Rico Dredd: The Titan Years

by Michael Carroll

  Far better to stick with the heavy, unbreakable baton Giambalvo had given me. I’ve seen—and felt—the effect of those batons far too often. They were smaller but weightier than a Judge’s daystick. A quick tap in the right place and a guard could shatter an inmate’s jaw without even breaking stride.

  Another scuffing sound, closer now. Something shifted in the darkness, a grey fuzziness slowly moving from right to left.

  I shuffled closer to the corner, and called out in a loud whisper, “It’s okay, it’s just me!” I figured it was worth a shot.

  The distinctive voice of a modified female inmate came drifting back, “Did you get it?”

  “Just about. See for yourself.”

  The face of Dominie Malasi appeared around the corner, and I immediately jabbed the end of the baton at the voicebox in her throat.

  She stumbled back, gasping, and I caught her arm and pulled her forward before she hit the ground.

  “It’s Rico Dredd,” I whispered. “Sorry about that, Malasi, but I couldn’t risk you calling out.”

  She coughed and rasped a little, still clutching her throat. “Drokker!”

  “Yeah, I know. Who are you with?”

  “No one.” She tried to pull free of my grip. “It’s just me and Bailey. We were down in sub-level three when it all kicked off. Heard you stole the last of our food.”

  “You heard wrong. We went out looking for food.”

  Her good eye narrowed at that. “Where?”

  “The crashed freighter; before your time. Who else is around? Do you know where Genoa Amin is? Last I heard, she was in the med-centre.”

  “Who?” Going from her expression, she genuinely didn’t recognise the name.

  “Scottish, female, about thirty, pale skin, dark hair.”

  Malasi shrugged. “That sounds like Lauren McRitchie. Short girl, yeah? I can’t think of anyone else it could be.” Then her sewn-up lips spread into a wide smile. “Oh. Oh, that’s great. Damn it, Dredd, have you been calling her by the wrong name all this time? Hah, she smiles a lot when you’re around, does she?” If it had been possible, Malasi would have been laughing by now. “That’s fantastic! She’s let you think her name is Genoa Amin for years and you think she’s smiling because she likes you!”

  I didn’t have time for this. I squeezed harder on her arm. “Just tell me where she is!”

  “McRitchie, or Amin?”

  My other hand tightened on the baton, and I think that Malasi sensed it.

  “All right, I’ll tell you! She’s still in the med-centre, I think. There’s a few of them holed up there.”

  I loosened my grip on her arm. “Tell no one you saw me, okay? We don’t want this turning into more of a bloodbath than it already is.”

  I began to move on, but stopped when Malasi asked, “Dredd, how are we going to survive this? Before the riot, I heard Copus talking about creating a new garden, but we’ll all be dead long before anything edible can grow.”

  For a moment I didn’t know what to say. Judges aren’t therapists; it’s not our job to hold the frightened citizens’ hands and tell them everything is going to be all right. So I said the only thing I could think of: “Every inmate on this rock is here, not because we got caught, but because we lived through the worst that our cities’ authorities could throw at us. We’re not just prisoners. We’re survivors.” I forced a smile. “Can you think of any other bunch of people more suited to get through this than us?”

  THE CORRIDOR LEADING to the med-centre was blocked by a barricade of desks, stretchers and filing cabinets, and some genius had smashed the overhead lights but rigged up portable spotlights that shone directly along the corridor.

  I stepped out into the full glare and could see almost nothing past the spotlights. But they could sure see me.

  Genoa’s voice came from somewhere behind the barricade. “Rico Dredd. So yeh came back, did ye? I... Dredd, I’d stop walking right drokkin’ now if I were you.”

  I kept walking. “You’re not me.” I was taking the chance that they didn’t have guns. Sure, they could have taken the guards’ weapons, but overriding a gun’s handprint-scanner without it exploding in your face isn’t an easy task. I’d only ever known one inmate smart enough to do that: Ren Tramatky, former Euro-Cit Judge and current corpse.

  “I mean it, Dredd. One more step!”

  “I’m not a threat. Not to you.” I wanted to say her name, of course, but the conversation with Malasi had thrown me. “You know that.”

