(Mars – Red Sector Theta-9)
The wind on Mars never stopped screaming.
It scraped across armor plating, rattled loose debris, and carried red dust in thick, choking waves that clung to everything it touched. The storm had been building for hours, visibility dropping to less than fifty meters, but command had refused evacuation. Theta-9 was too important. Too many mining rigs. Too many civilians are still moving through underground transit lines.
Staff Sergeant Kade stood at the forward observation trench, boots braced against the tremor in the ground, CMC armor humming quietly as it compensated for the uneven terrain. His visor scrolled threat assessments and sensor data in constant motion.
Nothing.
That was the problem.
"Report," Kade said over the squad channel.
"Perimeter stable," Corporal Ryke replied. "No surface contacts. No thermal spikes."
"Underground sensors?" Kade asked.
Static crackled for a moment.
"Reading interference," Ryke said. "Dust's playing hell with it."
Kade clenched his jaw. He didn't like interference. He liked clean data. Clean data meant clean decisions.
Mars didn't do clean.
"Maintain formation," he ordered. "No one relaxes."
The marines around him shifted slightly, adjusting grips on gauss rifles, heavy cannons, and flamers. Thirty-six CMC suits formed the defensive line, matte gray armor already stained red with dust and old acid burns from previous engagements.
They were veterans now. Not because of years of service, but because Mars aged soldiers faster than time ever could.
The ground shuddered.
Not a quake. Not an explosion.
A pull.
Kade's HUD flashed yellow.
SUBSURFACE ANOMALY – DEPTH UNKNOWN
"CONTACT!" Ryke shouted.
The ground collapsed inward fifty meters ahead of the line.
The surface didn't crack outward. It folded down, soil and rock sucked into a widening sinkhole as if something below had taken a massive breath.
Then the Zerg erupted.
Zerglings burst upward in a writhing tide, bodies slamming into one another as they clawed free of the earth. They were faster than before. Leaner. Their limbs moved with sharper precision, movements corrected mid-leap as if guided by an unseen hand.
"OPEN FIRE!" Kade roared.
The defensive line came alive.
Gauss rifles thundered, muzzle flashes strobing through the storm as armor-piercing rounds tore into the swarm. Zerg bodies exploded in sprays of ichor and chitin, acid hissing as it splashed against CMC armor.
For a moment, the line held.
Zerglings piled up, corpses forming uneven barricades of flesh and bone. Marines adjusted fire patterns instinctively, sweeping arcs, overlapping kill zones just like the VR simulations had drilled into them.
Then the Hydralisks surfaced.
They rose behind the Zerglings like living artillery, long bodies coiling as they locked onto targets. Their mouths split open and bone spines launched in blistering volleys.
"HYDRAS!" someone screamed.
The first spines hit the line.
A marine on the right flank took one through the shoulder joint. His armor screamed as acid ate through the seal, warning icons flashing red across squad HUDs.
He went down screaming.
Then his vitals flatlined.
UNIT DOWN.
"DO NOT BREAK FORMATION!" Kade shouted. "ADAPT FIRE! JOINTS AND HEADS!"
The Zerg adapted instantly.
Zerglings began moving erratically, feinting left then right, timing their leaps between firing cycles. Hydralisk spines started targeting knees, elbows, neck seals.
Ryke felt one impact slam into her thigh, the force nearly knocking her sideways. Her armor absorbed most of it, but alarms wailed as integrity dropped.
ARMOR: 81%
She fired anyway, gauss rounds punching holes through two Zerglings mid-air.
"They're learning again!" she yelled.
"No shit!" Kade snapped. "That's why we learn faster!"
The ground shook harder.
This time, it wasn't subtle.
The tremor rolled through the battlefield, knocking marines off balance as something massive moved beneath the surface.
Kade's HUD went crimson.
ULTRA-CLASS BIOFORM DETECTED
"Brace!" he shouted.
The Ultralisks emerged like living siege engines.
Three of them.
Each one towered over the battlefield, overlapping armor plates deflecting incoming fire as tusks longer than dropships carved trenches in the ground with every step. Their roars vibrated through the CMC suits, rattling teeth and bones even through layers of dampening.
