The echo of the collision ringing in his ears, Dredd pushed himself back up to his feet and dived for his gun. From the corner of his eye he caught a blink of movement, a night-black uniform trimmed with silver skulls coming at him like a rocket. His fingers touched the butt of the pulse gun just as a daystick cracked him across the back.
"Stay down!" Wright commanded. "We got you!"
Dredd decided otherwise. He flipped over, caught Wright's shin between his ankles and twisted. The SJS-Judge let out a hiss of pain and fell over backwards, arms windmilling. Dredd reached for the STUP-gun in time to meet Judge Hiro's boot in the face.
The second SJS officer kicked him again for good measure, then brought down his heel on Dredd's splayed hand. "Fingers!" he spat, teeth bared in a snarl.
Constellations of light exploded inside Dredd's skull, flares of pain making him dizzy. He shifted, coming to his feet, trying to gather himself.
"Tough old bastard..." Wright's voice said from somewhere nearby.
"Not tough enough," retorted Hiro. "Got your gun?"
"Yeah."
"Then shoot him."
Dredd launched himself toward the SJS-Judge just as something sun-bright and sizzling struck him hard in the chest. The walls of the oxy-station seemed to shift and merge, as if they were collapsing in on him. Darkness gathered in on Dredd, voices chasing him into a senseless black void.
"You could have killed us all with that stunt, Hiro."
"Don't be such a weakling."
Che examined the object on the desk before him and his lips twisted in a weary grimace. "And this is?"
"I believe it is some form of listening device," said Kessler, absently running a finger over his scarred chin. "After you were sworn in I took the liberty of ordering a deep scan of Judge-Marshal Tex's... Uh, that is, of your office and my technicians discovered it. The unit self-destructed before we could make a thorough examination, but it appears to have been a transmitter."
Che pushed it away. "Bugs planted in the Chief Judge's office. How did we come to this? It sickens me to think we may have turncoats and crooked Judges among our forces!"
"I wholeheartedly agree, sir. Luna-1 is a city that enjoys unprecedented freedoms, but because of that we must also be the most watchful. That is why the SJS is also free to pursue its objectives to the bitter end." Kessler said the last words with relish.
"I want every officer on the take found and purged!" Che thumped the desk with his fist.
Kessler smiled crookedly. "Already in progress, sir. We are investigating the technician Maktoh, who I suspect Dredd killed in order to prevent discovery of his own collusion and Rodriguez. There may be others."
Che nodded. "What is the word from the street? Is the curfew holding?"
"For now, Judge-Marshal. There has been some squawking from the veterans' societies and citizen rights groups about the possible effects on the upcoming Apocalypse Day anniversary, but we've dealt with that." Kessler handed the Chief Judge a data-pad. "We still have a few isolated pockets of trouble here and there - an incident at the Tycho Brahe Hilton hotel and a fire at the Leisureplex - but nothing that cannot be quelled with the correct application of force."
"And those punkamente channel hackers?"
Kessler's face soured. "Their transmissions remain untraceable, sir. Tek Division simply do not have hardware advanced enough to block their frequency-hopping attack programs. Short of shutting down every vid-screen, net-link and radio on Luna-1, there's no way we can stop them."
"And so they continue to goad us and make the citizens side against us," he spat. "If you can't block the signals, than find the source and destroy it! There is a cancer at the heart of this city, Kessler and these are all symptoms of it. I want it cut out, do you understand? Ripped out, if needs be, but gone!" He stood up and began to pace. "Tex's death will be avenged, of that you must be certain!"
"My sentiments exactly, Judge-Marshal. You should know that two of my best men have reported in with Dredd in custody. He will be arriving in confinement in a matter of minutes."
"Dredd! I never wanted him up here, do you know?" Che studied the room around him. Despite the events of the past twenty-four hours, he could not settle himself with the idea that the city was now his to command. "I told Tex that we could handle these insurrections ourselves, and now it has come to this."
"Desperate times require extreme measures," said Kessler archly. "Dredd is a tricky one. He lives on his reputation, but only the clearest thinkers can see he's not all he appears to be."
"I... I never wanted to take Tex's place, Kessler, you understand? Not like this. I don't know if I can do the job that he did."
