"There is no doubt?" J'aele asked. "You are certain of this?"
"It's just a matter o' time," said Tex quietly.
Dredd grimaced. "Then we have to tear these creeps out by the root before it goes that far." He saw Kontarsky framing another piece of pro-Communist rhetoric and beat her to the punch. "You say they want a revolution? Well, you know as well as I do that no matter what the brains behind this are promising, all it is going to lead to is blood on the streets."
There was a bleak chorus of agreement around the table, even a reluctant assent from the East-Meg Judge.
"The last flashpoint, whaddaya call it, in Kipple Dome-" Rodriguez began.
"Kepler," corrected Che.
"Kipple, Kepple, whatever. The point is, the last riot. What happened there?"
"If I may," J'aele said. "I have read the forensic report from Tek Central. There was an oxygen outage in the dome and panic drove the populace there to riot. It appears that Moon-U pirate broadcasts were used to transmit images of the event across the entire city."
"Sabotage?" asked Dredd.
"Inconclusive at this time."
"How do we know these Moon-U pendejos didn't start the whole thing?"
"They stirred it up, that's for sure," said Tex. "Got the whole damn Moon riled up about it. The media's puttin' the blame right at the door of the Oxygen Board for causing the panic and claiming it was the Judges who started shootin' first."
Kontarsky pointed at a data window on the vid-screen. "What about these weapons that were used in the riots? How were your citizens able to get them?"
"We have no leads," Che said bluntly, angry that he had to admit his failure. "If we did, we would not be seeking help from outside agencies!"
Foster cleared his throat. "Pardon my directness, Deputy Che, but if this bunch of blokes from 'outside agencies' can't help you out, then you're going to find yourself out of a job quite sharpish. Marshal Tex here has remained in charge of Luna-1 thanks to his twenty-odd years of keeping this slice of the Moon in check, but the rules of the International Treaty of 2061 are very clear."
"Clear to you, gringo," said Rodriguez. "Not to me. Explain, please."
"It's all in the small print, chum. If the Triumvirate council's current representative - which would be our esteemed Judge-Marshal Tex - demonstrates an inability to keep the lunar colony under control, then the treaty is automatically suspended. That means all the territories will be up for grabs for whomever wants to deal, cheat or invade their way into them."
Foster worked a control pad and the vid-screen shifted to show a display of near-lunar space. Several small platforms and starships in orbit were highlighted. He pointed upward. "At any one time there's about a dozen diplomatic courier vessels from all the major powers on Earth hovering overhead, ships from each of our cities as well as places like Hondo, the Stani-States, Midgard, Sino-Cit... They're all ready to stake a claim if the Moon goes to pieces." Foster leant forward and Dredd realised he was speaking directly to him. "This ain't just about knocking down some paint-spraying coffee-house rebels. It's about the future of the Luna-1 colony."
Dredd got to his feet. "Then we're wasting time every second we spend debating it in here. Kontarsky, you and J'aele secure me an L-Wagon with a full tech station rig. Foster and Rodriguez, you come with me. We'll get our equipment from the quartermaster and meet you at pad three in twenty."
To their credit, each of the five members of Dredd's team rose without hesitation to his commands. "Let's move like we got a purpose," he added.
"Dredd," Tex called as they were leaving. "Where you headin'?"
"Where else? Kepler Dome," he replied. "Scene of the crime."
When they were alone in the room, Che gave Tex an arch look. "I thought age might have mellowed him a little, but it hasn't. Dredd hasn't changed a bit."
"How do you figure?"
"He's still got the same iron rod up his backside he had when he was Luna-1 Chief Judge. If anything, I'll bet he's even more of a hardcase now."
Tex's mien softened. "No doubt he's one tough hombre, but he'll do what it takes to get the job done, Che."
"I hope so, sir. I'm just not sure there will be much of a city left after he's through with it."
5. STREET LEVEL
Foster looked Dredd up and down as they walked through the halls of Justice Central. The Mega-City Judge spoke without facing him. "Something on your mind?"
The Brit-Citter hesitated for a moment. "It's not important. I just... Well, I just thought you'd be taller."
