At the same time, more mutants popped up from their hiding places. A lot of them. Dredd found himself, not for the first time in his life, standing in the crosshairs of several hundred weapons.
"This is my city, Judge Dredd," snarled Mako Quint. "And you are not welcome here."
9. POWER TO THE PEOPLE
Luckily for the mutants, none of them tried to take Dredd's Lawgiver away.
The drop team had been led into the Putin's conning tower by a squad of armed men and women who appeared to be under Mako Quint's direct command. Some were obviously mutated, although many seemed human. Dredd guessed that everyone on the cityship must have been mutated to some degree but he also knew that DNA tended to start kinking on prolonged exposure to Black Atlantic water.
Quint had met them at the base of the conning tower, looked them over, and then turned away and walked inside without a word. He was a big man, physically larger than Dredd, and he carried his bulk easily. Under his clothes - dark shirt and trousers, fishskin jacket, heavy utility boots - he was all muscle. Dredd noted that if he and Quint came to blows, the other man would definitely have the advantage in strength. And Dredd couldn't rely on being too much faster, either.
Life on the Atlantic not only made people into mutants, it also made them tough. It would be a mistake, Dredd knew, to underestimate any of them.
Once inside the tower, they were taken by elevator to what had been the fire control deck. According to what Dredd knew about this class of warship, the Putin's deck would have been ringed with weapons boards, sensor stations and comms equipment when it was operational. All that was long gone and in its place were blank walls painted a grim brown, biolume strips around the ceiling, and three rows of bench seats against the far wall. The seats were set at different levels with highest at the back. To Dredd, who had spent a lot of time in the Cursed Earth, it was a familiar enough arrangement.
"Mutants," he growled, mainly to himself, "sure do love a council."
Quint had gone in ahead of them and his guards had stationed themselves around the rear wall of the chamber. The benches were already occupied - Dredd counted thirteen mutants there, none of whom could have been mistaken for human, even in the worst light.
Out in the rad-deserts and wastelands that surrounded Mega-City One, every second town or settlement Dredd had ridden through had some kind of council, quorum or elected body making life difficult. He didn't know why and didn't much care. They just seemed to like it. Maybe it made them feel important, worthwhile.
Human.
Dredd looked across at Quint. "I got the impression you were in charge here."
"Skipper Quint," said a mutant on the lowest bench, "is responsible for maintaining the rule of law on board the Sargasso." The mutant's voice was rich and fluid; strangely so, given that he seemed to consist of a head and very little else. The fleshy tentacle making up the rest of his body was curled up and strapped into a padded chair that was studded with interface jacks; presumably it could be bolted into a robot prosthesis to give the man mobility.
Dredd hadn't taken his eyes off Quint. "Then we have at least that in common."
"However," the mutant continued, "matters that concern the safety of the entire cityship come before us. My name is Jubal Haab, and we are-"
"The ruling council," Dredd cut in. "Or some variation on the theme." He stepped forward.
"Listen to me, councillor. You're wasting time. You know who I am and why I'm here - if you hadn't got my message we'd be shooting our way in to see you right about now."
"You wouldn't be getting far," rumbled Quint.
The limbless mutant gave Quint a dark look, then turned his attention back to Dredd. "I've no doubt you would have tried, lawman. And it would have been Quint's duty to stop you. We selected him for the post of skipper, just as we were elected to the council by the people of Sargasso. And we are very good indeed at choosing the right man for the job."
"Oh, terrific," snapped Vix. "A democracy. We could be here for a week."
At the SJS-Judge's words, the temperature in the room seemed to drop by several degrees. Dredd kept his gaze firmly on the wormlike mutant, but in his peripheral vision he could see Larson and Adams tensing up, shifting their body positions to allow for a quick draw from their temporary holsters.
He could also see that, while the guards still weren't aiming directly at him, their guns weren't exactly pointed anywhere else, either. This was bad. If push came to shove, the drop team were badly outnumbered, and they hadn't had a chance to take their Shrike suits off. Dredd didn't relish the idea of trying to shoot his way out of this place with ten kilos of McTighe's radar-eating rubber spoiling his aim.
