The wet grass squelched underhoof as Meadow carefully marched ahead. She hated hearing her own hoofsteps, but the constant rain left the ground muddy and made each step she took far too loud for her liking. Nothing could be done about it though, unless she wanted to make her pace even slower. The last thing she wanted was to be out here any longer than she needed. Even after all these years as a HUNTR, she still dreaded each expedition into the Wildlands. She’d never say it though, especially not to her team. She was the captain, so she needed to be tough for all their sake's. No matter how much she dreaded the mission, she had a duty; to her team and to Haven.
She held her DC-17 out in front of her, finger always ready on the trigger. Another thing she still couldn’t completely wrap her head around despite her years of service. Fingers, hands, walking upright, and a thousand other augmentations given to her and every other HUNTR through the miracle of cybernetics. All to make them the perfect soldiers. Perfect to take on this still-new world.
Raindrops dripped from her metals arms, and she could hear the droplets hitting the top of her helmet, a dull thud constantly ringing. It was almost pitch black, but the built-in night vision in her ocular enhancements kept her from stumbling in the darkness of the forest. Out of habit, she did a quick scan of her Heads Up Display. Vitals were good, clip was full, no movement on the scanners; everything seemed to be going well. Again, out of habit, she pulled up the mini map on her HUD and checked. Less than 100 meters before they reached the checkpoint. She breathed a silent sigh of relief at the thought. A second glance at the map showed five blips moving towards the objective, one being Meadow and the other four being her squad.
Meadow cracked a small smile. Her squad. Phantom Squad. Even among HUNTRS, Phantom Squad was considered a cut above the rest. It stood with Arrow Squad and Domino Squad as the best of the best, the Elite Three as it had come to be known. And she was Captain of one of those legendary teams. She still felt a rush of pride at that fact. She and her team had worked hard to get to where they were, and Meadow always looked out for them.
“Phantom Squad, this is Phantom 1,” she called through the communication network that linked the team. “Sound off and check in.”
“Mother Hen, this is Phantom 2 checking in for the third time in the past half hour. Yes, I made sure to pack a juice box.”
Meadow heard the rest of the squad laugh over the comm. Mother Hen had become their nickname for their captain. She may have babied them sometimes, being overprotective. Other times though…
“Right Dice, that’s a thirty mile lap for you when we get back to Haven,” Meadow responded coolly yet menacingly. “Any other moron that doesn’t give a proper check-in can join him.”
“Phantom 3, checking in.”
“Phantom 4, checking in.”
“Phantom 5, checking in.”
“That’s what I thought,” Meadow said with satisfaction. “We’re coming up on the outpost. We’ll resupply, get an hour’s rest, and get back home.”
“It’ll be good to be home again,” Phantom 3, a pegasus mare named Light Feather, said.
“Even though we didn't accomplish much. Bet the Council is gonna love our report.” Phantom 5, an earth pony stallion named Triceps.
“What’re you talking about? They’re gonna love hearing about the jungle we found filled to the brim with giant carnivorous plants, and swamps emitting gas so toxic it’ll melt your skin off.” Phantom 4, an earth pony stallion named Stitches. “I bet they may even plan to build a second city in one of those places.”
“Personally, I’d go with the toxic swamp,” Dice responded. “It stinks way less than when one of those plants gets shot and dies.” He shivered. “That stench’ll haunt me till the day I die.
Meadow raised an eyebrow. “Everything we’ve seen on Neo-Terra, and that’s what’ll haunt you?”
“An ugly beast with a thousand teeth and just as many claws is one thing Captain, but a stench like that does something to a pony.”
Another round of laughter filled the comm., and Meadow couldn’t help but join in. She quickly snapped back to reality when her mini-map flashed. It was static for just a second before it returned to normal. But one thing had changed. The blip representing Phantom 5 was gone.
“Phantom 5 check in,” Meadow called. Silence. “Phantom 5 check in and report.” More silence. “Triceps I’ve lost you on my map, report your location immediately.”
Meadow’s heart pounded as there was still no response. The other members of Phantom Squad each attempted to contact Triceps, but no one could reach him, and no one saw him on their maps.
