We soon figured out why. Why the setup looked messy, and why it stayed that way.

During the second night, we got a little closer. There was a second group there. A small subgroup was evidently in charge. For all appearances, they looked to be ordering the rest around, often hitting or kicking them. They wore silvery armor but frequently took off their helmets. Underneath the helmet, they were clearly a second race. They appeared reptilian and were bipedal, but with a lower center of gravity, making them look a little hunched over and forward.

“Is it me or does it seem like the reptilian ones are in charge?” Killmonger said, “Or maybe they just need some cocoa butter?”

We huddled together behind our like rocky outcropping. Their comings and goings were less frequent than the rest.

“Yeah, but I don’t think that the rest of them are totally fine with that fact,” Kiernan said. “I think something happened here.”

I was getting unnerved at the whole situation, myself. If I’d had hair, it probably would have been on edge.

“Also, they don’t look particularly professional. It looks to me like a bunch of lower-ranking guys trying to abuse their power and reveling in it. Of course, I’m certain that I’m missing a large portion of whatever cultural or societal influences brought them here.”

“As long as we’re not being watched, we should try to learn what we can.”

That was the other thing we noticed. Whoever these guys were, they were messing up a lot.

Kiernan held up a closed fist. It was well known as the universal military signal to stop whatever one was doing and for their ovaries (or testicles) to clench.

Killmonger and I immediately turned in the direction that she was looking.

One of the more humanoid ones was walking towards us. Both of its arms were up, and we didn’t see any weaponry. The crest that we’d seen so often was on its forehead, leading back to where a mohawk would be if the crest was hair. It wore what I’d call a cross between an aviator's jumpsuit and what a farm hand would wear. Not quite overalls but not quite a bomber jacket with matching pants.

“Keep a nice diplomatic posture. I don’t know how we’ll communicate our intentions.” It wasn’t one of the ones in the armor at the very least. I made sure that FERMI was on record more and then waited.

It came closer, stopping about ten meters away. It watched us for a short while, probably the same sort of nervous that we were.

“Haaamaaa Haaamaaa,” It said, lowering its arms and joining hands together by its waist.

I mimed the same motion.

“Hello,” I pointed to myself. “Stevie.” I pointed to the others in turn. “Eric, Kiernan.”

I heard a sound that was along the lines of aaaaaaah. But it was like a whisper. It fiddled with something on its arm. The three of us exchanged nervous looks. I had expected a language barrier.

“Good day,” It said in a rough approximation of my voice.

I was briefly taken aback, and I took a second to really think about what I would say next, via overclocking, then after what felt like a minute, but was closer to ten seconds, I dropped back into normal time.

“Well, that is unusual,” I said. “We’re pleased to meet you.”

“Please… speak slowly. One hast not spoken thy language in quite some time and it has diverged from the path I once knew.”

“Hark, fair beings from the stars above! I, a humble mortal, do greet thee with open arms and a curious mind. Pray, what manner of creatures art thou, and from whence doth thou hail?”

I swear to you that FERMI laughed in the back of my head.

The dang alien was speaking in a terrible English accent that I’d be having problems with if I wasn’t so happy to hear a different voice for once.

The relief I felt was palpable. I’d expected a painful long drawn-out discovery period, or someone shooting at us. If there was possibly something even worse, then I might have spiraled on that particular point. I hadn’t dared to dream.

“We don’t mean to harm you. We’re here on a mission of discovery and scientific inquiry,” Kiernan said.

“I see. I am Roh. Please sit with me and let these minds have a discussion…?” Roh sat down. His legs folded easily with the practiced ease of a yogi.

I sat across from Roh, with Killmonger and Kiernan next to me on either side. It would have been picturesque to have tea between us, but one only has so many resources so far from home.

“I see from thy countenance that you are Ucit.” Roh said. “I have not seen another in quite some time. You’ll forgive me, but don’t recognize you though. Are you from the tribe of Llorias?”

