It was almost an entirely droid workforce sorting the luggage, and they paid Dredd little heed as he entered. He swiftly scanned the space, ducking low to try to glimpse his quarry between the conveyor belts and stacked grav-lifts, but there was too much confusion, too much movement to gain a fix. He felt a figure looming behind him, and swung his Lawgiver automatically, finger poised on the trigger, but it was a loading-bot attempting to turn around, warning beacon flashing. Dredd shook his head, breathed out, but didn’t relax his grip on his gun. He could do with some assistance to peel apart the layers of noise and distraction: he switched the helmet-view to infra-red, blanking out the machinery, zeroing in on any red spots of warmth.
There. A human silhouette was tiptoeing between the containers, back against the wall, head swivelling left and right. Dredd didn’t hesitate: he crouched and ran, using a transporter trundling past as cover, grimacing as his muscles groaned. The figure appeared none the wiser, peering round boxes in the other direction. Dredd stood, flipping off the infra-red, and brought his gun to bear as he sidestepped into the aisle that the perp was hiding in.
“On the floor! Now!” the Judge roared. “This will be your only warning!”
The man’s arms shot up as he turned to face Dredd, panic etched on his features. It wasn’t Tronjer. It was Carver. Dredd recognised him from the cit ID files that he’d downloaded to his Lawmaster. He looked terrified.
“I said, on the floor,” the lawman repeated. Carver duly dropped to his knees, hands still in the air. Dredd kept his gun trained on him as he edged forward. “Where’s your accomplice, Deek? Where’s Tronjer?”
“L-listen, Judge, I... I never wanted to...”
“Answer the question.”
Carver licked his lips, visibly shaking, his eyes screwed shut. “I never m-meant to...”
“Too late for regrets,” Dredd snarled, now standing over the creep. “You knew the damage you were doing; you knew the lives that would be lost.”
“You misunderstand,” a voice said behind him. “Deek means that he never wanted a Judge to die. That was never the plan. But you’ve made it unavoidable.”
Dredd turned, just as a wrench was brought down hard and heavy on the side of his head. His helmet cushioned some of the blow, but the force of it still knocked him to one side, careening him off a crate and onto his hands and knees. His Lawgiver went skittering across the floor.
He looked up, a coppery tang in his mouth as blood trickled from his nose, and saw Tronjer kick his gun under a pallet as Carver joined him, pulling a snubnose from his waistband, and levelling at Dredd. He appeared significantly less scared now, though not entirely happy about the situation. Dredd concurred; his skull was pounding. But he was determined not to display any signs of weakness to these punks.
“I guess you baby Judges are still a little raw,” Tronjer said. “Still a little green. That’s the second time I’ve knocked you flat on your back in as many minutes.”
“Maybe it’s experience telling me to shoot first in future,” Dredd growled, wiping blood from his face with the back of a gauntlet.
“That’s if you have a future.” Tronjer held out a hand. “Your boot knife too, please.”
Dredd reached forward and eased the blade from its holster, tossing it at the two men’s feet. “There’s no way out for you,” he said. “Hoverport’s sealed off.”
“We know. But we’re getting out of the city nevertheless. Smuggling ourselves out”—Tronjer indicated the storage containers around them—“with the help of a few friends we have amongst the flight crew.”
“You’re leaving? What about your work to rid the city of the criminal element? You’re going to leave that unfinished?”
“Regrettably so. We would’ve liked to have rolled it out further, but I suppose it was only a matter of time, once the scum started dropping, before the jays would take an interest. Still, enough of the dust was disseminated to prove a point.”
“And get your revenge.”
“No,” Carver replied, his voice catching in his throat. “There can never be enough for that.”
“You think this was justice?” Dredd said quietly. “It was obsession, madness. You murdered to further your plan, became as ruthless as those you professed to despise and wanted to eliminate, even as far as disposing of Hubbly. What about Novak? Has he been dealt with too?”
Carver and Tronjer exchanged a glance, telling Dredd all he needed to know.
“Guessed as much. Threatening to bail on you, was he?”
“Dane got scared, same way Biv did,” Tronjer answered. “They both became risks, problems we couldn’t afford not to tackle. They knew from the beginning the stakes, how committed we had to be for this to work.”
“Committed? It’s insanity.”
“What do you know, Judge?” Carver yelled suddenly, lashing out at Dredd with a boot to the head. “You don’t know what it’s like, to lose your child to the drokkers that prey on this city. You’re meant to protect us, but you weren’t there for my little girl, none of you were. You’d failed, and we had the strength of purpose to do what we had to do.”
“Easy, Deek,” Tronjer soothed, casting a wary eye over his shoulder.
“No one said life would be easy,” Dredd said, turning away to spit a globule of blood on the floor. “You think yours is the only sob story? Suck it up, pal. But don’t commit mass murder and call it judgement.”
“It was payback—”
“It was four psychos who took the Law into their own hands, nothing more. Adding to the body count was never going to bring your kid back.”
Carver was trembling, and Tronjer looked at him, concerned. “Stay cool, Deek. We need to do this smart and clean. You want to give me the gun?”
“No,” Carver rasped and crouched, jamming his blaster under Dredd’s chin, pushing his head back. “You’d rather the filth lived, huh, Judge? That Maggie died for nothing?”
“Way I heard it, if her old man hadn’t been such a loser, who knows how things might’ve turned out differently.”
Carver wailed like a wounded animal and tensed his grip on the gun, his breaths coming in short bursts.
