Judgment Plague

by James Axler

  Behind Irons, the rookie looked around, scanning the tents and the plains, the high ridges of the mesa that loomed close by. Plenty of places to hide.

  “Then you maybe come to see me,” the farm spokesman said, “but I not remember inviting you. Did I invite you?”

  Irons disliked the man already. He was cocky—too cocky, even for a bandit. He thought he had the upper hand here and he wasn’t afraid to let the magistrates know that.

  “This here is illegal incarceration,” Magistrate Irons said, gesturing to the pen where the muties agonised in their sweatsuits. “And you are on barony land. Now, we could do this easy or we could do it hard. I’m a little long in the tooth for hard, so what say you let these poor wretched creatures go, and close up this stinking operation, and I won’t cause you any more aggravation.”

  “You think you’re going to cause me aggravation?” the cocky rancher challenged, taking a step toward Irons and the SandCat.

  DePaul saw a movement over to his left in the distance. Someone was crouching there, behind a cluster of sand-beige rocks as tall as a man.

  Irons stepped forward, too, pacing toward the edge of the cattle pen, with DePaul following.

  “I’ve made you the offer,” Irons explained. “It’s nonnegotiable. Pack up your tents, close your farm and move on. Otherwise, I won’t hesitate to bring the full force of the law down on you.”

  The rancher laughed. “Hah, full force o’ the law? What’s that mean—you and the kid here?”

  “Yeah,” Irons said, turning to the rancher. “Me and the kid.” His eyes were hidden by the visor, and yet the rancher could make no mistake that he was being stared at.

  “Bored,” the man said. Then he shrugged and made as if to turn his back on the two mags. The shrug was a practiced move, intended to disguise the way his right hand was reaching down for the blaster holstered at his hip. But he never got the chance to unleather it— DePaul saw it and moved quicker, his right arm coming up, hand pointing at the rancher over the shoulder of his instructor. With a practiced flinch of his wrist tendons, DePaul brought the sin eater pistol into his hand from its hidden sheath in his sleeve, propelled by the mechanism he wore strapped there.

  A compact 9 mm automatic, the sin eater was the official sidearm of the Magistrate Division, and was recognized even way out in the Outlands. The weapon retracted from sight while not in use, its butt folding over the top of the barrel to reduce its stored length to just ten inches. The holster operated by a specific flinch of the wrist tendon, powering the blaster straight into the user’s hand. The weapon’s trigger had no guard; the necessity for one had never been foreseen, since the magistrates were believed to be infallible. Which meant that as the gun touched DePaul’s hand, the trigger was depressed and a burst of 9 mm titanium-shelled bullets spit from the muzzle, cutting down the rancher even as he grabbed the butt of his own pistol.

  The man toppled to the dirt with an agonized cry, his hand still locked on the pistol he had not had the chance to draw. His breath mask was shattered, blood gushing over his jaw.

  All around, the other ranch hands were reaching for their own weapons, some worn proudly on their hips, others stuffed in hidden places in their waistbands or tucked into the pockets of their pants.

  Irons had his blaster in his hand a moment later, reeling off shots at the nearest of the illegal farmhands as they reached for their guns. Above and behind him, the twin USMG-73s came to life on the roof of the SandCat, sending a relentless stream of bullets into the ranchers as they ran for cover. The woman with the blond dreads went down in a hail of fire, and so did another of the farmhands, his chest erupting with blood as the SandCat’s bullets drilled through him. Everyone else ran for cover, including the two magistrates, as bullets flew back and forth between the two groups.

  Irons and DePaul were behind the armored side of the SandCat in seconds, a trail of bullets cutting the ground all around them.

  “Quick thinking,” the older man said as his partner reloaded his pistol.

  “Saw him reach,” DePaul said. “Made the decision without hesitation, the way they taught me in the academy.”

  Irons nodded, satisfied with the rookie’s reasoning.

