Wear Iron

by Al Ewing

  JUDGE DREDD: YEAR ONE

  WEAR

  IRON

  Al Ewing

  An Abaddon Books™ Publication

  www.abaddonbooks.com

  abaddonsolaris@rebellion.co.uk

  First published in 2014 by Abaddon Books™, Rebellion Intellectual Property Limited, Riverside House, Osney Mead, Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK.

  Editor-in-Chief: Jonathan Oliver

  Commissioning Editor: David Moore

  Cover: Pye Parr

  Design: Simon Parr & Sam Gretton

  Marketing and PR: Michael Molcher

  Publishing Manager: Ben Smith

  Creative Director and CEO: Jason Kingsley

  Chief Technical Officer: Chris Kingsley

  Copyright © 2014 Rebellion. All rights reserved.

  Judge Dredd created by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra.

  ISBN: 978-1-84997-852-1

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Judge Dredd: Year One

  City Fathers, Matthew Smith

  The Cold Light of Day, Michael Carroll

  Wear Iron, Al Ewing

  Judge Dredd

  Dredd vs. Death, Gordon Rennie

  Bad Moon Rising, David Bishop

  Black Atlantic, Simon Jowett & Peter J Evans

  Eclipse, James Swallow

  Kingdom of the Blind, David Bishop

  The Final Cut, Matthew Smith

  Swine Fever, Andrew Cartmel

  Whiteout, James Swallow

  Psykogeddon, Dave Stone

  More 2000 AD Action

  Judge Anderson

  Fear the Darkness, Mitchel Scanlon

  Red Shadows, Mitchel Scanlon

  Sins of the Father, Mitchel Scanlon

  The ABC Warriors

  The Medusa War, Pat Mills & Alan Mitchell

  Durham Red

  The Unquiet Grave, Peter J Evans

  Rogue Trooper

  Crucible, Gordon Rennie

  Strontium Dog

  Bad Timing, Rebecca Levene

  Fiends of the Eastern Front

  Operation Vampyr, David Bishop

  The Blood Red Army, David Bishop

  Twilight of the Dead, David Bishop

  Part One

  Mega-City One

  2080 AD

  One

  STRADER RAISED THE gun and fired twice.

  The first bullet scored a trench down the security guard’s cheek, glanced off the bone of the jaw and then buried itself in the plasteen behind him. The second round made a neat hole just above the man’s left eye, pushed its way through his brain and ploughed out of the back of the skull in a shower of blood and fragments. The guard’s eyes rolled back and he staggered once, his feet doing a little shuffle like a soft-shoe entertainer in an old-time cabaret club; a macabre two-step. His finger tightened reflexively on his own trigger, sending a bullet wild, a stray lump of lead that careened off the polished chrome of the front counter and into some poor woman’s leg.

  Then he finally dropped.

  The second guard hesitated—Strader could see the desire to be a hero warring in his eyes with the urge to lower his gun, survive, maybe go home to see his wife and kids again—and then Petersen opened up with the stuttergun and took him apart like a jigsaw puzzle.

  Petersen wasn’t the best aim, but with a stuttergun all you had to do was point it in roughly the right direction and hold on tight. The hardest part was lifting the damn thing. It had stopping power, Strader had to admit that much.

  Which didn’t change the fact that they should never have brought it along in the first place. It was too much gun for a simple jewellery-store heist like this—the wrong gun for any kind of serious work. It was cheaply made, prone to jams and misfires, and it only had three or four seconds of sustained fire in it before the ammo ran out. After that, changing out the mag and loading fresh ammo was so fiddly and overcomplicated that it could easily get you killed—and it usually did. Stutterguns had a reputation.

  And yet somehow this piece of crap, notorious in its day as a wartime boondoggle slapped together by some enterprising defence contractors to line their pockets at President Booth’s expense, had become the go-to killing machine for the juve gangs that were on the rise in the blocks. Probably because they were juves, because they didn’t know any better—after all, the stuttergun was big, it was mean-looking, and it made a mess. What else was there to care about?

  So the gangs were using it for drive-bys, assassinations, block rumbles—lots of spraying and praying, firing indiscriminately like a kid with a water pistol. Most often they’d end up taking out two or three cits for every rival gang member, until whatever Judge was first on the scene took them out in turn.

  So while no serious professional worth his salt would touch a stuttergun, the thing had grown itself a reputation among the average Joe Cit as a thing to be feared—the weapon of choice for psychos and crazies who didn’t give a damn about collateral damage. It was on all the news channels—special bulletins telling you how to recognise one being pointed at you and what to do about it. Anything you’re told to, was the short version.

  And suddenly, otherwise-smart people like Petersen were taking a second look.

  There were advantages to being feared, Petersen had argued at the planning sessions—advantages they maybe couldn’t ignore. He’d explained at length that he didn’t want to bring one of these deathtraps along on a heist to shoot the damn thing—hell, no, he wasn’t stupid. He’s just wave it around a little—it was all about the threat, that implicit promise of violence.

