Wear Iron

by Al Ewing

  Not to mention that Mooney having a friend on the force was confirmation of all the whispers that had done the rounds, the ones that said he wasn’t to be trusted. So there was that.

  The other rule—once upon a time he’d had them all written down—was never to say yes to a job before you know all the details. Ideally, you can massage any flaws in the details yourself, but some plans were just unworkable, and you didn’t want to be locked in to an unworkable plan. Especially with the kind of people who might decide not to let you out again. Like, for instance, bent Judges who ran protection rackets on operators like him.

  He’d stood, looked Mooney in the eye, and...

  “I’ll think about it.”

  And now, here he was, in an empty plastic park. Thinking about it. He leaned against the artificial tree and looked up at the fizzing screens. As long as you didn’t try to pretend they were a sky, they were pretty soothing.

  He was locked in, that was the problem. Within days, he was going to be either dead or cubed—unless he had enough money in his pocket, in cash, to pay off his debts and get out of the city before the net closed in. And now this opportunity had fallen into his lap, as if karma was paying him back somehow for the mess in Texas City.

  He scowled, looking down at the sickly grass, squashing the superstition before it took root in his mind. In his experience, the day you started using words like karma and believe that there was any kind of balance in the universe was the day you booked your trip on the Resyk belt.

  Still, a score like this would net him a cool ten million share at the absolute lowest—enough to set him up for years, maybe even enough to retire on. He could, if he wanted, buy a bar somewhere with no extradition treaties and live comfortably off the proceeds for the rest of his life. This could be his ticket out of the game. Was that something he could afford to say no to? He might not believe in karma, but he believed in the laws of probability, and a payout as big as this wouldn’t come his way again.

  He looked back up, focussing on the flickering sky above his head, and decided, as a mental exercise, to assume the worst. Everything that could go wrong, would go wrong.

  He assumed Mooney’s mysterious Judge-buddy was going to blackmail them—or worse, was working undercover to trap and cube them. He assumed that the plan Mooney had in mind was a drunken pipe-dream with more holes in it than a bagel factory. He assumed at least three other teams were working on heists of their own at the same time, looking to swoop in on their score—Mooney couldn’t be the only one to have noticed what was under everyone’s nose. He assumed that the Jays had closed off every angle, thought through every possible plan of attack, that he was going to the cubes no matter what he did.

  Strader scowled a little more at that, the mental image too much to take. He changed it to an assumption that he’d come out of this with a bullet in the head, and felt much better—the daydream of his own brains splattered on a pristine stadium wall seemed infinitely preferable. A measure of fatality gripped him—even assuming the worst, assuming that he’d come out of this warming a cube or, preferably, riding the belt... what would he have lost? Not a thing.

  He was headed in the same direction now—a little slower, that was all.

  The thought was bizarrely relaxing, like a weight lifting from him. He looked down from his reverie to see that three juves had wandered into the block park through one of the entry-ways—their spiked leather jackets, a well-worn cliché that was enjoying a brief comeback, were covered with dancing brown homunculi in various sizes, amidst the words TONY HART BLOCK MIGHTY MORPHS. One of the new juve gangs.

  Strader gave them a quick look-over, checking to see if they had any real weapons. They weren’t carrying stutterguns—a bitter smile crossed his face at the thought—but they’d have switchblades on them at the very least. The toughest-looking of the three, a girl of about sixteen with torn-off sleeves, subdermal implants running up her forearms and jet-black eyes—eyeball tattoos, Strader realised, and found himself wincing in sympathetic pain—had the tell-tale bulge of a shoulder holster under one of her lapels. He supposed that made her the leader; the other two, a couple of barely-pubescent boys—one shorter than she was and still covered in a layer of babyfat, the other tall and gangly—seemed like they were just along for the ride, playing entourage.

