Judge Dredd: Year Two Read online

  An Abaddon Books™ Publication

  www.abaddonbooks.com

  [email protected]

  First published in 2016 by Abaddon Books™, Rebellion Intellectual Property Limited, Riverside House, Osney Mead, Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK.

  Editor: David Moore

  Cover: Neil Roberts

  Design: Sam Gretton, Oz Osborne & Maz Smith

  Marketing and PR: Remy Njambi

  Editor-in-Chief: Jonathan Oliver

  Head of Books and Comics Publishing: Ben Smith

  Creative Director and CEO: Jason Kingsley

  Chief Technical Officer: Chris Kingsley

  The Righteous Man and Down and Out copyright © 2016 Rebellion.

  Introduction and Alternative Facts copyright © 2017 Rebellion.

  Judge Dredd created by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra.

  ISBN: 978-1-78618-086-5

  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

  Wear Iron, Al Ewing

  Judge Dredd: Year Two

  The Righteous Man, Michael Carroll

  Down and Out, Matthew Smith

  Alternative Facts, Cavan Scott

  Rico Dredd: The Titan Years

  The Third Law, Michael Carroll

  Judge Anderson, Rookie

  Heartbreaker, Alec Worley

  The Abyss, Alec Worley

  A Dream of the Never Time, Alec Worley

  Judge Dredd

  Bad Moon Rising, David Bishop

  Black Atlantic, Simon Jowett & Peter J Evans

  Cursed Earth Asylum, David Bishop

  Deathmasques, Dave Stone

  Dread Dominion, Dave Stone

  Dredd vs. Death, Gordon Rennie

  Dreddlocked, Stephen Marley

  Eclipse, James Swallow

  The Final Cut, Matthew Smith

  The Hundredfold Problem, John Grant

  Kingdom of the Blind, David Bishop

  The Medusa Seed, Dave Stone

  Psykogeddon, Dave Stone

  The Savage Amusement, David Bishop

  Silencer, David Bishop

  Swine Fever, Andrew Cartmel

  Wetworks, Dave Stone

  Whiteout, James Swallow

  Judge Anderson

  Fear the Darkness, Mitchel Scanlon

  Red Shadows, Mitchel Scanlon

  Sins of the Father, Mitchel Scanlon

  Contents

  Introduction, by the Mighty Tharg

  The Righteous Man, by Michael Carroll

  Down and Out, by Matt Smith

  Alternative Facts, by Cavan Scott

  Sneak Peek: Judges

  More 2000 AD Fiction

  Introduction

  BORAG THUNGG, EARHLETS!

  Welcome to the second zarjaz collection of prose stories from Judge Joe Dredd’s early years, cunningly entitled Year Two. As the name suggests, we’re now into 2081 AD, and these novellas establish a Young Stoney-Face that’s making his mark on the mean streets of Mega-City One, and no longer quite the raw rookie that he was. Of course, being a clone of Eustace Fargo, the Father of Justice and creator of the Judges—engineered from the finest genetic material, and fashioned into a law-enforcement machine—Dredd was never going to be as wet behind the ears as other graduates from the Academy of Law, but he has a lot of expectation to live up to, and nothing, not even fifteen years in the toughest school on Earth, can quite prepare you for policing this violent, crazy metropolis.

  A shadow looms over Dredd too in the shape of his corrupt clone-brother Rico, who despite being Joe’s equal in so many ways, chose a darker path. The previous collection saw Rico still a Mega-City Judge, and using his ill-gotten gains through association with organised crime to fund a luxurious lifestyle. In 2000 AD, Rico’s corruption was only glimpsed—the first full story of how far the Dredd sibling had fallen didn’t come until the three-parter from March 2000 Blood Cadets—but prose has allowed the writers to explore the character and his relationship with Joe a lot more deeply. Indeed, Michael Carroll, who pens the first story here The Righteous Man, has also written an e-novella purely about Rico’s time on the penal colony of Titan called The Third Law. By Year Two, however, Rico has been arrested and sentenced, the bloodline besmirched. How Dredd deals with this, and the impact it has on him, informs not just Carroll’s book but the second story too, Down & Out by Matthew Smith.

  The Righteous Man asks questions of Dredd in the aftermath of Rico’s fall from grace—can he be trusted? They’re cut from the same cloth, share the same DNA—who’s to say Joe doesn’t also possess that bad seed that could see him twisting justice for his own ends. Dredd struggles with these questions himself in Down & Out, opening with him being asked to express how he feels by a Justice Department psychoanalyst—and that’s the problem. He doesn’t feel—he doesn’t know how, it was drilled out of him by his tutors. When he becomes cut off in notorious part of town, severely injured, escape impossible, he’s haunted by the spectre of Rico, about what it means to be part of the bloodline, and what he must do to step up to restore honour to the Fargo lineage.

  The press interest and publicity around the Rico case also plays a part in needling the Grand Hall, who frankly could do without the scandal, and indeed it is a journalist that travels to Titan to interview the ex-Judge who ends up bearing Dredd’s niece Vienna. Scurrilous reportage forms the backbone of the story that rounds out this omnibus, Alternative Facts by Cavan Scott, which works in an on-point plot about a whistleblowing blogger alongside a murder case and several neat continuity elements. Enjoy, Terrans!

