Mars

Mars is the fourth planet in the Sol system and humanity's oldest interplanetary colony. Although the planet has a tumultuous history, it has developed into an industrial powerhouse and one of the most important worlds to the United Nations Space Command as it houses the headquarters of key military-industrial contractors such as Misriah Armory and Reyes-McLees Corporation alongside commercial megacorporations like Traxus Heavy Industries. As one of the earliest and most developed human colonies, Mars is also one of the few worlds outside Earth to have significant clout in the United Earth Government.

Early days
For millennia, Mars held a lofty position within the cultures of humanity, though it was not until the 20th century that clear images of the planet were broadcast to the citizens of Earth. Throughout the later decades of the century, human space exploration blossomed into a myriad of unmanned satellites orbiting the planet conducting surveys and scans of all kinds - preparing for the inevitability of a human colony on the red planet. This answer came in the late 2010s and early 2020s, with the launching of three manned missions in 2018, 2021 and 2023 aimed at conducting scientific expeditions. Each mission consisted of roughly 15-35 personnel, slowly expanding in scope per successive mission as each rocket brought with it more infrastructure and supplies to slowly build up the colony base located inside the lava tubes of Arsia Mons. These missions were short duration in nature, lasting only a few weeks each before returning their crews to Earth.

Scramble for Mars
As the 2020s continued in earnest, more contracts for space exploration were granted to the various corporations of Earth - establishing vital space infrastructure in orbit in preparation for continued scientific and industrial interest in space travel. More pioneer groups began to land across Mars as the decade continued, until the discovery of a lifetime was announced. On May 3, 2027, Firegrove Industries' CEO Christopher Leto announced the discovery of what was believed to be a microorganism native to the Martian underground permafrost; life outside of Earth. The discovery lit a fire on Earth, and effectively overnight, trillions began being poured into fledgling space programs and industries the world over. The boom of Mars landings was effectively uncontrolled, and as such any hope by the scientific community of a slow and ordered approach to exploring the planet were ignored. Settlements were scattershot across the planetary surface in a cluttered effort to cover as much area as possible and recover more samples for study. Such samples proved extremely difficult to find, and after the first five years of searching almost no further traces of Martian life were found. Claims arose that Leto's announcement was a fake, or that his team had misidentified Earth life brought to the planet as an example of interplanetary contamination. In 2042, these claims were proven correct as anonymous sources within Firegrove leaked a series of documents proving with no doubt; the Martian bacterial samples claimed by the company were not only mis-attributed Earth life, but that the samples had been genetically engineered and tampered to appear more convincing to the scientific community. The hoax had increased Firegrove's profits tremendously, and seen a huge investment in Earth's space programs - at the expense of Martian contamination and scientific integrity. The scandal blew up and Firegrove was practically dismantled overnight.

The legacy of what would later become referred to as the "Martian Gold Rush" was a mixed one, with long-spanning effects on Mars' development. The disorderly nature of settlement on the planet (and the subsequent abandonment of these sites) meant that much of the planet's surface was littered with human artificial waste. A number of small nonviolent clashes over land rights on the planet had also given rise to an effective sense of "frontier justice" - many Martian explorers routinely carried firearms for their own self-defense - though none had yet to be discharged in anger. Perhaps most of all, the microbe which had been "discovered" on Mars by Firegrove back in 2027 had proven well-adapted to the Martian environment, and was beginning to slowly but surely spread across the surface - effectively destroying all chances for a search for native Martian life. With a multitude of corporations and nations pulling out of Mars in the wake of the Firegrove scandal in favour of alternatives such as Luna, interests in Mars fell and investment in the planet took a nosedive.

