The Tek-Judge gulped. "I, uh, could be wrong, Dredd. It's just a chance lead, after all, it could be nothing."
Dredd accelerated out on to the highway, heading westwards. "I'll let you know."
In the early days of the Judge system, when men like Fargo and Solomon had laid down the first foundations of the Mega-Cities, the need for hardware that could support the nascent justice program was paramount. Invoking special dispensation and unique clauses in the city charter, Fargo had given certain organisations and corporations favoured status in the hierarchy of MC-1, in return for their assistance in arming and armouring the Judges. West 17 had been such a company, and in the years following the establishment of the Judges it has been West 17's Test Labs that created the tools that the Justice Department used to enforce the law. The Lawgiver multi-ammunition handgun; the nigh-infallible Birdie lie detector; the mighty Lawmaster motorcycle, and more - all of the variants of these devices had their origins at West 17, the gifted scientists and engineers working with renowned Tek-Judges like Marconi and Stumm, inventor of the non-lethal riot pacification gas that still bared his name.
Over time, while Mega-City weapons manufacturers like General Arms kept their independence, West 17 became less and less a civilian auxiliary and more and more a division of the Justice Department, eventually incorporated into the governmental structure by edict of then-Chief Judge Clarence Goodman. It became a centre for technical excellence, the dream posting for Tek-Judges from across the city. Other facilities found themselves marginalised in favour of West 17, with only the Tech 21 Lab in MegEast gaining anything near the same level of prestige - and even they were tarred with a erratic reputation for their research into the more "exotic" projects, like time travel and inter-dimensional physics.
These were golden years for Marconi and his staff; but they were about to end abruptly.
Dredd crossed the Danny Jackson Bridge at high speed, the only rider in the central Judges-Only Lane that bisected the median strip. Ahead of him, the distinctive pillar of the West 17 building rose up. It was a vast, spindle-shaped construction, a faded white column of stone and metal rising from the axis of a broad hemisphere, supporting four large saucer-shaped pods. The dark, gun-metal grey discs looked like a tower of balancing plates, the flat matte-coloured surface reflecting nothing of the day's wan sunlight. There were no visible windows, lending it a sinister, secretive air.
He pulled his Lawmaster into the parking atrium and strode to the robot receptionist. A fan of laser light wafted over his badge as he approached.
"Judge Dredd," said the droid, "you do not have an appointment."
"I'm pursuing an investigation," he replied flatly. "I want access to your motor pool, right now."
"Do you have a warrant?"
Dredd leaned closer. "West 17 Test Labs is a Justice Department division. This badge is all the warrant that I need."
The droid continued, unaffected by the implied threat in Dredd's tone. "I will require an authorisation code from a ranking Council officer, or failing that-"
"What's the problem here?" said a new voice. Dredd turned to see another Judge approaching him. A Tek-Judge - who wore no helmet - approached, his shock of white hair and a thick, snowy beard all to evident.
"Loengard?" Dredd read the name from the man's shield. "Are you what passes for authority in this place?"
The Judge's face twisted in irritation. "Your reputation precedes you, Judge Dredd. How can we help you on your way?"
"By showing me your motor pool. Now."
The hint of a smirk crossed Loengard's features. "Let me guess? You need another replacement Lawmaster? I hope you brought the right requisition forms."
Dredd handed him a printout with an image of the stealth truck. "I'm looking for this vehicle."
"Doesn't seem familiar to me." Loengard extended a hand to take the printout from Dredd. "Leave this with me and I'll look into it."
Dredd coiled the paper in his hand. "Better I do it myself. Save you the time."
"Come with me, then," said Loengard, after a long pause.
Two factors marked the sea change for the West 17 Test Labs; the first was the disastrous development of a new laser-based firearm for Judge assault operations and city wall security. The JD EX1850, more commonly known as the "stub gun", was hailed as a breakthrough weapon. Capable of slicing through thick plasteen armour and long-range attacks, the West 17 facility threw itself behind the manufacture of the gun - only to discover that the EX1850 had a fatal design flaw. Continuous uses of the weapon caused a catastrophic overheat and power pack detonation. Retired even before entering service, the stub gun became an obsolete curiosity - until the event that would lead to the second factor in West 17's fall from grace.
