Mars

[Captain Hesperus]

(Source: http://hazzard65.deviantart.com/art/Mars-station-371433678)
Mars was the first planet to be colonized by humans as they expanded out into space. The initial concept of the Mars Colony, named Ares City, was little more than a stopping-off point for spacecraft that were planned to fly out past the asteroid belt that separated the inner four planets from the outer ones to mine the mineral-rich moons of Jupiter and Saturn. But, contrary to the colony designers’ expectations, the colony quickly drew more and more settlers. People who wanted a new life on a different world flocked to Mars and the designers were forced to consider extensive remodeling of the small, basic colony that was in existence. So it was that limited terraforming operations were commenced. The terraforming consisted of making synthesized water to create atmospheric and terrestrial water sources and an immense tower was constructed to allow water to evaporate into the atmosphere. This was an initial success, but the terraformers quickly realized the mistake they had made in locating their first city in a crater as the first rainfall caused substantial flooding, turning the crater into a lake.

The colonists quickly moved out of the crater and reestablished their city on an elevated plain. Ares II quickly flourished, even though the rain rarely fell and the nights were cold. The entire city was fitted with gravity modification panels in the floor of every building, since the gravity of Mars is slightly less than that of Earth’s and it was thought wise to not allow Martian settlers to become weakened by their long exposure to a lighter gravity than Earth’s. Longitudinal studies of people in low gravity environments showed a gradual decrease in muscle mass and bone density which did not return when exposed to normal gravity, so it was considered a safety measure to prevent Martians becoming weak and brittle when exposed to Earth-like gravity.

Ares City II was a success, this time a proper spaceport was built on the city limits and businesses flocked to set up Martian offices and outlets. A city government was established under the auspices of the UEF’s off-world policies. The government would have limited powers of taxation and regulation of law within the boundaries of the UEF’s laws. Some of the taxes had specific breaks dependent on the taxed party’s contribution to the expansion of ARES II and some UEF laws were altered to reflect the more ‘frontier’ nature of Mars at that time. However, as time advanced and Mars became more settled and civilized, the disparities between its rough-and-ready approach to taxes and laws compared to the orderly system in place on Earth and other members of the UEF became apparent. One particular law that the UEF did not agree with was the open, unregulated carrying of firearms by all citizens, allowing all citizens regardless of their legal status the ability to carry weapons up to and including anti-armor weapons. Plainly, this was not something the UEF wanted to have in a vassal planet and attempted to disarm the population.

They effected this by landing four whole battalions of Space Marines around Ares City II and moving them en masse into the city itself. They expected the massive show of force would be enough to cow the civilian population into calmly surrendering their guns. However, the UEF obviously did not read their history books as they did not anticipate the massive upsurge of civil disorder and defiant resistance to the new law. Criminals and law-abiding citizens alike took up arms to resist the UEF and the Space Marines suddenly found themselves in a firestorm of gunfire. Their tanks and APCs were subjected to concentrated rocket and mine attacks, their aircraft knocked down by guided missiles and their infantry pinned down by such a storm of gunfire that it was almost impossible to tell when any one opponent was reloading as the rate of incoming fire was too intense to gauge. Finally, after almost a day and a half of constant fighting, the General in charge of the Space Marines had a loudspeaker set up and requested a ceasefire to withdraw his troops. To their credit, the Space Marines had advanced to almost three miles from the administrative center of Ares City II, but they were now cut off from resupply, low on ammunition and more than two thirds of their force was sporting injuries with insufficient medical facilities to effectively treat them.

They waited an hour as the incoming fire raged before, suddenly the gunfire tapered off and stopped. In the eerie silence, the Space Marines stopped and tried to take stock. Before they even had chance to attempt to withdraw, a high-quality limousine glided through the streets and came to a stop by the ruined store that currently stood in as the UEF forward command base. A man dressed in a business suit stepped out from the rear of the vehicle and strolled over to the General. He was Erasmus Gray, the CEO of KinetiCorp. The corporation had been one of the first to move it’s headquarters, research and manufacturing facilities to Mars and had contributed hugely to the expansion of Ares City II. It had been rumored that many members of the Mars government were exclusively owned by KinetiCorp, allowing the company to shape the development of the city to its own requirements. The CEO cheerfully reported that the Space Marines were welcome to leave their forward positions, but they would have to leave their weapons behind. Further to that, they would have to immediately return to orbit, since in the time they had been caught up in the city, KinetiCorp had contacted the UEF Council on Earth and had threatened to sever all economic and financial agreements with the government. That would have cost the UEF hundreds of billions of dollars, an unacceptable loss. The General could see what was going on. KinetiCorp had effectively bought Mars. Ignoring the handshake Gray offered, the General tossed his empty pistol at the man’s feet and lead his injured and exhausted soldiers back to their dropzones and from there, back to orbit.

Since then, Mars has been something of a semi-autonomous planet, maintaining its own laws and taxes, but paying large sums of money to the UEF for access to trading routes protected by the UEF Space Navy. Apart from that however, the UEF has not had the collective power to bring Mars completely back into the fold, basically successfully seceding the United Earth Federation and becoming nothing more then a glorified trade partner.

Notable locations on Mars:

Ares City
The flooded earliest settlement of the Mars colonists is still accessible, to a degree. Many of the buildings were lost as the floodwaters engulfed them, but some of the taller buildings have upper levels that can still be entered, either by boat or hover vehicle. Most of the buildings were designed to be airtight, since in those early days Mars had a barely breathable atmosphere, so the interiors of the underwater buildings are likely still dry and intact, so long as their windows and walls have withheld the weight of water pressing against them. Much of the city can be seen from the surface of the lake, including several heavy vehicles that could not be moved in the thick mud that ran down in the early part of the flood.

Ares City II
The current capital city of Mars is a metropolitan hub, much like cities on Earth. Designed on a gridiron plan, with blocks of the city criss-crossed by roads, monorail transit train lines and express routes for hover vehicles, it is easy to navigate. The city is the new home of KinetiCorp, a science and technology R&D company, with the majority of their manufacturing, research and corporate hubs located in and around the city. Another sight in Ares City II that an Earth-born human might see as unusual is the proliferation of firearms dealers. Gun stores and other stores with ammunition for sale are as common as coffee shops and bars in an Earth city. This is due to Mars’ much more relaxed policy on gun ownership, resulting in almost 90% of the Martian population owning at least one gun, with the majority owning an average 8.3 guns per individual.

Olympus Mons arcologies and the Mons Observatory
After the establishment of Ares City II, groups of scientists and explorers set out, Oregon Trail-style to attempt to scale the infamous Olympus Mons, Mars’ immense extinct volcano. The initial expedition took eight months to scale the slopes, finally ceasing at 18km above Mars’ surface on a plateau that came to be dubbed ‘Ascension’. At this point, the scientists started to lay down the foundations of a scientific community that later expanded into a self-sufficient colony of arcologies.
A further expedition set out from Ascension to complete the final journey to the caldera. Once they had descended into the extinct volcano’s heart, these explorers started simultaneously extracting minerals to research extraterrestrial volcanology and building the Vesuvius Array. The Vesuvius Array is a radio telescope that covers the entire interior of the Olympus Mons caldera. It was built to start observing extragalactic phenomena and begin charting the neighboring Andromeda galaxy. To date, the Vesuvius Array has discovered 387 planets that exhibit Earth-like characteristics in terms of size, orbit and distance from the primary star.