  “They see these things every day on the vid,” he’d said earnestly, with the smile of a man who thought he’d discovered the secret of turning lead into gold, the magical shortcut that was going to make them all millionaires. “They’re already trained to respond—psychologically, you know? They take one good look at that baby, they ain’t gonna think twice. They’ll drop onto their knees and pray we leave enough pieces of them for the Resyk belt! Right? Know what I’m talkin’ about?” He’d guffawed like a donkey on a vid-cartoon. “Hell, you guys probably won’t even need to bring anything else!”

  Strader didn’t even bother to reply to that one. It wouldn’t have mattered if Petersen was talking about a gun that shot lightning, crapped thunder and counted out the shares for you afterwards—only an idiot relied on someone else’s piece.

  Wear Iron. That was the rule.

  Strader hadn’t liked Petersen’s big idea one little bit. For one thing, he’d patiently explained as if talking to a two-year-old, a gang of three professional stick-up merchants with more than twenty years’ experience between them shouldn’t need to play psychological games to knock over a small jewellery store in a chintzy block mall.

  For another—but that was when McKittrick, the bagman, had chimed in and cut Strader off. McKittrick thought the idea was ‘badass,’ and thought Strader was wetting his u-fronts over nothing. And with that, Strader was outvoted two to one. The stuttergun was the official fourth member of the gang.

  Strader knew he should have walked then and there. Anybody using the word ‘badass’ in the context of work was not somebody you could trust to make the coffee, never mind to help pull off a job.

  But he was short on options, still over a barrel after the stommshow in Texas City, a casino heist that’d gone south and left five dead and two more cubed, with Strader in the wind only by the skin of his teeth. People had investe
d in that one—serious people with serious money and serious ways of getting it back—and his share of this job would go a long way to digging himself out of that particular hole.

  Last time he’d talked to the Cowboy—a big, one-eyed Texan who hadn’t given his real name but had given Strader three all-terrain vehicles to make the getaway with, all of which were now smouldering hunks of twisted metal in a judicial impound somewhere—the Cowboy had made it pretty clear that unless Strader came up with the original investment, plus a hefty vig, inside of thirty days, he’d be breathing rockcrete under the new intersection. That had been ten days ago. Time was running out.

  Strader didn’t have time to be picky, so he’d let his need—or his greed—get the better of him. He’d swallowed his pride and told himself it’d probably all work out.

  Probably.

  And to give Petersen his credit, it had worked out just fine. When Strader, Petersen and McKittrick had burst into that jewellery store, everything had gone as smooth as butter.

  For a whole minute.

  Maybe more.

  Petersen had screamed like a futsie and waved his brand-new stuttergun around like a gangster on an old-time vid-show, and the other two had played their part in turn, aiming their .45s at anyone who looked like they might not be getting the message. Four horrified customers hit the floor on command, and the kid behind the counter—some girl fresh out of block college—curled up like a foetus, not even thinking about hitting the silent alarm button under the till. Strader kept a weather eye on the two security guards—they had the biggest potential to make trouble, but right then, in that one perfect moment, they were good boys, the best you could want, keeping their hands well away from their holsters and not letting the thought of death for a paycheque cross their tiny minds.

  And in that first golden minute, Strader was happy he’d been proved wrong.

  But he wasn’t wrong.

  The big, ragged hole in Petersen’s big, ragged idea was this: not all fear is good fear. Three professionals, armed with professional weapons, acting in a professional manner, and very professionally telling Joe Cit just what’d happen if he stepped out of line for even a moment—that created a useful kind of fear. That made Joe Cit afraid of what would happen if he didn’t do what he was told. These are professionals, that fear whispered. You might get through this, if you keep your head and do what the nice men want.

  One maniac waving a stuttergun around and screaming his head off, on the other hand, made Joe Cit afraid of what might happen if he did do what he was told. That wasn’t useful. That kind of fear was bad for business. It whispered: these people are crazy, and anything could happen. There’s no percentage in keeping your head. If I were you, I’d start taking chances, because they might just be the last chances you ever take in your short life.

  It was the kind of fear that prompted action, in other words. The kind of fear that made the first guard—who wasn’t being paid nearly enough for gunplay, and would, under ordinary circumstances, have remembered that—go for his piece in a blur of barely-trained motion and send a slug right through McKittrick’s throat.

  In that one moment, the whole operation had collapsed like a house of cards. As McKittrick staggered back—scrabbling at the bloody wound that used to be his jugular, making noises like fish used to, back when there were fish—Strader raised his gun and fired twice, and the guard fell, and then Petersen opened up with the stuttergun he’d sworn up and down he wouldn’t use.

  And now here they all were.

  Strader tore his eyes away from the wet chunks of flesh that’d once been guard number two—the swaying remains of the man’s legs, still bizarrely standing like that statue of Ozymandias, the blood and cartilage dribbling down a wall that looked like Swiss mock-cheese—and took a look over at McKittrick.

  There was no saving him. He was still twitching, but there was nothing left in his eyes. Next to him, the dame who’d taken the ricochet in the leg lay stiff and lifeless as stone, bright red blood gushing from the wound and soaking the carpet in a spreading pool. The bullet had made a neat hole in her pulmonary artery. Petersen’s stuttergun had turned a simple heist into a triple murder.

