Interstellar Spark

A kilometer-long warship loomed unmarked in the starry void. From its underbelly, a tube unfurled, creeping toward Michael as he drifted weightless in space.

His senses swept the vessel in a heartbeat, and cold dread coiled in his chest. Fifty crew members stirred within—men and women—and among them, four were Augments: three men, one woman.

Augments were humanity's dark progeny, forged by forbidden arts the Federation had long outlawed.

At the Federation's birth, ancient decrees had banned augmentation, a craft stretching back ten thousand years, forbidding the creation of superhuman forms.

Once, this science mended broken bodies, weaving microtech miracles to replace lost flesh.

Later, it birthed warriors—half-human, half-machine—whose chilling power reaped death without mercy.

Now, augmentation shunned metal grafts for enhanced cells, injected to overtake natural ones, sculpting new, unnatural tissues.

Augmented beings could not renew through rebirth technology.

Their long lives depended on fresh cell infusions, a cycle that stripped away their humanity, spawning cold, ruthless shadows who crushed life beneath their heels.

No sane heart could abide them, and so Parliament's ban had rung unanimous.

Outwardly, Augments resembled ordinary folk, save for their icy stares and strange-toned skin, but beneath, they thrummed with devastating strength, unscathed by lesser weapons.

They needed neither food nor breath, sustained only by an annual pulse of Vital Energy, a magnetic quantum stream that carried them through any abyss.

After the Federation rose, a great purge had hunted these hollow wraiths, razing their labs and lore to ash.

Yet unseen hands had guarded the craft in secret.

Augmentation was a one-way fall, sought only by desperate outlaws—killers without law or pity.

Thankfully, its price soared high, and its risks loomed vast, demanding a century for even basic change, with a mere one percent surviving the ordeal. Otherwise, tyrants would have reshaped legions, and the galaxy would drown in ruin.

Four Augments on a single ship? Word of this would ignite the Federation like wildfire.

The tube brushed Michael's head, and a fierce pull dragged him inside.

After a sterile quarantine wash, two pairs of robotic arms floated free, peeling away his helmet, pinning his limbs, and stretching him star-like, bearing him to the main hold. Five men and three women stood ready to judge this stray from the void.

Two men caught his eye—Augments, one towering, one squat, their frames swollen with unnatural might, their skin glinting like polished steel from enhanced cells.

Their eyes shone golden, bright as moons, their faces carved with cruel, twisted smirks.

The tall one, bald and sprawling in a chair, clutched a woman of gaudy beauty, his hands wandering her scantily clad form in shameless revelry.

Michael remained unshaken. Institute records painted Augments as primal brutes, slaves to lust—instinctive predators.

The shorter one lingered apart, his gaze wild with delight, sizing up his new catch.

The other three men hefted weapons Michael knew to fear: nuclear blasters with gaping maws, leveled straight at him.

These guns spun atomic matter into rays of searing ruin. His weary body, though a hundred times tougher than most, could not withstand a single blast.