The Martian fleet cuts through space like a spear hurled by the god of war.
It flies fast, unflinching—
toward a planet small, stubborn, and already glowing in the viewports.
Mercury.
To many officers, it isn't just another set of coordinates.
It's a mission of return.
A reckoning.
A chance to wrest power back from oblivion—
to remind the system who once ruled its skies.
Onboard the flagship Cobalt, a signal echoes through the decks:
All commanders—report to council.
The war room sharpens under cold beams of light.
A sleek, boomerang-shaped table gleams like a blade laid bare, reflecting power arranged in the strict geometry of battle.
Tyler. Marcus. Ani.
The others—holograms.
Faint silhouettes in armor, flickering like ghosts of an ancient legion, ready to vanish at the slightest static ripple.
At the center of the room, the holo-map ignites.
A miniature cosmos blooms—stars, trajectories, gravity wells, and choke points.
Mercury spins cold and unyielding, its orbit pulsing with red marks, as if war were already breathing beneath its skin.
Admiral Tyler scans their faces.
Marcus nods—silent signal: proceed.
"Gentlemen," Tyler begins, his voice sharp, like a discharge of static.
"The battle we've marched toward for years begins in hours."
He gestures.
"Our scans show the orbit is clear. But don't be fooled."
He doesn't say it aloud, but the thought strikes like a drumbeat behind his eyes:
Mercury is a rat. It doesn't show its teeth until it's already bitten. It hides. It waits. We need to move first.
The map shifts.
Black arrows—battle cruisers—slice through the void.
Their vectors carve paths across the simulated starscape.
"Scouts out front. Clearing a clean corridor—no mines, no traps, no chances for ambush. No room for error."
His voice tightens, tension coiled like steel cable under stress.
Silence gathers in the room, solid, alert.
"Formation: twenty-five war cruisers.
They form a defensive hemisphere."
He taps the center of the hologram.
"Cobalt stays at the core."
"Thirty drop ships.
Fifty transports in the rear."
"A living system—every ship a part of the same body.
The heart. The hands. The lungs."
Even the liver, Tyler thinks grimly. But the brain—that's here.
Right now. At this table.
The map flickers—highlights flash around key vectors.
Tyler's eyes lock on Marcus.
In that look, he seeks more than agreement.
He seeks faith.
A reflection of his own fury.
Everything holds still.
Silence—dense, like a museum just before the blast.
Everyone knows:
The next order won't just move ships.
It will change people.
Change them.
Tyler scans the room again.
The living and the spectral—united at the same pole.
"Questions?" he asks.
The word slices the air like a combat blade through armor mesh.
And then—movement.
One of the holograms flickers brighter. A voice emerges.
"Permission to speak, Admiral.
You haven't addressed the enemy's force composition.
What does intel say?"
The room shifts.
Even Marcus—usually unreadable—leans forward.
Tyler straightens.
His voice deepens—no longer just a man speaking,
but the entire weight of a warship made flesh.
"A fair question," he says.
"Intelligence sent a final update before departure."
He doesn't soften the tone.
"No euphemisms. No diplomacy."
"This isn't a fleet. It's a stage set."
He snaps his fingers.
The map morphs again.
Rusted tugs.
Aged orbital rigs.
Scavenger platforms—relics from another century.
"This," he says through clenched teeth, "is their might.
Scrap. Dust. Hollow shells."
"Android crews who can't hold formation.
Miners. Not soldiers."
"No shipyards.
No infrastructure.
No pulse."
"Let them see what Mars does to obsolete machines."
"Let them smell real power."
He leans forward.
"They aren't warriors.
They're castoffs."
"And we'll reduce them to ash."
His head rises slowly.
The motion isn't dramatic—
it's a sentence.
A verdict.
His eyes become concrete—
hard, cold, inescapable.
This is a man who's gone beyond the brink,
and chosen to return for one reason only:
To win.
