Novels2Search

Chapter 7: Daemon on the shoulder

Data Ink co. email- Dear customer, this is the requested information we could gather on the bounty hunter who hurt your little girl a few days ago. I, for one, am sorry those tragic events happened, and hope with all my heart that you can obtain satisfaction.

Her full name is Katiana Ariel Aiko, also known as Pitbull Kate in her domain. 23 of age with a hunter's license since she was 19. We sadly have little information about her current whereabouts or spending habits, she practically disappeared from the system around her 17th year, only appearing on some court documents and arrests she executed. She is probably using the cryptocurrency system offered to all bounty hunters for their financial information security. We can't (in your range of services) do anything about that data, since it would require to grease an official to get the requested information. As you can probably guess, moving "emotionally" the people guarding the keys of such systems is quite HARD and I know you don't have the pull required to do so.

I did, however, get you some information about her known relations and a bit of raw data about her. Sadly nothing definitive could be found in your price range. To find more would require constant observation or power that you do not have. Judging from her nature I doubt she'll make any easy-to-catch faux-pas in her personal security anytime soon.

***

Aiko Ayame: Kate's mother, deceased in a raid 20 years ago between two minor corporations that are now completely destroyed. We have limited information on her task description other than she used to be working the internal network of the attacked corporation.

Bogdan Ariel: Kate's father, deceased in the same raid, he was the network manager.

We know that they immigrated after fleeing from another ethnic purge in New Eden, ex-United-States territories. Little is known of that time but we suspect their polyethnic relation put them in danger down there. They probably hopped on the first elevator they could when Ayame got pregnant. They got a very substantive debt coming up but the debt's IDN was probably destroyed during the raid. Therefore nobody can claim it, nor know its exact content, but based on our estimations and the initial amount Kate should have been saddled with some pretty substantial debts to perpetuity, especially as a single child.

Cherry: Yes, that Cherry, the actress, Asstronaughty's superstar, and co-owner of the renegade artistic commune. Her origins are even more mysterious and shrouded by time than Kate's. We know little more than you can personally find out by yourself on the net about her. She appeared at the onset of a conflict between two invading factions in the Asstronaughty's dome. The conflict was mostly between two main contestants. The first was Killswitch, a merc outfit backed by Crispy Cereals Co, trying to take over the dome for its agricultural infrastructures downstairs. The second was MeatGrinder, a crime syndicate neck-deep into human trafficking in all its goriest shapes. A bunch of prostitutes got stuck between the two and Cherry was seemingly one of them at the time. She armed them and led them to open a new front in the conflict.

When things were going toward their grimmest conclusions, Cherry made a sex VR to finance a weapon buy. She didn't make some cheap easy fapping material. It was a heartfelt first-hand account documentary of the war... with a slice of "plot" interwoven in it to put sugar on a bitter pill.

Critiques threw gold at it, the Solar System was in ecstatic stupor awe, and outrage. Public opinion became so polarized riots broke out all over Paradise. An uncaring unfeeling city was suddenly living vicariously its revolution's fantasies. Fans volunteered for the fight, and crowdfunding revenues became insane in a day, pouring like rain in a drought.

Two weeks later not a single shot could be heard in the tunnels. Some say the Council of 101 made a deal with the Crispy Co. to avoid more public unrest. The atmosphere was ripe for a global revolution and they needed the pressure cooker to cool off. A victory of the revolters was the best way to do so, no martyrs, a symbolic victory, a good way to relieve the pressure without too much real fuss or losses in profits. As for MeatGrinder... well there is that video circulating of their leader getting smashed on the head with a lead pipe by his own mother... in a very public setting... in his underwear. She was yelling bloody murder about him hurting those poor girls she REALLY liked watching every day she was feeling stressed... Yeah, I would totally have dug a hole to hide as well. By the way, I got a copy of the event, I'll throw it in as a bonus, you need the laugh. Anyway, long story short, both sides chose to bide their time, waiting for the spotlights of internet fame to fade to black, for people to find something else to give a shit about...

Cherry's real masterstroke came during that time, she did something never seen in military history, she personally went to invite every artist she could find, to bring them to live with the Angels in the Dome. As more of them poured in, peer pressure did its best job. She made a shield of Stars to protect her newborn city-state, giving it a new identity.