East-Meg One's invasion of the city in 2104 forced the stub gun back into service, but it was too late to save the life of Judge Marconi, who was captured and subjected to mental reprogramming by the Sov occupation army. By the time Marconi took his own life, the East-Meggers had stolen much of the technology stored in West 17's databanks, and in the aftermath of the Apocalypse War many of the facility's duties were transferred to the staff at Tech 21.
They paused at a hatch and Loengard tapped in a key code with brisk strokes. For the first time, Dredd noticed that the white-haired Judge had a cybernetic prosthetic where his right forearm should have been. "How'd you get that?" he asked.
Loengard shot him a look. "Lab accident. I have a couple of plasteen ribs and an artificial liver as well, if you're interested."
"Must have been some mishap."
The hatch yawned open and Loengard stepped through. "We make weapons here, Dredd," he said. "Accidents in this place are usually terminal."
The Judge led him along a service gantry, overlooking a wide garage level with dozens of vehicles on repair platforms and test rigs. Dredd spotted various models of Lawmasters and Quasar Bikes, a Banshee interceptor and even a K2001/Killdozer rig, the vehicle he'd used to cross the Cursed Earth during the 2T(fru)T breakout in Mega-City Two.
"As you can see," Loengard gestured with his robotic limb, "we've got a lot of auxiliary vehicles here but nothing of the design you're looking for."
"This isn't your only vehicle bay," Dredd broke in. "I've been here before, remember? What about the secure levels down below?" He pointed at the floor for emphasis.
"I can't grant you access to those, Dredd, you know that. Sub-levels are restricted and you don't have the clearance."
Dredd grimaced. There was that word again. He pulled his belt mic from its clip. "Maybe I should call Chief Hershey and get it right now?"
Loengard didn't fall for Dredd's bluff. "Good luck. This building is protected with a ray-shield. You won't be able to get a signal in or out of here without a landline." He met Dredd's hooded gaze. "If you have a play to make, Dredd, then make it. Otherwise, get out. I've got work to do."
The Judge advanced on Loengard. "What are you hiding?"
"All sorts of things," Loengard replied, "as you well know! What we do here is vital to the security of the city, and no one, not even you, Dredd, has a right to come in here and start throwing their weight around!" He looked away. "Of course we have our secrets. But we keep them for the good of Mega-City One."
"And who decides that?"
"Who judges the Judges, is that what you're asking me?" Loengard sneered. "Not you, Dredd."
In desperation, the administration at West 17 Test Labs threw all they could into crash development programs for new weapons, in hope of regaining the favour of the Justice Department. In 2119, Chief Judge Hadrian Volt threw them a lifeline, ordering the introduction of a new Lawgiver pistol for the department's officers, and West 17 entered into a partnership with General Arms to create the new handgun; but corners were cut and security compromised in their eagerness to redeem themselves.
It was an opportunity ripe for exploitation. Behind double-blind sub-contractors and shell companies, a Mega-City crimelord named Nero Narcos engineered a
long game of infiltration and subterfuge through General Arms and West 17. Narcos ensured that the new Mark II Lawgivers were equipped with an undetectable circuit capable of jamming the firearms at the flip of a switch. When he was ready, the mobster launched a city-wide robot revolution and left the Judges impotent and disarmed. Narcos's plan ultimately failed, and the guns were redesigned; but West 17's fall from grace was complete. Tech 21 became the leading light, and what had once been the city's richest intellectual playground was now a scientific backwater for projects on the fringe of viability.
Dredd mounted his bike and paused for a moment, mulling over Loengard's behaviour. That the Judge was hiding something wasn't the issue - Dredd could smell that on him a mile off - but it was the nature of the secret that bothered him. Naked crime, aggression and lawlessness were one thing, but conspiracy was another, and it stuck in his craw.
"Attention." The bike computer interrupted his thoughts. "Message received. Data only."
His brow furrowed. Loengard had said that no signals could reach inside the building, so where had this come from? "Show me."
