Black Atlantic

by Peter J Evans

  Teague's office was at the Bisley's stern, past the bottling and distribution plant. But when he got there, the place was empty. A worker directed him down to the filtration plant.

  "Great," Peyton muttered darkly. "Down the drokking stairway again..."

  He met Teague down by the boiler. The mess from the Warchild's attack had been cleaned up and maintenance crews were once again moving between the filters and pipes, checking the readings. They were walking in pairs now, he noticed.

  A sudden vision of Judge Larson's head spinning away from his shoulders filled his mind. He shook it away and decided not to tell the shift workers that it didn't matter if they were in pairs or not.

  "Foreman Teague?" He had to shout the man's name as he walked up to the boiler. The filtration plant was as loud as ever.

  Teague heard the shout and turned. "Ah, Tek-Judge Peyton. Back again?"

  "Just briefly, foreman. I need you to tell me something. Since the, ah, incident, have there been any breaches in the system? Something that maybe caused a loss of pressure?"

  Teague's scaly face creased in surprise. "Why yes. Once poor Voley Sparxx had recovered somewhat, she told me that she'd been investigating a pressure drop in cylinder C-3." Teague's voice was rich and booming and Peyton had no difficulty hearing it. "That's what she was doing when she was separated from the rest of her shift."

  "Did you check it out?"

  "We did. There's a split in the cylinder, up at the end cap. Not big, but enough to drop ten per cent of filtration pressure. We're hoping that's what is causing the bad taste in the water."

  "Bad taste in the..." Peyton's heart flip-flopped behind his ribs. "Tell me you haven't sealed it yet."

  "We're about to. We have a man working on it right now."

  Peyton turned and ran, haring towards the cylinders. "Stop him!" he yelled. "For grud's sake, stop him!"

  Peyton was in time. He was up the cylinder ladder, staring down at the hole Voley Sparxx had seen, when the call came in from Judge Dredd.

  "Peyton, you obviously like the idea of a permanent posting to the Undercity."

  "Sir, I'm sorry about leaving the team. But what I'm doing is extremely relevant to our investigation."

  "Explain."

  "Give me a few minutes, Judge Dredd. I'll give you all the explanation you need."

  What Peyton needed was light. He took the flashlight from his belt pouch and instead of clipping it to his Lawgiver, he snapped it into a concealed port in the right side of his helmet. He wanted both hands free for this.

  The beam from the flashlight speared down into the hole. Peyton could see where the two skins of the cylinder had been punched through, and then the hole deliberately widened. Inside the cylinder the water was dark and churning, frothy with heat and the constant rotation of the filter heads.

  There was something in the water that should not have been there. Hoping his arms were roughly as long as the Warchild's, Peyton leaned in and thrust his hand into the scalding water.

  "It was attached to the inside of the cylinder," he told Dredd later. "The Warchild ripped a hole in the top of the filter and just stuck it there."

  The object was the size of his fist, a swollen mushroom covered in the same pallid, leathery skin they had seen on the eye-spiders and the exploding pustules in the power chamber. Peyton had sealed it in a clear jar of water and taken it back to the central bridge. Now he, Dredd, Quint and Bane were clustered around it, watching as it pulsed softly.

  Quint had activated a table-map. The table had bright biolumes under the surface, for illuminating maps and charts from below. It also did a very good job of illuminating the thing in the jar.

  "Every few minutes," Peyton continued, "it... Hold on, here goes."

  As they watched, the mushroom drew back into itself, then gave a stronger pulse. Holes in its wider end dilated, allowing black dust to spill out into the water.

  There was already a coating of similar dust on the bottom of the jar.

  "Spores," said Peyton, straightening up. "Microscopic and tougher than Justice Department boots. It's been releasing them into the water supply since before D-shift was attacked."

  "But the filters," Quint began. "Why didn't they-"

  "If it had just put germs in the water, the filters would have killed them. The boiler would have made them safe before they got to distribution. But spores, some of them, can survive almost anything: trips through interstellar space, being cooked in volcanoes, and worse."

