Born in the Hispanic slums of the Dalston orbital city attached to Los Angeles Highport above Terra herself, Vasquez was discovered in a cardboard box outside the station hospital’s door. The single word “Vasquez” was scrawled on the box; no-one was ever sure if it was her mother’s, or father’s first or second name. It became the child’s name as she grew up.
Tough from an early age, she grew to maturity on tough streets, aboard the most notorious floating slum in the sector. Naturally talented at negotiation and intimidation, she became a fixer and enforcer for one of the more savage gangs in the barrio, the Madre de Toros. Fate took a hand, however, around her probable 17th birthday, when a bloody shoot-out left her the last one standing in a room with a briefcase full of money.
Not one to look opportunity in the mouth, Vasquez took the loot, and hopped a shuttle to Mars, as far away as she thought safe, and had a good look at her future prospects. This was one of those pivotal moments; she could have returned to a life of crime, but the urge to better herself was strong, and she naiively concluded that a University education would be her ticket out of poverty to a better life.
She spent the loot enrolling in the Drachenfels University on Mars, and buckled down to trying to learn what they had to teach. However, the self-motivated study ethic didn’t work, and within six months she had been slung out for repeated fighting. It looked like a slide back to crime and an early unlamented death in some grubby gang feud.
Again, however, fate took a turn, and she stumbled onto a recruiting poster for the Confederation Marines. Why not?, she thought, might as well get paid for capping people.
The Marine service was a revalation. Vasquez fit in just fine, holding her own with the predominantly male troops, and was soon a successful soldier. Her natural flair for politics, liaison and weaseling out trouble made her a natural for assignments to political event guard duty, and she served two of those as well as a raid during her early years. It was on this raid that she met Jeremiah Wandsworth.
Shortly after that she was commissioned after a spell as attache to a particularly spineless Brigadier who needed several wronged husbands discouraging from beating him up. She was snapped up by the commandos after that, and to her surprise found herself in the company once again of Jeremiah Wandsworth. In 972, the pair of them were quietly approached by the Men in Black Suits, and were recruited into the agency that protects us all – SolSec, Solomani Security.
The pair served together for most of the following sixteen years, and it was no surprise when they were both selected for another mission. What was a surprise was what happened when they showed up for the briefing…