Let's look on the bright side; the war has ended. On the downside, you've just woken from a coma and everything is confused, but your team – God bless them – are still together, but they have a new captain. You're a Colonel; she's a Captain and the one taking you to Admiral Waalia, of course, he's dead when you get there. Then Ezzra Loore turns up, you haven't seen him for thirty-four years, and he was bad news then, but he needs your help. Are you being suckered again? Still, the war is over and once you get used to dodging the bullets life's not so bad even when you've got to crawl down to the archive, and that's under a million tonnes of rubble. Marcus Trillian, a theoretical physicist who lived over a hundred years ago by all accounts, discovered something he wanted to keep secret, so his brother created the Cascade to protect it for a thousand years. Sorry Ashlar, you failed. What was the secret you ask, Loore doesn't know, but he does know whose trying to escape the coming apocalypse and that's Dr Daalon Maasi, your old mentor when you were at university. What makes matters worse is that you, Loore, Maasi and Loore's ward, Taabari – God rest her soul - were all together when you discovered the stones. How's that for a coincidence?