  Quadruple. Petersen, eyes glassy, cold sweat pouring down his face, swung his too-much-gun at the college girl behind the counter and opened up with a second burst that turned everything above her shoulders into wet munce. Her finger slipped off the button she’d been pressing—the silent alarm—as what was left of her slumped to the ground, legs twitching and spasming, heels drumming in the familiar rhythm of the freshly dead. Strader felt numb at the sight of it.

  Everyone was being stupid now. The remaining three cits were out of control—whatever spell the stuttergun had cast over them in the first moments had reversed itself when Petersen actually fired the thing. One of them, a bald man of about forty, was kneeling down next to the dead woman with the torn artery, trying fruitlessly to wake her back up, tears splashing from his double chin into the pooled blood. The other two—punk-jocks in fake-leather jackets who’d been shopping for new cheek-rings—took their chance and made a run for the door, crying out for someone, anyone, to help. Crying for the Judges.

  Petersen barked an order, hoarse and almost unintelligible, and swung the heavy stuttergun around. In that moment, his wild eyes and the set of his jaw suggested he really had gone futsie. When the stuttergun misfired and jammed, he made a strangled noise deep in the back of his throat and shook the weapon helplessly, as if trying to jar some loose part of the mechanism back into place.

  In the distance, Strader could hear a siren. Closing in.

  That was another of Strader’s rules—the Judges were the law, and brother, you had better believe it. The Academy of Law made them faster, better and harder than you could ever be, even if they weren’t Atom War veterans with itchy trigger fingers. Facing down the Jays was for first-time juves and mugs with more guts than brains. A true professional never tangled with the Judges. Not ever.

  It was time to go.

  He’d already given the job—and Petersen—up for lost. Rule three—no such thing as a job you can’t walk away from. The moment he heard the siren, mixing with Petersen’s muttered curses as he shook the massive gun like a bad father shaking a crying baby, Strader was already stepping calmly over the remains of the counter-girl and through the door that led into the back offices, walking away from the whole sorry mess.

  He turned as the door swung shut behind him, risking a last look at what he was leaving. A Judge was already leaping off his bike just outside the door, Lawgiver at the ready. For his part, Petersen had grabbed the bald man by the shirt collar and was holding the useless stuttergun to his head, yelling obscenities, trying to bluff it out. Strader winced—it looked like suicide by Judge as much as anything. Maybe Petersen’s mind really had gone. But then, the Judge seemed young, fresh from the Academy—just a kid, really. After the war, they were rushing them through, trying to bolster the numbers. It was just possible Petersen had lucked out and caught one of the dumber ones—but those weren’t betting odds.

  Just before the door swung shut, Strader caught a glimpse of the kid Judge’s badge: Dredd.

  Strader turned and walked quickly past the empty office in back and the meagre break room, moving as silently as he could to the fire door—it was alarmed, but Strader knew which wire to cut with his pocket las-knife to fix that.

  As he pushed the fire door open, he heard the familiar dull flat boom of a standard execution bullet. It was too bad—and it put a timer on things. Even if the Judge didn’t know there was a third man on the job, he would as soon as one of the cits started talking.

  Strader was just thankful he had his wrist-com working—or rather, the surveillance blocker built into it, a wireless pulse designed to scramble the software of any cameras within a hundred feet or so. A brief victory for his side in the endless war between those who made security systems and those who broke them—they were already working on plugging the hole, but f
or the moment, Strader had the edge. And a few other tricks besides.

  He reversed his jacket quickly, moving the shocking, fluorescent green from the outside to the inside, replaced by a sombre, fashionable grey. The false moustache and eyebrows went into his pocket, before he pulled off his shoes and tossed them down the stairwell, making sure his bloody footprints ended at the fire door on the thirty-eighth floor. He gave the wires there a quick slash to complete the illusion, then carried on running down the fire stairs to ground level barefoot.

  He felt safer now. The black dye in his hair might still identify him, but he could take care of that soon enough. Somewhere above him, a cit was describing some schmuck in a day-glo green jacket that had a moustache a hell of a lot like Rudy Conn’s in Fight Thru The Night at the Bijou—and that wasn’t him, not any more.

  Still, he allowed himself the luxury of a little self-loathing as he ran—he’d acted desperate, teaming up with a couple of characters he was better than on his worst day, and as a result he was right back in the hole where he’d started. Worse—he had four murders on his rap sheet he didn’t have before, and he had a bad feeling they’d come back to haunt him.

  He’d only caught a glimpse—but this Dredd kid didn’t seem the type to forget.

  Two

  FOUR HOURS LATER, Strader was a sector away, staring into a mirror at his naked face.

  The hair dye was the cheap one-wash stuff, made for the juves and the club-hoppers—it washed out with just a little help from the cold tap in the toilet sink, leaving Strader’s hair a close-cropped, silvery grey. The brown disposable contacts had been removed and dropped into the sink to melt with the dye, leaving behind a pair of eyes that were as cool and green as a mint freezy-whip on a hot summer day.