Rico laughed. “You’d be right. Those clowns aren’t killers.”
Dredd nodded and looked over his shoulder at his brother standing behind the cabinet, one hand on the countertop to steady himself, the other swirling his drink. The woman was snoring quietly as she dozed. “I’ll see you around, Rico.”
The other man raised his glass in salute, and slipped the shades back into place, watching as Dredd exited the apartment.
Five
ANGER AND FRUSTRATION gnawed at him throughout the day, the case feeling as if it was slipping through his fingers. Rico’s words jabbed at him like a splinter under the skin, and he had considered whether his brother was in fact being entirely honest with him; it was well within his character to send Dredd down the wrong path, muddy the waters, obfuscate the investigation. The possibility had even occurred to him that Rico himself could be involved in the drugs operation—either by backing it financially or aiding the import of the narcotics—and he was deliberately feeding Dredd the wrong information. His clone sibling had fingers in all manner of illegal endeavours, and if there was money to be made he would not hesitate to protect his investment.
But Dredd had doublechecked with Wally Squad officers embedded within the sector’s criminal fraternity and they too reported that they had no evidence that an alien element was at large. They had seen no newcomers inveigle their way onto the scene, heard no gossip of off-worlders. Whispers of Vassell’s wonder drug had reached them and the talk spoke of amazing highs and relentless demand and the creds that were there for the taking, but none of them had seen or spoken to the dealer himself, and the scuttlebutt was that he was preparing to launch it onto the market. Dredd gave the undercover operatives strict instructions to contact him the instant that Vassell surfaced and to keep the elusive creep under constant surveillance.
It was clear that the alien assumption he’d made was incorrect, and he was back to square one with regards to finding the peeper’s killers. He remained convinced that the murder was connected to this fabled drug that had got the local perps so excited, but was no closer to ascertaining who was cooking it up and supplying it. Failure was a sensation he was unfamiliar with since the Academy; he’d always pursued every case with a dogged tenacity and a determination to bring those responsible to account. It was in the blood, he didn’t know any other way. So Rico’s barbed comments that the legacy the two of them represented wasn’t always easy to live up to cut deeply, as they’d no doubt been intended to. It was an enormous honour—vast, the highest imaginable—to carry Fargo’s DNA in his genes and to continue his work; it was equally a part of him, right down to the cellular level, that he didn’t want to disappoint his clone-father. He supposed that was what drove him to some extent, that sense he’d be found wanting by comparison. He was the son of the man, there was no question of that. It was what made it doubly strange that, while Dredd distilled the essence of Fargo, Rico, from identical tissue stock, should exhibit tendencies that were an anathema to everything that the bloodline stood for. That Rico had failed to live up to the legacy was plain to see; but Dredd would be nothing like him, and was as committed to justice as Fargo had been. The awareness of Dredd’s own fallibility, though, hadn’t entered into the equation, and it was this—perhaps the side of his nature that most would call human—that infuriated him. He was young still, he knew that, but he was at the same time impatient. He had standards to maintain, and anything less was doing a disservice to a memory and an ideal.
The call came through at the peak of his bad mood, and it suited him fine: Ollie North lux-apts had erupted again, waging war on neighbouring Len Ganley block, and all units in the vicinity were required to assist. The workout would be just what he needed, he mused, to dispel the black cloud that had settled upon him, and indeed he found his spirits rising as he joined his fellow Judges on the perimeter of the buildings. The two starscrapers were both partially on fire, entire floors swallowed by gouts of orange flame and roiling smoke, and yet still the residents fought on, bright bursts of gunfire crackling from roof to mezzanine. Emergency H-vehicles orbited on the periphery, trying to stem the spread of the inferno with water cannon or offer a lifeline to those attempting to escape, but the ferocity of the violence was forcing them back.
Dredd turned to the helmet nearest to him—Halliwell, a forty-year man. “What’s the plan?”
“Operation Command wants the blocks pacified floor by floor. Citi-Def in North are holed up from two-twenty to two-forty; they need to be taken out so we can get the med-services in.”
