In the style of a French eighteenth-century chateau, it was originally built with private money as a place of entertainment by business interests and as a six-star hotel for VIPs. But most VIPs, it turned out, liked to stay in Tanusha’s multitude of thriving commercial hubs, not here amidst the leafy, quiet suburbia beside a lovely walking park. The chateau had been used variously since as an art gallery, a museum, and a performing arts school until someone in the Callayan government had offered it to FedInt as a new base following the relocation of Federation government to Callay. They’d been joking, the story went, but FedInt had snapped it up, and occupied it thoroughly the past five years. Walking from the cruiser, boots crunching on driveway gravel, Sandy had to admit that FedInt had done a very nice job of maintaining the place. The stonework looked old and heavy, though modern laser cutters and robotic construction would have taken a fraction of the time of its predecessors in France.