The mid-2040s were bereft with the Kasimov Crisis - an event in which settlers on the Martian surface refused to pull out and return to their homes on Earth, attempting to declare themselves independent of their home nations and encourage a Martian independence movement. The seven colonists were ultimately subject to a four-week siege conducted by corporate security forces, before their shelter supplies ran out and they surrendered themselves to return home and face arrest. The following year, a dedicated colony site was founded at Arsia Mons at the site of the initial Mars landings 25 years prior, marking the start of what is now considered to be a "true" Mars colony. Unlike previous efforts, the Arsia colony was to be a dedicated effort organised by the Chinese government hoping to lead the way in Mars exploration. In the following decades, American and European efforts would crop up in the Mariner Valley, Tharsis region and Hellas Basin, with a myriad of small mining and industrial operations beginning to develop to support the burgeoning population. The relative lack of investment and the ordered nature of the colony efforts - hoping to avoid the chaos of the 2030s - saw a time of relative quiet, as scientists and explorers were to keep primarily to the regions surrounding their home bases.

The Sino-Russian War of the 2050s and 2060s saw the Chinese development on Mars take a much larger acceleration, as increased tensions back on Earth saw the Chinese government begin to invest in their Mars settlement to serve effectively as an offworld bunker - well out of range of Russian nuclear missiles. This acceleration of development would see the Chinese begin to install hidden nuclear missile silos on Mars, disguised as underground VTOL rocket maintenance, storage and launch facilities. This was soon followed up by the NATO coalition's own equivalents in the years after due to emerging tensions back on Earth, though neither side would publicly acknowledge any of these facilities' existence - due to their breach of the Outer Space Treaty. Mars was later a victim of the 2075 asteroid economic crash following the rapid development of the Belt as an industrial hub, with most Mars-based export industry suffering greatly for several years. The economic crash's long-running affects on the United States would ultimately contribute to the Second American Civil War throughout the 2080s, leading to a great deal of unrest and turmoil in the offworld Martian colonies. The end of the civil war in 2093 put an end to much of this unrest, though the disturbance ultimately saw some American settlements on the Martian surface declare their own independence. Due to the turmoil on Earth, these settlements were mostly a footnote in the news broadcasts of the time, and they would be left to their own devices for the next few years without interference.

Second wave of colonisation
The growing presence of the bacteria unleashed by Firegrove back in the 2040s continued to be a nuisance on Mars throughout the later stages of the 21st century, with much of the planet's surface coming to be covered in a thin coating of the organism. By the 2090s, definitive alterations to the planet's atmosphere could be proven without a doubt to be traced back to the bacteria. Nonetheless, the growing issues of population and climate change back on Earth did little to stop increased waves of colonist import to the planet, fuelled by the emergence of cities such as Mombasa competing for valuable space launch industries. Many of these colonists were now sourced from poorer and more destitute regions of Earth, hoping to leave to make a better life on Mars. Over the final decades of the 21st century and the first years of the 22nd, the Martian landscape once again underwent rapid development particularly spurred by an import of cheap labour from the Philippines and India - in particular focused on the regions surrounding Argyre Planitia.

By this time, corporate interests were once again becoming very predominant on Mars, with many such corporations funding the settlement of these second-wave colonists in exchange for extended work contracts in often-hazardous conditions. As the 2100s began in earnest, Mars was an increasingly diverse scattering of competing settlements of varying political, economic, religious and corporate goals. The lack of oversight by the powers of Earth - busy with ongoing cold war and a movement for independence on Earth's moon saw intra-colony conflicts begin to break out more and more often. The lack of major firearms or military production on Mars meant that such conflicts were small-scale in nature and often consisted of single-digits numbers of firearms (often themselves smuggled onto the planet) between rival worker settlements over land rights and supposed-territorial breaches. Strikes against the working conditions of the colony settlements became increasingly common, and tensions began to rise. As colonisation drives increased, Mars soon began to find itself bearing a higher unemployed population of migrants the increasingly-hostile Earth, desperate for any work they could find.

