Starborn: Origin of the Stars

The moment Robin began to feel for the energy generated by the reactor, he was surprised by the ease with which he could use his senses to create the image in his mind.

Blue lines started to appear before his inner eye, faster than ever, without the usual need for extreme concentration and much clearer than anything he sensed before.

‘It doesn't only feel more natural to use, the time I need to create an image in my mind has probably been reduced by half!’ he marveled at this unexpected change.

Admiring the many new details he could feel through his obviously heightened senses, he watched as the bright blue representation of the reactor was completed and his senses continued to send feedback, enlarging the area of inspection further on.

Soon he also felt the structure of the repulsor in his mind. Then, more power lines grew out, four going towards the ship's back to the vents and another two connected to the big thrusters which were also slowly sketched out. Only the four lines that wriggled towards the front of the ship disappeared into the darkness that indicated the end of his range.

Robin was absolutely speechless.

Normally he would focus his senses on a specific point and in his mind an image would appear, showing him the energy structure roughly half a meter in every direction. Now? That range grew massively to a 2-3m radius, coupled with the higher quality of the picture and reduced strain on his mind, his mutation got a crazy upgrade.

Disbelieving, he watched his hands.

Did his mutation evolve? Was he Class D now? How did that happen?

His thoughts were running wild with unanswered questions.

Calming down, he reflected on what he knew about the improved version of his mutation.

‘No, the descriptions of Class D - Energy Senses are different from this. It’s said that with Class D you can send out an echo-like pulse for a few meters around you and get the image instantly imprinted in your mind - I definitely cannot do that. The strain on the mind should also be pretty high and if a Class D tried to sense something the way I just did, it wouldn’t work much different from my Minor Energy Senses, only their quality should be as improved as mine are now. But I’ve never heard of anyone with such a sensor-range or -speed.’

Not knowing what he should make out of this surprising evolution, he experimented for some time.

A lot more tests and online-research later, he came to the conclusion that his upgrade unfortunately didn’t lift him to Class D - Energy Senses.

He now got a much clearer picture with more details from his senses, probably comparable to Class D. But he couldn’t send out a pulse nor sense energy just by touching stuff, which apparently also was a thing for Class D. The strain on his mind was reduced and his range, the size of the image so to say, grew to an unheard level.

All in all, he had no idea how his mutation would be classified by now.

After mankind achieved a breakthrough in gene-technology, almost all humans gained a G-Anomaly, or simply called mutation.

Mutations were categorized in Classes, ranked from the lowest Class D, to the highest Class S. There were hundreds of known G-Anomalies out there and every now and then, a new one appeared. The low-ranked mutations like his were the great majority and just gave minor effects like energy sensing, better hearing, optimized eyesight and so on. The top G-Anomalies became increasingly rare and often had powerful or especially useful effects, sometimes even coming with visible changes to the body.

Robin knew about a woman with Class A - High-Speed Movement, she had to wear a special protection suit to take her running speed to the limit. Such crazy mutations often appeared with additional complements, like in this case better reflexes and optimized digestion to support the main power.

After a deal with the Ommih, humans also got the means to upgrade some of their G-Anomalies, which shifted the rarity scalar a bit. Mainly body enhancements, like Patience’s Enhanced Strength or the Class D Strengthened Muscles, were on the upgradeable list, enabling those to advance one rank.

For Robins Minor Energy Senses definitely wasn’t an upgrade available and no comparable mutation came to his mind. So, until he gets a science-guy to take new measurements for his G-Anomaly, he will have to remain clueless about what had happened to him.

Forcing himself to postpone any more experiments with his mutation, Robin finally shifted his focus back to the still waiting ship. Caressing the black metal with loving hands, he activated the calibration process and watched, as the control unit made the repulsor send plasma waves of varying strength to the different outlets and the thrusters. Having to adjust only some thresholds here and there, most of the program ran on its own.

Twenty minutes later, Robin got the system's report and double checked the numbers again. His last step was a final scan of all parts with his energy senses, while the plasma repulsor put them under moderate pressure.

“Everything seems fine! We are good to go, my love!” he happily exclaimed, took the ship out of maintenance mode and disconnected the datapad.

He then climbed into the cockpit and took a look around.

It had two sport seats behind each other, the copilot’s one in the back slightly elevated to provide a better view. The Melody II was controlled by the pilot in the front, with two joysticks and a throttle controller. A configuration normally only rarely used for a selected few racing ships, but Robin liked the set-up way more than the more common yoke-throttle-combinations.

After he got his piloting license for atmospheric flights, he had to visit an extra class to be allowed to fly ships with dual-sticks. Since then, he occasionally trained in a simulator to not come out of practice.

The maiden flight of Melody II will although be his first own flight in a real ship since he got his license six years ago.

‘Well, the first time except for the thing with Melody I, of course…’ Robin remembered.

Not thinking about that dark day any longer, he reluctantly turned off all systems again and stepped out of the cockpit.

With his datapad he accessed the Ship Admission Office to get the registration for a custom-built ship done. He submitted the ship's specifications together with the just finalized reports and authorized the management fee.

‘400 credits just to get them to work, doing their damn job…’ Robin grieved over the spent money and called it a day.