  “Only thing I know is if yeh keep walking, we’ll... Ah, drokk it! Give him a shot across the bows!”

  A small crater appeared in the floor more than ten centimetres to my left and the sound of the gunshot echoed through the corridor.

  I stopped.

  Still squinting against the spotlight, I said, “Okay, you’ve got my attention. How’d you do it?”

  “What do yeh want, Dredd?”

  “I’m going to take back control. Of everything. And to do that I need you with me.”

  There was a moment of silence that stretched out too long, until Genoa whispered, “Is he drokkin’ serious?”

  I called back, “Yes, I am. Are you with me?”

  “Do yeh not know what’s happening here, Rico? Lot of folks dead already. Now there’s eight or nine or ten factions, each one waiting for something to trigger them. Won’t be long before the hunger gets into some drokker’s brain and a lot more people die.”

  I shuffled about as I shielded my eyes, risking another couple of steps in the process. “I do get that. I’m not an idiot. But this situation won’t resolve itself.”

  Her voice heavy with exasperation, Genoa said, “Yes, it will. The more people who die, the more food there is to go around for the rest of us. This is the resolution.”

  I didn’t want to admit it, but that was hard to argue with. I was stumped for a second. But only a second. “What if whoever has the remaining supplies decides to torch them rather than let anyone else win? We’re not exactly dealing with the most empathic and compassionate people, here.”

  There was more whispering, then Genoa said, “All right, yeh have a point there. Come on. Drop the stick. Hands where—”

  “I know the drill. Everyone always wants to see my hands.” I let the baton fall to the ground and stepped forward.

  When I walked around the barricade and my eyes readjusted to the darkness, I discovered how they’d managed to get one of the guards’ guns to work. They didn’t need to bypass the gun’s handprint-scanner because sub-warden Morton De Luyando was part of their group. De Luyando and I hadn’t crossed paths many times. That made him an unknown quantity.

  Past De Luyando was Genoa, armed with what looked like a metal chair leg, with one end sharpened to a point and medical tape wrapped around the other to make a grip.

  And behind Genoa, through the glass doors of the med-centre, I could see another seven or eight inmates. I didn’t know all of them, but a glance at their nervous expressions was enough: these people were not fighters. They’d been incarcerated for non-violent crimes. In a fight, they’d be a liability.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked Genoa. “Thought you’d be smart enough to side with someone who has at least a chance of winning.”

  De Luyando said, “This isn’t about winning through violence, inmate. It’s about attrition. The other factions expend their energies and ammunition fighting each other, then they need medical supplies to patch themselves up.”

  “Which you’ll trade for food.”

  Genoa nodded. “Spot on, hen. So yeh want me to help negotiate with the others? I can’t see it working. Carbonara’s got almost all the food, and she’s mad as a bag of spaniels. Sims and Kassir have control of the air and the heat. The other factions are spread out ready to ambush anyone who looks like a soft target.”

  “That’s one of the reasons I need you,” I told her. “You have a reputation. Same as me. They’re gonna think twice before they mess with us.” I g
lanced at De Luyando. “Guess you’re staying here. Keep these people safe.”

  I again looked through the glass doors and that was when I realised why those other inmates were part of this clique. Genoa had chosen them deliberately. Most I didn’t know, but I recognised Lyanne-Bette Tyrone, a Mega-City Two surgeon serving twenty years for reclassifying comatose patients as deceased and then harvesting their organs. And next to her was Blake “Diamond-Dust” Chancellor, also of MC2, who killed at least forty random citizens by dropping a variety of poisons into their synthi-caf cups on the morning zoom. A qualified surgeon and an accomplished poisoner: both more than capable of dispensing the right medicines.

  De Luyando said, “You bring her back safe, Dredd. Intact. Or I’ll make sure you draw K-shaft for every duty for the rest of your life. You hear me?”

  There was no point in a counter-threat. “Sure. I hear you.”

  Genoa asked, “Who first?”

  “Kassir and Sims.”

  “They hate you, yeh know. My guess is yer sittin’ at the top of their must-kill list.”

