Angelika Ransfield

What's a nice girl like her doing in a place like New Carthage?

She wasn't always terribly nice. Or even blonde.

***

(With acknowledgements and very sincere apologies to Once Were Warriors and Absolutely Fabulous )

As a girl she roamed the urban craters of Two Lakes, New Zealand with her father's gang, the Black Fists. Their home territory in Pine Block, was a devastated low income housing project. The Fists would strut the local streets by day, looking for a rumble or a bust. At night, they would string themselves silently through the wealthy Pakeha neighbourhoods in search of the goods they considered their due.

Angelika was taken along as they searched for tribute. A small, inconspicuous and ragged spy, she would scout out an area before they made their entrance. When on a celebratory bust, she was their mascot, smiling over the broken beerbottles and bloodstains that accompanied all parties, and making them laugh at her imitations of the rich and respectable women they'd robbed that day.

Her father's strength was legend. His reputation for cruelty allowed him to rule the gang and its surrounding areas relatively unchallenged. Ruling from behind a wall of silence, Jake made sure that, even when the sun shone, it was still dark in Pine Block. One quality he prized over all. Staunchness. To one another. And staunch Jake was. Even to Angelika's mother who had died soon after she was born. He never took another woman, keeping his daughter as the apple of his cold little black eyes. She was gorgeous, and he allowed no mention of her very slight congenital deformity.

As Angelika grew older, she became more than a little spoilt and vain. Surrounded by men who woke up wanting to punch someone, she knew herself invulnerable. Watching them defer to her father in the way men of violence defer to those they know to be their physical betters, she accepted the transferred tribute as her due. Witnessing the gang's infinite tolerance of Jake's punishment, seeing their stoic acceptance of pain as their moko tats were chiselled into their faces, she knew that such men were hers to bid and call. At fifteen, she insisted on receiving the moko, which marked her as a full member of the gang.The men sometimes joked (out of Jake's earshot) that more and more raids were conducted to provide her with the foreign-made goods she desired - elaborate jewelry, stylish weapons, rich fabrics, and wildly outlandish gadgets.

Just before her sixteenth birthday, one of the brothers, a boy called Kepe, about her age, and good-looking as the devil, was rumoured to have made something of an impression on the young Angelika. Word of this was enough to inspire Jake to a towering rage. By the next morning, Kepe was laid out dead, with none of the customary formalities. Flouted for the first time in her life, the young Angelika walked out of Jake's house, stepped right over Kepe's pretty little smashed face, and marched through the crumbling streets of Pine Block to the Pakeha side of Two Lakes. She walked into the office of the commanding officer from the regional military police base. Everyone knew he had been brought in at great expense by corporate power, and had been remarkably unsuccessful at breaking the power of the Black Fists. Angelika's hot gaze roasted the Commander from across the room. She sat on his lap, put her arms about his neck, and offered to tell him all she knew about the Black Fists, and about her own black- fisted Dad if he, Commander Martin, would offer her his personal protection. Commander Martin trailed a finger over her cheekbones, and promised that he would protect her with his own life.

By the end of the week there was not a Black Fist left alive in Two Lakes, or so everyone thought. The guilty taste of revenge flooded the initial months of Angelika's liaison with Commander Martin, and tied him to her with strong ropes of lust. To the immense scandal of the local community, she persuaded him within a month that he should marry her. As the Commander's new wife, Angelika delighted in frequenting the lofty social gatherings that had once whispered her family name in fear. She adopted their affected speech and flaunted gorgeously inappropriate and inordinately expensive outfits. Overnight, her hair became excessively blonde. Unable to snub her, Two Lakes society was intensely resentful. They whispered among themselves of the day Commander Martin would regret bringing this black stain into their little Pakeha world .

A worthy successor to Jake, Commander Martin knew the way to keep Angelika's heart happy was to give her all she desired. He gave her expensive gadgets of surveillance and propaganda, and she used them for her own pleasure. He continued to use her talents, knowledge of the area, and considerable power of attraction in raids, and she was entirely at home in this new form of legal thievery and gangsterism. He also travelled with her around the world. First of their priorities were Angelika's shopping sprees, second were their visits to places of pleasure. Any business he might have in exotic places such as New Carthage and Neo Moscow assumed a humble third place in importance.

On their last trip together to New Carthage, they staggered to their hotel after a drunken drinking bout in a local club. A man wearing a dark hood approached them.. Menace was tangible from his very outline, silhouetted against the filthy night smog. As he closed in on them, Angelika drew her sword, but drunkenly fumbled the move. Without wasting a moment, the man snatched the sword from her grasp, and sliced it past her in a calculated miss, rending her armored cloak, and slicing through the flesh of her abdomen. Commander Martin turned on the assailant with an enraged roar. Now Angelika saw the man for the first time, and a shock of recognition immobilised her. She watched a cold-eyed man with Maori tattoos bring down an armored black fist through her husband's face, sending the handsome Commander reeling past, arms wide, inviting her to a last drunken dance. She ignored his fall, looking straight into her father's little black eyes, now infinitely older, infinitely harder. Jake efficiently disposed of Martin, and then silently gathered the couple's scattered possessions. He looked Angelika over once with contempt, as he noted the considerable changes in her appearance since he had last seen her. He nodded at her not to move. "I'm going back to Two Lakes now to deal with his clone. I'll take the cunt apart, and his pussy boy friends. You want to be safe, fancy girl, stay quietly here in New Carthage." As he moved to go, leaving Angelika naked except for a bit of jewellery and a ridiculously revealing dress, he turned back, hissing "Some staunch new friends you found for yourself, little angel face, didn't you? Suggest you find you a new sugar-daddy now."

***

Barely affected by this tragedy, the widowed Angelika proceeded to pull herself up by her bra-straps. Her early career in New Carthage is veiled in mystery, but it is known that she starred in some extremely dubious TRI-V programming, became dangerously entangled with a notorious member of the Brethren of the Fallen, and conducted an entirely quackish practice as a counsellor, a profession for which she was not adequately trained.

Soon, however , she met up with the peculiar British neuter, Vi, with whom she hatched the plan of producing a documentary about the city. She was quickly established in a TRI-V studio on South Hitachi, under the name 'Reality Bites' productions. She employed a bodyguard, Raul, one of the city's most notorious thugs, and several other stuntmen. Local celebrities became inured to her constant requests for interviews, and eventually, most of them obliged. Her major challenges were:

• To remain on friendly terms with the various warring factions in the city, despite the local paranoia pandemic,
• To avoid hard news and its associated dangers whenever possible,
• To milk all friends and acquantances for the capital needed to fund her expensive and wholly unprofitable venture,
• To find a low-calorie version of Zot Cola.

She hijacked the NCI broadcast studio on occasion, and had several tussles with the law over minor infringements on the East side. It is known that she provided some espionage services to local warlords, but these were of dubious effect. Despite several feigned nervous breakdowns, she eventually completed her documentary project several months over schedule. Sadly, however, the documentary alienated almost all her acquaintances, owing to her unflattering portrayals.It also drained all her capital. Destitute and utterly humiated, she was forced to vacate her studio and move into a cramped coffin hotel at a local nightclub.