The gunman's comments made Diaz see red and he launched himself at him, swearing and stabbing. The cook plunged the knife into the other man's chest, his face splitting with a savage grin as blood spurted. All that Ernesto wanted now was to tear this fool apart and paint the street with his innards.
There was a crack of sound and Diaz reeled away and fell on his backside. He felt like a robo-horse had kicked him, and his right shoulder sang with burning hot pain.
The cook looked down to see a crimson patch growing around a blackened entry wound.
The gunman took a shaky step toward him, one hand clutching at the hottie knife still in his ribs, the other holding the smoking gun. "Y-you... You types. You think you're better than me, just 'cos you got a job." Blood trickled from his lips. "You ain't gonna look down on me no more. Not now I got me this." He nodded at the spit gun.
Ernesto tried to get to his feet. The flat of his hand fell on something angular and metallic - a pistol. Without hesitation, Diaz gripped the weapon and brought it up, pointing it at the gunman in a shaky, inaccurate grip.
"You dumb spug!" spat the gunman. "Lookit what you got there. That's a Judge's rod. You can't fire that!"
The cook never took his eyes off his target, but he could see the bulky shape of the weapon in the periphery of his vision. The gun must have been tossed aside when the mob was busy taking that lady Judge to pieces. A small flicker of memory tickled at the back of Ernesto's mind, something important, something about a Judge's gun, but he shook it away. Angry thoughts crawled around the inside of his brain like a troop of ants, scratching for a way out, blanking out everything else. "Shut it! You can't tell me what to do, jerk-o!"
The gunman grimaced and pulled the trigger. The spit gun's hammer fell on an empty chamber with a hollow click. "Ah, sneck-"
Ernesto growled, teeth flaring in a feral grin, and fired as well. In the instant his finger tightened on the electronic trigger mechanism, his mind threw up the thing that had been nagging at him. All Judges' guns had a key characteristic in common: a tiny computer-scanner combination that checked the palm print of any person attempting to fire it. If someone other than the designated Judge pulled the trigger, a countermeasure was activated. In some models, this was a simple safety catch or an electro-stunner, but like the pistols used by Mega-City Judges, firearms issued by the Luna-1 Justice Department had a self-destruct charge fitted to them, equivalent in power to a hand grenade. The gun's detonation killed both men instantly, leaving two more shredded corpses to litter Kepler Dome's streets.
On the electronic billboard overhead, Moon-U broadcast a replay of the moment across the whole complex, repeating it on any screen that the pirate signal could infiltrate.
Judge Spring cursed inwardly as the low battery buzzer sounded on his sonic rifle, just as a smoke-blackened rioter vaulted over the plastiform barricade. Without wasting a moment to swap out the power pack, Spring flipped the weapon over and used the heavy butt to crack the lawbreaker across the face. "Get back, meathead!" he snapped and the rioter fell away, unconscious.
Spring reloaded by touch alone, scanning the open plaza in front of the Kepler precinct house for any sign of a new rush towards the barriers - but no, the citizens seemed happy enough to continue tearing into one another or smashing up property. The Brit-Cit Judge frowned. This wasn't like any typical confront or Block War, there was just no direction to it. It was nothing but wanton destruction; violence for the sake of violence.
He spotted movement close to the flickering panels of a cracked wall-screen and called out to his deputy on the line, a female Judge from the Sydney-Melbourne Conurb. "Kenzy! Watch for any group movement."
She nodded. "On it. Where's that electro-cordon?"
He opened his mouth to answer, but a new voice interrupted him. "Spring! Where are you?" The Brit-Judge stepped back from the barricade as Senior Judge Koenig approached, emerging from drifts of grey smoke with a group of men in riot gear. Koenig was Sector Chief for Kepler Dome and Spring's direct superior. Spring had grown to respect the elder Luna-City officer during his secondment to the Moon and knew him well enough to read the grim set of his chin.
"Judge Koenig. Glad to see you brought reinforcements, sir. I hope they're not all you've got."
"Save it, Spring," Koenig snapped irritably. "What are you still doing here? We can't just hold the plaza, we need to move in and pacify."