  “I’ve been at the top of a lot of people’s kill lists. But I’m still here.”

  Chapter Ten

  THE PENAL COLONY’S chief power-source was the generator room. Located at the northern end of the complex, it was only accessible—without going outside—through one long, easily-defended corridor. Halfway along, Vivean Kassir and Lorne Sims had posted one of their people, Hector Boyarsky, as a sentry behind a barricade of battered steel doors and wide-bore plastic ducting. I was familiar with the stuff from digging out the lower tunnels: it wasn’t heavy, but it was almost strong enough to stop even an armour-piercing round.

  “No one gets in,” Hector said. I didn’t know him well, and nor did Genoa, but it was clear he didn’t want to be there. It wasn’t warm in the corridor, but he was drenched in sweat, and his hands were trembling.

  “We don’t want to get in,” I told him. “We just want to talk to Sims.”

  Genoa said, “Or Kassir,” and I inwardly winced, but didn’t contradict her.

  Kassir was too volatile, too close to Brennan in temperament. Any discussion with her was almost destined to end in threats of violence, if not actual violence. Hell, one time she walked over to a guy and punched him so hard in the stomach that he was pissing blood for a week. She said he deserved it, because she’d had a dream in which she’d thrown a birthday cake to him and he’d failed to catch it.

  Story goes that she’d committed so many acts of violence and insubordination when she first got to Titan that the guards just kept piling on the months to the point where within the first year she’d almost doubled her sentence.

  To Hector, I said, “Just let me speak to either of them.”

  He dry-swallowed and shook his head. “Can’t do that.”

  I began to speak, but he flinched as though I’d raised my arm to strike him—I hadn’t moved at all.

  “You want this to end, Hector? I can end it. But I need their help.”

  He glanced along the corridor, towards a second barricade close to the generator room’s doors. “I... No, I can’t.”

  Genoa said, “Ah, drokk this. He’s not armed, Dredd. What’s he gonna do? Tell yer ma?”

  She stepped around me and made to push past Hector. He put his arm out and she bumped into it and stopped walking.

  She slowly turned her head to face him.

  I’ve seen a lot of things, but I’ve never seen a man so absolutely terrified. He knew that he had no choice. If he didn’t try to stop us, Kassir would make sure he paid.

  Genoa said, “Who scares you most, Boyarsky? Me or them?”

  He muttered, “Oh sweet grud...” Then, louder, said, “Them. I’m sorry, McRitchie. I respect you, I do, but they... They’ll kill me.”

  She leaned closer. “I’ll kill you.”

  Hector gently shook his head. “Not the way they would. I’d rather it was you.”

  I’d had enough. I swung my baton, whacked him on the side of the head. He crumpled neatly and almost silently.

  From behind the second barricade, Vivean Kassir’s voice said, “We know what you want, Dredd. We’re not buying.”

  “I just want this to end,” I shouted back. “We got some supplies. Enough to last an extra month, maybe. In fact, maybe even longer given that so many of our fellow inmates are no longer in the respiration club.”

  Kassir stepped out from behind the barricade. She was also carrying a guard’s baton. “Got them from where?”

  “The crashed freighter. You remember that?”

  “Stomm. If that freighter had been carrying supplies, we’d have heard about it a long time ago.”

  “Emergency rations. Plus, there was stuff we missed last time. Didn’t seem important then to recover five kilograms of mockpork jerky. Everyone hates that stuff. In a few weeks it’s going to be ambrosia. And not just that. There’s canned fruit and vegetables, dry cereals, ration packs. It’s not going to be a feast, but it’ll help keep us all alive until the ships get here.”

  “If they get here. The mining company might just decide it’s easier to hold off until we’re dead.”

  Genoa said, “The guards aren’t criminals. If the company abandons them, that’s a crime in sixteen different city-states. They won’t take that chance.”

  Kassir walked closer. She was as tall as me, with roughly the same build. She stopped a metre in front of me and said, “State your terms.”

  “We need to take down Carbonara’s people; they’ve got all the supplies.”

  “This much I know.”

  Genoa said, “Ye control the power throughout most of the complex... So cut the heatin’ to B- and C-Blocks. Thirty minutes, forty max, they’ll be begging yeh to turn it back on.”

