Dredd caught sight of the Luna-City Judge working at a holoconsole, using the department's central computer MAC to compose a report on the wrecker incident. "Tyler," he snapped, and the technician started at the sound of his voice.
"Dredd! What's, uh, up?"
"Figured you might tell me." He gestured at the console, where an exploded graphic of the suspect truck was slowly rotating. "What do you have?"
"Gotta hand it to you, sir. You know how to pick 'em." Tyler manipulated the controls to highlight the vehicle's engine compartment. "Normally, fake ID or a pay 'n' spray is about how far you have to go with a thing like this, but whoever was running this truck put in a hell of a lot of effort to make it stay invisible." He pointed at an engine component. "If the tags on a vehicle are fake, you can usually make a secondary ID with serial numbers on the chassis or the drive core."
"Tell me something I don't know," Dredd snapped.
"Uh, yeah. Well, that's the thing. There are no serial codes on the parts of this truck. I mean, on none of them, from the pads in the disc brakes to the igniter plugs, heck, even the bulbs in the headlights. They've all been burnt off with microlasers." He scratched at his temple. "Like I said, a lot of effort."
"What about streetcams? Can you backtrack the vehicle to its point of origin."
Tyler shook his head. "Way ahead of you there, Dredd. I ran a search process using the truck's sensor silhouette with traffic control's cameras along the Braga Sked and came up with this." A grainy image appeared on the display, and it took Dredd a moment to realise that all he could see of the nondescript truck was maybe a half-metre piece of its prow, poking out from behind a large petrotanker rig.
"One still? One picture from the hundreds of thousands of public security monitors we've got all over the Meg?"
"Exactly," replied the Tek-Judge. "Here's the crux of it. I reckon the truck's autonavigator knew where the cameras were, it knew their sweep patterns. With that information, it could make sure it passed the observation points at just the right moment, when the cameras were pointing the opposite way or when a bigger vehicle..." he pointed at the image, "...was blocking the view."
"Cute theory," said Dredd, "but with the computer core fried there's no way to verify it."
"Yup. I just can't figure why someone would go to all this trouble to conceal an empty truck."
"It wasn't empty." The other Judge's tone was flat; he wasn't making a suggestion, he was stating a fact. "It was just empty when we found it. Where's the vehicle?"
Tyler jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "In bay nine, in little pieces by now. I thought maybe we could get a metallurgical read off some of the parts, maybe trace the origins that way."
"Show me."
The Tek-Judge led him to an opaque plasteen bubble held on an overhead frame, giving him a sideways glance. "Uh, my divisional commander wanted me back in the H-Wagon for this shift, but I told him I was working this on your orders and-"
Dredd silenced him with a snarl. "What the drokk is this?" Tyler followed Dredd's accusing finger. An inert servo-droid sat idly next to an empty transport pallet. There was no sign of the truck, or any of its component parts.
Tyler blanched. "Wait, no... This is bay nine. This is where I left it." He approached the robot, which came to life as it detected him. "Droid! Where's the damn truck?"
"Dismantled and destroyed, as per orders of Tek-Judge Nathan Tyler this morning."
"What? No! I didn't say nothin' about destruction! I ordered you to take it apart!"
"Where are the pieces?" snapped Dredd, although he already knew the answer.
"Components declared null and void are shipped to municipal fusion furnace for disposal."
"Stomm!" shouted Tyler. "That's a loada stomm!" He rounded on Dredd. "I never gave that order!"
"Too late now." The senior Judge studied Tyler's face; if he was lying, he was faking it pretty damn well. "Find out who had access to this bay today..." The words died on his lips as Dredd's line of sight crossed the walkway gantry of the lab's upper level. A female Judge, one with a fan of dark red hair emerging from beneath her helmet, was making a swift exit from the room.
Vedder. She'd had the same haircut in her file photo.
Dredd left a nonplussed Tyler in his wake and made for the lower level exit, shouldering aside anyone who got in his way.
