Eclipse

by James Swallow

  Moonie screeched as the shell penetrated somewhere above his leg and the recoil spun his hoverchair about in a drunken pirouette. He returned fire with a fan of ruby-red laser light, carving a burning line down the walls and over the carpeted floor. The hot beam left a smouldering trail in its wake over the furniture and Dredd had to dive behind a repeater screen to avoid losing a limb.

  Creep's got me on the defensive, Dredd's mind raced. Gotta make him the rat on the run... Dimly, the Judge was aware of Foster's voice in his ear, yelling something about the ship going out of control, the helm malfunctioning, but he tuned it out. With all the mechanical precision of the hardware wired into Moonie's chair-cum-battle armour, one millisecond of indecision would be enough to cost Dredd his life.

  As if in reply to his thoughts, Moonie shouted: "I see you, Joe! The dark's like daylight to Mister Moonie!"

  Another flame spurt whooshed over Dredd's helmet, melting a monitor to molten slag. The Judge bolted from cover and found himself at the head of the chamber, the humming disc of a holo-screen at his feet.

  Moonie came screeching after him and Dredd met his charge with paced shots that shredded armour plate and cut through flesh. Clawed, servo-assisted hands snapped out for the lawman's throat, as drool flew from Moonie's lips in anticipation of murder. Dredd waited for the last possible second then triggered the inert holo with a kick-switch.

  A huge image of the Moon from orbit sprang into life in the air between them and Dredd's anti-dazzle visor darkened instantly - but Moonie, staring intently through an image intensifier, was blinded. He screamed, flailing at the insubstantial image, clawing at his eyes.

  "Heatseeker," commanded the Judge and he sent the heart-chaser bullet through the rips he'd torn in Moonie's armour, into the soft flesh beneath.

  The hoverchair sank to the floor gracelessly and toppled over. Moonie spat foamy pink spittle and slapped vengefully at a control near his hand. "You Earther bastard! You killed me! But I'm not going without a fight..."

  "Drokk!" Dredd saw Moonie's fingers move and stamped on them, the brittle bones snapping like twigs.

  "Too late!" he wheezed. "I sent the zero command to Moon-U, understand? No more air for Luna-1, Dredd!" Moonie's massive spherical face lolled forward as his life ebbed out of him. "I die, you die, everyone dies!"

  Dredd gave a slow shake of the head. "Your pet AI is on the endangered list, Moonie. It's as dead as you are!"

  "No!" Moonie shook with rage. "If I can't have the Moon, no one can! No one!"

  Dredd rested the barrel of his Lawgiver against Moonie's bloated skull. "Clinton Wendell Moonie," he pronounced, his face set in a grim mask, "for your numerous crimes against the people of Luna-1, I judge you guilty as charged. The sentence is death."

  The gunshot echoed like thunder down the corridors of the doomed starship.

  "Is that it?" said Foster at J'aele's shoulder.

  The Tek-Judge gave a weary nod. "I think so."

  "You think? You're not sure?"

  "Can you slice through a Sov data core with one hand missing and a bloodstream full of De-Shock?" J'aele snapped, suddenly fierce. "No? Well, then shut up!" The Simba City Judge punched out a final string of keystrokes. "There. I've launched the null program. Once it comes into contact with the Moon-U AI, it will automatically begin decompiling it. The bitstream should reach the Luna-1 network in ninety seconds." He sagged. "I feel... so tired..."

  "Oh, no," Foster dragged him to his feet. "None of that. Come on, mate, let's blow this place." He paused. "Uh, bad choice of words, eh?"

  The Brit-Cit Judge's voice filled Dredd's helmet: "Job done! We're on our way out! "

  "Copy," he replied, casting a last look at Moonie's corpse. The crime lord's eyes were wide open, the glittering light of the lunar holo-display reflected in them. "Kontarsky, do you read me? It's time to go."

  The Sov-Judge's voice came back leaden with effort. "Affirmative, Dredd. The kommissar had been removed from office."

  Dredd nodded to himself. "Get to a pod. I'll see you Moonside."

  Without looking back, the Judge sprinted from the Silent Room as the cruiser began its final fall toward the lunar surface.