"With respect, sir, we're spread too thin. Ten patrol Judges dead or incapacitated out in the field, a dozen more in medbay. The citizens outnumber the rest of us fifteen-to-one and we can't chance using riot foam or stumm gas until the oxygen supply is reactivated. I put in a call for cordons and Mantas from the main dome, but-"
"But they're not going to get here for another four hours, at least," Koenig broke in, seeing the Brit-Judge's jaw drop. "I've just come from the zoom terminal. Rioters sabotaged the track, the train has blocked the tunnel and we've had a blow-out in the zipstrip to Luna-1. We're on our own."
"Grud," mumbled Kenzy.
"We need to crush this, before it gets out of control," Koenig added.
Spring felt his annoyance flare. "Look around!" he grated. "It already is out of control!" He took a step closer to the senior Judge. "We've got the lowest manpower and hardware capability of any outer dome on Luna and we're coming apart just holding these crazies in place!"
"Then maybe you should have been aware of this before it even happened! You're my sector deputy! Where are your street skills?"
"Maybe if you got out of your office once in a whi-"
Kenzy shouted, her voice mingling with the sound of a high-powered spit carbine: "Sniper!"
With a keening ricochet, a bullet deflected off the crown of Koenig's helmet and the elder Judge cursed. "Drokk!" In a swift movement, Koenig's pulse gun was in his hand and he cracked off a trio of well-aimed shots. On the far side of the plaza, a man clutching a rifle fell out of a tree and lay still. Koenig looked back at Spring, the sudden anger that had been building between them dissipated for the moment. "Where are they getting these weapons from? This doesn't make sense. I'd expect panic from an oxygen outage, but not a full-blown street war."
"Surveillance has had absolutely no indicators of any serious tensions for the past three weeks. It's like someone just pushed a button and got a riot, sir."
Koenig paused for a moment, considering. "All right, Spring, we'll do it your way. Bottle them up and let it burn itself out."
"Incoming!" called another Judge from further up the barricade.
"How many?" said Spring.
"Uh... All of them."
Koenig and Spring turned together to see a wall of figures boiling out of the entryways and into the plaza. Spring raised the sonic rifle and took careful aim, searching for obvious ringleaders.
"Form up!" Koenig shouted, his voice carrying over the line. "Set your STUP-guns to maximum stun. Knock them down!" The Judge flicked a glance down at his own pulse pistol and checked the charge. "Hold the line!"
Chief Judge-Marshal Tex flicked off the comm-screen with a grimace and pushed back the hat on his head, rubbing the furrows on his brow. From his office at the pinnacle of the Luna-1 Hall of Justice, the entirety of the Moon's largest city-dome was visible as a vast network of lights. Thousands of towers, bridges and sub-spheres all clustered beneath a huge silver-grey roof. From this height, Luna-1 looked like some intricately worked piece of jewellery, set in a cratered stone landscape. Kepler Dome was just barely visible, to the south west beyond the Armstrong Monument and the skyscrapers of Von Braun Territory. From such a vantage point it was hard to imagine that Kepler's streets were alive with violence and flame.
"We could consider a Class One contingency," Tex's second-in-command, Judge-Marshal Che spoke quietly, his soft Mexican accent carrying across the room.
Tex removed his hat and shook his head. "A domewide lockdown? I reckon that'd be a death sentence for anyone still in Kepler."
"We have to keep it contained, Chief Judge," Che insis
ted. "This is the worst incident yet. If word spreads that we can't keep a lid on our own citizens-"
"What?!" Tex snapped. "You think the Triumvirate will come in here and fire us? Send us to Titan?" He shook his head wearily. "The day we took these badges we swore an oath to protect this colony." Tex tapped the star-and-crescent-moon shield on his chest. "I'm not gonna put myself before that. Not ever."
"So what do you propose?"
"We're fallin' apart up here and we know it, Che. We need help to get to the heart of this and I know just the man to ask."
Che's eyes widened. "With all due respect, sir, I must protest-"
"Protest all you want, amigo. But just get me a secured line to Chief Judge Hershey at the Mega-City One Grand Hall o'Justice."
2. THE DAY SHIFT
The deck of cards unfolded into a fan before the young woman's face and she found her attention fixed on their glittering, shiny surfaces.
