Rico Dredd: The Titan Years

by Michael Carroll

  I saw the uneven, glassy ice approach, and at the last second I stabbed upward with the point of the screwdriver.

  The impact rippled through my bones, threatened to tear my muscles free... But there was a crack in the ice. Without dropping back, I stabbed again, in the same spot, and the shock knocked the screwdriver from my grip. I grabbed for it, and missed.

  I watched it drift down and I remember thinking, This is not how I’m going to die! Not after everything!

  I was going to live out my twenty years on this glacial moon. I’d serve my time and go back to Earth, back to Mega-City One, and find my brother. Make him pay.

  Because he did this to me. He had refused to see things from my point of view, to even consider the possibility that I’d been right. But that’s how he’s always been. Sure, he’ll listen to advice and he’ll pay attention to new ideas, but in the end Joe Dredd does whatever Joe Dredd wants.

  And one day, I’d go back. I’d see him. Look the drokker in the eye and show him what he’d done.

  Twenty years in this hell-hole for what? For having different ideas. For having the intelligence and the empathy to understand that the Law isn’t everything. That without mercy, it’s nothing.

  Maybe it was because I was exhausted, and desperate. Maybe it was because I didn’t like being trapped. Whatever it was, it fed my anger and my anger gave me strength.

  I slammed my fist upwards, and it punched clear through the ice.

  I KNEW THAT, inside my gloves, my knuckles were cracked, the skin raw and seeping, and I was grateful that I could feel nothing but the cold.

  For a long time I didn’t have the strength to pull myself up, so I clung to the edge of the fracture, trying to summon that anger again.

  But it eluded me. All I could do was hold on, the faceplate of my environment suit barely above the misty surface of the liquid.

  Through the soul-chilling numbness I felt Guildford’s strong arms wrap themselves around my legs, and for a moment I imagined he was trying to pull me down, to drag me into the suffocating, freezing death.

  Then he was lifting me from below, pushing me until I could get my elbows over the edge.

  I hauled myself up, Guildford still pushing me, and collapsed onto the ice, face-down.

  I allowed myself a couple of seconds to rest, then twisted around, reached into the hole, grabbed hold of Guildford’s flailing hand, and pulled. It took the last of my strength to get him out, and I wouldn’t have been able to do it had he not used the screwdriver—he’d seen it fall from my hand and caught it—as a piton.

  It was only when he was out of the liquid and onto the ice that I understood how close we had come to failure. Twenty metres in front of us was the bus, trapped inside a hill of compacted hail. Guildford and I were in a shallow, inexplicable depression. Otherwise, the ice stretched for hundreds of metres in every direction.

  The floe was drifting across a vast plain. There were mountains in the distance, but nothing recognisable. The only clue I had as to how far we’d come was the position of Saturn in the sky.

  From where we were when the storm hit, Saturn should have been a few degrees above the horizon; here it was well up in the sky.

  Guildford joined me, his helmet now removed, and we stood together looking at the planet. “What do you think, Rico? A couple of hundred kilometres?”

  “At least,” I said. “Probably a lot more.”

  “Then all that was for nothing. They’re never going to find us before the oxygen in the suits runs out.”

  “You’ll have to tell them what happened, then.”

  He barked a harsh, mechanical laugh, then slapped me on the shoulder. “We should get the others free. And then maybe there’s a way we can break the bus loose. Probably won’t work, but it’ll keep us all occupied while death sneaks up on us.”

  We returned to the bus and circumnavigated it, looking for the easiest access point. As we walked, I told Guildford about the GPS fraud. He didn’t seem surprised. He said, “They think we don’t know, so we let them believe that. If they figure we know it’s a con, they’ll do it for real.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I was a scientist, remember? And it doesn’t take a genius—which I am, for whatever that’s worth on this Grud-forsaken rock—to figure it out. You know how everyone keeps telling us that escape is impossible? Well, about four years ago three prisoners did escape. They weren’t able to get off-planet, but they did manage to get out of the prison. Copus made a big show of bringing back the remains of their bodies, but it wasn’t them. They’d dug up a few graves instead. For all we know the real escapees could still be out here somewhere.” Guildford began to climb up onto the ice-sheathed front of the bus. “So they’re free, but dead, of course, because there’s nowhere on this rock to actually escape to.”