  19. MOONRISE

  Driven insane by conflicting commands, the wounded auto-helm on the Irkutsk turned the starship out of orbit at full burn and pointed its broken bow towards the grey surface of the Moon. In the sealed compartments of the drop pods and landers, the elite of East-Meg Two's forces were on radio silence and they never heard the panicked screams of the rest of the crew as the ship turned into a huge guided missile. Some of the troopers wondered a little at the shift in gravity as the vessel manoeuvred, but they never got to ponder it for more than a few moments.

  At maximum power, the People's Star Navy Diplomatic Vessel Irkutsk rammed itself into the lunar regolith, carving a new crater in the planetoid's pock-marked surface. A few seconds later, the spontaneous detonation of its fusion core was visible to the naked eye of anyone on Earth's nightside.

  "Whoo hoo hoo!" cheered Moon-U, as it tap-danced back and forth over a giant wall-screen in the Green Cheese Shoplex. The mall was now a blackened ruin, the stores gutted by fire and looting, the once-pristine floors smeared with soot and blood. The malevolent image showed big, pointed teeth and mocked the dead and dying. It was enjoying this, the sensation of power that came from flooding the minds of these small, simple organics with maddening sound. It was so easy to pressure their primitive hind-brains with the right frequencies and triggers, dragging out the violent tribal behaviour patterns that lurked inside the psyche of every human being. The software entity moved them around like toys in its own private nursery, throwing them against one another or sending them insane. Moon-U made them dance to its tune and the intelligent program was delighted by it. The AI played with the city with all the ruthless, directionless evil of a petulant child, listening to the people gasp as it choked off their final breaths, forcing them to fight even as they asphyxiated. It would be so sad when its job was done...

  But then, from the wellspring of synthetic emotions inside it, the program felt something new emerge, something black and deep, a vast tidal wave of darkness.

  Fear, as cold as space itself.

  Elements of the AI peeking through exterior sensors felt the tremor as the Irkutsk dashed itself against the lunar surface and other fragments tasted the first precursors to the null program as it surged through Luna-1's computer net. Dimly, it became aware of the fact that the men who had created it were dead and, without them, it suddenly had no purpose, no directions to follow or orders to fulfil. Analogues of dread and despair bubbled up from the core of its essence.

  "No, no, no!" Moon-U cried. The virtual being fled from the screens, coiling itself into a tiny ball of existence. It raced for the deep ranges of the city's memory cores, dropping into the low levels of dusty, untouched data where no search programs ever ventured - but the null was already there, surging up to meet it, closing in from all sides. It chipped away at Moon-U's mind, lopping off lines of code like a scythe through wheat.

  The AI ran until it had nowhere to go and there, in some forgotten corner of a data store, the spiteful creation was suffocated and torn into meaningless binary threads of ones and zeros. Moon-U's death scream shattered street-screens all across the city, its last spastic twitches of life blooming in random pixel patterns and as it died, the hold it had on Luna-1 disintegrated with it.

  Across the Moon, millions of minds were cleared of rage and hate as if a veil had been drawn away from them and the stifling, thick poison of a spent, dioxide-clogged atmosphere began to fade as clean, fresh air flooded back into the domes.

  And out in the Ocean of Storms, a rain of hull fragments and pieces of starship fell across the landscape. Among them was a trio of escape pods that dropped on plumes of retro-rocket fire, settling back into the gentle embrace of the lunar day.

  A full Earth hung in the blackness above the crystalline glasseen of the cemetery dome. It seeme
d incongruous there, the blue-emerald marbling of humanity's homeworld mirroring the layers of false greenery that carpeted the graveyard's floor. The stone orchard of burial markers and low tombs stretched off to the bowed horizon of Gravity Boot Hill's dome, simple rectangular headstones mingling with the ornate shapes of willowy angels. The statues seemed frail and delicate, as if they were frozen in that moment before they leapt from their plinths and into the lunar sky.

  The stones had been joined by a new monument: simple in form but with lines that were strong and sturdy, it stood among the quadrant of the cemetery that was reserved for the Justice Department's honoured dead. Dredd let his eyes fall to the inscription on the face of the tombstone: "Judge Tex - Bringing Justice to the Hereafter."

