The past is a distraction, a source of envy, enmity, bitterness. Only the present matters, for only in the present can we shape the future.

Cut loose the past; it is dead weight.

Let the Extirpation continue. Let it never end.

—Hama Druz

Chapter 19

Pirius Red wasn’t impressed by Mars.

From low orbit it struck him as a dull, closed-in little world. Aside from the scrapings of ice at the polar caps, its color was a uniform, burned-out red. Mars was dead, or all but; you could tell that even from space, just by looking at its worn craters and soft-edged mountains.

Given this world had been the most earthlike world in Sol system after the home planet itself, it was surprising how little mark humans had made on its surface. There were plenty of ruins, though. Once, extensive arcologies had splashed the ancient face of this world with Earth green-blue. But those bubble-colonies had been smashed during the Qax Occupation. The largest of them had been in a region called Cydonia, and from space you could still make out where it had been: the neat circle of the dome’s perimeter, the blocky shapes of a few remaining buildings, a tracery of foundations. But the ubiquitous dust had covered it over, washing away lines and colors.

A more striking ruin, in fact, was a massive building put up by the Qax themselves: an exotic-matter factory. Its walls were massive and robust, enduring even after twenty thousand years. In the wars that had followed the expulsion of the Qax, the factory ruins had been used as a fortress, as human fought human. Pirius sent Virtual images back to Torec to remind her of the similar factory she had explored on the Moon. But Torec was at Saturn, still working on the CTC processor project, out of touch.

Pirius’s reaction to Mars seemed to disappoint Nilis. Apparently Mars held a sentimental place in earthworm hearts. Mars was a small world, but it had as much land area as Earth, Nilis said. It had canyons and mountains and huge impact craters—in fact the whole of the northern hemisphere appeared to be one immense basin—and its range of elevations, from the depths of the deepest basins to the heights of the highest mountains, was actually greater than anything on Earth, even if you were to strip away that world’s oceans.

Geology was never going to appeal much to a Navy brat. But Pirius was intrigued by Mons Olympus, the tallest mountain in the whole of Sol system—and their destination. For in a grandiose, astonishingly arrogant gesture, the Interim Coalition of Governance had built its Secret Archive into that mightiest of monuments.