Judge Dredd

ELEVEN

The barge wasn’t made for beauty. It was three blocks long, solid and black, and built like a slag-iron whale. The Mega-City wall-lock opened like a dark and empty eye; the barge shuddered down through the night and poked its pitted nose inside.

In the amber light of the lock, the rusty hide of the barge seemed afflicted by ugly metal warts. The drive-rings in its belly pulsed in alarming shades of blue. The docking engineer frowned at the rings, glanced at his watch and cursed beneath his breath. It was 0610 and Clydo, his morning relief, was late. If the barge’s rings went totally out of sync—which they very well might, from the way they looked now—a white ball of fire would appear in the wall. He’d be a vapor, and Clydo would get another roach in his record for being late.

The barge finally whined into silence and the lock took hold. The massive craft creaked and moaned. A portal came open with a hiss of dirty steam. A crewman stepped out, rubbed a sleeve across his face, and nodded at the guard.

“Two loads from the prison factory in Hold Number Nine. One from the mines in Six. Prisoner mail in Two.”

The guard looked up from his computer tablet. “No prisoners comin’ back?”

“Just dead ones.” He nodded back into the dark. “Families probably glad to get rid of ’em, now they gotta bury the bastards.”

The crewman stalked off. The guard stepped past him into the dimly-lit hold. Fifteen body bags were strapped to the deck. Each had a yellow plastic tag stapled to his chest. Each bag was stenciled: ASP.

The guard leaned down to check the names. When he first got the docking assignment, it bothered him to get near the bodies. Like he told his wife, it was spooky as hell in there, like a Saturday holo show where the zombies and stuff came to life. He had been on the job eight months now, and the bodies didn’t bother him any more. They didn’t look like zombies, they looked like black bags with dead guys inside. Which proved you could get used to anything if y—

He heard the slight crinkle of plastic and jerked around. One of the body bags sat up, and the hair stood up on the back of the guard’s neck. He reached for his weapon, then stopped, and threw back his head and laughed. He knew what had happened and he knew who it was that’d pull a crazy stunt like this.

“Okay, I’m scared, all right? Get the hell out of there, Jak!”

A pinhole slit appeared in the black body bag. A laser beam thin as a needle touched the guard between the eyes. The guard looked surprised. There might be a punch line to this, but he was too dead to wait around and see.

Rico stepped out of the body bag and smiled at the guard.

“Home, sweet home,” he said.

The lights were always on. The streets were always wet. Everything in Mega-City was above Redtown, and everything above dripped down.

Rico ignored the hungry eyes, the men and women who offered him a peek at their sorrow and their souls. He walked past the crowded taverns, past the holo-kill parlors where every kiss and cut was good as life, and every crime was real.

On a video screen, he saw Vardis Hammond silently mouthing a replay of the city’s block wars. Rico winked at the image and rolled his eyes.

The sign outside said: GEIGER’S BAZAAR. The jittery neon offered SURPLUS PAWN FAXO TOOLS VOUCHERS CASHED.

Everything nobody wanted hung from the ceiling and the walls. Rico made his way through the maze. In the rear of the store a fence guarded better merchandise.

Geiger himself looked up and blinked. A cigar dangled from the side of his mouth. His face was long and narrow, his eyes bright gold, like a predatory bird that only hunts at night.

“We’re closed,” he said.

“No you’re not,” Rico said. “You’ve got a package for me. Codename Lazarus.”

The pupils in Geiger’s eyes shrank to tiny points. “Gimme a second,” he muttered, and disappeared.

Rico waited. He timed Geiger. He was back in twenty-nine seconds. Not too long.

“Nice place,” he said.

“It might look like junk to most people, but there’s stuff in here that’s real antiques. Valuable stuff, man.”

Rico nodded at a row of metal men in shadow behind the security fence. The tall figures looked hollow, like toy soldiers some giant had cast aside.

“Odd to run into something like that,” Rico said. “I thought they slagged all the ABC warriors after the last wars.”

Geiger shrugged. “DeWats. People collect ’em, got nothing else to do. They’re fifty, sixty years old. Nonfunctional, of course.” Geiger showed yellow teeth. “Like my old lady, you know?” He handed Rico a long box. “Here you go. Says ‘Hold for Lazarus’ on top.”

Rico swept a pile of surplus breathers aside, set the box on the table, and thumbed the lock. Geiger pretended not to look, but when the lid slid back he could easily see what was inside.

“Holy… !” Geiger stood back. “Man, is that what I think it is?”

A black, perfectly pressed uniform was laid neatly in the box. On top of the uniform was an item any Citizen of Mega-City would recognize at once; The personal weapon of a Judge, the Lawgiver.

