Administrant Pravel, the Serefim Presidium’s strategic communications officer, had been kept in the dark during the decade it took to construct T-Taxiarch. She’d known a new torus was being built but was never informed of its purpose. She wasn’t even brought into the loop during the annum required to attach T-Taxiarch to the orbiting station’s hub. Only when the cohorts of armed forces and a fleet of troop transports and attack ships began arriving did she realize the torus’s function.
Given the turmoil within the ranks of Anotas-Deithe, Pravel did not share Grandmaster Elyon’s confidence about the loyalty of the new security forces. With the troops stationed so nearby, she hid a hand-held sonic-blaster in the recording studio adjacent to her office.
Pravel had just stepped into the Pres
