Judge Dredd

THIRTY-SIX

Dredd tore through the anteroom, stopped to jack a shell into the chamber of the Remington pump. He could hear the Judge Hunters in the Council Chamber, Griffin’s ragged shout.

He listened a moment, then stepped into the hall. Two Hunters turned and stared. Dredd squeezed the trigger twice. The blast thundered off the walls. Dredd ran without looking back. Someone yelled. Bullets whined off the stone floor.

Dredd rounded the corner and stopped, searched the dark hall.

“Ferguson! Damn it, where are you?”

Fergie peeked out of a closet. “What the hell did you do in there, Dredd? You got all the groons stirred up again. Everybody’s after me, right?”

“Come on, get out of there.” Dredd grabbed a handful of shirt and jerked Fergie into the hall. “Stay close. Don’t stray off anywhere.”

Fergie looked pained. “Where have I heard that before?”

The end of the corridor narrowed. There were doors on either side. Dredd moved quickly, opened the third door and shoved Fergie in.

“Where are we?” Fergie said. “What are we doing, Dredd?”

“Shut up,” Dredd said.

The room was almost dark. Dredd knew he couldn’t risk a light. A faint glow came from the skylight, reflecting the brightness of Mega-City outside. The light didn’t matter. He knew every corner of this room in the dark. It was the Academy Training Center, and it was as familiar as his own bedroom.

He passed a table stacked with weapons and locks and stopped at the gleaming black machine. He felt a slight catch in his throat at the sight of brushed chrome and stainless steel, at the metal black as night.

“What is it, why are we stopping here?” Fergie looked nervously across the room. “We don’t have time to be doing any shopping now, Dredd. We’ve got company dropping in.”

“The Mark IV Lawmaster. State-of-the-art. Double sixty-fours, rapid-fire.”

“Yeah, yeah, great.”

“Get on.”

“Do what?”

“Get on or stay behind. Your choice.”

Dredd threw his leg over the broad leather saddle. He ran his fingers swiftly over the panel keys imbedded in the black steel dash. Red lights blinked in a line. Dredd punched the ignition. The lights turned green. The big engine came to life and roared.

“You coming or not?”

“Huh-uh, not me.” Fergie backed off. “I don’t think so, man. You enjoy yourself. Give me a call—”

The door to the room exploded in a burst of broken glass. Gunfire whined past Fergie’s head.

“Let’s go, what are we waiting for, haul it out of here!”

The engine climbed up the scale, wailing like a demon, howling like a lost soul. Fergie wondered briefly where Dredd intended to go. What was he going to do, charge for rides around the room? Would the Judge Hunters care, would they stand around and clap?

The floor shook. Something caught fire. Dredd slammed his palm down hard. The Lawmaster’s black fenders whirred, folded up, and disappeared. Two ugly snouts appeared in their place.

“Side arms—FIRE!” Dredd said.

The Lawmaster buckled. White flames blossomed from the twin sixty-fours. The far wall exploded, loosing a geyser of glass, brick, and assorted debris. Fergie stared at the large, gaping hole, at the towers of Mega-City that suddenly appeared, at the diamond-bright lights as far as the eye could see.

“You’re kidding, right?” Fergie gripped Dredd’s arm. “You’re not going to do that. Nobody in their right mind would do that…”

AERIAL MODE—AERIAL MODE—AERIAL MODE…

“What?” Fergie closed his eyes. “No way, man.”

“Work-work-work!” Dredd said between his teeth. “Work, you son of a bitch!”

The Lawmaster’s engine sputtered, howled. The big machine trembled, pitched forward with a gut-wrenching burst of speed and roared through the hole in the wall.

Fergie screamed.

Gunfire followed the Lawmaster into the night.

“Please-work-please-work-please-work…”

The broad wheels sucked up into the frame. The lights on the console went wild.

AERIAL MODE—AERIAL MODE—AERIAL MODE ON-LINE—AERIAL MODE ON-LINE…

The engine changed pitch. The Lawmaster banked gently in the air.

“All right!” Dredd shouted. He pounded on the dash.

“Yeah-yeah-yeah!” Fergie yelled.

The engine sputtered. Died. The Lawmaster fell like a stone.

AERIAL MODE MALFUNCTION—AERIAL MODE MALFUNCTION—AERIAL MODE MAL—

“Do-it-do-it-do-it!”

