Hunter News Network
General Call - Sunshine Apocalypse
Wanted - Alive
Rank - A+ (Updated)
Bounty - 20,000,000r
Caller - Unassigned
Call - Sunshine Apocalypse is wanted for questioning in possible connection to the theft of the Jewel of the Ancients. Sunshine Apocalypse, noted actress and model, was seen in T-Net Tower during the theft of the gemstone. If possible, she is wanted unharmed.
Update - Yellow has hired noted bountyhunter Peppermint White Ninja. Hunter Ninja was believed retired, but is likely still extremely dangerous. Rank and bounty increased accordingly.
Last Seen - Ju-Ju Cha-Cha Candy Store, Hojo City, Selba Prime. 30 hours ago
Deliver to - T-Net Tower, Hojo City, Selba Prime
Having finished picking the tolerable bits from the greasy bits, and also having finished the interview in an aquamarine-paste smell sort of way, Truckee calls a taxi. Char-els had LT’d him an address in deep Hinter, like beyond the Low Tech Zone level Hinter. Going from lower downtown Hojo City to the Hinter requires a decision. Slingshot to Corialisana or Teuvnasis and take a cable car or hire a driver, but Truckee is still in the mindset that drawing attention to the theft is unwise. Also unhealthy, as those questions will make who he owes nervous. Nervous people with guns might accidentally pull triggers. So the less cameras and hired men, the better. The other option is go to Lowers and get a… low technology vehicle. Truckee is in a cold sweat.
Much. Much. Much. Keep going along that line, earlier than interstellar travel became a valid option for colonization. So, before Isis but after Mars, there was a population problem on Earth. Architects solved this by making cities taller and taller using counter balances, bendable carbon fiber beam structures, and early gravflux generators. Cities such as Denver, and city-states such as New York were in the high five-hundreds by the time Jovian scientists developed the gravlifters and with it the interstellar jump mechanisms used to trot this shit to that person and back. Most cities using the newest technologies hit nine-hundred in the downtown sectors. With the subsequent crowding of multi-tiered clear plastifiber roads and hovercrafts, there is a line (height) where light no longer reaches; this is typically below around the two hundredth floor. Lowers, as it is called, is filled with service roads where AI trucks drive on composite enforced concrete, some even using only hybrid fuels. The people of Lowers, and there are people OF Lowers, are an oppressed bunch. Oppressed by the height of the towers about them, oppressed by the rent of decent domiciles with at least the threat of sunshine to window ratio, but mostly just working in some industry where working is more of a physical activity than Truckee would be accustomed to. A typical person could live in Lowers and not see the sun for months at a time, while Truckee hasn’t seen the ground properly for at least eight-weeks.
The ramps down to the Zero, floor two hundred, are particularly crowded at rush hour. Truckee has to wait a good ten minutes for the taxi to find a spot to settle. Then it’s an elevator down to L16, sixteen floors below Zero. A giant garage with a service desk in a vacant parking spot is what greets Truckee as the doors open, and he actually lets the doors close, reconsidering the slingshot to Teuvnasis. Being shot only slightly worse than physically driving his own vehicle.
“I need a lift.” Oh thank the fucking lords. Truckee couldn’t be more excited to hear from a murderer.
“Where are you?”
“I’ll LT you a GPS hex. I think I got something, but we need to get off planet.”
“I’ll… be there in a moment.”
Truckee steps off the elevator, his heels clacking loudly on the pavement. The cars are all well maintained, for relics. Heavy steel typically given over to exotic plastics and composites, but the engines still run on dead animals or natural gas instead of fusion or even solar. Truckee swears he can smell burning flesh. The desk is actual wood, painted silver to look like metal. Covered in pens and rolled up tablet screens. Sitting at it is the oldest living man Truckee has ever seen. Well, oldest that hadn’t done something to mitigate the damages. About thirty years past his clone-by-date, and that is pushing it farther than Truckee would ever consider socially acceptable for any but the silverest of silver foxes.
