“No,” Jace answered his own question. “They would listen to you or the Council. With your rigid social structure, your belief in your superiority, and your inflexibility, I believe that most Thaf’ell pilots--no matter how skilled--would simply not be useful to me.”
“So humans then--”
“Some humans, yes,” Jace agreed with a bright grin.
He brought up a holographic screen that he “pushed” which sent it spinning through the air only to blow up between all of the tables so that everyone could read what it said. It was a list of Alliance species. All Alliance species.
“I’m going to put out a call for pilots from every species in the Alliance,” Jace said. “Everyone will have a chance to apply.”
Khoth blinked as he thought of a xols applying for a piloting position. Or what about a neenda? Or well, there were many objections, but were they valid? Again, his instinct was to say: yes, of course, they were valid! But was he right?
“And I’m going to reach out to many of the species that you have blocked from power and I’m going to ask them if they would like to have a representative on the Osiris as part of her crew,” Jace continued.
His mother’s brow furrowed. “You seem to think we have excluded these species out of base prejudice and not logical--”
“Your logic has not won you anything, High Councillor Voor,” Jace told her. “In fact, I would argue, it has stopped you from progressing and has, in fact, threatened the very existence of every single Alliance species. So, forgive me, if I don’t give a rat’s ass about your judgment.”
She blinked.
“You seem to not have a good high opinion of the Alliance, Jace Parker,” she said.
“I don’t have a good opinion of the Council,” he corrected her. “You asked earlier what you had to do to retain your position.”
“Yes,” she said carefully. Her hands were now clenched around one another.
“The truth is,” Jace said again with that smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes, “that all I need you to do is to simply keep the Council out of my way.”
“But we run the Alliance!” she objected.
“No, Mother,” Khoth found himself calling her by that familial term as he realized Jace’s plan, “the Pilot is telling you that he runs the Alliance now.”
Negotiations
Jace hadn’t expected a “good” reaction to his plan from High Councillor Nova Voor. He was, after all, telling her that she would be a glorified figurehead at best. She would have a say, but not the determining say any longer in what happened to the Alliance. He was informing her that instead of the triumphant return to Haseon with the Osiris and the Pilot under her command as she’d envisioned, she would be returning as the conquered. Not to mention, she would have to appear happy about it and sell this new role to the Council and all of Haseon.
Needless to say, it was going to take a little more convincing.
“Is this a human joke?” Nova asked with a faint, disbelieving smile on her lips.
Khoth stirred beside him. His Commander’s blue-on-blue eyes narrowed. He saw his mother’s reaction as disrespectful. Jace gently pressed his arm against Khoth’s. His Commander looked down at where their shoulders touched. Some tension bled out of him. Jace had this. Though he appreciated Khoth’s protective instincts.
“No,” Jace answered, “it’s not a joke. I’m quite serious.”
She asks that yet she does not think it funny, Gehenna said to him, just as outraged as Khoth.
Oh, she thinks it funny as in strange, but not ha-ha funny, Jace responded. I’m pretty sure she believes I must be joking because when she compares us she doesn’t think much of me.
“You were a clerk in a convenience store yesterday,” she said with knowledge about his job that didn’t surprise him. She had known enough about his psychology to understand he would be drawn to Khoth. She would have known what he had done for a living.
“Yes,” he answered her with an equanimity he didn’t exactly feel.
Despite his plan and the certainty he felt within himself that he was doing the right thing, he realized that his background was unusual. Most would think he had no experience to command anything, let alone the Alliance. But while he had worked at a convenience store by day, at night, he had been the Pilot for years.
Here we go, he said.
Your position as a clerk required you to interact with many difficult people, handle an economy and offer protection for goods and property! Gehenna defended him loyally.
I’m pretty sure that Nova doesn’t consider being a convenience store clerk quite the same thing as running the Alliance no matter the parallels, Jace replied. I don’t either. I can’t blame her for being skeptical.
