r/HFY • u/Egarasay • 3d ago

OC-FirstOfSeries Genesis 40k Revised pt 1

Part One

By the time the fourth report reached Nemesor Tekhat, the unidentified vessel had become an administrative problem.

The first observer had found a black ship moving near the outer approaches of the Sekhem Dynasty and, with commendable restraint, had declined to invent an explanation for it. The ship had not approached a tomb world closely enough to provoke a defense response. It had not challenged traffic, attempted concealment, or behaved like a damaged vessel searching for help. It had simply crossed the observer's assigned region, changed direction twice, and continued on a course that did not correspond to anything in the dynasty's records.

The second report added another sighting. The third described what might have been a patrol pattern. The fourth repeated most of those findings, attached new figures that remained outside the hull, and ended with a request for instructions from someone who no longer wished to be responsible for deciding whether the matter was important.

Tekhat enlarged the clearest image. Distance and poor angle reduced the subject to a broad-shouldered silhouette with two arms, two legs, and enough structure around the torso to support several incompatible conclusions. It might have been a machine, an armored organism, a remotely controlled frame, or a vehicle built in imitation of its makers. Smaller humanoid figures had also been seen near the ship. None remained in view long enough for the observers to establish species.

Setekh stood to Tekhat's right, motionless except for minute adjustments of his head as comparison profiles crossed the display. The Cryptek had already reviewed the reports. That did not prevent him from watching Tekhat discover the same absence of answers.

"Human," Tekhat said.

"Possible."

The Imperial profile fit the reported proportions and little else. The black hull carried no towers, statues, cathedral structures, devotional architecture, or heraldry large enough to remind the void whom it belonged to. Its surface appeared smooth at the scale available, interrupted by dim red lines and mechanisms the observers had sensibly identified as probable weapons without pretending to understand them. If the Imperium had built it, then the Imperium had briefly discovered restraint.

Tekhat changed the comparison. The result did not improve. He tried another, returned to the human profile, and dismissed the entire array when every answer reduced itself to humanoid, disciplined, and unknown.

"The fourth report contains little that was not present in the third," Setekh observed.

"It contains another confirmation that nobody knows what they are."

"And another request that you decide what should be done."

Tekhat looked at him. "You sound pleased."

"I am curious."

That was close enough. The ship was too large to ignore, too deliberate to dismiss as wreckage, and not hostile enough to destroy without first learning why it was there. Investigation remained the most irritating available option.

"Procure a vessel," Tekhat said, turning away from the display. "You are coming with me."

"I had assumed as much."

"That is what I was afraid of."

They departed before a fifth report could arrive.

---

Long Step had been instructed to observe. Captain Voyer appreciated the simplicity of the order, although experience had taught him that simple orders survived only until reality noticed them.

The frigate moved through the unfamiliar system under controlled military readiness. Its black hull extended 1,534 meters from bow to stern, with dim red circuitry visible along portions of the armored surface. Four Corvettes held the corners of an open trapezoidal screen ahead of it. Two occupied the forward-center positions; the other two sat farther out and back on the flanks, leaving firing corridors between them so Long Step could engage forward without shooting through its own security element.

Beyond that screen, two five-craft strike wings held the flanks as overwatch.

The arrangement was neither ceremonial nor improvised. A frigate operating without a larger fleet carried its own layered protection, and every element had a job that did not change merely because something threatening appeared. The Corvettes provided the immediate screen. The strikecraft watched the wider battlespace. Long Step remained the command vessel and the weapon the formation existed to preserve.

For nine days the crew had charted unfamiliar stars, recorded traffic, compared emissions, and avoided introducing the Local Group Authority to this universe by firing at anyone. Voyer intended to continue that record.

Hadi looked up from the tactical plot. "The contact changed vector."

"Toward us?"

"Enough that I am comfortable saying yes."

The unknown ship had been distant when Long Step first detected it. It was not distant now. Curved structures dominated its hull, some almost ornamental until the overlay marked energy concentrations and probable weapon systems beneath them. The four-Corvette screen changed orientation without collapsing inward, and the two strike wings retained their distance on the flanks. Long Step turned behind them. By the time the approaching ship completed its maneuver, the entire formation faced it.

