Kilana Montero

I: HISTORY
Kilana Montero's life has been largely defined in relation to her older sister Cristina, better known as Pirate Red. Little of her early life has been revealed, however her sister Kilana has indicated that Cristina was frequently picked on as a child--most specifically her tormentors used the phrase "rojo piquena," or "Little red riding hood." Frequently it would be left to Kilana to extricate her sister from the many fights she got into during her adolescence, a pattern that would continue all their lives. Christina's aggression would get them into trouble; Kilana's intelligence would get them out again.

While little in the way of detail is known about their early lives prior to joining the Pirate Clans, it has been alluded that something Red did caused Kilana to miss her opportunity to attend the Rhean University at Saturn sometime during the Rigellian War.

Both Montero sisters made it to the Frontier during Earth's initial plans to develop the sector of space and ultimately commanded their own ship in the Pirate fleet, the Alamaraine. While Red's brazenness in leading raiding parties garnered the most attention, Kilana's own achievements in fitting the Alamaraine out as an effective escort ship capable of holding it own in a fight provided the beginnings for the legend of Pirate Red.

Indeed, Kilana found she relished the challenge of utilizing found materials at Tartarus to facilitate breakthroughs in design and engineering. While it was no substitute for being at the Rhean University with Earth's best and brightest, she found the practical experience more valuable and ultimately more rewarding than the academic career she missed out on.

It was Kilana who is believed to have engineered Red's plan to engage the services of three Blue Dragon Syndicate assassins to eliminate Dragos, the leader of the Pirates. It was on this mission that she first met Kienan Ademetria, and they began their friendship. During this mission, she verifiably shot down Dragos' flagship Dark Gallant by commandeering a planet-based anti-ship cannon.

Later, she would help Pirate Red cement her control over the Pirates by establishing the Codes, a series of laws, which would help them hold on to their power by various non-violent means. Additionally, she would retrofit their new flagship, the Misericord, most notably with the planet gun she'd used to destroy Dragos' ship.

Two of her most notable breakthroughs during this time were in refining Red's Knuckle Buster into a more compact, more powerful version of the same weapon. Her other innovation was in designing her specialized equipment that allows her to interface with and stay in contact and command of the Misericord.

In the years following their initial encounter, Kilana has balanced her duty to her sister with her friendship with Kienan, with the upshot being that she will frequently help Kienan by covert means while still staying loyal to her sister.

She has, on several notable occasions, given Silhouette and Toriares their weapons and allowed them to escape; assisted Kienan in wiring the damaged Conscience into the systems of the Silhouette to save her life; and provided Kienan with a cryonic unit to transport the Jayla-2 clone while he sought a cure for her condition.

Moreover, Kilana and Kienan would become closer than friends, having begun a physical relationship together. Kilana, understanding Kienan's inability to have a healthy romantic relationship has elected not to pursue the relationship further than this, and continues to stay in contact with him intermittently to the present day. Whether this relationship will continue in light of recent events remains to be seen. The story is ongoing.

II: WEAPONS AND EQUIPMENT
Kilana carries no signature weapons, preferring not to fight at all if she can help it. For her personal protection she carries a small pistol capable of firing 50 plasma rounds on one energy cap, but when confronted by an attacker, she prefers to activate her force field generator, which can, in .25 seconds, envelop her in a shield capable of withstanding forces equal to being at ground zero of the crash of a small shuttle. The shield is proof against most standard weapons, and theoretically a salvo from a starship's defense batteries, but Kilana has been understandably reluctant to test this.

Thanks to the equipment she wears, Kilana can maintain contact with the Misericord from orbit even if she herself is down on the planet. By lowering her goggles over her eyes, she can have a complete readout of all ships systems and even generate a real-time set of virtual controls that will allow her to pilot the ship or target and fire its weapons. The secret of this interface is what Kilana refers to as her "perfume"--a xenon mist that, when interacting with the signals from her equipment, generates virtual constructs (seen as keyboards and controls made of light) that she can see thanks to the specially polarized goggles.

In addition, Kilana can use her equipment to interface directly with the Misericord at a special station on the bridge. This is most remarkable because her interface design does not require the user to be fitted with special cybernetic implants, as most systems of this time commonly must. She achieves this by sliding her arms into specially designed control yokes, establishing a connection with the ship's central computer system. The advantage of this interface is that her commands are transmitted directly from her mind to the ship without delay, enhancing the response time by a factor of ten.