Dredd's lip curled in a sneer. "Ask yourself, who was in charge back then? Who was it that made sure he got every construction contract, every land grab, every sweet deal? This place was the wild frontier. Laws were flouted as long as the job got done."
"Computer, who was primary contractor for the original Luna-1 dome systems?" Kontarsky demanded.
"Moonie Enterprises," said the console. "The company was disbanded as of 2100 by order of then-current Judge-Marshal Joseph Dredd."
15. TRANQUILITY BASE
Dredd turned to Kontarsky. "You asked me before how one man could plan to steal the Moon and here's your answer: Clinton Moonie has been taking the long view... He's been planning this caper since before you were born."
"A secret command that lets him shut off air to any dome on the Moon... The implications of such a thing are staggering. But if Moonie can do this, why has he never used it before? When he was arrested, he could have traded his freedom for the threat of suffocating Luna-1," she replied.
"You still don't really understand him, do you? He's no street perp. Moonie doesn't want freedom, at least not in the way that you or I think of it. He doesn't care about anything except power, power over the Moon. He wants to own this ball of rock and everyone on it. What good is being master of a city when it's full of corpses?"
"I see your point," she conceded. "But we have no assurances that he won't change his mind and we still have many questions unanswered. Even with his money and influence, how could he have escaped and substituted a duplicate without detection? How could he have operated for months and not raise any suspicions?"
Dredd gave her a level stare. "You tell me, Kontarsky."
She matched his look. "You continue to distrust me, Dredd? You know the answers to these questions yourself and yet you test me over and over, hoping that I will reveal myself in a lie, yes? Why can you not see past my uniform and accept that we are fighting the same foe?"
"Because someone is helping Moonie and like you said, that someone may be one of your countrymen."
The Sov-Judge's pale face flushed. "I said no such thing! I voiced a suspicion, nothing more!" She forced herself to calm down. "It is true that I believe Moonie is not working alone, but his accomplices could be-"
Dredd looked away. "We'll burn that bridge when we come to it. Right now we have to concentrate on keeping Luna-1 breathing. If Moonie can pull the plug on the air, he's more dangerous than we ever suspected. We've gotta take that away from him and quickly. There's no telling what other surprises he's got lurking in the city's control sub-routines."
"The computer's orders came through a data link," she gestured to the control console on the dais. "The Oxy-Dome uses hard lines, fibre optic cables."
"Yes, they're more reliable than transmitters during the solar flares. That means the signal came down the line from the central computer hub in Luna-1 itself. If I know Moonie, he's close by so he can watch and gloat, but he's not dumb enough to be hiding in Luna-City itself. He's beaming his orders through the hub and straight into the network."
"Yes," nodded Kontarsky. "Very clever. He uses the system itself to carry his commands, making them invisible. But how do we sever that control without a shutdown of every system on Luna-1? I hardly think Che will agree to let us reboot the entire city."
The Sov-Judge was correct. Even if they could overcome the impossible odds against it, such a thing would plunge the lunar metropolis into chaos, exactly the circumstances that the fleet of so-called diplomatic cruisers in orbit was waiting for. Dredd realised the callous, engineered subtlety of Moonie's plans - the crime lord had set up the city like a complex game board, the pieces all turned to his advantage. But their other options had been reduced to nothing. "We're not going to ask for permission. How long would it take us to get back to the city?"
Kontarsky made a quick calculation. "Four hours in a rover, if we traversed the Sea of Tranquillity. Could we not return on the cargo train?"
"Negative, those railshuttles run once a day and the next won't pass this way until past dawn tomorrow. We need to get to the Spike."
"What are you planning, Dredd?" she demanded. The Spike was Luna-1's primary computer centre, a huge needle-shaped tower in Serenity Territory. Dominating the Luna-1 skyline, virtually every piece of computer data that flowed through the city complex went in or out of the vast plasteen spire.
"If we want to stop Moonie turning the air off, then Luna-1 has to go off the air. We're gonna spike the Spike."