“How’d it start?”
The other Judge shrugged. “Grud knows. Some imagined slight or petty grievance. It never takes much to send these meatheads buggo.” He unholstered his Lawgiver and checked the magazines, slamming them back into place. “Must be the time of year. Or there’s something in the water.”
“What do you mean?”
“You get that feeling...” Halliwell murmured, looking up at the embattled buildings. “You can sense when the cits are on the verge of tipping over into outright mania. It’s like a tension in the air.” He glanced at Dredd. “You done a graveyard shift yet?”
“Sure.”
“Then you know what I’m talking about. That feeling when things are coming to a head, that the pressure’s about to blow. Nothing unusual about that amongst the spugs—but recently even the respectable creeps are losing it. You catch what happened to that investment banker yesterday?”
Dredd shook his head.
“High-flying corporate suit, executive vice president, worked for Dillman Nash over on Goodman, went futsie. Ranted and raved, attacked his secretary, then threw himself out the hundred-and-sixth-storey window. Took two droids and a hose to scrape him off the slab. Work colleagues say he was fine right up until five minutes before he took the dive. Completely lost his mind.”
“And it’s not an isolated incident?”
“No, there’s been others, if you track back the last three days. We’re not talking mass suicides here, but still there’s been an anomalous rise in the number of unlikely cases of FS syndrome.”
“What did the autopsy reports say?”
“You’ll have to talk to the case Judge about that. Like I say, maybe it’s the time of the year, or the weather, or their favourite Tri-D show was cancelled. There’s always some cretin taking a leap out of his apartment window ’cause he can’t take it anymore. Seems to me that the only time they stop trying to kill each other is when they’re killing themselves.”
“Huh.” Dredd watched a senior Judge near the entrance to the blocks coordinating the uniforms for the assault on North. “Or maybe it’s something else.”
“Like what?”
“You said it yourself: something in the water.”
“No, too localised for a contaminant,” Halliwell replied. “These are individuals going nuts, not whole swathes of cits. This”—he nodded towards the chaos tumbling around them—“is everyday Mega-City mania. I see this pretty much every rotation. If they were babbling to themselves and cutting their own throats, then I’d say we had a problem.” He swung himself off his Lawmaster and unhooked his daystick from his belt. “They’re gonna use sonic cannons before we go in—make sure your helmet’s audio dampners are on.”
Dredd nodded.
“See you on the other side,” he said, stomping off to join the massed ranks of Judges swelling in the shadow of Ollie North. Dredd could see the sonics being wheeled into position; radar-shaped devices that emitted a targeted stream of high-frequency noise that was designed to confuse and debilitate. With any luck, they’d knock much of the fight out of the rioters before the Justice Department personnel went in to mop up.
Dredd checked his own weapon, ensuring he was well equipped with ammunition, and pondered on what the other Judge had told him. It kept coming back to drugs, he thought. That was the common element, and his Academy instinct told him it was too much of a coincidence not to be linked to what was going on amongst the cr
ims in the narcotics trade. It stood to reason that if there was a noticeable trend—that individual cits (an investment banker, no less) were bugging out—then there had to be a root cause. Their foodstuffs or air supply couldn’t be spiked without it affecting others, so it had to be something personal to them. Could they have been slipped a hallucinogen? And to what end—what did the perpetrator gain from sending the victims fatally insane? Just some random malicious mischief-makers, juves out to cause trouble and not caring who they hurt? It could be there was a link between the vics that might point towards someone with a grudge, that they might share some previously uncovered history. He would have to dig deeper, and the first port of call was finding out who the case Judge was and snagging a look at the toxicology reports on the bodies.
But right now there was some Law to administer.
