'Welcome to hell, Aaron muttered as he monitored the images from outside. The ship began to probe through the clouds with high-resolution hysradar sweeps, standard radar, magnoscan, quantum signature receptors, and electromagnetic sensors; revealing the lay of the frozen land underneath. Several com-beacon signals appeared on the emerging cartography, the only indication of activity on this bygone world. They broadcast the official channels of the Restoration team, asking all arriving ships to make contact.

Corrie-Lyn watched the images in the portal with a mournful face as the starship flew round and round the planet, building up a detailed survey of the surface. Twelve hundred years after the Prime attack, glaciers were still advancing out of the polar regions. 'I can't believe Inigo was ever attracted to this place, she said.

'You heard Qatux; he enjoyed the idea of an ancestral homework!.

'Even if he came here, he'd take one look and leave. There's nothing here.

'There are Restoration teams down there, even today, Aaron said, waving at the little scarlet lights dotted across the map. The beacons acted as crude relays across continents, the only communication net on the planet.

'That's got to be the biggest lost cause in the galaxy, she said.

'You're probably right. Seventeen of the Second47 worlds have officially closed their Restoration projects, and the remainder are winding down. Budgets get reduced every year. Nobody kicks up a fuss about it any more, not like the first couple of centuries after the War.

After ten orbits, the smartcore had mapped all the exposed land lurking below the eternal cloud. Sensors had located twenty-three centres of dense electromagnetic activity. The largest was a force field dome in the centre of Kajaani, the old capital city. All the others were little more than clumps of machinery and buildings scattered across the dead tundra of three continents. No thermal sensor could begin to penetrate the cloud, so he had no way of telling if any of the outposts were occupied. There didn't seem to be any capsules in flight. Electrical activity in the air was strong, interfering with several sensor fields.

'No way of telling if he's down there, Aaron said. 'Not from up here. I can't even see what ships are parked under the force field.

'What were you expecting?

'Nothing more than this. I'm just scouting the territory before we go in to make sure there are no surprises.

Corrie-Lyn rubbed her arms, as if the cold from the planet was seeping into the cabin. 'So what's our cover story this time?

'No point in one. It's not like the teams are heavily armed.

'So you just shoot them one at a time until they give him up to us?

He gave her an annoyed stare. 'We'll tell them that you're searching for a former lover. He changed his name and profile to forget you, but you've tracked him down here. All very romantic'

'That makes me look like a complete loser.

'Oh dear, he sneered, and told the smartcore to call the beacon at Kajaani.

It took several minutes to get a reply from the shielded base. Eventually a very startled Restoration project director called Ansan Purillar came on line to give them landing authority.

The Artful Dodger sank deftly through the three kilometres of the upper cloud layer. Two hundred kph winds buffeted the hull with near-solid clumps of grey mist while lightning clawed furiously at the force field. Eventually they cleared the base of the layer into a strata of super-clear air and the outside temperature plummeted. A gloomy panorama opened up beneath them. Black ice-locked land smeared with long dunes of snow. Eenuded of vegetation, every geographical feature was shaded in stark monochrome. Long braids of grubby cloud chased across the dead features.

'It must have been terrifying, Corrie-Lyn said sadly.

'The Primes dropped two flare bombs into the star, Aaron told her. 'The only way the Navy could knock them out was by using quantumbusters on the corona. Between them, they produced enough radiation to slaughter every living cell a million times over. Hanko's atmosphere absorbed the energy until it reached saturation point, which triggered a superstorm, which in turn threw up enough cloud to cover the planet and kick off an ice age. And the star still hasn't stabilized. Even if it did, it wouldn't matter; the radiation has completely destroyed the biosphere. According to the files, there's some marine life that's still alive in the deepest parts of the oceans, but that's all. The land is as sterile as a surgical chamber. Check out those radiation levels — and we're still five kilometres high.

'I didn't appreciate what a scale this War was fought on.

'They were going to genocide us. The words were almost painful to speak. It had been a fearful time. Aaron shuddered. How do I know what the War was like? A deeper instinct assured him he wasn't that old.

The Artful Dodger continued its descent through the rampaging lower clouds, blazing with solar brilliance as it sloughed off whip-like tendrils of electrical energy. At this altitude the wind speeds had dropped to a hundred and fifty kilometres per hour, but the air density meant the ship's ingrav units were straining to hold them stable against the pressure.

Corrie-Lyn tried not to look alarmed as the starship began to shake. High velocity ice crystals shattered against the force field as an amok cloud braid hurtled around them. The crunch of disintegrating ice could be heard inside the cabin.

'Okay then, this is why there aren't any capsules flying down here, Aaron muttered. His exovision was showing him the force field dome below altering its permeability index to allow them through. The wind speed was now less than a hundred kilometres.

Outside the dome, there was very little evidence of the city remaining. In its time, Kajaani had been home to three million people. Its force field had warded off the storms in the days following the Prime attack, protecting the wormhole station so that the planet's population could be evacuated to Anagaska. The process had taken over a month, with government vehicles transporting refugees from outlying counties on every continent as the storms grew worse and worse and vegetation withered and died. Seven weeks and three days after the planet's Premier Speaker led the way, CST closed the Hanko wormhole. If there was anybody left on the planet, they were beyond contact. Every effort had been made, every known habitation and isolated farmstead searched.

With the people gone, the force fields protecting cities and towns failed one by one, allowing the winds to pound against the buildings and floodwater to scour the ground around them. Not even modern superstrong materials could resist such pummelling for ever. The structures began to crumple and collapse. Eventually, with the climate spiralling down into its ice age the rains chilled to become snow, then ice. Mushy scree piled up against the frozen ruins, obliterating yet more evidence that this had once been an inhabited world.

The Artful Dodger passed through the force field and into the calm bubble of warm air that was the Restoration team's main base. It was centred on one of Kajaani's old parks. Under the protective auspice of the force field, the ground had been decontaminated and replanted. Grass grew once again, as did a short avenue of trees. Clusters of airborne polyphoto spheres shone an imitation sunlight on to the lush greenery; irrigation pipes provided clean water; there were even native birds and insects humming about, oblivious to the dark sky with its sub-zero winds outside.

They landed on a small patch of concrete on the edge of the park which held just one other starship, a thirty-year-old commercial combi-freighter with a continuous wormhole drive, that could carry a mix of cargo and passengers. The difference between the two ships was patent, with the Artful Dodger's smooth chrome-purple hull seeming almost organic compared to the Restoration team's workhorse with its carbon-bonded titanium fuselage and fading paintwork.