Rodriguez bit his lip to stifle a chuckle.
Dredd ignored the comment. "You were posted here on secondment?"
Foster nodded. "Yeah and that Simba fella too. You know the drill, Luna-1's an international zone so forty per cent of the Judge force comes from treaty state members."
"So why'd you get sent up, huh?" Rodriguez asked. "Who did you sneck off to get a Moon posting?"
Dredd saw Foster colour slightly. The SouthAm Judge had hit a nerve. "There's a lot of opportunity for Diplo-Div work in space, what with all the alien traffic and so on. On top of that, there's coppers from a dozen countries up here and you need to know who's who and what's what."
Dredd mused on his first impression of the Brit-Judge and played a hunch. "International cooperation. It's a different ballgame to the street."
"No arguments there," Foster gave a nod. "Some days I wish I was back in the Birmingham Wastes on traffic patrol."
His suspicions were confirmed; he didn't have to read Foster's file to figure out what the Brit-Judge wasn't saying. A Street Judge, somewhere along the line Foster had been shuttled off Earth for some sort of infraction and left to cool his heels in orbit. Dredd was sure that he would find a similar situation with J'aele if he dug deep enough into the Simba City Tek-Judge's background. The other nations had promised Hershey that Dredd would get the best officers for the job, but now it was becoming increasingly clear that his taskforce was made up of whomever they wanted out of the way. He filed this information away for later consideration as they approached the quartermaster's stores.
Rodriguez's foot dragged and he stumbled, swearing. "Keep up," Dredd said.
The SouthAm Judge sneered and fiddled with a control on his ankle. "Okay, okay. It's these damn gravity boots we gotta wear. I haven't had to calibrate a pair of these since I got off this dull piece of rock." Like all of Luna-1's law force, the Judges had donned g-boots prior to their arrival on the Moon. The modified footgear enabled the wearers to walk as if they were in an Earth-normal gravity field, even in places where municipal grav-generators did not operate.
A spindly mechanoid with four arms rolled over to Dredd on clanking caterpillar tracks. The robot was an old Moderna Systems Model Eight, the same kind that Mega-City One had retired years ago after a spate of programming errors. It was another sign of the poor state of Luna-1's Justice Department.
"Gentlemen. Follow me to ordinance, please."
The machine rumbled over to a firing range, where belts and holsters were piled next to a rack of flat, compact handguns. "As you know," the robot continued, "projectile weapons rated at grade three and above are illegal on the Moon except with Justice Department special approval waivers. For the duration of your stay, you'll each be equipped with a Glock-Weptek S-54 STUP-gun firearm."
Rodriguez glanced at Foster. "You got one of these already?"
The Brit-Judge nodded and drew his sidearm. "You never used a beam pistol before? They're energy weapons. They shoot streams of highly-charged particles in microsecond pulses."
"STUP stands for Scalar-Tesla Uniform Pulse," droned the droid. "Palm print reader and self-destruct charge, trigger mechanism and safety catches all match those of a standard Mark 11 Lawgiver. Battery magazines will auto-recharge while the guns are holstered."
Dredd and Rodriguez both took a gun and the weapons beeped softly to signify that they were now locked for their use only.
Foster took up a position on the ran
ge. "Let me show you how these things work." He flicked a thumb-dial. "They've got five levels of intensity, from a low-grade stun right up to a full power blast, manual or voice-active select. Hit someone with a level one shot and you'll make 'em puke or pass out. Go up to a five and-"
Foster squeezed the trigger plate and the gun bucked in his hand, the recoil washing back from the crackle of superheated air as the pulse flashed into the target dummy. The plasti-flesh body shape blew apart like an overripe fruit. "Well, you get the picture."
Rodriguez gave the gun a cautious once-over. "Eh, give me my pistola rata any day. These space toys look like something from a sci-fi vid-slug."
Dredd said nothing and brought up his STUP-gun. The air snapped and hissed as he let off four precise shots from a modified Weaver stance.
"Four discharges registered. All range targets hit, ninety-four per cent critical strike percentage," intoned the robot.
"Hmm." Dredd considered the pistol for a second and then holstered it. "Seems okay to me."