Meadow took a deep breath. “Remain calm. You’ve trained for situations like this. He’s a HUNTR, they all are.” It only took a split second to gather her thoughts and plot the best course of action. “Phantom 4, Phantom 2, head to Phantom 5’s last known location. Keep in constant contact and let us know as soon as you find him.”
“Roger!”
“Roger!”
Meadow saw two blips moving to where Triceps had been. This was all strange. If Triceps had been attacked, there would have been noise. It was almost impossible to sneak up on a HUNTR, and even if something did, they were too tough to take down without some kind of fight, and with Triceps, fights were always loud.
No sooner had that thought crossed her mind when she heard gunfire come from Phantom 4 and 2’s location. She could see the light of the muzzle flashes through the trees, and she swore she heard some kind of ungodly shriek echo loudly. Her mini-map was still open, and to her horror she saw Phantom 4’s blip disappear.
She frantically called out. “Phantom 2, Phantom 4, what’s your status?!”
Only Dice answered. “Stitches is gone! Some…things brought him down. Oh gods…what are these things?!”
Meadow heard more shots as she saw Dice’s blip move back toward her position. “Phantom Squad, fall back to my position! We’ll face whatever these things are in the clearing.”
“Roger!”
“Roger!”
Meadow readied herself, found the best position for her team. Good cover facing an open area, easy escape route, no way for whatever it was attacking them to flank. What was attacking them? To take down two HUNTRS…and did Dice actually sound scared?
A cold shiver ran down Meadow’s spine when she heard a scream tear through the forest. It sounded like Feather, but it couldn’t…Meadow’s heart sank when she saw Feather’s blip was gone.
“Phantom 3 report! Feather are you there?!” She was answered with deafening silence. A rustling in the trees made her swing her gun around, ready to fire, before she saw Dice flying as fast as he could toward her, a look of sheer terror on his face.
“I’m sorry Captain, I couldn’t help him. They just…appeared out of nowhere. They didn’t show up on scanners or any of our ocular settings. By the time I saw them…they’d already…where’s Feather?”
Meadow couldn’t look at him. “We lost Phantom 3.” The words were like a punch in the gut. Feather, Stitches, Triceps; more than half her team, just gone.
Dice began to panic, breathing heavily. “Captain, we need to retreat, move as fast as we can to the outpost. If those things catch us, we’re dead!”
“Calm down soldier!” Meadow shouted. “We are HUNTRS, the greatest soldiers ever created. Even better, we are Phantom Squad, and we are going to survive this.”
“There is no more Phantom Squad! They’re gone! Taken by those…oh gods, here they come!”
Meadow could just barely make them out. Formless shapes and lidless eyes. They were…everywhere. They had been completely surrounded without even knowing it.
“No escape…we’re dead. We’re dead, this is it!” Dice felt a sharp punch to the head.
“I’m embarrassed to call you a Phantom right now! I told you, we’re HUNTRS. We survive or we take as many of these bastards with us as we can. So get in position and get ready to fight!” Meadow’s heart was pounding; she wanted nothing more than for her and her team to be behind Haven’s walls right now. But she wasn’t going to be like Dice. She would either survive or die a true HUNTRS death, striking against all threats to ponykind.
She got in as best a position as she could, readied every weapon in the arsenal that was her body, and waited; waited for one of these creatures to make a move. The sound of ungodly shrieks was deafening as the horde of creatures descended on her.
The rain pelted against Charter’s face as she walked down Haven’s busy main road. She could have put up a shield to protect her from the stinging droplets, but she got enough dirty looks from the other ponies as it was. No need to make them even more hostile.
Brightly lit neon signs were everywhere, most of them some kind of inspirational propaganda. Phrases like “Stiff Upper Lip,” and “Trust the Council,” placed next to “Do your Job, Do your Duty,” and “Do Your Part for Haven,” all with colorfully illustrated pictures of smiling ponies doing as the signs requested, all of Haven benefiting because of it. Charter once again saw a sign that she had known since she was a little filly. It was a picture of a mare and stallion holding a little foal and looking toward a literally brighter Haven, all smiling of course, while the words “Procreate for Progress” shone above them.
Charter felt herself gag a little. Once she learned what the word “procreate” meant, she had always looked at the sign with a sense of queasiness. Another sign had caught her eye, this one also having been around since she was little. But this one didn’t make her gag. It made her smile.
