Allegiance of Honor Read Online Free PDF Page A

feel out some of your Trinity contacts, too? Ask them to keep an ear open?”
    Lucas scowled, his arm braced on the window frame and his eyes taking in the vibrant life of San Francisco. “I’ll think about it, but right now, I only truly trust a tiny minority of those who’ve signed the accord.” All were people he’d known and trusted
prior
to the formation of the ambitious cooperation agreement.
    Lucas wanted the Trinity Accord to succeed, probably more than any other individual in the world aside from Sascha, but at this point, it was far too new and untested. “Trinity has two major issues,” he said to Clay. “The first is how to confirm the sincerity of those who sign it and want to be part of any Trinity-wide discussions. Consortium plants as well as others who have their own reasons to want the accord to fail are a certainty.”
    Peace wasn’t good for everyone, including those who manufactured weapons and made their money off the misery of others. Post-Trinity, people had stopped blowing one another up, and, inside the Net, the civil war was apparently at a truce that was holding. The pro-Silence faction hadn’t disappeared, but according to those who understood the complex political situation in the Net, the rise of the empaths had shaken it to its core.
    Designation E had been crushed under Silence, their ability to sense emotions and heal wounds of the heart and the mind considered unnecessary in a race that had outlawed emotion and that punished any deviation from the status quo with vicious psychic brainwipes. Yet this pastwinter, the empaths had categorically proven that they were very much necessary.
    Without the Es, the PsyNet would’ve collapsed—would
still
collapse should they be taken out of the equation.
    And without the biofeedback provided by the PsyNet, those of the Psy race would die horrifically painful deaths in a matter of seconds.
    It left the most well-known pro-Silence groups in a quandary: How could they re-create a society without emotion when a vast majority of the linchpin members of that society were empaths, emotion their lifeblood? As a result, they’d stopped their vocal protests while they debated the issue; even the unstable fringe elements had halted their spate of bombings and shootings, though no one could predict how long that would last.
    Of course, the Trinity Accord wasn’t behind either of those outcomes, but it
was
currently the focus of the world’s attention. Including that of the malcontents from all three races—everyone was waiting to see what came next, whether Trinity would become a powerhouse or fall flat.
    However, it wasn’t just the weapons makers who had to be unhappy with Trinity’s flow-on effects. There were no doubt business owners—Psy, human, and changeling—pissed off because Trinity had facilitated an explosion of cross-racial business networks. Great for the clever operators who were good at what they did. Not so good for those who’d been coasting by with substandard work because the competition wasn’t as accessible to their clients.
    Even powerful families with links to large medical corporations had to be looked at with a suspicious eye, because in times of peace, certain types of medicine were either no longer needed—or no longer profitable. “It’s a crapshoot as to who’s sincere and who’s not,” Lucas added. “That’s going to be a long-term issue.”
    Clay’s hand moved smoothly on the manual controls. “Ming LeBon really requested to sign the accord?”
    “Just to screw things up even more.” Lucas didn’t bother to contain his growl this time. “Hawke might have held off on killing the son of a bitch, but SnowDancer will pull out of Trinity the instant he’s permittedto sign, and so will we.” The wolf pack and DarkRiver were blood allies and Ming LeBon had threatened the life of Hawke’s mate among his other murderous crimes.
    “The Forgotten will also leave.” Founded by rebels who’d defected from