  A burial detail of twenty Judges stood to attention as Tex's coffin was lowered into the grey earth, eight of them from terrestrial Mega-Cities to represent the foreign officers serving on Luna-1. Tex's will had asked for no special religious ceremony, so the casket dropped away into the dark in silence.

  Foster stepped forward when the deed was done and drew his pulse gun. With reverence, he led the twenty officers in a cross-armed firing salute. The low-power energy beams sang through the heavy air.

  Dredd gave Kontarsky a sideways glance. She was ill-at-ease in her East-Meg uniform, as if it no longer fitted her correctly. Although the Sov-Judge had kept it to herself, Dredd knew that she had already been chastised by her superiors on Earth and it was certain that the moment she returned, she would be stripped of her rank at the very least. East-Meg Two had been quick to distance itself from Ivanov's plans, claiming that he was a renegade pursuing his own agenda, but Dredd didn't believe a word of it. The Diktatorat had kept its hands clean.

  He took a step up to the podium and studied the crowd; mostly senior Luna-City Judges, a few discreet reporters and a knot of whispering diplomats from the orbital embassies. "We are here to pay our respects to Judge-Marshal Jefferson Tex, Chief Judge of Luna-1. Tex was a fine lawman and a strong leader. This city and the law itself, is poorer for his loss." A wave of nods went through the audience. "In this troubled period, I found myself called upon to take his place, but it is a post I cannot continue to hold." Dredd saw questions appearing in the expressions before him. "My mission here on Luna-1 is at an end, but before I discharge my responsibility as Judge-Marshal, I have a one last act to perform." He looked directly at the diplomatic party, who had fallen silent.

  "When Luna-1 stood alone against the tide of lawlessness that threatened to engulf it, the call for help went unanswered by those who call themselves the allies of the lunarian citizenry. These people were willing to allow Moonie's insurrection to occur, to let Luna-1 fall rather than aid it." The representatives murmured amongst themselves in low, urgent tones. "Your allies preferred the chance to fight over the remains of any failed revolution rather than jockey for position under the rules of the Partnership Treaty." Dredd looked into the cameras that had zoomed closer as the impact of his speech became clear; his face filled a million screens across the city. "It is clear that Luna-1 will never be able to achieve its own destiny while other cities fight over it like a trophy. Therefore, by my executive order, I officially nullify the Global Partnership Treaty and return control of this colony to the surviving members of the original founding Triumvirate: Mega-City One and Texas City."

  There was an explosion of gasps and cries of disbelief from across the cemetery. Dredd ignored the shouts from men and women who decried his orders and continued to speak as if they had said nothing. "Furthermore, after the manner in which the security of the city's air supply was threatened by the control of the Oxygen Board, I am also ordering that the Board be immediately broken up and privatised, so that it can never again be manipulated by the whims of one individual."

  The voices of dissent rose and fell like a wave, but Dredd noted that there were far more Judges in the crowd who nodded with agreement than those who did not. "Finally," he said, reaching for the badge that Che had given him only a day earlier, "I now step down from the post of Judge-Marshal of Luna-1 and name my replacement as Judge Nikita Kontarsky, formerly of East-Meg Two. She will serve Luna-1 until a new Marshal is selected in six months' time."

  Dredd stepped away from the podium and left his words to hang there behind him, coiling in the air like smoke. Kontarsky's gaze met his as he passed her. Dredd paused and laid the badge in her hand. "Good luck," he said. "You'll need it."

  The Sov-Judge was speechless and she stared at the gold star-and-crescent-moon in her gloved hand. She wasn't even aware that Dredd had gone until the reporters were crowding around her, demanding a statement.

  Dredd slipped away through the cluster of dark uniforms and the shade of the spindly lunar elm trees at the base of the hill.

  "Always the same thing with you, isn't it, Dredd?" said a voice from the shadows.

  "Kessler." Dredd turned as the SJS chief emerged from cover.

  "You come up here, you screw with the status quo and then you leave. Meanwhile, Luna-1 has to deal with the mess you made. You've ruined this city, do you understand that? You've signed Luna-1's death warrant!"

  Dredd rounded on the other Judge. "I've given the people a chance. A chance to forge their own future, not one controlled by politicians hundreds of thousands of kilometres away. I've given them breathing space."