  Suddenly, the girl turned, looking at Strader with a snarl, revealing that her teeth had been filed down to points. “What you wincin’ at, geeko?” Strader sighed gently, irritated with himself. He’d been caught staring—never a good thing with juves.

  The two boys with her grimaced and postured in turn, trying to one-up each other. “Sorry.” Strader set his face in what he hoped was a smile. “Didn’t mean anything by it.” His eyes flicked over her shoulder holster, and he found himself wondering just how much practice she’d had with it. She was young, but they started early these days.

  “You know that’s our tree, geek?” She spat, hitting the toe of his shoe. The file teeth gave her a slight lisp, which on someone else might have seemed comical. She gave him a hard stare with her jet-black eyes, and he quietly stepped to the side.

  “Sorry. I’ll go somewhere else.” He was smiling, keeping his tone pleasant, ingratiating, but he had a feeling he already knew how this would end. The fingers of his gun hand twitched, and he felt the iron hanging, heavy with bullets, in his jacket. Waiting for its turn to speak.

  “Who said you could leave?” The girl took a step closer, and the boys, swapping glances, reached into their jacket pockets and pulled out a pair of plasteen-handled flick-knives, cheap mail-order crap from the back of a Citi-Def magazine. Strader felt his mind numb, as it had in the jewellery store when things had gone bad. Rationally, he knew there was still a way to escape the situation without violence, to keep hiding out peacefully in this quiet, near-derelict block while he considered his next move. But at the same time, he felt his hand slide closer to the concealed holster in his jacket.

  Once he made the move—once he drew—it would all happen very quickly. He had no doubt he was faster than the girl, although she was close enough that she might be able to leap on top of him before he could aim—at which point those file teeth would probably bite into his neck. He had a feeling she’d done that before. But assuming she didn’t think of that, he had enough in the magazine to put two into her and then deal with both of the boys before they could—

  “Hey!”

  Strader turned towards the sound of the voice—a deep, rough growl, like gravel passing through an industrial hopper—and he felt ice shoot up his spine, freezing him in place.

  It was a Judge. More—it was the Judge, the one from the jewellery store, the kid.

  Dredd.

  He’d been scary—scarier than a kid with a badge should have been—when Strader had glimpsed him through the closing doorway in the jeweller’s. There, he’d been all lean, violent muscle and black leather, all purpose—but there was something even more terrifying about him now, as he strode across the livid fake grass to meet them, fists swinging almost jauntily at his sides.

  Strader didn’t know how he knew.

  But he knew that face wasn’t meant to be smiling.

  “Well, well, well,” Dredd grinned, and there was a cruel joy in that deep gravel voice that made Strader shudder. Dredd smiled with his teeth, pearly white and incongruous against the black of the uniform. He flashed his grin at Strader, and for a moment Strader wondered why his hand was back at his side, why he hadn’t gone for his piece and fired a bullet through that visor already. But there was another part of him that knew with a cold, hard certainty that Dredd could drop to a firing position and put a hole right through his heart without even breaking his stride. Without losing that smile.

  “Take a step back, Paul,” Dredd said in that deep, dark voice, and Strader felt his blood ice over in his veins.

  “What?”

  But Dredd wasn’t listening—he’d already turned his attention to the three juves. “You know, you thr
ee are a long way away from the hundred and sixtieth floor. That’s home turf for you Morphs, right? Down here belongs to the Mister Bennett Boys.”

  The three of them had backed up a little—the boys were shooting nervous glances at their leader, visibly sweating, the hands holding the knives rammed deep in the pockets and out of sight—it was pretty clear they hadn’t signed up for this. Up until now, they’d been playing pretend, making believe that they were grown-ups, that they knew what they’d do when things got serious—and now it was real, now they were a heartbeat away from years of cube-time, they’d remembered they were just kids after all.

  The girl didn’t say a word.