THE SONIC CANNONS had done their job, and as Dredd stormed the first block corridors, a few of the North residents were still reeling from the effects, clutching their ears, noses bleeding, several with vomit caked down their fronts. They put up little resistance, barely able to hold a gun, much less aim and fire it. Dredd herded them towards the exits, instructing them to surrender to the officers waiting outside with the catch-wagons. They trooped obediently and resignedly to their fate, each looking at three to five years minimum. He figured they should feel lucky they were still alive—any insurrection like this was always met with a brutal and sustained show of force. The audio disruption had, in fact, saved many of them from a Standard Execution bullet between the eyes.
He wondered if some of them even knew why they were fighting their neighbours, or if they had simply followed suit, driven by that pack mentality and mass psychosis that typified any block war. Overcrowding and tribal rivalries, simmering discontent and boredom were the usual ingredients for an uprising, and it just needed a trigger to spark the flame of anarchy—something as innocuous as an unreturned greeting, a rumour of an insult, or the resurgence of a decade-old argument was all it took to turn regular (if easily led) citizens into armed maniacs fighting for their building’s cause. Any unspoken resentments flourished, jealousy turning to murder, reason abandoned in the rush to pour blame on the target of their frustrations. To make matters worse, as Halliwell had commented, these sudden outbursts were not rare occurrences but part of life in the Big Meg, the result of living on top of a giant, industrialised tinderbox. Employment was virtually non-existent, lives were deemed utterly pointless, insignificant within the vast Judicial system; this had to find a vent somewhere. It was, unfortunately, human nature, and it was Justice Department’s job to keep a lid on it when it periodically erupted.
It was also human nature to rally around a figure, for there to be a focal point driving the rage and fanning the flames of hatred, and more often than not it was a Citi-Def captain—a borderline psycho with a uniform and a troubling arsenal. Citi-Def—armed civilian defence squads, initially created to be called upon in times of need, and for the citizens to staff their own citywide militia—caused more headaches than they helped, and many at the Grand Hall questioned how long they would be allowed to operate before Justice Central stepped in and stripped them of their powers. As far as Dredd understood it, it was a right-to-bear-arms deal that successive Chief Judges had been reluctant to revoke, knowing how strident those that stood behind that particular piece of legislation were. The fact that each block had a cadre of these creeps ostensibly to protect the thousands within each building from foreign invasion or catastrophe, but who instead were more prone to flipping out and encouraging conflict at every turn, was one of the many factors behind why the metropolis was this perpetual boiling cauldron of madness. Thus, the presumption was that the engineers of Ollie North’s attack on Ganley were the block’s Citi-Def unit, which was why the Judges were moving in to eliminate that threat and cut the heart out of the riot.
Dredd mounted the stairs to the next level, the crackle of gunfire above him. He hit the corridor shooting, downing a nutbag with a pair of automatics. A door to his left opened a crack and an elderly face peered out, plainly petrified; he snapped at it to stay inside and it promptly vanished from view. There was a return of fire from the far end of the corridor from at least two gunmen, shot peppering the plaster on the wall ten centimetres from Dredd’s head; he swore and ducked, swiftly flicking the setting on his Lawgiver to Heatseeker in one fluid motion and then responding with a couple of homing shells. He didn’t have time to confirm they’d hit their intended targets—though the muffled cries that followed seconds after he’d pulled the trigger spoke volumes—but continued his rapid ascent, issuing warnings and taking out meatheads in equal measure.
Given how much he’d been trained in this kind of urban warfare environment, it was almost a performance, a note-perfect display. When his Academy schooling kicked in, he had to admit he felt in the moment: his balance poised, his senses heightened, fifteen years’ worth of knowledge fuelling every step and action. He’d been right to believe that this would bolster his confidence as a Judge. This was where he felt at home; any concept of what he could or couldn’t aspire to be, any legacy locked up in his genes that may seem as much an obstacle as it was a point of pride, faded into the background, drowned out by the roar of his gun, the crunch of lawbreaker jaws dissolving beneath his fist, the immediacy of bringing order where there was chaos.
