Rico Dredd: The Titan Years

by Michael Carroll

  I shouted back, “Why?”

  He didn’t have a real answer for that. “Because I said so!”

  Guildford resumed talking anyway. “So, there was this guy in the company, one of those people who just really wind you up the wrong way. They never actually do anything bad, nothing you can point your finger at and say, ‘That’s why he’s a complete spugwit!’ but still, you can’t get along with them. You know the type?”

  I said that I did. I was, of course, thinking of Little Joe.

  “Herman, his name was. He joined the company after I did, and everyone liked him immediately. I did too, for a while. But Herman just kept pushing my buttons, over and over. Wouldn’t stop no matter what I said or did. It was stupid stuff, mostly. Like, we’d go together to the canteen for lunch, and he always—always—ended up ahead of me in the line. Somehow, we’d be walking along the corridor and no matter what I did, it was always me holding the door open for him, so that he’d go through first and go straight to the end of the line.” Guildford shrugged. “Like I said, stupid stuff. But imagine that happening every single day for eight drokkin’ years.”

  I was about to make a comment, but he wasn’t done yet.

  “Herman always found a way to get under my skin. Subtle things, but the sort that build up. Leaving stuff on my desk. Taking my pen and chewing the end of it. And he’d go out with the others after work and not invite me, but the next day he’d tell me what a great night it was, and that I should have been there.”

  There was more like this, a lot more, and it was all I could do to rein in my Judge training and resist punching his arm and telling him to grow a pair. What it all boiled down to was that this guy Herman had supplanted him in the company’s social hierarchy, and so Guildford poisoned him with thallium. “It was simple, in the end,” Guildford said. “I dipped my pen in thallium dust and left it on my desk. I mean, I’d told Herman a hundred times not to chew my pens, but, true to form, he did it anyway.”

  “How did you get caught?” I asked.

  “Well, Herman was only the first. I had problems with another colleague, in a different department. We’d talk about work and he’d take my ideas and present them to his boss like he’d thought of them. So he had to go. So did his boss; that drokker knew they were my ideas and he didn’t care. And there was a neighbour, too. And a few others.”

  “How many in total? Someone told me it was at least ten, is that right?”

  “Seventeen. They caught me because some hot-shot young Judge took over the investigation and just wouldn’t let it go.”

  After a long pause, I said, “I’d have executed you on the spot.”

  “I know. But that was Brit-Cit, not Mega-City One. You have your Laws, we have ours.”

  I glanced back at our captors. “And here, they have their own laws. It all seems so... arbitrary.”

  An hour later, Siebert called for another rest-break. Guildford and I strolled back to the others, but kept our distance.

  Vickers dropped to the ground and said, “We must have walked a thousand kilometres by now.”

  “A couple of hundred, at most,” I told him. To Siebert, who was gulping water from his bottle, I said, “Slow down. We don’t know how long we’ll be out here.”

  Siebert glared at me. “You don’t tell me what to do, Rico. Never tell me what to do.” He looked around to make sure the others were listening, then said, “Rico Dredd was a Judge, can you believe that? A Judge. Supposed to be the best of the best. Turned out he was nothing but a thug. A perp. Best-trained perp in the world, maybe, but still a bottom-feeder. Still nothing more than a piece of murdering scum.” Siebert lowered himself down to the ground next to Vickers. “You think your old man would be proud of you, Rico? I doubt it. He’d have put you away himself. Like your brother did.”

  Standing close to them, Register Forbes said, quietly, “Siebert, it’s time.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Siebert looked from me to Guildford and back. “One of you has come to the end of his journey. And it’s you, Rico. We still need one of you to carry the stuff, and Guildford doesn’t need an oxygen tank.” He smiled. “Told you I’d reduce your sentence if you got us out of the bus, didn’t I?”

  “I understand,” I said. “Believe me, if I was in your position I’d do the same. Give me a few minutes to make my peace with Grud?”

