"Yeah."

"Four more days to think of something."

"It would be nice if we could just put them all to sleep."

"Yep. How many trustworthy daeva do you think we'd need and how do we summon on Endore without attracting immediate attention?"

"I don't think I know enough about Endore to answer that question."

"Once we land this jump we're in the star system with the summoner, but maybe figuring out all we can about what's going on on Endore is really the next step."

"Yeah."

"Should I divert the fleet? On the off chance he pulls 'alien arrivals in the relevant star system' regularly and will notice we're around?"

"Maybe, if we don't have a solid plan for what to do when we get there yet."

"Drag them off their planet as nicely and apologetically as we can and then once they're all off try to kill the summoner, which we're pretty sure crumbles the planet. If we can get to that stage without him knowing, summon him back and we're set. If he finds out but with less than five days' lead, act somehow to make sure orcs can't summon him back. If he finds out with more than five days' lead, position ourselves for a fight in this system or possibly for him to try to make some kind of deal.

If orcs summon him back, besiege Endore and shoot down every starship that leaves it, indefinitely, so we know at least the planet his summoner's on and have time to find an orc solution."

"Do we have a plan for how to drag them off their planet?"

"I was really hoping 'it's going to be exploding soon, we made you a nice new one' will do it. You don't think so?"

"I think, if we have evidence, which we do, we can get a lot of people evacuated that way. We won't be able to get everyone to believe us, not in five days. I don't know how many people we're going to have to choose between leaving behind and removing by force but the answer won't be zero."

"Given that choice I am inclined to remove people by force but I don't know this species. You do."

"I am also so inclined."

"It's one thing if their stated reason is 'I prefer to die in my home than be evacuated', but I'm guessing it's going to be 'we don't trust you'.

I don't currently have enough people to maintain control of the airspace on Endore in case we need to stop him from smuggling off another summoner and to evacuate a system of ten billion. Father's working on ships that require less crew but it'll take time that depending how bad things are on Endore may or may not be worth it."

"One or more demons somewhere with a reasonable view of the planet could probably destroy spaceships leaving it."

"The binding would have to be one that explicitly permitted chip-destructive murder."

"Under very specific circumstances, perhaps."

"Yeah. And we should be suitably reminded that one demon on the Enemy's payroll can stop us evacuating just as easily. I am tempted to swear on recording that we'll destroy the planet whether or not we're permitted to evacuate it, so he has no incentive to try. But."

"I mean, you or someone else could swear it, and then spend until-the-planet-was-evacuated-or-it-was-no-longer-a-concern-for-other-reasons unconscious, but that's probably not the best idea."

"Might be worth it if we were sufficiently confident it'd deter him. Though I can't swear something in the expectation I'll be prevented from trying to do it. I can swear something hopeless, but not something I've orchestrated to be outside my capacity."

"Well, you're very good at your job and it's an important job so you probably wouldn't be my first choice for swear-er anyway, but yeah."

"Well, that's your problem, it'd have to be someone with the authority to promise it credibly. So that's probably my father, who's trying better ship designs for evacuation and I think also occasionally butting his head against the problem of disabling all the planet's triggers, and who we definitely can't afford to have out of commission..."

"So it's not a good idea unless there's a very extreme emergency."