  I said, “Yeah, everyone keeps telling us that, too. But they’re wrong.”

  Guildford looked back at me. “Meaning?”

  “Meaning I’m pretty sure we’re not alone on Titan.”

  Twelve

  THE COMPACTED HAIL on top of the bus was a metre thick, and without proper tools the only way we could get through it was by hacking at it with the screwdriver and pulling at the chunks of ice with our hands. The constant freezing and thawing of the methane ice had solidified it into a single mass peppered with tiny pockets of air.

  As we worked, we talked. “You look at the size of the prison’s gardens,” I told him, “then think of the portion sizes of our meals, and the number of prisoners. The gardens produce a lot more food than we consume. About three times as much.”

  “I guess the rest is used to create biofuel or ethanol to power the vehicles,” said Guildford. He stamped the heel of his boot down onto the ice. “Like the bus. It’s certainly not nuclear.”

  “That doesn’t account for all of it,” I said as I stabbed at what looked like a weak seam. “And every six days one particular truck heads out to pick up loose ore fragments. Or so they say. But from where? I’ve never been on that duty, nor has anyone I’ve asked. You’ve seen it—it’s red and has a massive dent in the side of the cab. I’ve been keeping track... Sometimes it goes west, sometimes east, but that’s a diversion. It always heads south.” I dropped back, exhausted.

  Guildford pulled the screwdriver from my hand, and took over. “How did you work that out?”

  “Because we’re sent out every direction but due south, and I’ve never seen the red truck out here, although I’ve seen every other one many times.” I pushed myself to my feet, and turned in a slow circle. “And the red truck never comes back with a full load. In fact, it always comes back with pretty much the same amount of ore. Ore that I’ve never been assigned to unload. Have you?”

  “Can’t say that I have, no. So what are you saying? That there’s another base somewhere on Titan and the prison is supplying it with food?”

  “Yeah, I think so. It just carries the same ore out and back every time. And because they’re keeping it a secret, I figure it’s either a research station working on something big, or it’s a military base.”

  Guildford stopped working, and turned to face me. “Military. Out here?”

  “We know we’re not alone in the galaxy. Have you ever heard of a society that wasn’t paranoid about invaders? I’d put money on it, if I had any. There’s a military base here. Probably one on every major moon in the system. And military bases have ships. And guns.”

  After some consideration, Guildford said, “If we knew exactly where...” Then he shook his head. “It’d be a lot better defended than the prison.” He stepped back and handed me the screwdriver.

  “I know,” I said, as I crouched down and resumed working. We were above the roof of the bus, slowly working our way down through the ice toward the door. The plan was to clear away enough ice that Montenegro could get out, then she could take over for a while.

  And we couldn’t stop. Being a mod, Guildford had turned off his oxygen, but mine was already ru
nning low. When it was gone, I’d swap tanks with him, but even so, time was against us. The sooner we got Montenegro out, the sooner she could free the others.

  We worked in silence for a while. Holding the screwdriver in both hands, I stabbed at the ice, over and over, while Guildford stood next to me, watching, ready to take over when the cold and constant jarring in my arms became too much.

  “Suppose we did get to the military base,” Guildford said, “And we managed to get a ship that we could somehow actually fly. What then? Where would we go? You’ve said it yourself many times—if we go back to Earth, we’ll be shot down.”

  I told him, “We don’t go to Earth. We go... elsewhere. There are races out there who’d pay a lot for our knowledge of Earth.”

  Before Guildford could reply, a head-sized portion of the ice collapsed under my hands.

  We stared down into the small hole, and heard Siebert’s voice call out, “We’re through!”

