Read Online Loralynn Kennakris 2: The Morning Which Breaks by Owen R. O'Neill, Jordan Leah Hunter - Free Book Online Page A

the Archon pretty much told him to his face that he didn’t have the balls to go through with it. Now Gayle is well known for being spine-optional, but the Archon had to go and yank his chain on this one—overplayed his hand.”
    “Boys,” Trin snarled under her breath.
    “You ever meet him?” The question was purely rhetorical: serving CEF intelligence officers did not hobnob with Homeworld politicians.
    “He was a lawyer, wasn’t he?” Trin said, smoothing some strands of hair back distractedly.
    “Colonial law, I think. Got his start as head of this big charitable foundation, doing good works in underdeveloped colonies, y’see. He’s a queer fish—bit of a rabble rouser. Likes to champion this cause or that one—took up the antislavery cudgel for a while—then move on before the real work starts. Made a boatload of money doing it, too.”
    “Charming.”
    “They say he is. He was originally a pacifist too. Then just after the war, he claimed to see the light and switched sides, becoming a big proponent of defense and active measures. More ‘n likely, he just realized that the pacifists were never gonna get him elected Grand Senator. My read, though, is that he’s still a lawyer at heart. Thinks this is all just an academic exercise with real nice fringe benefits. He ain’t gonna take a threat seriously until he comes home to find it soaking in his hot tub, eating his last avocado.”
    An alarm chimed: someone requesting entrance to the building. Taliaferro got up, checked the monitors and excused himself. Two minutes later he was back with a large flat box that emitted wisps of steam. He put the box between them on his desk. “You hungry?”
    Trin leaned forward and inhaled expectantly. “You didn’t.”
    “I’m afraid I did.” He opened the box, revealing a large, flat round of baked dough slathered in red sauce and crowded with small rounds of sausage smothered in cheese, still bubbling.
    “Is that real?” Nedaemans were officially all vegetarians; what meat was allowed to be imported for consumption by foreign residents was strictly monitored, licensed and regulated. Only meat that was cultured according to very specific and exacting standards was permitted and certainly no variety of sausage was on the list.
    “Yep. It pays to know people.” He extracted a slice, the cheese pulling into long, sticky threads and a few drops of hot grease scattering onto his desk.
    “So much for the sacred principle of law enforcement not being above the Law,” Trin muttered, inhaling deeply of the warm, savory aroma.
    “I prefer to think of it as being below the Law. Help yourself. Plates under the coffee maker if you’re feeling civilized.”
    She was feeling civilized and they ate in silence for a while, Trin more cautiously after the first bite nearly blistered the roof of her mouth.
    “Like a beer?” Taliaferro asked, procuring one for himself. Trin shook her head; she preferred milk with this particular delicacy and Nick Taliaferro was emphatically not a milk drinker, although she assumed he knew what it was.
    They demolished three-quarters of the pizza in religious silence. Trin declined a final piece and brushed crumbs from her lap. Watching them scatter—they were more profuse than she’d thought—she asked suddenly, “Nick, do you know how they were planning to handle Mankho’s interrogation if the op succeeded? They didn’t exactly cover themselves with glory with Larson and his cohorts.”
    “Screwed the pooch is more what I’d call it.”
    Larson was the name—obviously a codename—of the one good-sized fish Nick’s people had netted, along with a shoal of minor ones, in the aftermath of Mankho’s plot. Then, once the heavy lifting was done, the Nedaeman Foreign Office moved in and claimed jurisdiction. They demanded that the captured terrorists be turned over to the counterterrorism task force, which the Foreign Office led. The claim was perfectly valid, given the interstellar