The Cold Light of Day Read online

  JUDGE DREDD: YEAR ONE

  THE

  COLD LIGHT

  OF DAY

  Michael Carroll

  An Abaddon Books™ Publication

  www.abaddonbooks.com

  [email protected]

  First published in 2013 by Abaddon Books™, Rebellion Intellectual Property Limited, Riverside House, Osney Mead, Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK.

  Editor-in-Chief: Jonathan Oliver

  Commissioning Editor: David Moore

  Cover: Darren Douglas

  Design: Simon Parr & Sam Gretton

  Marketing and PR: Michael Molcher

  Publishing Manager: Ben Smith

  Creative Director and CEO: Jason Kingsley

  Chief Technical Officer: Chris Kingsley

  Copyright © 2013 Rebellion. All rights reserved.

  Judge Dredd created by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra.

  ISBN (epub): 978-1-84997-530-8

  ISBN (mobi): 978-1-84997-531-5

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Judge Dredd: Year One

  City Fathers, Matthew Smith

  The Cold Light of Day, Michael Carroll

  Judge Dredd

  Dredd vs. Death, Gordon Rennie

  Bad Moon Rising, David Bishop

  Black Atlantic, Simon Jowett & Peter J Evans

  Eclipse, James Swallow

  Kingdom of the Blind, David Bishop

  The Final Cut, Matthew Smith

  Swine Fever, Andrew Cartmel

  Whiteout, James Swallow

  Psykogeddon, Dave Stone

  More 2000 AD Action

  Judge Anderson

  Fear the Darkness, Mitchel Scanlon

  Red Shadows, Mitchel Scanlon

  Sins of the Father, Mitchel Scanlon

  The ABC Warriors

  The Medusa War, Pat Mills & Alan Mitchell

  Durham Red

  The Unquiet Grave, Peter J Evans

  Rogue Trooper

  Crucible, Gordon Rennie

  Strontium Dog

  Bad Timing, Rebecca Levene

  Fiends of the Eastern Front

  Operation Vampyr, David Bishop

  The Blood Red Army, David Bishop

  Twilight of the Dead, David Bishop

  Mega-City One

  2080 AD

  One

  DREDD DISMOUNTED HIS Lawmaster and switched his helmet’s speakers to noise-cancellation mode, to muffle the roar of the crowd. It made a difference, but not as much as he’d have liked.

  Though the streets were teeming, a wide clearing had automatically formed around him—it happened any time he stood still for more than a few minutes, as though the crowd was a living organism that regarded a Judge as an unwelcome infection. He turned slowly, watching the citizens at the edge of the clearing.

  Every citizen had something to hide, something they felt guilty about. Something that made them sweat when a Judge was nearby.

  Once, a few days after they graduated from the Academy of Law, Judge Gibson had said to him, “Joe, I’m starting to think that the whole city stinks of sweat. You get that? You walk up to a citizen and, bam, he’s got pit-stains. Happened to me a dozen times already.”

  “Cite them for public hygiene violations,” Dredd had suggested.

  “Sure. Give them another reason to be scared of us. That’ll help.”

  Now, nearly a year into the job, Dredd had seen his share of terrified citizens. Even today, with all the excitement building for the annual Mega-City 5000 race, the citizens grew quiet as the Judges moved among them, bubbles of silent panic filtering through the throng.

  A man waving a large “Spacers Suck!” flag saw Dredd, quickly looked away, and was now standing very still, the crowd’s chant of “Mutants Forever!” dying in his throat on the first syllable.

  The short, bald man next to him said, “‘Moo’? Whaddaya mean, ‘Moo’? That some kinda insult? You sayin’ the Muties are cows? ’Cos if you are, pal, you an’ Freddie Fist here are gonna be gettin’ to know each other real drokkin’ intimate!”

  Dredd placed his hand on the bald man’s shoulder. “Maybe Freddie Fist would like a date with Debbie Daystick.”