"You have the full support of every man serving under you, sir," Kessler replied smoothly, "including the Special Judicial Service."
Che gave a vague nod. "Yes... Thank you, Kessler."
A chime sounded from the intercom. "Chief Judge, we're ready to begin the conference."
"Very well," Che sat down and turned to face the eagle's-eye window. "Begin." The glasseen oval flickered and changed to become a series of smaller screens. Each displayed the face of a senior Judge from the member states of the Global Partnership Treaty, some broadcasting from Earth, others from their courier ships in lunar orbit. Kessler sneered as he saw Kommisar Ivanov appear among them.
A dozen voices began talking at once, all of them raised and angry.
Che waved a hand in front of his face, as if he was dismissing a nagging insect. "One at a time, please, señors!"
Kessler watched as Che fought off recriminations and harsh words from representatives of a dozen city-states. Each of them said it in a different way, but all of them were pushing the same agenda - they all believed that Luna-1 was on the verge of collapse and that their city was the one that should step in to take over.
Kessler kept his expression set, but inwardly he sneered. Look at them, fighting over the Moon like a pack of rabid dogs! The SJS chief doubted than any one of the diplomats and representatives had the strength of will to keep Luna-1 in line. Only a hardened man, someone like himself, was capable of that. His eyes drifted to Che, whose face was ruddy with anxiety. Perhaps, he thought, I may have to take a more proactive hand in things...
Then the feed from Mega-City One was highlighted and Chief Judge Hershey's face filled the screen. "Judge-Marshal Che, before we go any further, I must protest your issue of an arrest warrant for Judge Dredd-"
Kessler broke in before Che could answer. "You may protest all you want, Chief Judge, but you have no jurisdiction here. Dredd is my prisoner and he is going to answer for his crimes!"
The SJS-Judge's words set off a new storm of invective from the screens but Kessler simply looked on, a mocking glint in his monocled eye.
Consciousness returned to Dredd as a series of slow, dull aches all over his body. He opened his eyes and his vision swam for a moment before he recognised the shape of a bio-lume strip above him. Gingerly, he righted himself; someone had roughly deposited him on a bunk in a standard iso-cube. Almost very item of Justice Department-issue clothing was gone, even down to his boots. All they had left him was the regulation blue-black undersuit and his helmet.
Dredd washed away the metallic taste in his mouth with a cupped handful of water from the sink mounted in the far wall. Aside from the bunk, the steel toilet in the opposite corner of the room and the black dome of a scanner in the ceiling, the cell was bare. The Judge absently ran a hand over the plasteen walls. He'd lost count of the number of perps he'd put in places like this one, but he remembered with absolute clarity every time that he had been forced into a cell. It happened with a regularity that Dredd found extremely irritating. Anywhere else and he might have held out hope for a fair trial, a chance to prove his innocence - but with Kessler prosecuting him and Moonie's unseen influence infesting the Luna-1 Justice Department, Dredd had his doubts.
Once I get out of this, he thought to himself, I'm recommending a serious review of the Luna Judge force.
He stepped up to the cell door and peered through a grille. Beyond, he could see a dozen more doors and a corridor leading off around a corner. Dredd guessed that he was in the sub-basement levels of the Grand Hall of Justice, in the long-term holding cells. Before too long, he'd probably be transferred over to the SJS building and left to Kessler's tender mercies. He remembered his last visit there with razor-sharp clarity and Kessler's leering face hanging over him as he tried to wring a confession from him. There was no doubt in Dredd's mind that this time the SJS officer would pull out all the stops; Kessler would make their previous meeting look like a happy chit-chat.
A Luna-City Judge came into view and stopped in front of Dredd's cell. "You're awake." He beckoned someone that Dredd could not see. "You have a visitor."
There was a flick of red and black and Kontarsky appeared, her ice-cold eyes giving him the most cursory of glances. "Open it," she told the other Judge. "I need to speak to him."
Dredd knew the drill. He stepped back into the cell and the door retracted into the wall. Kontarsky entered and the Luna-City Judge stood in the doorway. "They caught you," she said flatly.
"Yeah. A real coincidence, considering that you were the only one who knew where I was." He studied her face for any sign of emotion, any hint that would give him a clue about what she was thinking, but there was nothing.
