The cold, silent immensity of intergalactic space was being torn apart.
Here, far from any star, without witness, a drama of unimaginable scale was unfolding. A ship, a cathedral of metal kilometres long, was fleeing. Its hull, scratched with half-erased runes and scarred by the impacts of terrifying weapons, spewed gouts of unstable energy. It was the Aegis of Purpose, one of the Emperor's most precious vessels, and it was dying.
Inside, in a sterile and monumental chamber designed to harbour hope, a wounded Tech-priest fought against death. His bionic fingers, trembling, frantically worked the controls of an incubator shaped like a sarcophagus, the last of a score that now lay empty and damaged around him.
"No… not him… not the last…" he gurgled, blood flowing from his lips.
A dull explosion shook the ship, making the deck tremble. The lights flickered. The imminent disintegration alarm screamed, a shrill, desperate sound. The Tech-priest knew there was no way out. The battle against the Horrors, those brothers become nightmares, was lost. Their safeguard mission had failed.
Everything, except this.
With one last ounce of strength, he activated the emergency ejection sequence. The hydraulic locks of the sarcophagus groaned. The energy shields flickered.
"May the Emperor… guide you… wherever you may go…" he whispered before an explosion engulfed the chamber, vaporizing the last guardian of the Lost Son.
The sarcophagus, a pod of strangely angular, smooth metal, was hurled into the void like a grain of pepper. Propelled by doomed fusion engines, it cleaved the nothingness, leaving behind the funeral pyre of the Aegis of Purpose. It drifted, silent and solitary, for a time that had no measure, traversing realms human science could not name, until the gravity of a distant world, lost in a forgotten spiral arm of the galaxy, pulled it inexorably into its embrace.
---
The world was called Tarsonis. A name that, for its inhabitants, meant civilization, technological power, and a never-ending war against a scourge from the stars: the Swarm.
On the edge of the Xil Desert, a zone ravaged by Swarm spores and crematory crust, the sky was usually a sombre red, streaked with black trails of pollution and distant fires. But that evening, a new meteor traced a furrow of blinding, intense white-blue across it.
In the forward command post Bunker-7, an alarm blared.
"Meteoric impact detected! Grid coordinates 7-8-0! Speed and energy signature are… abnormal!" announced an operator, his voice tense.
Leaning over the radar screen, Lord Commander Marcus Valerius, a man with a face weathered by decades of war and close-cropped greying hair, frowned.
"Abnormal how? Is it a Swarm ship? A new form of Baneling?"
"Negative, Commander. No bio-signature. It's… metal. A lot of metal. And phenomenal residual heat. It landed – no, crashed – just twenty klicks from the base."
Valerius clenched his fists. Anything that fell from the sky on Tarsonis was, by default, a threat. The Swarm used every tactic, including orbital bombardment of spores.
"Send a recon unit. Two Goliaths for escort. Rules of engagement: absolute caution. If it moves and it doesn't have our IFF, shred it."
---
Sergeant Maya Kincaid and her squad approached the crater with the wariness of those who had seen Zerg eggs hatch in far worse places. Heat still radiated from the vitrified earth. At the centre, half-buried, lay the object.
It was not a meteor.
"By all the gods…" breathed one of the marines.
The pod was smooth, of an immaculate steel grey, without visible welds or rivets. Complex geometric patterns, which seemed to be both circuits and inscriptions in an unknown language, ran along its flanks. It was like nothing Terran, nothing Protoss, and certainly nothing Zerg. It was strange, cold, and of a technology that seemed almost… divine.
"Commander, you need to see this," Kincaid radioed, her voice shaking slightly. "It's… I don't know what this is."
A few minutes later, Valerius's dropship landed. The veteran descended, his CMC-300 combat armour scraping the charred ground. He approached the rim of the crater, and his breath caught in his throat. He had fought on a dozen worlds, seen Protoss carriers, Zerg Creep, but never anything like this.
Suddenly, a hiss of pressurized air was heard. A section of the pod, until then perfectly smooth, disengaged with a muffled chunk and began to open, sliding backward like a sarcophagus lid.
Every weapon in the squad snapped up instantly, the Goliaths locking their auto-cannons on the target.
A cloud of cryogenic vapour escaped from within, dissipating to reveal…
… a baby.
He was lying on a cloth that resembled silk, but which shimmered with a faint energetic glow. He was of an impressive size and build for a newborn, his muscles well-defined, his hair thick and black. And he was perfectly healthy, silent, his eyes wide open.
His eyes. They were a piercing steel grey, holding an intelligence and awareness far too ancient for an infant. They did not cry. They observed. They analysed.
Valerius, dumbfounded, slowly pushed down the barrel of Kincaid's pulse rifle.
"Commander… what in hell is that thing?" she whispered.
Valerius didn't answer immediately. He approached, fascinated, cautiously descending into the crater towards the pod. The baby turned its head towards him. There was no fear in its gaze, only an intense, calm curiosity.
The Lord Commander had lost his family years before, when their city had been consumed by the Swarm. He had lost thousands of soldiers under his command. He had seen absolute horror. But here, in this smoking crater, facing this child fallen from the stars, he saw no horror. He saw a miracle. A mystery. A hope.
He leaned over and, with a caution he had not known in a long time, he ran a gloved finger over the infant's forehead. The skin was warm, alive.
"It's… a child," Valerius finally said, his raspy voice filled with a emotion he thought forgotten. "A lost child."
The baby, as if in response, gripped his finger. The strength of the grip was astounding, impossible for a being so young.
At that instant, a new alarm blared over the squad's radios.
"Swarm alert! Bio-signatures detected approaching! Reading… Zerglings and Hydralisks! They're converging on your position!"
The spell was broken. The soldiers regrouped, weapons ready, forming a perimeter.
"They can smell the thing!" a marine yelled.
Valerius looked at the baby, then at the sky where the first specimens of the Swarm were beginning to appear on the horizon, a tide of claws and fangs pouring from the surrounding canyons.
They didn't smell the pod. They smelled the child. They were coming for him.
A cold determination filled the Commander. He shrugged off his thick command coat, carefully wrapped the infant in the warm fabric, and lifted him. The child was heavy, dense.
"Everyone, listen up!" Valerius roared, his voice carrying over the roar of the approaching Swarm. "Our mission has changed! We are not securing the object! We are protecting this child! We are taking him back to base! At all costs!"
He looked at the baby's peaceful face, who, amidst the nascent chaos, stared back at him with absolute concentration, as if understanding every word.
"Goliaths point! Marines, tight formation around me! We're going home!"
As the first Zerglings shrieked and charged, Lord Commander Marcus Valerius, hero of Tarsonis, clutched the lost son from the stars against his armour, and engaged in the first of many battles to come.