Erianda
Rensler’s world, and apparently the fate of the Human race on the colony world
of Rensler, changed just a few Lunars after her twenty-third birthday. The
change started simply, innocently enough. Crises had arisen, drastic enough for
the Council of the Central Allied Worlds to call a meeting that included the
governors of the colony worlds. Her uncle, Governor Eryk Rensler, had been suffering
from some illness that wouldn’t go away, and changed symptoms on a semi-regular
basis. He sent his younger brother Edrian, Randi’s father, because his
physician didn’t recommend Wrinkleship travel, with strain on every major
organ.
Her mother
Aura, who usually acted as hostess for Government House, went with Edrian. That
left Randi the task of looking after her uncle, double-checking his security,
and running a few discrete tests to make sure the physician was still a friend
and not in the pay of some new enemy. She accepted her assignment with minimal
grumbling. She was needed at home; she just didn’t care to be saddled with the
onerous duties of acting as hostess.
“On the
bright side,” her uncle said, when she grumbled to him over an after-dinner game
of Strategems, “with the way I’m feeling, you won’t have to suffer through any
ridiculous parties for a while.”
Randi knew
she had been acting and feeling like a child. She let her uncle win two of
their five games, to make up for her attitude. He felt bad enough by the end of
the evening that he didn’t seem to notice, and retired to bed before his usual
midnight.
The reprieve from social obligations was short-lived. Less than two days after her parents’ ship left orbit, a Council starship slid into orbit and the Honorable Inspector General Asmondias Kreeng shuttled down to the colony.
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