"Perhaps all the free oxygen in here has affected your mind, Dredd. What you're suggesting is extremely dangerous! There's no telling what the side effects could be!"
The Mega-City Judge took a step closer. "Why are you opposed to trying, Kontarsky? All of this time, we've been dancing to Moonie's tune, always one step behind his game-plan." Dredd shook his head. "Not any more. We're going to change the rules. We reboot the hub and he'll be forced to use another way to tap into the dome systems."
The point of Dredd's daring gambit snapped into crisp focus for the Sov-Judge. "If Moonie does that, he won't be hidden. We'll be able to track him to his point of origin."
"Exactly. I figure we've got a fifty-fifty chance of making this work."
She frowned. "If it fails, the next thing we will see is armed ships and troopers from a dozen countries cutting their way through the airlocks and shooting each other. Are you really willing to risk a war?"
Dredd holstered his gun with a slight shrug. "Wouldn't be the first time."
At that moment, a kilometre above the lunar surface and a few more downrange from the Oxy-Dome Complex, a fast rocket was streaking westward under full burn, cutting a brilliant red streak across the black sky. The rocket itself was little more than a skeletal framework, an ugly collection of engine bells, fuel tanks and guidance systems that lacked even the most basic design aesthetics. Built to operate in vacuum, it had none of the smooth lines of a trans-atmospheric liner or a NEO clipper, but that had no bearing on the craft's ability to perform its function and it was doing it to perfection. Thin Mylar sheets that served as micro-meteor barriers tore away from the middle of the fuselage like falling petals. They revealed four angular man-shapes hanging inside the rocket's frame, clustered like piglets suckling at a sow. One of the man-shapes was skinny and nimble-looking, with extra arms and legs; the other three were like cast blocks of dark metal in the shape of a human being.
A green lamp blinked on inside the heads of the three big man-shapes and the rocket let go of them, pushing them and their skinny sibling away under jets of inert gas. Any observer watching the figures falling toward the surface might have been reminded of an earthbound skydiver. Messages carried on low-power laser beams blinked between the four and they shifted orientation as they dropped, revealing retro-rocket packs that would soft-land them just inside the factory perimeter. The rocket, its cargo delivered and its purpose complete, altered course and aimed for the foot of the Lunar Pyrenees. At maximum thrust, the crater it would form on impact would swallow any piece of wreckage bigger than a child's fist.
The larger figures used the time during the drop to run a few final diagnostics on their weapons and exoskeleton systems. None of them spoke. Each of them knew exactly who their targets were.
A new alarm sound chirped in the control room for a couple of seconds before suddenly being silenced. Dredd saw something appear and then disappear on one of the sub-consoles. "What the drokk was that?" he demanded of the computer.
The machine actually hesitated. "A glitch," it said finally. "A minor malfunction, now corrected. Please remain calm."
Kontarsky raised an eyebrow. "Doubtful. I believe a burst transmission was just received by the XF6 system." She tapped the screen on another panel. "It's hiding something from us. New orders, perhaps?"
Dredd indicated her drawn weapon with the jut of his chin. "Explain it to our silicon pal here, will you?"
The Sov-Judge dialled down the pulse setting and tore blaster bolts through t
wo adjacent monitor stations. "Awwk!" The computer replied with a noise that might almost have been an analogue of physical pain. "Desist! Desist! The authorities are on the way! You will be neutralised!"
The screen close to Dredd reactivated, to display a real-time image from the perimeter sensors. Kontarsky saw the scan, the four downward tracks approaching the complex. "Missiles!" she gasped.
"Too slow," Dredd replied. "Besides, a missile hit in the wrong place here would blast a chunk out of the Moon as big as Texas City... No, these are something else. Not big enough to be landers, they must be hunter-killers or drop-troopers." The Judge didn't waste time on speculating who had sent them or how they had tracked them - for now they needed to flee. "We're sitting ducks here. We need a way out."
"We're at the top of the dome," said Kontarsky. "By the time we go down the ladder shaft, they would be setting up camp at the bottom."
"And we can't trust Smiley here not to lock us in the elevator," Dredd jerked a thumb at the XF6. "Where's the escape airlock for this floor?"