Martian War of Independence
The end of the Lunar independence movement in 2106 was a landmark moment for the emergent direction of Mars. Having emerged victorious, the US was now able to turn its attentions to its errant Martian colonies, many of whom had declared their secession from the United States fifteen years prior. With its freshly-available and now-battle-hardened Marines, the US began the process of officially reclaiming its old colony bases - intending to keep up the momentum it started with its successes on Luna. However, the Lunar independence movement itself had proven a template for many on Mars to begin the discussions of their own allegiance to the flags of Earth, leading to the establishment of the Free Mars Coalition. The coalition was a movement led by several figureheads including one Vladimir Koslov, seeking to unite many of the disparate settlements on Mars in an attempt to form a truly united stance against the Earth. The FMC saw Mars' sheer distance as the major strength the planet held where their Lunar brethren had failed; if control of the planet could be established, all that remained was to hold off the Earthers' response attempts until they were forced to concede.

The arrival of the US Marines in 2108 was a brief flashpoint for Martian history, as the Chinese and US played an intense standoff later known as the Phobos Crisis, in which the Chinese government protested the deployment of an armed military force on the planet. Geopolitical tensions escalated to a level not seen since the Cold War of the 20th century, with the Chinese preparing to use their Mars-bound missile silos to shoot down the American rockets, and the Americans prepared to do the same in kind back on Earth - starting a nuclear war. Cooler heads prevailed and the company was allowed to land, though under the proviso that the PRC were allowed to match the NATO troops man-for-man in any force deployment on Mars.

The remainder of the 2110s were relatively quiet as the military deployments began to forcibly reclaim their old grounds from previous decades. However, the Phobos Crisis did light a spark in the Martian populace, many of whom called for an end to the imperialistic reconquest of the lost colonies by the Americans. By 2112, the US and China had both graduated from simply reclaiming old territory to a land-grab and scramble across the Martian surface, echoing the European colonial conquest of Africa two centuries prior. The 2109 publication of the Koslovic Manifesto by the Coalition's own Vladimir Koslov took on like wildfire, pushing many settlements to stop admitting Earth-based corporations or soldiers into their territories.

2114 saw the outbreak of the Martian War of Independence as the Free Mars Coalition formally declared their independence, prompting an aggressive response by the combined US and Chinese military forces on the planet. The Mariner Valley became home to a long-term low-intensity guerrilla war between Coalition forces and their Earther counterparts. The conflict peaked in 2118 with the Coalition's attempted capture of the Hebes interplanetary ballistic missile silo, prompting an extremely aggressive response from the Chinese military and putting both NATO and Chinese forces on an extremely high alert. Twenty-three days later, events on Earth would see the two powers erupt into a global conflict on and around Earth and its orbit, with the violence spreading to Mars in the ensuing days. The Third World War saw the NATO and Chinese Marine forces on Mars engage in a handful of direct battles, though both sides' low numbers and potential for conflict with the Free Mars Coalition forces saw these firefights result in few serious casualties. Nonetheless, the three-way war on Mars grew in intensity, and a series of assaults on known Coalition strongholds saw the movement's central leadership killed or imprisoned, and the Martian War of Independence officially end, having achieved relatively little.

ZGene and continued tensions
Although the end of the Free Mars Coalition had seen relatively little accomplished in regard to material gains, it did accomplish one very notable thing - the name of Vladimir Koslov was well-established in Martian pro-independence circles, and his ideas were now freely proliferating like never before. The previous decade's conflicts on Mars, Earth and Luna had pushed many to the tipping point, and now the military rule of the Earth powers was all that kept the colonies in line. The end of the conflict on Earth in 2121 saw a power vacuum form throughout the Solar System as both sides had been badly beaten, and now had to contend back home with rising powers in Asia, South America and Africa such as the EAF.