  The bald man swallowed audibly. Under his breath he muttered, “Oh, sweet Jovus!” Then, louder, “No, Judge. Just makin’ banter, that’s all.”

  “Banter, huh?” Dredd hauled the man out of the crowd. “Name and address.”

  The man’s eyes were wide, his head already studded with beads of perspiration. “Ted-Teddy LeFevre. Apartment fifty-four, Winker Watson Block. I swear, I didn’t mean anything! I’m not the violent type.”

  “How many warnings have you got, LeFevre?”

  “None, Judge. I promise.”

  “You’ve got one now. Threatening behaviour.” He grabbed LeFevre by the collar, pulled him closer. “We’re watching you. Understood? Might find myself dropping by Winker Watson Block tomorrow. How’s that sound to you? What are you hiding, LeFevre?”

  “Nothing! I swear! I super-swear! I’ve never been in trouble with the law!”

  “Until now. You’re on the watch-list, citizen.” He let go and shoved the man back into the crowd, then continued on his way.

  Almost every Judge in the city was on the streets today, patrolling the crowd. Arrests and spot fines were already up two hundred per cent on the average day, and it wasn’t yet eight o’clock in the morning.

  Dredd spotted a familiar glint of light off to his left—the tell-tale reflection of sunlight on a Judge’s helmet—and strode in that direction. The crowd parted around him: a Judge rarely had to ask a citizen to move out of the way.

  The other Judge was female, tall and slender, maybe ten years older than Dredd. She nodded at him as he approached, and glanced at the name on his badge. “Dredd. Don’t know you, do I?”

  Dredd returned the nod. “Judge Safford. No, we’ve never met. Crowd behaving themselves?”

  “Been on the clock three hours now. Sixteen arrests. You?”

  “Just came on.” They stood side-by-side and looked toward the cordoned-off street. The crowd was packed twenty-deep on this side of the street, probably twice that on the other side.

  “This your first one?” Safford asked.

  “Yeah. Word is it gets pretty intense.”

  “Intense doesn’t cover it. It’s a foregone conclusion that either the Spacers or the Muties will win, so most of the cits don’t care about who hits the finishing post first. They just want to see some carnage. Word of advice: once the bikers reach this point, watch for dunks and taps. The crowd gets so wild you could probably barbecue a baby and they wouldn’t notice.”

  “Dunks and taps,” Dredd said. “Got it.”

  “How long have you been on the streets, Dredd?”

  “Almost twelve months.”

  “Class of ’79. Good year, I heard. You’re one of the twins, right? Heard you both scored top marks pretty much all the way through the academy.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Then tell me what laws are being broken right here, in front of you.”

  “None,” Dredd replied. “But there’s potential.”

  “There always is. Specifically?”

  Dredd nodded toward a middle-aged man holding a mini-cam. “Illegal recording of a sponsored event. Can’t arrest him until the race actually starts.” To their left, a hottie-vendor who
was far-too-casually wheeling her cart away. “Probably unlicensed trader. Possession of a hottie-cart isn’t illegal. We’d need to witness her exchanging goods for creds before we can arrest her. Same with the two juves behind us. Both wearing new, identical, home-made Spacers t-shirts, both carrying full backpacks. Bootleggers.”

  Safford turned to look. “Huh. Missed that myself. Not bad.” She turned back and nodded toward a man wearing a long coat. “And you missed that guy. Bulge in his coat. Possible concealed weapon.”

  “I saw him,” Dredd said. “Mid-fifties, pasty skin, sallow eyes, slight tremor in his hands, rash of small blisters on the side of his neck, trouble keeping his head raised. He’s in the advanced stages of a flesh-wasting disease, probably Lundsgaard Syndrome. The bulge under his coat isn’t a gun. It’s his med-pack. Sufferers of Lundsgaard Syndrome can’t process certain proteins—the med-pack does it for him.”

  “Impressive,” Safford said.

