Tanya has plenty of time on the way to mull over her approach. How much to reveal, how quickly and how publicly?

She knows nothing about the internal organization of this army or the bigger polity behind it. There are likely to be individuals or factions who will try to monopolize access to her once her true value becomes obvious. All else being equal, it is better for her to deal with the official government (or whoever the strongest faction is in practice). Well, it would be even better to deal with private individuals or organizations competing in the free market, but she's a complete foreigner approaching a fortified city in a nation at war while knowing absolutely nothing about it, she knows better than to hope for a public announcement and a fair-value auction of her valuable extraworld knowledge.

This is an argument for revealing all she is willing to reveal in public, to make sure word gets spread quickly. (It will also cause word to spread to these people's enemies quickly, but that's not her concern.) The problem is that Tanya has no idea how to do that short of flying round and round the city, which would invite them to take potshots at a presumed enemy. She'll have to play it by ear.

:Greetings, quendi of Nargothrond. I am Lieutenant Colonel Tanya von Degurechaff of the Germanian Imperial Army. It appears that a hostile spell somehow transported me here, leaving me stranded. I realize this may sound absurd, but exchanging world-maps and other descriptions with other people I met has let me to conclude I am from another world entirely.:

:I have come here in peace, hoping to trade services with your people. In the short term for supplies and information; in the longer term, perhaps for translation services between me and people who, like the dwarves east of here, do not have quendi.:

That's ... not really the sort of thing the Enemy usually tries. But, then again, the Enemy is subtle and clever.

There's a flare of magic as he relays this back toward the city, before he resumes talking to her.

:The idea that there may be more worlds than this is an incredible one. But if what you say is true, we Elves — Quendi, we called ourselves, when we awoke under the stars; Edhel, we are now known in the common tongue of Beleriand — we Elves, I say, of Nargothrond, would be most happy to trade for supplies and information. Ordinarily, we would not ask a guest to pay for food from our table, but the world is at war, and our supplies are not as sure as they once were. I am sure we would be glad to hear what trade goods you bring, upon your back or in your head as they may be.:

He has an archaic and longwinded way of thinking, which comes across clearly in his telepathy.

The elves call themselves quendi - does he mean they are all telepaths? Perhaps the orks and dwarves borrowed their word for it.

Everyone having telepathy would be incredibly convenient. Presumably it still costs mana, otherwise they would not have developed a spoken language at all, and so no writing and no civilization - have they got a spoken language, she was sure she heard some snatches...

Much more importantly, that implies they're all mages. If they learn even one more broadly-useful spell it could change this world. It might be a good thing her orb can't be easily copied, for reasons other besides her own irreplacement value.

:The value of my knowledge depends on what is known here already and on what is relevant and can be easily adapted; I have no way of estimating either yet. In particular, the only use of magic I have encountered so far is telepathy; if other spells are commonly used, they would affect the value of any non-magical techniques I know.:

Tanya is used to concise reports that prioritize important information and have a convenient summary in front. (How can you even be archaic when there's no actual shared language - never mind, not the time.) But 'archaic' and 'longwinded' are both synonyms for speaking in a polite register and she tries to imitate it on an almost subconscious level.

:In my own world, I made a study of various ways of organizing people and of managing those organizations and keeping them true to their founding purpose. Logistics, the organization of supply and the inputs and outputs of industry. Economics, the mathematics of supply and demand, markets and other allocation systems: (companies are not run as markets internally). :The logic of the ways individuals interface with such systems and act in response to incentives, and the rationally optimal ways to so act.:

:As a military officer, I have both taken part in and observed several theaters of war, but our military technology is very different from what I have seen here so far and my knowledge there may be of limited use.:

:It may well turn out that things I did not particularly study but happen to know will turn out to be the most impactful. I know or may be able to rederive very disparate technologies - ways to create labor-saving machinery powered by burning fuel instead of muscles, chemical fertilizers to enable better plant growth, life-saving medicines or treatment procedures, instant communications over large distances. Basic scientific theories, though I do not yet know which ones are both true of this world and still undiscovered by you. And mathematics, which is universal, although I sadly do not know nearly as much of it as I should like.:

This speech is delivered by a fifteen-year-old girl, short enough to repeatedly make people suspect stunted growth from childhood malnutrition, who does not look strong enough to carry the military kit that she is in fact carrying across many cross-country leagues of hostile territory (or possibly at all).

Said kit includes a submachine gun, a pistol, several grenades, high-altitude furs, goggles and a rebreather pack, a large well-secured backpack and plenty of pockets, as well as other, less visible things. Not that the locals should be able to identify any of those.

Well, Dwarves are that short and Ainur can look like anything they like. Perhaps she is some new kind of person? Certainly a child — even a daughter of Men — wouldn't have had the opportunity to become an experienced military officer.

:I am not sure that we categorize magics in quite the same way that you do,: her interlocutor remarks. :Because many useful magics are not so discrete and immediate as that thought implies. So it may take some discussion to find if your nonmagical techniques are relevant to us, but I find the prospect promising.:

:Do you know what you would ask of us in trade? Food and shelter we can provide, but perhaps you would prefer safe transport to Brithombar or some other place far from the advance of the Enemy? Or, if here you intend to remain, tuition in Sindarin?:

He's only stalling a little, by soliciting an opening position from her while the King is notified.

:I do not know enough yet to say where I would prefer to live. Certainly I would rather not live in a nation at war, let alone close to the front. Is Brithombar another city or a different polity?: If pressed, Tanya intends to say that her active commission in the Germanian Army precludes her from aiding any foreign military efforts lest she be perceived as committing Germania to one side of the war.

She considered also saying she must focus on pursuing leads for returning to her own world to discharge her duties there, a safely impossible goal that should honorably excuse her. The only problem is that she might be forced to invest most of her future wealth in some barely-credible research effort. Governments are allowed to fund moonshot research, since contact with a more advanced world obviously has immense public value; she just doesn't want to be forced to spend her own life on it, because even if it works and she returns home in some distant future she is likely to find -

:Any technology transfer is likely a long-term prospect at best; it will take days or weeks to choose a prospective avenue of approach, and during that time I expect to also learn more about the local situation. This would give us time to find a workable arrangement in case I make a long-term deal with your people but prefer to live elsewhere. In the meanwhile, I would not ask anything of you but food and shelter.: What she really needs is ammunition resupply but even with full cooperation from both sides leather-armor-and-longbows people will presumably take far too long to achieve modern bullet manufacturing tolerances, even aside from the required chemistry and metallurgy, not that she is an expert in any of those.

:And I will not need transport, only maps and directions. One of the spells known in my world is flight.: She demonstrates this by rising to hover at eye level with him. (Regulations unfortunately forbade her from doing this when talking to her superiors.) She will keep doing this at least until they go inside, to maximize the number of people who see her and the chance that the government will hear of it quickly.

:On the other hand, we had no idea telepathy was possible. I will want to learn a local language, but I do not expect to make enough progress in a few days to make that a priority.:

:If it would help, I have training as an aerial observer and can draw maps in the air or from memory. I can quickly carry messages and small objects to distant locations, assuming there are no aerial threats in this world I do not yet know of. I could lift one of your people to see from on high for yourself, and would recommend doing it to appreciate the options opened by aerial observation.:

She is of course not going to tell them she can kill people on the ground from a mile up; she doubts bows have that range and she demonstrably does not have a bow. If she takes someone up for them she'll let the wind buffet her enough to interfere with making good shots, just in case they decide she's a good vehicle for assassinating enemy leaders.