Chapter 299: What Kest's Word Is Worth
General Hadrian Kest sat by the reinforced glass window of his apartment.
He looked out over the sprawling, meticulously filtered gray skyline of Bastion One. He held a ceramic cup of black coffee in his left hand. His right arm sat useless in his lap, wrapped from wrist to elbow in clean white bandages, the hand curled and unmoving beneath the cloth.
He did not stare at the ruined limb with grief. He did not curse the masked figure who had taken its function during the brutal extraction in the slums weeks ago. He simply drank his coffee and evaluated his new center of gravity.
It had been precisely twenty-eight days since he was placed under house arrest.
Two heavily armed Vanguard Knights stood outside his front door. They rotated shifts every eight hours. Kest had not been formally charged with treason, desertion, or mutiny. The Capital Senate simply did not know what to do with him.