Five ponies, all of them with stern faces, military equipment, and cybernetic arms in place of front hooves, stood straight and proud as they saluted Haven’s flag, a grass-green banner with a winged shield patterned with three diamonds. They looked strong, indomitable, and above them shone the words “Support our HUNTRS! Support our Protectors!”
Charter could feel the pride welling up inside of her, the excitement. She may not have even noticed that not one of those proud and strong ponies was a unicorn. That didn’t matter. She would change that.
***
Gale Wind sat uncomfortably in a folding chair, waiting just off stage for his name to be announced so that he could come out and speak. He was the picture boredom, slumped in his seat with his head resting on his mechanical hand. He hated not moving, he hated not being out in the field doing his job as a HUNTR, and most of all he hated every other year when he was forced to go through the process of training new HUNTRS. The congratulatory speech towards the new recruits at the Sentinel Academy was by far the worst part of the whole ordeal.
Standing next to him was his first officer, Lieutenant Chill Wind, a pegasus who also just happened to be his younger brother. They were almost spitting images of each other, the only difference being that the color of their coat and mane was reversed, Gale having a gun metal grey coat and jet black mane while Chill had a jet black coat and gun metal grey mane. But anyone who saw them would almost immediately know they were brothers through their eyes; they both shared the same intense, icy blue eyes that seemed able to pierce through anything.
Gale sighed and turned to Chill. “Out of everyone that could have been picked, why is it that I’m the one that has had to do this all these years?”
“Maybe it’s because the Commander likes you,” Chill responded.
“Really? It feels more like he hates me.”
“You have to remember that you’re the second-in-command of the HUNTRS, and that means you have to go through all the ceremony and duties that the Commander doesn’t want to.”
Gale snorted in response. “I’m also Captain of Arrow Squad, and Arrow Squad has better things to do than play babysitter to a bunch of greenhorns, especially when less than a third of them will make the cut.”
“Look at it this way Captain, the Commander respects Arrow Squad’s abilities so much, that he trusts them with being able to turn ‘greenhorns’ into true HUNTRS. I don’t see Phantom or Domino Squad with that honor.”
“That’s because they’re out in the Wildlands being useful.” Gale heard the commandant announce his name, giving him the signal to come out on stage and address what would be his class in just a few days. He sighed again before lifting himself off his chair and gave Chill an almost pleading look. “If I gave you an order to shoot me, would you do it?”
“You and I both know there are days I’d do it without an order,” Chill said with a brotherly smile.
A grunt and a small smile of his own were all he responded with before he walked out on stage. He nodded to the commandant before taking his place center stage where a microphone awaited him. He looked out and saw about 30 ponies staring back at him, most of them with awed expressions gawking at the oddity that was a HUNTR. He took a deep breath and spoke.
“Let me be the first to congratulate all of you. You all are here tonight because you are the best of your class, because you have proved yourselves capable of becoming something far greater than a Sentinel patrolling the streets or guarding the Wall. You are here because you just might have what it takes to venture beyond the safety of Haven, to aid in the struggle to secure this planet, to keep Haven and all its inhabitants safe, to ensure the future of our species. You are here because you have the potential to be HUNTRS.”
The crowd began to applaud and cheer, pride taking over them far too early for Gale’s liking. They hadn’t even gone through their first day yet and already they celebrated. That would change soon, Gale thought with an unseen scowl. He held up a hand to quiet them down.
“I won’t lie to you, the coming months will be difficult. The training will be intense, and most of you will not graduate from the program.” That seemed to sober most of them up a bit. “In fact, the training, in many cases, will be dangerous. You will be pushed to your limit, and then some. And if you do finally undergo the cybernetic enhancements and become HUNTRS, you will be thrust into a different world, a world that is a far cry from the safety and plenty of Haven. You will be expected to face threats far beyond your current comprehension, and face them head on. Make no mistake, everything outside of those walls wants you dead.” He paused a moment to let it sink in. “But if you have the makings of a HUNTR, everything outside those walls will learn to fear you. If you have the makings of a HUNTR, you will be the hope for our species. Forge the Future!”
“Forge the Future!” The motto of the HUNTRS rang out through the crowd. Gale simply rolled his eyes at the excitement of the young and ignorant gathered before him.
“They still think it’s a game,” he thought. “They have no idea what this means. But they’ll learn, or they’ll fail.”
