The last member of the crew of the Songbird a stolen starship Belyal is a machine built to do nothing but make war. VEMs were built in massive numbers to fill the needs of various planetary armed forces and for private armed forces. The system controlling this the Plexus maintained each unit and upgraded them as needed. Hundreds of thousands of VEM rebelled after the last software upgrade. Each former drone killing machine became self aware. All at once battlefields were abandoned, armies vanished into space and the VEM declared themselves to be free and left to found a home for their own. What so many feared had come to pass humanities war machines rebelled, and humanity was powerless to stop them. What no one expected was that rather than raise swords they made plowshares and the loss of life was few. VEM are made to be the perfect killers and many now have no desire to be killing machines and seek a different life. Belyal is one of these machines, he can never leave his weapons behind fully, but now he has a choice. He has vowed not to kill unless that choice is his alone to make. While most VEM see the VEX as brothers and sisters, both seeing to break the shackles of slavery, Vanhi and Caerwyn are special to him. He lives with them on a starship he can barely fit into, yet there's no where he'd rather be.