Eclipse

by James Swallow

  They stepped on to the slidewalk to the port dome. As they passed underneath the world-famous Lunar Arch, a massive stone arc cut from porous moonrock, she couldn't help but read the words chiselled there and smile a little. One Small Step for Man. One Giant Leap for Mankind. It wasn't important that an American had said those words; the promise of a future in the stars they held was all that mattered. Kontarsky hadn't felt so alive since the day she had succeeded in making the grade for cosmonaut training, while still a Justice Academy trainee. They had praised her then, told her that she was a prodigy, a credit to the Motherland and she'd seen her own face on the cover of Neo-Pravda as yet another example of Sov superiority.

  But it did not last. Young Judge-Kadet Kontarsky was just a momentary distraction for the East-Meg people, a propaganda subject one day, a forgotten footnote the next. It mattered little that she passed through space training with flying colours in the company of other kadets three or four years her senior. The State had chosen to give her a time in the spotlight and now it was over. She returned to her studies and excelled, but her teachers never made good on their promises of sending her to the stars. It would not be equitable to graduate you early, her mentors had told her. The State cannot give you special treatment. It seemed to Nikita that she had spent her entire life in training, in her orphanarium, at the Academy, at the Baikonur KosmoDome out in the Russian rad-lands, but now it had come to an end.

  She would embrace this assignment and perform it flawlessly, she told herself. It mattered little that she would be forced to work alongside capitalists and opportunistic nyekulturni like Dredd and Rodriguez. These things were simply tests of her skill and her dedication. Sov-Judge Nikita Kontarsky would be a shining beacon to the people of East-Meg Two once again. Devoted. Strong. Indefatigable.

  The SouthAm Judge made a weak joke and patted Dredd on the shoulder, his breezy demeanour rebounding ineffectually off the Mega-City lawman's hard gaze. Although Dredd was technically classified as an Enemy of the Sov Nation, Kontarsky had to admit that she harboured a sneaking admiration for him. It was something she would never dare to speak of in earshot of any other East-Meg citizen, but in poring over Dredd's files in preparation for the mission, she had learnt much more about him than the typical State-sanctioned portrayal of a heartless killer. Since childhood, Nikita had been in love with the thought of travelling into space, but that passion was twinned with another devotion: to justice. Despite the yawning gulfs of creed and nationality between them, Kontarsky saw that Dredd, too, held the law in the highest possible regard.

  She halted this train of thought with a shake of her head. It would not do for her to consider Dredd as anything more than what he was - a grudging ally. Her briefing from Kommisar Ivanov, the East-Meg Diktatorat's lunar representative, had been quite forthright on that subject. Kontarsky was to fulfil her function as Dredd's deputy and monitor him for any signs of subterfuge or conspiracy against the Sov peoples. Any other motivations were not to be considered.

  "Moon-U?" Rodriguez said suddenly, pointing to pieces of graffiti on the terminal wall. "What are they, some sort of new go-ganger crew or Free Luna activists?"

  "There's a lot of these pro-independence kooks up here," rumbled Dredd. "They started making noise about 'liberation' a few years ago."

  Despite herself, Kontarsky bristled. "Kooks, Dredd? You should not be so quick to dismiss those with a revolutionary fervour and desire for change. Was it not your own country that once sought independence from the nations that had colonised it?"

  Rodriguez rolled his eyes. "Ay, Dredd, you've started her off again. Here we go, another political diatribe from the little red book, eh?"

  Dredd did not reply, momentarily scanning a cleaning crew of four men who were working to erase more wall-scrawls further along the dome's inner perimeter.

  "I was merely making an observation," Kontarsky retorted. "I make no apologies for my beliefs. The ordinary citizens of Luna-1 should be free to decide the path of their own future without the controls of a capitalistic-"

  "Fine, fine, lovely chica, but listen. Keep it to yourself, eh? Dredd and me, we got more important things on our minds." He glanced at the other lawman, who seemed fixated on the work crew. "Say, Dredd, right?"

  Kontarsky saw the subtle stiffening of the Mega-City Judge's shoulders and instantly caught the same sense of threat in the air. Something was wrong...

  "The cleaners..." Dredd muttered. "No droids..."

