|
|
Post by Insano-Man on Sept 20, 2018 13:35:04 GMT -5
GROWING UP
A few people in Drassa tried to scout the city for Niza, but she never turned up - not as Niza'Narun, anyways. Left alone was a lost little girl who was still struggling to put the city in perspective with the wasteland. Even with Drassa doing their best, there was always that hole in Ves. She was always distant and fidgety around other people. The handful of humans in the Enclave evoked a kind of primal loathing from her. The wastes didn't stop her from growing up pretty, but her looks never got around her paranoid personality. Ves wasn't a popular girl.
Between her mom's notoriety and her own reputation for being a sourpuss, Ves had a lot of catching-up to do. She wasn't going to be popular, but she could still shoot for respect. She went into training for Drassa's Self-Defense Committee at 16, two years underage. Not one person argued with it; Ves had gone through rifle training at 15 and somehow managed to get an urban combat course a few months later. She scored so high in each, people up the ladder were nervous she'd replace them.
Even then, Ves wasn't all that successful in the SDC. It wasn't that she wasn't an effective soldier. If anything, it was because she was too good. Out in the wastes, there was no capture, arrest, subdue, or any of that. You killed your mark or they'd come back twice as angry the next time. Combine that with the tiny muscles of a young teen and the only option she could see was a bullet in the eye. People were always afraid to put her out on patrol. Most days, they just stuffed her in a guard post on the outskirts of the Enclave.
She made it two years before she gave up on the whole thing. She resigned and went to work finishing her education. People were relieved. Over her career, she'd killed about ten people, only two of which she was ever fully cleared on. Seven nearly got her fired. The last one, not even the gossip in Drassa likes to talk about - even the SDC kept it off the records. Ves didn't get much in the way of fame, but she came away with a clear conscience. Around the same time, she exited Drassa's improv education system with decent scores. It was the kind of fresh start she needed; she had a future to take care of and nothing but free time to spend on it.
|
|
|
|
Post by Insano-Man on Sept 20, 2018 13:35:14 GMT -5
FINDING OUT
Ves didn't exactly leap on it. She didn't care about her future. She hit 18 still with that same hole in her. Her parents were gone and she still didn't know why. It was a feeling she'd gotten used to out in the wastes - and she'd never made peace with it. She piled up her earnings, took in as much information as she could, and set out into Cloneston in October of 1297. She knew her dad was gone. She knew better than to expect much from her mom by then. She just wanted some kind of closure.
It was one of the first times she'd ever gone into the real Cloneston; the big, awful land of humans, clones, and misery. She wasn't daft to what the city was like, but she wasn't a local yet. The worst was getting to grips with the clones. Small arguments popped up everywhere she went, over turf, colors, or species. Arguments turned into fights. Fights turned into police responses. Police responses turned into all-out invasions. Ves still had it in her head that they were something like the Drassa Self-Defense Committee.
When the clones came in ready to kill everyone on the scene, things went bad. Ves was shot and nearly killed at least five times. She was arrested twice by Chuikov's clones. She dodged a stint in a Damsel Center whorehouse only because the Damsel clones were tied up with a gang war. The fact that she was an alien only made every encounter worse. The clones were bumbling idiots around Ves, but never around humans. Learning how they worked was a slow, slippery, uphill battle - and what Ves knew about the reject clones out in the wastes only got in the way.
|
|
|
|
Post by Insano-Man on Sept 20, 2018 13:35:47 GMT -5
DOUBLING DOWN
Nearly half a year later, she got to Westbridge. It wasn't the place a redworlder should've been. Even relative to the rest of Cloneston, it was a slum. It was a nest of stripped-out tram cars tucked under a ramp, leading up to a tiny plate no one cared about. It was populated by around 300 squatters and lowlives - all human and no redworlders. In spite of all that, it was where "Yari'Solah" was holed up - with a 9-year-old daughter. Ves didn't really need to guess at anything. She knew how to track her mom down - when the city wasn't trying its best to kill her.
