Starborn: Origin of the Stars

Chapter 16 - It’s Still Powered?



Robin jumped out of the ship, storming to the ruin in front of him. Still not fully able to believe his luck, he began to touch the remains of the old structure.

If this really meant what his brain was telling him, then his map was an incredible treasure. Sure, here on Rucasur none of the marked locations will be left undetected, but there are four more planets in the Mereus Cluster in addition to 11 moons, none of those were as much excavated and industrialized as Rucasur. He should be able to find many untouched territories and therefore maybe even still hidden locations that could house long forgotten buildings from alien races.

Calming his racing mind, he observed the ruins more closely.

There wasn’t much left, not enough to call it a building. A wall here, a pillar there and lots of broken rubble on the floor, spanning over an area of maybe 30 by 50 meters. He turned around to look for Patience and when he saw her also inspecting the ruins, he scrambled over the first wall.

Robin wasn’t an expert for alien cultures by any means, but even he could quickly associate the site to one of the prominent ancient races. The mixture of stone and wood-like biomass, as well as the quite noticeable absence of metal pointed clearly in the direction of the Wuranger.

The Wuranger sites often were already in ruins when found because the biomass became a weak point in their constructions as soon as the energy supply fell short.

Climbing around in the stones for some time, Robin found a good place to sit down and took out his datapad. He wouldn’t find any valuables here, this place was already plundered and stripped clean long before. But that wasn’t why he came here, not today. Robin came to find out the meaning of one more point of interest in his map and such he did.

He added a new entry Wuranger Site in his still short legend under the marker for mountains from yesterday.

[*** Map Legend ***]

Δ Mountain

✮ Wuranger Site

✲ unknown

✳ unknown

✸ unknown

❂ unknown

❉ unknown

Closing his eyes and activating his energy senses, he tried to feel for anything noticeable in his surroundings, but as expected, there were no traces of energy left behind.

Switching over to his Interface, he studied the map in more detail.

The next location they wanted to visit had a different marker, so it shouldn’t be a Wuranger site… maybe some other race or just a new natural landmark? He couldn’t tell and started to look at the three moons of Rucasur.

He still didn’t know yet, which one belonged to which entry on the map, but now that he was at least sure they were the correct moons, he would be able to find out after some more research. One of the moons showed multiple markers for the Wuranger relic sites - that would probably be Ruca I. He heard that they found many old structures over there. After skimming a little longer through the cryptic map, Robin closed his Interface and searched for Patience.

“Hey, how's it going? Have you stumbled upon anything interesting?” he called, after finding her near some collapsed walls to the side.

“Nah, only rubble and junk. Even so, I never stepped in an alien ruin. I think it’s an old Wuranger site, what do you think?”

“Yeah, I came to the same conclusion. Not much left for exciting exploration and making your own story” he teased her, “Shall we look for the other location I heard of? I cannot promise that it’ll be another structure, however. Could also be a natural landmark that was long excavated or destroyed.”

“It’s fine, this was something totally new for me and I already had so much fun, even with the ruin in such a dilapidated state.” Patience answered and made her way back to the ship.

Robin followed her and soon they were back in the skies of Rucasur.

***

“We should reach the area in a few minutes. Keep your eyes open!” Robin informed Patience of their imminent arrival. They hadn’t seen many more greenhouses for half an hour already and were flying with quite a good speed.

Robin realized he had overrated the statement ‘the whole planet outside of cities is filled with greenhouses, production plants and meat farms’.

Sure, there was a nearly uncountable number of them, but the planet was huge and even if they only traveled some small distance in that perspective, it was obvious that a lot of Rucasur was just plain, rocky ground without anything notable. Anyways, that this region wasn’t packed with industrial buildings was a good thing for them. Their chances of finding whatever the marker was pointing to were much higher this way.

Slowing down Melody II, Robin didn’t even have to wait for Patience to notify him. He soon spotted a building in the rocky plains. It was made of a dark black metal, gleaming in the sun. It's trigonal form and the flat roof with little spikes sticking out here and there implied an alien origin. The structure was in a good shape, compared to the Wuranger site they visited before, and only showed few signs of wear and tear.

Like before Robin, could make out an old road leading to the facility, indicating that it was already cleared by the government. But then again, he wasn’t here for riches. He was here to get a better idea of the map in his head and this alien relic site was exactly what he needed!

“Ohhh, that looks interesting! What is that? Do you think it's alien? It doesn’t look like a human design…and why should anyone build such a big structure out here in the middle of nowhere?” Patience instantly fell into her adventure mode, fidgeting impatiently in her seat.

“I have no idea. Never seen anything like that. But I have never really dived into alien cultures, so how should I know?” Robin smiled at her antics, “There seems to be some kind of door on that wall there. I hope we will be able to open it, I would love to take a look inside!”

Circling with the ship once, he steered down and landed a few meters to the side of the door.

He didn’t show it like Patience, but he was as eager as she was. If this was another alien structure, he had to find out from which race it was! That was his chance to take one step further to unraveling the map.

Getting out of the ship, he immediately took his box with the tools from the cargo area and walked over to the door. Touching the cold, black metal he shivered in excitement.

‘Now this is becoming a proper adventure!’ He grinned and inspected the big, rectangular slab in front of him. He couldn’t make out any kind of visual opening mechanism and saw no scanners for keycards or anything. He knocked on the metal, trying to figure out how massive the construction was.

‘Okay, no breaking this open with force!’ He recognized by the deep dull thump he heard.

Maybe he would get some results with an energy scan. Closing his eyes, Robin focused on the door and started to feel for remnant energies. Behind him, he heard Patience approaching, but didn’t lose concentration and kept on.

“Burn in plasma!” he yelped in surprise, “This facility is still running with a proper power supply…how can that be?”

“Are you sure?” Patience chimed in, “This should really be an ancient structure. The road is proof that it’s already been cleared by the officials and I can’t find any reason why they should leave behind any kind of energy source, especially one that has worked for centuries without maintenance. Such a technology would be a huge breakthrough in our studies…”

Robin continued to sense the energy in the wall. In his mind an image of the network behind the door began to form. Blue lines snaked from one side to another, fewer than one would expect from such a high tech-facility. Some came together on the left side of the door, probably the opening mechanism. He followed the lines and found what he assumed to be the access-panel in the wall. He put his hand in that place, stopped his skill and opened his eyes. Inspecting the cold metal once more, now that he knew where to search, he found an inconspicuous looking tile.

“I think I found something, give me a moment.” He told Patience and rummaged through his box, taking out a sharp screwdriver. After some trial and error, he found leverage and pushed the tile off the wall. In the hole that came to view was a numeric keypad, a yellow light blinked and it was apparently waiting for someone to enter a passcode.

Perching down beside him, Patience scratched her head.

“I dunno…that looks like an old school, human keypad.” Excitement began to gleam in her eyes.

“Are we going to break in?”


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