Crystal Witness by Kathy Tyers

Author:Kathy Tyers [Tyers, Kathy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Science Fiction, Christian, Space Opera
ISBN: 9781621841258
Publisher: Enclave Publishing
Published: 2020-06-16T05:00:00+00:00

The following morning, Holjpip sat in her anteroom to the villa’s main meeting chamber, waiting while other high Renasco personnel arrived and seated themselves. She would enter on time, and any man or woman not at station had better have an excuse.

She stared once around the freshly painted anteroom walls, which now had a faint ochre tint. The scent of enamel lingered, and most of the furniture still was elsewhere, but her small desk was already back in place. She had gone over her notes for the meeting well in advance, so she could afford a few minutes’ speculation on other matters.

Ming, for example.

Holjpip sat down.

Under the additional pressure of the invitation deadline, Holjpip had expected an emotional flurry. Instead, Ming accepted the work and addressed it. The Ops room techs, told to keep her under watch for the evening, reported Ming working late, finishing with all appearances of satisfaction.

Holjpip laced her fingers together and rested her chin on them, elbows digging into the desk’s edge. Ming seemed so delicate. Inner strength would make her valuable over the long stretch, if she didn’t break under training.

A tiny twinge below her navel reminded Holjpip she was due for rejuv treatment.

At times, Holjpip almost wished she could spark sections out of her own recall. Tieg Innig, here in her employ, constantly called up one such memory.

She had seen it on the private Company net, so it had not been public news. Still, the woman’s death was too gruesome to forget. The victim’s previous memory wipe for some unmentioned crime did not matter. Even without an identity, no woman deserved such a death. Holjpip had vowed to control her underlings, to keep the strong from torturing the weak—vowed in the name of the dead slave, Abriel Innig.

Hiring her son had felt like a matter of responsibility. Keeping her ugly death secret from him had been a matter of preventing Tieg from abandoning his work to seek revenge. Holjpip knew his violent side without ever having observed it. After all, Claude Yerren was correct: One heard it in his music.

So Tieg Innig served three purposes: a nod to the dead woman she vowed by, the chance to watch the Old School through one of its agents, and—Holjpip let a little smile tug her lips—his professional capacity. He was the best in the Belt.

She glanced at the timepiece set into her desk and stood, noted at the edge of her vision that her guard stepped out to follow, and pushed through double doors into the adjoining meeting room.

Chairs scraped as seven men and women in copper-on-blue rose. Without hurrying, Holjpip walked up the long table to the single chair at its head. Excellent. They all arrived on time. This room had also been repainted, but the wall on her right still displayed an inlaid wood map of Mannheim, with various pins and tags inserted through tiny joints into its magnetic backing. She gave this other game board a glance as she walked past. The guard who followed drew back her chair and seated her.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.