Ancalagon - 75. Chapter 75

We’d shared some information I’d learned and what the team had compile so far, so there were more than a few murmurs when Bouncer made his little threat display. Of course, he’d promptly yawned and then lay down at my feet again right afterward. Lazy little shit caused problems and then left me to fix them.

“Yes, he is dangerous, and he does have natural defenses that could harm others. But so do a great many aliens or creatures from their planets that accompany them among Galactic space. He cannot be separated from me.” In fact, now that I thought about it, the farthest we’d been apart since I’d gotten him out of stasis on Garjah’s ship was the night we’d spent in his house and Bouncer had spent time among the plants. “Bouncer is usually within sight of me at all times. I don’t know what he’d do if you tried to make him leave; he’s not a domesticated pet, he’s a wild animal who is connected to me by choice.” My voice had more steel in it than I expected, but what harm was he doing? Why the talk to move him out of the council room all of a sudden?

An Aelqaed stood from her seat midway up the chamber. “This being you call Bouncer is not just a simple animal. His sentience his hidden, but it is there.”

Sentient? I cranked my head back, frowning. “I think I would know if he was sentient. He’s with me all the time.”

“Would you? I can literally see inside his mind. He is not what he seems.”

Bouncer still sat at my feet, seemingly relaxed, and only flicked one ear in her direction. He didn’t even look at her. “So he’s an advanced, thinking being? I mean, he thinks about where his last meal is coming from sure, but that’s not higher order.”

“So you think.”

The Aelqaed said they could see into minds, but it wasn’t telepathy and it wasn’t scientific. They sensed things and expected others to take what they couldn’t—or wouldn’t—explain on their word alone. “And if his kind is sentient why didn’t anyone else register this on the survey team?”

“We do not go to heavy planets. The gravity is too extreme.”

I scoffed internally but tried to keep my inner derision off my face. Years of experience suppressing my emotions helped as I wasn’t sanctioned immediately for insubordination. “So then any heavy planet we explore and potentially include in the Galactic could have sentient beings we don’t know about because you haven’t figured out a way to make your woowoo work within a transport that would equalize the gravity for you?” So maybe I wasn’t hiding the derision all that well.

“We do not believe that is likely.”

They didn’t? So Ardra is somehow magically different? I held back that argument since it didn’t bear on why we were there. “That still doesn’t explain why Bouncer’s presence is in question.”

“If he’s sentient, he should not be in a closed meeting with the Council regarding inclusion with a new species.” This came from the Tolgoi who’d reentered the chamber. He’d donned a heavy outer robe that tucked his wings down without damaging them.

“You are not serious. Not only is the planet in contention the one he—a supposed sentient being—is a native to that clearly has no issue with Garjah’s people since they’ve never had a conflict, if he’s sentient this a process the council will have to repeat with his people. Which kind of first contact do you want to have?”

“It is not protocol.” The Tolgoi were a pedantic bunch at the best of times.

“Very little of my life has been protocol lately. What I’ve learned is that you do the best with what you are presented with. We—I pointed to Garjah and Bouncer with a swirl of my finger that ended pointing back at myself—“will not be separated. Garjah’s people have been on Ardra beyond the statutes of prior claim, and yet he is here willing to negotiate a treaty that would allow for study and potential use by members also within the treaty. So do you want to continue to bicker about protocol or do you want to make some actual headway anytime soon?”

I hadn’t meant to speak so bluntly, but then again, I was a scientist and not a politician. Garjah was a security specialist, so he wasn’t a politician either. A strategist, though, that he was. He’d anticipated some push back and decided that revealing our overall agenda up front might be necessary.

“Essell.” That was my mother’s hiss from behind me.

Yes, yes, I knew what she would say. “One does not speak to their betters in that tone.”

Screw it. We’d already been there for forever, the chair was beginning to feel like a torture device, and I was getting a crick in my neck from looking up. I leaned forward, sweeping my gaze across the Council members assembled across the room from us in their seats looking down.

“Garjah is here as a representative of his people. While I will not assume anything about Bouncer he doesn’t show me personally, he may be here as a representative of his kind as well. I’ve done the best I can to be an ambassador. I’d like for the Galactic Council to prove its worth so they know it’s the right choice to join.”

Impromptu speech over, I sank back into my chair. One just did not ask their rules to prove they were fit to rule over them, but in this case, I was firmly on Garjah’s side.

There was a flurry of side conversation, and then the Aqnars took the lead. “We would like to hear more about Garjah’s people, and what they expect from a treaty as part of the Galactic.”