  “Never took you for a believer, Rico. But go ahead. Say whatever prayers you think might help you. But try not to breathe too much—no sense in wasting that precious oxygen.”

  “Of course.” I dropped to my knees, facing away from them. I took a few deep breaths, then disconnected the tank from my suit. Hidden in the palm of my other hand I had Siebert’s electronic key.

  Guildford had explained how it worked. It was about the size of a thumb, and the only reason it needed to be that big was because it contained a thumb-scanner. When Siebert wanted to unlock a chain, he put his thumb on the scanner, the key’s internal circuits recognised it, and for the next one hundred seconds it would disable the appropriate lock. But I didn’t care about the scanner, or the circuitry. I was interested in the tiny lithium battery inside the lock.

  It had been tricky work, with the insulated gloves, but I’d managed to disconnect the battery from the rest of the key, exposing the hair-thin wires.

  Guildford said, “I don’t want to see this. Been nice knowing you, Rico.” He walked away.

  There was no time to experiment, to check that what I was planning was even possible. When you’re a Judge, you’re trained to work with whatever you have to hand.

  I had a half-full oxygen tank, a methane-rich atmosphere and a device capable of making a spark.

  Behind me, Siebert got to his feet and said, “You’ve had long enough. You’ll be seeing Grud in person in a few seconds anyway.”

  “Okay,” I said. I stood up, and turned to face him. I had the oxygen tank, with the key taped to it, in my left hand.

  All four remaining guards, and Forbes, were clustered nicely. The explosion, if it worked, would certainly take them all out. But it would take me out too. Guildford and I had talked about that, and agreed that it was worth it if only one of us was going to make it.

  I honestly believed that was it for me, that I was going to die right there and then. It might have looked like a noble sacrifice to save my friend, but the truth is that I just wanted those drokkers to suffer.

  Forbes said to me, “Rico, no hard feelings. You understand that this is how it’s got to be?”

  “You’ll be next, Forbes. They need Guildford alive more than they need you.”

  “I doubt it,” he said, smiling. “If I die under suspicious circumstances, certain information about certain guards will become public. Right, Siebert?”

  “That’s right,” the guard said, nodding.

  I said to Forbes, “I know this is coming a bit late, but you wanted me to shake your hand, first time we met. I refused.” I extended my right hand to him. “Well done. I’m man enough to admit that you beat me. But don’t die here, Forbes, got that? Don’t let them win. At least one of us has to get out of this alive.”

  Forbes shook my hand, a smug little grin on his face. “Sure, Rico.”

  I stepped closer to him, turning the handshake half-way into a friendly embrace. With my left hand around his back.

  Vickers said, “Wait, what’s that he’s got—?”

  He never finished that sentence, because I pressed my thumb into the inside of the key. The battery’s exposed wires sparked, and ignited the pure oxygen invisibly spraying from the tank’s half-open valve.

  I let the tank go and whipped my hand back just as the tank exploded. Forbes slammed against me, shielding me from the blast as shards of the tank tore through the guards.

  One shard, quite a large one, passed straight through Vickers’s chest. He was the first of them to die. The others merely had their suits ripped open. There was plenty of repair tape, of course, but that was with the bundles of supplies that Guild
ford and I had been carrying.

  The guards desperately tried to cover the rips in their environment suits. Siebert ran for the supplies, and Guildford tackled him from behind, brought him crashing face-first onto the frozen ground.

  My own suit had been torn, too. Not as much as Forbes’s had, but enough that I was losing air, and fast.

  I rolled Forbes’s mangled body off me, then scrambled to my feet.

  I ran past Guildford, who was sitting on top of Siebert’s prone body and methodically slamming the screaming man’s face into a sharp-pointed rock, and skidded to a stop next to the supplies.

  Obviously I survived. I’m still around to tell the tale.

  Siebert didn’t. Guildford cracked the face-plate on his suit, and—ignoring my suggestion that we sit and watch him die—continued to slam his face against the rock. Over and over, until I swear I could see the rock making dents in the back of Siebert’s helmet.