  “So I guess this is an initiation. You three go back with a scalp, and you get to keep those jackets. Am I right?” Dredd was still smiling, the deep voice genial, amused. He jerked a thumb in Strader’s direction. “Grandpa over there, maybe? Let me see if I understand—you weren’t going to hurt him. You were just going to get his tie. Or his wallet. Or maybe his thumb.”

  “It ain’t l-like that—” the taller of the boys stammered, looking helplessly at the girl—she shot him a look back with her jet-black eyes, shutting him up.

  Strader could see how Dredd was narrowing his focus in his body language. He was concentrating entirely on the girl now—she was the key to the situation. Strader couldn’t work out why Dredd was taking the approach he was, though. He took another step back, away from whatever was about to happen.

  “Sure it is,” Dredd said, almost crooning, flashing another smile. “Come on, sweetheart. You think I don’t see that pistol you’ve got strapped to your shoulder?” The smile dropped, and Strader held his breath. “Here’s how it is,” Dredd said, very quietly. “You three are heading to the cubes. Nothing you can do about that. But there’s two ways you can do this. Easy or hard.”

  The girl opened her mouth, ready to spit venom, but something in Dredd’s eye shut her up. He let her have the moment, and then carried on speaking. “The easy way, you go away for about six months. No more. That’s the lowest end of the weapon possession charge—if you hand over what you’ve got right now. That’s me being nice.” He smiled again, and there was something in that smile that made Strader want to run for one of the exits—but he knew he wouldn’t make it three feet.

  “The hard way... we go high end on the weapon possession, add in a little mugging, intent—you can get real finickity with intent, that’s one of the first things you learn at the Academy. We could go right up to attempted murder. Thirty years.” He cocked his head, looking her up and down. “With those teeth and that eyeball-ink, I could get away with fifty. You can’t even imagine that kind of time, can you?” He smirked. “Half a century without seeing a human face.”

  One of the boys broke down in tears. The other looked white, ghostly, and like he might vomit at any second. Strader looked at the girl, and saw that her eyes had gone very wide, and her bottom lip was starting to tremble. It was one thing to be defiant in the face of the law when it was implacable and intractable, Strader knew. When you were given the choice, like this—comply or face the consequences—it was the easiest thing in the world to knuckle under. To take the deal.

  “Just show me the gun. You too, boys.” Dredd’s voice was soft—softer than Strader would have believe that cracked-gravel larynx capable of. There was something wrong about all this—about the whole approach—but Strader couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

  The girl blinked, those big black eyes suddenly seeming very large and vulnerable, not menacing at all. Then, hand shaking, she reached into her jacket, gently sprung the clasp on the holster, and very slowly—making sure not to point it at anyone—she drew the gun out.

  Dredd shot her.

  He moved so fast Strader didn’t realise what he was looking at at first. One minute, the Judge was standing, hands empty, quietly cajoling—the next, he was in a crouch, the gun in his hand, barrel smoking, and the girl was stumbling back a pace, the gun clutched in her hand and a dark red puncture wound right in the middle of her forehead. The back of her head was gone.

  As the girl toppled back, the bright red of her blood staining the livid green of the plastic grass, Dredd aimed and fired twice more. The smaller of the two boys had time for a scream, shrill and hideously truncated.

  And then Dredd slid the Lawgiver back into its boot holster, straightened up, and turned back to Strader. “You saw it,” he smiled. “Well, you were never here, but you get the point. They drew on me. I had no choice.”

  “You...” Strader swallowed hard, mouth dry. “You killed them.”

  “Kill shot’s the safe shot, Paulie. That’s what they drum into you at the Academy.” He smiled, glancing over the cooling corpses. “Pretty good shot placement, don’t you think? Dead centre, head or heart—perfect as always, that’s what they used to say about me. Maybe I should go back to the Academy shooting range one of these days—don’t you think? Give the instructors a thrill.”

