Mars had been the first. Not the first station or the first colony, but the first attempt by humanity to cut ties from Earth. The upstart colony that declared its independence. And if Solomon Epstein hadn’t been a Martian and hadn’t perfected his drive just when he had, Mars would have been the site of the first true interplanetary war. Instead, Earth and Mars had made the kind of rough friendship where each side could feel superior to the other and they’d set about carving up the solar system. So it had been for as long as she could remember.