  GUILDFORD DIED SIX days later.

  We’d carried on walking, always going west, because the only other option was to lay down and die.

  We dragged the supplies behind us, and as the days progressed that became both easier and harder. Easier because there was less and less to drag, harder because we’d run out of food and fresh water.

  The environment suits are capable of recycling the body’s waste water—sweat and urine—but that only works for so long before the filters become clogged.

  Night had fallen on Titan, but there was enough light from Saturn that we could mostly see where we were going. Mostly, but not perfectly. Guildford stepped on a loose rock, tripped, and his left ankle snapped.

  He couldn’t walk, and I didn’t have the strength to carry him.

  I had Siebert’s gun—there was no way I was going to leave that behind—and Guildford begged me to put him out of his misery.

  “Do it, Rico! Make it fast. I’ve always known I wasn’t getting off this rock. Better to end it now, because even if we get back, I don’t think I can last another week in the prison.” He looked up at me, through plastic-coated eyes that, if they’d been capable, would have filled with tears. “I deserve to die, Rico. I murdered all those people because I cared more about my feelings than I did about their lives. So do it. Shoot me.”

  I looked down at him, and did my best to give him a brave smile. “Good-bye, Donny.”

  The echo of the shot seemed to last a lot longer than it should have. Maybe that was the strange atmosphere on Titan, or maybe it was just my imagination.

  Fourteen

  I DON’T KNOW who found me. I asked, but they wouldn’t tell me. The last thing I remember, when I couldn’t go on any further, was using the high-explosive shell in Siebert’s gun to blast a large chunk out of the side of a hill, in the hope that someone would see the explosion and come looking.

  I guess it worked. Hell, for all I know, the military base could have been on the other side of that hill.

  I woke up in the prison infirmary, surrounded by too-familiar sounds and smells. And I was glad to be back; the only alternative was a slow, suffocating death. I’d no idea how long I’d been unconscious, or how I got there. All I knew was that I was alive and, for the first time in an eternity, I wasn’t hungry or thirsty.

  I couldn’t see too well—everything seemed out-of-focus—and I couldn’t move, could barely even turn my head, and it took me a few moments to understand that I’d been strapped to the bed.

  On my left side a hazy face came into view, close enough for me to recognise it as sub-warden Copus. I was genuinely pleased to see the man.

  “Don’t try to talk, Rico. You probably can’t, anyway. You’ve been through quite an ordeal. Twenty-five went out, only one came back.” Copus moved closer in an odd jarring motion, and I realised he was sitting on a chair and had shuffled forward. “We back-tracked your path... Found a few of the others. Took us some time to identify Siebert.” He paused for a long time, then said, “There were a couple of hidden cameras on the bus. Siebert and his friends weren’t aware of them. So we know a lot of what happened. The bus got trapped in that hailstorm, is that right?”

  I nodded.

  “You and Guildford managed to get out. You freed the others. Then Siebert decided you should all head for... a place he’d heard about. Correct?”

  Again, I nodded.

  “That place doesn’t exist, Rico. You know that, don’t you? It can’t exist. Siebert was delusional, or maybe he was lying in order to keep morale up, to give you the motivation you all needed to survive. I know that’s what it was, because there’s nothing on this moon but us. Only us.” Copus leaned back a little, and seemed to be lost in thought for a moment. “I was never able to prove that Siebert was dirty, but the hidden cameras caught him and Frazier strangling the other prisoners to increase their own chances of survival.”

  Then, more to himself than to me, he added, “We’re gonna have to make some changes around here. Big changes. It was a mistake to have Register Forbes serve his sentence in the same place he committed his crimes.”

  He looked at me again. “But you, Rico... Fact is you probably should have been left out there. Your return has been giving the other inmates the idea that it’s possible to survive out on the surface. That’s not what we want. Not what we want at all. So the warden and I made a decision. You understand that this was the only way, right?”