He emerged in the main atrium, and for long seconds he hesitated, scanning the crowds of citizens and uniforms for his target. Dredd concentrated on the kinetics of the woman's movements, visualising the balance of her walk in his mind's eye until he spotted the red-haired Judge, stepping into an elevator across from the giant Arrest Clock counter.
"Vedder!" Dredd broke into a sprint, boots snapping against the marble floor. She met his gaze, her helmet concealing an indifferent expression on her face. He saw the name on her badge; it was the COE agent all right.
She watched him get to within a few metres of the lift before the doors slammed shut, blocking Dredd's snarling visage from her view. Alone in the elevator car, Vedder allowed herself a brief smile of amusement. It was a cold, chilly expression on her flawless, cream-coloured face, there and then gone again like the glint of a muzzle-flash.
The lift dropped two levels to the underground garages where her bike was waiting for her. She had already summoned the machine through her tight-beam vocoder, and it would be there for her like a loyal steed as she stepped out...
The doors parted to reveal a man made of hard armour planes, shoulders rising and falling with the effort of exertion. "Vedder," he said, sarcasm sharpening his words. "Perhaps you didn't hear me?"
She stepped out of the lift, masking her disappointment. How had he known where she was going? A lucky guess, perhaps? No matter. She wouldn't allow such a ploy to wrong-foot her. "Dredd," she pitched her voice with boredom and disinterest. "I'm sorry. My mind is on other things."
Vedder tried to step around him to where her bike was humming quietly on the ramp, but Dredd moved with her, close enough to be menacing, far enough away to react if she tried to attack. As if she would ever have been so crude.
"We have to talk."
"I'm busy-"
"You can start by telling me what you were doing in the Tek-Lab just now."
She halted and met his steely gaze. "Is this an interrogation, Judge Dredd? It sounds like an interrogation. Am I being accused of something?" She made a show of looking around. "I don't see any officers of the SJS here, which means I can't be under suspicion of any crimes."
"You're ducking me," Dredd growled. "You were in Sector 88 last night and you ignored an all-points call. Then some of my evidence goes missing and you just happen to be walking by. What's the deal with the stealth truck, Vedder?"
"Your evidence is your concern, Dredd," she snapped back. "And I'm not ducking you, as you put it. I'm on a critical assignment and I don't have time to waste answering your questions. This is a 'big picture, small picture' thing, Dredd, and you are quite small right now..." Vedder sneered. "But in the interest of inter-departmental cordiality, I'll tell you this, for the record. I have no comprehension of what you are talking about. Run a Birdie test if you don't believe me."
Dredd snorted. "I know all about the training and the implants you spooks have. You could tell my lie detector you were Judge Cal and it would give you a green light." He leaned closer. "Why don't you save us all a lot of trouble and tell me what that vehicle was carrying?"
Vedder's lips thinned to a hard line. "I'll say it once more, because of my personal respect for your record and your reputation, Dredd. You are wasting my time and your own following a dead-end lead. Now get out of my way, or I'll charge you with obstruction!"
There was a brief moment when Vedder thought Dredd was actually going to strike her; but then he stepped aside with a grimace and let her climb aboard her bike. The motorcycle carried her away and out into the city, and she never once looked back to see him watch her go.
The bike took her into the th
rong of the mid-day traffic. Although outwardly it appeared to be a standard-issue Mark III Lawmaster, the modifications under the skin added by COE TekOps made it altogether a different breed of animal to the machines that Dredd and his fellow street jockeys rode. Like Vedder herself, it was an advanced tool masquerading as its common cousin; like the bike, Vedder was something very different beneath the leathereen of her Judge's uniform.
She gunned the motor and accelerated. Dredd had taken up too much of her time already, and she had an appointment to keep.
He found Tyler up to his elbows inside the torso of the robot assistant, cables and circuit boards spilling out onto a workbench like mechanical innards.
"What's this?" Dredd demanded.
Tyler looked up, his face drawn. "Lookin' for evidence of tampering. Didn't find a damn thing. According to this tin-head's memory, I ordered the truck to be broken up and disintegrated - 'cept I didn't say anything of the kind!"