"Here!" Kontarsky tugged at a latch on the far wall and a sliding panel folded open. Another alarm went off automatically. Usually, escape airlocks were only accessed when fire or moonquakes had cut off all other means of egress.
The Russian tossed out a thin garment made from neon-bright orange plastic. "An emergency e-suit. These should be enough to protect us until we can reach the rover bays on ground level."
"You cannot abscond!" began the computer. "You will be-"
This time Kontarsky didn't wait to be asked, only paused before sealing her helmet shut to silence the XF6 with an energy bolt right between the machine's photoreceptor eyes.
Suited, Dredd followed her into the cramped airlock and pressed the heel of his hand into the button for fast decompression. The inner door had barely shut before the air caught in the lock screamed away into the lunar night. They stepped out and found themselves at the very crest of the Oxy-Dome, lit by the colours of the LunAir holo-sign.
Kontarsky pointed, pressing her jaws together to stop her teeth chattering in the polar cold. "Look, up there. I saw something."
Dredd followed her direction and caught a flash of reflected sunlight off a metallic surface, an object closing fast. "Where are the rovers?"
"Below us. We can use the walkway on the dome to get down," she began.
Dredd shook his head, the orange suit exaggerating the movement. "No time for that. We're taking the express route."
Kontarsky started to argue, but Dredd hit her hard with a body-check that flattened her to the curved surface of the roof. Without the adhesive soles of her suit's g-boots to hold her upright, she began to slide. The two Judges locked arms and fell like a human toboggan, racing down the steep slope of the dome toward the lip of the crater a hundred metres below.
Even through the thick polypropylop of the emergency suit, Dredd felt the stinging heat of friction as the material heated up from the forced descent; one sharp jag of metal in their path and they would suffer a catastrophic puncture.
Kontarsky screwed her eyes shut and held her breath, counting the seconds in her mind, desperately trying not to imagine what would happen if they struck a rocky outcrop at the lip of the domed crater - but Dredd's luck held and, with a shocking thud that made her spit out flecks of blood, they impacted a drift of moondust and rolled to a clumsy, bruising halt.
"Please have the decency to warn me if you wish to throw me off a roof," she snapped, checking her suit for tears as she stood up.
Dredd probed a hairline crack in his faceplate and frowned. "Our friends are almost here. Let's get ourselves some wheels."
The spindly humanoid shape landed on all fours next to the three identical man-forms. Its extra limbs unfolded to produce laser tips and a fan of sensors. The seeker head instantly found Dredd and Kontarsky, the heat of their bodies visible against the cold of the landscape in the infrared spectrum. It opened a real-time link to the armoured figures and showed them.
The figures threw off the disposable thruster packs that had slowed their descents and unlimbered a variety of weapons from magnetic clamps on their backpacks. Their leader gestured and they spread out in a loose formation.
The rover garage was a prefabricated hut of plastiform panels, sheathed from the hard radiation of the sun by a coasting of lunacrete. The roller-blind door gave easily under the combined fire from the Judges' pistols and they clambered inside, careful not to catch their suits on the orange-red edges of the hole they had burned. Kontarsky pulled a lamp from her belt and waved it around the room. There were a couple of open-deck moonjeeps to one side and a yo-yo, a civilian flybike similar to the Zippers used by the Judges. Dredd ignored them all and crossed to the largest vehicle in the room: set on a cluster of six fat wheels, the rover's hull was two spheres linked by a stubby tube. It was almost as tall as the garage was wide, but it had a sealed cabin and a better chance for survival on the lunar terrain. "This one," he said.
Kontarsky nodded and followed him through the rover's cramped airlock. Inside, the vehicle smelled stale and mouldy. "This thing is ancient," she said under her breath.
If Dredd heard her comment, he gave no sign. The Judge dropped into the driver's seat and pressed the starter pedal. The rover's motor clicked and hummed, but did not engage. Dredd saw movement through the hole in the garage door and frowned, pushing the pedal again, harder this time.