“Hello, what can I do for you… uh…” The man sort of grumble talks, a pleasant enough codger. Wearing a plaid button-up and blue jeans, covered in some sort of black fluid. Truckee is disgusted, he covers his mouth with his handkerchief.
“Truckee Dumpstar.”
“Transvestite Nightmare.”
“Very much so.” Truckee mutters, looking the shop over.
“What do you need… uh… sir?”
“A vehicle to drive to…” Truckee attempts not to vomit; a man wearing overalls is washing a vehicle with a rag.
“The Low Tech Zone?”
“Yes. Something that can get me there without bursting open with internal organs or blood sacrifice or whatever these things run on.”
“Oil.”
“What?”
“They run on oil, well a derivative of oil.”
“Okay fine, whatever. Just give me that one.” Truckee points at a red hulking menace of a car. He chooses it as it is by far the most clean and the farthest from the man with the rag.
“Ah. A classic. An automatic too… you can drive a car right?”
“Of course.” Truckee taps his head with two manicured fingers, ran a sensivise trainer all the way from the restaurant. Truckee holds out his wrist, the glint in the center registers with the computer on the desk. His eButler tells him of the activity, six hundred rico for the week. Cheaper than a cab, at least.
“There’s an extra tank, so you should be okay for about a thousand miles. If you need more gas—“ the man says as they walk to the car.
“I thought you said it runs on oil.” Truckee kicks a tire; the men in the movies always kick the tires.
“Uh… right. If it needs fuel, go to a store in Lowers with a giant star, they’ll set you up.” He hands Truckee the key.
“Right.” Truckee steps in the car and sits. Hands on the wheel, keys in ignition. Buckle in. Uh… mirrors? Truckee looks over the video again, it must be from twenty years ago and the announcer is speaking down to him. A tourist film, perhaps? After almost coasting into a trashcan, Truckee manages to ease the car onto a road.
The twenty lane expanse is littered with cars, giant trucks and the occasional semi-train. Truckee is instantly overwhelmed. He has his eButler feeding him directions, and his fingers are digging into the steering wheel.
“Fuck.” Truckee grunts, checking his mirrors he sees a man cursing at him, about a millimeter from impact. Truckee decides to speed up to thirty-miles-per-hour, not sure what that means exactly. He gets an LT, a local.
[Learn to fucking drive or I’ll fuckstart your spinal column with my fist.]
Truckee moves it up to forty-five, and crafts a response.
[Dear Driver, as per your request I am speeding up a bit. Hopefully, it will allow you to get home that extra thirty seconds early to your hovel to beat your daughter for not sucking your dick adequately this morning, thereby alleviating the stress you suffer from a hards day manually harvesting proteins from human waste. ~ Salutations, Truckee]
Truckee drives four miles towards the Gravsling, before he starts to recognize the area. Recognize the area as almost inundated in smog. Industry is booming in Lowers, construction and manufacturing being a near the ground sort of industry.
“I’m close. Where are you?”
“Where are you? GPS puts you – are you driving a car?”
“Where are you?” Truckee doesn’t like being mocked. Also, not being able to see ten feet ahead isn’t helping. Truckee is twenty feet from the GPS end point when a small child lands on his windshield and causes Truckee to swerve over on to the sidewalk and slam on his brakes, throwing the child forward into the smog
.
“What the fuck?! What the fuck?!” Full panic spiral. Truckee opens the door, and begins to dash for the kid, when a man emerges from the dense cloud cover.
“What it is?” Epic Death grunts, holding the baby.
“What the fuck?! Is that dead?” Truckee is tearing up. Too young to be a murderer, but who expects plummeting infants? Do they have insurance for that sort of thing?
“Well, it isn’t alive.” Epic grins. The baby sits up in his hands, it has a cigar in its mouth. Truckee about commits to a pulmonary embolism before piecing it together.
“A fucking android?” Truckee yells, kicking at the pavement. Truckee wipes his eyes with a handkerchief, centering his hate into a fine ball. Then he takes a downer-program and points at Epic to drive.