This time, it wasn't enough. When Ves arrived, "Yari" had been dead for a little less than a month. Her cause of death is all up to guesswork. Drug overdose, clone shootouts, or just the wasteland catching up with her - no one's figured it out. Ves never saw Niza's body. What she did find was the proof she needed. Waiting there was another orphan with glowing eyes; Amin'Solah, halfway between blank shock and crippling grief. Ves didn't stay there for longer than a day. She grabbed Amin and left for Drassa. She'd found the closure she was looking for - just not the kind she wanted.
There was still a good person inside Ves somewhere. She wanted to help her little sister grow up in a stable home, in a good community. She'd picked that up from her parents and Drassa. She just wasn't any good at it - and Amin didn't want it. By the time they walked into the Enclave, Amin woke up. She realized she'd been abducted. She bucked and ran, nearly fled Drassa altogether. When the SDC tracked her down and sent her back to Ves, things didn't go so well. Ves didn't know how to be a parent. She didn't want to be a parent - she was mourning her mother just like Amin was. She just didn't see any other choice for her sister.
In a way, Ves looped in on her own past. She'd become the Webleys of days gone by. She'd cast Amin as her younger self. She treated the girl like a problem thrown into her lap while Drassa did the bulk of the work in raising her. True to her part, Amin pulled away fast and hard. A few months in, everyone - Ves included - accepted that she'd become the neighborhood's child. She was just Ves's roommate. With Niza, people weren't expecting anything. With Ves, still in her right mind, the burden didn't shift the same way. Everyone else expected her to keep Amin fed, clothed, and sheltered.
|
|
|
|
Post by Insano-Man on Sept 20, 2018 13:35:59 GMT -5
SHAPING UP
The older sister managed, but it was an awkward process. Her only skills revolved around killing people and not dying - everything else was just fluff that only mattered out in the scums. She tried for the Defense Committee again, but that only lasted a few months before she was forced to resign. She tried playing bogeyman for the night watch, but the pay wasn't enough to keep things together. A couple dozen odd jobs later, she found something that finally worked; the mercenary trade. She was billed as a sentry and enforcer for some of VANDAL's low-key operations in Drassa.
It was the perfect job for Ves. It put food on the table, kept her close to familiar territory, and played to her best skills. If people knew who she was, they backed off in a hurry. If they didn't, she was the muscle no one expected; a quiet young woman hiding SDC hand-to-hand training and a wasteland course in marksmanship. Every job went by without a single problem. VANDAL's middlemen took notes, passed them up, and promoted Ves up the chain. Her pay doubled by the end of 1298. By the time 1300 rolled in, she wasn't living in a squatter's shanty anymore. She owned a decent apartment just off of Drassa's center - and she had her eyes on a suite in the plate above.
It was a dream for Amin, too. Her big sister was gone most of the time. Ves didn't have the time to pretend to be her parent. She was busy getting better and better offers from VANDAL and Jimmy. She was busy pulling jobs that even the folks back in her hometown heard about. Amin turned into a little nightmare whenever her half-sister was gone - but, by then, Ves's hands were clean of the girl. Somewhere around 1301, she was hooked deeper into the mercenary market than she was in Drassa. She spent most of her time on security gigs or low-level hits. For every one day she was keeping an eye on Amin at home, she spent three somewhere out in Cloneston.
Going professional meant Ves had to step up her game. If she wanted bigger and better things, she needed bigger and badder skills. The cash pool she had from all her overwatch jobs gave her the chance to invest. She put her mind to cyberintelligence, broadened her mechanical knowledge, and dug deeper into advanced marksmanship and gunfighting. She picked up English as a second language and Pedronese as a third. Around the end of 1302, Ves had honed so many of her basic skills that she was something like a one-woman army. She could do a little bit of everything on any kind of job - even if she was just by herself.
|
|
|
|
Post by Insano-Man on Sept 20, 2018 13:36:12 GMT -5
SHIPPING OUT
All that was put to the test around September of that year. Ves had been part of plenty of high-class jobs, but she'd never hit the big leagues. She'd cased jewelry stores and hit the dirt in a few shootouts with Chuikov goons and Jimmy clones, but she'd never been in on an honest, genuine heist. When VANDAL decided it was time, he made sure it was something she'd remember. Waiting for Ves was one of her closest relatives; Raki'Sakazzah, better known as Sevex at the time.
