“He thought we were all doomed anyway.”
“Thusss you ssssinnerssss are denied the chance to come to termsss with your own guilt. Thissss fool embraced extinction because he thought he could leap into the grave without acknowledging hisss own culpability—”
If you knew the purity of the grave, you’d race towards it. A lingering imprint of Misha’s psi-connection with her sister flashed through her head. Signifiers lit up, that all this had been pre-ordained, that she’d been receiving glimpses of her fate: pathways to the here and now.
“—but no one essscapesss justice, as it ssshould be delivered. By a Judge’ssss hand.”
De’Ath’s fingers disappeared into the meat of Arnold’s throat, and the man’s eyes rolled up in their sockets. Somehow, De’Ath managed to splay his hand beneath the jawline, and the next thing Misha knew the cult leader’s body had dropped to the ground while his head remained gripped by the Judge, a gore-streaked hand puppet. De’Ath took one final look at it before slinging it to one side.
“I’m finding the flesssh of the guilty growsss more malleable asss our crusssade continuesss,” he murmured, preoccupied with flexing his digits. “It’ssss like I am a sssword of righteousssnesss, cutting through the lawbreakerssss...” He turned his attention back to the girl. “I’ve been too long away from thissss. Delegating such tasssksss to otherssss, you forget the pleasssure there issss in bringing the guilty to account.”
He walked towards her, and Misha felt her bowels loosen. The creature was a study in malevolence, both magnetically evil and too intimidating to even contemplate attacking. Could she try? Could she stop things if she dashed his skull open with a rock? Was he even capable of being killed? The idea of one last grand gesture floated across her mind… but then the moment was gone. He stopped a foot or so away and silently regarded her, as if tasting her sputtering life-spirit; then he glided past her. “The Ssssissstersss are waiting for you,” he said without a backwards glance.
Misha staggered up the ramp and into the darkness of the craft. The background noise of butchery faded, and for the moment she could only hear the soft, shallow rasps of her own breath. Her legs felt heavy, and tiredness weighed upon her as the blood loss took its toll. She used the wall of the short corridor she was in to prop her up and guide her into the main cabin.
And then there they were, seated and expecting her. They wore the bodies of girls not of a dissimilar age to Misha herself, hair wild and unkempt, dressed in nothing more than shifts, barefoot… but she knew they were vastly older and more menacing than they initially appeared. They’d been in her head, and she’d gleaned something of their psyche in the process too—they were ancient beings, of enormous power and utterly alien in their disregard for any other living thing.
“Hello, Misssha,” one said, smiling.
“Which one of you is which?” she asked.
“Which witch is which?” The girl to Misha’s left shrieked with abrupt, maniacal laughter. “I’m Nausssea.” She lazily proffered a hand that the young woman had no intention of shaking.
“Which I guessss makesss me Phobia,” the other added, looking the teen up and down. “I can hear your heart sssslowing. You don’t have long, do you?”
Misha shook her head, putting all her efforts into staying upright.
“You were quite the prize, my dear,” Phobia continued. “Quite the catch. After what we dissscovered about your sssisster, and learning that there was another Cafferly out there… well, we jussst had to bring you in. But you’ve been very evasssive.”
“Where’s Rachel?”
The Sisters exchanged a glance. “She’sss helping usss with our work,” Nausea said.
“Is she alive?”
“After a fassshion. Ssshe overcame the Dead Fluidsss, regained her sssensse of ssself—we’d never ssseen that before. We’re not going to lossse our prime sssubject.”
“To experiment on, in other words,” Misha remarked, spots dancing before her eyes.
“Ssshe’sss invaluable, let’sss put it that way,” Phobia said. “And you can be reunited with her. The sssibling you never knew you had.”
Misha’s gaze alighted on a section of the hull and she sidled towards it, making a play of stumbling. Phobia’s and Nausea’s eyes never left her. “What are you?” she asked them. “I mean, really.”
“I guesss you’d call ussss representativessss, dear heart,” Phobia said.
“Mediatorssss,” Nausea added.
“For whom?”
