The Cold Light of Day Read online

  “Well, Ted, he’s young, he’s fresh, and as we all know the Lawmaster is one of the most powerful motorcycles ever built. I’d say he has every chance.”

  “Y’know, it puts me in mind of the late Rip Venner. He was a Judge before he took up scramble-biking. Played Inferno for the Harlem Hellcats for a while. Or did I dream all that?”

  A med-Judge entered the room, and Ruiz beckoned her over. “How much longer do I have to stay here?”

  The young woman checked the monitor at the end of Ruiz’s bed. “Another day, at least, then maybe six to eight days before you can return to duty.”

  Ruiz pulled back the thin sheet covering her body. “And suppose I check myself out?”

  The med-Judge smiled. “Go ahead. If you can walk as far as the door, I’ll even drive you back to your quarters.”

  After a moment, Ruiz said, “I can’t move my legs.”

  “That’ll be the anaesthetic. We need to have you immobilised so that the rapid-heal can work.” She moved closer and pulled the sheet back into place. “My advice... Take the time to recover. And prepare your case, obviously.”

  Ruiz raised an eyebrow. “My case?”

  “You were in charge of that hot-dog run. You take responsibility for anything your cadets did.” The med-Judge regarded Ruiz with an expression of pity. “They say this is the first serious blemish on an otherwise exemplary career. If you’re lucky, the SJS will take that into account.”

  The Judge leaned back against the bed’s headrest. “The SJS.”

  “That’s what everyone is saying. They’re going to want to talk to you.” The med-Judge gave her another pitying look as she left the room.

  Ruiz sighed. The Special Judicial Squad were the Judges who judged the Judges, given special dispensation to act in any way they felt was necessary to root out corruption and incompetence. No one came out of a meeting with the SJS unscathed. Ruiz had even heard of Judges taking their own lives when faced with the SJS. I didn’t do anything wrong, she told herself. We gave Chalk a fair sentence. We can’t be held responsible for his actions after his release.

  She suppressed a shudder. The SJS. Grud-damn it, that’s it for me. Pendleton and Collins are dead, and they’re going to want to blame someone for that.

  An unexpected, bitter thought jumped into her mind: And they won’t blame Joe Dredd, because he’s one of Goodman’s little golden boys. They’ll pin it all on me.

  She took a deep breath—as deep as the rapid-heal would allow her—and forced herself to relax. It could be just a rumour. Surely if the SJS wanted me, they’d have shown up by now.

  Then the door was pushed open, and a tall, slender woman stepped in. Her black uniform was graced with silver instead of gold, skulls in place of eagles. The woman removed her helmet and ran a black-gloved hand through her close-cropped hair. “Judge Amber Ruiz. I was told you were awake. Gillen, SJS.”

  Fifteen

  SHOCK CHECKED THE map of the race’s route. He was still in fourth position, behind Silver Sylvia, leader of the Fishsickles. Neapolitan was six kilometres ahead of her, in second place. In the lead was Travis Cannon, an independent rider who’d been quickly dismissed by the bookies and pundits as a no-hoper. Cannon had taken the lead early, and stayed there far longer than anyone had anticipated. Now, there was every chance that he’d cross the finish-line in the top three. Possibly even first, if Napoleon Neapolitan couldn’t catch him.

  For most of the other riders, the race might as well be over.

  The route took Shock up onto the Southern Pass Elevated, a long banking highway that swept to the right. Here, Shock could make up some of the lost time. Neapolitan’s custom-built machine had done well on the flat, straight roads below, but hadn’t proved to be as capable on the curves. Shock opened the throttle all the way, revelling in the tremble in his arms as he held on with all of his strength.

  A glance at the speedometer: Four-eighty. Four-ninety. Five-twelve. Come on, come on! Push it! He cursed himself for using up his one-shot afterburners coming out of The Crowbar.

  The speedometer on his screen touched five-thirty-one, and flashed red. Shock couldn’t help grinning. Oh, man... New record! Eat that, Napoleon! Even if you do win, all anyone’s gonna remember is that I slowed down to let the Judge cross, and you didn’t. They’ll be wondering how much faster I could have gone if I hadn’t dropped speed.

  Far ahead, as the elevated highway smoothed out, he saw a dot on the track that could only be Silver Sylvia. His screen showed her a kilometre away. He’d overtake her in less than a minute.

  And just beyond Silver the H-wagons were still in pursuit of the other vehicle, now bearing down on the sharp right-turn at Sector 102. Already, two of the H-wagons were peeling away from the herd, banking to the right. If the unregistered flyer stuck to the race’s route, they’d be able to cut him off.

  As Shock came within grabbing distance of Silver’s bike, another three H-Wagons also cut the corner.

  He’s either an idiot or a genius, Shock thought. If that was me flying that thing, I’d follow the route closely until a sharp turn like that, get them to anticipate where I was going to be... And then not take the turn.