The job was a classic Cloneston heist. All accounted for, they had a four-man crew of seasoned professionals. The score was an S&C-backed corporate office hiding a small cybernetics research lab. Inside were reverse-engineered prototypes VANDAL wanted to keep to himself. The team was going to go in, grab the gear, and steal as much data as they could. Once all that was done, they were going to leave a little parting gift; nerve gas with a corrosive twist, perfect for a hard purge.
Plan A didn't go so well. The job was a setup - not by VANDAL, but by Jimmy. He'd been going after Raki for about two years running, trying to nab him in every job he took. With a bit of the wrong intel in the right place, Chuikov knew he was coming. As soon as they were inside, clones came down on the crew from behind. Up front was a wall of S&C guards, juiced up and ready for them. Things got messy in a hurry. Two of the crew went down fast, leaving Ves and Raki alone. Ves dodged death, but she didn't dodge bullets. She took two in her left shoulder, one in her right, and shrapnel stuck in just about everything. Rumor had it she was still setting off metal detectors almost a decade later.
|
|
|
|
Post by Insano-Man on Sept 20, 2018 13:36:20 GMT -5
TEAMING UP
Somehow, in all that shooting and bleeding, she and Raki managed to survive. Not only did they survive, but they led Chuikov's henchmen on an hours-long shootout across the offices. Ves knew how to stay low and fight dirty. Raki knew how to hijack clones and send goons the wrong way. Maybe it wasn't enough to break loose, but it was enough to get where they needed to be. For hour one, it was just about staying alive; moving through the offices to better positions and less crossfires. By hour two, they were headed for the lab.
There was a small problem when they showed up. They'd gotten there late. Someone had already hit the place - and they were still there. Right there was Vincent Le DuBuon and his crew, bagging up the prototypes and getting ready to move. Some people say he'd hit the place on purpose, to try to nab Raki as new blood for his team. It didn't matter much for Ves. She was just about dead by the time DuBuon entered the picture. S&C had wised up and pushed in to corner the two teams in the labs. Things were getting messier by the minute.
Somehow, with only about five people on the job, they made it out. No losses, no casualties - Ves didn't even have to take another bullet to make it onto the streets. Delivery on the nerve gas was sloppy, but it was enough to satisfy the contract. Chuikov couldn't staff the building for months after. Raki and DuBuon started grooming a partnership after the job. Ves took her cut and went back to Drassa with a bad taste in her mouth. It was her first major job. She'd nearly wound up in an S&C morgue over it. She needed a break - maybe even from the whole city.
|
|
|
|
Post by Insano-Man on Sept 20, 2018 13:36:29 GMT -5
RUNNING FREE
Ves took a few months to recover. She didn't spend the time sitting on her hands. She went back to school to touch up her skills and study up on politics. She charted the city and took trams to places she didn't recognize. She wound up just about everywhere. She wasn't doing all this so she could stick around - if anything, it was just the opposite. Ves wanted to know where the trams went down. She wanted to know where the elevators came up. She wanted to know how to get back down to the bottom of the city - and back up if something went wrong.
Ves had seen enough of Cloneston and the mercenary lifestyle to know it was going to get her killed sooner or later. Her job with Raki drove that home. She wanted out. Not just from the city, but from everything to do with it. She'd learned there was somewhere past the wasteland. She wanted to get there. That place with green trees, clean air, where people weren't trying to kill her every time she stepped outside. She pulled together everything she could. In June of 1303, she left without a single goodbye. It took about a month before anyone realized she wasn't coming back.
