Deepspace: Vycter Captain of the Voot Runner (Ea)(Com)

A commission for last_of_workers

Vycter was currently aboard the Nu Mercury, which was a massive ship with a small sanctity of traders on it. Vycter’s ship, the Voot Runner, was currently docked at one of the connection ports outside the ship, and he was here to sell minerals he mined and pick up new parts.

He sold his minerals for a decent amount of credits and got to shopping. He started with restocking necessary supplies like food, water, and fuel. Then went to things that just make his quality of life in space better, like oxygen filters that prevent the recycled air from tasting stale.

Everything left after that was spent on new parts and upgrades for the Voot Runner. This time around, Vycter picked up a new shield system, auto-turret program upgrade, and replacement SX7 cooling exhaust.

He brought them all back to his ship and got right to work installing, updating, and replacing those parts. Normally for ships, this process could take hours or even days, as the process for maintaining ships is long and complicated and only done by professionals, which Vycter is not.

However, the Voot Runner isn’t like most ships. Well, it’s actually one of the most common ships, it’s just not used the way Vycter uses it. See, Voot Runner is a ship made for travel between the core of the empire, the houses, and the corporations.

While it can travel far in space, it’s rarely used for that, and never used for travel in deepspace. Because of its simple purpose, it’s one of the cheapest and smallest ships on the market, and when it’s bought, it has almost no parts inside it.

However, its design is modular, meaning new parts can be installed or removed in no time at all. It also has no limits to what can be installed into it or where inside they must be installed. It’s basically the most customizable ship if you’re willing to buy all the parts for it.

So even the spoiled brat of one of the core of the empire’s leaders' children could work on a ship like this. Since acquiring the Voot Runner, Vycter has installed an IJ9-Superdrive, a K1mm1 AI assistant, a VS19 mining drill, and a Taygete CD99 relay system.

Thanks to all of those, Voot Runner was usable in deepspace as a normal ship; however, it is still a bit weaker than most ships and requires new parts and repairs way more often, but it balances out thanks to how cheap it is to do those things.

So while not even close to the best ship for traveling deepspace, perhaps even one of the worst, it’s what Vycter has and he’s never complained. After all, it was this ship he used to escape one of the houses before he was supposed to be executed.

He was born to one of the poor families who lived outside the capital on the Purple House, and as such never really had much growing up. In fact, compared to those in the capital, he basically lived like the cavemen did back on Earth in the early days of humanity.

One day he had enough and attempted to change his fate by stealing a credit ship that was inbound from the core of the empire. It was a dumb plan and Vycter got caught and locked up and was supposed to be shot into the vast emptiness of space as punishment.

However, one of the guards messed up and didn’t properly put Vycter’s cuffs on, and he was able to sneak out of jail and steal the leader of the Purple house’s personal ship, that being the Voot Runner. After that, Vycter took the ship and flew as far as he could.

Eventually he made it into deepspace thanks to help from another pilot who he worked under for a couple of years as he saved up money to upgrade the Voot Runner so he could work on his own. Once he could go off on his own, he did, and since then he hasn’t looked back.

Which he has good reason to; he lives a far better life out here than he did in the Purple House, and being that they’d kill him if he went back, he’s best roaming deepspace for as long as it’ll have him around, which is fine by him.

Having completed his repairs, he takes off from the Nu Mercury and tells his AI assistant K1MMY, to head to specific coordinates. It was a place one of the merchants told him had a ton of new asteroids with precious materials.

He then went off to his bedroom and went into stasis while he waited to get there. He thought he was going to wake up to them arriving and get to work, but he was woken up to a distress signal from a place called Zeta-13.

Vycter had no idea what that was, but if there was loot, there was money to be made, and more money meant more upgrades to the Voot Runner. So Vycter told K1MMY to reroute them to Zeta-13, and off they went.

Arriving in the space around Zeta-13 wasn’t even close to what Vycter was expecting. The palace was a mess, and it was beyond dangerous. A ship like his shouldn’t be anywhere near a place like this, even with all the upgrades he’s done.

Vycter was cutting it close as meteorites and broken chunks of plants flew at him from all directions. He also nearly flew right into a distortion that seemed to be making things that touched it ten times smaller.

He was doing his best to survive flying towards Zeta-13, and had there not been so many other ships around to help him out, he wouldn’t even have made it a fourth of the way, but thanks to them, he was able to land at the space station.

After landing and going out to speak with the other captains, he thanked them all for their help and said he’d make it up to them by giving them a bit more of the rewards when he claimed Zeta-13. Some of the group laugh and take it as a fun challenge, while others just ignore Vycter.

The group then heads to the orbital elevator and starts their descent down to the surface. Vycter was hoping it would be smooth sailing from here on, that a simple foot race to the center would start, which would be great for him since he’s quick.

