Vi
The stark gunmetal grey interior of their KN37 gunship, or the Dagger, was the closest thing Vi had to a home. Running up the rear gangplank after a long op or during a fast extraction? Heavenly. Especially when the Dagger comes in hot. Overwhelming firepower always put Vi in a good mood, and the two 40mm auto coil-cannons definitely delivered. They could liquify a building in under a couple seconds if needed and provided that warm homey feeling for Vi.
A small, four room ship, the Dagger served as Vi and Vic’s mobile base of operations. Each of them had their own cabin, which included separate wall armories, sleeping quarters, hygiene facilities and, most importantly, augmentation workshops. The ship’s cargo hold served as their maglev bike dock and occasionally a makeshift confinement area if needed to transport live targets. Finally, the cockpit contained all the piloting apparatus and the ship’s autopilot computer, as well as a makeshift ops center for mission planning. All in all, not a bad setup considering it was crammed into a military-grade gunship intended to carry up to 16 troops on short hops.
It was the cockpit floor that Vi ended up dumping her weapons and gear onto when they boarded.
“Come on Vi, you know that’s one of my pet peeves.” said Vic with more than a hint of disdain.
“Hey, who carried the particle drill the whole time?” said Vi, as she stripped the armor and projector plates off of her bodysuit.
“And who carried the ascension gear?”
“Fair. I was gonna move it in a minute anyways. We just need to get off the planet first.”
Vi sat down in the pilot’s seat and Vic climbed up behind her to the copilot’s seat.
“We’re going to Orendali next, right?”
“Yeah. Resort world, so hopefully it’s not as nasty as this last job.”
“Hopefully.”
Vi put the ship into autopilot, letting it ascend out of the ashen atmosphere on it’s own. The ship’s trio of thrusters made short work of the flight and soon they were staring down on the steel grey ball of a planet they’d just left.
“That is one ugly world.”
“Yup. Way too much pollution.”
Vi spun the ship around so that they were facing the void of space and plotted the course to Orendali.
“Looks like the trip should take about seven realspace days, or two and a half hours Ether time. Opening tear.”
The space in front of the ship suddenly peeled apart, opening a hole into a true void. Vi switched on their displacement shielding, then let the autopilot take them through.
“Goodbye Mordian, Orendali here we come. Time for a looooong shower.”
“I’m going to catch some sleep, Vi, then I’ll go inventory our weaponry.”
Vic hopped down from the copilot’s seat and meandered off to his cabin, casually kicking over the particle drill on the floor as he left.
“Pick this stuff up before you hit the shower!” He yelled back.
Vi ignored him and stared out of the cockpit at the insanity of ether travel. Vi loved to watch the temporal streamers as they traveled through the ether. To her, it looked as if they were falling into a kaleidoscope, the fractal geometry continuously opening up in their path. Vic always said that he just saw a single point of light that slowly grew larger until they arrived, almost like a tunnel. Some say that the way you see the ether tells you how you will die. Vi was a little skeptical. It’s just light phenomena occurring between the Li-Wal shielding and the ether.
She wasn’t really one for the science of ether travel, but from what she could gather the sling drive in the ship essentially tore a hole in the universe. Travelling through the hole brought the ship into another dimension, the ether, where time and space are fluid. Then you simply fly to your destination in time and space. Sounded simple enough to Vi, anyways. There were some things you couldn’t do, such as fly to a point in time that had already occurred. Additionally, the technology was limited to a few days into the future at a time, otherwise the integrity of the Li-Wal shielding would break down and the ship would be shredded.
“You good, Vi?”
Vi jolted in surprise.
“Yeah, Vic. Just thinking about how getting spread across space and timelike some sort of fleshy temporal pinata would be a nasty way to go.”
“You know the ether always has that effect on you.”
“Yeah, but I kinda have to fly the ship through the crossing point. Can’t really avoid looking.”
“I can always take us through, Vi. I’m not that bad of a pilot.”
“Right. I think it’s safer if I fly us through and occasionally space out.”
Vic laughed and shook his head.
“You’ll never let Illia 9 go, will you?”
Vi hopped out of the pilot’s seat and started to walk to her cabin, grabbing her gear off the floor as she went.
“Nope! You managed to crash a Corbat Vault truck through the bank vault. With me on the front. Probably not gonna let that one go for as long as I have these legs.”