Ves made it out of the city without too many stories to tell, but the wasteland hadn't changed. It was still trying to kill her. It was just a bit more honest about the whole thing. The mutants were still there, collecting bones and making tents out of skin. The half-finished clones were still there, playing cops-and-robbers out in the badlands. Some of the same towns and bandit camps she'd visited in her childhood were still there, still scraping by. A few even recognized her.
Somewhere along the way, she got lost. Ves still knew how to navigate the scums, but something just wasn't clicking. She wound up just like her parents, trying so hard to walk a straight line out of the place that it turned into a giant circle. Instead of going east, like she'd planned, she ended up on the opposite side of the city, trapped in the western wastes. She didn't even realize where she was until a month in. Whenever she tried to swing back in the right direction, something got in the way. A mutant horde, a pack of monsters, or bandits looking for a new hood ornament. Whenever it seemed like the way was finally clear, a storm rode in. The wastes wanted her back.
|
|
|
|
Post by Insano-Man on Sept 20, 2018 13:36:37 GMT -5
RISING UP
It was around month three of her stay that Ves found a town by the name of Dirtville. That was its official name. That was its only name. It was a ragged little mess of shanties and mud huts out in a big stretch of drylands. Something that wanted to be a farm kept it from turning into a boneyard. Some of the more placid mutants of the wastes lived there, minding their own business. When Ves wandered in, they didn't pay her much mind. They didn't even try to steal a tibia while she wasn't looking. It was as good a place as any to make camp, so she stuck around.
Not a day into her stay, a warband showed up at the town's doorstep. Mutants and marauders, men and monsters - not even Ves remembers their name. All that mattered was what they wanted; Ves's scalp. She knew better than to camp where someone could find her, so all Dirtville could do was plead ignorance. The warlord didn't care. He had the town razed and half the inhabitants murdered. A quarter went off as slaves. The rest were left to starve in what was left. Meanwhile, in a roost somewhere south of the town, a pair of white dots watched the whole exchange take place.
When Ves came to investigate, Dirtville's survivors were too broken to blame her. They didn't know what to do anymore. Ves had an answer. She might've gone merc, but she hadn't lost her conscience - most of it, at least. She could still feel guilt. She could still feel rage, too. She let those sparks jump to the survivors. She talked about the slaves, told them their families were still out there, and dragged them into a desperate facsimile of a people's army. It worked. Dirtville - or what was left of it - was furious. They grabbed their junk guns and their bone spears. They ran straight at the warband. Ves went in right alongside them.
|
|
|
|
Post by Insano-Man on Sept 20, 2018 13:36:46 GMT -5
TRIPPING UP
It didn't work. Dirtville was still Dirtville. The mutants didn't know how to fight. They were about a tenth as large as the horde that'd hit them. Ves wasn't a leader, either. All she could do was snipe from the flanks. A day of fighting went by that ended with Dirtville dead to the last. Even the slaves ended up as corpse-tents when the warlord took it personally. Only a few were left alive, mostly small children and pets. Ves pulled back. She realized what she'd done.
That only made her more angry. She kept following the warband from a distance. Maybe Ves wasn't a leader, but she was still a sniper. She knew which mutants were in charge. She knew where the warlord was sleeping. She had all the ammo she needed. She wasn't going to let them off that easy. She tracked her targets, plotted their probable path, and went to work. Days rolled over into weeks. Humans died first, mutants second. First it was just a few priests, then it picked up to nobles and chieftains. If someone had a brain, Ves got rid of it.