  Although Luna-1 had a far lower unemployment level than Mega-City One, it was still a common sight to see robotic street tenders at work on building maintenance instead of humans. Most people, even up here, preferred to find jobs that were less demeaning than scrubbing stonework. One of the men produced a remote control unit and stabbed at a key with his finger. A hundred metres away, something inside the slidewalk control box fizzed and melted.

  As they passed the clean-up crew, the slidewalk suddenly slammed to a halt and the tourists and travellers it carried fell like dominoes. Completely oblivious, Rodriguez took a nasty spill, collapsing over a portly woman and swearing in furious Spanish. Only Dredd and Kontarsky remained standing, both snatching at the guide rail for support.

  The four men turned in unison, each of them brandishing a backpack-mounted splurge gun. Designed to remove even the hardiest paints from a surface, the sud-throwers projected streams of concentrated, heated detergent - and they could strip bare flesh to bone with a foamy deluge.

  "Hit 'em!" yelled the leader, training his sud-gun on the slidewalk. "Moon-U! Moon-U! Lunar liberty!"

  The other men took up the chant and fired. Streams of bubbling liquid gushed across the terminal plaza in thick white streams, hosing the Judges.

  "Kontarsky, cover!" Dredd took the brunt of the discharge as he shouldered the Sov-Judge aside, flattening her against a support pillar. Acidic liquid hissed and spat as it ate into his shoulder pad and badge. Kontarsky's nostrils stung as she smelt the harsh zest of chemicals and the sickly scent of seared flesh.

  The splurge-gunners continued to project the foam into the crowd, striking anything that moved without concern for who they targeted. People died with gargling, wet shrieks.

  "We're pinned down!" Rodriguez yelled. "They're gonna bathe us to death!"

  Kontarsky resisted the urge to make a flippant comment about the SouthAm Judge's need for personal hygiene and gasped in a breath. She hesitated. This was different from the two perps up on Union Station; the only goal of these criminals were to murder them all.

  Inwardly, Dredd cursed his lack of a weapon and pulled at his ruined badge, snapping off the gold shield where it connected to his chain of office. "We need to take them together," he told the other two Judges. "I'll get the leader. Rodriguez, find a weapon! Kontarsky, you think you can handle this?"

  The Sov-Judge's face reddened. "I am more than capable."

  "Time to prove it, then, kid. On three! One..."

  Rodriguez gave the obese lady a toothy smile and snatched up her plasti-cane. "Mind if I borrow this?"

  "Two..."

  "Moon-U! Moon-U!" chorused the shooters, spraying jets of hot foam over the pedway.

  "Three!" Dredd sprang out from behind the pillar like a bullet from a gun, springing off the slidewalk guardrail at a shallow angle. He was ready for the lower lunar gravity and let it take him up and over the sud-gunman at the front. At the zenith of his jump, Dredd threw his badge like a shuriken and sent the plasteen shield streaking at the leader's bare throat. The badge struck his windpipe, embedding itself in the soft flesh and choking off his rabble-rousing chant in mid-flow.

  At the same instant, Rodriguez popped up from behind the slidewalk and used the cane to swipe at the closest gunman. He struck the rifle-shaped weapon underneath the barrel and deflected it aside to aim at another one of the attackers, like a fencer parrying a sabre. Caught off-guard, the criminal inadvertently hosed his cohort with a point-blank blast of detergent, smothering him with boiling soap.

  Rod
riguez used the crown of his crested helmet to deliver a crippling head-butt to his target and sent him sprawling, blood spurting from his nose, to the ground.

  Dredd came down hard on his shoulder and rolled, feeling the pain from the earlier chemical burn. Bad landing. I'm out of practice with this low-g stuff, he thought to himself.

  The fourth man was waiting for him, splurge gun at the ready. "Moon-U!" he chanted, wild-eyed and snarling. "Mooooon-Uuuuu!" The sud-thrower barrel yawned before Dredd's face.

  "Moon this!" Kontarsky's clipped voice snapped and Dredd caught the coughing report of a needler pistol. The fourth man slapped at a clump of thin metal spines that embedded themselves in his cheek and sank to his knees, eyes fluttering as a nerve toxin burned through his tissues.

  Dredd got to his feet and stepped over the criminal's twitching body. The Sov-Judge stood nearby, gripping a small silver gun in her fist. "Give me the weapon, Kontarsky."

  After a long moment, she handed him the firearm. Dredd studied it for a moment. "Volokov ZK-91 holdout pistol. How did you get this past the starport sensors?"