  Bane looked puzzled. "So the spores get into the water, and into the bottles. People drink the water and get sick. But why?"

  "Area denial," said Peyton simply. At Dredd's questioning glance, he continued. "Remember I said that the Warchild units had a number of mission profiles? I reckon this batch was set for area denial. Get into enemy territory and make it uninhabitable. It killed enough people to hide its intentions, ate enough of them to provide itself with biomass for the booby traps and the spiders and this, and then waited for the population to start dying off." He stepped back and folded his arms. "The plague and the Warchild are one and the same problem."

  "Drokk," Quint snarled. "Unless we can cure this spore-plague, your monster has killed us all."

  "I wish Hellermann was here," Peyton said, then noticed that the others were looking at him very hard. "No, what I mean is, we need her expertise. She'd know how this thing works."

  "Wouldn't tell us, though, would she?" Vix was still slumped in her chair on the other side of the bridge. "She'd rather watch us all die."

  Peyton had to admit that was true. He turned to Dredd. "Sir? I'd like to request a change of assignment."

  "Wouldn't we all?" said Vix. Peyton narrowed his eyes in her direction then turned back to Dredd. "I'm no street Judge, sir, and face to face with the Warchild I'd be worse than useless. But this might be something I can help with. Request transfer to the Venturer so I can work on a cure."

  "Peyton," whispered Bane. "That's suicide. It's obviously gone beyond something you catch from bad water. You'd get it too."

  "Maybe. But hell, there's nothing like a tight deadline to sharpen the mind, is there?"

  Dredd didn't like losing Peyton, but the man was right. There was far more he could do for the case on the Venturer than chasing after the Warchild.

  Bane had helped him collect as much equipment as he could from the Judges' medikits, leaving just enough painkillers and bandages for Vix. There would be other equipment on the Venturer, Quint had told him. As Sargasso's newest hospital it had already been fitted out with the best the cityship had to offer.

  Dredd watched him go from the long windows, with Bane guiding him. Quint was studying a control board next to him. "Looks like you're on your own, Dredd."

  "I work best that way." He waited for Vix to make a snide comment, but when he glanced over at her, she'd fallen asleep. "What can you tell me about the Kraken's sump outlets?"

  Quint was still studying his board. "Wait a moment, Dredd." The skipper walked to another board, one that looked like a comms set. He lifted a microphone on the end of a coiled cable. "Stern lookout, what have you got bearing one-seven-five?"

  There was a hiss of static. "Ah, hard to tell, skipper. Lot of gunk in that direction. The screws are kicking up some real drek."

  Quint made a face. "Keep looking."

  Dredd watched him walk back to the board he had been working before. "What's the problem?"

  "I'm not sure. Take a look at this and tell me what you see."

  Dredd studied the monitor screen set into the control board. It looked like a broad-scan sensor array: feeds from deep sonar, surface radar, and even high-intensity laser-return sets all patched into one integrated system.

  The monitor screen was largely blank, save for a few motes scattered around. But there was a hazy line dogging the lower edge. "Looks like a laser return."

  "That's what I thought." Quint tapped commands into the board, cycling the screen through a number of different modes. Only
one showed the ghostly line. "Yeah, laser all right. But why aren't we getting a return from anything else?"

  "Stealth?" suggested Dredd. As he said it, Quint's eye went wide.

  He raced back to the comms set. "Stern lookout, bearing one-seven-five! Switch off all electronic assist and use your eyes! What do you see?"

  The silence was longer this time. "We have a sighting, skipper, mark one-seven-five. Another cityship at extreme visual range. It must be stealth-clad along the bow, that's why we didn't catch it."

  "Stealth-clad? Grud..." Quint turned to stare out of the bridge's rear ports then went to a side door and shoved it open. Dredd saw him step out onto an observation deck and followed.

  "What now, Quint?"

  In answer, Quint stretched out a massive arm and pointed. "There. See it?"

  On the stern horizon, past the fountains of spray kicked up by the drive screws, was a low, flat cloud of dark vapour. "Another city?"