By about the second or third week, the warlord was just another body left behind. The warband was running. It was breaking up as it went. Whenever it wasn't Ves, other mutant tribes were pulling it apart every time it tried to make camp. She'd satisfied that anger, that hate deep inside of her. People in the wastes were going to remember it. The survivors took back stories people had heard before; a pair of white dots, turning skulls into fireworks from halfway across the wastes.
|
|
|
|
Post by Insano-Man on Sept 20, 2018 13:36:54 GMT -5
THE WHITE HUNTER
There was still the matter of Ves's conscience. She hadn't accomplished anything. Another fellowship of freaks would come a year, a month, or even a week later. She'd just gotten a lot of people killed over nothing. All she could do was look after the survivors. The mutants had left the kids behind when they ran. They were about a dozen pre-teens with half-melted faces and a few snake-dog-things they kept as pets. They were scared to death of the six-foot-tall alien with fire in her eyes, but they had enough sense to know better. The wastes weren't going to be a better shepherd.
Ves took them along for a month and change. For her, she was just trying to find them somewhere that'd take them in. For the kids, she ended up something like an adoptive parent. She still wasn't a good mother, but she knew how to be nice - usually. The constant threat of death was a good distraction, too. Whenever one of the little monsters found a town or a tribe that wanted them, they begged to stay with the redworlder. Ves knew better. Bit by bit, the group thinned out. She even managed to get rid of all the dog-snakes without losing a finger.
Eventually, she was left with two siblings who looked something like upright crocodiles. Passing them off on a town was close to impossible. Ves settled on an "easy" out; she was going to take them home. Maybe not to Drassa and definitely not as her own kids, but somewhere in Cloneston that wouldn't turn them into shoes right away. By then, she'd gotten tired of the wastes. She'd had enough psychological trauma for one outing. She still hadn't gotten loose, either.
Ves had kicked off a legend by splitting the horde, but her journey back to the city was what really got people talking. She was still determined to find the kids a home in the wastes - mutants didn't get very far in the city of clones. She stopped at every town along the way, trying to find someone who didn't cringe at the sight of the two brothers. She didn't find anyone, but she did get people talking. Wandering along with a pair of orphaned children was the lightning of the drylands, the motherless sniper who'd come back to set things right. The legend blazed out of control. By the time Ves was back in Cloneston, people out in the wastes knew her by a different name. She wasn't Ves'Narun anymore. She was the White Hunter.
|
|
|
|
Post by Insano-Man on Sept 20, 2018 13:37:04 GMT -5
TRYING AGAIN
Ves was able to get the kids back, but that, as far as she was concerned, was the end of their story. She pawned them off on the first sympathetic orphanage she could find. She didn't look back. She went straight to Drassa to shake off the slime. She had rent to catch up on and Amin's reign of terror to deal with - or pretend to, at least. She'd tried as hard as she could to break free. She couldn't. All that was left was to pick up her mercenary career and try to save up for her next trip.
A few years passed by without much in the way of curveballs. Ves had moved on up as a contractor. People came to trust her. High-profile jobs flew by with her name on the roster. Every once in a while, DuBuon and Sakazzah were on the same list. She worked for just about everyone, usually VANDAL or Jimmy when she wasn't looking for something new. She even signed on with Damsel Center to test the waters. She lost her nerve when she realized she was abducting clones - not people - for prostitution.
Something odd came up in all those years. In November of 1304, the Webleys turned up dead. They hadn't lost to wasteland cancer or a gang brawl. They'd been shot dead in their own home and left there until their teenage daughter came home to find them. People out in the wider city might wonder what happened, but, when the news got back to Drassa, no one was asking questions. Nobody was surprised. Ves never talked about it. How it went down or why it went down are both details she's held onto.
In all that time, Ves was dipping in and out of the wastes. She was charting the scums for safe paths and easy roads. She was pinpointing every town and hideaway from Cloneston to the western coastline. Every once in a while, she'd try again. She'd head for the east, get kicked off her trail by mutants and gunships, and wind up back in the city. Every time she went out, people realized the White Hunter wasn't a myth. Every time she slunk back, people started to forget - and everything she'd done only added to the legend.
|
|
|
|
Post by Insano-Man on Sept 20, 2018 13:37:14 GMT -5
FORMING UP
1304 and onward came in with something new - sort of. Raki'Sakazzah had been profiling people in Drassa for something. Most people didn't know what. Most didn't even know he was testing them. Ves did. She was one of the first people the Fishbowl went to. He was pulling together his own outfit, something to match his ambition. He needed people he could trust and rely on. Most of those people were redworlders. Ves was around the top of that list. She wasn't all that crazy about the idea.
