Christa Matloff: director of Earth’s orbiting medical facility.
Cyrus Mobarak: the “Sun King,” inventor of the Moby fusion drive, and head of Mobarak Enterprises.
Lucy-Maria Mobarak: daughter of Cyrus Mobarak.
MORD: the idiosyncratic high-level Fax of the late Mordecai Perlman.
Pack Rat: senior member and Master of the Puzzle Network.
OLE PEDERSEN: the capable but paranoid head of a predictive group competing with Alex Ligon and Kate Lonaker.
TheSeine: the integrated quantum-entangled computer system that extends all through the solar system.
Nadeen Selassie: legendary developer of a lost “dark as day” doomsday weapon, presumed killed at the end of the Great War.
Bengt Suomi: chief scientist for Ligon Industries.
Milly Wu: SETI analyst, and former junior champion of the Puzzle Network.
ZETTER: security chief for Project Argus.
PROLOG
2071 A. D.
The Great War was over. It ended four months after it began, when the leaders of the Belt — crushed, humiliated, drained, and defenseless — agreed to an unconditional surrender.
And yet the Great War did not end. It could not end. It had swept like a gigantic storm across the face of the solar system, and like any storm it left behind its own trail of destruction, invisible eddies of unspent energy, whirlpools of hatred, and cluttered heaps of flotsam: people, weapons, and secret knowledge thrown together and abandoned.
Mars was not aware of the fact, but although hard-hit it had been doubly blessed. True, over half of its people had died. But life could still continue far below the surface, and the same infernal forces that swept clear the northern hemisphere had set in motion the melting of the permafrost. Two thousand years later, humans would walk unaided on the surface and breathe the clear Mars air.