  IT TOOK ANOTHER half-hour to free enough ice for Montenegro to squirm out.

  Vickers came next. He threw a large cloth-wrapped bundle ahead of him, then reached for me and Guildford through the opening. “Don’t try anything,” he warned us. “Siebert’s still armed. You don’t want to lose your friends to a gun after all you’ve been through, right?”

  We hauled him free, and he ordered us to back away. “Toward the front of the bus. Move.” Still watching us, he called over his shoulder, “Mister Siebert? It’s clear.”

  Vickers crouched down next to the opening and Siebert passed him up the gun.

  Vickers held the gun on us as he tapped the bundle with his foot. “Spare oxygen tanks, the rest of the food and water. You’ll be carrying it.”

  “Where are we going?” Guildford asked. “We don’t know where we are, and—”

  “No questions,” Vickers said.

  It was a few minutes before Register Forbes emerged, clambering awkwardly out of the hole, almost slipping back a couple of times. He hoisted his stomach over the edge, then turned to help Siebert out.

  Siebert was also carrying a large bundle, and I could see now that they’d been fashioned from the thick rubberised cloth that covered the seats inside the bus.

  Vickers helped the other guards out, Guildford, Montenegro and I watching, as Siebert and Forbes peered around at our surroundings. “I don’t know this place,” Forbes said. “We could be anywhere. What do we do?”

  Siebert examined his gun. “We have one high-ex shell. We can use that as a flare if we see anything. Right now, we head west.” Then he looked directly at me. “You were right about the military base.”

  “You heard that,” I said.

  “We heard everything,” Siebert said. He kicked at the bundle at his feet, and it slid over the ice toward me. “Pick it up. You three walk ahead of us, not more than ten metres, not closer than five. We stop only when I say we stop. Understood?”

  “What about the others?” asked Montenegro. “We can’t just leave them here!”

  Even before I picked up the bundle, I knew what had happened. It was heavier than it should have been, and that was because it contained more oxygen tanks. Not just the tanks from the spare suits. “There are no others,” I told her. “They’re dead.”

  Thirteen

  NAVIGATING ON TITAN isn’t as tough as it would be on Earth, where the sun is only a useful pointer if you know the time of day. Titan’s day is the same length as its orbit, so Saturn never moves in the sky. If we’d been on the other side of Titan, it’s almost certain that none of us would have made it.

  The ice-floe continued to melt as we walked, in pockets that evaporated into thick, tall columns of mist that twisted and writhed like giant agonised snakes. In some places, the mist remained at ground level, hiding the deep, jagged-edged pits from which it had evaporated.

  Forbes and the guards walked behind us, mostly in silence but occasionally talking or even joking.

  I couldn’t take my mind off the prisoners inside the bus. I didn’t know most of them—Pea was the only one I’d have considered a friend—but that wasn’t the point.

  Siebert had ordered them killed just to give himself a better chance of survival. And I had no doubt that if they hadn’t needed me, Montenegro and Guildford to carry their supplies, we too would have been left behind.

  After a few hours, the wind picked up a little, coming at us from behind, blowing away the mist and allowing us sporadic glimpses of the pockmarked landscape ahead. The wind was loud enough that the guards could no longer hear us talk.

  “They won’t admit what they’ve done,” I told Guildford and Montenegro. “They’ll kill us before we reach the military base.”

  Montenegro said, “So we have to remain useful to them as long as possible. And that means not using up the supplies too quickly.”

  A few minutes later we lost one of the guards. Frazier, a quiet man who’d always looked to me like he was continually running a mental countdown of the days he had left until retirement, walked across a patch of ordinary-looking ice and it cracked under his feet.

  The rest of us barely had time to register the sound of the crack before he was gone: fallen through, dragged under by the liquid methane’s strong current, and swept away. It took a second, maybe less.

  Frazier had been carrying one of the makeshift sacks of supplies.

  We carried on—there was nothing else we could do—with increased caution, and growing concern from Guildford. He sidled closer to me. “Most of my food-paste was in Frazier’s pack.”