"Oh hell," Ryke breathed.
"ANTI-ARMOR UNITS, FORWARD!" Kade commanded. "EVERYTHING ELSE SCREEN THE SWARM!"
Heavy CMC units stepped through the line, missile pods deploying with mechanical precision. The marines behind them shifted automatically, opening fire to keep Zerglings from swarming the heavies.
The first missile launched.
Direct hit.
The explosion rocked the battlefield, fire and debris washing over the Ultralisks.
When the smoke cleared, it was still moving.
Armor cracked.
But intact.
"They reinforced plating!" a heavy shouted. "Missiles aren't punching through!"
"THEN HIT IT HARDER!" Kade roared.
Railguns fired, hypersonic slugs slamming into Ultralisks' heads and joints. Plasma cannons burned glowing scars across chitin.
One Ultralisks stumbled, then collapsed in a thunderous crash, crushing dozens of Zerg beneath its weight.
The second hit the line.
It didn't slow.
It plowed.
CMC marines were thrown aside like debris, armor screaming as it absorbed impacts that should have liquefied organs. One marine was impaled on a tusk and lifted screaming into the air before being slammed into the ground hard enough to crater the regolith.
His HUD went dark.
"MEDIC—" someone shouted.
A Hydralisk spine cut them off mid-word.
Ryke felt fear claw up her spine.
Not the controlled, expected fear of simulations.
The raw kind.
The kind VR couldn't replicate.
She fired until her rifle clicked empty.
A Zergling slammed into her, claws scraping across her chest plate as acid splashed against her armor.
ARMOR: 63%… 59%…
She screamed and kicked, the CMC suit amplifying the motion as her boot crushed the creature's skull.
Another leapt.
A gauntleted hand grabbed it mid-air.
Sergeant Kade crushed it effortlessly and hurled the corpse aside.
"STAY UP!" he barked.
The third Ultralisks turned.
Not toward the line.
Toward the command bunker.
"Oh no," Ryke whispered.
"ALL HEAVIES ON ME!" Kade shouted. "WE DROP IT HERE!"
The marines repositioned under fire, Zerg swarming them from all sides. Ammo counters dropped fast. Armor integrity alarms screamed across multiple HUDs.
Then the sky split open.
Dropships screamed overhead, engines blazing as they slammed reinforcements directly into the kill zone. Heavy CMC squads landed like meteor strikes, shock absorbers firing as they hit the ground.
One marine planted a massive siege cannon into the dirt.
"CLEAR A LANE!"
Ryke and the others poured fire into the swarm, carving a corridor through bodies and acid.
The cannon fired.
The Ultralisks' head disintegrated in a blinding explosion.
The corpse collapsed forward, shaking the ground as it crushed dozens of Zerg beneath it.
The remaining Ultralisks hesitated.
Not fear.
Calculation.
Then it turned and withdrew.
The Zerg followed, melting back into tunnels and ruptured ground with terrifying coordination.
Silence fell.
Broken only by the crackle of burning chitin and the labored breathing of survivors.
Ryke stood there, rifle lowered, armor steaming.
Her HUD slowly cleared.
THREAT COUNT: 0
She looked around.
The battlefield was devastation.
Burned Zerg corpses. Broken armor. Dead marines.
Kade limped over, visor cracked, blood leaking from a seam in his armor.
"Status," he asked.
Ryke swallowed. "Alive."
He nodded. "Good."
She looked at the tunnels where the Zerg had vanished. "They're not done."
"No," Kade said quietly. "They never are."
Deep beneath Mars, the Zerg Hive Mind processed the data.
Humans had adapted again.
They were no longer prey.
They were a problem.
And problems demanded solutions.
The war on Mars was only beginning.
__________
Tony watched the battle end in silence.
The hologram above the command table replayed the last five minutes on a loop, slowed down, annotated, stripped of heroics. No music. No dramatic angles. Just raw telemetry pulled straight from Mars.
He didn't look at the explosions anymore.
He looked at the gaps.
Tony Stark leaned forward, elbows on the table, arc reactor casting pale light across data streams scrolling faster than most people could read.
Casualty spikes.
Armor integrity curves.
