Chapter 8: First Missions

Alyssa had already hated stealth missions in video games. The option to maybe whittle down a few numbers first with stealth, then charge in, sure. But full stealth missions had been something that turned her off of any such games. Which, of course, made it rather ironic that every single ‘mission’ she’d done so far was stealth focused. Including her current task, where she was making heavy use of her new suit. A suit that included the final version of her thermoptic camouflage, and which she was using to creep around the only base belonging to The Hammer organization that she’d been able to find.

She supposed the fact that she’d chosen to take the skillset of a black ops and counter-intel expert made it logical that she’d err on the side of stealth operations. Given her lack of personal experience to call on with taking down evil organizations, or even seriously fighting someone, it was sort of the only expertise she had to call on. Truth be told, though, she might have tried to go for something more showy if she hadn’t realized an irritating truth.

Getting people arrested required evidence, even if you knew they were crooked.

If she’d been out to just kill everyone in The Hammer, it would have been one thing to go in heavy. Though even then she’d have needed to do some recon because she wasn’t at all sure her main target was in this particular base. In fact, given their data security to this point, it was highly likely he wasn’t. This entire group was ex-KGB after all. Even if they’d turned to crime, their leaders hadn’t completely forgotten their spy craft, or failed to keep up with the times. Still, as she stuck a data cable into the main server after using a bit of mental persuasion to make the sole occupant of the room nod off into naptime, she reflected it was mostly the evidence thing.

She needed proof that these people were criminal. Preferably both physical and money trail, in quantities it would be hard to cover up if they had bought off cops in the Gotham PD. Which, of course, they almost certainly had a done with at least a few officers. This was Gotham, after all, and even random people on the streets of other cities knew the cops here had a corruption issue. Not that she intended to bring most of what she was doing to the attention of the GCPD, anyway. That had been another mistake of the Bat family. They kept giving the criminals over to a known-corrupt group. No, she’d spotted enough heroin in storage here to bring the DEA down on this particular building once she forwarded everything to them.

Ohhhh, and looky at the nice data!

Smirking as she cracked the, again quite good, security on the air-gapped server, Alyssa began rapidly assimilating new information. She started a download of the entire server, of course, her new omni-tool MK 2 having more than enough data storage to copy everything. But, just in case she was interrupted before it finished, she began skimming the stuff with little to no additional encryption. Additional locations were of particular interest, as were the activities going on at each facility.

An illegal gambling ring was the most tame, almost not worth the effort. Additional drug sites were noted, since she’d need to gather evidence from them as well to better entice a large DEA sting. The biggest find, though, at least outside the encrypted data she hoped would lead to KGBeast, was a counterfeiting operation. A big one. That was very interesting, doubly so since they were counterfeiting euros instead of dollars. If she remembered the charter she’d read correctly, international money counterfeiting was one of the things Shield had taken over, along with anti-terrorism.

It wasn’t what they were known for, of course. But this operation looked like it was clearing billions. That would be enough to entice a non-parahuman Shield team deployment, at least. Something that would add to the positive impression she could hopefully make with that group by capturing and handing over KGBeast. Getting both them and the DEA involved with raids would, not at all incidentally, prevent the corruption in the GCPD from saving this particular group.

Perfect.

Smiling in a way that even the most charitable wouldn’t consider friendly, Star Knight extracted the data cable and began retracing her steps out of the building…

… … …

It was four days, three more evidence-gathering missions, and one clandestine insertion of certain spyware into the GCPD systems later, that ‘Star Knight,’ aka Alyssa, stood looking herself critically over in the full-length mirror. This time, when she went out, she was going to quickly go loud, which meant she was going to be seen, and she was vainly checking over her costume one-last-time before showtime. It had been tweaked and improved after each mission, but that was mostly function rather than form. For form, she’d worked hard on finding an acceptable compromise between what seemed like the norm for heroes/heroines and something she could accept as not-created-by-an-idiot.

