Starborn: Origin of the Stars

This was awesome, the absolute pinnacle of freedom!

Robin was elated as they flew in the skies above Seka and looked down. The city with its huge skyscrapers and long streets was rushing by below them. It wasn't that they were speeding along very fast - there were rules and regulations for flight control - but not to be bound by the fixed tracks of public transportation or even any roads at all, felt great.

His whole life Robin looked to the stars, marveling what wonders they may hide.

When he grew up and learned the history of humanity and read about the legends of the Starborn, the stars became more and more what he ultimately desired. After awakening his G-Anomaly he worked hard to get a job that will one day get him on one of the big interplanetary ships of the UAS. Unfortunately, the early death of his father shuffled his well thought plans around a bit and he ended up at Jim’s workshop. He never thought this to be his final destination, but just the beginning of him climbing the ladder through the ranks.

Today, he finally began that journey. Today, he finally began to write his own story.

Tearing his eyes away from the ground, he rolled the ship to realign it with the horizon. He only had to pay a little bit of his attention to the ships systems and the route they took. Over Seka there were strict regulations for individual flights to ensure order and safety. After taking off, they reported their travel directions and Flight Control assigned them a corridor. This corridor was just a long, reserved area in the sky, leading out of the city towards the south. The ship's systems visualized the corridor on one of its displays and an angry beeping informed him, when he was leaving its boundaries.

It would be really great to get an upgrade for his Interface. There were models for pilots that could project data like the visualization of the corridor, speed, rotation and other things directly in his field of view.

Augmented Reality, an old technology, but one mankind still held on to, even though there were much better alternatives like implants that directly send information into the brain. Robin didn’t really understand the reasons, but it was something about the risks of using too much alien tech in critical functions. Apparently putting implants in one's head, that could fuck with your mind to a much greater degree than the Interface and Neuro-Chip would ever be able to, counted as such.

Behind him in the copilot's seat sat Patience, also looking out and marveling at the wonderful view of the endless sky and passing city. She didn’t even know why she asked Robin to bring her with him, it just suddenly overcame her and she went with it. During the week, having some time to think about it, she began to form second guesses. Was this really a good idea? She had never once left Seka before and while the outskirts weren’t a lawless area, they still were anything but safe to travel.

Now, sitting in this - if she had to be honest - quite nice ship, flying through the skies, she was really happy that she didn’t chicken out. It was great to leave everything behind and just follow one's own ideas and desires for once.

Tapping Robin's shoulder to get his attention, she mumbled “Thanks man, I really mean it. Thank you very much. This is…something special.”

“You’re welcome, I’m happy to have some company on this trip. Let's have a crazy weekend, ok?” he responded honestly.

“We’ll be flying through this corridor for roughly two more hours, before we’re reaching the outer areas of Seka and can switch to an individual route. I plan to visit an area today that looked interesting in some photos and turn back to the edge of the city to find an inn for the night. Tomorrow we can move to some spots that should hold old relic sites. I found them in online reports, but over the years many structures were just destroyed to make room for greenhouses or production plants. So, no promises that there is anything left.”

"That's fine with me. I just want to get away from everything for a few days, relaxing and taking a look around. I don’t have any specific places I wanna visit.”

“Ok, but let me know if you spot something you want to see. We do have enough time for explorations.” Robin invited her and put his concentration back on the ship's systems. To ensure that everything was doing well, he started a complete system-check every 15 minutes and even observed the critical components with his mutation every now and then.

Seems like Melody II wasn’t going to follow the steps of her predecessor. She was doing great and Robin was already looking forward to putting the ship under a little bit of strain. He really wanted to see the limits of his creation!

After the initial excitement died down and the two travelers got used to the sight of the endless city, they both started to look forward to leaving the flight corridor.

When the moment finally came and Flight Control checked them out, the tension came back. Robin took a deep breath and pushed the throttle up all the way to raise the speed limiter. Pushing the left joystick forward Melody II reacted immediately. The two oversized thrusters screamed, catapulting the ship forward in a flash. Robin and Patience nearly blacked out, before Robin managed to react and reduce the acceleration.

“Oops…” he chuckled, after he regained control over the ship.

“OOPS???? Fuck you, crazy lunatic.” Patience screamed, not one bit of patience left, “If you want to get yourself killed, do it when you are alone!”

“Yeah sorry, I still need to get a better feel for the ship's and our limits.” Robin explained “I’ll have to do a few cycles of acceleration and braking, bear with it for a moment.”

Letting the insults from behind fade out, Robin began to earnestly test the ship's behavior. After a few very uncomfortable rounds of raising and lowering the speed, he got the hang of it. Patience also quieted down, as she was well aware that this was necessary.

The flight became much more enjoyable afterwards. Robin often changed the altitude and rolled the ship to the left or right to give them a better view. Soon, the huge buildings made way for enormous halls with glass-roofs. Flying slowly over them, they could see hundreds of green lines full of vegetables and robots buzzing around between the rows.

The backbone of Seka. Here grew the food for millions of citizens of Rucasur and even for the ones on the moons. There were also breeding stations to ensure the supply of meat, but those were built on the other side of the city.

With the sharp increase of their speed, the ship soon entered the area where he hoped to find two big mountains. With the pictures from above he couldn’t confirm their existence, he only made out two deep black, rocky spots and hoped that those were the mountains.

Only minutes later, Robin got excited. They flew over the last greenhouse and a great plain opened up before them. From their heightened position they could see two deep craters in the ground, each spanning nearly three kilometers wide. It did look like someone with a really big spoon took a scoop out of the ground twice.

“Wow, impressive! This must be one of the excavation sites from the early days of Rucasur!” Patience exclaimed after she spotted the holes. “How did you get to know of this?”

“I was looking for interesting landmarks and hoped to find two mountains here” He explained.

“Well, those probably once were mountains, it’s just that we completely mined them down to the last rock. You wanna land there?”

“I think the same, but no, let's move on. If we identified them correctly, then there should be a third one a short way to the east. There we can take a break and have a picnic lunch.” Robin explained, suppressing the growing hope in him.

The ancient map had a few markers that should be representing mountains. From his assumption that the map was for this system, he singled out the planet that would be Rucasur and scanned for recognizable matches with the photos he had. This trio of mountains would be perfect. Two nearly together, one slightly to the east. If they were able to find the third one, then he finally had not only certainty of the map's content, but also a reference point and relation for distance to work with.

Twenty minutes later the Melody II flew a circle over another deep bowl-shaped crater in the ground. It wasn’t as black as the other two and looked just like the earth around it, which explained why he couldn’t make it out on the aerial photos.

Stopping the ship, he initialized the hover mode first and landed shortly after. He opened the hatch to let Patience take out the stuff needed for the picnic and got out of the ship.

Robin simply sat on the rocky ground and opened the Interface to access the map. He also took out a little notepad and began to write down his findings with coordinates, distances and even started a new legend, with his first entry being the symbol now confirmed to represent mountains.

[*** Map Legend ***]

Δ Mountain

✮ unknown

✲ unknown

✳ unknown

✸ unknown

❂ unknown

❉ unknown

‘I’ve got it…I really made it!’ Robin rejoiced and scrolled further to the east on his map, stopping at two different markers he couldn’t identify.

‘Now it’s time to find out what the meaning of these symbols are!’