The Sov-Judge saw it too, the thin, shiny arms clutching at the door, probing at the interior. With a sharp flash of motion, the skinny humanoid mechanism sprang through the torn gap and landed somewhere in the shadows, out of sight.
"Hunter-killer," Dredd noted, working the ignition once more. This time, the motor hissed into life and the rover's headlight cast white beams over the garage interior. The vehicle lurched forward and Kontarsky let out a yelp as the scrawny robot slammed into the windscreen and hung there.
The machine's twitching head was only an arm's length away from Dredd's face, with nothing but the armoured glasseen of the window between them. A lipless metal mouth opened and extruded a drill-bit tongue that whirred into the plastic. Dredd stamped on the accelerator and the drive motors in the wheels responded, skidding as they picked up traction before launching the rover forward. The hunter-killer droid brought its extra arms around to aim a pair of laser cutters, concentrating with digital precision on its primary target. Dredd ignored the robot and drove the moon rover straight into the centre of the garage's roller door. The collision sent a ringing crash through the hull of the vehicle and Kontarsky reeled, slipping to her knees in the gangway.
For a second, Dredd lost control of the rover and it fishtailed, the six balloon tyres biting into the moondust and kicking up spurts of grey powder like slow-motion fountains. The hunter-killer was flattened into the windscreen by the impact and parts of it broke off, thin legs snapping at the joints. Dredd saw a piece of the garage door fold away, the edge shearing through the droid's flexible neck. The robot's body dropped, tumbling under the axle. The rover bounced once, twice, three times as the portside wheels rode straight over it, smashing the attack drone into pieces.
Kontarsky struggled back to her feet, fingers clutching at a grab-bar for support as the rover bounded over the rough ground. She made a sour face at the head of the robot, which was still staring at them through the glasseen, impaled in place on its own drill shaft.
One of the suited men was knocked off his feet by the rover's explosive departure and he took long seconds to stand up once again. In the meantime, the leader and his other team-mate were sprinting after the fleeing vehicle, using compressed gas thrusters in their boot soles to make low, loping hops across the ground. Bouncing like children's toys, they skipped after the vehicle. Specially programmed targeting software developed for combat on the lunar surface came into play, overlaying graphics on the inside of their helmets, tracking the rover and predicting where it would go next. The scopes crunched numbers for velocity, speed, gravity and distance
, giving the two of them aim points as good as anything a rock-steady target would have provided.
Ruby-coloured lasers winked out, linking the armoured figures and the rover like thin threads. One shot tore off the vehicle's communications antenna, the second struck the hub of the starboard rear wheel, melting vital gears in the drive mechanism.
Dredd felt the laser bolt hits rather than heard them, the seizing motor forcing a shudder up through the rover chassis. He paid no attention to the warning lights that flared on the dashboard, his boot pressing the accelerator pedal to the firewall. Beside him, Kontarsky was strapping herself into the jump seat.
"There are no weapons," her voice was high with barely concealed anxiety. "A remote construction arm, nothing else."
"Use it," said Dredd and he pulled hard on the steering yoke, bringing the rover around in a tight turn. The broad expanse of the Oxy-Dome reappeared in the window and before it the bouncing shapes of the two armoured suits. Dredd chose one of the suits at random and aimed the rover directly at it, revving the electric motor.
The leader used her jets to leap up to the top of a rocky outcropping as the rover swept past, bearing down on her team-mate at full speed. She toggled her laser to a broad-beam setting and raked a fiery streak down the length of the hull as the vehicle darted away. Her team-mate easily side-stepped the oncoming rover, but too late the leader saw that Dredd's intention had been to make him do exactly that, not to run him down. The other armoured suit dodged directly into the path of the heavy crane arm extending out from the back of the rover and, before she could shout a warning over the radio, the leader watched the claw-gripper at the end strike the figure in the chest, ripping away a great chunk of metallic armour as it passed. The other man twisted away into the dust, a gout of crimson gushing into the vacuum as he fell. Flash-frozen spheres of bright arterial blood scattered around him like a handful of jewels.
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