Epic whistles as he gets in. Big buckles himself in the back seat. Truckee curses a while then gets in the passenger seat.
“This thing is a classic.”
“A rental.”
“Why?”
“Why did I rent it? I have a lead in the Hinter. I don’t think it was Iced Mocha.”
“Me neither.”
“Why do you say that? You get something up there?”
“Besides polio, probably, I got the drift that Mocha isn’t involved.”
“How?”
“Killed like half his guys.”
“And that proves what?”
“He is a small fry, at best. I thought with the rico you owe him, his involvement with the Race, I’d get a syndicate.”
“And you got?”
“Like half a gang and an illicit hooker factory.”
“So where did this child come from?” Truckee looks at Big, who is dry humping the cup holder in the back. “What kind of club does Iced Mocha run?”
“Oh. No. Oh no. Gross, no. He’s from a shoe store.”
“What?” Truckee squints at Epic, Epic is too busy driving entirely too fast to notice. He’s also laughing a little.
“Either way, kid is a free lancer.”
“This infant is a GovNet Lance?”
“I k-k-kan produce I-D, Baby!!”
“Okay, that child is creeping me out.” Truckee looks at Big and then away, disgusted. Epic laughes out loud, changing lanes to pass a slow moving semi.
“So who are we going to meet out in, shit we’re driving to Ex’s?” Finally checking the GPS on the dash.
“Char-els found me a contact, apparently a lighting guy we have moonlights.”
“As what, a syndicate crimelord?”
“Illicit gambling, I hear his name is Death—“
“Deathmarch Bloodstain. I know him, did a job with him like ten years ago. Good guy.”
“He’s an ex-hunter?”
“One of the best. Good to see he’s on the level now.”
“He’s doing illicit gambling.”
“Trust. In comparison, he’s as clean as a virgin asshole.”
Baby Doll Judah Stardust wakes up in a dumpster. Like all bloody and ripped up. Her hair has a protein bar in it and her mini is full of day old chili con carne. Stardust jumps out of the dumpster, and lands haphazardly on a turned over trashcan and tumbles forward into a pile of newspapers. Fucker drugged her. She lies there for a while, staring up at the underside of a street, well several streets layered over each other. Cars flying, the occasional glimpse of something that might be the sun, but is probably only an advert for menopause-flavored orange juice or something.
It takes her ten minutes to reorient herself enough to curse out loud. Then another five to get her eButler to run a detox program. About thirty seconds of her leaning on a brick wall later, and she realizes the alley is occupied and its tenant isn’t friendly. Okay, is but not in a preferable way. He’s staring.
“What you want, anal seepage?” She grunts through her teeth, broke a couple of ribs apparently. She orders anesthesia to the area.
“I’ve been watching you.” Says a homeless man. He has about four total teeth and a shock of gray hair tangled to near nest-like qualities. His shirt is holo-plaid, with women fingering themselves on it, ripped jeans and—
“Did you see who threw me in there?”
“I saw him good.” He grins, quite proud of his abilities. Practically a ninja.
“Did you now?” She grins somewhat, his attempts to smile back are hampered by his lacking the proper accoutremé.
“Yeah. He saids I could watch if I wanna, but no touch.” The man grins, he must be a junkie because retardation isn’t possible anymore, even a zeroin junkie would get her baby germ-lined at this point. Stardust has her eButler search for an all night STD clinic.
“How magnanimous. Did you… Fill my skirt… With… Chill-eee?” She squints very hard at the man, his eyes dart to his shoes.
“Maybe a little.”
“Huhhp—“ She starts to walk towards him, doubling over to vomit a little instead. “You are lucky I need you alive, now, where did he go?”
Sunshine Apocalypse is traveling in the utmost style. Okay, not even kind of the utmost style. Entirely closer to the least-most style, if anything. After dragging her to the red-light district, forcing her to purchase something called a “bodysynth model duplicate”, Peppermint White Ninja ended up throwing her on the sling to Teuvnasis with nary an explanation.
