Chapter 20 Negotiations
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.
Yes, but we used these interactions in the training! Gehenna objected. You realize that I didn’t just train you how to fly, don’t you?
Jace blinked. Vague memories surfaced of sitting at a table much like this and negotiating with various alien species. His eyes widened.
That’s why this feels so natural? We’ve done this before! Jace realized, feeling a fool for not thinking about it earlier.
Of course! Gehenna shot him a smiley face. You also learned military strategy, statecraft, negotiation skills and more! You were quite good at taking over the known star systems whenever we played war games! You won nine out of ten times against me. That is quite impressive.
And you didn’t just let me win, did you? He hid a smile.
No, I would never do that. You won fair and square! She informed him, sounding like a proud parent. You always told me though that your losses taught you more than your wins.
Jace’s forehead furrowed. He could half-remember conversations with Gehenna, but they were like wisps of dreams that could be blown away by a slight wind. He supposed that it was his subconscious where all of this was stored.
Very handy, Gehenna. I think we need to talk more about the training you gave me, he said.
Of course, Jace. I am an open book, she promised, but he wasn’t quite sure he believed that.
“My understanding is that you could not even live apart from your parents--despite your culture dictating that you should have long ago--because of a multitude of physical ailments,” she continued carefully.
“You’re quite informed,” he said to her.
“These ailments and your continued stay in your childhood home surely retarded your growth,” Nova continued.
“What the Hell,” his father muttered and he caught sight of him fisting one hand.
Jace caught his father’s eye and gave a shake of his head. His father gave the smallest of nods. He wouldn’t interfere though he most certainly wanted to. Khoth was all rigid too.
She is being insulting! You are highly advanced! Gehenna straightened her imposing metallic form. Her red eyes glowed like coals. And she is misinformed as to young people living with their parents and--
It’s okay, Gehenna, Jace soothed her. I don’t care if she thinks my life before this was small, ordinary and maybe a little pathetic.
But it wasn’t!
It was small other than the training, Jace said. But that’s okay. I did a few other things than she’s mentioning.
“Yet, despite all of this, you think you should be the leader of the Alliance today?” Though it was posed as a question, it was clearly meant to answer itself.
Jace shifted slightly forward in his seat.
His palms slid over the smooth material of the table.
If he wanted to, he could know what the table was composed of.
He could have seen the individual atoms of it.
She might know the outer aspects of his old life, but she didn’t know his new one very well. He didn’t even know his limits.
“Everything you’ve just said about me is true except for…
well, the suggestion that living at home retarded my growth.
It actually allowed me more time with my highly skilled and very wise parents.
As an adult, I got to experience them very differently than I did as a child and learn from them,” Jace said smoothly and his mother smiled at him from the other table.
His father clasped his shoulder and squeezed it.
“But you’re leaving out the other bits.”
“Oh? Well, I think--”
He talked over her, “Yesterday, I stopped a Khul invasion by activating Metal Rain on the Osiris. Yesterday, I also completed the transformation into the Pilot. Yesterday, I further took down a Hive. Oh, and today… today I defeated you and your entire fleet without a single shot being fired.”
“Well done, Jace,” his father murmured.
“And, tomorrow, who knows what I’m going to do,” Jace said, suppressing a triumphant grin at her fallen expression.
Silence fell until a sharp bark of laughter left General Intoshkin’s lips.
“He’s got you there, Nova!” the general said gleefully.
She shot him a narrow-eyed glance, but said nothing.
Clearly, there was much bad blood there.
Jace could completely understand in that moment though how irritated the general was.
How often had Nova described humanity’s faults or in what it was lacking without admitting what it could bring to the table?
“I admit that what you have done since becoming the Pilot is impressive.” She bowed her head for the moment. “But you are still very new at all of this. You must admit that.”
“Like I said, I think the Alliance needs new and it needs change,” Jace said, not going into the fact that he had a decade of training in all he would need to know.
“And I won’t be leading the Alliance in a bubble.
I already have people to advise me. Commander Khoth Voor, who as I’m sure you’re aware, is highly accomplished.
Both my Flight-Commanders.” He gestured to his father and Thammah.
“And, of course, Gehenna and the Osiris itself who were created by the Altaeth to accomplish the goal of defeating the Khul.”
Jace was certain that was true of the Osiris.
He also sensed that Gehenna was created for this purpose, but her origins and her purpose were a little murkier.
He did wonder why she had been imprisoned.
This idea that maybe there were two warring factions within the Altaeth who had perhaps very different ideas about AI and maybe how to defeat the Khul sounded reasonable.
He didn’t yet know though for certain. That worried him.
Slightly. Or maybe a lot. But he did trust the two AI, yet he was sure they were keeping things from him.
But that was a thought for after this hearing. He certainly wasn’t telling Nova that.
“I will also be more than willing to hear from my eventual crew, who, as I said, will be chosen from among the many species of the Alliance who will have unique viewpoints and many things to add to my knowledge base,” he added.
“The Alliance will never accept your rule,” Nova said flatly with a slice of her hand through the air.
“You mean the Council won’t. The Thaf’ell probably won’t. But I am betting the people that you’ve frozen out of power will be very excited for this opportunity,” Jace corrected her.
“You will only find those unfit to lead or serve outside of the current power structure,” she countered.
“In your opinion, but you already know what I think of that,” Jace told her. “Thinking the same way about anything is slow death. If something is not working, you need to do something else, not keep doing the same thing and expect something different.”
This was something that both his parents always said and it was a bastardization of an Einstein quote.
It was so easy to get tunnel vision, to think that something should work, but if it was not working then a reassessment needed to be done.
The Alliance--or at least the people in charge at the current moment--appeared unable to do this for whatever reason.
“Nothing you have shared with me encourages me to assist you with your plans,” Nova said, folding her hands in front of her.
“That is because you aren’t truly understanding your current position,” Jace said, his voice growing cooler by the moment.
She lifted an eyebrow.