  “The rest of us will share,” I told him.

  He tapped his grey, surgically-sealed mouth. “I can only eat the paste, remember?”

  There was a solution to that, of course, as we discovered on our next food-break. The environment suits featured a small airlock on the underside of the helmet, so that non-mod prisoners working outside could eat by breaking up the food and inserting it one mouthful at a time. The food was compacted lumps of dried fruit and vegetables. We’d break off a chunk, put it into the food-airlock where it’d be warmed up.

  That wouldn’t work for Guildford—he couldn’t chew. So I had to do the work for him, and that wasn’t pleasant for any of us. I took his meagre portion of food and chewed it up, spat it back out into his hand so he could quickly force it into the voicebox-hole in his throat before it froze.

  Vickers and one of the other guards—I never learned his name—thought this was tremendously amusing.

  We reached the edge of the ice-floe shortly after that, and by luck it had butted up against a gentle hillside. If we’d had to wade through the lake of liquid methane I doubt any of us would have survived.

  We trudged on through the Bronze, sleeping a few hours at a time whenever Siebert grew too tired to carry on. We left in our wake a widely-spaced trail of discarded oxygen tanks and food packaging, until Montenegro, Guildford and I could no longer fake how light the makeshift bags had grown.

  Siebert ordered a stop. “Food and water are getting low, and night’s coming in. We don’t need all three of you to carry the gear. You can decide amongst yourselves which of you won’t be coming any further.”

  Montenegro said, “Siebert, if you show up at the military base with Forbes as the only surviving prisoner, they’ll figure out what happened. No matter what we’ve done, you have a duty of care to your prisoners, and—”

  Siebert shot her in the face.

  I HAD ALREADY decided to kill Siebert, so the suddenness and brutality of his action made little difference to how I felt. But it did crystallise the timetable. Siebert and the others, Forbes included, had to die before they killed me. Or Guildford; I’d never make it to the military base alone.

  But I needed Siebert alive to find the place. That was the only reason I hadn’t already smashed open his helmet and watched him suffocate.

  “Rico, get her tank and supplies,” Siebert ordered. “Then we pick up the pace. It won’t be much longer now. We get within a hundred kilometres of the base, th
ey’ll detect us and send someone out to investigate.”

  Guildford and I took a last look at Montenegro as we removed the oxygen tank from her suit. While we crouched over her he quietly asked me, “You still got Siebert’s key?”

  “Yeah. Can’t see what good it’ll do us, though. We’re not chained.”

  “It’s got a power-source. First chance you get, give it to me.”

  We marched on, always heading west. Though Guildford was bigger and stronger than me, and had been adapted for the climate, he wasn’t holding up too well. Maybe it was because I’d been trained as a Judge. Or maybe it was because, despite everything, Donny Guildford of Brit-Cit wasn’t used to seeing someone he knew gunned down in cold blood.

  He spoke about that as we walked. He’d rarely mentioned anything about his past before, and I knew then that he was certain that he was going to die. This was his confession. Perhaps telling it to a Judge made things easier, I don’t know. But I listened, because he was my friend.

  “I did it,” he told me. “There. Never admitted it before, not even when the prosecution showed absolute proof. I did it. I killed them. Deliberately, too. I intended to kill them, and I succeeded.”

  “So who were they?” I asked.

  “Colleagues. One in particular. We were working on a way to create liquid glass.” He turned to me and smiled, as best as his sewn-up mouth allowed. “Pointless, I know. There’s not a lot of practical applications, but we weren’t exactly in a cutting-edge industry. Everyone thinks that research scientists spend their days trying to come up with a smarter rat-trap or a cure for something horrible, but most of us are in the private sector working on stuff intended to save a private company tiny sums of money. Liquid glass was probably going to be a novelty item. It’d be liquid at room temperature.” Guildford shrugged. “Like I said, pointless.”

  Behind us, Vickers called out, “Shut up!”