  “I...” Strader’s legs felt weak, jelly-like, as though he was in a dream. Some part of him was already starting to put it together, but the rest didn’t want to believe it. “You were at the jeweller’s. Barry Scott Block. You killed Petersen—“

  Dredd cocked his head, giving Strader a hard stare. “No, I don’t think I was there,” he murmured, “I think you might have me confused with someone else.” He smiled again, and Strader had a sudden understanding that he should shut up about that, right now, that he should let this cold, cruel, dangerous maniac in a Judge’s uniform tell him when and where they’d met before—not the other way around.

  He was still trying to tell himself that he didn’t know how this Judge, this Dredd, should know him, or why he was doing the rounds in Tony Hart, just a stone’s throw from Mooney’s apartment in Jeff Daniels, when Dredd stuck out a hand, forcing Strader to shake. The grip was firm, hard enough to grind Strader’s knuckles and make him wince in pain, and Dredd smiled that maddening, psychopathic smile as he did it.

  “Paul Strader. I understand you’re something of a star turn in the stick-up game. My old friend, Buddy Mooney”—he put a special inflection on the word friend, like it was a private joke—“gave me a call and said you were thinking over my little, ah... proposal.”

  Strader looked back at him, at the eyes hidden behind the visor. “Oh, Jovus...” He shook his head, suddenly wanting very much to be out of this, wanting to be as far away from this man and his plan as he could possibly get. But he knew it was too late for that now.

  “Oh, no.” The Judge laughed, giving Strader’s hand an agonizing squeeze for luck, then letting it go. “Actually, my name’s Dredd.” He indicated the badge. “Judge Dredd, to the world at large. But you, Paulie...”

  He smiled wider, showing his perfect teeth.

  “...you can call me Rico.”

  Part Two

  Six

  RICO WAS THE best.

  And Rico knew it.

  Mega-city was his city—it had been since he’d came out of the tank. When he rode down the street, watching that mixture of love and fear on the faces of the cits, that look he lived for, he felt like one of the kings of old, parading before his conquered subjects. Then he’d see his own face in a mirror—the Father of Justice, young again, strong again—and he’d know that’s exactly what he was, a princeling of Mega-City One, playing games in the city he loved and owned. And he’d laugh.

  Sometimes, in his quieter moments, he wondered if there was something wrong there—something wrong in his head. When he was a kid, there’d been an accident on a hotdog run, out in the Cursed Earth. He’d cracked his skull, messed himself up pretty bad—taken a lot of rads in the process. It was comforting, every so often, to blame it all on that—all the cynicism he felt, the growing hatred for the system he lived and worked in, all the blind sheep stumbling around in it, never seeing it for what it was. Maybe he was the problem—wouldn’t that be nice?

  He wasn’t, obviously. The system—the Judges, the Meg
a-Cities, the whole damned circus show—was pure nonsense, straight from the head of some lunatic Grud playing loaded dice with the universe. Justice Department in particular—that was the blackest, filthiest joke Rico could ever imagine, a savage act of dark comedy imposed on a populace who’d never asked for it but didn’t know how to ask for anything else. The party line was that the city was crazy, and that if the Judges relaxed their grip for a second, that craziness would spiral out of control—nobody seemed to be willing to admit that it already had, and the Department was the cherry on the top of the whole sick, sad sundae.

  So of course Rico was corrupt. The law was corrupt—an ugly, festering mess that existed only to squeeze every last drop of dignity out of the people and kick the broken husks around a little for good measure.

  And Rico Dredd was the law.

  Better believe it.

  He worked alone, for the most part. It was technically against regs, but then so was the lux-apt he kept in Oldtown, and nobody said a word to him about that. They might have, if he hadn’t been as good as he was—but he knew how to play the game, how to juke the stats, get the arrests. Sure, his bodycount was a little high—and occasionally he’d lean on people a little harder than he had to during interrogation, especially if they were innocent—but so what? His cleanup rate was high and he made sure his record looked clean—or at least not too dirty to let stand—and at the end of the day, that was all the higher-ups cared about.