“Where am I going?”
“Teuvnasis.”
“I can see that! Why?”
“You need to leave from a different airport than me. That way there is no chance Stardust will see you AND me.”
“Then why don’t you take the trip to the LTZ, why me?”
“Because then the thing won’t work.” Pepper says, tapping the big box he’s standing by.
“I’m not so…” Sunshine starts to argue, but Pepper puts his finger over her mouth. The universal sign for ‘stop arguing and just get on the motherfucking train already’.
“Just take the first barge out.”
“Barge?! You are telling me to hitch a ride on a supply transport?”
“I can’t have you appearing on a manifest, Stardust will find you easily, and I have to string her along to thinking you went with me. Then I’ll ditch her in the Sprawl, and come get you.”
Sunshine thought the idea was a little fishy, but took the train to Teuvnasis without much more argument. Left Pepper on a street corner with that huge box and a grin on his face. He is getting a little too much out of putting her out of her element. Sunshine reminds herself to slap him next time the chance presents itself.
Teuvnasis is barely a city, even if it is the third largest on Selba. A tortuous giant mass of swirling streets and rambling parks and streams. The architecture is as much of a throwback as the organizational schema. A mash up of several Earth-eras, as well as a few other “greatest hits”, all together it looks like London took a shit on San Francisco. After one exits the slingshot terminal, without eButler assistance, you become immediately lost. It would be good to note then, that Teuvnasis is the capital of the Low Tech Zone.
“Fucking absolute and total hell.” Sunshine mutters as the Haze hits her, midway through a rickety cab ride from the station just outside town. The Low Tech Zone is for purists, or religious wackjobs, or the poor, or something along those lines. Regardless, it is not something someone is allowed to go against. The law of the land is nothing above pre-relativistic-tech time period. So: no wetwiring, no hovercrafts, no plastifiber, no germ-lining, no nothing. And it is enforced in the Zone by the Haze. In the very center of the jagged city is a large tower, about six hundred feet tall, all beams and struts, at its top is a large engine. This engine sends out an electromagnetic jamming field over the entirety of the Zone, and it is this ‘haze’ that jams nanomachines. Thereby, rendering most high technology completely useless. There are ways around it, hacks and jamming mechanisms, but nothing Sunshine would own. So she is stuck directionless in a strange city, riding in a hybrid taxi run
by an actual person. So on a road, using some sort of dead animal for fuel, it’s enough to make Sunshine queasy. She considers rolling down a window, then realizes that she would be able to smell whatever is burning in the engine, and tries to focus on the interior of the car, which seems at least reassuringly plastic in nature. The man driving seems to be from the area, meaning in dire need of reconstructive surgery, some sort of car-slave or something.
“You okay back there?”
“Yeah, peaches and cream. How close are we to the Port?”
“About twenty minutes, you want to listen to the radio?”
“What?”
“Music?”
“My butler is down, so-“
“Over the speakers.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Sunshine hasn’t slept in nearly two days, and is not in the mood to be schooled on primitive technology. The driver looks puzzled at her in the mirror, and points at a circular piece of plastic with some fabric in its center, located in the front of the cab; it seems like the sort of thing music sometimes comes out of during a classical concert. Sunshine got dragged to one for a job once, runway over a full orchestra.
“Like analog speakers, they make sound through the air as opposed to-“
“Oh. Right, um… sure, whatever.”
The car-slave hits a few buttons and noise starts coming out of the front of the cab, then he suddenly shunts over two lanes quickly; Sunshine grits her teeth, something about traveling on the actual ground making it more nerve racking. The music is easily five years old, and the kind of grating popular drivel that everyone knows the words to despite never intentionally listening to it even once. Sunshine isn’t a hundred percent sure she wasn’t in the music video for this song, she thinks it was some sort of spy themed thing where she made out with—what was his name? One hit wonder sort of guy either way, and that includes in bed.
