Descend- Seeing Stars by Sean Oswald (the ebook reader .TXT) 📕

actually came into play here. He thought about famous moments of diplomacy throughout the history of Earth. Certainly, these people would have their own heritage and customs but the key lesson that he remembered was that appearance was often more important than reality.

      If he went alone, it would show them one of a few things and it was difficult to judge how they might react. It might cause them to believe that he was arrogant or dismissive of their customs or even without honor worthy of being guarded. Going alone would prevent risk to the others but he couldn’t protect them from all danger. They were a team and deserved to stand by him just the same.

      He called out to all his fuses and summoned them to one of the larger meeting rooms. One by one they popped into the room. Miguel’s team took over guard duties so that they could all attend.

      Once everyone was there, Jay started to speak but Amelia interrupted him. “Please let me say something first. I think I can speak for all of us that we regret upsetting you with our decision to scout the leviathan without waking you. There is still a part of me that thinks it was the right thing to do based on the information that we had at the time. The bigger problem was that we didn’t break off the battle when we had the chance. And that was because we let Miguel’s team join us.

      So, I want to say I am sorry for creating this mess. I own my part in it and I hope you will forgive all of us.”

      Jay smiled and said, “You are all already forgiven. We are all entitled to screw up. This time it cost lives and I think that is going to be an issue moving forward but I can’t stay mad at you. Just don’t do it again.”

      As everyone nodded, Jay filled them all in on the invitation to meet in less than thirty minutes now. “There is a part of me that wants to go alone, but don’t worry I have decided against that. We need to match their custom since we are the outsiders here. So, I need an honor guard and can bring up to twelve of you.”

      “Do you think that was the honor guard of that lion guy before,” Charlotte asked.

      “I had kinda thought it was his wives, but maybe so. I would be the last person to underestimate the power of a woman after all that we have been through,” Jay replied.

      What ensued was a bit of jockeying for position. Every fuse had an argument for why they should be on his honor guard. He was surprised that even the less combat oriented wanted to come, but it made sense to bring some of them. They might notice something that he didn’t.

      In the end he gave a spot to all of his wives, Char, Maddy, Bong-Cha, Samantha, and Emma. This provided a good number of eyes and different skills to look at the situation from different perspectives. Of course, the debate had used up most of their time, so he didn’t have time to argue with them about the next instruction.

      “I want you all to dress up for this. Use your own style, but imagine that you are going to a fancy, state dinner rather than a battle. That said you can bring weapons if you want, but I want you to appear as flowers on my arm more than thorns,” Jay said.

      “What, you’ve never acted like this before,” Amelia protested. There was a faint sense of offense oozing out of her into the fusion.

      “This is me catering to their expectations. Now, I’m sorry but there isn’t time to debate this. If you can’t do this for me then at least give your spot at this meeting to one of your sisters who is willing to go along with the show I am trying to put on,” Jay replied.

      Amelia stared at him for a moment. Then she curtsied and said, “Oh my, I have to go powder my nose for my big, strong man. I just don’t know what I will wear.” The sarcasm oozed out of her words, but Jay could sense that she was going to comply. He might pay for it later, but she was on board for now.

      A few minutes later they were all walking out towards the tent that had been set up a few hundred feet from their ship’s airlock. Jay was glad that it wasn’t too far as several of the girls had gone all the way and were wearing long elegant dresses and heels. Others like Meikiyo were wearing old fashioned Japanese formal attire to highlight her culture. They were quite an eclectic group. He had never seen Amelia in anything but shorts, now though she was in a dress that seemed to highlight her curves even more.

When it came to clothes on women, Jay was usually an advocate of the less is more model, but he was surprised how hot they could look even though they were far more covered up than normal. He actually found their outfits more tantalizing. Maybe it was that he knew what was underneath, but he knew that it would be hard to take his eyes off of his wives and fuses.

Which raised another question. The cat people were fairly close to humans, if just with more hair, mostly on their arms, legs. Oh, and their ears weren’t on the side of their heads like humans, but more towards the top and were definitely furry pointed. Yet the females who had been with Jad-bal-ja had been attractive in an exotic fashion.

At least he realized that now. In the heat of the moment, he had been too worried about the safety