  The turret of the SandCat continued to send bullets at the retreating farmers, the sound brutally loud as it echoed from the distant mesa walls. Another of the farmers went down when he poked his head out from behind a pressured canister used to collect the mutie sweat. A moment later a bullet clipped the container and it went up in a burst of expelled gas, hissing like some colossal snake as it spewed its contents into the air.

  Without warning, a line of bullets rattled against the side of the Sandcat, inches from the magistrates’ heads. Both mags turned, searching for the sniper.

  “Spotted someone hiding in the shadows of the rocks,” DePaul commented.

  “I saw him, too,” Irons agreed. “We need to pick him off if—”

  DePaul was on his feet and running toward the rock face immediately. “Cover me!” he called back.

  Irons ducked as more bullets slapped against the ceramic armaglass side of the SandCat. Then he was around its front edge, blasting his sin eater again as another of the farmhands tried to sneak up on him. His play was backed by Bellevue on the turret, whose bullets cut another of the ranchers down before he could take two steps out from cover.

  * * *

  DEPAUL RAN, the sin eater thrust before him as he ascended the incline toward where the sniper was hiding in the long shadow of the mesa. A bullet whizzed past him, while two more flicked against the ground just a few feet behind. DePaul weaved, shifting his body left and right as more bullets cut the air. He was taking a heck of a chance here, he knew, but sometimes a chance was all you had.

  The sniper kept firing, three more bullets burning the air just feet from the sprinting magistrate rookie. Then there came a lull; he guessed the gunner was reloading.

  DePaul scrambled up the dry and dusty incline, his rubber-soled boots dislodging loose soil and small stones as he hurried toward the sniper’s hiding place. He saw a head appear between two boulders to his left, a flicker of silhouette glimpsed only for a moment. He ran at the nearest one, keeping his balance as he clambered up its side. The rock was fifteen feet in height and the faded orange color of sand.

  DePaul reached the top in seconds, the sound of his footsteps lost in the continued reports of blasterfire coming from the ranch. He crouched down, peering over the side. The sniper was down there, kneeling behind the rock, eye to the scope of his rifle. He had dusty blond hair and wore a kerchief over his mouth and nose to stop him from breathing in the dirt that was being kicked up by the wind. He had obviously lost his target in that brief moment when he had reloaded and the rookie magistrate had clambered out of sight.

  Steadying himself, DePaul leaned forward with his Sin Eater and squeezed the trigger, sending a swift burst of fire at his would-be killer. The sniper gave a startled cry as bullets rained down on him from above, but before he could react, one drilled into his skull and he sank down like a wet sheet of paper.

  Still crouching atop the rock, DePaul turned, scanning the area all the way back to the ranch. The gunfire was easing now, the constant blasts replaced by occasional bursts of sound as Irons and Bellevue mopped up the last of the farmhands. There was no one else about. Whatever other security the farm had employed had been drawn into the firefight and killed.

  DePaul scrambled back down the rock, marching around to its far side and checking on his target. The man was dead, eyes open but unfocused, blood pooling beneath his head. DePaul took the man’s rifle and checked him over, swiftly and professionally, for other weapons, finding a hand pistol and a knife. He stripped him of these before making his way back down to the farm compound, by which time the senior magistrates had finished containing the farmers.

  “You did goo
d today, rookie,” Irons told DePaul as he saw him approach. He was disarming the dead ranchers, tossing their guns behind him into the open door of the Sandcat. Bellevue sat on the lip of the seat, taking stock of the illegal weapons.

  “Thanks,” DePaul said. “Sorry I missed the main action.”

  “You got the main action,” Irons corrected. “Nailed it. That sniper woulda had both our heads if you hadn’t moved so quickly. You did yourself proud.”

  “What happens now?” he asked, gazing around at the farm and the dead bodies left in the wake of the firefight. There was a scent in the air this close to the pen, sweet like refined sugar. It was mutie sweat, buckets of it, waiting to be processed and sold.

  “We’ll free the muties,” Irons told him, “and leave for the birds and wolves these poor saps who thought they could take on magistrates.”