Back then, being an artist meant being a starving obscure legend from the web. Not many revenue sources, food, or protection. Countless geniuses died every day in the dark. In a world where most couldn't find conventional jobs, art was blooming underground, but without a roof or a direction. They suddenly got access to cheap, decent, lodging and food. They grew it themselves in the underbelly of the dome.

A steady stream of revenue came from the cultural control they had. A single platform, a small monthly fee, all the art you could eat, no frontier, no competition. The artist got directly paid a stipend based partly on the appreciation of their art, plus a base amount to survive for everyone. With safety and time, they didn't stop, they craved for more, they craved for the summit, and now they could make the rest of their climb safely.

The model worked, and nearly no one dared attack after that. The corporations were too scared of a popular revolt to try anything. Plus it was serving their own cravings for entertainment perfectly and no one wants to shoot their favourite artist in the gut for a fistful of dollars. Especially when you are creating the damn things at will by typing a 0 on a spreadsheet.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

The gangs were not strong enough to represent a threat anymore, during that period of grace the Angels had put their hands on some high-end cybernetics and weaponry technologies that even the most advanced corporations can't even get their hands on to this very day. I don't know the origin of that mysterious tech, only that Cherry is the only one providing the blueprints somehow. I don't know the source, but she's known to be really fucking old, like alive through the turn-of-the-millennium old. She's one of the handfuls of bloody First Immortals still alive today and of all these old monsters she might be the scariest.

For all I know, she might have swiped a stash of the Corporate War blueprints. Top-shelf, produced before the decline in a secret lab, or she might even be behind the damn tech herself. You know how these types are, all mysterious with some secret accumulations stashed everywhere. There is a rumour saying that she was up here on the Moon alone during fifty years of conflict, half-mad. Watching us die down there powerless to act, but this is unsubstantiated. Reports of the first international base are top secret under the Big 3's umbrella. I won't risk my neck spoofing them, don't even ask. Wouldn't do you any good anyway.

She is known for her artistic talents, advanced knowledge, and skills in combat and tactics. She changes cybernetic pretty much on a whim and is probably at the head of one of the richest non-corporate entities on the Moon. She has a personal army at her beck and call: plus or minus five thousand nanocarbon-reinforced combat cyborgs and one of the vastest information networks known to humanity. That's discounting around fifty CEOs in the Fortune 500 who would personally take a bullet for her. She also seems to have some automated surveillance capacities over all the city, and she seems to use it to eliminate anyone going against her or her people. Over three thousand violent events can be linked to her rise in power and maintaining it. She is by far one of the most dangerous non-corporate entities in the whole system.

Now how does she relate to Kate, that's bad news for your revenge Mr. Blanchard, and I would advise revisiting your objectives to something less... intrusive. Cherry is Kate's adopted mother as are around 50 kids she took under her wing right after she stabilized control of the dome.

Asstronaughty: Kate grew up there from age three to seventeen.

There is little you probably can't find with a simple search but hey! It's my job to copy the brochure AR for you:

"The Asstraunaughty, not just a dome, a brothel, or a physical space. It's a frenetic beating heart running wild with passion. Filled with neon glows and avant-garde art like a perpetual firework in a dark sky. Where the rest of Paradise is subdued, cold, oppressive, and brutalist, here, everything is hot, vibrant and soft... well, sometimes HARD, where it counts. If I made an Old-World analogy, it would be Vegas Strip, Holywood, Moulin Rouge, and postcolonial Macao rolled in a hippie commune's joint and smoked in an 18th-century philosophe café. It is, by every measurable data point, the last bastion of culture and humanism in the Solar System. From the temporary gas miner's sky cities of Venus to the asteroid mining launch point and factories on Phobos, there is just nothing like it anywhere.

