Much more linear / easier to follow.

Never trust a Freneti. ;D

(And here’s to hoping I did the italics thing correctly, my apologies if I didn’t.)
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Jens ducked through a gap in the wrecked library’s entrance, covering her nose with her tunic and holding her gill flaps tightly closed against the still-settling dust. As her eyes adjusted to the pattern of light and shadow, she spied a spool of parchment, partially unrolled, lying across a pile of rubble. She picked it up, then made her way across the ruined floor to the cracked basalt head of a gargoyle and sat down. She carefully re-rolled the parchment, brushing fine debris off the date carved on the end of its core. Forty-three twenty-seven; twelve years after the end of the fifth plague; the year of Zhorel’s crossing, of the Chainships and Fenji the Betrayer. Beyond the glass-sharded window frames, the Vaernae that Zhorel had saved lay in ruins and the massive ships waited, humming. Within days, the entire planet Gedrel would be dead from seismic throes. The Freneti, whom Zhorel had once fought and Fenji once aided, had developed coreplex technology after all. No personal possessions. Jens reluctantly slid the ancient parchment into what was left of a cubby. She made her way back through the ruined doorway, no longer a Vaernaean or even a Gedrelian, but merely an evacuee on ship ten fifty-three.

And yes, I’m having fun – I’ve been working on that planet since high school and it’s high time I got back to writing about it. Trust the freakin’ Freneti to go and destroy it . . .

Pushing open the heavy boardroom door, Harris stepped into the room. Beyond the board table and its ring of haphazardly placed chairs loomed a blank picture window. As he crossed the gold rug, he tripped hidden sensor circuits. The window transpared and he saw the great and silver buildings of the city.

There are a million different ways to rewrite this one. Keep having fun (because that’s, y’know, the point).

Here is my rewrite for the first exercise:

Pushing open the heavy boardroom door, Harris stepped into the room. Beyond the board table and its ring of haphazardly placed chairs, the picture window transpared as his footsteps tripped sensor circuits hidden beneath the gold rug. Through the window’s huge pane he could see the great and silver buildings of the city.