  DePaul nodded. His first patrol of the Outlands had been a success.

  Chapter 2

  Ten years later

  “Well, this royally stinks,” Kane said as he pulled the rebreather mask from his face. Barely covering his mouth and nostrils, the mask fed oxygen in the same way a diver’s breath mask does.

  Kane waded through the murky, knee-deep water that covered the floor outside the mat-trans chamber, a scowl on his face as he looked around. He had expected trouble, hence the rebreather, but it was still grim seeing the place in person. He lit the way with a compact but powerful xenon flashlight that bathed the mold-scarred walls of the control room in stark brilliance.

  Kane was a tall, broad-shouldered man in his early thirties, with long, rangy limbs and a sleek, muscular torso hidden beneath the second skin of his shadow suit. He was handsome, with a square jaw, and had dark, cropped hair and gray-blue eyes that seemed to take in every detail and could look right through you.

  There was something of the wolf about Kane, both in his alertness and the way he held himself, and personalitywise, too, for he could be both loner and pack leader.

  The shadow suit’s dark weave clung to his taut body, made from an incredible fabric that acted like armor and was capable of deflecting a blade and redistributing blunt trauma. The shadow suit had other capabilities, too, providing a regulated environment for its wearer, allowing Kane to survive in extremes of temperature without breaking a sweat or catching a chill. He had augmented his shadow suit with a denim jacket with enough pockets to hide crucial supplies for a scouting mission like this one, dark pants and scuffed leather boots with age-old creases in them. The boots were a legacy from his days as a Cobaltville Magistrate, copies of the boots he had worn on shift before he had crossed Baron Cobalt and fled from the ville along with his partner and best friend, Grant, and a remarkable woman called Brigid Baptiste.

  Both Grant and Brigid accompanied Kane now. They were also wearing rebreathers and were wading along behind him as he exited the mat-trans chamber and made his way through the flooded control room of the redoubt. The trio was the exploration team for an outlawed group called Cerberus, based in the Bitterroot Mountains of Montana and dedicated to the protection of humankind.

  Brigid pocketed her rebreather. “Everyone be careful. That water smells stagnant,” she said, wrinkling her nose.

  “Don’t drink it,” Kane said. “Gotcha.”

  Brigid shook her head in despair at his flippant attitude. Typical Kane.

  Brigid was a beautiful woman in her late twenties, with pale skin, emerald eyes and long red hair the color of sunset, tied back for the mission today. Her high forehead suggested intelligence, while her full lips spoke of a more passionate side. In reality she exhibited both these facets and many more besides. Like Kane, Brigid wore a shadow suit. In her case, she had augmented it with a short dark jacket that did nothing to disguise the swell of her breasts, and she wore a low-slung holster at her hip holding her trusted TP-9 semiautomatic pistol.

  Where Kane had been a magistrate, Brigid was once an archivist, and while she could hold her own in a fight, she was equally at home poring over books and data. She had one particular quality that made this a weapon in its own right—an eidetic memory that meant she could retain information in the manner of a photograph in her mind’s eye. Her incredible bank of knowledge had helped herself and her companions out of more than one tight corner.

  The final member of the team was Grant, an ominous, hulking figure with skin dark as mahogany. Like Kane, he was an ex-magistrate who had been caught up in the same conspiracy and forced to flee from Cobaltville to roam the Outlands. In his mid-thirties, Grant had recently taken to shaving his head, and sported a gunslinger’s mustache. Like his companions, he wore a shadow suit, over which he had added his favored duster coat. The garment appeared to be made of black leather, though in truth the fabric was a fireproof Kevlar-Nomex weave capable of deflecting bullets. Neither he nor Kane appeared armed, but they were; their blasters were hidden in quick-release holsters strapped to their wrists, the same sin eater weapons they had worn as magistrates years before.