“Thing is,” Dredd continued, “I don’t think you can pull that trigger, ’cos it’s not me you want dead. You’ve got no beef with the Judges. You want to see the guilty one, the one that deserves punishment, look a little closer to home.”
Carver froze, staring at Dredd—or maybe he was studying his reflection in the visor. But the hesitation was enough: the Judge powered his fist into the man’s face, demolishing his nose and driving him to the ground. He snatched the gun from Carver with his other hand and in one swift movement aimed and fired it at Tronjer, who had barely time to back away before three slugs hit him in the belly and chest. He pirouetted on the spot, leaving behind a crimson smear across the side of a container, then crumpled in a heap.
Dredd turned his attention to Carver, who was slowly picking himself up. “You can choose how this ends, citizen.”
The man stood motionless, head lowered, his features a mask of blood. “It ended a long time ago,” he murmured.
“Save it for the psych-wardens. Let’s go, creep.” Dredd motioned with the blaster. “The sentence is life.”
“Always was,” Carver replied, raising his eyes and fixing them on the snubnose. Then he charged, waiting for the final bullet to bring it all to a close.
Dredd obliged without further deliberation.
“I UNDERSTAND OUR cases intersected.”
Dredd turned from his surveying of the clean-up at Atlantic and saw White approaching through the cordon. He nodded in acknowledgement.
“You’ve been brought up to speed, presumably.”
“Yeah. I saw the public health warning you ordered broadcast. Apparently it was partly successful—sector houses noted an increase in narcotics being flushed. Must’ve saved a few lives.”
“Only partly, though?”
“Well, something on this scale
was never going to be stopped entirely. You cut off the source, and the distribution of babooba dust will slow to a trickle, but more cits are going to die before that happens. Too many out there for it to vanish overnight.”
Dredd had to concede the point. Once the drug had been released, it was impossible to control or eradicate it fully until it played itself out. Even then, some enterprising creep would probably try to synthesise their own variant. He felt unsatisfied: he wouldn’t be able to guarantee the cits’ protection, not from themselves.
“Don’t beat yourself up about it,” White said. “Nothing more you could’ve done.”
“I made mistakes. Things I missed.”
“Hey, we’re only human.”
Dredd wanted to answer that that wasn’t enough, but couldn’t formulate the words to express what he meant by it. This is what he was engineered for; he had to have high expectations for himself, and for every officer in uniform, for if they failed, then the badge, Fargo’s legacy, meant nothing.
“I better go,” Dredd said. “Meds want to book me into the speed-heal. They think I got a fractured cheekbone, some muscle damage.”
“Meatheads went to work on you.”
“I’m sure I’ll have worse,” Dredd replied as he strode back towards the street.
About the Author
Matthew Smith was employed as a desk editor for Pan Macmillan book publishers for three years before joining 2000 AD as assistant editor in July 2000 to work on a comic he had read religiously since 1985. He became editor of the Galaxy's Greatest in December 2001, and then editor-in-chief of the 2000 AD titles in January 2006. He lives in Oxford. Judge Dredd - Year One: City Fathers is his second book for Abaddon Books.
THE CRIME IS LIFE...
Mega-City One, 2123 - and a plague is spreading like wildfire amongst its millions of citizens, apparently turning them into blood-crazed vampires. With the Justice Department struggling to contain the outbreak, Judge Dredd teams up with the psychic Judge Anderson and ex-Judge DeMarco to investigate the trail of carnage and death left by the enigmatic Death Cult. When the cultists fight back by summoning the four Dark Judges - Death, Fire, Fear and Mortis - it becomes a fight to save both the Mega- City and Dredd’s very soul! Based on the explosive computer game by Rebellion Studios, this all-action novel pits the legendary future lawman against his deadliest and most infamous enemies.
... THE SENTENCE IS DEATH!
All-new stories from the future-shocked worlds of the Galaxy's Greatest Comic - 2000 AD! Check out the other books in this series.
www.2000adonline.com
PREPARE FOR JUDGEMENT!
The world's greatest cult comic book star, Judge Dredd, is back on the beat in Mega-City One. Senior Judges from around the world are gathering to sign an important treaty and security in the city is tight. Notorious crime boss Jesus Bludd has evaded justice for decades, but now he's prepared to step out of the shadows for the first time and seize control of the Big Meg. For Dredd, it's a race against time before Bludd completely destroys the city.
Fast-paced SF action with the uncompromising future lawman, Judge Dredd!
All-new stories from the future-shocked worlds of the Galaxy's Greatest Comic - 2000 AD! Check out the other books in this series.
www.2000adonline.com
PREPARE FOR JUDGEMENT!
One of the world's greatest cult comic book stars, Judge Dredd, is back on the beat in Mega-City One - the crazy megalopolis of the future with a population of over four hundred million. The Judges rule with an iron fist, their word is law and their judgement can sometimes be fatal. When the reclamation work on a plaza eradicated during the Apocalypse War reveals freshly mutilated bodies, it's up to Dredd to uncover the truth behind the murders which seem to involve friends in high places.
Fast-paced SF action laced with dark humour from the editor of 2000 AD. Check out the other books in this series.
www.2000adonline.com
Title
Indicia
2000AD Books
Mega-City One, 2080 AD
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
About the Author
'Dredd vs. Death' by Gordon Rennie
'Kingdom of the Blind' by David Bishop
'The Final Cut' by Matthew Smith
Judge Dredd Year One: City Fathers Page 10