  Kassir shook her head. “We already thought of that. Can’t be done. We can’t isolate a couple of blocks like that.”

  I nodded. I’d guessed that must be the case, or they’d have done it already. But I had a backup option. “The generator... I’ve seen it. It’s big.”

  “So?”

  “It’s big enough to stay warm for a few hours after you shut it down. You cluster around it, that’d keep you going long after everyone else has passed out from the cold.”

  Kassir looked from me to Genoa and back. “Jovus... are you drokkin’ insane? The surface temperature out there is about negative one-eighty! If we shut down the generator and can’t get it started again, everyone would be dead in less than a day.”

  Genoa stepped away from me. “She’s right, Dredd. That’s just nuts.”

  “You want this to end before you starve; so do I. And freezing is a better death than starvation.”

  From the doorway to the generator room, Lorne Sims called out, “The cold won’t affect him. He’s a mod.” Sims was wearing an environment suit, everything but the gloves and helmet. The gloves were tucked into his belt, and it was a safe guess that the helmet was close to hand.

  Kassir glanced back at Sims. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying Dredd’s a snake, but he’s not an idiot. And he’s no coward.” He beckoned me closer. “Let’s talk.”

  As I moved towards him, Kassir put her hand on my shoulder to stop me. It wasn’t immediately obvious from her grip whether she was threatening me or just grabbing my attention. “You killed him, didn’t you?”

  “What?”

  “Brennan. That’s why you’re here and he’s not.”

  That confirmed my long-held suspicion that Kassir was in love with Brennan. She was almost twice his age, but it’s said that love doesn’t recognise temporal barriers. From the way I’d seen Brennan treat her, it was a pretty safe bet Kassir’s feelings weren’t reciprocated and never would be. Sometimes, love is like trying to catch your own shadow in a jar.

  Brennan probably didn’t even realise why Kassir was so loyal to him.

  I was on the edge of telling her what had happened to him, how he’d finally snapped and shown his tr
ue self. But I decided to save that for another time. Always good to have something in the bank. “He’s not dead. He’s safe. For now.” I let her stew on that while I asked Sims, “Who does Carbonara have backing her up?”

  He began to rattle off a list of names, and Genoa raised her hands to stop him: “Pull the brakes on that, there. Who does she have who’s a threat?”

  Sims said, “It’s not a matter of who, it’s how many. We figure at least sixty. Maybe as many as eighty.”

  Genoa and I exchanged a glance, and I’m sure we were thinking the same thing: we’d been expecting to have to deal with maybe ten of the pastor’s acolytes, fifteen at most, and even that would be a lot more than she usually had.

  Genoa said, “She’s got the supplies. Food buys a lot of faith.”

  I heard voices from the doorway behind Sims, and asked him, “Who do you have in there?”

  His eyes narrowed at that. “What the drokk difference does that make?”

  “Basic strategy, spugwit. If you don’t know who your allies are, how are you supposed to be able to recognise your enemies?”

  “Yeah. Always the same with you, Dredd. You want everyone to believe you’re a step ahead of them. You’re not the only one who can strategise.”

  Genoa said, “I don’t think that’s a real word.”

  Sims ignored her. To Kassir, he said, “They want to shut down the generator, everyone else freezes, then we all go and take the supplies from Carbonara. Good plan. We’ll take it.” A grin stretched out across his face. “And we don’t need these drokkers alive to use it.”

  I had been expecting that. If they’d known me better, they’d have understood that I don’t respond well to threats, and I certainly don’t go anywhere without a backup plan.

  Just as Kassir shifted her stance and raised her baton, preparing to strike out at Genoa, I raised my own arm and shot Sims in the face.

  I’d taken a risk with the Kolibri replica, but I’d been almost certain it would pay off. Whoever had owned the gun before me had kept it clean; that was a good indication that it still worked.

  I liked it a lot. Sure, it didn’t have the power, accuracy, range or versatility of a Lawgiver, but a gun small enough to conceal in your hand? A very, very useful tool. It might well be my new favourite weapon.