"Perfect," he heard Peyton mutter. "I survive the drop and then get fragged because she doesn't like their politics."
Dredd pointed a gloved finger at Haab. "You can vote all you like," he grated. "Fact is, you've got a killing machine making synthi-mince of your population. All you have to work out is what's less welcome - us, or it."
"It's thanks to people like you that it's here in the first place!" hissed out the councillor to Haab's left. This one had three eyes staring out of a blank sac of a head and his reedy, outraged voice whistled from an opening at the base of his throat.
"Grafton's right," said a woman whose arms were as boneless and ceaselessly mobile as a squid's. "I say put them over the side and we'll kill this evil toy of theirs ourselves!"
At that, everyone on the bench was yelling. Thirteen councillors, thirteen opinions, thirteen voices raised above that of its neighbour in an attempt to get its message across. Instant chaos. Fights broke out. Pieces of paper flew up into the air. Jubal Haab was howling for silence and Dredd saw that Quint was standing with his eyes closed, his head shaking slowly from side to side.
"Wonderful sight," said Dredd quietly. "Democracy in action."
"This toy," snapped Hellermann, stepping past Dredd and right up to the first bench, "is the most sophisticated biological weapons platform ever produced!"
The hubbub gradually died down. Within a few seconds, every one of the mutant councillors were looking at Hellermann, the sharp-featured, crop-headed woman with the bulky grey bodysuit and the voice that could cut through hull plating.
Hellermann folded her arms and glared up at the council with utter disdain. "What do you think this is, some B-Vid monster? Wandering about with its arms outstretched, picking off the odd screaming victim until the hero catches it off guard and pushes it off a cliff?"
She shook her head as if amazed by their stupidity. "The Warchild project took fifteen years and over two billion credits of research to develop. It's designed to operate independently for an indefinite period under the harshest battlefield conditions. It has internal weaponry, stealth skin and bullet proof armour. It can be programmed with any number of specific mission profiles, or left to its default settings - and believe me, even under default settings this thing is your worst nightmare!"
Hellermann stepped back, knowing she had the whole council's attention and obviously loving it. "Trust me; no matter how many people you send after this thing there's only one way you'll know if they find it. They won't come back.
"There's only one person on this cityship who can stop it. Me."
There was a long pause. Then Jubal Haab twisted in his support harness. "Is this true?" he demanded, staring directly at Dredd.
"That's what she says," Dredd replied. "She's the closest thing it's got to a mother."
Again, the council members began to talk at once. Haab called for silence and this time the noise ceased almost immediately.
"We should consider this carefully," Haab said. "In private."
Two council members - the one with the neck-mouth and a woman who had vestigial hands sprouting from either side of her neck - picked up Haab's seat and carried it out of the room. "Make yourselves comfortable," Haab told Dredd as he was carried towards the door. "Uninvited you may be, but you are our guests."
"I ca
n't believe they thought we brought it here on purpose!"
Gethsemane Bane stopped pacing as Angle spoke. It was the first time in a long while that anyone in the cell had said anything, and sitting in silence had been driving her slowly insane. She often paced about on Golgotha's decks, when the seas had been empty and the way home long and slow.
Of course, there wasn't as much room here.
There were five decks under the conning tower in the brig. The Putin's superstructure housed the council chamber, Quint's office and the central bridge; all the machinery of law and order on Sargasso, in fact. So it was quite appropriate that anyone who transgressed those laws should be kept on the same vessel.
"They don't," Dray replied. He was sitting on the cell's one, narrow bunk, his eye closed and his back against the wall. "They're just drokked off with us."
"We'll still be punished, though." Can-Rat was next to him, curled up around the pain of his bandaged ribs. "Maybe they're trying to figure out what to do with us."
