Luna Isadora Voss had not constructed thirty years of absolute structural control by fighting every battle. She had engineered her supremacy by identifying, earlier than any other player in the legislative chamber, precisely which campaigns were already lost.
She initiated the execution at seven o'clock on Friday morning. It occurred before Alpha Caius had emerged from his morning tactical briefing, before Beta Brennan had finalized his initial audit of the day's intelligence files, and before a single administrator in the Ashborne stronghold had thought to question her movements.
This synchronization was deliberate. The most lethal manoeuvres resembled nothing at all on the surface. They resembled concessions. They mimicked the behaviour of a woman who had completely run out of procedur
