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There are a lot of Amentan countries. Vanda Nossëo representatives are dispatched to all of them. These Elves (two with black hair, one with silver) take a shuttle down from the lightleaper to a country called Calado, and radio ahead to request permission to land at a elegant modern spaceport.
okay by comparison Voa and Tapa look like thriving modern democracies
"You could conceivably get prison time, you'd have a record - there are a few places that won't take immigrants with a criminal record but not many -"
" - oh, we distinguish holding people for trial from sentencing people at trial to serve some length of time in prison. You'd actually be allowed to go home pending trial if you lived somewhere with a justice system we had an agreement with, but, uh, current directive is not to send anybody to Calado."
"I don't think they're unwilling to navigate complicated but it has to be the kind of complicated where it's safe to be around while you're learning. Anyway, usually you'd just get picked up for the hearing and then sent home and picked up for the trial, but there's a concern Calado might try to interfere with the arrest officer. I'm sorry."
"Do my family know where I am? I warned them that something came up at work but I didn't know what else to say."
"Can you email them? We can get something set up so emails reach them. If they can make it to - uh, Tapa - there's shuttles here, too."
"It should be up and if it's not I'll file an emergency petition with the judge, you can't have peoples' families wondering if they're still alive or being treated all right."
"Okay. So one option is to go to the court and say 'look, your issue is with the person who gave this stupid dangerous order, how about we settle this with my client agreeing to an illegal orders class' or, if you like, 'agreeing not to work for a Calador blue with these, uh, expansive privileges', or something in that vein - I'm not really sure what would impose a significant cost on you and what would be pretty acceptable -"
"...employment options get pretty limited if you don't want to answer to blues. I don't have enough rhythm to dance."
Nod. "So we don't propose that, we propose something you're all right with. Or, if you'd rather, we instead go to trial and you can testify - under the truth effect if you're comfortable with that - that this is how a legitimate action for public safety reasons would have been carried out and we collect evidence to that effect and you hopefully get acquitted."
"...not really. It's a character defense - it means you're probably not going to go around towing ships out of the sky and holding their crews prisoner under other circumstances - but the point of section 43 is that everyone know that if they run across one of our people, and they hurt them, there'll be a prosecution. If some tourist accidentally wanders across a border and gets tortured to death the court doesn't want to let the perp off because that country doesn't have a law against torturing aliens, and that's the principle the law is written around. It would matter if they'd been acting threatening, of course, but by the transcripts they were just requesting permission to leave."
"...powerful aliens show up and want to do stuff but won't be specific even after there's only one faction talking to 'em?"
"In Calado would it be, like, helpful to kidnap someone, so that then they're spared deciding which, uh, faction to speak to?"
"We didn't hurt 'em. One time my grandpa yanked a new ambassador from someplace into a senator's office when they were confused and the ambassador thanked him later."