"Show-off." Rodriguez rapped on the droid's carapace. "So, tin-head, where do we go to get our rides, huh? Come on, speedo. I feel naked without my wheels."
"The bike park is over here," Foster indicated the direction of the flyer bay with a nod. "Come with me."
With the robot trailing behind them, Dredd and Rodriguez followed Foster into an open atrium halfway up the building. Ranks of parked aircars painted in pursuit colour schemes and modified low-gravity H-Wagons sat next to hover-bikes in varying states of disassembly.
"Judge-Marshal Tex has assigned a Krait 3000 model zipper bike for your personal usage, Judge Dredd," said the quartermaster droid, as it worked a set of lift controls. From a garage level one floor below them, a launch cradle rose up with a sleek gunmetal and silver-blue speeder resting upon it.
"Ooh, hello baby," Rodriguez breathed, admiring the machine. "That is a fine piece of engineering. Too good for Dredd, I think. She needs a more caring rider, like me, maybe."
The Krait was an agile skybike, armed with its own array of STUP-cannons and a suite of full-spectrum sensors in addition to all the standard features of a Judge's motorcycle. While the Earth-style wheeled Lawmasters were sometimes employed in Luna-1, it was more typical to see the retrojet-powered zipper bikes cutting back and forth across the lunar skyline.
Dredd ran a gloved hand over the fuselage. He'd ridden one of these shark-like flyers before, on a previous mission to the Moon. "Just this one?"
"Affirmative." the robot clicked. "The rest of your taskforce has been assigned the standard Skymaster."
"The Krait bikes are few and far between these days," Foster broke in. "They used to be the front-line vehicle for Street Judges up here, but they've dwindled. Not enough replacement parts, you see? There's barely a tenth of the original number still airworthy."
"Ugh, so what do we get?" Rodriguez asked.
Foster gestured to another model of zipper bike nearby. The Skymasters were built around the ground-based Mark III Lawmaster's chassis, but replacing the tyres and power plant with a Teka-Tek anti-grav drive and thruster grid. A frown creased Rodriguez's face. "The ladies, they are not going to be impressed by a brute machine like this."
"You can always walk," Dredd snapped.
"We're lucky to get these," said Foster, mounting his bike. "The way things are going, by the end of the year the department will be back to using ground bikes."
"So where the drokk does all the funding from the Triumvirate go?" Irritation rose in Dredd's tone.
Foster gave a weary shrug. "Look around, Dredd. It ain't going here."
The trio of Judges circled up and out of the launch bay, climbing to the upper landing pads. Dredd saw a bulky L-Wagon lift off as they passed and the larger flyer moved up behind them to follow their three-bike "V" formation. In the lead, Dredd scanned the horizon as the city blurred by beneath him. The Krait responded smoothly, cutting through the air like a blade.
"Dredd, this is Kontarsky. Switch to secure channel, please." The Sov-Blocker's voice issued from Dredd's helmet radio speaker. He toggled the control on the zipper bike's dashboard.
"Dredd, responding. What's so important that you need to talk to me without the rest of the team hearing?"
"I am merely following command protocol. And I have also made an observation."
"Let's hear it."
"I was examining the incident reports and after-action arrest transcripts from the Kepler riots. Many of the survivors claimed that they felt compelled to fight, or that an irrational rage or intense fear seized them. I suspect there might have been some sort of psychoactive agent at work-"
"When does a rioter ever want to take responsibility for what they've done? Besides, the food, the air and the water were the first things that Tex's people checked," Dredd snapped. "Read the file, Kontarsky. Ever since East-Meg One tried that trick with the Block Mania virus, we've been ready for it! If any chemical or biological factor was there, we'd know it."
The Sov-Judge's voice went tight with annoyance. "I am well aware of that, Judge Dredd. But perhaps it could have been something else. A psionic effect-"
"Luna Psi Division haven't exactly been asleep over the past six months. A psyker strong enough to influence a few hundred thousand people wouldn't stay hidden from them for long." Dredd spotted the zipstrip tunnel to Kepler Dome and brought the skybike on to a new heading. "I want facts, Kontarsky, not speculations."