"Like I said, too late now. What about your files?"
The Tek-Judge nodded. "Yeah, I backed them up into deep memory and cut a copy myself." He brandished a shiny data disc. "At least we still got that." Tyler frowned. "But without the vehicle we're back to square one... That's if, uh, you still want me to work on this case with you."
Dredd gave him a measuring stare. If the Covert Operations Establishment were messing around inside city limits with something, then their influence over the Mega-City One Justice Department couldn't be ruled out - and that made it difficult for Dredd to move without them knowing about it. Tyler, however... At the moment, Tyler was the closest thing to untouchable, recently arrived from Luna-1 and therefore highly unlikely to be under COE influence. Add to that, the junior Judge had put in good work after that "Moon-U" incident and he was quick, if a little inexperienced. "For now," Dredd told him, "get to work sifting through the rest of the incident reports. Look for anomalies, anything that doesn't track."
"Got it, Dredd. What are you gonna do?"
"Back to Double-Eight. We're not done with the crime sweep there yet."
Wess felt guilty when his phone rang, because he knew, even before he saw her little love-heart-and-bunny icon on the screen, that it would be Jayni calling. Checking to make sure that the camera bead on the handset was in its off position - because explaining his state to her would be impossible - he answered it with what he hoped would sound like sunny joy. In reality, his wheezy "Hey, babe," came out more like the death rattle of a black lung victim.
"Wess?" she said, and in that one word he knew she knew. "What's going on?" In the background he could hear the toneless thumping beat of a muffled jukebot, and he realised she was calling from Bendy's, the nasty little skankerie that was just one of the sleazy jewels of Ruben Cortez's criminal empire. Smyth had lost track of time since the accident. Of course, it was late in the day now, and Jayni would be starting her shift on the poles. Her ratfink boss usually put her on early, because she was one of the less attractive girls at Bendy's, after her stint making her run waitress duty for the shady clientele. Wess liked to forget the fact that Bendy's was where he met her, stuffing singles and the odd ten-spot cred-note into her v-string.
"Are you there?" she said. "Wess, Latreena and Ashtré are here and they told me that Flex was over at the club, bragging about breaking your face. Is that true?"
Smyth sagged. That was just great. He forced a laugh. "Ah, that big lug. He's just having a joke, sweetie. Flex, and me we're good pals. We had a little misunderstanding, sure, but nothing serious."
"Latreena says Flex says he's gonna make shoes out of you."
He gave a weak chuckle. "He's such a kidder."
"Are you hurt?" Jayni demanded, and the tone in her voice cut him like a knife. He hated lying to her, which was odd when he thought about it, because Wess had made an art out of lying to almost everyone he knew. It was some kind of karmic punishment, he reasoned, that the one person he couldn't lie to was the woman Wess Smyth had come to care about the most.
At times like this, he got annoyed with himself for not being able to get around her, and it usually manifested in this way. "I told you, I'm fine!" he snapped angrily. "Grud, Jayni, why you always gotta be fussing over me?"
"Because I'm worried about you!" Her reply was brittle and he instantly felt like a total scumbag. "You selfish spug!" Jayni shouted the insult down the phone and cut him off, leaving Wess spent with the emotional effort of the conversation.
Not for the first time, he wondered if Jayni wouldn't be better off without Wesson Smyth in her life. The answer, as always, was yes. If he had any kind of self-respect at all, he would have cancelled their on-off-on-off relationship once and for all, and let her find someone better - not that that was likely, working in a place as low-rent as Bendy's - but Wess, although he hated himself for it, simply didn't have the will to let her go. Deep down, Jayni was the one thing that made him yearn to be a better man, even if those feelings had a hard time bubbling to the surface. He wanted to take her away from all this; he wanted to make that single big score and just cut loose and run. It was just that fate, luck or stupidity always seemed to get in the way.
At least until today. Wess pocketed the phone, then as an afterthought took it out again and turned it off. He needed time to think. Somewhere to clean up and get some food, somewhere he could weigh things up and set a plan cooking.
