Name: Kate Mercury
Gender: Female
Age: 25
Place of Birth: Detroit, MI
Former Shokushu Student? No
Nationality: American
Ethnicity: French/Navajo
Hair: Dark Brunette

Eye Color: Dark
Skin Tone: Bike Tan
Build: She's built like a sports bike: svelte, lean, supple. Her lower body is surprisingly strong, wiry-muscled from countless hours test-driving powerful metal machines. Healthy C-cups are usually concealed in tight speed suits. They'd just get in the way.
Pubic Hair: Oil slick black racing stripe
Piercing or Tattoos: None
Height: 5'6"
Weight: 135

Background:
Her mother died in child birth, and her dad poured all of his love into her. Howard Mercury was a brilliant engineer who began designing weapons for various government projects out of MIT. As the exploration of space kicked into full gear, he was one of the first designers to corner contracts on space travel and warfare. Kate grew up in and around the laboratories for Mercury Engineering. The boy's club of researchers, techs, engineers, and test pilots became her family, and she became a sort of unofficial mascot around the offices. She forewent a typical education for a specialized education in the technical cutting edge. From the time she could walk, she was tinkering. By 15 she was hotwiring and coercing staff to test drive Mercury prototypes. By 16, she was working in engineering bay. By then, Mercury Engineering was one of the primary supply contractors for the ADD, providing them Directorate with a substantial majority of their small craft fleets. By 18, she was test piloting new gear. A lifetime raised on the bleeding edge of technology gave her a crucial advantage in piloting the machines. By 22, she was one of the most promising recruits in in the ADD Mobile Cavalry School. In that time, she's developed into an ace pilot with an exemplary talent in the field, but with disappointingly low political ambitions.

Psychological Profile:
Kate grew up in an unusual family unit, and her social development was severely stunted as a result. A consummate tomboy growing up, she was raised on an unhealthy taste for speed and sacrificed a balance lifestyle from an early age, in favor of a specialized concentration of talent. She operates in two gears, only. If she's on bike or on craft, then she's absorbed in the machine, caught in the adrenaline rush of high danger racing. Otherwise, she's distant, mind occupied by the technical aspects of improving her gear. She lives to ride, and everything else is preparation. In public, she's cocky as hell, a daredevil ace who knows the mechanics of the ADD's small craft better than perhaps anyone. She was driven to the ADD not out of altruism, but out of a sense of competition, a need to set higher and harder goals for herself, to get her high. The ADD offers her exposure to new technologies, and she doesn't waste any opportunities to cannibalize the tech of any aliens who come her way, and fold them back into her own projects.

Virgin: No.
Sexuality: Bisexual. She had a couple of experiments with men while still on Earth, and a few brief flings with cavalry girls since joining the ADD. But they never amount to much of anything. She's too self-absorbed in her own personal specialties that she's incapable of the broad sort of empathy required to connect on a significant romantic level. Her own perception of sexuality is skewed, rarely pondered over by Kate. It's intrinsically intertwined with her horsepower addiction. She spends practically all of her time mounted to a rumbling, powerful engine, but she just flippantly divorces herself from the sexual implications

Transport:
A modified Sparrow.
Originally intended for rapidly shuttling troops to planetary surfaces, the ship is only intended for near-atmosphere travel. It needs to dock to a larger ship for interplanetary transit.
Her Sparrow has been heavily converted to suit her unique purposes. Most of the ship's armor has been stripped away for the sake of maneuverability, with small calibre laser cannons mounted to the front, sacrificing the security of a transport for the flexibility of speed in atmospheric dogfight skirmishes. The transport space for soldiers in the back has been converted into a custom garage and diagnostics, housing Kate's small collection of vehicles and weaponry, along with the means for on-the-fly repairs and custom. The two-man cockpit has been left in place, allowing Kate to carry a passenger in-flight, but the steering and navigation consoles have all been shifted to one seat.

Weapons and Equipment: In the field, she'll typically bring a sidearm and light rifle. She carries a couple of concealed knives on her person that she's not yet had to use. Her wardrobe consists of a small collection of speed and impact suits built for a variety of rides and situations. Whatever vehicle she takes into the field always carries a small cache of plasma grenades, clean water and rations, a first-aid kit, and an emergency repair kit.

Gear: Kate maintains a small fleet of bikes, experimental vehicles, and light flight craft, most of which are constantly being tinkered with and expanded on. Her access to the fortune of one of the ADD's largest vehicle manufacturers as well as her exposure to new technologies in the field means she's always got a plethora of new parts to play with. Her machinery is typically lean, stripped down to basic components of speed, maneuverability, and power. Her modifications typically strip away any computer-aided assistances or handicaps, always opting in favor of personal control on the vehicles. Despite her tech obsessions, she's loathe to the idea of surgical cybernetics and performance enhancing drugs, priding herself on relying wholly on her own knowledge of her toys and faith in her reflexes. The notable exception is a Hermes chip, implanted at the base of her brain at the demand of her superiors. In lieu of the comm systems stripped from her vehicles, the Hermes allows her to interface directly with the ADD network, giving her access to maps, briefings, and communication relay with her superiors. The technology makes her an ideal Command liaison while in the field, but also wreaks havoc on her nervous system. When off of the field, she suffers from terrible migraines, nause, dizziness, and self-prescribes herself a motley of (mostly illicit) drugs.
The mainstays of her collection include:
- Her prized possession and favorite bike, a custom Coyote. Originally built as a recon and cavalry vehicle, the original model had no armor and built a quick reputation as a death ride. The models afterwards began a trend of sacrificing some of the speed for higher durability and computer-assisted navigation. Her custom uses the chassis of a first model Coyote along with components from later models and off-market hardware. Hover rotors taken from Space Department Police bikes add much needed traction to the slippery bike. Incredibly dangerous, but incredibly nimble.
- Cricket AX, a prototype small recon vehicle. It utilizes a pair of feet rather than typical wheels or hover technology. The hydraulically-powered legs offer a maximum height of thirty feet, and rocket propulsor on the back allows for flexible movement in the air. A machine gun mounted on the front nose offers firepower, but the adjustable height of the vehicle also makes it feasible as an elevated or mobile gun platform for whatever weapons the rider has on hand. Like the Coyote, protection is literally nonexistent.
Assets: She's an ace piot with ground vehicles and small, short-distance air/spacecraft, an accomplished marksman with light rifles and pistols, and well-trained in the difficult art of faiming and firing at high speeds. But the heavy weight of recoil from larger firearms makes her dangerously inefficient with bigger weapons. She's a barely competent hand-to-hand and melee fighter.

Here's Kate on her Cricket:


Showroom Coyote, with model


((Under construction but... what do you guys think?))

Looks tasty to me!

I like the thought here. The ADD would need its own engineers and technical specialists as well as soldiers, just like in any military. This is a novel concept. It doesn't hurt that Kate is remarkably cute with her Cricket in that picture. Good job.

Thanks!



Isn't she just?

So, would anyone like to help me bring Kate back?