On the screen an icon of a file appeared, with two short sentences written on it: "We need to talk. But you need to read this first."
GUNSIGHT
"It's encrypted," said Tyler, pushing the data-goggles back up his forehead.
"Figured it would be. That's why you're looking at it," Dredd replied, glancing around the Tek-Lab. It was third watch now, and the night shift meant that labs were virtually empty.
"No," Tyler said, rubbing his eyes. "When I say 'encrypted', I mean encrypted. Like the difference between a BigSize SlurpaShake and the way that the Statute of Judgement is big. There are more layers of data protection on this file than craters on Luna."
The Judge frowned. "Some message. A mystery informant leaves this in my bike computer and we can't even read it."
Tyler shook his head. "Oh, don't get me wrong, Dredd. I can hack this, it'll just take some time. And I don't think this is part of the message, as you put it. Whoever the snitch is at West 17, they're handin' us evidence straight from the facility's main computer core." He pointed at a code string on his monitor. "I recognise the routing protocol. They must've done it in a hurry, without decoding the raw information first."
"So someone inside the West 17's ray-shield, someone who was there while I was talking to Loengard, transmitted this into my Lawmaster's CPU?"
"Got it in one." Tyler stifled a yawn. "I've made a start already. There's several sub files in here..." He blinked slowly.
"When did you sleep last?" Dredd asked.
"Uh..." The Tek-Judge hesitated. "Tuesday, I think."
"It's Thursday, Tyler. You're no good to me half-awake. Get some rack time in the sleep machine and make a fresh start."
He nodded. "In a second. First, let me show you what I squeezed out of this thing so far." A string of images appeared on the monitor, all of them displaying the familiar shape of the stealth truck.
"I've seen this," said Dredd. "Your breakdown on the vehicle we recovered."
"Wrong answer," smirked Tyler. "These aren't my records - these are the data files from West 17's special circumstances unit. I was right about the trucks, it was them who modified the vehicles. Check it out..." He tapped the screen with a stylus. "Advanced artificially intelligent navigation system tied into a state of the art sensor web. A laser-resistant, bombproof hull. Nine different kinds of electronic masking and countermeasures systems. Radar, madar, lidar, thermal and meson scan-proof. Hell, Dredd, on any kind of sensor grid this thing would look like a hole in the air. It's pretty impressive."
"Not to me. In the wrong hands, one of these transports could be trouble. Think about it, Tyler. The ultimate getaway vehicle, undetectable and untraceable."
"With all due respect, sir, I don't reckon West 17 are usin' them to rob banks. This is a cargo configuration, somethin' you'd use to ship items across the city without anyone ever knowing about it."
Dredd looked closer. "You said it was armoured, right? Practically impossible to open without a demolition bot or a photon torch."
"That's about the size of it, yeah." Tyler blinked again as he caught on to Dredd's train of thought. "Oh... So how come it was open and empty, is that what you're askin'?"
"That cargo compartment was opened from the inside, not the outside. Something blew out the lock."
Tyler went pale. "You think... You think we're talking about something that's alive here? Whoa."
"Right now, we don't know what we're dealing with. Right now all we got is more questions."
"Not quite," said the Tek-Judge, folding away the vehicle graphics and opening another set of data-windows. "The deeper data on this file has tags indicating where it came from and who it went to. I can't get into the file proper yet, but the tags are easier to read. Look here. That Judge Loengard is on the list, so all his yap about not knowin' anything was stomm."
"Can't say that comes as a surprise. What else?" asked Dredd.
"This." He tapped the screen again. "There's only one agency in Mega-City One that uses this routing code. The Data Collating Bureau."
Dredd's face twisted into a cold smile. "The DCB. The public face of the Covert Operations Establishment." It was a well-known fact that the secretive COE had a mandate to operate only in matters that affected the security of the city, and only in territory outside the city walls; anything that happened on MC-1 turf was a Justice Department matter. But the COE did have one official presence on the inside, a small division of the city's Public Surveillance Unit, the department in charge of overseeing the millions of data feeds from spy-in-the-sky cameras, street-scanners and signal traffic monitors. The DCB was supposedly a passive observer, filtering the terabytes of raw data before handing it off to the PSU and the Justice Department's central computer; Dredd didn't buy that for a second.