  SPLUNDIG VUR THRIGG!

  THARG THE MIGHTY

  THE

  RIGHTEOUS

  MAN

  Michael Carroll

  Mega-City One

  2080 AD

  One

  “NO WAY, RICO. I’m taking you in.”

  Seven words that marked the end of everything. They echoed through Joseph Dredd’s mind as he watched a squad of more experienced Judges go into action.

  Joe had already cuffed Rico’s wrists and stripped him of his weapons and equipment, but no one was taking any chances. They put a second set of cuffs on Rico’s wrists, two more on his ankles. A Med-Judge hit him with a heavy tranquiliser, then allowed him to topple backwards onto a stretcher.

  Four street Judges carried him out of the block, another four walking alongside them, all with their Lawgivers already drawn.

  As they carried Rico’s barely-conscious body past Joe and toward a waiting H-Wagon, one of the Judges muttered, “How the hell do we know we got the right one?”

  Joe ran his gloved hand over the back of his neck; it came away damp with sweat.

  He glanced back toward the block. Inside, Virgil Livingstone was dead, face-down in a drying pool of his own blood. So far, the other Judges had only barely glanced at him. That made sense: a rogue Judge needed to be dealt with immediately, and Livingstone wasn’t going anywhere.

  Joe moved to follow the Judges into the H-Wagon, but a senior Judge stepped in front of him, palm out. “Not a chance, boy. You stay put—the chief’s on the way to see you.”

  “Understood,” Joe said.

  They were all watching him, he knew that. He didn’t blame them. He and Rico were identical, down to the names on thei
r badges. Few of their fellow Judges were able to tell them apart.

  Until they spoke, at least. Joe’s voice was a little deeper, his manner more calm. Where Rico was talkative, Joe was taciturn. When they were together, one sure way to identify them was to see who spoke first in any given situation. Odds were, that was Rico.

  Joe was the cold one. He was aware that some of tutors at the Academy had believed him to be too dispassionate to make it as a Judge. Once, during preparation for a training exercise to the Cursed Earth, he’d overhead Judge-Tutor Semple talking about him with Judge Ruiz: “Judges have got to be calm and assured, but this damn kid’s a robot. He’s good at what he does—the best—but a Judge needs empathy. Joe’s about as empathic as a rock. You meet Rico, he asks you how things are going. Joe asks you what needs to be done.”

  Judge Ruiz had said, “Have to say, I prefer the latter. We’re not here to be friends.”

  “At least you can have a conversation with Rico. You get the feeling that there’s more behind those eyes than a law-book. Joe Dredd needs to learn how to engage, because right now his attitude is holding him back. Rico has friends who’d take a bullet for him; Joe has colleagues who are cautious around him. No Judge works alone. Joe will only become an effective Judge if he has the full support and trust of the rest of the Department.”

  So he’d tried harder to fit in with the other cadets, to join in their conversations and sometimes offer opinions even when he hadn’t been asked. That hadn’t been easy, and he wasn’t completely sure that it was as important as Judge-Tutor Semple believed, until he realised that it wasn’t just for his benefit; it was also for theirs. A suggestion here, a subtle prompt there, and soon Joe found that the other cadets were coming to him for advice. Only on judicial matters, of course; for almost anything else they came to Rico.

  All those years in the Academy, a year on the streets... And it had come down to this. Rico had turned bad. Somewhere along the way, he’d strayed from the path.

  Every cadet strayed to some degree, of course—that was only human—but most of them realised their mistake and turned back. Joe himself had experienced moments of doubt about the system, but unlike Rico he’d never chosen to subvert that system.

  He’d put his doubts aside. If the Law was wrong—and it sometimes was—then the correct approach was to temper that error with justice and mercy. Rico’s approach had been to say, “Drokk it,” and do whatever suited him in that moment.

  The H-Wagon rose silently and Joe watched it go, very much aware of the many Judges still at the scene of the crime.

  Now, another senior Judge stepped up to him. Kimber was a tall, lean, fifty-year-old man sporting a non-regulation grey moustache. “Chief Judge Goodman is on the way, Dredd. Hand over your Lawgiver, daystick, boot-knife and utility belt.”

  Joe didn’t move. “I’m under arrest?”

  “Just hand them over.”

  “You didn’t answer.” Every other Judge present was now looking in his direction. Some of them already had their Lawgivers in hand, held pseudo-casually by their sides.

  “I don’t answer to you, Dredd. I’ve been on the streets since before you were mixed in a test-tube. So either you give me your weapons, or I take them from you. Trust me, you will not enjoy the latter option.”

  Another H-Wagon was approaching. The other Judges would never let him anywhere near the Chief Judge if he was armed. He unclipped his belt and handed it over, along with his Lawgiver and everything else.

  Kimber passed them to another Judge, then removed a set of cuffs from his own belt. To Joe, he said, “Arms out, wrists together.”

