Kylie Silver

Kylie Silver is a freelance private investigator and former CEF Captain. She is written by Shining Light.

Other characters written by this user include:

 Meredith McKay (Medic) 

Biography
There isn't much to speak of about Kylie's life before she joined the Confederate Earth Forces. She was born on Earth, grew up as the daughter of a middle-class family in North America, and she graduated from university at twenty-one with an MBA. But a few months of planning her future in business led her to realize it wasn't what she wanted out of her life. She desired a cause where she could make a difference in the larger scheme of things -- and she found one when the CEF established a recruiting station in her city.

Kylie always had been good at analytic thinking, but as a soldier, it helped her soar through the ranks of the CEF. She made Captain at twenty-four and became the head of a hand-picked squad at twenty-five. Kylie made it a habit to prioritize the survival of her men over the mission, which meant she tended to ignore objectives if she believed the losses she'd take weren't worth it. Her mission success rate wasn't the highest, but as a result of her efforts, her squad had the least casualties in her division. In time, Kylie grew to cherish her team like a surrogate family. Fighting in the war became less about a CEF victory and more about making sure her people had a future after it was all over. Towards the year 2225, she believed she could pull it off -- and then Operation Red Dust happened.

During the campaign, Kylie's squad was ordered to coordinate with several other strike teams to capture an AMC communications outpost on the surface of Mars. But the mission was a disaster, for the moment the CEF teams launched their assault, they were met with overwhelming resistance. Following her own rule, Kylie attempted to pull her team out, but the enemy was too numerous. Four members of her six-man squad were killed in the escape, and Kylie herself nearly died from a grenade that she didn't see coming. In the end, only she and the last member of her squad made it out of the attack alive, the remainder of the CEF teams killed.

The trauma of Kylie's injury combined with the shock of losing almost her entire team caused her to fall into depression. With Red Dust called off and the enacting of the ceasefire shortly after, her superiors gave her an honourable discharge and she was summarily transported to Earth. It took months of therapy before Kylie was able to consider herself functional again, and when she did, she took up a new job as a private investigator, helping civilians with small problems. Her taste for fighting effectively gone, she's now focusing on putting her military life back together.

Physical Appearance
With an ivory complexion and shoulder-length rosewood hair, Kylie sports an exotically pretty look. She stands at 5'8" and possess an athletic build, limber and long-legged. Sharp dark-brown eyes, a lightly-slanted nose, and full lips round out her facial features. Her lean face isn't one accustomed to wearing smiles, and there always seems to be a melancholy glint in her gaze.

Kylie wears a thick dark shirt and full gloves, with her lower body consisting of dark pants and laced ankle-length boots. Several pairs of belt harnesses are wrapped around her waist and shoulders, indicators of the weapons holstered on her person. A black knee-length coat is worn over her clothing, hiding her weaponry from sight.

Kylie's right arm is fully robotic from shoulder to hand, her old limb having been amputated due to an incurable war injury. Without the funds for prosthetic skin, she keeps it covered under her layered clothing.

Personality and Traits
Cool-headed and controlled, Kylie doesn't rattle easily during crisis or combat situations, the result of discipline from years of military service. Under such circumstances, she can be curt, possibly icy, but never harsh and she has the good sense to avoid talking down on others. While not quite so rigid that she isn't capable of casual conversation and relaxation, Kylie tends to prefer solitude when she has time to herself. Mostly, this is because she isn't exactly a cheery soul, her past being a constant source of torment and guilt for her. Though she once wore the mantle of leadership with confidence and authority, Kylie is now a reluctant shadow of her former self, unable to devote herself to a higher cause as she once did as a Captain of the Confederate Earth Forces.

Primary Combat Style
Kylie's former occupation as a squad-leader left her with capable leadership skills and a talent for on-the-fly planning. She has a knack for seeing the bigger picture of a battle, allowing her to rapidly formulate a reasonable estimate of the enemy's objectives and tactics. She is by no means a perfect strategist and doesn't always come up with the correct guesses, but she values the survival of her team more than the completion of her mission. If things fall apart, she's smart enough to order a retreat rather than waste her team's lives trying to salvage a bad situation.

In terms of weaponry, Kylie carries a nanotech Japanese sword long enough to hide beneath her coat and a Seelix ten-millimeter handgun holstered at her hip. Her blade is standard fare as far as nanotech blades go, able to cut through common metals as if they were aluminum foil. Her handgun is loaded with hollow point rounds, inflicting maximum damage against unarmoured foes. To help with her aim, her firearm is fitted with a laser-sight attachment. Kylie's marksmanship skills are sound, but her forte lies in hand-to-hand combat and swordplay, her style a blend of Chinese martial arts and military fighting techniques. With over six years of experience under her belt, she's quite a formidable combatant when her enemies are close enough for a sword.

Finally, Kylie's cybernetic arm lends itself nicely to matters of strength, drastically enhancing the force of punches and melee weapon attacks executed with her right hand. It is also durable enough to withstand considerable harm before giving out, though it cannot block a nanotech weapon. Routine maintenance performed by a cybernetic specialist will be required to keep her arm in optimal condition.

Trivia
 The name of Kylie's firearm comes from the surname of Diana "Hardball" Seelix, a minor character from Battlestar Galactic. While Meredith's handgun is named as a homage to sci-fi novel protagonist Cassandra Kresnov, the character of Kresnov has more in common with Kylie than Meredith. In the novels, Kresnov was once a respected and maternal squad commander, but when the war she fought in ended, her nation took her team off her hands and quietly disposed of them. This act was what drove Kresnov to desert from her nation and seek a civilian life among humans. The manner of how Kylie wears her sword is derived from Highlander protagonist Connor MacLeod, who also favours a Japanese sword and keeps it sheathed inside his trenchcoat. Kylie's PHST is a bit larger than the length and width of a paperback novel, but is light enough to be a handheld. In design, it bears a resemblance to the tablet devices popularized in the twenty-first century. The PHST itself is dark gray, while the screen is blue-gray. 