  "Really?" Kessler sneered. "Are you so naïve? You've forced Luna-1 to stand alone and without a strong hand as Chief Judge, it will wither and die! The other cities will withdraw all their support. With the dissolution of the treaty, all you've done is cut off the lifeline from Earth!"

  "That treaty wasn't a lifeline, it was a noose," Dredd retorted. "Every Mega-City on Earth was using it to control the colony up here. Nobody cared about these citizens... They just used Luna-1 like a political pawn, a prize in their big game."

  The scar on the SJS-Judge's face was red with anger. "That's all it is!" Kessler spat. "A commodity, nothing more! This is how the game of empire is played-"

  "Spare me." Dredd grated. "These people wanted freedom and I've given it to them. But you...you're no better than Moonie, Ivanov or the others up there in the courier ships. You stood by and watched Che make all the wrong choices and you did nothing. You wanted him to fail. You were waiting for the moment when you could push him out and take his place and it didn't matter a drokk to you if citizens had to die in the meantime. I saw what your men did out there on the streets. Non-combatants gunned down, zero regard for preservation of innocent life. You're a disgrace to the shield."

  Kessler fumed. "I was only obeying orders."

  "We'll see," Dredd said after a moment. "The last thing I did before I turned the badge over to Kontarsky was to begin an internal affairs investigation. Your man Wright seemed quite concerned about Judge Hiro's complicity and some of your more zealous mandates. I put him in charge of filing the report." He let the implications of this sink in. "I'm sure Wright will be very thorough. I gave him full discretionary powers in the matter."

  Kessler tried to frame a retort, but it just came out as an angry splutter.

  Dredd turned his back on the SJS officer and walked away, crossing the line of the Justice Department cordon and into the crowd of onlookers. A few reporters who'd been quick enough to see him leave raced after him, a flock of hover-cams clustered around them.

  "Judge Dredd! Any comments for the Luna-1 citizens?"

  "How can you justify such an act?"

  "Are you and Kontarsky romantically linked?"

  A daystick spiked the nearest hover-cam and sent it spinning away in a whirr of complaining gyros. "Back off!" snarled Foster, waving the baton menacingly. "You heard the man. He's off the job now!"

  J'aele and the Brit-Cit Judge forced back the cordon a little more so Dredd could reach a Skymaster bike parked at the kerb.

  "You surely know how to make an exit, Dredd," said the African, favouring his arm. The Tek-Judge's stump had been replaced with a new cyber-limb, a skelet
al construct of black carbon and dull steel. "I think perhaps you would have caused less trouble if you had just let off a stumm grenade in there."

  Dredd mounted the zipper skycycle. "You think I was wrong?"

  J'aele shook his head. "On the contrary. I think you've liberated Luna-1 more than any revolution could have. I just hope the citizens can handle it."

  "That's why we're here," said Dredd. "Freedom alone is anarchy, but freedom with the law. That's a chance for something better."

  Foster grinned. "Blimey, Dredd, that almost sounded philosophical. You getting soft in your old age?"

  Dredd was about to snap a rejoinder when a juve tried to jump the barricade. On reflex, he swung out a fist and sent the punk reeling, blood and teeth flying from the kid's flapping mouth. "Code 13, Section 7. Disorderly conduct, twelve months," Dredd reeled off the sentence with automatic calm.

  "My mistake," said Foster.

  "Where next for you?" J'aele asked. "Back to Mega-City One?"

  Dredd gave a curt nod, thumbing the Skymaster's ignition. "Creeps down there probably had a field day while I was away. Can't let that slide." He glanced at the two Judges. "You?"

  J'aele frowned. "With no treaty now, our cities will recall us both."

  Foster made a spitting sound. "That'll be lovely," he said without warmth.

  "Kontarsky's going to need people around her she can trust," said Dredd. "You might consider trading in your badges for Luna-1 shields." He gunned the Zipper's motor and powered the bike into the air. "See you on the streets."

  Chief Judge Hershey had ordered a Space Corps Shadow-class interceptor diverted off its patrol route to pick up Dredd and return him home; something about wanting him back in the Big Meg for a debriefing that would probably be more like an interrogation. Dredd crossed the landing pad to where the sleek little ship sat on a trio of landing skids, ducking under the nuclear cruise missile blister in the nose.