"We can't give them the transporter tech, since sub-space is involved and that's a cen-tral bit of warp. Vira can't figure out a way round that, but we can build them ourselves and use them to help people."

"It's the helping people like this that I'm confused bout. The Treaty says we can't act as a shut-tle service and move people round using our ships all the time. A bit is fine but we can't effect-ively get around the res-trictions by acting as prox-ies. And I'm sort of worried using the trans-porters on so many people in such a big changey way is in a grey area."

Sierra closes her eyes briefly and shakes her head, upset. 

"Can you show me the bit of the treat-y?"

This bit, that says signers aren't allowed to "alter the course or destiny of a civilization through the proxy use of warp or warp-related technologies."

"That's... a grey area. Yeah." 

This is the hardest thing she's had to do since the war ended.

"It's. It's important to be the sort of people that can make treaties, even when that's hard."

"We have to talk to the Federation before doing this. See if they are okay with it."

The Federation Task Force for Treaty Compliance with the Amalien Expanse is usually stationed near the Borg quarantine planet, but they aren't doing essential quarantine functions there, just observing, and they can be dispatched in a small ship to come and have a look at the Amenta situation. There are five of them - looks from their hail like an Andorian and two humans and a Tellarite and a Vulcan.

"This is Ashovaol Th'zahlel," says the Andorian, "treaty compliance task force, I believe we've met."

"I'm Capitan Sierra of Starship Keetim, I think we met during the negotiations."

Sierra wouldn't have reco-gnized him - it's been several years and she's still not used to people aging.

"On behalf of the Amalien Expanse, thank you for coming and being willing to discuss further what I know is a difficult thing for all of us."

"Just doing my job. My understanding of your request is that you want to put tens of millions of people through the transporter for local religious purposes?"

"Yes. The distance transported is immaterial for the ritual."

"And how did these people come by a religious ritual that involves transporters... when they don't have them?"

"They have intense distress about... immaterial contamination. Their caste system contains an unclean caste which faces a lot of discrimination be-cause of this. They don't know how to ritualistically clear things that are alive without killing them, but apparently the basic mechanics of a transporter are sufficient to purify people. This way we can help the unclean caste become clean and they'll be treated a lot better."

"What do they already know about the mechanics of transporters?"

"We've explained what they do on a sufficient technical level for them to be satisfied of the ritualistic rel-evance, but not how the transporters work. No subspace rel-evant information has been shared."

"We'd like to meet some of the Amentans and talk to them about this, of course."

"Mhm. It's logistically comp-li-cated to meet members of the unclean caste but we can help arrange that if you'd like. Or you can talk to them remotely."

"Remotely should be fine at least as a preliminary. Will your ship be a convenient venue?"

"Yeah, it would be good."

Tense maybe, but she would prefer they met Amentans here then without nearby Amaliens in case things go bad-ly some-how.

They leave the Tellarite behind to man the ship. Everybody else transports across. "May I introduce my colleagues Park Ha-Yoon, Amani Imamu, and Isabella T'Mir," says Ashovaol.

"Good day."

"Hello. I'm Capitan Sierra of the Starship Keetim - Flagship of the Amalien Expanse. This is First Officer Neh, Chief Operations Officer Lucien, and Lieutenant Commander Moira - the ship's Navigator."

Sierra gestures to each in turn. Moira's job title wasn't very rel-evant to what she did a lot of the time, or why she was here, so she mentions the rank first.

... this is probably more formal than she needed to be able this but she doesn't want to surprise the Federation people with who's important. She's not-iced that a lot of them treat Amaliens as children except for ones they have noticed are important and it's good to avoid that.

"I'd like to hear whatever your prepared remarks are about why the treaty may permit this," says T'Mir.

"I'd like to confer with local religious authorities -"

"If you happen to have an Amentan physicist aboard, I'd like to talk to them."

"I'd like to be set up on a call with a representative of the unclean Amentans."

Lucien can provide them with emails for the local religious authorities, and will introduce the onboard Ameentan physicists, mostly here for col-on-ization things, to the federation official.

Moira leads the way to a conference room to set-up a call with a red.

And Sierra talks to T'Mir, going over the points she'd discussed with Moira and Lucien earlier.

"The relevant part of the treaty is the agreement in in Article 2, Section 3A, paragraph 1, which says that signatories must not 'alter the course or destiny of a civilization through the proxy use of warp or warp-related technologies'. Our proposal does not break this rule, for three different reasons - each of which would be enough on it's own to make us compliant."

"One, the natural course of the Amentan civi-lization would be for the elimination of the unclean caste, leaving only clean members of their society. They tacitly planned on doing this by population controls and exterminations. Our proposal replaces those methods with a method that preserves the lives and happiness of the currently unclean caste, but does not change the primary civilizational end result."

"Two, what we are doing is not proxy-use of technologies - given this technology the Amentan civilization would prioritize different actions, we are doing this only once on a scale relevant to the provision - not providing a continuous service, and Amentans will not primarily direct the process."

"And three, within the context of this situation and the relevant provision, the category of 'warp or warp-related technologies' doesn't apply to Transporters, because they are not being using to provide any services that are relevant or related to warp."

Normally Sierra would add things about how this is really important and using the transporters to clean reds is the right thing to do, but that's not really useful when it comes to listening to a treaty since they are s'ppossed to be followed even when it's important not to. Being able to agree with treaties is it's own sort of important that is right even when you have do something bad as a result. Also T'Mir is a Vulcan and mostly Vulcans seem to care even more than most Federation people about following the rules even when it meant doing the wrong thing.

"Of course, transported reds will be able, after this event, to affect the rest of Amentan civilization - presumably they are interfertile, mutually intelligible, planning to live in this system..."