"Watch and be amazed!" intoned the magician, his eyes flashing darkly from under his top hat. "Choose a card, my dear, but don't show it to me."
The woman did as she was asked, ignoring the sneer on the face of her boyfriend. She took a careful look at the card. "Okay!" she chirped.
She was a little excited to be getting involved with the street performer's act. It was nice to be the centre of attention for a change, as all the other people gathered around stopped to watch what was happening. Foot traffic across the Barry Waffle Plaza was slowing as more and more citizens drifted over. With nearly ninety per cent unemployment among the six hundred million-strong population of Mega-City One, anything that broke up the boredom was a big draw - even something as simple as a person doing card tricks.
The magician made a deep murmur in his chest and extended a hand toward the concealed card. "You chose... the three of diamonds."
"Ohmygosh! Yes! Yes, I did!" She held up the card and showed it to the audience, who clapped and smiled. All of them except her boyfriend.
"Is that it?" he griped. "That's the best you can do?"
The magician fixed him with a practiced glare. There was always one who wanted to make trouble. "Would you like to see something else then, sir? Another demonstration of the incredible powers of the mind?" He gave the last words an echoed emphasis, thanks to the hidden sub-dermal resonator taped to his larynx. "So be it."
That gave the guy pause, but he quickly overcame it and snatched the deck of cards from the magician's hand and shuffled them. Picking three at random from different parts of the pack, he held them away. "Okay, smart guy. You tell me what I got here, eh?"
The magician had to fight to hold off a smile. "You doubt me? Then perhaps you'd like to place a little wager on my abilities? Say, twenty credits?"
"Sure!" the man snapped, fishing a banknote out of his pocket. "You ain't no psyker, and I'll prove it!" A couple of other folks in the crowd waved money as well, eager to test his skills.
"We shall see." The performer gave a broad wink to the rest of the audience, who chuckled. I've got these mugs eating out the palm of my hand, he told himself. The magician concentrated again and closed his eyes. A collective gasp arose from the watchers as he slowly began to rise off the pedway until his feet were just barely touching the permacrete pavement.
He fixed the boyfriend with a hard look and spoke in a deep, sepulchral voice. "You have in your hand the queen of spades, ten of hearts and..." he gave a wry smile, "the joker."
To the man's irritation, the magician was completely right. The money was gone from his fingers in a flash and the performer nodded to himself. Where none of the marks could see it, a small optical imager was fixed to the inside of his hat, using a low-power laser to project a readout into his eye. Micro-thin circuits inside the cards transmitted their location to the hat and the imager relayed that to the magician; he didn't even have to look at him to know exactly what the guy was holding. "And now, I will stagger your imaginations with a new illusion that will confound your very reason itself!" Surreptitiously, he touched a control disguised as a cufflink that powered up the short-range teleporter built into his kneepad; next, he'd do the pull-a-card-out-of-thin-air trick, maybe by 'porting it into the girl's blouse.
He looked back at the audience and saw that all of them, even the boyfriend, were silent and awe-struck before him. This is gonna be sweet, he told himself, I'm gonna milk these fools dry!
"Watch, as I exhibit powers that no mortal man could ever hope to achieve!"
And then from behind him, a voice all gravel and hard edges said, "I'll be the judge of that."
The magician's feet hit the ground and he whirled around. Too late, he realised that his audience hadn't been cowed by him. They were looking at a two-metre tall sentinel clad in midnight blue and adorned with gold armour pads. Colour drained from the performer's face and he felt his bladder loosen as he caught sight of the name on the Judge's badge: Dredd.
"Uh... uh," he managed.
Dredd extended his gloved hand. "Street performance licence?"
The magician looked dumbly at him.
"He conned me outta twenty creds, Judge!" said the boyfriend. "Bet me he could read my mind!"
Dredd gave the mark a brief look. "Betting is illegal, citizen. You're under arrest, one year in the cubes." He tossed a cuff-clip at the guy and waited. The boyfriend showed uncommonly good sense, meekly putting on the restraints and stared at the ground. "As for you," Dredd took a step toward the performer. "I'm guessing you don't have a licence."