"So, if the DCB's SOP is to filter MC-1's VDTs for the PSU and MAC, WTF are they doing getting the COE F2F with W17?" Tyler gave an involuntary smirk.
Dredd's icy demeanour made the Tek-Judge's insouciant remark shrivel up and die. "Don't mistake my earlier concern for your well-being as an excuse for flippancy, Tyler. Judge-Marshal Tex may have allowed levity among his officers, but I don't."
"Uh, yes sir. Sorry, sir. It's just been a long, uh, day."
The senior Judge jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "Get that rest. You're no good to me if you're punchy." He watched Tyler slope away; once he was alone, Dredd ran off a hard copy of the encrypted files and sent another digital duplicate to the secure data stack in the Chief Judge's office. If he didn't have this figured out by the time Hershey was back from the conference on Justice Five, it might help to justify the effort he was putting into this investigation.
On paper, it all looked so insubstantial. A stealth truck that vanished. A COE operative conducting what was clearly an unsanctioned mission inside his jurisdiction. And now a phantom informant in the heart of a secret weapons laboratory. It was a mixture of random pieces from different jigsaws, and as much as he studied them, no coherent picture was emerging for the lawman. Worse still, deep down inside Dredd couldn't shake off the feeling that someone, somewhere, was playing with him; and catch-up was a game that he had always hated.
We need to talk. "Talk about what?" Dredd asked aloud. For all he knew, the files could be a plant, something to throw him off the trail of the real thing, to divert him from Vedder and whatever machinations she was hatching; but if he pulled Vedder off the street with nothing but gut instinct and instant dislike to go on, the Special Judicial Service would have a field day and he'd never get to the bottom of this. No. There was only one way to handle this new wrinkle. He'd work the problem, find the angles, then push until it gave.
"Control, this is Judge Dredd," he spoke into his mic. "I need a location for a Justice Department officer. Name's Loengard, attached to West 17 Test Labs."
"Wilco, Dredd. Judge Loengard is off-duty right now, at his quarters. You wa
nt us to page him?"
"Negative. Just tell me where to find him."
"Samuel Seaborne con-apts, hab module 1657."
Jayni had changed the code for the door. Wess sagged against the frame and blew out a sigh, leaving a small smear of blue alien blood on the grubby plasteen. Some remnant of Hoog's death throes had jetted on to Smyth's radorak, although he had hardly noticed.
Following an impulse he wasn't quite sure of, Wess took out the black gun and placed it to the card reader slot in the door. He thought about pulling the trigger, but before he was even aware of it the lock made a buzzing electrical discharge and opened. Inside, the smell of the fake lavender air freshener he always associated with Jayni caressed his senses. The scent seemed stronger in a way he couldn't properly place, more potent, sharper. Wess walked into the kitchen alcove and absently placed the weapon on the table. With robotic, numb motions he picked out bottles of water from the cupboard and a thick slice of munce from the cooler. The meat-like protein slab was munce in its most basic processed form - dull brown in colour, odourless and tasteless, utterly bland in every sense of the word. Jayni was clever with munce, Wess recalled, she had racks of cheap but potent spices that could make the soyafood taste like a million different things. He drained all the bottles of water one after another like a machine pumping fuel into a tank, then set to work on eating the munce, alternating between ripping off slices with his fingers and chewing it into paste. He ate and drank, and ate and drank, drifting without anything but the most vague thoughts on his mind. Now and then, woolly noises from Jayni's neighbours came through the walls, too indistinct to fathom their meaning.
Eventually, when most of Jayni's larder was bare, and the strange, directionless hunger in his gut had been satisfied, rational thought began to return to Smyth. His eyes fell on the radorak where he'd shrugged it from his shoulders, there in a ragged pile on the floor. Hoog's blood had dried to a dull green hue, in spatter-pattern patches of manic starbursts; and like a zoom train hitting him in the small of the back, the sudden awful reality of what he had done crashed down on Wesson Smyth in a single moment of blinding clarity.
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