He switched back to the general radio channel, leaving the young Russian to seethe. "All units, form up, we're going down on the deck."
When they reached the skedway off-ramp to Kepler, the Judges were forced to halt in front of a massive set of airlock doors. The dome had been closed off completely from the rest of the Luna-1 network after the street fighting had threatened to spill over into the city proper and days later the place was still sealed, considered a giant crime scene. A Luna Judge at the gate control station waved Dredd over to him.
"You understand the dome has still to be re-certified after the riots?" he asked. "When things came apart in there, we had to evacuate and lock it down. There could still be booby-traps inside, maybe even a few stragglers still dug in."
"We could go in wearing environment suits," offered J'aele.
"If you come across a sniper or trip a frag mine in there, all an e-suit is going to do is slow you down." Dredd shook his head: "No, we'll take it slow and by the numbers. Open it up."
With a grinding hiss of hydraulics, the saw-toothed airlock doors yawned open, parting like the steel mandibles of some huge predatory insect. A puff of displaced air whistled out in a breeze and the scents carried on it sent alarm bells sounding in Dredd's mind. The acrid smell of smoke and cordite, melted plastic and the unmistakable odour of old, dried blood.
Just beyond the entranceway he saw the far end of the plaza outside the abandoned Kepler precinct house. The Justice Department building was a gutted ruin, black and skeletal. "Overwatch formation," Dredd called out. "Follow me."
The convoy of anti-grav vehicles kept low to the ground as it snaked across the lunacrete roadway, drifting up and over makeshift barricades and the shallow craters made by crude firebombs. "Be ready on your respirators, just in case," ordered Dredd. "Connect to your belt-pack oxy supply the instant you suspect any air leaks." If the dome did suffer a sudden breach, at least the Judges would be able to survive for a few minutes until rescue units could arrive. Dredd had felt the icy kiss of raw vacuum on his skin before and it wasn't an experience he wanted to repeat.
The Mega-City Judge studied the silent wreckage carefully, in his mind's eye reconstructing the confrontation that had taken place, figuring out what had happened when. Here was the burnt-out frame of a bot-cab, probably used as a ram to breach the precinct barricade. There were the circular impact marks typical of a close-range hit from a sonic disruptor rifle. Across the plaza, the stain of a broad heat scorch was visible, one that could have been from a hand flamer or a rocket-propelled grenade.
Foster cursed softly under his breath. "I saw the other incident sites before this one, but I had no idea this one was so bad... Dredd, you ever seen anything like it before?"
"Too many times." Something about the whole scene didn't sit right with Dredd and it bothered him. He brought the Krait to a halt and held up a hand. "Foster, Rodriguez, dismount. We'll check out this zone. Kontarsky, you and J'aele set up the Tek-station at the crossped to the west and get to work on figuring out where this all started."
The Sov-Judge hesitated. "I should accompany you-"
"The crossped," Dredd repeated. "Get going."
Kontarsky gave him a grudging nod and returned to the L-Wagon. As she walked out of earshot, she began speaking into a recorder rod in low, urgent Russian.
"If I didn't know better, I'd say the Sov there was more interested in you than she is in the job," Foster noted.
"I'm sure it's purely professional," noted Dredd. "Spread out. Look for anything out of the ordinary."
Rodriguez put his hands on his hips. "That's it? We just came out here for a look around? I can think of better uses of our time."
Dredd frowned. "It's called Judge work, Rodriguez. Perhaps you've heard of it?"
The Pan Andes Judge muttered something rude under his breath and set to work with a scanalyser. Foster took the central quadrant of the plaza and Dredd walked the length of the perimeter, taking it all in. Four decades of experience on the street had granted the lawman an almost uncanny sense for a crime scene, the ability to at once see the big picture and to also focus in on small, seemingly insignificant details. With grim determination, Dredd circled the ruins from the street fighting. He caught sight of Kontarsky observing him from the crossped, the red of her rad-cloak peering through the broken teeth of a fractured building foundation. An abrupt jab of memory passed through Dredd's mind. The last time he had faced a Sov-Judge wandering through ruined city streets, they had been shooting at one another.
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