Not corporate or gang-controlled. A cooperative owns it: The Angels. They are artists and prostitutes... man, woman, gender fluid. They share the load of the local security, and share in the profits from its operations, based on the individual work they do with no adjustment by hierarchy. It's the closest thing you'll get to a socialist utopia in The City. The Angels are also a citizen militia benefiting from legendary status. They are immortalized both by their military exploits and the VRs depicting their courage and strength. The commoners see them as modern knights, fighting for honour and the weak. Years of conflicts and struggles against corporations and gangs have hardened them. They were forged, tempered by fire and steel. At first, they were simply slave prostitutes, victims of the local warlords fighting for a rundown dome. They were resources, boys and girls, sold for sex to finance the fights. Those same slaves decided to unionize and fought back in a bloody conflict and opened their own front. They were drowning in their own blood, losing against mountainous odds until Cherry evened the odds and then overturned them."

Madam Hui (luck in Chinese) or Mama Hui for the intimates: She's a gun printer accredited by her local, friendly, Corpo. She seems to have taken over the role of a motherly figure from Cherry once Kate took to the job. Kate has been spotted at a few of her kiosks around the city. The last contact was in dome 78, a run-down place going to scraps. She was seen recently at Ma' Hui kiosk in an underground market called Old Pork Market. The market has recently been closed by the authorities for the illegal establishment of a commercial area. It is expected to reopen soon once the crackdown is over. Human meat has been sold there, I wouldn't advise attempting anything in that area for your own safety.

***

We suppose Kate has left the Asstronaughty after the murder of a street kid named Petrov Smyrnoi, known as the Stink, a budding artist in the field of smellography working for Cherry. From what we know, Kate got wounded badly that day, then disappeared for two years. Post-traumatic behaviours can be observed from her ever since. She met with another person of interest known only as Texas, another mysterious figure in the Angels. She's the trainer of the Enforcement Wing of the Angels. She'll probably be the woman to get our skins tanned on a rack if we are not smart about this Mr. Blanchard. That person is as secretive as a spook from the best Corpo. We only suppose she was one of Cherry's first girls during the revolt. She also changes bodies like I change shirts... well as other people change shirts. We think she's the one who trained Kate when she got hurt.

Kate used to have an artistic streak under Cherry's education, she used a lot of wall paint, especially orange and pink. We haven't found anything relating to that clue in recent years, we ignore if she kept at her artistic hobbies as no purchases of those colours fit her known movements since. It was our best lead for her commercial habits and nothing else came to focus in our investigation. The likelihood of her abandoning the craft after her trauma is highly probable.

The people implicated in the murder of Petrov Smyrnoi are all dead, either shot personally by Kate two years after the incident or died in a firefight with the Angels on patrol that day. They were a bunch of religious hooligans claiming to purge the world of sin for the Presipope. They came for some Saturday-style casual terrorism. The action reports are classified but I do have access to about half of the events through second-hand video accounts of the event.

Kate seems to use a mix of special forces training and her prosthetic's military-grade softs during combat. She tends to disguise herself as a local to stalk her prey and go in explosively while in close proximity of her target once she feels sufficiently certain the target has limited or no backup. She now mostly goes after minor offenders without cyber, small-time crooks, or printers, but no big game.

She's calculating, but sometimes gets a bit messy in the execution, our analysis shows it has 97% chance to have something to do with her obvious PTSD. She exhibits clear signs of hypervigilance and mostly uses it well during action, but she seems to break down after. Sometimes she breaks down in very public settings, though she keeps silent during panic attacks and usually goes for more of a freeze reaction during those. We also noted excessive violent tendencies when interacting with the public, nothing big though, altercations and small acts of physical aggression are common. Her symptoms and behaviour seem to be spiralling lately. We think that her recent failures might accentuate the economic pressure aspect in her life, and make her devolve into more pathological patterns relating to her condition.

Due to her mother's personal power and propensity for extreme violence, I would suggest you abandon your initial idea of doing the deed yourself. I understand your frustrations but she wouldn't live so well after her father visited the pavement "Angel style". You could, on the other hand, use your contacts in less reputable circles to find a patsy to do the job blindly. Bounty hunters are a hated class of people, if you give the right incentive to the right people, they might do the work for you. Might I suggest arranging for Steeve on the corner of the 33rd corridor and elevator 12 to get the following attachment anonymously? One of his dial-up-brained associates and Kate had some earlier run-ins.