Starborn: Origin of the Stars

Robin continued to play around with the map, which was forcefully uploaded to his Neuro-Chip, until the train's speakers announced the arrival at Nexus Haven South. Hopping off the train, he walked straight home, along the streets that were already filled with people again.

Wondering if he was the only one in Nexus Haven, the residential district, that was happy to welcome the weekend, he fell asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow.

Only a few hours after lunchtime did he crawl out of his bed. The combination of overusing his ability and the accident with the artifact really took a toll on him.

‘The map! Right…’ he remembered the fucked-up excuse of a map on his Neuro-Chip.

Putting his trusty food-generator to work, he thought about his options.

‘Okay, so handing the data on my chip over to authority is off the table, after leaving the museum without mentioning anything about it. They would probably sue me for breaking the contract, right before opening my head to see if there was more to find.’

Nipping on his hot coffee, he went on with his thoughts ‘Selling it, without knowing what it’s worth, would also be a bad idea. Not to mention that trading with some shady black market dealer has a high chance of me getting a ticket to some back-alley trash recycler to be never seen again.’

He shuddered, thinking of the news about such instances one could read every now and then.

‘Well, that leaves me with the option to use the map myself. If it could guide me to some nice treasure or technology of the old races, that would be neat!’ he began to daydream, ‘But the problems here are manifold…to begin with, I don’t even recognize the system the map shows. All names and descriptions are just cryptic characters jumbled together. The same applies to its markers and the legend. How would I know what the different pins are representing? Could be anything from a secret weapon factory to a fucking shithouse in the middle of nowhere.’

“Right, this thing comes from a Wuranger relic site on Ruca I! So, it must be really old…and really outdated.” Robin realized.

“But that also gives me a small lead, if I’m not totally unlucky, the map should be representing a solar system in the Wuranger territory, or one of the neighboring systems. Shouldn't be too many…”

An hour of online history-research later, he turned off his Interface.

“Burn in plasma! 49 fucking systems? Damn…” he angrily exclaimed.

Normally 49 systems in the scale of a galaxy would be a drop in the ocean:

Rucasur with its three moons was orbiting Mereus, the central star of the Mereus Cluster. Together with four other planets and their moons, they represented one solar system.

The Mereus Cluster was one of thousands of solar systems in his galaxy, the Pranum Expanse. So, while 49 systems under control of the Wuranger didn’t sound too impressive, one needed to know that of the uncountable systems out there, only a very small fraction were actually accessible, even less if one is looking for inhabitable systems. The great majority of solar systems were already dead or too dangerous to travel through, often due to stars being too hot, magnetic storms raging about or spatial rifts caused by black holes that were devastating whole clusters of solar systems.

Robin calmed down a bit and pondered about his next steps.

There were 49 systems spread over three galaxies. While the distances and locations of the map may be outdated, he should be able to reduce the potential matches by comparing the number of planets and moons around the star. That shouldn’t be something that easily changed over the years.

“Five planets, 11 moons. Factoring in the combination of planets and moons…” Turning the Interface back on, Robin started another lengthy research.

The sun was already setting when Robin finished his studies.

"The UAS really should reorganize the database, this shouldn’t have taken me this long. How can a filter option be such a mess?"

“Hess, time?” He wearily asked his home system.

“It’s Saturday the 3rd of the second month, 18:14” The trusty companion responded.

‘Yeah, shit, the weekend is halfway over already’ Robin whined.

At least his work paid off, as he could boil the number of possible systems down to two. One of them being the Mereus Cluster itself.

‘It’s not that big of a coincidence, considering that it was found here. Hopefully I can confirm that it’s the Mereus Cluster itself or else traveling will be a fucking hassle’.

Robin planned for the next day to finally finish up the last configurations for the Melody II and get her flightready. After that, his idea was to travel around the planet and visit some of the points marked on the map. He had too few references to be sure where to go, but if Rucasur was really one of the planets the map described, he should be able to find some regions that weren’t totally dug over and match them with noticeable terrain markings.

After mankind found Rucasur as an inhabitable planet with an atmosphere for good living conditions, it was soon stripped of all its valuable materials and resources.

Today, most of the planet's surface is occupied with big cities and endless greenhouse-installations. There also were big production- and recycling facilities, water purification plants and corresponding reservoirs.

If he would ask anyone for a map, he would only ever get something like a street map, with some additional information on the train networks. That’s normally all you need to get an accurate representation of Rucasur.

Robin hoped to find some natural formations that survived the passage of time and the rampage of mankind. If he could match them with the ancient map, he had a reference point to start from. On a platform that provided pictures taken from Rucasur’s orbit, he had found some promising places he wanted to visit and felt quite optimistic.

***

Arriving at Jim’s workshop the next day, Robin immediately started to prepare his little ship. He made a connection to his datapad and booted the systems. With a loud buzzing the plasma repulsor woke up and sent strong, compressed energy waves to the vents sticking out of the bottom of the ship. Like with the CTV, the outlets were used for hovering and steering the ship, only to a much more delicate degree, as Melody II had eight of them, instead of only four.

The similarities ended there. The two big thrusters at the back were already glowing with excess power, only waiting to shoot the ship forwards! The winglets were for supporting the atmospheric flight and will provide lift if enough speed is gained.

Robin took a look at the incoming data on his pad and inspected the engine more closely. The plasma repulsor was a little oversized for his ship, but still manageable for the chassis…probably. Where the CTV’s engine was powered by a battery pack, Melody’s repulsor got its energy from an incorporated hydrogen fusion reactor. While this tech was already quite old and inefficient by today's standards, it’s pretty safe to use, not susceptible to failure and fuel is cheap and abundant.

Looking at the ship he spent three years and lots of sweat and blood on, hovering in the air before him, Robin felt pride seeping into his bones.

“Just a few more checks and calibrations and I will take you out for a ride!” He said in anticipation.

Focusing his concentration back on the engine, he began with a thorough checkup with his energy senses.

When he tapped into his mutation for the first time after finishing the job at the museum, Robin immediately could feel that something was different.