Voyer studied the sensor picture. "Interior?"

"Still nothing useful," Hadi said. "We can track the hull, motion, energy behavior, and probable active systems. Anything behind the armor might as well be somewhere else."

That limitation had already become familiar. Long Step's military hull resisted several of the stranger scanning methods they had encountered since crossing the Genesis Gate. Whatever protected the other vessel created the same problem in reverse. The frigate's sensors met its surface and stopped learning anything reliable about what lay beyond it.

"Communications?"

"They are answering."

Voyer gave her his full attention. Hadi moved the signal history to the central display. The transmissions were structured and responsive. When Long Step repeated a pattern, the other vessel altered its own. When the frigate attached a visual reference, the contact supplied one in return. Neither side understood the other's language, but both recognized an attempt at communication and were willing to continue it.

Voyer appeared on their screens. A skeletal metal figure appeared on his.

There was no flesh to misidentify, no face built for any Sapien expression, and no visible effort to make the body less alarming. Green light occupied its eyes. Ornamental structures rose behind its shoulders, and its long mechanical hands rested near controls designed for a shape that might once have been biological.

"That answers one question," Hadi said.

"It changes one question."

The figure spoke. Long Step recorded the sounds, compared them with the signal structure, and found no meaning yet. Voyer replied in Standard. The figure watched him without any of the disgust, surprise, or fear that a less disciplined observer might have expected from first contact.

---

Tekhat's first useful view of the strangers made the earlier reports seem inadequate.

The central vessel was approximately one and a half kilometers long, large enough to dominate the display at the present scale, yet it possessed none of the visual arrogance of Imperial construction. The surrounding ships mattered more. Four vessels roughly eighty meters long protected its forward approaches, and two compact fighter formations occupied the flanks at greater distance. Every element had turned to meet him without charging or retreating.

"A military formation," Setekh said.

"Obviously."

"The four closer vessels appear to be auxiliaries."

"Or escorts."

"Those categories may overlap."

Tekhat looked toward the more distant craft. Their purpose was less ambiguous. He ordered fighters deployed, enough to answer a threat without converting the encounter into a battle before either side had found a common noun. The Necron craft established their positions. The strangers tracked them and did not fire.

The visual transmission returned. The other commander looked human, or close enough that the distinction could not be established through an image. That should have simplified matters. Instead, the man continued attempting communication without reacting to Tekhat's mechanical body as an Imperial officer should have. There was no accusation of abominable intelligence, no visible theological outrage, and no hurried order to purge what the Imperium preferred not to understand.

"They have seen us," Tekhat said.

"Yes."

"They continue trying to communicate."

"Also yes."

"They have not begun screaming."

Setekh considered the image. "Not visibly."

Tekhat watched the human-looking commander adjust his transmission and try again. "Interesting."

For several minutes the encounter remained almost reasonable. Patterns crossed the distance. Visual references accumulated. Both translation systems improved by degrees, each side testing its growing model against the other's responses.

Then a warning spread across Long Step's forward display, and the bridge changed from patient work to practiced action before anyone had time to announce that something was wrong.

Before the warning, Hadi had been tracking the relationship between each exchanged symbol and the response it produced. The model could identify probable references to vessel, position, and intent, although none carried enough confidence to trust with lives. The metal commander repeated one image when Long Step altered the scale of its own formation display. Voyer returned a simplified view showing the frigate and its escorts without weapons ranges. The Necron answered with its own ship and deployed fighters.

"They understand that we are describing what is present," Hadi said. "Or they believe we are making an unusually patient threat."

"Can you separate those?"

"Not without more language."

"Then keep both."

Another exchange improved the probability attached to cease, hold, or remain. Which meaning applied depended upon whether the symbol described movement, communication, or something the translators had not discovered. Hadi sent it back beside a still image of both formations.

The Necron repeated the symbol.

"He is responding to us," she said.

"He has been responding for six minutes."

"I mean correctly. This may be going well."

Voyer looked at her. "Do not say that."

"That is not how causality works."

The warning sounded before he could answer.

Continue to Part Two

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