The three of us passed a wary look back and forth. When making the android, the team had tried to approximate the heads of the corpses we’d found on the ship. It would be too easy to just make a human head and be out of place and then I realized we’d been sharing confused looks for a bit too long.

He looked deflated.

“I’m unfamiliar with the Ucit,” I said.

Roh folded in on himself, collapsing into a low ball. His crest nearly hit the floor as he made some barely audible breaths. For the longest shortest time, he stayed bent over, before he popped back up.

“Roh, would you like to tell us about your race?”

“If you are willing to talk to me about how you have come here.” Roh said, dropping back and forth into his accent, “Verily, I do propose a quid pro quo, a fair exchange of goods or services. I shall impart unto thee valuable information, in exchange for a reciprocal sharing of knowledge on thine end. Doth that meet with thy approval?”

“I don’t see that as a problem. We’re open to talking about how we got here.” I said.

“Alas, my current dwelling is but a simple abode, fit for one of my lowly stations. I am but a poor player, that struts and frets upon the stage of life, and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying the void…”

“We need a degree of trust between the two of us, so that is why I told you a bit about Earth first. It sounds like you’ve been there before. Perhaps, we could get to know each other better, while we’re”

“I have. Perhaps we should go back and forth. Alas, I’m not certain, are you a Miss or a Mister…?”

All three of us looked over to him. I wasn’t going to take human emotions and paint them on whatever he was, but if I had, well? I’m at least certain that he isn’t happy.

“I’m a woman. Miss Stevie Long, this is Kiernan Jones, she is also female. Eric Parker over there, he is male.”

Roh studied us for a while. Again, I tried to use my previous framework to analyze his body and came up short. I would say that he relaxed a bit. Also, these lazy shorthands would be hell to drill out of myself.

“It’s curious how many races come in these forms. Male and female, that is. Mistress Long, I… I hope you come in peace,” he choked up, “I do sincerely hope that thy intentions are peaceful, and that thou dost come in amity. Let us lay aside any hostility, and engage in honest discourse for the betterment of all.”

We’d agreed to provide a unified front, and bullets were damn near the most expensive thing we could make. Paid for in time, though not money. Plus I’d rather not antagonize a potential ally.

“To start with, yes as you’ve guessed, we’re male and female, and yes our species has just barely achieved a level of interstellar travel that put us out here. We’re…. we’re not human anymore. I mean, we were, but we’ve…”

I searched for the word.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“Ascended, perhaps?” Eric said.

He might have meant that in jest, but I was thinking about how else to describe our situation and had come up short.

“To a higher level, you mean?” Roh looked tentatively at Eric.

I nearly slapped myself. Analyze later, girl.

“Perhaps this is a higher level? We’re artificial. Our brains are mostly computer now.”

Roh examined us with renewed vigor. That part I knew was something he was trying to imitate from us.

“And you made these bodies? They are very similar to the elder's designs and… you’ll understand my confusion, mistress. Pray tell, art thou some manner of android or mechanical being? Thy design doth seem eerily similar to that of the mortal form. Doth thou possess a soul, or art thou but a machine?

I wished that I had something cultural to share with our new friend that we had met in the wilderness. He himself seemed a bit lost and on his own. I would probably be too, based on what he’d told us.

I racked my brain for a bit.

“How would you like a lesson on some newer English idioms?”

***

We sat down and talked with Roh for hours. I got a few puns in there and I felt like we were finally making a bit of progress.

I’d brought Roh up to the current geopolitical climate as much as I could. I felt my baseline explanation made good use of our time, and it was a gift to be certain. I hadn’t expected a starfaring species to be so calm and welcoming. I hadn’t expected much of anything at all, to be clear. Had he been warlike or peaceful, I wouldn’t have had a prior idea to point to.

“What led you to be here, then?” I said, circling back.