However, in deepspace, things can sour in a moment, and no place suffers from that more than Zeta-13. The space station vanished in thin air, along with the orbital elevator they were all on, causing them to start falling towards the surface.

Vycter was regretting coming here and wondering what the hell was going on to cause all these crazy events to happen. He was also panicking about dying, but that's when he heard K1MMY on the coms telling him to stop freaking out and reach his hand out so she could catch him.

He turns his head and sees the Voot Runner flying towards him and takes a deep breath. He thanks her for the save and reaches his hand out and grabs onto the outside of the ship. He then watches the rest of the captains get picked up by their ships.

He hoped some of them would be freaked out and leave, but not a single person seemed put off by the space station vanishing. Every single one of them was heading down to the surface for their chance at claiming Zeta-13 and its riches.

Vycter told K1MMY to land the ship on the surface; however, before she replied, Vycter saw a light coming from the distance. As it touched the other pilots and ships, they both vanished. Vycter’s eyes got wide and he changed his order and told K1MMY to get them out of there.

Most of the captains didn’t see it coming, and even if they did, none of them were fast enough to escape it, including Vycter. Once he was hit by it, he blacked out. When Vycter came to, she was nowhere near where she was before, and something about her was off.

She noticed her body didn’t feel, well, anything. Not hurt, uncomfortable, nothing. It was like all the feeling in her body was turned off. Suddenly her HUD flashed and said it was turning on her nervous system. Once it did, it became very clear right away that her body was different.

Vycter started patting herself down and while she looked identical to a normal human with basic cybernetic enhancements, her body seemed to be entirely robotic. Not one part of her seemed to still be human.

She was confused about how her consciousness ended up in a robot, but those worries were quickly pushed out of her mind as she pressed her chest and realized she wasn’t just a robot now, but also a female one as well.

Vycter grabbed her hair, fell back on the ground and yelled to the sky. She spent a few minutes asking why this happened to her. As she was pulling her head, it suddenly came popping off. It rolled on the ground a few feet from Vycter and she was completely stunned because of it.

It didn’t hurt, nor did her body stop functioning in any way, but her head was now clearly detached from her body and that was a freaky thing to feel. After the shock wore off, she had to watch as she tried to move her body around in order to pick her head back up.

It took a bit of work, but she got her head and put it back on her neck and was relieved when it clicked into place. Vycter then yelled out again, asking why her head came off. That’s when a voice started speaking in her head and explaining the answer.

The voice told Vycter it was because her body was modular and each part of her body came off with ease for her, so replacing or changing parts could be done within minutes. The voice then explained that there were some limits, though.

Vycter could swap her current parts with a great deal of parts on the market, but she couldn’t swap with any male parts, any parts that are overly robotic and make her look less human and finally, she couldn’t use any parts that are more than half the size of her original body.

That prevented her from making a new male body that looked just like her old one, which made her grab her head and ask why that happened to her. That’s when the voice spoke up again and explained that it had detected several anomalies in the area.

Vycter calmed down and asked what that meant, and the voice explained that all the strange things happening were called anomalies and that this area was known for making crazy, sometimes unrealistic things happen.

Vycter then asked if that’s what turned her into a robot and made her ship vanish. The voice got silent and said it didn’t understand. Vycter said she was turned into a robot girl and the Voot Runner was nowhere to be seen.

The voice then said Vycter was inside the Voot Runner, so it didn’t understand. Vycter was confused, but suddenly he realized something: she was modular now, and That was the type of ship the Voot Runner was. Vycter gulped and asked if it was possible for an anomaly to fuse a human with a ship.

The voice went silent and said that with anomalies anything was possible. Vycter looked at her hands and let out an awkward laugh. She then asked the voice if she was K1MMY, the ship's AI assistant.

The voice confirmed that it was the AI assistant, but her name was VYC73R. Vycter raised an eyebrow and told the AI that was her name, just with some letters replaced with numbers. The voice confirmed that was true.

It said it was recently uploaded into the ship to take over for the last AI and that it used Vycter as a sample and created a duplicate in order to be able to know Vycter’s needs since she also thinks like Vycter.

Vycter thought that was sort of interesting. As much as she had grown used to K1MMY, she was only a basic AI and didn’t have much of a personality. Vycter had planned to replace her soon, but it wasn’t a priority yet, so having one that’s just like her was perfect.

At least it was until Vycter realized that the voice she was hearing was her own, and it was so soft and high-pitched, which meant she sounded like that, and that caused her embarrassment about being a woman to come flowing back again.

If it weren't for VYC73R, Vycter would have sat there whining, but VYC73R mentioned the race to claim Zeta-13 was still going and that Vycter should get going. Vycter took a deep breath and agreed, saying they might as well try to salvage the situation by claiming the riches of this place.