"Nothing we can't handle, if you've given us the run of the ship. What exactly did you do with the Alteri?"

They are in an atmosphere that should be safe for them. They're upset. We're attempting to communicate that we are not going to hurt them but since we are kidnapping them and going to war with their society of origin the truthful reassurances all sound a little empty.

"I imagine they would. Lisael, I think we're going to be here for some time, get the people who just came off shift something to eat. Savret, Yon, take some people and search the administrative wing for intel, while that's a thing we can do. Everyone who wants to can... go outside, I guess."

Ves has just come off a twelve-hour kitchen shift, but she immediately takes off for the administrative wing anyway.

"Noting this now, if you're going to be talking about anything important in a place that isn't here, then you should probably make sure that I'm in that place. And that the other psyons aren't."

I think it's reasonably likely that we can make your form of telepathy voluntary, if that's relevant for long-term planning. I do not yet know how. 

"- I guess that's not totally unbelievable coming from telepathic aliens. Doesn't really sound like the sort of thing that would stop 950357 from reporting on everything you say."

You're mean.

      You're a traitor to the cause, kid, 's how it is.

You're a traitor.

     I'm a lot of things, kid.

"I think you will have more options later if you discuss military strategy somewhere else."

"That seems reasonable." She hands off responsibility for the crew to one of her lieutenants, then lists four units - herself, Parael, the leader of the Liar engineering team, and the ship's doctor - who she thinks are likely to have useful input during initial discussion.

And then they are somewhere else. It's outdoors - grassy and peaceful and quiet. There are seats and birds flying in the distance.

Will this work for you?

"Works just fine."

Thank you so much for your patience.

"Well, thank you for the... grass."

The environment can be something entirely different if you'd like.

"No, no, it just seems premature to thank you for deactivating the chips until someone has independently confirmed that you have. So. You wanted to know things."

Yes. 97816 has been very helpful but I don't think we have enough information to be confident in our next steps yet.

"Understandable. The chip deactivation and the teleportation will certainly be helpful, but if they're limited in any way then I see how there would still be logistical issues. And I'm a little unclear on your end goal, here."

We'd like everyone to be eventually settled safely on a planet governed according to rules and principles they like. We have very limited capacity to move people around as I've been doing, and expect to be able to deactivate chips at scale.

"I see," says Mathrael, though she is not really sure she does. "And your - anti-violence field, I assume that can't be extended over an entire planet all at once?"

Unfortunately not. 97816 is pursuing an appeal to the power that might enable that but I think we should make plans that will assume we will not have it.

"Then you may have to fight it out. Liars are by and large unarmed, and Alteri don't take invasions lying down, so that will likely lead to massive casualties even if you're also able to deactivate their means of blowing up planets."

"Can you deactivate their weapons, or is it only the chips?" asks the engineer.

We'd need some weapons to test with but it'd be surprising if we could not do anything. We would like to avoid deaths as much as we can. 

"Well, you'd even the playing field, if they could be limited to hitting people with blunt or sharp objects at close range. Not enough to prevent deaths, but enough to prevent a series of extremely boring massacres. If I were trying to defeat the entire Confederacy with minimal casualties I would want to see whether the Carthons could be of assistance, unless you're planning on dismantling their society simultaneously."

We know very little about them.

"Well we're not exactly experts here, as you can imagine. They're mortal enemies of the Alteri, but prefer not to kill them if they have any other options, though they usually don't. They are pathologically horrified by lying, and by anything that looks, sounds, feels, or smells like lying. They live much longer than either Liars or Alteri. They are approximately technologically equivalent to the Alteri, though they are also the only power to possess the ansible, and are therefore capable of instantaneous communication over arbitrary distances. This last could easily be strategically relevant."

We have some instantaneous communications but a technological solution might be preferable and is quite impressive, we don't have it ourselves. We do have the capacity to travel faster than lightspeed between worlds.