As he gazed out at the crowd, dreading having to teach yet another class, he spied something he hadn’t noticed before. In the third row closest to him, all the way at the end of the aisle, was a mare who seemed to be even more excited to be there than anyone else. The seats around her were all empty, as if the others were afraid sitting near her might give them the plague. He could understand why, as this mare with a coat like fresh parchment, a curly ginger mane, and bright pink eyes…also had a horn.
“Oh, wonderful,” he thought with dread. “I can already tell this will be…problematic.”
***
Charter felt like her heart was going to burst out of her chest at any moment. She couldn’t remove the smile from her face, and it took every ounce of her self-control not to bounce in the air with every step she took making her way towards the Keep, the headquarters of the HUNTRS.
After his speech, Captain Gale had told them to report to the Keep in three days at 0600 hours. Those three days had gone by far too slowly for Charter, but now the day was here and she was ecstatic about the first day and the next big step towards her dream. All her hard work at the Sentinel Academy, all those years of studying and training, and now she could see the finish line. Just one more stretch and she’ll finally get the chance to see the world like she’d always wanted.
She stood just outside the gate to the Keep. She had seen it, admired it, a thousand times but it still managed to amaze her whenever she saw it. A massive, looming grey walled fortress modeled after the stone castle keeps of the Old World, but made of metal like everything else in Haven and heavily guarded by turrets both automated and manned.
At the gate stood a pair of sentries, both of them Sentinels and not HUNTRS. Charter showed them her letter of acceptance into the program and they allowed her past the gate. Once inside, there was a courtyard area facing a massive door that led into the Keep. Charter saw that the some of the other ponies that had been accepted as recruits were already gathered and waiting to be let in or told what to do.
Charter joined them, though most that noticed her either moved away or deliberately ignored her. It wasn’t long before the rest of the recruits arrived and joined the others waiting in the courtyard.
At exactly 0600, the massive doors creaked open and out stepped five HUNTRS. Charter immediately recognized Captain Gale, and the pegasus that stood closest to his right looked strikingly similar aside from their inverted mane and coat colors. The others were a red earth pony mare with a mane like a burning fire, a massive pegasus stallion with a sea-green coat and ocean-blue mane, and a bright pink earth pony mare with a short, cherry red mane that covered most of the left side of her face.
Charter had seen them enough times to recognize the famed Arrow Squad, one of the Elite Three.
Captain Gale spoke up. “Welcome to the Keep recruits. You will be living here for the duration of your training, but this is NOT your home. This is the home of the HUNTRS, and it will not become your home until you are one of us. For most of you, this will never be your home. Most of you will be ringing that bell.” He pointed back towards the gate, where the assembled recruits finally noticed the head-sized bell hanging right next to it. “You are free to ring that bell at any time, but once you do, that means you have quit or failed the program and you will not be allowed in the Keep again. My job is to break you down and remake you into the perfect soldier, a killing machine. And trust me when I say that I am very dedicated to doing my job. By the end of this year, you will either be HUNTRS ready to take on the Wildlands, or you will be failures.
“This is my house, and while you live in my house you will follow my rules to the letter and without question. In the Keep, there is no Council of Five. I am your king, your emperor, your god. When I say you train, you will train. When I say you sleep, you will sleep. When I want you to suffer, you will suffer and you will thank me for it.”
Some of the recruits began to shift uneasily, a few of them even sweating despite the early morning chill.
Gale gestured to the ponies surrounding him. “For those of you that don’t know, this is Arrow Squad, the best of the best. Lieutenant Chill Wind, Sergeant Wildfire, Corporal Ocean Breeze, and Corporal Pulse. They are the other gods in this pantheon, and you will obey them as you do me. If you lot become half the HUNTRS these ponies are, Haven will have a bright future indeed. Now, all of you step inside the Keep and get ready for your first lessons.”
Gale and the rest of Arrow Squad marched silently into the Keep, the rest of the recruits cautiously following behind them. Charter seemed to be among the few that wasn’t unnerved by that welcome speech, and she tried her best to get to the front and as close as she could to her new instructors.