  "Another city. One with stealth plating, heading right for us."

  Not all cityships, Bane told Dredd later, made their living by salvage and fishing. Some preferred quicker, riskier profits. Among the twenty or so cityships that plied the Black Atlantic, at least two were known pirates.

  Instead of scavenger vessels, they had fleets of attack ships. Usually they would concentrate their efforts on single vessels, using suites of sophisticated sensors to detect them at long range, then creep in masked by stealth plates. The attack ships had such plates too. Bane knew this from bitter experience. She had almost lost the Warchild casket to a stealth-clad pirate. "Wish I had now," she sighed.

  "You and me both," said Dredd. They were on one of the upper balconies, using Bane's binocs to watch the other cityship's approach. "How often do they attack another city?"

  "Not once in my lifetime. But they're coming in fast. Quint says they'll be on us in about ten hours."

  The other cityship had been identified as the Abraxis. It was smaller than Sargasso, but significantly faster. Quint had ordered the harbour barges to close their doors, and skipper's men had been stationed at the city's edges, ready to repel boarders. Heavy weapons were being prepared, but such things were rare on the open ocean. Sargasso had access to a few dozen twin-linked spit guns, a few ship-to-ship missiles, maybe even a torpedo or two. But nothing that could even dent an entire cityship.

  "Dredd?" Vix had appeared at the balcony hatch. She was still pale and hanging onto the wall for support, but there was a familiar set to her jaw and she had her helmet back on. Despite being almost eviscerated only a short time ago, she was back on the case. Buell would have been proud. "You better come and listen to this."

  Dredd and Bane followed her back onto the bridge. Vix had taken over one of the sensor workstations, and she led them there before dropping heavily back into its seat.

  "The Sargassans have been trying to hail the Abraxis for an hour," she said, gloved fingers tapping at the workstation's keyboard. "No reply, of course. They're persistent, I'll give them that, but to be quite honest they couldn't run a listening post to save their lives."

  "And you could?" Bane muttered. Vix grinned.

  "It's my job. Now this is the interesting part. Sargasso did get a reply, but no one heard it. Before anyone saw the Abraxis, we got this."

  She tapped a final key, and a long, wavering squawk of static erupted from the speakers. Dredd saw Bane wincing.

  The static finished. "Well," Dredd growled. "Very enlightening."

  Vix tapped more keys. "Okay, maybe I'm more used to this kind of thing. This is all the filters I have here - try now."

  This time, there was a voice embedded in the static. It said one word.

  "Everyone."

  Another hour went by, during which time Dredd learned that the Kraken's sump outlets could have deposited the Warchild in any one of fifteen different spots, all of them in easy reach of either the open sea or a way back to the cityship. Once again, he was reduced to waiting for someone to see spiders. In the meantime, the Abraxis drew ever closer, but neither modified its course or sent any further transmissions.

  Eventually, Vix took Dredd aside. "Sir, I've got a very bad feeling about this."

  "When have you ever had a good one?"

  "Captain Bane told me that there was at least one more casket out at sea when she picked her one up. We know that Hellermann's first batch consisted of ten Warchild units. What if the stealth ship that attacked Bane picked one up or more than one? They might all be on the same timer and they'd all have the same programming."

  "So why aim Abraxis right at Sargasso and put their foot down?"

  She shook her head. "I don't know. But maybe the Abraxis is unable to alter course. If they can't, maybe we should."

  "They have. Quint slammed the Sargasso hard to port as soon as the Abraxis was confirmed. But with something this size, it's gonna be twenty hours before it even starts to turn away."

  Vix sagged. "Twenty hours... Grud. What can we do?"

  "I'm working on that," Dredd told her. "And in spite of my better judgement, I'll need your help."

  16. ALWAYS AND EVERYONE

  Peyton had been given a little office on board the Venturer. He had turned it as quickly as possible into a disease control laboratory, equipped with everything Quint had been able to find for him. He had microscopes, a spectrogram, bio-scanners and bacterial growth chambers. He had a small hot zone box, pressure sealed and with two heavy rubberised gloves poking into it from the front face. He had a computer. He had several competent, dedicated nurses, even if a couple of them did have more eyes than usual.

