History[]
Kali was a hard-bitten, no-nonsense woman from the Kuiper belt (the region of the solar system beyond Neptune), with a glare that could melt steel at twenty paces. In 2581 AD she joined the reformed V.C.s, under the command of Major Smith, when the war with the Geeks reignited. Her comrades were Lin-Fu, Ronsalle, Diderot (who replaced Ronsalle when he died), Ryx and Keege.
Kali was initially suspicious of the Geek Keege, and would happily have vaped him when he was suspected of treachery, but she later got involved in a pub fight on Mars on his behalf after he had proved his reliability in combat. During downtime she enjoyed playing a rude version of 'rock, paper, scissors' with Diderot, but was later disturbed to discover that he was a cyborg. So was he, because he'd thought he was 100% human, but it turned out that all his memories of his wholesome picket-fenced childhood and sunny adolescence belonged to somebody else. Following an investigation, 200 other facsimile humans were discovered in Earth's military forces.
Lin-Fu, the only other female member of Kali's squad, died on Charon while saving the Earth from a Geek planet-killing weapons. In 2582 AD Kali and the remaining V.C.s (except for Diderot, who had been imprisoned by the Earth government) were sent to Fort Kennedy on Mars to train cadets. Major Smith and Kali both proved to have a pedagogical philosophy that can be summarised as 'pain makes you strong', and were not averse to electrocuting cadets in order to get them to move quicker during exercises. (To be fair, it worked.) Kali also severely wounded Ryx with her Geekslice so he could be admitted to Fort Kennedy's infirmary, a place a statistically significant proportion of the facsimile humans had passed through.
Ryx was abducted in the middle of the night and flown off in a spaceship. The other V.C.s followed the ship and boarded it, thanks mainly to Kali's superb flying skills. Ryx was rescued and the V.C.s ultimately discovered that the facsimile humans had been created by the Polity, a group of alien civilisations, who had incited the human-Geek war and wanted robots to watch it for them so they could enjoy it vicariously. Kali helped the other V.C.s (including new recruits Tommy Hoff and Tycho) to bring an influential pacifist Geek called Gaek'rr to a human-Geek peace conference that had a chance of ending the war forever... or at least swapping war between humans and Geeks for war between a human-Geek alliance and the Polity. Plus ça change.
Powers and abilities[]
Abilities
Flying spaceships; armed and unarmed combat.
Strength level
Peak human female.
Weaknesses
Gravity.
Paraphernalia[]
Equipment
A spacesuit with her name on it; G.C.C. (Global Combat Corps) Victory Cross.
Transportation
G.C.C. battlecarrier James Earl Carter; G.C.C. mobile which Kali pilots.
Weapons
Belly burner guns; Geekslice (large blade); discus.
Notes[]
Kali is the name of a Hindu goddess.
Trivia[]
New V.C. Tommy Hoff described Kali in one of his letters home as 'gene-challenged'.
Links[]
- Appearances of Kali
- Character Gallery: Kali
- Images that feature Kali
- Fan-Art Gallery: Kali
- Kali quotations