  She patted her thigh. "Skin pocket."

  "You know the law. No unsanctioned weapons inside the domes. I could have you put in the cubes for this." He weighed the tiny weapon in his hand.

  "It only fires reduced velocity subsonic needle rounds. I'd never carry a weapon that could cause a blowout, Dredd. I'm not a fool."

  "Hmmph." With a flick of the wrist, Dredd tossed the needler into the maw of a public garbage grinder. "Under the circumstances, I'll overlook this infraction. But don't test me again, understand? You can play with your Sov bag of tricks in your own time."

  "Yes, Judge Dredd," she said, her cheeks burning with embarrassment.

  "I think our friend here is also muerte," Rodriguez noted, nudging the foam-covered corpse with the tip of his boot. "I can see why they call it 'The Bubbly Death', eh?" He smiled. "So, tell me Dredd. Is this the kind of thing we can expect while we're working with you? Is this how it is down in Mega-City One?"

  Dredd gave a shrug. "Different city. Same creeps."

  A familiar face was waiting for him in the starport terminal and for a brief instant the sight of Judge-Marshal Tex standing there before him gave Dredd pause; twenty-five years earlier, he had stood in exactly that place and had welcomed him to the Moon.

  Tex's face creased in a smile. "Well, howdy Joe." A glint of recognition told Dredd his old friend was thinking the very same thing. "Just like old times, ain't it?"

  "Tex." Dredd took his hand and shook it. The Judge-Marshal still had the same firm grip, the same easy grin and trademark Stetson on his head, but the years had not been kind to the stout Texan. The hair that peeked out from under his hat was grey and his chubby face had turned craggy and drawn. He wore every day of his two and a half decades in office in the lines around his eyes. "Shame about the circumstances," Dredd added.

  Tex nodded. "It is that." He studied the other two Judges. "I guess you'd be Rodriguez and Kontarsky, right?" Tex tapped his fingers to the brim of his hat. "Glad to have you both aboard."

  "A pleasure to meet you, Judge-Marshal Tex," Nikita replied.

  "So is this how you welcome everyone to the Moon?" Rodriguez jerked a thumb at the group of Luna Judges securing the remains of the sud-gunners. "Or maybe I'm thinking this is a special hello just for Dredd here?"

  Tex's smile thinned to a tight line. "I reckon we'd better talk somewhere more private. Come on, I've got an L-Wagon waiting for us at the upper dock."

  The low-grav flyer jetted away from the starport and turned in a long, lazy curve over the towers of Apollo Territory, heading towards the city core. Dredd glanced out of the window and watched the buildings flash by. A casual observer might mistake the view for a nighttime panorama of Mega-City One, with the same panoply of citiblocks and arcologies, but closer inspection picked out the spindly shapes of selenescrapers and skyhighways suspended on thin columns of lunacrete. Architecture throughout Luna-1 took advantage of the one-sixth gravity to create unique structures that would have collapsed under their own weight on Earth. The city's rapid pace of expansion from the early days of the Moon Rush had slowed, the nine original territory zones now filled, with new satellite domes growing like huge glassy mushroom caps around the vast half-sphere of the original settlement. Dredd picked out a few familiar landmarks as the craft threaded itself through aircar traffic: the bright lights of Main Street, the first road ever built on the Moon; the Spike, the glittering tower of the city computer hub; and in the near distance, the grey oval of Crater Stadium. Dredd noted that Rodriguez was maintaining a studied show of blasé disinterest, while Kontarsky was barely concealing her eagerness to drink it all in.

  But things were different here. Not just the cosmetic changes in the growth of the city, but something deeper. Even from three hundred metres up, Dredd's seasoned street sense registered the telltale signs of decrepitude - zones where lighting was inactive, empty industrial compounds and run-down residential con-apts daubed with scrawls. Around the edges, the clean, model city he'd visited seven years ago was turning quietly back into the lawless colony he remembered from the turn of the century.

  "Not like it used to be, is it?" Tex said quietly at his ear. The veteran Judge-Marshal read Dredd's thoughts in the set of his chin. "There was a time... Maybe we had our golden years, but now we're finding it hard."

  Dredd didn't look away. "You're undermanned and underfunded."