Viewing the Earth's grip on Mars as tenuous at best, Koslov saw an opportunity to begin a real change not just for the red planet, but for the Solar System as a whole. The Martian socialist movement at this time, without the unifying banner of the FMC, began to diverge and splinter in their beliefs, leading to fears that a complacent populace would allow the Earth to eventually re-cement its iron grip on the planet forevermore. To this end, Koslovic began to tour the various settlements of Mars to personally spread his message, and began rallying a support base on Mars intent on keeping on the pressure while the Earth was still weak. Simultaneously, the weakened NATO and Chinese states on Earth saw both sides begin to grant increased autonomy to their corporations' operations in space, requiring an ever-higher import of materials from space-based sources to fuel the rebuilding industries back home. This led to secondary effects on the Martian population; lower wages, longer hours, higher performance quotas and more dangerous working conditions.

The ZGene fiasco of 2132 was a major tipping point for the spread of socialist sentiment across the planet, as an almost overnight economic crash on Mars saw an eruption of protests and riots - a perfect environment for the Koslovics' radical ideas to take ahold. Unlike the previous decades, the ZGene crisis gained prime attention on the news feeds of Earth - particularly in parts of the world opposed to the interests of NATO and China on Mars or with large populations of largely-exploited siblings on the planet. 2135 and 2137 were major successes for the Koslovic cause, seeing the formation of the First and Second Interplanetary Coordination Councils; a series of conferences hosted by Vladimir Koslov with the goal of unifying interests not just on Mars but across the Solar System for the creation of a stateless anarcho-communist society for the good of all humanity. The councils were extremely successful in spreading Koslovic ideals off Mars and throughout the Solar System, gaining the Koslovics ground as far afield as Earth and the Jovian Moons.

The backing of Brazil and the Philippines, among other countries, was a major boon for the Koslovic cause and their right to recognition, and helped fund their efforts further throughout the system. The wake of the Coordination Councils saw the eruption of massive workers' strikes across the planet. Regional conflicts sprung up again as the Koslovics began to gain a united footing, ultimately leading to the assassination of Vladimir Koslov at Luoyang City during a miner's strike in 2142. Rather than ending the burgeoning Koslovic movement, as hoped, this action turned Koslov into a martyr and set the movement to a fever pitch - starting the Hellas Spring and the militarisation of the Koslovics in a series of armed uprisings.

The wake of the Hellas Spring saw the establishment of the Martian Combine, the Koslovics' official proclamation of independence and government on Mars - open to all Martians to join in the fight against what they saw as the "imperialism of Earth". The Combine's government saw backing by the Koslovic-aligned nations of South America and Asia, resulting in somewhat of a stalemate on Earth with no Earther colonial powers able to risk a response without triggering another conflict on Earth. As a result, over the course of the 2150s the Earth powers tended toward appeasement of the new Combine government, with the powers of Earth beginning to attempt to play breakaway Martian states off each other for political gain. This included the later supporting of Frieden powers both on Mars and offworld in the hopes of curtailing the rise of the Martian Combine and the spread of the Koslovics' cause.

Interplanetary War
In 2159, a Frieden-backed terrorist attack on the port at Phobos proved a monumental blow to the Martian Combine, and the first major hurdle the revolutionary government experienced since the start of the group's snowballing in the 2130s. Where the Friedens had been previously seen as a quaint counter-revolution, they were now viewed as a force with the reach and ability to strike directly at Mars or even Earth itself. The attack shocked the Koslovic populace on Mars and its allies throughout the system, prompting the eruption of violence across a multitude of nations and astronomical bodies as the Friedens and Koslovics came to blows.

Emboldened by the attack, Frieden forces began a campaign of eradicating the Koslovic cause the following year across the Jovian Moons, ultimately coming to blows with the UN and officially beginning the Interplanetary Wars. For the first three years of the conflict, Mars itself remained relatively untouched except for brief bouts of fighting on the planetary surface between Frieden-aligned elements and the Martian Combine. In 2162, the Martian Combine lent its support to their allies in South America during the Rainforest Wars, officially starting hostilities with the forces of the newly-established United Nations Space Command.