He weighed the phone in his hand. Jayni. Jayni had a place in the Fillmore Barbone con-apts a few miles from the edge of the Dust Zone, and she'd be out at the bar for at least the next four hours. Wess would have to hope that she hadn't changed the lock code again after their last spat.
He smiled, and his eyes drifted toward the open case on the floor. Yeah, he told himself, things are going to be different now. Smyth wasn't really sure why he felt that way, but he liked it. He scratched absently at the places where the sensor needles had nicked his fingers and then gathered up the contents of the case.
WEAPONS GRADE
Dredd parked his Lawmaster on the ramp of watch bay Bravo 63 Delta, and strode out across the thin ferrocrete arch of the observation platform. Braga Skedway and the convoluted knot of roads fanned out beneath him in a wild profusion of speeding vehicles, the sound of their passing a constant rumble he could sense through the soles of his boots. The Judge crouched and examined the spot where Vedder had stood, glancing around for anything that could point him toward her motives. He had already checked the watch bay's monitor unit. The device had absolutely no record of any serving officer being on the platform in the moments before the firebomb explosion, despite the fact that Dredd had seen the COE agent up there with his own eyes. Watch bay cameras only operated on remote command or when the bay was registered as occupied, and so the sensor log had no images to prove that Vedder had even been here. Dredd scowled, regretting not giving in to his instinct to arrest the woman when he'd had her there in front of him.
"Bike," he snapped. "Infra-red scan. Sweep the platform."
"Wilco, Judge Dredd." The motorcycle's primary headlamps illuminated and the Lawmaster rolled forward on its own, the on-board computer laying a diffusion pattern across the watch bay surface. It was hardly a substitute for a full Tek-crew evaluation, but Dredd had already gone a long way on nothing more than a bad feeling about Vedder, and he had his doubts that Hershey would let him authorise a scene-of-crime scan of the platform.
"Detection," said the bike computer suddenly. "Anomalous object." The headlamps swivelled slightly to spotlight a grey bump in the bay floor. It was exactly the same texture and colouration as the ferrocrete.
"Identify." Dredd kept his distance. He wouldn't put it past Vedder to have left him a little surprise up there.
"Non-volatile," replied the computer. "No explosive or toxic materials detected."
The Judge crouched and removed his boot knife. With slow and steady movements, Dredd levered the object from the platform and took a closer look. It was a micro-camera, a civilian model of the kind that were sold to corporat
ions or to worried spouses interested in spying on their errant partners. Covered with a disc of low-grade mimetic plasteen, they could lay concealed for months. Dredd had seen them many times before. They were short-range and far too low-tech for the COE. This was someone else's piece of spy gear. Acting quickly, he drew a pair of binoculars from the Lawmaster's panniers and scanned the surroundings with them. There was just one citiblock: Phillip J Fry Block. Dredd's gaze settled on the flank of the building, searching for the telltale flicker of a curtain, the blink of a light - and he found it.
He saw a face, pale with shock, staring back at him through a monoscope. The Judge tapped his helmet mic. "Control, Dredd. Need a citizen record check. Female Caucasian, dark hair, twenties, resident Phillip J Fry, Sector 88. Southern facing apartment, somewhere between sixty-second and sixty-fourth floors. Probable badge-spotter."
There was a momentary pause as Justice Central's vast databases searched millions of names and faces for a match. "Copy, Dredd. We have a tally, apartment 874/J..."
The crime sweep was still in effect sector-wide, so Dredd was fully within his rights as he kicked open the door to 874/J and shouted the name of the hab's sole resident. "Katy Hart! This is the law! Show yourself!"
A rustle from the living room drew Dredd's attention and he moved in, Lawgiver raised and ready. The house shared floor and shelf space with dozens of bizarre mutant plants, breeds of unpleasant but not really dangerous Cursed Earth flora that were part of a current trend for exotic greenery. "Citizen Hart!" he ordered. "I won't ask again!"
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