"You are the most wanted man in the city, Dredd. Your capture was inevitable." Kontarsky ignored the thinly veiled accusation. "Kessler was denied access to interrogate me. I have been released into the custody of Kommissar Ivanov."
"Don't let me keep you from reporting in to your bosses at the Diktatorat. I'm sure they'll be pleased to hear that an Enemy of the People has been arrested for a murder he didn't commit."
"Kessler believes you are the agent of chaos here, Dredd. He intends to prove that you are working to destabilise Luna-1, possibly as an instrument of the crime lord Moonie-"
"I put Moonie away!" Dredd snapped. "You were there at Farside, you saw what happened to Rodriguez and Maktoh! You know what will happen if we don't stop that freak. He wants the Moon so badly he'll cause the deaths of thousands to get it!"
Kontarsky said nothing for a long moment, then in a rapid blur of movement, she whipped around and drew a compact needle gun from inside the folds of her cloak, turning the pistol on the Luna Judge. "Do not move," she ordered, "or you will be shot."
"Where did you get that?" said Dredd, indicating the weapon.
"I had a spare," Kontarsky retorted. "Do you not recognise a prison break when you see one? We have little time. I programmed the iso-cube's security camera to run a loop of footage, but it will only last for few minutes."
Dredd folded his arms. "Why should I trust you? For all I know, you're part of this conspiracy as well. How do I know you didn't tip off the SJS about where to find me? How do I know you're not going to have me 'shot while trying to escape'?"
"Because I give you my word. Not as an East-Meg citizen or a member of the Sov party, but as a Judge." She stepped closer to him, careful to keep her pistol on the guard. "I am a Russian and I am a patriot, but my first loyalty is to justice. To the law."
Dredd held out his hand. "Prove it. Give me the gun."
Kontarsky did not hesitate. "Here." She placed the needler in his palm and did not flinch when the Mega-City Judge carefully aimed the weapon at her.
"What's to stop me shooting you and making my own way out of here?"
"Nothing. But I can help you get to the heart of this conspiracy, Dredd. There's more at stake than just the dissension here in Luna-1; I suspect that Kommisar Ivanov may be involved in some way."
Dredd considered this new development. An East-Meg connection chimed with the illegal weapons discovered at Kepler and Kontarsky's knowledge would be a useful asset - if he could bring himself to trust a Sov-Judge.
"Guess you're right," he said after a moment. "You!" Dredd told the Luna Judge. "Get in here. Give me your gear."
The guard nodded. "I'm not going to stop you, sir," he replied, quickly stripping off his holster, shoulder pads, belt and boots. "I don't care what the SJS say, I know you didn't kill the Chief Judge."
Dredd studied the younger man's face. "Do I know you, son?"
"Goodworthy, sir. Judge Arthur Goodworthy, Junior. You saved my dad's life once, back on New Year's Eve, 2100. He went Futsie."
Dredd nodded, the events returning to him. "Future shock syndrome. You were just a child, your father worked for Moonie..."
"Yes," said Goodworthy. "That creep worked my dad until he cracked, then sent his goons to gun him down on the street! But you stood up for him, sir. You got him to the shrinks and I never forgot that. That's why I became a Judge." He handed Dredd his STUP-gun. "Get him, sir. The Moon doesn't need scum like Moonie any more."
"Count on it." Dredd nodded at Kontarsky and the Sov-Judge struck Goodworthy with a nerve punch, knocking him unconscious.
"He would have helped us," said Kontarsky. "We could have used him."
Dredd shook his head. "No sense giving Kessler anyone else to take it out on. From now, we do this alone."
"Very well. I assume you have some sort of plan?
"I'll explain on the way."
14. FRESH AIR
With a grim set to his jaw, Dredd watched the metropolitan sprawl flash past through the small rectangular window of the railshuttle, buildings in the foreground blurring into abstract white shapes while the structures further away seemed to move at a more sedate speed. Luna-1 was a city under siege by forces from within and without. Thin plumes of smoke lingered in the air over places where street-fights had turned into infernos and the glittering shapes of Manta prowl tanks and armed Justice Department flyers wove low patterns between the Selenescrapers, spotlights washing over citiblocks and con-apt clusters.
