creatures live on the planet below. They hibernate during the cold periods and live during the warm ones. Throughout the book their society and civilization advances quite a bit.
One of the aliens sees "strange flashes of light", which is the battle happening overhead. He is one of the main drivers of progress on the alien planet if I remember well.
For most of the story, these aliens and the main characters on the derelict ship live separately, but at some point they start communicating.
When they communicate, it very much feels like two vaguely-humanoid species talking.
At the end of the book, the aliens rescue the main characters on the derelict from the bad guys (who are also there, I think the MCs were prisoners or something?)
And then they meet; andThursday, March 24, 2016

Times Group's Bennett University and the non-profit online learning edx online courses moocplatform edX, founded by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), will now jointly provide online courses to its students.

edX as well as Bennett University plan to work together for developing a mutually-agreeable plan to offer Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC).

edX would become the preferred MOOC provider for the new Indian university as it tries to offer a blended on-campus model for its courses. The faculty at Bennett would also get involved in creating new online courses that would later be put up on edX. In fact, Bennett would also have Anant Agarwal on its International Advisory Board to guide it as it aims to become India's first post-digital university.

Bennett university