The magician suddenly found his voice again and raised his hands in defiance. "You cannot hope to, uh, defeat me! I have uncanny powers of the mind!"
"I don't think so," Dredd retorted flatly. Unknown to this loser, a pair of real Psi-Division operatives were working a block away on a murder case and the presence of any real, unlicensed telepath would have registered with them like a flare on a dark night. "Fraud, unauthorised street performance, gambling... Anything else to add before I take you and that chump there downtown?"
In reply, the magician jumped into the air, rising up and away, gaining height with every passing second. Dredd's hand darted forward to grab the hem of his overcoat, but the material ripped and fell away, revealing a small grav-pack on the performer's back; the kind that kids used for aeroball games.
"He wasn't levitating at all!" cried the woman.
Dredd watched the flyer wobble his way across the plaza. The grav-pack wasn't designed to hold an adult's weight and the motor was straining. It would be a simple shot for the veteran Judge, a single standard execution round from his Lawgiver pistol and the perp would come crashing to earth - but instead he just watched and waited.
When the magician was about seven metres high, the grav-pack belched smoke and spat out a nasty cloud of smoke. The performer gave a strangled yelp and dropped like a stone, tumbling head over heels to land in an ornamental fountain. Dredd hauled the magician's dripping form out of the water and slapped a pair of plastiform handcuffs around his wrists. "Read my mind," he said.
"Uh, I'm... under arrest?"
"Six years. You can practice your card games in the cubes."
Lacking a convenient holding post, Dredd tethered the two men to a bench in the plaza, where the local catch wagon would scoop them up on its next pass through the area.
His helmet radio crackled into life. "Control to Dredd. What's your location?"
"Waffle Plaza, east exit."
"Investigate reports of armed robbery with violence in progress, Mobi-Cred Autobank, heading west on Dave Fincher Overzoom."
"ARV, copy. I'm on my way." The Judge mounted his Lawmaster bike, sparing a glance up at the wide highway that passed over the top of the plaza at the twelve-storey level. There, on the city's high-velocity traffic lanes, massive computer-controlled transporters and mobile homes - mo-pads - roared along at speeds of over three hundred kilometres per hour. A large proportion of Mega-City One's population lived on the roads, never settling in a single place, constantly circling the metropolis i
n a vast, unceasing migration. Where there were people, there were also schools, shops, leisure facilities and even banks, built into mobile platforms following the course of the massive twenty-lane megways that formed the transport arteries of the city. But, like the static buildings they flashed past every day, they were just as prone to crime.
The Mobi-Cred resembled a big, fat bug on eight clusters of wheels, low to the highway and broad enough to take up two lanes. A docking platform to the right allowed foot traffic to step off another moving vehicle and board, while a small slip-ramp enabled groundcar drivers to use a drive-thru terminal. Right now the mobile bank was cruising much too fast for anyone to disembark, thanks to a hasty reprogramming job at the hands of one of the Dexter gang. Up to now, that had been the only thing that was going right about the robbery.
In the bank proper, it was hard to see clearly. A low fog gathered around the knees of Big Dave Dexter and his men, making their legs cold and forcing the bank staff and customers to huddle together to keep warm where they sat on the floor. It was still raining inside, thanks to the small cluster of storm clouds that floated near the ceiling. Big Dave made a face and gave his cousin Larry a blunt look.
"How much longer?"
"Couple o' minutes, I reckon." Larry hefted the large, complex-looking rifle in his hand and patted it with a smile. "I set this to 'Sunshine' and burned off the vault locks."
"First thing that snecking piece of junk did right so far." Dave grumbled. "Why we couldn't just have used a plasma torch-"
"This is better!" Larry broke in. "What, you wanna be known as 'the plasma torch gang'? What kinda name is that? I told you, we got to have ourselves an identity. A gimmick, else we're just plain old bank robbers."
"Plain old, cold bank robbers," Royd, Dave's younger brother chimed in. "Plain old cold and wet bank robbers."
Larry was getting irritated. "You little spug! I didn't quit my job at Weather Control to listen to you whining! You're gonna be singing a different tune when we're all over the vid-news! Think about it, 'Judges Fail to Capture Weather Gun Gang'. It'll be great!"
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