Chapter 311: The Senate Floor (Part 1)
Elder Isolde Renwick stood by the tall, arched window of her private office.
The gray, filtered light of Bastion One poured over her deeply wrinkled face. She held a porcelain cup of chamomile tea. It had gone entirely cold.
She turned away from the thick glass and looked at her heavy mahogany desk. A neatly stacked pile of encrypted shipping manifests rested on the polished wood. The ledgers had been meticulously compiled by Perrin Locke and Sirius Statanham down in Bastion Seven. They were beautiful, damning, and profoundly incomplete.
Isolde took a slow sip of the cold tea.
"He did not buy the performance," Isolde said aloud. Her voice was dry and raspy in the quiet room.
Her trusted legislative aide, a young man named Torvin, stood nervously near the closed oak door.
"Senator Vast seemed perfectly polite when he left, Elder," Torvin offered cautiously.
