Icarus: Charlie Bishop
Ein weiteres vielversprechendes Artwork für Icarus.
Charlie Bishop
Charlie Bishop is the pilot of the infamous mercenary ship, The Nimbus.
Military Career
Charlie Bishop entered the Alliance Spaceflight Academy on her 18th birthday. Her goal was to work as part of the flight crew on one of the Alliance’s larger ships, maybe even a Dreadnought.
During her first month at the academy she met Vanessa Graham, a fellow cadet. Vanessa convinced her and a group of other cadets to steal some of the training fighter ships and race them through a nearby asteroid field.
Charlie was able to out manoeuvre all the other cadets, and won the race. When they returned to the frigate a group of senior officers was waiting for them. They revealed that Vanessa was actually a fighter pilot trainer and regularly convinced groups of new recruits to go out after-hours to assess their skill. She commended Charlie for her incredible natural talent, and requested that she transfer to the fighter program, after her and the other cadets serve their two week mess hall rotation for stealing the ships.
Over the next two years, Charlie rose to become the top of her class, breaking multiple academy records that had been in place for decades. During this time, she and Vanessa also began an affair and got engaged in secret. Officers and cadets were strictly forbidden from carrying on a relationship.
The Second Nexus War
During Charlie’s graduation ceremony, news of the Second Nexus War reached the academy. The newly graduated cadets where ordered into active duty. Charlie and Vanessa’s squadron was assigned to the Iroquois, a front line cruiser engaging the Nexus on the western fringe.
The lovers fought alongside each other for six months, beating the Nexus back wherever they encountered them, until the Iroquois detected a signal coming from the far side of a local star. When the cruiser arrived at the signal, seemingly an Alliance ship in distress, they were ambushed. Three Nexus frigates that had been using the star to conceal themselves opened fire. All fighters were deployed and during the fire fight, Vanessa’s ship was disabled.
The ships that remained, Charlie’s included, returned to the Iroquois as it began to make its escape. Just before the Iroquois reached the Light Gate, the Nexus forced a video communication through the entire ships systems.
The camera was focused on a group of eight captured pilots, on their knees and bound. A towering Nexus stood behind them. The crew of the Iroquois watched as the Nexus executed each of the pilots. The last pilot to be killed was Vanessa, who kept eye contact with the camera until her head was separated from her body.
For the rest of the war, Charlie was single minded in her duty. She swapped shifts so that she could be out in her fighter more often. She got more confirmed ship-to-ship kills than any other pilot in her sector.
Senna
When the war ended, Charlie found herself lost. Without an enemy to take her aggression out on, she began to dull the pain with Echo. Her drug addiction quickly drained her tour compensation, and she joined an underground racing circuit to pay the bills. Her skills as a pilot meant that she quickly climbed the leader boards, and by carefully betting on herself via proxy, she was able to raise a large amount of credits in a short time span.
When she raced, her skill and ferocity in the cockpit earned her the nickname of Senna. Given after a famous land racer of old earth, Charlie didn’t know whether she had been given the name for her skills, or her seemingly inevitable path to destruction. She didn’t care either way.
Her new found wealth meant that she could afford trips to the VR tubes. A combination of powerful Echo, coupled with submersion in some sort of hallucinogenic liquid, and being connected to a computer system allows for users to engage in a virtual reality that seems so real it becomes and addition unto itself.
Charlie used the VR tubes to be with Vanessa, and her days became an Echo induced blur of racing, followed by nights spent in the VR tubes.
During her last race as Senna, coming down from a long weekend of Echo and VR, Charlie crashed her ship trying to pull out of a turn too late. The crash broke 26 bones and put her in a coma for a week. When she woke up, a man in red armour was sat at her bedside. He introduced himself as Gabriel, a friend. He said that he had never seen a pilot as talented as she was, and that he happened to be in need of a pilot for his new ship.Charlie told him she wasn’t interested and told him to leave. Gabriel told her that drugs and VR could never bring Vanessa back, and that he might be able to give her a sense of purpose again. He may not be a marine anymore, he told her, putting a small box on her bedside, but he still had friends in the right places. He told her to open her gift and consider his offer, and that he would be at the docks for two more days.
Inside the box he had left behind was a pair of Alliance dog tags that once belonged to Vanessa Graham.
Quelle: Icarus Miniatures
Schönes Artwork – da gabs ja schon einige für Icarus.
Bei der Miniatur fänd ichs aber gut, wenn die Diskrepanz aus Linkshänderin und Holster rechts auf die eine oder andere Art gelöst würde.