  What he didn't have was a clue. People were dying around him and right now he didn't have the faintest notion of what to do about it.

  Peyton put his notepad aside and rubbed his eyes. He'd only been working on the Venturer for a few hours, but he was already exhausted. There were six hundred patients aboard - the full capacity. When he had arrived there had been six hundred, then twenty minutes later there had been four hundred and seventy, plus one hundred and thirty corpses. Now there were six hundred again.

  He could imagine this process continuing until there was no one left on Sargasso at all.

  The disease killed everyone it touched. It was one of the very few infections with a one hundred per cent kill-rate.

  There was a tap on the door. As he lifted his head, the door opened and one of the nurses looked in. "Judge Peyton? There's been another wave."

  "How many this time?"

  "Ninety-six," she said quietly, and drew the door closed behind her. Peyton groaned. The time between the waves of deaths seemed impossible to predict. They might come an hour apart, or a minute. But no one on the Venturer died alone.

  In a while, skipper's men wearing breath-masks would come in and take the bodies away, while more would bring the new arrivals. It was like a murderous production line. Bring out the dead, take in the living, and wait for them to die.

  Judge Peyton sat back and wondered if was going to be any more use here than he would facing an angry Warchild.

  The hardest part was not going out into the ship to help the sick. That had been his first reaction upon reaching the Venturer, to don a mask and gown and help the nurses treat the fevers and the pains. Peyton had joined the Justice Department out of a desire to serve the people of Mega-City One, to help those in need, protect those who could not protect themselves. Here, on this great floating city-state, he was surrounded by people he couldn't help. He was watching them die right in front of him.

  Victims of the disease rapidly became horribly lethargic, barely able to move. They were breathless, suffered terrible muscle pains and shivered constantly. Their skin, especially over the major blood vessels, became a sprawl of angry red rashes. They were feverish, coughing and terrified.

  Then, very suddenly, they died.

  And he didn't know why.

  The stern lookout was set high above the deck. Unusually for the Sargasso it had been purpose-built - a tall, cant
ilevered tower topped by a plastiglass dome the size of a pat-wagon.

  Dredd was able to get Vix into the lookout by means of a walkway leading from the central bridge. The walkway was narrow and flimsy, shuddering in the breeze and floored in the same open mesh that the Sargassans used whenever they had to build a platform over a long drop. Still, she never would have made it into the lookout by its other accessway; that was a ladder with more than two hundred rungs.

  Quint had told the lookout operator to stand down while Vix was in the pod on Dredd's recommendation. Not that Vix needed to be alone to do her job, but if she were up there with anyone from the Sargasso's crew she would probably end up provoking him into a fist fight.

  Dredd watched as Vix settled herself into the lookout seat. The seat was on a rail that ran across the pod, port to starboard. She slid herself back and forward a few times, experimentally, making sure she was in easy reach of the various telescopes, binocs and scanners that were set into the pod's sternward side.

  "Whee," she said flatly.

  "This isn't a game, Vix," Dredd said. "You're supposed to be the big surveillance expert, so start surveilling."

  Vix rolled along to the big telescope in the centre of the pod. There was a video camera attached to the eyepiece, with a feed cable running back to a monitor screen. Vix tried to focus it for about four seconds before losing patience and tearing the camera away. The monitor screen showed a momentary whirl of colour, then the olive-green top of Dredd's boot.

  "That's better," muttered Vix, peering directly into the eyepiece. "No resolution on that piece of drek worth mentioning."

  "Never mind that. What do you see?"

  Vix was silent for a long moment. "I've got the Abraxis," she murmured after a time. "Bridge, upper deck, top structures. A lot of armour. Stealth plates over almost everything. No crew, though."

  "They hiding?"

  "A hundred thousand people?" Vix frowned, increasing the magnification. "Maybe they're all concealed, but it would be quite a... Hold on, I've got someone. Ah."