, and here Hoof is…”

“Good to know we're all in the same unit,” Grit said.

“They’re about as likely to put you guys in different units as they are putting me and Sam in different units,” Elliot said with a snort.

“You say that, I was actually pretty worried they'd call you off and leave me behind,” Sam said with a chuckle.

“They'd be idiots,” Elliot said with a grin. “You and me? We're unstoppable together.”

“So who are you, exactly?” Sam asked Flight.

“Errant was in Guard training with me,” True Grit said, still grinning widely. “We were in different units, but we all left around the same time.”

“Technically, I was kicked out,” Errant said with a smirk. “Bit too much mouth, bit too much drinking.”

“Sounds like my sort of bloke,” Sam said with a grin.

“Ahem,” the Unicorn mare said quietly, interrupting them all. “Excuse me, sir?”

Elliot turned to the mare with a questioning expression. She saluted him.

“Private Viola Heartswell,” she said with a smile. “Assigned to your F.E.A.R unit as medic and technical operator.”

“Private Heartswell,” Elliot said with a nod, frowning slightly. “You'll forgive me if I'm a little uncertain – Mr Flight at least has someone to speak for him in my team so I'm somewhat aware of his credentials. What about yourself?”

“I'm only recently qualified,” Heartswell said with a sheepish smile. “Used to be a violinist, but there's not much call for music in a war, so...”

“So you decided to join the PHL and probably die?” Sam said with a raised eyebrow.

“Smooth, man,” True Grit said with a sigh. “Real smooth.”

“It was where I was needed, sir,” Heartswell said with a soft tone, an expression of absolute certainty on her face.

Elliot sighed, before smiling. “I can understand that feeling. It's why I'm here, too.”

He looked at everyone and everypony in turn, trying to find a way to explain the mission. Eventually, he sighed.

“This is gonna be a weird one,” he said. “Top secret. Hush, hush. We're gonna be privy to some secrets not even the top of top brass knew.”

“And how,” Grit added, eyes widening as he spoke. “I still can't believe they didn't...”

“Anyway,” Elliot cut him off, “I think we'd all best get some sleep. We'll be heading out first thing tomorrow and I want everyone – and pony – in top form.”

There was a chorus of affirmatives as Elliot spoke, and he smiled at his group. He felt confident that whatever crazy shit this mission would throw at them, his team would be able to deal with it.

“Dismissed, guys,” he said.

Back in the game, and this is freshly tweaked too. Have fun.