“Thossse with… vessssted interessstsss. There are partiesss outssside thissss world, whossse power issss beyond your imagining. When they contacted ussss—”
“—or we contacted them—”
“—or we contacted them. The back and forth between the veil isss sssomewhat fuzzy, isssn’t it, Sissster? When contact wassss made, they gave usss the meansss to create a global mausssoleum in their honour. De’Ath wasss the firssst to transsssform and lead the crusade—the firssst of many.”
“You were human yourselves once.”
The witches glanced at each other and smiled. “Once, perhapsss. A long time ago.”
“Do you feel nothing for the lives you’re destroying?” Misha felt faint, light-headed. She leant against the wall, dizziness washing through her, her blood loss now taking its toll.
Nausea chuckled. “Ssssuch petty concernssss. Minissscule exissstencesss crussshed beneath our grand ssschemesss.”
“No,” Phobia said, “it doessss not bother ussss. Life isss a crime—there can be only one penalty.”
“That’s what I thought,” Misha said, and pulled the Lawgiver from her waistband, levelling it at the pair.
The Sisters swapped amused looks before Phobia gestured towards the weapon. “What ussse isss that, girl? The gun issss palm-encoded.”
“Oh, I know,” Misha replied. “But the collateral damage should be enough.”
She swung her arm down so the Lawgiver was next to the section of fuselage that she’d propped herself against, and pulled the trigger. The witches had watched the movement in confusion, only to see the gun resting against an ammo store—and realised a fraction of a second too late what she was intending to do. The moment the CPU in the gun failed to recognise that hand gripping it, it self-detonated, taking the teen’s limb with it—and catching the volatile ammunition within.
The H-wagon shuddered as part of the hull blew out. Inside, the damage was more catastrophic; the ignited ammo blossomed within the confines of the cabin, filling it with a lethal hail of shrapnel. The Sisters shrieked and clutched at each other in a bid to shield themselves, but they couldn’t escape it—their forms were shredded, their vulnerable human cloaks pureed. Equipment and screens inside the craft were also obliterated, the interior plunged into darkness as the systems were knocked out, and fires caught when the electrics blew. Within moments, the ship was aflame, listing over on one crumpled landing gear.
Misha scarcely had time to register the loss of her hand before taking the full force of the ammo going up. Her scorched, riddled form was thrown across the cabin.
The fire spread to the fuel tanks which detonated in turn, tearing the craft apart in an apocalyptic blast, spewing flaming debris in all directions, including onto the H-wagons on either side; they too were orange infernos not long after. Greys paused in their massacre to impassively watch the conflagration at the centre of the township; unchecked, the fires would eventually consume Libitina, eating the compound from the inside out.
EPILOGUE
One Month Later
THE THING THAT had once been Jackson McGill only had a vague approximation of a sense of self. Sometimes, it had thoughts, impressions, a hint of an identity, but these seemed like fragments of a dream it had once had, and could only recollect in a series of disconnected images. A word might trigger some spark of recognition—‘box’ held some undoubted significance, for some unknown reason, and it would study its hands for long moments, convinced that answers were wrapped
up in them—or the sight of an object could resonate. But instances like these were not common, and they were fleeting; its mind was not sharp or nimble enough to often process just what it was that was engaging with its unconscious brain. It acted on instinct a lot of the time, reacting to external stimuli in much the same way a low-level organism might. It could remember faces and follow simple instructions, but no more so than a well-trained pet.
McGill the man was an outline, a loose sketch of an idea, and every so often a line was connected, a piece filled in, that fired a long-dormant synapse. But understanding lay frustratingly out of reach, and the shuffling, servile creature never got any closer to clarity. Nevertheless, it kept these memory jags to itself and didn’t report them to Mortis or the Sisters; partly because it didn’t know how to vocalise them, but mainly because they were without question forbidden, and could result in its dissolution.