December of 2163 would see Mars involved in the then-largest ever extraterrestrial deployment of military force in human history, as the UNSC conducted the first planetary invasion with the deployment of the Drop Jet Jumpers during the Mars Campaign. The conflict on Mars would ultimately last for two years and see the complete eradication of Koslovic forces and the dissolution of the Martian Combine, with Mars reincorporated into the United Nations. The success of the campaign spurred on a wave of pro-Earth militarism and nationalism, helping secure alliances and funding for the organisation back home and leading to the successful conclusion of the Interplanetary Wars several years later. Despite the dissolution of the Martian Combine, Koslovic remnants would continue to hold out in the belt and beyond for a number of years afterward.

Post-War recovery
Following the end of the Interplanetary Wars, the now-dominant United Earth Government sought to prevent a re-emergence of Koslovic sentiment on Mars like that which had led to the establishment of the Martian Combine originally. As a result, the UEG proceeded to push a number of drastic labour reforms in an effort to placate the Martian workers' unions, and began investing heavily in Mars' manufacturing and technology industries. Over the later decades of the 22nd century, the planet slowly dragged itself back into a stable form and the Koslovic sentiment slowly lost its allure among the younger generations. The extensive rebuilding process on Earth saw the UEG grant the new Martian government considerable autonomy in decision-making in an effort to appease the independent streak of the planet's populace, while continuing to fund larger infrastructure projects across the planet as a whole.

Between 2185 and 2193, the Martian state conducted the construction of a huge infrastructural project - the construction of the Arsis Mons space elevator. Many cities across the planet also saw a number of construction projects to install rotating centrifugal gravity sections in public spaces to help improve overall public health.

The Martian Troubles
In 2207, Mars was hit with a new wave of setbacks taking the form of the Traxus Crash. The previous forty years had seen Mars establish itself as a hotbed for research and development, and Traxus Heavy Industries had led the charge from its research sector near the Isidis Basin. With the planet's strong history of scientific research behind it, the Traxus Artificial Intelligence Research Lab had made great strides over the decades, using its AI development to help bring Mars to the forefront of the Solar System. On August 28th of 2207, the Traxus-VI artificial intelligence began a rapid descent into a state of what would later become known as rampancy; and over the ensuing three days began to wreak havoc on the Martian planetary network. The Traxus facility hoped to keep the breach quiet until it could be contained - though was able to negotiate a 72 hour period of "maintenance downtime" for the Martian tightbeam communications network - though by the the dawn of September 1 the disruptions caused to the planet's computer networks were undeniable and a general order was given to installations across the planet to disconnect from planetary network however they could. This act caused huge damage to the Martian economy as servers were disconnected from the networks - often physically and without proper shutdown procedures, accumulating vast damages to the databases and communication systems of cities and companies across the planet. However, Mars was successfully quarantined from the wider SolNet and over the next three months, the Traxus-VI AI was successfully shut down.

Nonetheless, the Traxus Crash proved to be a catalyst for a new era of instability on Mars. Although most of the planet's systems were restored to working order within weeks, traces of the Traxus-VI AI and its copies continued to linger in remote servers for years afterward, prompting numerous other digital quarantines in the ensuing decade. The three-month outage of planetary communications and coordination was responsible for mass devastation on the planet's many AI-managed systems. Hydroponics, life support, airlocks, GPS, medical facilities, banking, power, communications - no industry was spared the effects of the crash, and thousands died from these combined effects - notably the inhabitants of Haldane, a mid-sized settlement in the Martian southern pole which was completely vented by a particularly unstable branch of the Traxus-VI AI.

Although the Traxus Crash was devastating, its immediate effects were dealt with in fairly short order though at massive economic and materiel cost. However, the failure of hydroponics across the planet and the destruction of supplies in storage saw many parts of the planet quickly begin succumbing to the combined effects of famine and drought. As supply outstripped demand, the remaining functional life support facilities holding up the planet's cities were forced to work harder to keep their inhabitants alive, putting increased stress on these systems and causing numerous outages. This resources situation led to riots across the planet and the deployment of Martian Commonwealth colonial guard troops to restore order and enforce martial law. As the months passed, the lack of reliable air filtration saw Martian bacteria begin to filter into the cities more and more, leading to widespread illness in the populace and the potential for a new plague to overwhelm the already-stressed situation.