  This time, I shook my head. I had no idea what he was talking about.

  Copus’s head moved out of view and I felt him working at the straps holding my left arm in place. “Raise your arm,” he told me.

  I did so, and though I couldn’t see it too clearly, it seemed that it was thinner than before. That was reasonable, after what I’d gone through. But I didn’t expect my skin to be grey.

  When Copus said, “We had to make some modifications,” I understood why my vision was blurred.

  A WEEK LATER I was released from the infirmary and returned to the general population. No one would look me in the eye, and I don’t blame them. I could barely look myself in the eye.

  They turned me into a monster. Not because they had to, but because they wanted to. They were in charge, and they wanted the other prisoners to understand that.

  Guildford had been right about the memory-altering drugs they’d administered before the operation: I have absolutely no recollection of it. And he was also right about the pain afterwards. Breathing and blinking were agony for the first few days. Took me a long time to get used to the new sensations.

  But it’s nice not to feel the cold any more.

  Before I left the infirmary, Copus told me, “When your time here is done, we’ll reverse the process. You’ll be left with some scarring, but…” He shrugged. “Until then, you play ball, Rico. There is no military establishment on Titan.”

  I said, “I understand. I genuinely do. I was a Judge, remember? A damn good one. I understand the need for secrets. And who would I tell, Copus? All of my friends are dead.” I looked at him steadily for a few seconds. “They all died in the storm. It was only by luck that I managed to survive.”

  What they did to me was horrific, but—from their point of view—it was necessary.

  There’s an upside, I can’t deny that. Copus arranged with the warden that my sentence should be reduced. Officially, that was in light of what Guildford and I did to free the others. Unofficially, it was a bribe to encourage me to forget about the military base that they denied existed. Plus, let’s be honest here, I’d been a model prisoner. Never started any trouble, never tried to escape. Being turned into a freak is fair price for getting out a year early.

  And mods work ten-hour shifts instead of the usual twelve. I use those extra two hours to read, or work out, or play chess with anyone brave enough to take me on.

  I have to keep myself sharp, you see, because I will get out. One day, I’ll return to Mega-City One and then... And then Little Joe and I will settle things. We’ll talk, he and I. And I know I’ll be able to prove to him that I was
right all along.

  Justice must be tempered with mercy. It must be flexible, and that goes both ways. Sure, what Copus and the warden did to me is inhumane, but it was necessary for the greater good. They had no reason to trust me not to say anything, and they didn’t want to just execute me, so they came up with a compromise. It’s not a perfect solution for any of us, but it works.

  It’s just like it was back in the Meg. What happened with Virgil Livingstone, well, that was an accident. He shouldn’t have died. No, scratch that. I shouldn’t have killed him. But I was making a point about the Law, and it’s a point in which I still believe: If the Law is too rigid, the citizens will eventually rise against it. But if it bends, even just a little, then the citizens will come to understand and respect that.

  The Judges present themselves as untouchable, as incorruptible, and the people don’t like that. They don’t like being made to feel inferior. The way I ran things, that wasn’t the case. Sure, it was clear to everyone that I was on the top of the heap, but they knew that they could come to me. They knew that I could change the things that needed to be changed. The other Judges said, “This is the Law, and it is immutable. Put up or shut up.” Okay, so it’s not actually immutable, since the Judges change the Law as they see fit, but that’s part of the problem. They change it to suit themselves, not to suit the citizens.

  Is it any wonder that they’re despised?

  In my year on the streets of Mega-City One, I worked hard to be seen as one of the people, and I know that they respected that. They respect a Judge who, if he catches them littering, will slap them across the back of the head and tell them not to do it again. They don’t respect a Judge who’ll imprison them for it.

  So I’ll get out of here when my time is done.

  I’ll go back to Earth. To Mega-City One.

  And I’ll find my brother.

  And then we’ll see who was right.

  Then we’ll see.

  The End