  Grant sniffed the air but could not really detect the stagnant, musty smell the others spoke of. His nose had been broken multiple times, which had affected its sensitivity. “Shouldn’t be wet like this,” he grumbled in a voice like rumbling thunder. “Something must’ve sprung a leak.”

  “Great deduction, Detective,” Kane deadpanned as he led the way through the room and out to the twin aisles of monitoring desks that faced the mat-trans chamber.

  Together, the trio scouted the control room, assuring themselves that they were alone and not being observed. The room was large, roughly thirty feet square, with rows of computers that dominated the space and had once been used, two hundred years ago, to monitor and program the comings and goings via the mat-trans unit. There were other desks here, too, one housing a half dozen telephone receivers, each one a different color. A couch and two easy chairs were set around a low coffee table in the farthest corner. Ancient magazines rested atop the table, while the water lapped just inches below.

  There were also several large computer banks lining one of the walls, a massive CPU held in a metal cabinet with armaglass front, and a whole row of printers with paper still spooling from them as if the site had been abandoned two minutes ago and not two centuries. The paper in the bottom-most printer had come free, however, and its slowly disintegrating remains floated on the dirty water that had filled the room. Beside the farthest bank of printers was a reinforced steel door rolled back on its tracks. Water sloshed in the corridor beyond, level with that in the control room.

  Everything here had been dedicated to one thing: the operation of the mat-trans, a system of transport dating back to the late twentieth century, where it had been the sole province of the United States military. Similar projects existed worldwide, but the U.S. system had been retained solely for the military in a series of hidden redoubts, protected bases that could withstand a nuclear assault. The redoubts had been devised as backup should the worst happen, and when it had, on that fateful January day in 2001, and nuclear missiles had rained down on the United States and across the world, the redoubts had stood firm as safe havens for anyone who could gain access to them. However, hidden and secret as they were, plus being locked, and heavily protected with military codes, they had by and large proved to be impregnable and often impossible to find. Which was why so many of them survived two centuries on, like the buried tombs of ancient Pharaohs.

  This redoubt, however, had highlighted a problem less than twenty-four hours ago, which had been picked up by the powerful monitoring equipment of the Cerberus facility.

  Grant made his way through the doors and into the corridor beyond. “I’ll check out the local amenities,” he joked, though his face was deadly serious. The team had done these kinds of missions before, and knew it didn’t pay to be anything less than careful when entering unknown territory.

  Wading back through the murky water tha
t swished almost to her knees, Brigid engaged her commtact and reported in. “Cerberus, we’re in. Mat-trans is clear. Automatic lights have failed, and the control room is waterlogged.”

  The commtacts were small implanted communications devices worn by all Cerberus field personnel. Each subdermal device was a top-of-the-line communication unit, the designs for which had been discovered among the artifacts in Redoubt Yankee several years before by the Cerberus exiles. Commtacts featured sensor circuitry incorporating an analog-to-digital voice encoder that was embedded in a subject’s mastoid bone. Once the pintles made contact, transmissions were funneled directly to the wearer’s auditory canals through the skull casing, vibrating the ear canal to create sound, which had the effect that they could pick up and enhance any subvocalisation. In theory, even if a user went deaf, he or she would still be able to hear, after a fashion, courtesy of the commtact device.

  A voice came back over Brigid’s commtact a moment later, broadcast from the Cerberus redoubt many miles away in Montana. It was Brewster Philboyd, one of the operators who helped run the base, including its communications desk. “Any signs of damage?” he asked.

  “Negative,” Brigid confirmed. She was already eyeing the mat-trans using the powerful illumination of her xenon beam. The octagonal chamber took up fully one-third of the control room, featuring a sealed door like an airlock, and armaglass walls that could repel a bullet. The glass was tinted a muddy shade of brown, much like the water that had seeped into the redoubt. There were some scuff marks here and there, and the base was hidden beneath the murky water, but nothing looked broken, and the monitoring desks that served the mat-trans were undamaged.

  “Remote reports flagged a reengaging of the power cores,” Philboyd reminded Brigid, as if she of all people would ever need reminding.