The words that follow don't land like strategy—
they sear, like a brand pressed into iron.
"But don't be deceived.
This battle won't be only fire and steel."
"They'll twist illusions.
They'll lie.
They'll manipulate."
"But we'll cut through the fog."
"They want to confuse us.
To make us doubt what we see."
"But doubt is a luxury of the dead.
And we are alive.
To the last breath."
He takes a step forward.
In his voice—drumbeat.
In his body—storm posture.
"They are an imitation of life."
"But we—are its essence."
"We are the inheritors of flesh and mind."
"We are the living force."
Tyler's eyes lock onto one of the officers.
The man trembles—but not from fear.
It's tension. Pressure from within.
A pulse of belief, barely held in check.
His eyes shimmer—not with dread, but recognition.
As if the fire in Tyler's words has already caught in his chest.
"Clear on the plan, Captain?" Tyler's voice cracks the air like frost under a boot in a frozen canyon.
"Yes, Admiral," the officer answers, voice sharp, deliberate.
His hologram nods—leaving behind a soft trail of light,
as if the universe itself had answered:
We're ready.
Tyler turns to face the chamber.
His movement is sudden—cutting.
"Attention, all commanders.
We are entering Mercury's gravitational shadow.
The battle could begin at any moment.
Fleet to full combat alert!"
These words aren't orders.
They're the iron clang of a war-gong,
awakening the beast.
Even veterans—men and women who've survived plasma storms and orbital fire—
go still.
No one flinches.
No one falters.
But everyone listens.
This is it.
No simulation.
No drill.
This is real.
Tyler lifts his head.
His eyes—like forward lights burning through the void—
cold, clear, unblinking.
He looks to Marcus.
The gesture is measured, precise.
Not a request.
Permission.
"President," he says.
It clicks like the cocking of a weapon.
Marcus rises.
Slowly. Heavily. Without hesitation.
I am not a politician.
I am the last voice of humankind.
A figure carved from granite and rage steps onto the central podium.
Cameras follow his every movement.
The signal beams across every ship, every deck, every corridor—
cockpits, hangars, war rooms, bunks.
The entire fleet goes silent.
Pilots in their chairs.
Engineers beside nuclear cores.
Senior officers at glowing panels.
Every nerve of the system… listens.
His silhouette appears on-screen.
Marcus.
Hands clenched into fists.
No panic in his chest—only protest.
I'm no longer a man.
I'm a voice made of pain, of pride… of vengeance.
When he speaks, it's quiet.
But it's the quiet of a tsunami—
the hum just before obliteration.
"Fellow citizens.
Flesh and blood."
The words drop like molten lead onto stone.
Slow. Precise.
Impossible to miss.
Impossible to forget.
"Today, we are separated from our wives.
From our children.
From our homes."
"But this is not escape.
This is choice."
"We refused to die quietly."
"We could have hidden.
But we chose to march forward.
Into fire.
Because behind us stands all of humanity."
"We are the last line that can save it from vanishing."
"We are its pulse.
Its will.
Its blade."
He steps closer to the camera.
His eyes pierce into the heart of anyone looking back.
They don't ask for approval.
They demand allegiance.
"We must reclaim the rogue androids.
We must restore order."
"Man will not be erased by machine.
Not now.
Not ever."
"We created them."
"We are their limit."
"Their purpose is to serve.
And serve they shall."
He raises his hand.
Not in greeting.
Not in command.
But like a curse.
Like a verdict.
Like an oath sealed in blood.
"In the name of the living."
And in that same breath—
Thousands of voices.
"In the name of the living!"
They erupt from every ship, every channel, every throat.
Not a slogan.
A roar.
A war cry.
A thunderous vow.
"In the name of the living!"
"In the name of the living!"
The sound tears through the ether—
vaulting from ship to ship,
racing through vacuum like fire through dry wind.
And if Mercury is listening—
let it hear.
We are coming.
We will not forgive.
We are alive.
We are alive.