  Tex nodded ever so slightly. "You know I wouldn't have asked for help if I didn't need it, Dredd. But the fact is, we're on the ropes now. Some sectors are turning into no-go areas. We're having to send in Judges with Manta Prowl Tanks or not at all. The gang problem is getting worse, the usual punk juves are hooking up with organised crime..." He took a breath and rubbed at his eyes, clearly fatigued. "Hell, it's like the bad old days all over again."

  The L-Wagon began to descend, passing by a vid-screen that flashed up a grinning Moon-U graphic. "What's that crud all about?"

  "Pirate signal hackers bustin' into the comm channels. We've always had 'em up here, but these guys, they're real good. Luna Tek-Division are on the case but so far we're getting nowhere trying to jam it."

  "Those yahoos at the starport, they were chanting it."

  "Yup." Tex's face wrinkled, as if he'd smelt something bad. "They're stirring up all kinds of trouble in the barrios and the outpost domes. But this is bigger than some cockamamie cartoon. We're looking at an acceleratin' street war situation here."

  "Then we'll have to stamp on it. Hard."

  Tex said nothing for a moment, then reached into a belt pocket. "Oh, I almost plumb forgot. As you lost your badge back there, I reckoned I could spot you for a temporary replacement, like. Here." He held out a gold disc and Dredd took it. "You're gonna be a Luna Judge for the time bein'. It's my estimation you oughta look like one."

  It was a Luna-City shield, a five-pointed star over an inverted quarter-moon, with four smaller stars on the crescent. "I accept," said Dredd.

  Rodriguez craned his neck to see. "Hey, can I get one of those too?"

  Nearby, Kontarsky frowned at him. "I think you will need to earn it first."

  The L-Wagon drifted into a hover then descended into the imposing structure of the Luna Grand Hall of Justice; modelled on the shape of a castle keep, the massive tower was one of the tallest constructions in the entire city. The north face of the building was sculpted into the shape of an eagle, with a crescent moon held firmly in its claws - a multi-storey reminder of the law's grip on the Moon. The flyer docked at a concealed landing bay in the upper levels and Tex walked them to his office, set in the eagle's head. One whole wall was an elliptical glasseen panel in the eye of the sculpture.

  Three men, each in a different uniform, stood as they entered. Dredd recognised Tex's second-in-command, Deputy Judge-Marshal Che. The former Mex-City Judge gave Dredd a grave, barely civil nod that confirmed what he had suspected: Tex's own officers objected to t
he request for the taskforce from Earth.

  "Sit down, y'all," Tex drawled. "We're not going to stand on ceremony here. I got no time for it and, frankly, neither do you." He touched a control in the desktop and part of the window became a video screen, scrolling up pictures from street cameras and spy-in-the-sky drones.

  "You all know myself and Deputy Che," Tex continued, "and that gentleman there is Joe Dredd, of Mega-City One. I'm sure you all know him, by reputation if nothin' else. As per my request to the Office of the Triumvirate, you five officers form the joint-nationality taskforce that is here to assist the Luna Justice Department with the current crisis. Che, you wanna take over from here?"

  The Deputy nodded, "Sí, Chief Judge. The taskforce will be an autonomous unit inside the department reporting directly to myself and Judge-Marshal Tex. Dredd will act as force commander and his deputy will be Judge Kontarsky of East-Meg Two. Our Sov friends have chosen her for her expertise in space law." He nodded to the SouthAm officer. "To my right is Judge Rodriguez from the PanAndes Conurb and these two gentlemen here are Judge Foster from the diplomatic corps out of Brit-Cit and Tek-Judge J'aele from Simba City. J'aele will be handling technical liaison."

  Dredd scrutinised the two Judges. Foster, dark-haired with a sharply chiselled face, had the watchful air of a career Street Judge about him; the African J'aele was a little shorter, bald and muscular with a bull-neck that accentuated the tiger-skin shoulder pads he wore. Neither seemed to be typical for their specialities as envoy and technician. Two more wildcards? Dredd found himself wondering why their governments had chosen them.

  Che continued: "As you are aware, incidents of violent crime and rioting have increased in outlying domes by forty per cent over the past two months and there has been a corresponding surge in anti-Judge sentiment." He paused; the hard truth of what he would say next weighed heavily on him. "It is our belief that a concerted effort is being made by elements of organised crime and dissident factions to engineer an armed insurrection in Luna-1."