Seriously, even if she was bulletproof against most small arms and even more resistant to many types of energy, flying or jumping around in what amounted to a swimsuit or gymnastic leotard was moronic. Yet entirely too many heroines did just that. Not Star Knight though, thank you very much! No, her armor was actual armor, albeit rather thin and skintight in order to make it hug her body snugly and show off her ‘assets.’

In looks, it rested somewhere between boobplate and futuristic body armor, with a shiny titanium white being the dominate color. Splashes of black and blue offset the white via simple expedient of the more minor articulating panels being set in those colors. Right at the chest, between and just below her boobs, was a distinct glowing-purple star that she intended to become her ‘symbol.’ The color being one chosen as she’d discovered that her altered version of ‘Starbolts’ came out in exactly that same shade of purple. Of course, the entire suit could change colors, a side effect of how her camo system worked. But this was her ‘default’ configuration when she wasn’t after stealth.

The only part of her that was uncovered was her face and hair. But, once she fully powered up, fiberoptic thread woven into her hair would color shift it toward the purple of the star symbol. Likewise, a holographic visor would cover the top half of her face and contacts shifted the pink of her eyes into a violet color. The projected visor was a form of hardlight, strong enough to add at least some protection, and she could switch to a full-helmet of the same with a voice command. The same holo-projection system even subtly changed the lines of her face with some artificial shadowing and skin tone changes.

If someone tried hard enough, they could probably find out her civilian ID. But it wouldn’t be easy. Frankly, outside the likes of Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne, or big organizations like Shield, it was unlikely they’d succeed at all. Even for those people, it would take time, since her civilian identity was deliberately a nobody. Not to mention she’d be scrambling any and all digital footprint as often as she could, meaning it might well take a while for anyone to get good shots of her face to run analysis on. Frankly, despite that logic, she really wanted to go with a full helmet. But they were extremely uncommon in Heroes for some bizarre reason. Even Batman left his lower face uncovered, and he was a vigilante that could have gotten away with not doing so!

Stupid, frustratingly so. In Batman’s example, that bit of face combined with build estimates were enough for her own profiling program to have pinned him as a perfect match for Bruce Wayne. Just covering his lower face would have prevented that from working!

Thankfully, this reality had a policy of ‘don’t poke the heroes unless needed.’ So even the ones that figured her out eventually would likely leave it alone unless she pissed them off somehow. Of course, given that there were a pair of swords at her hips, the Bat might take exception to a potentially lethal vigilante in ‘his city.’ But, frankly and bluntly…fuck him. He’d already failed to clean up Gotham, so she was taking the city as her territory. He could stay and keep fighting his personal rogues if he played nice.

Satisfied that everything was in place, she powered up the helmet for a quick test…then powered it down again so she could activate the tactical cloak to leave the warehouse. Sadly, the hardlight system wasn’t compatible with the tactical cloak, at least not in the current generation. Since there was no point making it easy for someone to track her back here, leaving under a tactical cloak was just good sense, too. Even if she’d already made sure to suborn all the cameras in a several block radius with programming that would edit her out.

With one last deep breath to center herself and a mental checklist run down, she took off. Her flight let her leave via a third entrance she’d belatedly set up, one that let her exit via the upper story roof. She took off into the night sky via that exit, invisible for the moment as she headed toward her target…

… … ...

Hovering above her target, Star Knight smirked viciously as she did two things simultaneously. One was to send out a live stream signal straight through the firewalls at the DEA, and more politely to a simple connection she knew was monitored 24/7 at Shield. She’d forwarded all of her evidence covering the other three installations to both groups 24 hours ago, doing so in such a way that she knew they’d pay attention and start planning raids. Now, she live-streamed them the results of her second action…the release of knock-out-gas into three of the four locations she’d visited in her stealth operations.