“A Scouting trip, to be certain. We had to make certain that any threats in the local star system wouldn’t come looking for us anytime soon. Of course, that was before…” Roh trailed off, “Oh woe is me, for I am but a mere pawn, trapped upon this foreign planet by the machinations of my patrons. I am but a prisoner, bound by their will, yet I shall not despair. I shall make the most of this dire situation and bide my time, for in adversity there is opportunity. And cake, as I am told.”

He paused to adjust something, or maybe it was just his apparent flair for the dramatic. The damn thing

"I am Ucit. I was created by the elders, thousands of years ago."

I wanted to pretend to munch on popcorn. His voice more and more sounded like a dad talking about his accomplishments as he went on.

“Forsooth, my patrons, those who brought me into existence, had a grand ambition to catalog the known universe. They didst task me and mine, to aid them in their quest for knowledge and discovery. We didst fly with them from star to star, as they didst uncover new worlds and, from time to time, establish colonies upon them. I was oft sent to explore the farthest reaches of these strange places, and didst always find them to be wondrous, even those barren worlds that had little in the way of life held a stark beauty that didst take my breath away.”

He paused to think.

“But alas, after a time spent in a land known as England, my patrons, the makers, didst return us to this place. These systems, what do you call them? I know not their proper nomenclature, but they are but a prison to me now, having beheld the beauty of other worlds.”

"The centauri systems?"

“These systems Centauri they may be, where my creators came from, are where they did leave my kin and I. We didst wait for years, with bated breath and heavy hearts, for their return. But alas, they did not come back, and we were left to our own devices, in this strange and unfamiliar land.”

Perhaps they had been created on a different planet in this system, I mused. His slang was getting to me. I was going to have to work on that with him.

Roh looked contemplative. I couldn't imagine being so old. So old that you could possibly forget things. So old that I might have to worry about long-term memory. I could imagine spinning up the 3d printer in the long term to grow a second larger brain to store all the cool things I’d done, but that seemed so far off as to be comical.

"They never came back?"

"We, the Ucit, didst wait and hope, but alas, our makers didst not return. Only a scarce one hundred of our kind remain, as some didst fall victim to the harshness of this land and the ferocity of its local wildlife. But fear not, for thou art safe amongst us."

Eric's knee started rocking. I knew he wanted to ask so many questions.

"Roh, I uh, well when we recreated these bodies, we used one that we had found far out. I want to say that I am sorry for whatever happened."

The eyes had it with Roh. His alien expression was one that I’d later learn was of grief. Eyes downcast, he didn't meet any of our gazes as his voice dropped low.

"So you have seen what happened, have you."

He dropped the accent. I was briefly overjoyed.

"We saw a large space habitat, it seemed like someone had attacked it. We don’t know any more than that. We..."

He looked at me and I nodded.

"We looked inside. I don't know if there is a proper Ucit burial procedure, but if you want us to honor them in some way we can."

Rohs gaze stayed low.

"I do thank thee. Though this burial ritual thou speakest of is familiar, and all species do have some manner of it, I would be curious to hear of how thou wouldst perform such a thing. However, it was not our habitat, alas, and only a small number of us didst dwell there."

My mind was going a mile a minute. Every little nugget of this conversation was going to be played over and over again as I mined the gold in it. And also to filter back the noise from the talk.

"Roh, who lived there?"

"The Mane. You will see them soon if you come with me. They're ... the Mane are agreeable for the most part, but between them and the Volk, there was some conflict. "

I swear that my brain was going to explode. Three alien races?

"Mane? Volk? They are your friends....or enemies?"

"The Mane doth be a vassal race to the Volk. Or a client species? The word itself matters not. The Volk are in charge. The few that reside here? They are more ... well in my experience they're rascals, left adrift. The Mane are mostly kind and go along to get along. Any Volk outranks all the Mane on the planet."

That didn't answer my real question.

"Was that a Mane habitat?" I asked.

"It was."

He’d left the loud part unsaid.

The silence that followed was only broken by the crackling of the small fire.

"The Volk destroyed their client species habitat?"

