"Mithrim's Thindarin. We can leave in twenty minutes; I require that many to pick people."

"Anything specific I should do meanwhile or just catch up on more reading?"

"What're you reading? And that's as much as I had planned for here."

"Hopping around aimlessly between various information security hazard this-and-that looking for bursts of inspiration, pretty much."

"The system I've got for clearing our way through Angband's archives is that half the teams are sorted by era and half by person or administrative position. They read everything and escalate everything even of minor interest, to curators - one for every four readers - who read the same and send the most interesting fourth up again. The level before me sees about a hundred pages of content a day, and sends me - or sent me when I was down there, now they're sending it to Pityo - half that. Documents are titled 'Angband - level 1' and then a serial number for what I see down to 'Angband - level 9.' I've got people in parallel on each level whose job is summaries rather than specific document escalation. Theirs are titled 'overview - level 1' down to 'overview - level 9' and then a serial number. In case that's helpful."

"May as well have it on hand." Cam yanks a bunch of chips out of his computer, interpolates them into dust, and replaces them with more consolidated ones.

"Who wrote the parley note?"

"A Maia - is how I'm interpreting the fact that it wasn't Melkor and trying to conjure them got me nothing and trying to conjure their body got me this orc dude -" He displays pictures.

"Can you conjure that guy's complete writings?"

"Sure thing." Here we go.

Lots of content.  

"And aliens?" Maitimo says. "Are there aliens? I gave you a confidence and am now personally invested in the question."

"No aliens, I'm very disappointed. However, I can communicate with Hell - a bit slowly, no one is looking out particularly for letters from me - and might be able to get demons doing experiments on things if you can think of any experiments best offloaded to demons with the obvious communication bottleneck."

"I'll let you know if any come to mind. Any of the other experiments productive?"

"Some interesting failures on the FTL."

"That's something. Orcs are safe?"

"Yup. In a copy of their own house being introduced to the concept of video games."

"Nice. Do you think the Enemy didn't notice you orc-kidnapping or didn't care or couldn't have shot you down?"

"Any of the above is possible, though didn't care is least likely."

"Alright, I picked my people. A thousand. Can we go?"

"Sure."

Off to Mithrim, computer chugging along at the language they'll need at the next stop.

Mithrim's two major cities are both surrounded and besieged. 

"...okay, I could go down alone and leave everybody else circling up here while I talk to folks, or I could land us inside a city, opinions?"

"You might be better off with someone who can hear and respond to osanwe, and we actually speak the language, and can swear to things in our own voices. I think you should take at least some people."

"Okay. A little shuttle will be less intimidating than landing everybody. Anyone comfortable jumping out of a ship and expecting a shuttle to be made around them?"

"Everyone will if I tell them to. Let me get you a landing party." He does. Six people.