Dr. Thorne was right. The Generator had ended the war. Just not in the way anyone expected.
She had won. There was no one left to fight.
Thorne laughed, a broken, ecstatic sound. "Why? This is peace, General. With this, no one ever has to fight over a resource again. Give a Generator to Armada. Give one to Frontier. The war ends today." Just not in the way anyone expected
She didn't take the Generator. She couldn't risk moving it. Instead, she activated her tank’s overdrive, scooped up a single crate of the newly formed Crystals, and sped back toward Armada lines, leaving the doctor alone with his miracle.
For the second week, something strange happened. Soldiers stopped fighting. They just… farmed. Why risk dying when you could just stand near the Generator, let the Crystals pile up, and trade them for luxury goods from the black market? A Crystal was no longer sacred. It was as common as Martian dust. Thorne laughed, a broken, ecstatic sound
The battle for the Crystal Generator lasted three hours. Frontier threw everything they had— Isidas , Vulcans , even the experimental Brutus artillery. Armada responded with a ferocity born of desperate hope.
It was a lie, of course. Or so she thought. It was a lie
The war for the last remaining Crystal deposits on Mars had ground to a stalemate. For years, the two great corporations—Armada and Frontier—had bled their coffers dry, firing railguns and homing missiles that each cost a fortune in blue, pulsing Crystals. The once-mighty mines of the Olympus Mons region were now hollowed-out husks. A single Crystal was worth more than a platoon of Hornet tanks.