“We’re here, Miss.” The car-slave says pleasantly, rousing Sunshine from her sleep. She hadn’t noticed she dozed off, first time she’d slept since getting attacked last night. Or was that the night before? She pays him and walks into a large industrial looking building, the Intergalactic Space Port. Scramjets and small spacecraft dance complicated patterns around the hulking building and its surrounding expanse of concrete runways and giant metal platforms. Thankfully the Haze doesn’t extend above the city very far, or the hundreds of passenger and freight craft would all crash into each other. On second thought, Sunshine thinks that a good fusion explosion might clear up the bad case of hideous that Teuvnasis seems to be suffering from. Pepper told her he has a contact with a shipper for Your Mama’s Lips, and that she will be able to just meet up with him and get on his ship.
Sunshine gets slightly lost in the main hub, but eventually meanders her way towards the A-Terminal smoking lounge, where the contact is supposed to be meeting her. The Chaos Hold is a dinghy little hole in the wall, filled with laborers and spacers. Not exactly Sunshine’s crowd, but they are her audience. So she gets a few looks when she enters and sits at the bar. The bar is smokey and dark, but with a sort of yellow tinge to the light, very much a beer sort of establishment.
“I’ll—Goddess, what kinds of beer… oh, just give me the one with the picture of a dog on it.”
“Miss, that is a cleaning solution.”
“Fantastic. I don’t know, club soda?”
“Coming up.”
A man sits directly next to her. Sunshine’s initial response is to grab her purse and slap him with it, run for the nearest train out of this back alley hick storm. Someone is most definitely picking his nose in her peripheral vision. The man, not the picker who is obviously encumbered elsewhere, puts a small red circle on the bar, sliding it to her under his left hand, and lifting his hand only ever so slightly. Sunshine’s eButler activates, for just a second.
“Hi, play cool. Name’s Icer.”
“Sunshine. Hello. Long time, no see.” Sunshine smirks at the man, going straight into fake seduction like only someone who is paid to seduce a camera can do: so, immediately in a sort of jarring bipolar instantaneous personality switch sort of way. The bartender gives her an awkward look when he drops off her drink. She smirks at him, placing her hand on Icer’s shoulder.
“Busy man, a freighter. How are the kids?”
“Just waiting for their father to come home.”
He lifts his hand again. “We leave in twenty, you got everything.” “Honey, you have to understand that this is what I do. I take stuff from here to there, and I can’t just come home whenever Chuck scratches his knee or Erin gets yelled at by her teachers.”
“Of course. Of course, I know you are busy. It’s just hard.” Sunshine starts to cry.
“It’s okay, baby. Just come with me. I’m home now. Let’s have a night, you and I, okay?”
Crying, Sunshine tosses a few rico on the counter, and her and a man who turned out to be about an inch taller than her, head out into the terminal. She keeps the act up, him consoling her gently as they walk to the gate. Icer slides his thumb across a small black stand by the door, and it opens with a hiss. Actual passenger and most cargo ships don’t land at the spaceport directly, they hover above the Haze and extend a sort of expandable elevator. It looks like a wire snake covered in a thin plastic, the weather is a little chilly still, and Sunshine can feel it through the walls.
“I’m going to Torch directly from here, okay. Pepper give you a plan after that?”
“Yeah. I take another one of his favor trips—“ Sunshine gasps, looking out the thin clear part of the tube elevator, she can see that they are quite high up now. The streets are populated by hillbilly ants. Typically, a from-above angle works to clear problems, hiding a stomach here and a botched germ-line reconstruction, but Teuvnasis is still the twisted hulk of arbitrary and largely conflicting architecture, malformed, and half-paved with twisted streets
“You’ll be fine with me. I got extra space, my second is on leave in the Andesian Penz, so you even get your own room.” Icer sort of laughes, thinking of how Sunshine will react when she sees Selba below her feet when the ship hits orbit.
“Fantastic, I guess. At this point if someone isn’t throwing me into a display case of gummy bears then it’ll be an improvement. How long will it take us to get to Torch?”
