Deepspace: Cayne Captain of the Vanguard (Ea)(Com)

A commission for last_of_workers

Cayne woke up and sat up, and like every time he did, he hit his head on the top of his bunk. He sighed and rubbed his head as he got out of bed. He really needed to find a way to fix that, as they were made for normal-sized people and Cayne was about a foot and a half larger than that.

He looked up at the top of the bunk and as always, there wasn’t even a dent, which makes sense. The Vanguard was one tough ship, literally. It’s almost impossible to break or piece through it thanks to the way it was designed.

The hull is made of Cast-r, which is thicker and denser than most metals used for ships, as well as incredibly hard to forge. It takes a great amount of heat to work with this metal, as most stars aren’t hot enough to melt this metal.

When you take that into account, it’s no surprise that Cayne’s head, never mind the many enemies the ship fought with before making it to deepspace left no marks on it. That’s not the only neat feature about the Vanguard.

The other is the power it was designed with. In most ships, the more power it has means it has more speed; however, the Vanguard uses that power for another purpose and remains a little under the average speed for a small ship like the Vanguard because of its heavy hull.

The power in the ship is used for its Defy-Grvty X-4 engines. Those engines allow the Vanguard to do one of the most impressive feats a ship can do. These engines allow the Vanguard to exit the gravity wells of gas giants.

It can also be used to get itself free of tractor beams and magnetic grips, which nearly no other ship can do, and that the government from the core of the empire banned due to them making it impossible for the authorities to catch criminals who had them.

Luckily, Cayne wasn’t a criminal, and in deepspace, so it didn’t really matter that he had it. With these two major features of his ship, Cayne can fly the Vanguard without even being at the controls, and no matter the star system.

He really had nothing to worry about, since he could get out of anything that could possibly trap him, and if he hit anything, he was more likely to break the thing he hit instead of his ship. Even the worst situation, flying into a sun, wasn't always that bad.

So more often than not, he just lets the ship fly straight, only taking control of it when he finds something interesting to mine or needs to head back to either unload what he mined, restock supplies, or fuel up.

This has worked out for him so far, and he had no plans to change how he went about things. After his head stopped hurting and he got some food, Cayne went to the cockpit and sat down. He looked around and smiled as he told the Vanguard good morning.

His ship didn’t have an AI yet, but he still treated it as a thinking being like himself. He was always praising it for good work, taking care of it when it wasn’t working as well, making jokes with it and always thanking it for working so hard alongside him.

Some think it’s a bit weird, but that’s just how Cayne is. He’s an amazingly kind person and would help anyone who asks, though he does hate conflict and tries to avoid it with peaceful talks whenever possible.

He has a bright sense of humor and is always telling jokes and laughing, which others have said is infectious; it’s really hard to be angry or sad when Cayne is around. Most people find all of it very surprising about Cayne.

Until they got to know Cayne, they only saw the massively tall and slightly scary-looking man and had no idea how much of a softy he was. They usually think things like he cracks skulls open for fun, but to him, playing with puppies or picking flowers is what he’d call fun.

Cayne's wholesome nature came into play when he got a distress signal on his way back towards the sector where the restocking facility is. Cayne opened it right away, worried that someone might be in terrible danger.

He was relieved to find it was a distress signal from Zeta-13, which was said to be abandoned a long time ago. Cayne checked his fuel levels and supplies and found he had enough to make a detour to Zeta-13 and perhaps have a chance to claim it.

Cayne patted the side of the seat and asked the Vanguard if it were up to it. He didn’t get an answer but he smiled anyway and thanked the ship before setting course. Cayne arrived in the sector to find some of the wildest things he’s ever seen in space occurring.

When he arrived, there were three very small suns spinning around each other before they suddenly crashed into each other and went supernova. Luckily for the other ships in the area, the supernova just vanished instead of spreading.

Cayne did what he always did: flew straight. A small planet suddenly appeared in front of the Vanguard, which was split in two when the Vanguard didn’t slow down to avoid it, and then it flew through a ship graveyard.

Somehow all the tractor beams in the graveyard activated and caught the Vanguard in their beams, but it doesn’t matter how many there are; they couldn’t hold the Vanguard down. With a slight boost to the engines, the Vanguard was free and going on its way.

Cayne was clear to head right to the space station, but he avoided landing right away to help some of the other ships that were struggling. He took the Vanguard and flew it through asteroids, broken ships, and other random things created by the anomalies occurring in the space around them.