Rico reached for the weapon. Geiger sucked in a breath and grabbed Rico’s wrist.

“Wait a second, don’t touch it! Whoever sent you this is no friend of yours!”

“No? And why is that?”

Geiger shook his head. “Where you been, pal? That’s a Lawgiver. Don’t you know that? They’re programmed, like they only recognize a Judge’s hand, the one the weapon was made for. I can get you somethin’ nice, but you touch that and the sucker’ll take your arm off.”

Rico smiled. “Really?”

“Yeah, really. You think I’d kid about a thing like—”

Rico gripped the Lawgiver in both hands. Geiger stared, waiting for the weapon to explode.

“That—that don’t make any sense!”

“No?”

Rico squeezed the trigger. Everything above Geiger’s shoulders moved six feet back. It looked as if someone had slammed a dozen pizzas against the wall.

Rico frowned at the mess. “I must be a Judge, pal. What do you think?”

Rico retrieved Geiger’s keys from his pocket, took two of his cigars, unlocked the security fence, and stepped inside. He studied the battered robots, one by one. Finally, he stopped before a tall combat warrior, its metal hide dented in a dozen forgotten wars.

“You’ll do just fine,” he said.

Stepping up on a plastic box, he studied the robot a moment, then removed a narrow panel on the side of its head. A nest of thin cables spilled out, dangling like silver dreadlocks. Rico patiently sorted them with practiced fingers, matching one slender tendon here, twisting another into place. Finally, a golden spark hissed, lighting Rico’s face and eyes. A faint sound began to whir in the warrior’s head. The powerful torso jerked. A spasm shot through its right arm. Steam covered the monster in a mist, and its eyes glowed like rubies in its head. The eyes blinked once, and turned on Rico.

“Status… Commander… Mission…”

The computer voice was old and it rustled like a snake.

“Status is Personal Bodyguard,” Rico said. He struck a match on the robot’s chin and lit one of Geiger’s cigars. “Commander is me. Mission is, we’re going to war again. Geronimo, pal…”

Lily Hammond had taken care of herself. Her husband’s status as Mega-City’s top broadcaster enabled her to make regular appointments at Lovely-U. Her breasts were always firm, her skin always clear, and though she hadn’t been born that way, her legs were slender and long. She was forty-seven and looked twenty-two. Vardis Hammond was fifty-five, and looked thirty-eight. No one at the studio dreamed that he spent his annual vacation getting re-studded at Handsome-Him.

“My God, Vardis…”

Lily looked up from the paper in her hand and stared at her husband. “A—a conspiracy in the Justice system? Radical elements on the City Council? Where did you get this stuff?”

Hammond didn’t look up. He sat at his desk in the corner, under his favorite antique light, tapping on his lap computer.

“What do you mean, where did I get it? That’s my job, Lily. I followed up some grumblings I found in some low level Council papers. They confirm what I’ve known all along. The shadow of oppression goes deeper than the Street Judges. Much deeper.”

Lily frowned. “Please, dear. Don’t say things like ‘shadow of oppression.’ You’re home, you are not on the video.” Lily paused, then studied her husband again. “Vardis, are you going to use that? Are you going to say that on the air?”

Vardis gave her a chilly look. “Well, it’s the truth. Why shouldn’t I say it?”

“I think you’re out of your mind, you want to know what I think.”

“I’m a reporter. I am a reputable journalist and I have an obligation to the Citizens of—”

“That doesn’t mean you have to go and get yourself killed.”

Hammond laughed. He set his keyboard aside and stood. “The Judges don’t kill reporters. Not yet, anyway.”

Lily watched him as he crossed the room to the bar. “Vardis, I’m serious. They’ll never let you put this on the air. Something like this could… it could bring down the Council!”

Vardis poured a generous glass of clear liquid from the bottle.

“Maybe it should, Lily. I know a lot more than I did when I started poking into this business. I wasted a lot of time investigating individual Judges. The problem is the entire system, not just… maniacs like Judge Dredd who—what the hell’s that?”

Hammond turned as the door chimes sounded gently in the hall. He walked to the door, the irritation clear in his dark eyes, the tension around his mouth. Lily didn’t have any idea what was really going on out there. She didn’t have to go out on the street where you could smell the burning victims of the block wars, try to get a visor-head to tell you something besides the official line.

“What is it?” Hammond said, jerking open the door. “What do you—”

Hammond had nearly a quarter of a second to look at the black silhouette, the helmet without a face. The Lawgiver coughed once. The Judge stepped over Hammond’s corpse and walked into the room.