Now and then, Dredd saw the faraway blink-blink of a muzzle flash, too distant to be heard over the rumble of the robot zoom train's maglev. The bubbling undercurrent of tension and lawlessness that he had sensed when he first arrived was raging on the surface now. People were dying and there was little that the Judges could do except plug the flow and pray that more cracks didn't appear. The Mega-City lawman had heard rumours over the past few years about the state of Luna-1, but he had typically dismissed them as hearsay. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Dredd had always known that the lunar capital would stay on an even keel as long as his old friend Tex was at the helm - but now the Judge-Marshal's corpse was barely cold and his city was self-destructing. What would happen in the coming days would be a test of fire for the new leader of Luna-1 and Dredd knew in his bones that former Deputy Judge-Marshal Che wasn't up to the task. Worse, Che was relying on Kessler for support without considering the SJS chief's own agenda.
The curfew would settle things for a few hours, but soon the city would grow restless once more - and the next time it would be worse. Dredd had seen countless block wars during his career, even the monstrous citywide conflict that was the precursor to the invasion by East-Meg One and he knew the cycle of violence behind them all too well. Citizens, trapped in lives that had little point, angry at everything and bored with the status quo were easy converts to the pack mentality and lust for casual violence that mob rule provided. But unlike the people of Earthbound Mega-Cities, Luna-1's populace didn't have the room to expand and blow off steam - they had a city with a lid on it, a pressure cooker that would get hotter and hotter until it exploded. No, there was only one way to stem the tide now. They had to find the root cause of the disorder. Find it and destroy it.
The railshuttle turned on to an outbound loop and with a lurch it was suddenly beyond the main city dome, passing behind the Puerto Luminia barrio and out into the wilderness of the Oxygen Desert. There was little aerial traffic over the city, the curfew extended to all forms of travel, including orbital transports and spaceliners. Only vehicles vital to Luna-1's operation, like this robot train or the constant string of astro-tankers, were still running. B
ut there were other ships up there, hard-edged shapes glinting among the stars, watching one another and biding their time. They circled the Moon like patient vultures shadowing a dying man, crewed by men who were diplomats in name only, men who kept a vigil for the first moment of opportunity. Dredd had no doubt that the moment Luna-1 turned into a fully-fledged war zone, each of them would be landing troop transports full of well-armed "advisors" intent on planting their flag on the city.
"We are accelerating," said Kontarsky. She shifted her position behind a cargo pod and frowned. "This is most uncomfortable."
"I didn't pick this train for the smooth ride," Dredd retorted. "We couldn't chance trying to take another hopper... This is the best option we have."
The Sov-Judge gave a nod. "As you say. But these things are not meant for human passengers and crew. We only have air in this wagon because the cargo in these pods would degrade without it."
Dredd remembered the last time he'd ridden the rails - aboard a hijacked, bomb-laden zoom train crossing the Black Atlantic - and decided that the drab lunar railshuttle was a big improvement. Kontarsky's escape ploy had been good enough to sneak the two of them out of the Grand Hall of Justice without arousing suspicion. Judge Goodworthy had kept his promise and, for all Dredd knew, he was still sleeping off Kontarsky's nerve strike in the iso-cube, waiting for the getaway to be discovered.
Dredd had guided them to a railhead depot in District Six, where automated magnetic levitation trains were dispatched to the distant outpost domes and factory complexes. From there, it had been a fairly simple matter for him to locate a railshuttle bound for the destination he wanted and they had boarded by stealth as machine loaders filled the train with freight. Kontarsky went along with all his commands up to this point without comment, but Dredd couldn't shake off his nagging doubts about the youthful Sov-Judge. It had taken a lot to convince himself not to just stun her and leave her with Goodworthy, but she'd proven useful throughout the investigation and like it or not, he had no way of knowing if something she had said got him caught by the SJS Judges Hiro and Wright. Kessler was smart, after all and he would have probably put someone in Kepler Dome just on the off-chance that Dredd would turn up there. It was what Dredd would have done, if the circumstances were reversed. On top of that, if Kontarsky was right about Ivanov, someone with knowledge of Sov protocols could be invaluable.
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