Once everyone who was seemingly trying to get here did, Cayne landed the Vanguard at the same time as one of the other pilots, still though making him one of the last to arrive. Cayne turned off the Vanguard and thanked it for working so hard, then told it to take a nice break.

Cayne then made it to the main square and started chatting with the other pilots, and it wasn’t long until they were warming up to him and laughing along with his jokes. He then asked everyone if they were okay and if anyone had any injuries, as he would help them patch themself up.

Everyone was in okay condition, which made Cayne happy to hear. After chatting a bit more, they all head to the orbital elevator to start a friendly little foot race to the center in order to claim it as their own. Of course, the anomalies wanted to start the race off in an interesting way.

One of them made the space station and orbital elevator vanish. Everyone started to fall to the ground and Cayne wasn’t sure what to do, but suddenly he looked over to see the Vanguard flying towards him.

It caught him in the air, and soon after the other ships started to catch their captains. Cayne sat on top of his ship, amazed and slightly confused. He had no idea how it activated and knew to get him, as it didn’t have an AI, and he hadn’t connected to control it manually yet.

It was almost like it wanted to catch him, which is probably unlikely, but Cayne thanked it with the bottom of his heart and called the Vanguard a good friend. The two then slowly went down towards the planet's surface, but before they could reach it, something caused Cayne to lose consciousness.

When she came to, she sat up and noticed she didn’t hit her head. She then looked around and realized she hadn’t fallen asleep on her ship, and instead was on the ground alone. Cayne jumped up and started to call out.

She called out to the other captains in order to see if they were okay or needed help. When she got no reply, she went to use her wrist device to summon her ship, but that’s when Cayne noticed her arms were different, completely robotic.

Those were far from the only changes, though. Cayne found herself with a lot of robotic parts, from her neck to her shoulders all the way down to her fingers, from under her bust to her lower stomach, and finally from her legs down, minus the bit of thighs she still had in the front.

Those alone were crazy, but when paired with the fact that Cayne could clearly tell from the quite large breasts she had now, she had also turned into a woman. Cayne was a bit surprised, but not angry or even upset about her change. Things happen and it’s not worth stressing about.

Instead, there was a chance the others and her ship were in danger, so she wanted to go help them. She started to run straight in front of her, hoping to come across one or the other; however, without thinking about it, she ran right into a huge rock… then right through it as the rock fell to pieces.

It only occurred to her after she did it. She stopped and turned around, then looked down at herself. It seemed she was just as strong and durable as the Vanguard now, as she didn’t even feel the rock, and it broke around her instead of stopping her.

Cayne walked back over to the rock to test her new body out a bit and found that she was incredibly strong now, far beyond the capabilities of humans and perhaps even most enhanced humans as well.

She easily lifted the remaining pieces of the rock she ran through and was able to throw them a great distance. Things people usually thought she could do before but wasn't actually capable of. Cayne looked down at her arms again and inspected them.

She didn’t notice it the first time, but her arms were made of Cast-r just like the Vanguard, which explained why they weren’t damaged at all, which was pretty neat but surprising, as the only Cast-r here should have been the Vanguard, so how was it somehow put on her body?

Cayne thought about it for a moment and, remembering the crazy things the anomalies could do, had a theory. She was somehow fused with her ship, but there was only one way to test it out. Cayne walked through the desert a bit and found a small parts graveyard.

She looked for old ship parts and ended up finding what she was looking for, a tractor beam. She messed with it for a bit and got it to turn on. She then looked at the spot and prepared herself. If it were true she was fused with her ship, she’d be able to get out.

If not, she’d have to wait until the tractor beam ran out of power before she could move again. Cayne walked into the beam and felt herself being frozen in place. She then tried to get out and could feel she was actually fighting against the tractor beam a bit.

Cayne then heard something inside of her start to power up, and suddenly she was moving slowly through the tractor beam, and once the device got to full power, she was able to walk around it as if it wasn’t even there.

The tractor beam turned off and Cayne smiled as she patted her metal parts and said she was so glad the Vanguard was safe and sound, though she apologized to it for getting them mixed up in this strange situation.

She then finished by saying if she had to be fused with any ship, she was glad it was the one that was her most loyal companion. Though she got no reply, Cayne could feel something warm coming from inside her and took that as a message from the Vanguard that it was happy.

Having figured that out, Cayne looked around. She didn’t think she’d find the other pilots out in the middle of nowhere. Most of them would head to the center, so that’s where she’ll go in order to make sure they’re alright, and if need be, she’ll nurse them back to health.