She'd like to know if they have a word for what system they're in now. She'd like to know if anyone else has appeared here before the way she did. She'd like to know what this ship is doing out here and whether it's controlled by any particular country or person or group. She'd like to know whether they report to Alteri, but is not super sure how to ask that one. 

She'd sort of like to know why everything is so pretty, but that's really not very important and she doesn't want to be a bother and they should really feel free to ignore it if it's a bother.

It's called Endorë. No one else has appeared here and they didn't know it was possible for her species (which they call humans). This ship is a patrol ship for the Noldor; it occasionally intercepts enemy ships or enemy weapons in low orbits but mostly it just looks out for trouble. 

Their species needs things to be pretty or they can't be in them for very long.

OK. This makes sense, mostly. The bit about pretty things is weird, but OK.

"So you don't have any - we call them Alteri, they're big insects that build ships and control lots of star systems? I didn't think there were any - humans? - any humans outside of Earth who didn't answer to Alteri. I've heard things about people taking over ships, but I don't know if they're true, and nobody with a whole planet."

"We don't have any of those. There are humans on Endorë but not many of them; Eru added them after the fighting had already started."

"Who's Eru? ...how did he add them?"

"Eru is the creator of all the worlds we know of. He can do anything. He wanted there to be humans so then there were."

"...oh."

OK. Well. Hm.

Maybe people were right about the Alteri not creating humans. Or maybe these people are mistaken. ...no, she's probably more likely to be mistaken about something like this, how would she know where humans came from?

"I can try to answer any questions you have. I don't know if I'll be able to, but I can try."

"How did you appear here?"

"There was a gate. A big metal ring in space, in the same system as Earth. The Liars there made it a long time ago, supposedly to travel over long distances. It was broken when we found it, but the Alteri had us spend months trying to fix it. None of the Alteri ships managed to pass through, so we assumed it wasn't working. I passed through by accident and ended up here. I'm not sure why it sent me here in particular."

"Do you know how to build such a thing?"

"No. I don't know of anyone who does. I didn't work on creating the replacement parts, either, I just installed them."

"Can you tell us about the Alteri?"

"Yeah. Lots of things. Um, they're big insect people who've conquered I think three peoples, the Thieves and the Sluggards and the Liars. I'm not sure how many star systems they control, at least a hundred. They're at war with the Carthons, and they'll probably still be at war with the Carthons when my great-grandchildren are dead. They live for longer than Liars, but they're awake for less time; they have to spend a lot of their life in long sleep cycles. Um, they speak to each other with noises and light patterns on the front of their chest and the back of their abdomen - I can't make the noises or the light patterns, but Liars use hand signs that correspond to the lights. I can teach you their most common language that way, if you want to learn it. Is there anything in particular - ?"

"Why are they at war?"

"So, um, I'm not an expert or anything, this is just what they told us, I don't know if it's right, but the Carthons are supposed to be the oldest spacefaring race in the galaxy. Our galaxy, anyway, I don't know whether that's the same one as this one. They're the ones who gave the Alteri space flight. They also demanded that the Alteri make a bunch of changes to their society - they tried to engineer away most of the Alteri's genders at one point, there's an epic poem about it but I don't remember all the details - and when the Alteri had amassed enough power, they rebelled and tried to take over as many Carthon systems as possible. The empires are too large and space flight's too slow for them to make much obvious progress during any single person's lifetime, but they're also not willing to make peace. The Earth ceasefire is the only long-term exception I've heard of."

"What do you know about their weapons?"

"Not a ton? I'm pretty sure they have warships that can make whole planets uninhabitable, though they usually colonize and take slaves instead."

"Are they going to come and find you?"

She winces. Not a pleasant line of thought, but a necessary one. "Maybe? I would have expected them to follow me through the gate almost immediately, but if nobody else has appeared then there must be something preventing them from using it. I don't know why that would be or how long it'll last. We'd just gotten the gate working, we don't know its limits yet."

She pauses and bites her lip again. Then, "If they do follow me, there's a good chance they'll decide that this was an intentional escape attempt and kill me for it. I don't know that they will, they might decide it was an accident and return me to my previous duties, but if I had to bet I'd bet that they kill me to discourage anyone else who might be tempted to have a similar accident."

"...I don't really want to die," she says, quietly.

"Well, we don't have to tell them you came through."

She nods. She wants to say thank you, but it doesn't sound like a commitment, and her voice isn't working very well anyway at this particular second. She clears her throat.

"OK. That makes sense. Anything else?"

"Do you know how to contact them?"

Swallow. This is not a pleasant line of thought either, but if they don't find a way to contact them then she's got no hope of seeing Taz or Ves or anyone else she's ever cared about, so.

"Not with the material I have, not over this distance. There are simple star charts loaded into my spacesuit's computer, but I'm not sure if they'll be complete enough to determine their exact coordinates from wherever we are. If we had access to a planetary ansible then I could maybe contact them through the Earth Carthon embassy, but I've never even seen an ansible and I have no idea how to make one."

"It is not something we're familiar with. We'll see what we can learn from the star charts. Do you expect they would be hostile towards us?"

"Best guess? Probably not immediately, but it depends which ones you run into and how they estimate your military strength compared to theirs. The house leaders wouldn't start another major war with an another advanced group, they need to conserve resources to fight the Carthons and any political enemies they've made within the Confederacy. If they think they can win without major casualties, they'll probably attack. Sometimes younger commanders from minor houses take stupid - "

She winces. Takes a deep breath.

"Um, sorry. Sometimes younger commanders from minor houses take inadvisable risks in pursuit of personal glory. But there shouldn't be any large-scale military opposition, not if you can defend yourselves and you don't attack them first. Especially not if you contact the ones around Earth, they're more likely to be searching for allies than more enemies."