Ves had a rocky history with Sakazzah. She might've been his cousin, but just about every job she'd ever done with him ended with a new bullet in a new place. Raki always had a talent for throwing her into the fire. Something with him at the helm sounded like a road straight to Hell. Ves went along with his exams, took scores with Raki while Raki kept score, but that was it. When Sakazzah pulled the curtains back, Ves wasn't even in the audience anymore. She turned him down right away. A true waster valued her independence.
A couple of years passed by. Things got bigger and bigger as time went on. Top players went to Raki's auditions. Plenty of them stayed on. Most of them started scaling back their personal work to get ready for the Fishbowl's debut. Even Amin managed to get an apprenticeship with Raki - and that only made it twice as awkward for her half-sister roommate. It was getting harder and harder for Ves to stay solo. It was making less and less sense, too. By the time 1306 hit, she was about the only person related to the Fishbowl who wasn't in on the plan.
By about February 3rd, Ves caved in. She'd hit a dry season with her own contracts. No more big scores, just small-time security and recon jobs. Bills were getting paid, but her big wasteland expeditions were getting harder to justify. Raki was her only shot at going back to the sweet stuff. When she put her resumé in, she was on the team right away. Maybe Ves had given him the cold shoulder, but the Fishbowl wasn't stupid. She was his cousin and one of the best solo operators in the city. She didn't have to say much.
|
|
|
|
Post by Insano-Man on Sept 20, 2018 13:37:22 GMT -5
THROWING DOWN
June 1st of that same year announced it to the world; the Fair Hand was ready for prime time. Ves was in on their first hit. She and around fourteen other people hit a series of Lamellar Transit Services convoys for guns, ammo, and other hardware. The job didn't exactly go to plan. Two people wound up dead, another eight wounded - much to her lack of surprise, Ves was one of them. Clones, LTS reinforcements, and local Jimmy goons cracked down hard when the redworlders took their marks. Crossfires and news crews were everywhere. For any other gang, it would've been a bust.
For the Fair Hand, it was still a win. Each team managed to pull something back. Each score paid back the blood cost and more. For Ves, it was about as she expected, but the city was stunned. It was something as funny as it was impressive. It was an outfit of the best alien mercenaries in Cloneston - all cousins, husbands, aunts, and sisters. People back in Drassa didn't even blink over that tidbit. The Self-Defense Committee was shaking in its boots, but the common folk were cheering it all on. Ves came home to find out she was some kind of celebrity.
It wasn't a pleasant surprise. All that attention wasn't for Ves. Be it the badlands or the mean streets, fame was the kind of thing that got a good merc killed. Fame put more snipers out there waiting for you. Fame got Damsel Center edgy to pull you into bed. Ves had managed to keep her reputation to her profession before, but the Fair Hand put it out there in the open. She wasn't used to it. She didn't want it. When it all started weighing down on her, she left Drassa. She moved in with the Fair Hand full-time. She kept Drassa in her name, but was it.
On top of that, Ves pushed for deeper jobs. Not just bigger scores, but things further down into the city's depths. She wanted to get away from the life above, melt into the underbelly for a while. Raki gave her the okay, found her some work, and let her off to make trouble. Her contracts were still on the Fair Hand's ledger, but everything about her work was lone wolf to the bone. Every once in a while, Vincent Le DuBuon tapped her for something off-the-wall in the city's basement. Ves only came up for air to help out on major Fair Hand jobs.
|
|
|
|
Post by Insano-Man on Sept 20, 2018 13:37:52 GMT -5
BREAKING UP
Amin'Solah hit adulthood with the Kalav'Lees the same year the gang got started. By then, she'd already moved out of Ves's apartment and into the Fair Hand's main safehouse. It wasn't a great time for Ves's relationship with her; they'd already fostered a kind of mutual hatred over years of problems. Ves was never there to help Amin, Amin was always causing trouble Ves had to deal with. Amin shot straight up in the Fair Hand's hierarchy without a single job behind her belt. Ves had gone through years of hard fighting for her spot.