She’d planted well-concealed micro-cameras, ones that explicitly hadn’t been sending signals out until now, in all three of the drug facilities. Right now, both DEA and Shield would be getting live-streams of everyone in those buildings being dosed with a rapid knock-out cocktail that she’d gotten the formula for from Motoko’s memories of Section 9 using the stuff. All while their own internal security went into lockdown mode, taken over by the backdoors she’d left in their systems, which would make it very hard for anyone to get out even if they could avoid the gas.

The fourth facility, the one she was hovering over, didn’t have any gas cannisters or micro-cameras. For good reason. Unlike the others, this was the main headquarters for The Hammer within Gotham, holding both the highest-ranking members and their euro counterfeiting operation. While she’d determined the other facilities were only very periodically swept for bugs, this one was swept daily. Sometimes more, with the extras being seemingly random. There was just no way that she could have gotten away with the same trick here.

Not that she’d wanted to.

After all, she had confirmed that KGBeast was present, and she was intending to make a splash.

With that in mind, she pushed the other facilities out of her thoughts. Gotham GCPD and the DEA were both getting the Live Stream and they’d act…or they wouldn’t. Which would be useful to know in GCPD’s case, though in the DEA’s case they might simply not have gathered enough people together for a raid yet. She hoped they had, but she’d settle the other facilities herself if she had too. For now, it was time for the main event.

Dropping her tactical cloak, Star Knight activated another stream directed at Shield only this time, with this feed being provided by her own body cam. It was one way only, with no way for Shield to respond, and she dropped out of the air like a homesick rock a moment after activating it. There was no subtly intended for this engagement and she didn’t even slow as she neared the roof below, blasting a hole in it just before she hit with concentrated starbolts.

Her knock-off Force Senses made detecting life easy, and she’d aimed just off to one side of the highest concentration of people in the building. The bolts and bits of collapsed ceiling carefully didn’t hit them directly, and several of the men who’d been awake in the barracks started reacting, scrambling for weapons. It didn’t help them as she hit them an instant later, in among them with fists and feet that delivered carefully-modulated hits that sent them into la-la land. It didn’t hurt that she was sending out a command of ‘sleep’ with her mind, something which wouldn’t have had much effect on alert opponents…except that they were trying to fight through to stay conscious after being hit.

The result was that only a single man of the fourteen that had been in the barracks didn’t go down with a single hit, subdermal armor she hadn’t detected cushioning the blow just enough that he shook off the first strike. The second hit went for his stomach instead, folding him over double…and the follow up hammer blow to the back of his head finally knocked him out despite the armor.

That was the end of this group. But she had, of course, just set off every alarm in the base, and there were another fifty-seven people present. Knowing she needed to keep moving, she blasted her way through a wall and out into the main floor of the counterfeiting room. A spread of starbolts, deliberately formed to be concussive instead of cutting, dropped six more men, even as she rushed into melee with another three. They went down just as quickly…but a moment later she started taking fire for the first time. Not from a person, but from a turret, which she quickly hammered into scrap with a far more potent starbolt.

One of its rounds had actually managed to hit her, the automated systems being much harder to detect with her precognition than a living mind, but it bounced off her armor with barely a scratch left behind. A half dozen men burst into the room, trying to bring weapons to bare, but she was much too fast. Already in among them before they could target her, she ripped away weapons and threw them telekinetically at the other door, striking another trio that had burst in through the only other entrance to the room.

Already finished with the six at this door, instead of turning to fight the trio that had only been knocked over by the thrown weapons, she charged into the hall where the larger group had come from. More men were trickling out from various side-rooms, but they weren’t in any sort of order yet, and she hit seven more people and disabled another turret as she flashed down the corridor.

Thirty-five left.

The next room was the armory, which had a dozen people in it scrambling for amor and weapons. That room, she threw gas grenades into and forced the door closed, twisting it in its frame so it wouldn’t open easily. Some of them would probably make it out, the room had its own venting system if they could hold their breath long enough, but it would take them time. More importantly, her danger sense was spiking harder by the second and she needed an open space.

