COMMANDER VEX
Mars belongs to everybody and nobody. Soldiers stage through it. Merchants make fortunes on it. Smugglers disappear into it. Scientists dig where they shouldn't. Every major planetary power in the Solar System has a stake.
Vex came looking for answers. Something on Mars took notice.
WARRIORS AND ADVENTURERS
Omicron is the only protection Jupiter bothered to send with Commander Vex. Sister Null crossed the Solar System from Pluto following mysteries nobody else can understand. Sparks is a Martian technician who knows how to work machines he has never seen. Banshee came from Earth and has already delved farther into the mystery than any of them.
HUMANITY, FOUR THOUSAND YEARS FROM NOW
Four thousand years and humanity has conquered every planet in our Solar System and given every world its own ways of surviving. Jupiter built dynasties on fuel, vast Houses and weapons engineered to last for generations. Venus mastered living crystal and turned beauty into technology. Saturn built strength and endurance, industry and war. Pluto followed a strange disciplines none of the other planets understand. Mars was stuck in the middle, a wasteland no one wanted.
And for a three-thousand years a Pax Solaris held those worlds together. But now it is irretrievably broken and no one knows why.
BANSHEE
Earth sent B.A.N.S.H.E.E. to Mars following evidence that never quite fit any accepted explanation. She arrived ahead of Vex, went deeper into the mystery than anyone expected and found something that will change human’s trajectories forever.
HL-745 is a living Helix Lobber fused into her very bones. It protects her, responds to her and can unleash a blue helix with devastating effect. Everyone who sees it assumes it is a weapon. The deeper Banshee travels into the mystery, the less certain that assumption becomes.