Angle, who had found a corner of the cell as soon as he had been thrown into it and had stayed there the whole time, punched the wall in frustration. "Should be a short debate," he spat. "I mean, what would you do to the dumb sneckers that brought a box-wrapped killing machine home to Mama?"
Can-Rat realised what Angle was talking about. "They wouldn't. Would they?"
"Exile?" Angle said, then shrugged. "Sneck. I would."
Bane closed her eyes. Exile was something she'd not been letting herself think about.
Even for a scavenger whose life was measured by long periods on the open sea, the idea of exile was a nightmare. Those sentenced to it would be cast adrift in a small vessel, sometimes with a little food and water, sometimes without. The lucky ones would find themselves prey to Black Atlantic wildlife; megasharks, most usually, but there were bigger and nastier things under those inky waters. The less fortunate wouldn't be eaten at all. They would die slowly from hunger and thirst and the slow, insidiously corrosive effects of the ocean itself.
If you were strong and they gave you some water, you might last a fortnight.
Exile was the worst punishment available to the cityships - worse than execution, by far. When you were exiled, you had time to regret what you'd done.
"They wouldn't exile you," Bane whispered. "They wouldn't do that. Golgotha's mine, I'm responsible. I won't let them punish you." She started pacing again, head down so they couldn't see the fear in her eyes.
"How, cap'n?" Angle was glaring up at her. "Sorry and all, but it doesn't look like you've got a whole lot of leverage from here!"
Dray opened his eye and gave him a look. "Calm down, kid."
"The sneck I will!" Angle leapt to his feet. Dray was up to, in an instant.
"I told you to calm the sneck down!"
"That's enough!" Philo Jennig had appeared at the cell door. As the crew fell silent, he gave a nod to the skipper's man who had been posted outside.
The guard unlocked the door and slid the bars aside.
"Jennig." Bane stepped quickly towards the deputy. The guard began to raise his rifle but Jennig shook his head.
Bane took a deep breath. The way things were going for her right now, she reckoned she had one chance at this, and one only. "Listen," she said, "I've told Quint and now I'm telling you. My people had nothing to do with this. If anyone should be punished, it's me."
Jennig cocked his head to one side. "You sure you know what you're saying?"
"Yeah. Tell them I'll accept exile." Behind her, Dray gasped, but she ignored him. "Drokk, I'll jump over the side myself if that's what it takes. Anything they want, as long as my crew go free."
A grin spread over Jennig's face. "Captain Bane, I believe you just said the magic words."
For the drop team, comfortable meant being rid of the Shrike suits.
By the time the councillors began to file back in, Dredd was in full uniform again. His shoulder and knee pads were strapped on, his Lawgiver and daystick were at his belt, and his badge of office was chained onto his uniform.
He was ready for work.
After the councillors had settled themselves, Mako Quint strode back into the chamber. This time, someone was with him; a tall, slender woman with short dark hair. She wore heavy trousers with pockets sewn onto every spare centimetre of fabric, a vest and heavy boots. She wasn't armed.
Her skin, under the glow of the biolumes, had a strange sheen.
"We have discussed the situation," began Jubal Haab, speaking as soon as his padded seat had been set onto the bench. "And your claim that you can solve it."
"And how many of your people have been slaughtered while you've been 'discussing?'" Vix spat.
Dredd raised a hand. "That's enough, Vix."
Haab fixed Dredd with a liquid stare. "You can take your weapon," he said. "Hunt it down, make it safe and take it back to your Mega-City. You will be escorted to the location of its last kill. From there, Gethsemane Bane will guide you." With a jerk of the head Haab indicated the new arrival. "She captained the ship that brought your monster here."
Dredd gave the woman a sideways look. "Bad luck."
"No drek," he heard her whisper.
"You will receive no more help from us," Haab continued. "Find the rogue weapon and you are welcome to it. Die and we shall find another way to deal with it."
"Sounds fair," Dredd replied. "Let's get to it."
10. THE HUNTER
They began at the vent. There was something at the site of that bloodbath Dredd needed to see.