  “Not really. He was in your line of sight—you couldn’t have missed him. Figured you’d already checked him out. The fact that he’s not in cuffs, and that he hasn’t moved away from us, tells me he’s not breaking the law.”

  “I mean, impressive that you correctly diagnosed his condition. You training for med?”

  “No. But I read the textbooks, pay attention to the lessons.”

  Judge Safford smiled. “You can relax a little now and then, Dredd. You’re not in the Academy any more. No need to keep hitting the books. You’re not a Judge twenty-four-seven.”

  “Can’t say I agree with that, Safford,” Dredd said. “A Judge is always on duty.”

  Another smile. “You’ll learn soon enough. Can’t keep your shoulder to the grindstone all the time. All work and no play makes Dredd a dull boy.”

  “Disagree with that, too. The grindstone is what keeps a Judge sharp.” He stepped away. “Be seeing you, Safford.”

  As he moved on through the crowd, he could sense Judge Safford watching him. She was like a lot of the older Judges he’d met. They thought of him as naive, idealistic. Green around the edges.

  Didn’t bother him, as long as it didn’t stop them doing their job.

  He spotted a dunk sidling toward a young couple—the man’s wallet was clearly visible in the back pocket of his trows—before the dunk just as smoothly shifted direction and sidled off. Dredd turned around and spotted a man of a similar age hurriedly looking away; the look-out, who’d warned his pal there was a Judge present.

  Already, the look-out was slipping through the crowd, heading in the opposite direction from the pick-pocket.

  Can’t catch both, not in this crowd... Dredd took a deep breath, and bellowed, “Halt!”

  The look-out skidded to a stop, as did every citizen in earshot.

  Dredd pointed to the look-out. “You. Stay put! Got that?”

  The man nodded feebly, and Dredd turned and ran in the other direction.

  He’d only had a few seconds to glimpse the pickpocket, mostly from behind, but that was all he needed to recognise him again.

  In the Academy, the cadets were trained to recognise people not just by their faces, but by their clothing, their footwear, their gait, the way their hair was parted, cut or shaved at the back of their head.

  He quickly spotted the dunk again. The man was now running flat-out along the outer edge of the crowd, deftly weaving around the other citizens.

  Dredd pounded after him, the soles of his department-issue boots slamming heavily onto the rockcrete, making that distinctive sound that informed the innocent that a Judge was approaching and they’d better get out of the way.

  The dunk vaulted over a rail onto a quiet street—Dredd added jaywalking to the man’s growing list of crimes—and darted across to the opposite sidewalk, where he collided with a burly woman, knocking her into a store’s doorway.

  As Dredd leapt over the rail, he pulled out his lawgiver and roared, “Heat-seeker!”

  Immediately, the fleeing man threw himself face-down on the ground.

  Well, that worked, Dredd said to himself. It was something Rico had suggested back when they were cadets: “We spread the rumour that a heat-seeker can’t hit you if you’re lying flat on the ground—the perps’ll hit the deck if they think one’s coming.”

  Dredd crossed the road and reached down to grab the would-be pickpocket by the arm, hauled him to his feet. The man was trembling, slick with sweat, the lower half of his face smeared with his own blood where his nose had scraped along the rockcrete.

  “I didn’t do nothin’! Don’t shoot me!”

  “Consider yourself lucky the heat-seeker missed,” Dredd said. “Instead of execution, you’re getting six years in the cubes. Two months for jaywalking, twenty months for assaulting that pedestrian, same again for fleeing, two years for intent to commit.”

  “That...” The man looked up into Dredd’s visor. “But that’s only, uh, five years and six months! What about the other six months?”

  Dredd pointed down at the man’s blood on the ground. “Littering. Six months.”

  He cuffed the perp and dragged him to the nearest holding-post, then called it in to Control.

  In the store’s doorway, he checked on the burly woman. “Are you hurt, citizen?”

  She looks past Dredd toward the holding post. “Damn fool near kilt me! He oughta be locked up!”