Still living in the shadow of the Interplanetary War, the relatively-new Martian Commonwealth government struggled to keep the disparate city-states on the Martian surface together and calls soon began openly questioning whether Mars could survive as a single entity. Numerous secessionist groups began to rise; neo-Koslovics and the Martian Independent Demarchist Alliance (MIDA) party proved among the more notable, though self-proclaimed independent cities were numerous. With belief in the Commonwealth government failing, the populace began to divide into the two extremities - one wishing for a return to the old "glory days" of the Koslovics and the other directly attributing the problems facing Mars to the Earth government. MIDA rapidly grew in popularity with their most zealous supporters even calling for outright war with Earth - though even their claims were seen as too extreme by the majority. Nonetheless, the tensions quickly spiralled over the 2210s, culminating in the MIDAns launching a coup against the Commonwealth government in 2221 and successfully taking over rule of the planet. For three months, MIDA ruled from Mariner with an iron fist, enacting a brutal policy of terror against anyone suspected of harbouring pro-Earth loyalties.

Seeing the unrest on Mars, the UNSC was hesitant to play its hand - with the Interplanetary War still fresh in public consciousness, the UEG was hesitant to authorise a military invention on Mars for fear of inflaming the already exacerbated tensions on the ground. However, the outbreak of large-scale violence at the hands of MIDA forced their hand, and three months after the initial coup UNSC Marines were again conducting an orbital deployment onto the dunes of Mars. Strikes against the MIDAn power base at Mariner were successful and the Commonwealth government soon restored, backed by the power of the UNSC armed forces.

The military occupation of Mars by the UNSC Army lasted for eight years, during which time UNSC troops conducted numerous anti-guerilla campaigns against local terrorists supporting the neo-Koslovic and MIDAn ideologies, though ultimately both groups were largely unable to hold ground for long and civilian support dwindled as the UNSC-held sectors of Mars began to stabilise and rebound decades ahead of the independents. The emergence of nuclear fusion going into the 2230s saw the UNSC able to implement shorter response times for flights from Earth and larger cargo payloads, as a result ensuring that they would be able to bring in more troops and supplies as needed. As such, the conflicts stirred up by the Traxus Crash grew less intense and by the mid-2230s had all-but died out.

Manufacturing
"Mars is different from Luna. If you need something on Luna, you can get it shipped up from Earth's surface in a month, or a week if you know the right people. Out here, we have to make it ourselves or do without. And I didn't come all this way just to live in abject poverty."

- Brad Illingsworth, early Martian industrialist

Martian industrialization took a sharp turn from the path that Luna took early on in the colonization process. Luna was colonized to support projects in Earth orbit, and so many of her industries were not self-sustaining, and were interdependent on Earth's manufacturing. Mars was colonized for the sake of habitation, and so its industry was meant to support itself. While Luna expanded and declined with the ambitions of Earth, Mars thrived. Habitat-factories sprouted like mushrooms, and the economy grew as fast as colonists could move in and integrate into the workforce.

Phobos
For centuries, Phobos has served as the "gateway" to Mars and the planet's primary orbital port. The moon is hollowed out and almost entirely built up.

Deimos
After plans to convert the moon into a massive intrasolar cargo transport or a slower-than-light colony ship fell through, Deimos was turned into the orbital counterweight for the Tharsis industrial heavy-lift array.

Chiron
A former outer system body moved to Mars' orbit in the 23rd century, Chiron first acted as an ice mining outpost, then commercial spaceport and habitat, before becoming a NAVSPECWAR testing ground and ONI research lab in 2468.