The bodies had been taken away but the stains had not. No one had wanted to stay near the vent long enough to clean the deck - simply moving the corpses had been done with unseemly haste. Bane found herself treading carefully between the grisly evidence of what had occurred a few hours before: broad, ragged-edged puddles where men's lives had poured out onto the deck, wide triangles that spoke of arterial spray and tracks where hands and feet had skidded in blood.
There were round spots, too, where droplets had flicked through the air. In their thousands.
Most of the blood had dried in the warm wind from the vent, gone from bright crimson to a dark, rusty brown, but some of the puddles were too deep. Distressingly, those were often the ones that contained fragments of what Bane could only allow herself to think of as "material."
Others had walked here without as much care. Bloody footprints crisscrossed the deck.
Just being here was making Bane feel shivery and ill. Before this, she had only been told of what the Warchild was capable of - she hadn't even been allowed to see Orca's body. But now, although the corpses themselves were gone, the tale of their final moments was told in painful detail.
And the Warchild, as these intruders from dry land called it, could be anywhere. It could be watching her right now.
Bane drew her coat tight around her thin shoulders and stuffed her hands deep into the pockets. She allowed herself a quick, surreptitious glance at the intruders to see if they were as frightened as she was.
Apart from the woman that called herself Hellermann, the rest of them wore glossy armoured helmets that covered most of their faces. What little she could see showed different reactions: Dredd, the leader, seemed completely unaffected by the carnage, as did the female Judge with the skull on her helmet. Larson and Adams had gone a little pale, and the small chubby one, Peyton, looked positively sick.
Dredd had noticed that too. "Pull yourself together, Peyton," he growled. "Gonna get worse than this."
Vix, the skull-headed one, was crouched next to the vent. Bane watched her, trying to work out what she was doing; the way she was tipping her head this way and that seemed odd, until she spoke. "How many do you make it, Dredd?"
"Fifteen."
"That's what I got." Vix stood up. She must have been down there to get a different angle on the bloodstains, Bane realised. And from this mess they were able to tell how many had died?
Despite herself, she was impressed.
"Doesn't tally," said Peyton. "I asked that Jennig guy, the one with the head? He told me there had been fourteen bodies pulled out of here." He put his hand to his mouth and coughed weakly. "Well, he said it had come to fourteen when they put them back together."
"So we're missing one." Dredd rubbed his chin, thoughtfully. "Maybe he got away."
"I doubt it," Hellerman cut in. "It's not built that way."
Vix walked over to Hellermann and put herself right in the scientist's face. "Enlighten us, doctor," she sneered.
There was a long silence as the two women stared each other down. Vix, behind her grisly-looking helmet, had the advantage. Eventually Hellermann shrugged. "It doesn't leave witnesses," she said.
Vix snorted and walked away. As she went past Dredd, Bane heard him say: "Feel better?"
"Much."
I'm doomed, Bane thought wildly. These people were supposed to find Orca's killer, track it down through the kilometres of steel maze that made up the cityship's interior, and make it safe. Instead, they seemed more interested in scoring points off each other.
Anyway, Hellermann was wrong. "Can-Rat's alive," she said.
Suddenly, everyone was looking at her. "Say again," Dredd told her.
"Can-Rat. He's one of my crew. He was there when the, er, Warchild killed Orca, and it hit him, but then it got distracted and ran away."
"Which means?" Dredd was looking at Hellermann. The woman seemed momentarily confused.
"Another situation must have overridden its default program. It thought it was in more immediate danger from another source."
"Did you build it that way?" asked Larson.
Hellermann shook her head. "Not exactly."
"Great," muttered Adams. "It's malfunctioning."
"Which makes it even more dangerous." Dredd turned to Bane. "Okay, captain. This is where you come in."
Bane's eyebrows went up. "Me?"
"You're supposed to guide us, right?" He leaned close and pointed his gloved finger at her nose. "So get guiding. Or we'll throw you back to the council and make our own way."
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