Pavonis Mons elevator

Hellas (2450s onward). When the Settlement and the Mandate built the Pavonis Mons elevator together in the 2390s, they also agreed that neither would settle south of the equator, each fearing the other would outflank its half of Mars from the south. The Open Cities had signed nothing. After losing the Belt in the Ore Secession they put charter cities into Hellas, the deepest basin on Mars, with the planet's thickest air and buried glaciers on its eastern rim, and called it America on Mars again, the answer to their oldest grievance. About a third of their Elevator slots, and slots the other blocs left idle once their own elevators opened, now carry settlers there, and their array's power builds it: about 15 million people in 2497, the fastest-growing city in the solar system. Hellas has no elevator and launches mostly by rocket, and the great dust storms of Mars begin in its basin. In the Hellas Crisis of the 2460s the Settlement and the Mandate, acting together against a third bloc as they rarely have, closed its routes to orbit for most of a Martian year, until the Anchorage brokered terms: Hellas keeps its charters but may not build beyond the basin's rim, and may buy climber slots at Pavonis.

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