  “He will be. And I’ll remind you that interfering with a criminal awaiting pick-up will get you a mandatory five years.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “On your way.”

  He crossed the street once more and returned to the look-out, who was standing exactly where Dredd had left him, trembling.

  “I’m sorry, Judge! I swear. I’ll never do it again!”

  “I believe you,” Dredd said.

  “Then... Then I can go?”

  “No. Intent to aid a perp in the commission of a crime. Two years. Plus another year for endangering the safety of a Mega-City One Judge.” Dredd spun the man about, grabbed his arms and slapped cuffs onto his wrists.

  “Endangering...?” The perp craned his head to peer over his shoulder at Dredd. “This is bogus! How did I endanger you?”

  “You informed a known criminal of my whereabouts.”

  “But... But... No. No, that doesn’t make sense! You didn’t know he was a criminal then!”

  “But you did. Want me to add failure to inform on a known criminal? That’s another two years.”

  The man started to cry. “I’m sorry. Really, I’m sorry!”

  “I know,” Dredd said. “I understand. You’ve learned your lesson?”

  Still sobbing, the man nodded. “Yeah.” He sniffed. “So you’re not really arresting me?”

  Dredd pushed the perp ahead of him. “What makes you think that? I just asked if you’ve learned your lesson.”

  The speaker in Dredd’s helmet beeped: “Control to Dredd. Multiple homicide, two Judges dead. Funex Eaterie, Bevis Wetzel Plaza, sector sixty-three.”

  “Sector sixty-three’s a thirty-minute ride from here, Control,” Dredd replied. “Maybe twice that with the crowds and the road-closures.”

  “Your presence has been requested, Dredd. Immediately.”

  Two

  IN SECTOR 276, possibly the northernmost sector of Mega-City One—the claim was also made by the inhabitants of Sector 275, and was a constant source of tension between the neighbouring regions—Chief Judge Clarence Goodman mounted the steps leading to the podium suspended over the race’s start line.

  Goodman was a large, barrel-chested man with a deeply-lined face and, in private, an often gruff, stern manner. In public he liked to present himself as “everyone’s favourite older uncle,” a term created by spin-doctors employed by Hollins Solomon, his predecessor. It hadn’t worked for Solomon, but then Solomon had been “a cold-hearted, weasel-faced, self-serving scumbag,” in the words of his own predecessor Eustace Fargo.

  Now, as Goodman strode along the walkway toward the podium, he took his ti
me. Off to one side, he saw himself on the fifty-metre-high holographic image projected onto the side of Ridley Scott Block.

  A hundred news cameras were focussed on him; every move he made would be analysed at length over the coming days. “Goodman’s looking a little old” would be the most common observation. “See how he has to hold onto the rail? Seems unsure of himself.” There would, of course, be counter-views from his unflinching supporters: “The Chief Judge looked noble and resplendent in his garb of office as he surveyed the cheering crowd below, his ever-present smile the surest indicator of his love for this magnificent city and its loyal citizens.”

  In truth, Goodman felt neither particularly unsure nor very noble. Announcing the start of the race was a job, same as any other. And the race itself was a distraction. Whether he liked it or not, he was patron to almost eight hundred million citizens, most of them unemployed and hungry for anything that might give meaning to their lives. The Mega-City 5000 would keep them occupied for a few days. With a bit of luck, someone new might win this year—that would give them something to talk about.

  The race was open to anyone, as long as they got their applications in early and didn’t have a criminal record. It had grown from the MegNorth Sector Run, established in 2068. Back then, it had simply been a race from the west side of Sector 276 to the eastern border of Sector 275.

  Twenty metres below the gantry, the bikers and their mechanics were dashing to and fro, conducting last-minute checks on their machines. This year, over a hundred of them had passed the tryouts. Today, eight unevenly-balanced teams and a handful of independents would race from north to south in a wide zig-zagging route chosen so as to cover as much of the city as possible—if only the more camera-friendly parts.