The tide was turning, he could see it in the faces of the perps, their lack of surety. Shots were going wild, panic was setting in, the Judicial onslaught swamping their initial rush towards lawlessness. He surprised a gang of juves coming out of an apartment, evidently having looted it—their fearless loyalty towards their block clearly only went so far if they could steal off their neighbours while they were otherwise distracted—and they bolted once they realised he was there, dropping the tri-d set two of them were carrying between them and leaking purloined jewellery in their wake. Dredd quickened his pace, conscious of not appearing to give chase but followed in a steady, implacable pursuit with the purpose of instilling in the crims a sense that they could not escape, that fleeing was futile. He watched them scramble into a nearby domicile, slamming the door behind them, but it was a pointless gesture; even they must’ve known it, Dredd thought. Nowhere for them to go, in a block surrounded by Judges—what did they think they were going to do? Hide under the bed? There was never any accounting for the brightness of your average cit, but the temptation of illegalities made everyone’s IQ drop a few points.
He booted in the door, instantly facing down a trembling teen with a homemade stuttergun. Dredd, framed in the doorway, was an easy target, and he heard the urgent insistences of the kid’s friends backed up against the far wall to fire, but he did not move; instead, he holstered his Lawgiver and folded his arms, filling the threshold with his presence. The juve—whom Dredd realised was only a little younger than he was—redoubled his grip on the weapon he clutched desperately, its wavering barrel aimed at Dredd’s chest, but he looked terrified. A weird calm descended—for brief moments, the fire and fury around them diminished, as if he’d turned up his helmet’s audio dampeners to maximum, and even the spugs shut up.
“Hard, isn’t it?” Dredd said finally.
The kid didn’t answer. He was sweating profusely, his breath coming in short gasps.
“Feels heavy in your hand, I bet,” Dredd continued. “That dead weight making your arm shake. Muscles straining, heart hammering. You know why? Because that’s not plas-steel you’re holding—it’s your life, your future. Your choice.”
The juve brought his other hand up to steady his aim. He was trying to appear resolute.
“He’s just a drokkin’ baby Judge, Skeet,” one of the gang hissed. “Blow him away.”
“Yeah, take a shot, Skeet,” Dredd said, opening his arms. “Can’t miss at that distance.”
Skeet’s eyes widened, his complexion paling. From the cast of his expression, suddenly offered the opportunity, it was clearly seeming less and less like a good idea as
the seconds ticked by. Dredd decided to end this now, and reached forward and snatched the stuttergun from the juve’s grip; he let it go without much resistance.
“You think I’m some green rookie straight out of the Academy dorm? You think you’re the first creeps to pull a blaster on me?” Dredd asked, turning the weapon over in his hands. “You don’t think I deal with idiots like you every day? You threaten a Judge, you shove a gun in my face, you better be prepared to know how to use it—and you, kid, were never going to squeeze that trigger.”
With that, he grabbed Skeet by the scruff of his shirt and threw him back into the block corridor, and motioned with his head for the others to follow. The scurried to join their friend without a word, unable to meet Dredd’s gaze. “Five years apiece,” he called after them. “Move!”
He was back in charge. Drokk you, Rico.
CO-ORDINATING WITH THE other lawmen blitzing Ollie North, they pushed upwards to where the Citi-Def bozos were hunkered down, aided by an H-wagon circling the building and firing Stumm gas canisters into areas still controlled by the cits. With their respirators down, the Judges waded through levels where visibility was virtually nil and relied on their helmets’ infra-red vision to pick their paths, choking residents materialising out of the thick fog and stumbling past them in a frantic bid to find fresh air. Many had already collapsed, unconscious bodies slumped in doorways.
They reached a barricaded section out of which the defence nuts were still conducting their war on Ganley, and bypassed it with a few well-placed high-explosive shells. The creeps on the other side didn’t seem massively surprised to see them and turned their fire on the Judges without a second thought, evidently believing the jays were in collusion with the Ganley blockers. There was no question the North Citi-Def had lost it: one look in their bloodshot eyes told Dredd that they’d gone over the edge and they weren’t coming back.
Judge Dredd Year One: City Fathers Page 5