Narun wasn't there for Solah's debut job, when the Dough Man reared his flabby head in November, but there was something special about it. Ves had seen all kinds of awful mutants out in the wastes. She'd grown up there. When Amin came back, so terrified she wouldn't speak to anyone for a week, Ves didn't have anything to say to her. She didn't have any compassion. She had a special kind of fear for Ezimat, the one-and-only Leather Man, but nothing for her half-sister. It was another year before the two were put on the same contract. It didn't end well.
Meanwhile, down in the sewage runoff and AI cores, Ves was still at it. She was still looking for a way out. She'd told it plain to Raki; if she ever managed to find the edge of the wastes, she'd run and never look back. The two had a special relationship over the matter. It wasn't pretty, but it worked. Raki held onto Ves's property as collateral in case she didn't come back. At the same time, he never tried to rein her in. If she left, it was on her to stay alive. Ves didn't argue with it. If she ever got loose, anything back in Cloneston was just history.
|
|
|
|
Post by Insano-Man on Sept 20, 2018 13:38:08 GMT -5
BURNING DOWN
Three years rolled by with dozens of scores and dozens of wasteland hikes. Ves never found her way out of the scums. She never much got rid of the city, either; the Kalav'Lees pulled her up more and more for bigger and bigger jobs. She had the kind of experience the whole Fair Hand couldn't get enough of. If they needed a way to get in quietly, she could navigate the sewers and bottom-streets better than anyone. If they needed to lay low, she could take them out to the dark spots in the wasteland. Sometimes, it was just Ves by herself, running raids from drainage pipes and dead tram lines. For Raki and everyone else, she was the "Fair Shadow" - their invisible muscle stalking the city's underbelly.
March of 1309 hit like a sledgehammer. Ves was resting off another badlands excursion when Chuikov came down on the Fair Hand, at the Raffemaster Industrial Plate. Clones and goons swarmed in with gunships on the prowl everywhere. Things were bad from the beginning - then VANDAL's thugs came in. A few hit a mine out in one of the tunnels leading into the Fair Hand's main compound. Ves and a few others went in to mop up the leftovers, but the damage was done. They'd tipped off S&C. Things were going to get worse.
Ves was there on the frontlines through the whole siege. S&C hated every second of it. She was living up to the legend of the White Hunter the whole time, showing up her old self from the Dirtville days. Helmets popped with every shot. Officers and squad leaders died faster than the people they were supposed to be leading. Every once in a while, the clones brought in a heavy combat drone. They all left with shattered optics or split gun barrels. Once the fighting took to the tunnels, Ves was still there, picking prime targets from dark corners and opportune vents. She was set on fire at least twice. All it did was make her mad.
Hate and rage weren't enough to save Dirtville. They weren't enough to save the Fair Hand, either. Tunnel by tunnel, they were losing. People were dying for every inch of turf. Whenever Ves was back for ammo, she had to stitch someone back together just to get out the door again. Her trips out were getting shorter every time. Her limbs were nothing but lead by the time they let the clones out. It was a miracle the girl could still walk, let alone hold a rifle.
Things got complicated when S&C broke through. Ves was in and out of the infirmary - sometimes, treating people while she was being treated herself. At some point after the Fair Hand's defenses collapsed, she was caught by an S&C team and cornered in a makeshift triage room. No one in that room survived, but, somehow, Ves got free. She ran past, took a shot in just about everything, and sprinted to the only exit she could think of. Somewhere along the way, she ran into Amin - bleeding out and two seconds away from being turned into a grease spot on an S&C exoskeleton.
|
|
