Martian Ring

Around Mars circles a massive ring, approximately twelve kilometers thick, and nearly forty-one thousand kilometers in diameter. A brilliant white, the ring is the main orbital body of Mars, Phobos and Deimos being far eclipsed by the man-made behemoth, first moved to higher orbits and then devoured entirely.

'Beneath' the Martian Ring are six great spokes, over a kilometer in radius each, anchoring the megastructure to the Martian surface itself. The foundations themselves, predictably called Foundation Arcologies, stretch from twenty kilometers beneath the Martian surface to thirty above it. More artificial mountains than actual arcologies, they are the main hubs of transportation, communication and power generation on the planet.

The Martian Ring was built for several reasons, above and beyond facilitating transportation. The second reason is that the ring and spokes contain a superconducting line, for distributing power around the planet at little cost, and making it easy to collect the massive numbers of beams the thousands of solar power satellites project.

The primary impetus, however, was defense. Defense against rogue asteroids, and against rogues who, in rejecting technology, have chosen that the ends justify the means. Mars lost an entire arcology in the 22nd century due to such terrorist actions, and four additional major attempts were made before the Purge.

The ring and spokes themselves consumed nearly the entirety of the Solar Consortium's mobius patterns for half a decade, a project completed a few years before the Consortium-Prime War. The ring projects two layers of planetary screens, and one planetary shield, with several hundred additional backup screens available if need be (though far weaker than the main screens). The Ring's point defense was actually considered to be somewhat weak, as it was often compared to Ouranos Prime. It was still capable of bringing down a small fleet on its own, however, and received a significantly lower priority due to the size of the Martian Fleet.