"They know there's a Bell from Ferardrin's world, but that's the extent of it."

"Okay. So - deposit some lightly edited forks where they can serve as good faith verification to the Council of Thirteen and key Vissers, if we're bottlenecked on volunteers possibly we first spy on a lot of Yeerk communication to figure out which Vissers are most key rather than a scattershot approach. Give them long enough to be infested and let the Yeerks talk it over. Present terms of surrender. Follow through on de-Kandrona-ing everything - assuming the star tests come out like we hope - in any situations where that's necessary. Make sure we have identities of casualties and get underway sorting out would-be well-behaved Yeerks and getting the rest better acculturated, Ristrell can direct that."

"Can Ristrell accommodate a couple hundred thousand Elves on her moon?"

"I do not think they would fit on the Pool ship, but if we want to make her some arcologies sure."

"Do we mind her knowing that demons exist?"

"Not really. We had kind of a lot of conversation in front of her just now."

"Okay. You have handed me a dizzying personnel problem so I think I will go home and get working on it; I will send you some fully-informed volunteers who can be forked from three hours back, kept unconscious, Boots-edited, and then sent out as envoys, can you handle the rest of those steps?"

"Yes. Please don't rush this ahead of the results on the suns - and the basement dweller hosts - we'll have to overhaul everything if we can't do the suns and we'll be substantially delayed if we can't use basement dwellers."

"No worries, first step is finding volunteers who've been suitably involved in all our projects and briefing them."

"Thank you."

"My pleasure! Take care!" He pops out.

Results come in.

Troporting suns: yes. (The troporter in question thinks this is tremendous fun and has been hopping around turning suns interesting colors. It also works on Kandrona emissions, when something that can emit Kandrona is encased in indestructible keratin and accompanies her so she can touch it and the sun at the same time without the one destroying the other. There is some speculation that the change won't last indefinitely, but Alice says it holds for more than three days.)

Basement dwellers as hosts: ...enh. They're operable. That's about it. Unfortunately, coming by many billions of non-basement-dweller animals is genuinely inconvenient, and it would have to be many billions to account for how few of them would manage a morph, and then those ones would have to be stunned so they didn't demorph, and then they'd have to maintain them all until they were needed. Intractable. Basement dwellers will have to do. They would be almost worse than nothing for any Yeerks who had never taken a host before, coming with no language skills or balance or ability to focus their eyes - but all of those Yeerks will be in pools and will not have to be offered hosts in order to de-hostage a situation. Yeerks who have spent time in hosts should be able to get around in basement dweller humans.

Yeerk records of breeding programs: look mostly pretty complete, except for maybe Visser Twenty-six's; it has pretty sparse writing that almost looks like it's covering for something? Visser Twenty-six will get its own goodwill ambassador.

Kandrona planetside generators and Kandrona suns: located, they're all set to take them out, Joy's on standby for finding in-motion ships with generators aboard at T=0 if they get to that point.

Goodwill ambassadors?

A dozen of them. Cheerful, nervous, with lengthy living wills to cover contingencies like 'if you die do you want an immediate resurrection or one once everything has calmed down' and 'if the suicide trigger is somehow disabled what do you want us to do' and so on. Matirin knows them all and commends them on successful projects of theirs that are mentioned in the files. Where are they being sent?

One for Visser Twenty-six, four for the Council so the Council can send them elsewhere via third-party indestructible teleporter if they want to communicate internally during the decisionmaking period, the other seven for other Vissers who hold particularly host-heavy positions or otherwise seem likely to be important.

Boots double checks all of their consent before proceeding.

Off they go.

Lahtaron is goodwill ambassador to Visser Twenty-six. He is appeared some distance away from the Yeerks and walks towards them peaceably, carrying no weapons.

There's some Hork-Bajir, presumably infested, over there. They are surprised to see him.

"Hello," he says in what will sound like their native language. "I am here as an ambassador from the Quendi, the people of Arda. Can I speak to your commander?"

They are even more confused now, but one of them says, "Wait there," and sends another one brachiating off to fetch the commander.

He was kind of expected to be dragged to the Yeerk pool thing. Maybe they'll ask him if he minds being Yeerked. That'd be promising for future cooperation. 

He waits.

Nothing quite that promising ensues. Somebody just brings out a Yeerk in a container and then a bunch of Hork-Bajir tackle him.

Sigh. He holds still for the Yeerk. They'd said it shouldn't hurt.

It doesn't.

Hello? he says tentatively. 

Hello.