  “Do you think I’ll be any less dangerous wearing cuffs?”

  Kimber regarded him for a moment. “All right. Your decision. If the chief won’t see you like this, it’s your loss. But you ought to understand that the word has already spread. You arrested your own brother, Dredd. That’s not won you any new friends.”

  “He broke the law, Kimber. The only reason we exist is to uphold the law. If you’re implying that I should have let him walk, then—”

  “Shut the drokk up, you stupid punk! You think you’re the only decent Judge in the department? That the rest of us are looking out for each other and to hell with the citizens? Rico was armed, he’d just gunned down a civilian, you had the drop on him, and you arrested him. Didn’t even fire your weapon once. You were within the law to blow his drokkin’ head off.” He leaned closer. “He’s a killer, and you protected him. Now do you understand me? If your brother kills again, that’s on you.”

  CHIEF JUDGE CLARENCE Goodman dismissed the other Judges—they retreated out of earshot, but remained close enough to act should anything go wrong—and stared at Joseph Dredd for a full minute before he spoke.

  During that time, he ran through a dozen opening sentences, but none of them felt right. In the end, he just sighed and said, “Stomm.”

  Dredd didn’t respond to that. Goodman hadn’t expected him to.

  “Joe... When did you know?”

  “Sir?”

  “You know what I’m asking. When did you realise Rico had turned?”

  “I... Sir, that’s hard to say. I wasn’t ever sure, but I had suspicions. On several occasions, citizens I’d never met before greeted me as though they knew me. Obviously they thought I was Rico. It’s likely the same thing happened to him.”

  “But?”

  “On three of those occasions, the conversations seemed to imply that they were low-level perps operating under Rico’s protection. Without further evidence, that wasn’t reason enough to question them, or even talk to him about them. Sometimes a Judge must allow some things to slide in order to—”

  “Do please keep teaching me the finer points of the law, Dredd,” cut in Goodman. “I’m only the damn Chief Judge!”

  “Sorry, sir.”

  “Go on.”

  “Rico’s been residing in an apartment belonging to a citizen who’s currently out of the city. That’s not against the rules. I checked out the owner. Everything Rico said was confirmed, and the owner himself was clean. He had been implicated in a body-sharking racket, but was cleared by subsequent investigation shortly before he relocated to Texas City.”

  “All right,” Goodman said. “His apartment will be vacant, so he asks a Judge to live there while he’s gone. That’s not uncommon. It helps keep the Judges among the people as well as protect the apartment. There’s even a tax-break the owner can claim for that.”

  “Sir, Rico was the investigating Judge in that body-sharking case.”

  “That’s not proof of anything, Dredd.”

  Dredd glanced back toward the building. “The body of Virgil Livingstone is pretty solid evidence.”

  Goodman took a step closer to Dredd, his eyes narrow and his face grim. “Funny. I didn’t know better, I’d swear that’s Rico talking. There’ll be a full investigation. Into both of you. You will return to the Hall of Justice. Once there, you will remain in your quarters under house-arrest pending the outcome of this investigation. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I mean it, Joe. You are forbidden to engage in any judicial activities unless and until specifically requested to do so by a senior Judge.” Goodman started to move away, then stopped and turned back. “Of the two of you, you were the one I had the most hope for. If you’ve let me down, I swear to Grud I’ll...”

  He couldn’t finish the sentence. He felt like he’d swallowed a ball of concrete. His opponents were going to have a field-day with this. They’d been arguing against the use of cloned Judges for years, and now they had all the ammunition they needed to put the programme on ice for good.

  Damn Rico. Always just a little too smug, too cocksure, for his own good. From the moment the kid learned that he was a clone of Judge Fargo, he’d thought of himself as special, better than the other cadets.

  And he had been good, that couldn’t be denied. Rico and Joe had been by far the best cadets the Academy had ever turned
out.

  From the moment they were removed from the accelerated-growth units—Rico first, then Joe—they’d been monitored every step of the way. For the first few years, at least. It was all on file; Goodman briefly wondered how much of that archived footage would become part of the investigation.

  Goodman climbed back into his shuttle. Despite the situation, he had to suppress a smile as he recalled Joe and Rico learning to walk. They’d looked to be the equivalent of about five years old, but—fresh from the cloning vats—they’d been as weak as newborn infants.

  Rico had been the first to walk, of course. Rico was always first. His chubby little legs had been supporting his own weight for a couple of days as he carefully made his way around the nursery, holding onto walls and chairs and anything that he could use to keep his balance, grinning and giggling as he grew steadier on his feet. For most of that time, Joe had sat in the middle of the room, just watching him.

  Then Rico had cautiously let go of the chair, first with one hand, then the other, and took his first real steps.

  Goodman had been watching. He’d spent a lot of time watching the twins, probably far too much time, he knew, but they were fascinating. He hadn’t had a lot of experience with children, and had been captivated by the rate at which the clones were developing.

  Rico had walked eight steps before collapsing onto his backside with fresh burst of giggles. Moments later, he was up again. Twenty-one steps. Third attempt, almost fifty steps before he fell. And then he got up once more, and never crawled again.