Reaction-time decay.
He tapped the table once. Paused the feed.
A marine went down. Another dragged them behind cover. Acid spread across the armor joint. The suit sealed, but too late. Vitals dropped. Flatline.
Tony didn't swear.
That was how bad it was.
"Friday," he said quietly, "overlay med-response latency."
A new graph appeared.
Tony's jaw tightened.
"Too slow," he muttered. "Way too slow."
The CMC armor had done exactly what it was designed to do. It had kept people alive through impacts that should have killed them. It had turned civilians into competent fighters in minutes. It had held the line against something that would have wiped out a normal army.
And it still wasn't enough.
He scrubbed the footage back to the Ultralisks breach.
Pause.
A heavy unit fired a missile. Another followed. Then a third.
The Ultralisks kept coming.
Tony leaned back, running a hand through his hair.
"Armor isn't the problem," he said. "It's everything around it."
Friday's voice was calm, neutral. "Please clarify."
Tony stood and began pacing.
"We built suits," he said, gesturing at the projection of a fallen marine. "Great suits. Strong suits. But we dropped them into a war ecosystem and expected that to be the answer."
He stopped pacing.
"That's not how wars work."
He flicked his wrist, pulling up a tactical overlay of the battlefield.
"Look at this," Tony continued. "When a marine goes down, it takes thirty to forty seconds before anyone can even reach them safely. By then, acid's already breached seals. Bleeding's already happening. Shock's already setting in."
He turned sharply. "Where are the medics."
Friday hesitated. "There are no dedicated medical units deployed in Theta-9. All CMC units are trained in basic combat triage."
Tony laughed once. No humor in it.
"Basic triage doesn't cut it when the enemy is a murder ecosystem," he snapped. "They need combat medics. Dedicated ones. Heavier armor. Faster access. Mobile cover."
He pulled up another feed.
Zerg retreating. Marines regrouping. Bodies being carried away.
"And tanks," Tony added.
Friday displayed a schematic automatically.
Tony shook his head. "No, not that. Not repurposed mining rigs with guns bolted on. Real armor. Mobile fortresses. Something that can take an Ultralisks head-on and not fold like a soda can."
He paused, staring at the frozen image of the battlefield.
"They adapted to our missiles in one engagement," he said quietly. "That means the next time, they'll counter them outright."
He straightened, decision crystallizing.
"Friday, log this," Tony said. "CMC armor is phase one. Not the solution."
"Logged," Friday replied.
Tony moved to a new console, fingers flying as he started sketching designs in the air.
"Phase two," he continued, "is combined arms."
Holograms blossomed around him.
Heavy med-evac suits. CMC-compatible combat medics with reinforced shielding and auto-sealing medical rigs. Injectors that could neutralize Zerg acid on contact. Portable stasis fields to keep soldiers alive long enough to extract.
Tony's eyes burned with focus.
"And tanks," he repeated. "Not drones. Not remote-only. Crewed. Heavily armored. Something with a big enough gun to make an Ultralisks rethink its life choices."
A new projection formed.
Low profile. Wide treads for Martian terrain. Energy shields layered over physical armor. Primary cannon designed for sustained fire, not bursts. Transformable into something more. Able to siege anything it wants.
Tony stared at it.
"That's the line holder," he murmured. "That's how you stop breakthroughs."
Friday processed silently, then spoke. "Resource allocation for armored vehicle production will significantly impact CMC output."
Tony didn't hesitate. "Good. It should."
He turned back to the battle footage one last time.
"They didn't lose because they weren't brave," he said. "They lost people because we sent them in without support."
He clenched his fists.
"That doesn't happen again."
Tony opened a secure channel.
"Patch me through to Bruce," he said. "And Mars command. And whoever's still pretending this is a clean war."
A pause.
"Connection pending," Friday replied.
Tony took a breath, steadying himself.
Armor had been the first answer.
But wars were never won by one answer.
They were won by systems. By logistics. By people whose only job was to keep others alive long enough to fight again.
Tony Stark watched the red planet rotate slowly on the display.
"We're not building heroes," he said quietly. "We're building an army that survives."
And this time, he was going to do it right.
__________
__________
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