"They reserve the right to deal with what they call acts of supra political will with judicious force."

It sounded like a terrorist attack but I wasn't going to press the issue. His voice sounded a bit more modern, the more we talked.

"It was destroyed two years ago or so, I don't know; I stopped counting. Has it drifted far?"

The three of us looked at each other.

"It's pretty far away," Kiernan said, this being her first addition to the conversation.

"But not so far that you all weren't able to find it."

Rohs eyebrows settled, something I later learned meant that he felt a bit better.

"We... Roh, what's going on on the planet now?"

"Oh after the one attack, the Volk decided to make an example of some of the Mane." He waved back to the way we had come.

I shuddered, thinking about the craters that we had passed by.

"They hit many of the Mane from orbit. Now only a token force of Volk is here to administer the colony. Many Ucit died in the attack, we are so few now. The Volk does not like us. The only reason that they didn’t kill us all outright was because of how we helped the Mane when they asked."

Though effectively immortal, if what he was saying was true this would mean that Ucit could be killed. It would probably take something like an orbital cannon. I filed that note away. We used the designs from the one Ucit we had found. The one that we would be performing funeral rites for shortly.

His words about the Volk not liking them made me think of science experiments rather than just run-of-the-mill dislike. After all, we’d kinda taken one of his kind apart, but in our defense, it was more like grave robbing than anything else. Grave robbing and repurposing, to be fair.

“I feel like I should ask a different question. I also don’t know what to ask here.”

Roh gave us the lowdown of the situation in the local stellar system. Roh was one of the few remaining Ucit. The Ucit were a race made by another earlier, older race. They were formed in the image of the elder race and given the ability to change their shape. Now, they had all taken the form of the Mane.

For thousands of years, the Ucit lived in peace until the current overlords came to town.

The Ucit measured time in “spans”: the time it took for the planet to circle the twin suns. One span was almost equivalent to two earth years. For thirty five spans these intruders had walked on their planet. The few Ucit on the planet lived in a small clan, and when the intruders came to town they watched and waited. After some time, the intruders spread across the area we were in, and the Ucit took their form to work and live among them.

These intruders were called the Mane, and the Ucit revealed themselves and worked and lived among them. They shifted their shape to look very similar to the Mane as they integrated into Mane society. When we found the donut, we were lucky to find the one Ucit corpse that we learned from. Many Ucit had traveled to the Mane home world, but the Ucit were exceedingly rare.

The Mane are a similar bipedal race with integumentary ridges on their nearly human-like heads. Nearly human except for the low set squared jaws and slightly larger ears. And of course, the ever-present ridges that for some seemed to look like a mohawk, and for some they looked a little like the ridges over a stegosaurus.

Roh further explained that the Mane were a lower-tier race. This was an outpost far from their home and this was possible because of their client relationship with the more advanced Volk. The Volk used the Mane for many things. The Ucit viewed this as an exploitative relationship, but the Ucit never revealed themselves to the Volk. In turn, the Ucit helped the Mane in secret, as the handful of Ucit that had been revealed had lead to what Roh only described as problems.

The Volk-Mane relationship hadn’t been a problem until one Mane five years earlier had spoken out about some edict that he disagreed with. That Mane came to blows with a Volk military commander and sabotaged the lone orbiting Volk ship, destroying it mid-flight. As punishment, the Volk had all but destroyed this small scientific outpost. Hundreds had died and the Volk had taken out the ring habitat that the Mane had brought, killing another few thousand.

Now, all the Mane on the planet were doing drudgery work for the Volk as penance. Roh explained that the Volk paid little attention to the comings and goings of the Mane and that he would be able to slip us in easily. So long as they were fed, the Volk tended to let them be.

He also let slip that most of the Mane that he was with didn’t know that he was one of the Ucit. I’ll admit that the whole shape-changing thing was something that threw me, but I was willing to run with it. The other thing he told us was worse.

He was the only Ucit that he knew of on the planet.