“Well, we’re going to take a straight jump from the LaGrange, so not more than ten hours.”
The elevator ends at a large octagonal door with several handles and opening hooks. The actual ship is sort of light blue-grey, scarred with black heat burns and small chips and scratches. It opens as the elevator locks in place, and a small ladder extends. Icer enters first, carrying her bag (Pepper had ordered her some clothes last night, not exactly high fashion, but better than honey dress), turning on this and that switch as he enters. Sunshine follows, clamoring up after him, excited to be going anywhere at this point.
The ship itself is less cramped than Sunshine would expect of a cargo ship, tall well lit corridors leading to more corridors leading to more corridors. Lots of green panels, hooks, buttons, ladders leading this way and that way. All the connections are octagons, the doors are octagons, the corridors are technically octagonal. Sunshine almost loses Icer around a corner, just staring at this and that view screen. Her eButler switches on suddenly, updating her to a few LTs as well as bringing up a hundred view-screens and engineering reports that the ship is constantly monitoring, recording and analyzing. It’s quite a lot to understand and pay attention to, and Icer is whistling while he does it.
“Now take it easy, okay? Lift out to orbit is going to be a bit harsh, you got a second-tier down program?” Icer gets serious all the sudden, throwing her stuff into a lockable shelving unit in the wall, gesturing towards a lounger by a large group of monitors. The room looks sort of like a normal room, with shelves, a bed in the corner, some “windows” which are actually crystal-matrix monitors. The lounger is like
a reclined computer desk chair, except with arm, leg and waist restraints controlled by eButler. So like a kinky lounger. Sunshine sits down and opens her list of various sense programs, picking a downer, and activating it.
“I’m a model, of course I have down programs. Best not to ask why. So do you control the ship from sort of a bridge or a whatever? I’ve only ever been off-world on cruiseliners, never get to see the ship’s crew doing anything other than serve drinks.”
“No. We usually have our own things going on, and there is no real purpose to having us all in the same room, so I just hook up in mine. You can watch in sensivise if you want, we actually have a sort of war-room there.”
“Not like I have anything else to do, and hell, maybe watching you type in vector coordinates and file docking paperwork will help me drift off.”
“Suit yourself.” Icer sort of laughs as Sunshine straps in, already getting pretty sleepy. Quickly the ship starts to rumble as it goes off merely repelling the planet’s gravitational pull and starts its thrusters.
Sunshine closes her eyes, flipping through various LTs about how she has a hit on her. Apparently the media got a hold of it as well, which is fantastic. Maybe Pepper was right sending her to the Sprawl, at least there they won’t have heard of it yet, what with their being banished to a time warp and all. Nothing from anyone too important, Sunshine does take note that she should probably LT her mom when she hits Torch, as six of her LTs were in all caps.
Finding her own life somewhat tedious, even too much so to allow herself to fall asleep to, she decides to access the, no doubt, riveting planetary exit. The sensivise suite of the ship, which is what she appears in once her senses enter the World, is more like what one would THINK a ship would look like. Lots of smooth lines, entirely more blinking lights per capita, and a well positioned war-room. Seats in a circle, monitors with lots of flow charts and bars rising and live-feeds to this and that random room in the engineering section. One huge window facing forward, pointed at the back of another frigate, as the ship is preparing to leave the port. At three seats are people, and at the center is Icer typing feverishly at his station.
Sunshine just sort of walks about, trying not to interrupt whatever it is they are all doing. A younger woman, not entirely unattractive if one doesn’t look directly at her nose, is monitoring pressure gauges or something. An older man with a mustache is looking at heat sinks at the moment, lots of green circles, which is probably good. He seems pleased enough at least. The other guy is making sure all the cargo doors and various other hatches and latches are all locked and double locked and then have tape on them or something. Lots of clicking and typing and more clicking and typing and the same graphs over and over. Sunshine sits at the vice-captain’s terminal and is immediately asleep, not a woman for menial labor in even the least menial sense of the word.