Character creation

Dorothea Astankova, Dotty, was a thief.

There really wasn’t a polite way to say it, she had tried to be a lot of things over the years, legitimate things, but in the end, she always ended up a thief. She’d been pretty good at it too until she got greedy and reached for a prize she really ought not to have reached for and it had cost her everything.

She’d been working on Calumet II, a large factory plant circling this gorgeous ringed gas giant. It was the only moon in the system with a magnetosphere and as such it was the only one that could be cheaply terraformed into something useful. Dotty wasn’t sure what they built there, some kind of gravitational something or other for starships but there were people there, lots of people, people with money and it was the kind of place where an unassuming girl such as herself could disappear into the crowds pretty easily. She’d run a few quick cons, broken into a few buildings and picked a lot of pockets before things started to go wrong.

One neon soaked rainy Saturday afternoon in Chennai Town she’d spotted a wealthy looking mark stumbling out of a strip bar called Busty Saint Claire’s. He was a big fella, a hundred and fifty kilos and two metres if he was a decimetre, he was also looking pretty darn wasted. He’d staggered into a back alley, fallen against a wall and passed out. Being an opportunist of discerning tastes, Dotty had taken it upon herself to relive the man of his wallet.

Cash only, that was her rule, cash only, but there’d been something in his wallet that had caught her attention, a transparent plastic security card with no markings, just a chip the size of her pinky nail buried in the center. Black and ominous with circuitry tendrils stretching out to the edge of the card like a spider in the middle of a web.

Dotty pocketed the card, unbent the flexi phone from her wrist and quickly scanned the fellow’s fingerprints before taking pictures of his eyes. He’d started to wake up when the flash had hit his retinas, but she was gone before he regained his vision.

For the next two days Dotty had followed the guy, it wasn’t until the evening of the second day that he’d figured out that the card was missing. Tied to get into this big abandoned industrial building, cold and quiet, bristling with camera’s and sensors. He’d had to knock on the door and scan his eyes before it opened from the inside, she couldn’t hear the conversation, but it had been heated, who ever was inside wasn’t happy with him. Thru windows on the upper stories she could see cars and skimmers, shuttles and motorcycles. It was the row of metal boxes stacked neatly against a central wall that had drawn her attention most, they were secure credit boxes dozens of them, maybe hundreds from the Bayern Bank on Nouveau Rochelle.

If she’d stuck around long enough she’d have seen the three metre tall Atlas Bot with the cerulean paint job crush the left hand of the big man from Busty Saint Claire’s, she might have even seen the second man in the million-credit suit smiling as it had happened, but Dotty was already gone formulating a plan. One of those boxes held enough cash to set her up for the rest of her life.

Dotty wasn’t really sure where the plan had gone sideways, it was a good plan but the man in the million-credit suit had her by the throat and was slamming her head repeatedly into a grey cinder-block wall shouting something at her in a language she barely understood. She’d gotten in, gotten past the security with a pair of custom printed retinal dupes and hand scans. She’d even managed to get two of the boxes out past security when the Atlas had grabbed her, it was devilishly quiet for something so large. The last thing she recalled before waking up in the alley was the single crimson eye of the Atlas bot staring at her.

When she woke up there was nothing but darkness and pain. She’d been naked, well almost naked the man in the suit had left her in her underwear, but he’d taken everything else. He’d take her eyes as a warning to anyone thinking about looking into his business, he’d used nanobots to flay the skin from her hands to remind thieves that stealing from him was not going to be tolerated and he’d left her alive so that she could spread the word. Drago Hasapis was a man not to be trifled with.

Dotty lived for 6 months on the streets of Chennai Town blind and begging for scraps, she sang for credits in the subway tunnels and lived in a rundown tenement on the fringes of Chennai that was occupied by the dregs of society. The surgeons had replaced the skin on her hands with this cheap synthetic that both smelt and felt wrong, her eyes weren’t considered critical and so they’d left her blind.

Astrid Nakamura had found her panhandling in Wellington Station, she’d heard the stories and wanted to find the girl who’d broken into Drago’s warehouse and almost made off with two of his crates. Astrid had liked what she’d seen, broken as she was there was talent there and so she had presented Dotty with an offer she couldn’t refuse. Passage off Calumet II, fresh eyes and new skin from a grey market surgeon she knew, and an opportunity to start over.

Astrid was good to Dotty, treated her well, set her up in a nice place, gave her clothes, food and a job. It felt legitimate singing in the club, it felt good to be the desired and wanted, but in the end, Dotty was still a thief. The only difference was she was someone else’s thief now.