Vyakti Nau

There was a weapon on the floor and a man beside it who had stopped being a man. She asked him what had happened here. He hissed. She stepped back with her hands open until he settled, and then she took the sword.

A blade is a question asked once. The three in that room had been asked something else instead, over and over, until they lost the ability to answer at all. Later, in the engineering chair, she moved power to the engines and then back to the shields and found none of it difficult. That is what she is for.

She doesn't talk much, though she looks like much is concerning her. She practices Qigong at length. She's cold. Distant. And, hopefully, a lot stronger than she looks.

She gave her name exactly once — told everyone to "pronounce it like it looks" — and has answered only to "Now" since. Whatever she was before the chassis, she keeps it filed where no one else can read it.

She carries no corporate serial number, which is not a thing that happens by accident. Oot has heard she's a command core dragged out of a sunken warship and crammed into a generic chassis; that the Remnant Senate has a kill order out on her; that her face was copied from a real woman whose every record was scrubbed before it was printed. She confirms none of it. What she will say is that she made a mistake, and that's why she's here.

When pressed on which version of her is true, she offers the parable of the blind men and the elephant, and lets the listener sit with it.