The Lawmaster tumbled dizzily toward the ground. The towers of Mega-City flashed by in a sickening streak of lights. Fergie yelled in Dredd’s ear. Dredd tore at the controls, punching every button he could find. Lights turned red-green-blue-yellow-white.

The wind spread Dredd’s skin flat against his face, opened his nostrils, pressed his lips against his teeth…

MALFUNCTION…

MALFUNCTION…

MALFUNCTION…

MAL—

AERIAL MODE ON-LINE—AERIAL MODE ON-LINE…

The engine came back to life, the most beautiful sound Dredd had ever heard. Safety rockets exploded beneath the Lawmaster, lifting it on a stable column of superheated air. Dredd twisted the control bar gently to the right. The Lawmaster jerked through four gears, and screwed itself in a dizzy circle through the night.

“What the hell are you doing!” Fergie wailed.

“Relax. I’m trying to get the feel of this thing.”

“What, this is your first time? Don’t tell me that, Dredd, I don’t want to hear tha—uh-oh!”

“What?”

“Company. Hunters on our ass. Two of ’em—three.”

“Great. Just great. Hang on.”

Dredd squeezed the control bar and gritted his teeth. The Lawmaster protested, stood on its tail, and shrieked straight up. Dredd left his stomach a thousand feet below. The bottom of a skyway appeared up ahead, blotting out the night. Dredd yanked the big machine aside, saw the startled face of a taxi driver flash by.

Fergie was babbling in his ear. Dredd risked a look back. The Hunters were good. Right on his tail.

“Here, take it,” he shouted. He ripped the Remington’s strap from his shoulder and passed it back.

“What?”

“Cover our rear. Hold those bastards off.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“I never shot a gun in my life!”

“What the hell kind of criminal are you, Ferguson?”

“I’m a nice criminal. I rob droids. I steal things. Just little things. I don’t do guns, man, I never—”

“Shoot, damn it!”

Fergie closed his eyes and fired. The muzzle flashed and the stock slammed into his shoulder.

“I missed, I knew I’d miss…”

“Again!”

Fergie pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.

“It doesn’t work anymore. I think the batteries are down.”

“You’ve got to pump it, you moron,” Dredd yelled. “Get a shell in the chamber.”

“I knew that.”

“Ferguson…”

Fergie fired. Something sparked on the lead Hunter’s machine.

“I got him!” Fergie pounded Dredd’s back. “You see that, I shot the son of bitch!”

“You hurt his feelings, maybe. You chipped his paint. What do you think these things are made of, paper plates? These are Lawmaster IVs.”

“Wonderful,” Fergie said, “so whose side are you on, ours or theirs?”

“You’ve got to hit something important.”

“Like what?”

“Like a power coil or cooler duct. The power coil is partially exposed during standard Aerial Mode. A well-placed shot would likely disable or seriously damage the machine.”

“That’s a lecture, right?”

“It’s a lecture. It’s my lecture. Just do it, Ferguson. Hang on, now.”

“Hang on, right. He says hang on, like I’ll maybe—Dredd, look where you’re going.”

“I’m looking.”

“You’re not looking. If you’re looking, you’re not looking like a regular person looks. That’s how I want you to look—Dredd, shit!”

Fergie held his breath. The thing loomed up ahead, a droid nearly twenty stories high. It’s eyes blinked red. One hand held a giant candy bar. The hand thrust the candy bar in and out of the droid’s mechanical mouth. The mouth chomped up and down. The droid grinned. It’s eyes winked on and off. Purple letters floated in the air overhead: YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE REAL TO LOVE ZEEL!

“We’re going to do it, we’re going to hit, we’re going to hit that thing!”

“I’m the driver,” Dredd said. “I’m the driver, you’re the shooter. Shoot, or I’ll kick your ass off of here.”

“I’m shooting, I’m shooting!”

Fergie twisted in his seat. The wind howled around his head. The three Hunters were close, spread in a narrow wedge. The two in the back weaved from side to side. Fergie didn’t care for that. He liked the one that stood still. He brought the gun to his shoulder again, took a breath, and fired. He even remembered to pump. Four shots. Three missed a mile. The last glanced off the Judge Hunter’s armor-glass visor and whined off to the side. The Hunter had been trained to ignore harmless missiles of any size. Every groon in Mega-City tossed bottles or bricks at Judges when they could.

The Hunter forgot. Before he could remember the drill, he’d pulled the Lawmaster down seven degrees. The machine hit the spire of a Mega-City condo and blossomed in a ball of white fire.