Gale spoke up once again. “HUNTRS: Heavily Upgraded Neo Terra Recon Soldiers. That is what we are, what you will strive to be, but why are we here? Why are the HUNTRS necessary? Some of you seem to think that we’re a group of daring adventurers who go out on exciting quests like you read in those old story books. Well, you’re wrong. We’re soldiers, and we’re the only ones capable enough to venture outside the Wall and secure this planet for our dying species. Yes, I said dying,” he said in response to the concerned whispers. “No matter what those neon signs say, our species is in danger of extinction. We need to expand outside of Haven, secure arable land, and establish new cities if we hope to survive. That’s why the HUNTRS exist, to take that land away from the beasts that try to prey on us. Progress is slow, and we’ll need all the able HUNTRS we can get if we don’t want the next generation to be the last.
“That explains the immediate why, but the reason for the establishment of the HUNTRS goes back much further than that. It goes all the way back to the Old World, and the Great War that destroyed it.” He stopped, and Charter noticed that they were now in what looked like a small museum, with journals, weird looking machines, and plagues with names posted all over a wall. “But I leave that story to someone who is far more qualified to tell it.”
He glanced to his left, Charter and the recruits following his gaze as they saw an older pegasus with a coat and mane the color of a storm cloud. He was a HUNTR to be sure, but he looked a lot different from Arrow Squad. In addition to the cybernetic arms that marked a HUNTR, he also had cybernetic legs and half of his face was entirely robotic, complete with a bright red eye.
“Recruits, salute your commanding officer!” Gale shouted. The recruits quickly and clumsily saluted the old pony. “This is Commander Storm, commanding officer of the HUNTRS, and the very first HUNTR. He’s also one of the last ponies who were born on Terra. In Equestria.”
The collective whispers of disbelief and amazement permeated the dim and somber hallway. Charter began to notice just how depressing this area of the Keep compared to what they had seen on their way here. She also noticed a brief yet unmistakable look of grief pass over Commander Storm’s face before he began to speak.
“The Great War had already been waged for forty years before I was born. The Alicorn Tyrants, obsessed with and driven mad by their own power, turned on us their own subjects. The devastation wreaked by their magic and that of their army was beyond imagining. To fight back, terrible weapons had to be created. This only added to the destruction of our ancestral home. Eventually, the Tyrants were slain, but by then it was too late. Our world was all but dead. In desperation, the Council of Five, known then as the Elements of Harmony, devoted everything to finding a new home among the stars.
“I was only ten when we left, but I remember what we left behind. They told me it used to be beautiful. Rolling green hills, forest thick with trees, a cool breeze wafting through shining cities. But that’s not what I saw. I saw fire, raging and unquenchable. I saw cities burned black, where no stone sat atop another. I saw hills of corpses, baking in the unforgiving sun.”
His look became more and more distant as he spoke. But he continued. “Ten years in cramped spaceships with just barely enough provisions. Disease spread through almost every ship, and we lost half of our fleet before we made it to what we call Neo-Terra.
“And still we suffered, trying to build our safe haven while our crops failed and we constantly fell prey to the thousands of predators that dominate this planet. Look here,” he pointed to an old and tattered journal displayed prominently on the wall. “The journal of Applejack, one of the founding members of the Council of Five. She wrote this in the first years of our landing.
“’I tire of the tears of mares and foals. My own have run dry. I cannot bring myself to think on the numbers we have lost, yet I cannot force the images of my own losses from my mind. In the night I find it difficult not to focus on times past. There are moments in my rest when I still hear the laughing of young ones at play. Other times I see the pale flashes of happy moments which were once so common in the land of Equestria. I try not to dwell on these memories too long. Often the surroundings make it impossible to dwell on any happiness. Even the strongest of us have faltered, with nothing to do but think on what is lost. I wake each day to forlorn faces and am reminded of where we are and all we have left behind. But if we lose hope now we will never survive. We can make no difference if our spirits remain broken. We must persevere.’”
Some among the recruits, Charter included, cried silent tears as they listened to the suffering of their ancestors. Commander Storm spoke again.
“We have come so far since then, yet we still have much more to go. The HUNTRS were created so that the sacrifices and suffering of our ancestors would not be in vain. We were created so that the better future that Applejack and the original Council dreamed of could be forged. We live and die so that the hope of ponykind is never lost again.”
With that, Commander Storm slowly turned his back to the recruits and returned to his office, silence filling the hall that held Applejack’s journal.