Vic’s eyes flicked down to Vi’s legs, eyeing the prosthetics with a tinge of regret.
“Hey, I was just pulling your leg. These things are great! Without ‘em I wouldn’t be able to do this!” Vi threw herself into a backflip and activated the electromagnets embedded in her feet, affixing herself to the ceiling. “These legs are way better than normal legs, Vic. Plus I probably would’ve been forced into augmentation anyways. You know how the Guild is.”
Vic looked at his arms, both of which rippled with black synthetic muscle bundles.
“That I do,” he sighed, “That I do.”
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Vi gathered up the gear strew about the cockpit floor and started waddling to her cabin.
“I’m gonna put this stuff away, Vic. Catch you in a couple hours to plan this next job?”
“Yeah, I’ll see you then.”
She turned and kicked the bulkhead next to her cabin door, causing it to sputter open. As the door slid aside with a soft hiss, Focus by Hocus Pocus blared into the cockpit.
“You need to fix that door. Going to die in an explosive decompression someday. And turn the music down!” Shouted Vic.
“Yeeeah, but I like the new kick to open feature!” Replied Vi as she disappeared into her cabin, loose particle drill swinging from her arms.
Vic shook his head, a small smile cresting the edges of his face before he turned and stared out into the Ether, a wistful look clouding his eyes.
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Vi’s cabin was a bit more decorative than the drab grey that populated the rest of the ship. She’d taken the liberty of painting the walls a deep purple, with a dark blue ceiling and floor. Crammed into the tiny 6 x 10 ft^2 room was Vi’s entire personal life. Set into the back wall was her bed, adorned with pink and white sheets. The fore wall contained a small office space outfitted with a workshop set into the rear wall. The aft wall contained her equipment rack which consisted of a frame for her armor surrounded by weapon mounts.
Vi dragged all of her equipment to the center of the room and started to inspect each piece, her eyes scanning for compromising damage. Her Que-Star revolver was first, of course. She’d taken the sleek chrome weapon off an assassin a few years back and found she absolutely loved the thing. From its pretty glowing violet accents to its raw destructive power, it satisfied all of Vi’s categories for the perfect close combat backup weapon. Once fired, the power shell in the weapon would unleash a violet shotgun blast of plasma out of the barrel, vaporising anything in its path.
Vi gave the Que-Star a quick wipe down after deeming the weapon immaculate, then pulled out the next piece of gear: Her Enforcer sniper rifle. Unlike the Que-Star, Vi wasn’t a big fan of the Enforcer. Shooting things from far away wasn’t her strong suit. Plus the blocky design of the enforcer wasn’t exactly appealing, nor was the boring gunmetal color. More Vic’s style to hide and shoot people with an ugly weapon.
Hanging up the Enforcer on her weapon rack, Vi moved on to her armor. The Shimmer suits were actually two independent suit systems working in tandem: The protective armor and the holoprojector plates. Each armor plate had a reactive component that utilized electromagnetic fields to deflect plasma and slug projectiles before they impacted the plate itself. The ceramic plates themselves were fairly standard, able to withstand a single low velocity rail rifle round or absorb midrange plasma blast. Not a whole lot of protection; however, that’s where the projector plates come in. Each projector plate allowed Vi to project photoreal images over herself and onto the environment around her, enabling her to go invisible or alter the environment to confuse her opponents. The built in speakers acted as further disorientation, blasting music at a concussing 160 decibels.
Yeah, Vi liked to rock out. Usually she’d roll metal, though her opponents probably didn’t really register what it was. The next piece of gear she inspected, her helmet allowed her to hear normally in spite of the blasting music. She put it on and flipped through the various filters it had. Infrared, low-light, electromagnetic and black-light. She tried not to use that black light filter too much. Gross.
The rest of the gear Vi ran through quickly. Particle drill. Still makes holes in stuff. Ascension gear. Still holds her full body weight. Grenade dispensers. Still dispenses grenades.
Tired.
Vi stifled an enormous yawn and eyed the rest of her gear.
It’d get taken care of at some point. She tossed the rest of her gear in a pile by her weapon rack and shut her music off as she rolled onto her bed.
