Mars Fleet Headquarters.
The hum of weapons systems.
Pulsing neon indicators.
Symbols flickering across the holographic battle map—
all of it screams the same thing:
the battle is in full swing.
But at the heart of the command center,
tension coils inward,
like pressure building in a sealed tank
on the verge of rupture.
An officer, pale and tight-voiced, reports with barely contained panic:
"We're losing drones! Casualties are climbing—
the enemy's got the firepower advantage.
Front line's calling for reinforcements!"
Admiral Tyler doesn't flinch.
He sits in the command chair
like a monument to restraint,
fingers clenched so tightly around the armrest
the alloy nearly groans.
His eyes lock onto the map,
reflections of red flashes dancing in his pupils—
not as numbers,
but as lives extinguished in real time.
Every drone destroyed…
is a piece of my will torn from my hands.
But they still don't know what I'm willing to risk to turn this tide.
"I agree, Lieutenant," he says, his voice low and deliberate after a beat.
"Reroute part of the flank drone force to the central axis. Immediately."
"Yes, Admiral!" the officer replies, hands suddenly steadier,
fingers flying over the console with renewed conviction.
Tyler's calm infects the room.
It turns panic into motion.
Fear into fire.
"Drones are shifting inward," the officer confirms.
"Front reinforced. Attack spread widened."
A second officer, lips pressed tight, dares to voice the doubt
that's been hanging in the air like a ghost:
"Sir… our flanks are exposed. We're—taking a risk."
Tyler turns his head slowly toward him.
His gaze isn't anger.
It's a verdict.
"I know," he says—quiet, clear, and immovable.
"But this risk is the gamble we make.
And I do not intend to lose it."
War isn't balance, he thinks.
It's sacrifice. Choosing who to burn, to land the blow that ends it.
And I always aim for the heart.
On the holoscreens, Mars's drone line tightens—
morphing into a clenched fist.
Reinforcements arrive.
Weapons prime.
A series of bright flashes pierces the map like detonations through silence.
The Martian drones open fire—targeted, brutal, relentless.
They spare no zone, no quadrant, no vacuum.
Mercurian platforms erupt one by one,
imploding under the pressure,
dissolving into radiant shrapnel.
Each blast strikes the enemy—
but also bleeds the fleet.
Victory here isn't granted.
It's ripped out by the root.
"Admiral!" the officer calls again,
his voice tinged with something dangerously close to joy.
"The enemy is losing ground. Their fire's weakening.
We're seizing the initiative!"
For the first time in this battle,
Tyler leans back in his chair.
He exhales slowly—
like a man who has stood in fire
and did not burn.
He folds his arms across his chest,
and in his eyes—
a flicker of something ancient:
satisfaction born through pain and defiance.
On the hologram, the front line shudders.
But not the Martian line.
Theirs.
"Excellent," Tyler says softly.
The two syllables fall into the command center like
bullets on steel—sharp, final, irreversible.
"Let them feel what Martian power really means."
They thought we'd flinch.
That we'd crumble under pressure.
But we were born of dust and blood.
We don't bend. We don't retreat.
We answer with such force the sky remembers it.
The holographic markers begin to shift—
new combat formations entering play.
In the command center, silence reigns again—
but now, not from fear.
From clarity.
Mars is breathing fire again.
And Mercury is about to learn
the price of that breath.