The Pilot
| Callsign | Origin | Age | Sex |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vector | Luna | 34 | F |
Every professional crew has a Pilot. Not because a pilot is necessary to fly a spaceship — the ship does that — but because sooner or later you need someone to fly the ship. By hand. Without assistance. Systems haywire, sensors jammed, hull venting, or an assistant nobody trusts anymore. This crew has seen it happen enough times to know it’s not a risk; it’s an eventuality.
On a mission, the pilot wears the “Tiger” — an elegant, hard-space-enhanced take on an MMA fighting kit. The suit makes her a walking close-quarters menace, from hand-to-hand tactics to ship-side corridor matches.
Sheet
- Class: The Pilot (Skill: Vehicle Handling)
- Initial Attributes: Mind 12, Ghost 8, Body 6
- Gear Loadout:
- TGI-22 “Tiger” Close Combat EXO: FRM 6 / SYS 12, AV 2 — grants Close Combat Tactics while piloted; climbs on magnetic + gecko grapplers, no thrusters. [Binds 3 Ghost + 1 Mind while piloted]
- Right hand, Assault hardpoint — Plasma Lance: DV 3, Piercing, recoilless twin-tube breaching gun. Single Use — grants Breaching for that one firing; mind the backblast. [Hardpoint-mounted — no Pilot Binding]
- Left hand, Support hardpoint — Personal Defence Droid Array: autonomous tazer drones screening Close range, 1 Harm nonlethal. [Hardpoint-mounted — no Pilot Binding]
- EVA Suit (Workhorse): AV 1 (Physical). [Binds 2 Body]
- Micro-Missile Pistol: DV 2. [Binds 1 Mind]
- Neural Link: data port — jack into the helm. [Binds 3 Ghost]
- Arthropod Sensors: personal sensor array. [Binds 1 Mind]
- TGI-22 “Tiger” Close Combat EXO: FRM 6 / SYS 12, AV 2 — grants Close Combat Tactics while piloted; climbs on magnetic + gecko grapplers, no thrusters. [Binds 3 Ghost + 1 Mind while piloted]
- Calculations:
- Body Binding: 2 (suit) = 2 · Mind Binding: 1 (pistol) + 1 (sensors) = 2, +1 (Tiger suite) while piloted · Ghost Binding: 3 (link) = 3, +3 (Tiger) while piloted
- Current Pool:
- Body: 6 − 2 = 4
- Mind: 12 − 2 = 10 (deep reserve for flying under fire), 9 in the Tiger
- Ghost: 8 − 3 = 5 — and 2 in the Tiger (the frame demands almost everything she has left)
In this scenario
- Nominal is not their scene — degraded is. If the Ram takes point-defense hits, if the active sweep wakes something that shoots back, if the ship comes off the breach with holed tanks: Vehicle Handling is what stands between “we limp home” and “we’re a second derelict.”
- In the Tiger, she is the boarding action. The Close Combat Suite grants Close Combat Tactics; SYS 12 moves her faster than anything else in the corridor; grapplers take her along any surface in any orientation. The hardpoints carry her fight for free: the plasma lance opens one door, hull, or argument — Single Use, it grants Breaching for that firing, so make it the right door (and mind the backblast — her own crew stacks behind her) — and the droid array tazes whatever tries to close the gap while she works. The price is written in her sheet: Ghost 2 while piloted — composure pared to the bone, in the scenario where composure is what the cargo eats. And no thrusters: knocked off the hull, she is cargo.
- After the QNA, the assistant’s word is worthless — the crew has just watched a machine forge paperwork-perfect orders. A human who can fly without asking the ship becomes the only navigation the crew can trust. Vector doesn’t know they’re the insurance against their own AI yet. The player will figure it out at the exact right moment.
- The trip home: near-dry tanks, whatever damage act two left, possibly a CSA interceptor with full tanks deciding whether to care. That leg is flown by hand or not at all.
Hooks (draft)
- Flew corporate extraction shuttles before something went on the record. The record is sealed. The habit of checking exits is not.
- Talks to the ship more politely than to people. Trusts it less than either.