Spectres took on difficult jobs, that was a given. But Mordian had been something else. Everything was going smooth right up until they’d eliminated their target, Major Marshall, by collapsing his 600 story skyscraper directly on top of him. After that everything went off the deep end. Every kid on the planet and their uncle came after the two Spectres, delaying their extraction by two weeks as they fought their way to the only viable landing zone within a hundred kilometers--The roof of the Grand Maul Hotel.
Which is where they’d encountered that team of Executors. They’d put up a better effort than anyone else on the planet, she’d give them that, but Vi had cut them down with reasonable ease. Something about their presence on the planet bothered her. It wasn’t like them to engage without having massive fire superiority. Twelve plus a makeshift gunship against two Spectres was hardly a fair fight.
Maybe it was the uneven odds throwing her off that had caused her to let one escape. Vi wasn’t one to preach about fair fights, but she held the Executors in higher regard than the average opponent. She expected at least a challenge from them. Not whatever that was.
Vic might have a point.
Making a mistake like that wasn’t like her. In her half a decade as a Spectre, she’d never let a single witness live. Bent the rules somewhat to make sure innocent people didn’t see her, yes, but never allowed anyone to walk away with an image of her in their minds. Definitely had never let someone just walk off the battlefield like that.
It was a deficiency. Something she needed to get out of her system before it got them killed. Vi got up and walked towards the door. She needed to tell Vic that they needed to turn around.
And yet...
Some little part of her mind made her stop at the door, her hand hovering over the control panel. Did it really hurt them to leave someone alive? Mordian would certainly kill him eventually even if they didn’t go after him. And if he did somehow make it offworld and came after them, he’d come to them. It’d be less work to kill him at that point.
Vi walked back to her bed and sat on the edge.
Maybe she’d tell Vic later. After Orendali. Better to be focused on the task at hand. Vi’s eyelids slowly, slowly drifted down over her visio-
Beep beep beep!
“Vi! Get up here!”
Vi opened her eyes and let out a sigh. Couldn’t catch a break.
“Coming!”
She dashed into the cockpit, tripping over the gear she’d left on the floor of her room. When she hopped into the pilots seat, the display was awash with warning lights.
“We just got pulled out of the Ether,” said Vic, “K-Class Interdictor Vermilion Night approaching from our left flank.”
“Where did that come from? When we entered the Ether the space around Mordian was clear.”
“We haven’t traversed any distance yet, just time. It’s been about a day in realspace, 20 minutes for us.”
Vi glanced over at the signal map by the left arm of her chair and noted the orange orb indicating the frigate approaching from their rear.
“Should I stretch my legs? Or are we going to do the talking thing?”
“The frigate is sending out a pair of fighters. Hit it, Vi. I’ll do my best to keep my lunch down.”
“Heard.” Said Vi, as she selected an EDM track and cranked the cockpit stereo volume.
Vi fired the front vectoring thrusters on full, rotating their ship 180 degrees so that they were flying backwards and upside down away from the approaching fighters. She fired off a pair of concussion missiles to keep the fighters off her back, then used the starboard thrusters to send the Dagger into a drift around the interdictor. Once the Dagger was perpendicular with the Vermilion Night, Vi hit the main thrusters and sent the Dagger on a spiraling strafing run.
The Vermilion Night shrugged off the onslaught of 40mm slugs and concussion missiles with ease, its high energy oscillating electromagnetic shielding flaring a brilliant blue on each impact. The rounds served their purpose however, by blinding the frigate’s close range weapons just long enough for the Dagger to slingshot past the Vermilion Night and into a high orbit around Mordian.
“Vi, are we disengaging?” said Vic, who was looking slightly green in the copilot’s chair.
“Vic, we aren’t going to win a fight with a K-Class Interdictor. Those things are designed to blockage planets. Which is probably why it’s here.”
“Fair.”
“We’re going to sling around the planet and land somewhere on the other side to lose those fighters. Not sure how to deal with the Interdictor though.”
“You can’t just run the blockade?”
“Unless you want to fly at sub-light speeds to the next star system.”
“Point taken. Mordian has orbital defense installations on both poles. If we can gain access to them, we should be able to kill anything in orbit.”
“And you know this how?”
“Pre-mission research from the job we just finished.”
“Nerd.”
A playful kick hit the side of her head.
“Turned out to be useful. The guns are controlled by the Savart house. Marking the nearest landing zone.”
“Alright. Taking us in. Again, unfortunately.”