It knew things, though—it knew that Mortis was its master, for example, and as such owed its existence to him. It knew that disobedience was an infraction punishable by dismemberment. And somehow it knew that it wanted to free the remains of the girls the Sisters had hooked up, deep in the bowels of the Grand Hall. It didn’t know why it had this strong conviction to help them, but it had remained lodged in its simple mind ever since it had first seen them. Mortis’s Red Mosquito psi-meme needed a signal boost to cover a wider area, and Phobia and Nausea had produced these battered heads, barely still functioning: one was Cafferly the Psi-Judge—it recognised her—and the other was a young woman, who didn’t look entirely dissimilar. She was blackened and bruised, but somehow the witches had managed to coax some life into her.
The Sisters were impatient with the project, but their mood had been foul ever since they’d lost their human forms in the firefight up north. Their spirits would find new ones—hell, they could spin up fresh hosts just as easily as fashioning a dress—but for the time being it inconvenienced them that they were without their favourite cloaks of blood and bone. De’Ath came by once or twice, but seemed amused more than anything by the Sisters’ consternation. He was spending more time outside the Hall of Injustice, claiming the politics were distracting him from enacting judgement.
Between Phobia, Nausea and Mortis, they’d been trying to draw more energy from the subjects, the witches clearly believing there was potential locked up in them, that each could augment the other. It felt a twinge, an unfathomable stab of regret, watching this, and knew it didn’t want it to continue. Were Cafferly and her twin aware of each other? It thought so, and it got the impression they were tortured by their situation, wishing it would end.
The thing that had once been Jackson McGill stood before the two heads, plugged into Mortis’s mainframe, and grasped the wires. Their eyes seemed to meet and urged it not to delay. It looked around furtively, making sure it was alone. It was taking what remained of its life in its hands, interfering with the Sisters’ pet project like this. It was sabotage, insubordination. Punishment would be terrible and merciless. But it somehow knew it had to do this.
It felt like it was taking the fight to the right guy.
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.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
2033 A.D.
In a time of widespread poverty, inequality and political unrest, Special Prosecutor Eustace Fargo’s controversial new justice laws have come into effect.
Protests and violence meet the first Judges as they hit the street to enforce the Law; the cure, it’s clear, is far worse than the disease.
Is this a sign of things to come?
This omnibus collects three novellas by Michael Carroll, George Mann and Charles J Eskew.
www.abaddonbooks.com
JUDGE DREDD: YEAR ONE
Mega-City One, 2080. Judge Joe Dredd’s first year on the streets as a full-eagle Judge. Bred for justice, trained in law, Dredd’s no helpless rookie, but he’s not the seasoned veteran we know either. Three tales follow the first adventures of the future city’s greatest lawman. With an introduction by the Mighty Tharg!
CITY FATHERS
The brutal murder of a Justice Department-sanctioned spy uncovers something new and dangerous in the sector’s murky black market. Unless Dredd can stop it, chaos will be unleashed.
COLD LIGHT OF DAY
A savage killing spree results in the deaths of two highly-regarded Judges, and many consider Dredd to be responsible: a decision he made five years earlier – while he was still a cadet – has come back to haunt him.
WEAR IRON
“Wear iron, that’s the rule.” Paul Strader is a stick-up man, and a stone cold professional. But when he gets in over his head, he has to risk everything on the word of a corrupt lawman and break every rule he has. Every rule but one
www.abaddonbooks.com
“YOU READY, ROOKIE?”
In years to come, Cassandra Anderson will be a living legend, Psi-Division’s most famous Judge. But for now it’s 2100, and a young Judge Anderson is fresh out of the Academy, the Eagle still gleaming on her shoulder. It’s time to put her training—and her judgement—to the test.
Tackling a love-obsessed telepathic killer at a Valentine’s Day parade, plunging into the depths of madness in a huge new psychiatric prison, and probing the boundaries of reality itself as she hunts a psychic virus to its roots, Cass will be forged in the fires of Justice, emerging as something extraordinary.
“Exactly what you’d want: smart, fast-moving sci-fi that’s filled with pulpy thrill power.”
Wait, What? Podcast
www.abaddonbooks.com
The Fall of Deadworld Omnibus Page 31
