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The grownups are all very busy, but the children are all bored.
Bored or having nightmares. But Tasárinon was not on a ship and did not see the people dying and has only heard it thirdhand and can't exactly have nightmares about the look in his mother's eyes - well, he probably could, but he hasn't - so he's bored, and he is drawing on the floor. It is an absurdly intricate drawing. He has been embellishing it for three days.
"Hundreds of thousands of orcs die pointlessly every engagement in this war," the President says. "Ending it protects them as much as us."
"Yes thank you this logic is not lost on me. I'd just as soon as evacuate them but I can't put them with any other evacuees..."
"So evacuate them somewhere else. Worst case is that somehow the Enemy finds them and if he can track light-leapers there's no hope anyway."
"We were trying to think how to conduct an evacuation without provoking the escalation you're afraid of," says the President. "Your friends don't think there's any other way and I will confess I cannot think of one."
"If the Enemy has the capabilities he demonstrated when he destroyed Valinor's Suns, it seems likely he could kill everything on this planet the minute he learned we had a way off it. Do you have ideas on how to stop that from happening?"
"We could do that," Maitimo says. "The systems we use for electrical power in Valinor require the Valar to bend Valinor's protections so they can run, because they'd otherwise be dangerous. If you ran them here and you ran them too hot you could poison a lot of land. The Enemy might know a lot more than that but anyone who'd spent time in Valinor would know that."
"I can do radiation shielding subject to usual concerns about doing more or less anything."
At that point the air raid sirens blare again. Everyone stands. The locals look positively bored. "It's right downstairs. You're welcome to come along if you want to keep talking, Cam, it'll probably be half an hour."
"Yeah, sure." Down Cam goes. He notifies the orc family that he will be delayed but is working out what comes next please don't panic.
The shelter under the palace is clean, spacious, even sort of furnished. They keep talking. "One option would be for someone else to fly the lightleapers, but then someone else has to know the destination," someone offers. "Though I guess you could have an oath that makes that safe."
Cam plops on a sort of furnishing. "Only if Melkor can't just get it off their chip directly."
"He must have been lying about that," the President says immediately. "There's no way he can redirect the chips. He must have sworn something like 'I have struck a great blow against the Elf-gods. No longer will they torture you when you die. I can preserve minds and someday I shall restore them."
It was! It's in all the orc newspapers. The President is half-right. "I swear to you that this is true: the Elf-god magic no longer holds the planet of the dead in its twisted thrall around the Elven suns. I have claimed the means to keep your souls out of the Elf-gods' hands. Someday we shall develop the technology to resurrect every dead orc."
"That can't be," the President says.
"If the Enemy already knows..." Maitimo says. "It can. We did it. We were trying to start an Eldarin kingdom outside Valinor, we wanted control of our own backups. Note he doesn't say that he is keeping their souls. He may know that he has the means but not know how to employ them."
"You fools," the President says.
"We didn't think he could assassinate our King and sack the palace in Valinor. I very deeply regret having had any part in strengthening our common foe, but I still haven't really given up the hope the Silmarils can be employed for exactly the purpose the Enemy means to put them to, by someone more trustworthy."
And then someone knocks on the shelter door. "Mr. President? They didn't drop bombs. They dropped letters."
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