Previously...

So finally, there are indeed other people out there in the universe...

The Centaurian civilisation had discovered the spectral image of Earth, betraying life in a form unknown to them. So they had sent a flotilla to probe. The captain they put in charge was the closest they had to a hero. Such a potentially uncontrollable leader meant it was to be watched over. The spy they assigned, Grishka, was conveniently positioned as the communication officer and so the third in command.

Once in space, the captain looked like he would not be controllable indeed. So the spy took upon himself to secretly poison the captain. And that sent him forward to the position of second officer and the new captain, unaware of this whole affair was Igor, his actual brother.

***

Executive summary of the intelligence gathered by the Centaurian task force commissioned by the Senate.

Beyond all reasonable expectation, the task force has somehow been detected quite early by the object of our probe, indicating not only the presence of intelligence but the certainty of a high level of intelligence.

Moreover, we have definitive proof that communication attempts originated from some entities present in the interstellar space. Those messages have not yet been deciphered successfully by the communication head officer Grishka.

That said, there appeared to be a situation within the encountered entities, which are most likely fighting among themselves. From their relative velocity, the one who should be called the prey emitted a complex mass scan typical of black matter, whereas the hunter's profile is compatible with life, as we know it.

The prey released a smaller version of itself on an interception course of the apparent hunter, which managed to remotely destroy that incoming object. We have no clue yet as to whether the prey tried to use a poisonous defence mechanism or the hunter was in fact the real prey lured into a trap.

Whichever, the hunter turned onto us, and vainly attempted to engage our fleet with a technology as much unknown as ineffective.

This resulted in a massive response from our superior weaponry which obliterated the offender, as well as our unfortunate vanguard which happened to be in the line of fire. We wished peace to the souls of those who died for but are not eaten by their people.

Nevertheless, the commander Igor is proud to present the Senate with the probably most interesting entities of the two since it contains black matter and it is communicating with increasing complexity.

We also wish to give the officer Grishka a chance to redeem his misconduct by assigning him the task to make the first ever cross-species contact.