“I did it, I got him, I got him, I—waaaah!”

Fergie looked forward in time to see Dredd hurl the Lawmaster straight into the enormous mouth of the droid. He saw the red eyes streak by, the candy bar big as a family car…

He shut his eyes tight. Nothing hurt. Everything was fine. He’d learned something. It didn’t hurt to die. Dying felt good. He opened his eyes. Mega-City was still there. A billion lights shimmered below.

“You missed it? You didn’t miss it, nobody could miss it.”

“I didn’t miss it,” Dredd said. “It’s a holo. There’s nothing to miss.”

“It’s a holo?” Fergie was astonished. “It’s a real good holo.”

“You’ve been out of town.”

“Six months, yeah, but—”

Nineteen balls of yellow fire appeared directly in the Lawmaster’s path, lined up neatly like a string of pretty lights. The sound reached them half a second later, a solid wall of air that sent them tumbling out of control toward the sea of lights below.

Dredd shouted something Fergie couldn’t hear. He smelled the sharp and unmistakeable scent of electric fire. He’d smelled it a hundred times before. You break into a droid, something doesn’t go right, everything starts to go wrong. Fine. Stuff like that, it always happened on the ground. It didn’t happen five thousand feet up in the air.

The Lawmaster’s engine coughed, died, and came to life again. Dredd struggled with the controls. He pounded on the dash. Fergie saw the street coming up fast. The street was full of people. People. Buses. Cars. Something didn’t look right. Fergie looked again. People were killing people. Breaking into stores. It was a battlefield, a full-scale riot.

The Lawmaster limped above the crowd, dragging its tail and spilling an acrid cloud of smoke. Dredd heard the Hunters’ cannons begin to chatter again. A missile screamed by his head. It exploded in the crowded street below. Flesh and metal fused, vaporized in the terrible heat. Screams went by in a blur, horror frozen for an instant, then gone.

Dredd steered the damaged craft to the right. Cannon fire stitched a brick wall ahead. Dredd muttered under his breath, and yanked the control bar all the way back.

Fergie felt his stomach lurch up into his throat. Flame scorched his hair. He turned, looked back, saw the Hunter explode against the wall a hundred feet below. Dredd’s Lawmaster jerked into a tight one-eighty, heading back the way it had come.

Fergie was too scared to scream. He hated being upside down. The last Judge Hunter was below him, looking straight up. He twisted his machine in a killing turn, firing his cannons in the split second Dredd’s Lawmaster was in his sights. Dredd’s machine shuddered. Fergie felt something drop off. It sounded big and important, something they’d probably like to keep.

The Hunter suddenly loomed into sight next to Dredd, half a dozen feet away. The Hunter aimed his Lawmaster and fired. The first shot missed. The second plowed through the control panel, leaving an ugly molten scar. The Judge Hunter grinned, and pushed his visor up on the brow of his helmet.

“Steer,” said Dredd.

“What?”

“Steer!”

“I don’t know how to steer!”

“You don’t know how to do shit, Ferguson. Learn real fast.”

Dredd leaped from his seat. The Judge Hunter stared. Dredd grabbed his arm, forced it back. The Hunter yelled, fought for balance, flailed his arms and disappeared.

The Lawmaster dipped, swerving sharply to the left. Dredd held on, grabbing for the controls. The machine pitched wildly across the sky. Dredd bullied it back on course, cutting a wide arc above the Mega-City towers.

Ferguson—the little crook’s got to be somewhere… hasn’t had time to disappear…

There. Dredd spotted him, five hundred feet below, spinning like a top. Smoke spewed from the machine as the Lawmaster headed straight for a concrete wall.

Dredd muttered under his breath and punched the control panel with his fist. Red letters screamed EMERG/OVERRIDE. Turbos roared, boosting Dredd forward on a stream of blue fire. He matched his speed with the twisting machine, working out the numbers in his head. Four… three…

Fergie’s eyes were closed. Dredd grabbed him by the collar, jerked him free, sent the Lawmaster straight up.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the smoking machine hit the wall in a ball of fire and oily black smoke.

Fergie opened his eyes. He held on fast, digging his hands into Dredd’s back.

“Never again,” he said. “Never driving with you again. You hear me? Not anytime. Never.”

“You can get off anytime you want,” Dredd said. “How about here? Here’s okay with me.”

“One more chance,” Fergie said. “One more, that’s it…”