Aran

Prologue

"What's this?"  A thick gray mustache mumbled with a thick cigar shoved between two sausage lips.  Similar gray eyes stared down at a data-drive that was tossed onto his desk.  He picked it up between two fat fingers as the clear lamanent bent under his pressure and the digital blue lights of foreign font filled the slide.  "Ah."  He knew what it was when he explored the page more with his eyes.

"That all you needed?"  A voice asked from the dark corner of the gray man's office.

He nodded with a huff of smoke, "Fer now."  He shooed the figure away with his other hand and stared, not taking an eye from it.  At the top right corner it translated to: Document 2L.  Below that line: Scribe: Klaxon 12b.  Though, the old man's tremors were a part of his bad health, the trembling through his bones was caused by something entirely different as he began to read.

"Boss, closing hour."  A shout came from outside his door.

He didn't look away, "Send the paper to print."

There was a pause, "Have a good night, boss."

It had been fifty-two years since he had began to search for the document.  To search for anything remotely telling of what had happened to his family in Star System Delta Five.  He knew the document was a retelling of something light years from the galactic quarry he wanted answers to, but it was the closest thing he had ever seen to talk about the hero of the stars.  A legend.  Something that was more accepted as a children's story than anything based on actual record.  The record he held in his hand was written in a language that could be best described as purposefully encrypted.  A language developed by an ancient peoples to be something unreadable. 

He could barely make sense of it.  The first few pages seemed meaningless, they were something to the effect of location of the event, though none of the coordinates made any sense to any way of logging star's coordinates or planets.  If he had to guess the light of such an event was probably barely visible at his current location.  That, in a romantic sense, the events were taking place as he read them.

It was, to the best of his knowledge, the earliest record of the star child.

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"She is just a child," One of the long shouldered figures cawed in an awkward language that sounded more like slow and whimsical whistles.  "Ferry her away from what is to our err.  To the edge of all orbits, perhaps, some culture can reside for another generation before it succumbs."

A much louder and heavier voice boomed from the edge of the shadows, "Then, for the sake of her breath, let all fall to our mistakes.  Martyr a universe than a single soul.  So noble and brilliant," It whistled sarcastically, "Too bad no soul can survive to retell of your courage."

"And you, such a vanguard of the galactic-xeno survival, to rely on a child."

"We are not foreign to death.  Betray your wits if you must, pretend, I will allow you a moment to just that, that this temple, once an errand for the fool-hearty chozo who were bored of clemency, is not the last of us.  The last of those who could ever stop a plague."

"Bring forth!" She cried, "Bring forth an idea that isn't to create one thing to supervise and eliminate another.  See not a paradigm.  Perhaps the quest of the all-seer was to watch us fumble and conclude the history of the universe so that it may begin again to make something less follied."

"Zealot," The voice whipped, so loud it shook the stone pillars around them, "Believe in whatever fate to allow you to mistake the universe into a silent grave.  She will be sent, mother-beak, to do what she was created to do."