The golden light of the newly healed sun washed over the bridge of The Ascendant, but the warmth did not reach the faces of the siblings. They stood shoulder to shoulder at the massive digital viewport. They were staring down at a graveyard.
The primary terrestrial planet in the orbital zone was completely dead. It was a jagged, petrified husk of irradiated gray rock. There were no clouds to soften its features. There was no atmospheric envelope to bend the light. The surface was a brutal, ugly tapestry of massive impact craters and deep, sterile canyons carved by millennia of unchecked cosmic radiation. It looked like a skull floating in the dark.