Bursting into the cafeteria less than three seconds later, she starbolted four more men into unconsciousness…then casually dodged as monowire ripped right through where she had been. She fired off more starbolts, but they all missed wide as KGBeast’s speedware let him keep up with her current speed. Keep up, but not surpass. Something he found out the hard way as he tried to close to take her head with the monowire again.

She moved just enough to dodge the strike, coming in behind it to grab his arm and spin. He was sent flying, but proved he was just as good as his file claimed by rotating in midair and springboarding off a wall. Still moving under the effect of whatever custom speedware he had, he pulled two submachine guns and unloaded them at her as he closed again.

Unfortunately for him there was one, albeit pretty much only the one, area in which the Tamaraneans her power was templated off of didn’t lose out even to Kryptonians. She was not as strong as Superman would have been, nor nearly as tough. She was, however, faster than even he would have been. Where KGBeast had been keeping up before, now she really poured on the gas, and simply flowed around the gunfire. To the man’s credit, he was experienced, and must have fought things faster than him before. He was already flinching away as her fist took him in the stomach, both of his guns ripped from his hands at the same time with a strong telekinetic pull.

Oh…actually one gun and one arm.

Yeesh, he must have had his cyberarm locked down on the gun. Still, it had worked, and he was only sparking a bit rather than bleeding out. Apparently, he was more cyberized than his files claimed. Likely, he’d gone full borg as he continued to age. It was something proven as his remaining hand shifted to some sort of energy weapon that fired a continuous beam in an attempt to track on her. In response, she took to the air and bounced off the ceiling at high speed, firing starbolts ahead of her.

She’d aimed at the gun and, when the beam intercepted the starbolt, the beam lost. An instant later, his second hand was gone and he was wide open as Star Knight slammed into him. He still tried to fight back, breathing fire, firing a gun from his knee, and attempting to shank her with a blade that came out of his elbow. She outright ignored the flames, let her armor tank the bullet, and shattered the blade with a grab and twist. All while raining down blows, trying to make him fall.

He just would not go down for an irritatingly long time, his cyberware keeping him going through dozens of hits that would have outright killed a normal human. Finally, she must have hit something critical as his blows got weaker and weaker, his implants shutting down. Grimacing and hoping he had medical standby cyberware so he didn’t outright die on her, she dropped his unconscious body just in time to leap up and avoid a stream of fully automatic fire from a team that burst through the door.

This team had possessed the time to get organized, fanning out and filling the space with lead in organized fire zones as a full dozen of them entered. Star Knight was done playing, though. None of these men had serious cyberware and she wove between the gunfire to bowl four of them over. She scowled as she saw friendly fire unflinchingly kill two of those people as guns tracked to her, and she threw out her arms and pushed out a telekinetic wave to stop it from happening again. The men were all slammed into the wall, and follow up starbolts knocked them out.

Zipping back out in the direction of the armory, she had to shoot down an RPG with a starbolt, before knocking the two idiots that had used it indoors out with her fists. A quick glance into the armory showed eight unconscious there, which just left another 8 in the entire facility. A quick sweep with the infrared scanner in her visor showed all eight of them were booking it for exits at this point and she scowled.

Nope. No escapes!

Accelerating again, she went after them…

... ... ... ... ...

A/N 1: Stealth missions where Rocket Launchers aren't a viable solution suck. You can disagree if you want, but it's obvious you're wrong if you do ;-).

A/N 2: I have zero clue why Batman never gets Federal Agencies involved to bypass the GCPD corruption. A lot of the stuff he finds are Federal level crimes anyway. I'm assuming his writers just don't actually want to solve problems, honestly.

A/N 3: The image for this story is roughly Alyssa as Star Knight. AI generated and not perfect (she doesn't have the cat ears). But it gives a decent idea at least. *Edit* Forgot to actually link said image: https://i.postimg.cc/mD9DBqbp/Armoed-Alyssa-cropped.png