  SIXTY KILOMETRES BEHIND Shock, Dredd had come to the same conclusion. “It’s a bluff,” he told Walton. “Has to be. Otherwise what’s waiting for him at the finish-line? He knows he’ll be shot down once he’s no longer a danger to the citizens below.”

  “Our strategists have considered that,” Walton said. “If they’re right, he’ll pass through Sector one-twelve en route to one-fifteen. We’ll force him down when his vehicle is over the Trent river. He... Hold tight, Dredd. The team’s closing on Winston Fierro’s apartment. They’re operating on the assumption that Chalk has anticipated them.”

  “Good,” Dredd said. “If Fierro is there, get him out and clear—and make sure it’s seen to be done. We want Chalk to be chasing us, not the other way around.”

  Dredd switched his bike’s screen to the feed from the camera slung underneath the lead H-wagon. If Chalk’s going to take the corner and follow the route, he’ll have to reduce speed now...

  The screen showed the flying Chameleon rocketing over the track at a height of twenty metres, low enough that the turbulence it generated ripped at the crowd’s home-made banners. Directly ahead of the Chameleon, the first-place rider Travis Cannon pulled in to the left in preparation for taking the right-angled turn.

  As Dredd watched, something fast and bright erupted from the passenger’s side of the Chameleon and an instant later Travis Cannon’s bike was a tumbling fireball, crashing, bouncing, shedding white-hot parts as it ploughed into the barrier and cut a charred, blood-spattered path through the crowd.

  Drokk... Dredd shut off the screen and concentrated on the road. There was nothing he could do now to help the dead and wounded.

  SHOCK ALMOST MISSED the accident. He was a hundred metres behind Napoleon, gradually gaining on him, when Channel Epsilon cut to show Travis Cannon’s last seconds, then repeated the clip over and over, from different angles.

  In slow motion, it was clear that Cannon had been shot by an occupant of the flying craft.

  “Son of a...!” Shock put a call through to Napoleon’s bike. It was answered immediately. “That’s how you’re gonna play it, Napoleon? You’re gunning down your rivals?”

  Napoleon glared back at him. “What? Don’t try to pin that on us, drokker! You knew I was going to overtake Cannon on the next stretch!”

  “You wanna take this to the next level? Is that what you want, Mutie? Then here’s the deal. Screw the track. Screw the rules. And screw the damn prize-money. It’s just you and me, first one to cross the finish-line alive wins.”

  Napoleon snarled, and nodded. “You’re on.”

  Shock slammed on the controls to disconnect the call.

  He’d always known that sooner or later it would come down to this, the Spacers versus the Muties. The Mega-City 5000 was just a way to vent some steam, but instead
of damping the tension between the rival gangs, it had only served to stoke it. Regardless of the race’s outcome, there was going to be blood on the streets tonight.

  The Judges would come down hard on them for this, that was certain, but Shock didn’t care. Once past the finish-line at Sector 124, he’d keep going, out into the Cursed Earth. They might follow him, but they’d never find him.

  His comm-link buzzed, and the team’s race-planner Amanda Quisling said, “Shock—no. I’m shutting you down! There’s no proof that the Muties have anything to do with that!”

  “You’re fired, Amanda.” He flipped the communicator to connect with every other member of the Spacers. “You all hearing this? The Muties are willing to shoot down their rivals, so the rules no longer apply. They’ve still got five riders in play. You take them out any way you can, or I swear to Jovus you’ll answer to me. Anyone got a problem with that?”

  For a second, the only response was silence, then Brown Clancy said, “No problems here, Shock. I’ve been stuck behind Sharry Bean for an hour and the drokker’s just weaving back and forth making sure I can’t get past. Wouldn’t hurt me one little bit if I ram her off the road.”

  “Do it, Clancy. Same goes for the rest of you. The race is over. Now it’s war.”

  Napoleon was forty metres in front of Shock as he approached the turn’s optimal point, the spot at which he should pull to the left before swinging right, to take the turn with as little loss of speed as possible.

  The Mutie pulled to the left, but kept going. His giant-wheeled bike streaked toward the flaming remains of the barrier into which Travis Cannon had crashed... and smashed through, punching a ragged, screaming hole through the already-injured crowd.

  A Judge in Napoleon’s path drew his Lawgiver a second too late: the bike’s left wheel struck him head-on, crushing him instantly.

  Shock was right behind. He steered his Blenderbike directly at one of the scattered fragments of the barrier. The angle was ideal, his speed perfect. The Blenderbike sailed into the air above the heads of the terrified citizens closest to the track.

  He felt the bike’s still-spinning rear wheel shudder as it shredded the face of a particularly tall on-looker, then he was crashing down, hard, landing on the shoulders, backs and legs of a dozen citizens trying to scramble clear.

  No going back now, Shock thought. Not that he wanted to.

  He slammed into a citizen who’d been getting to his feet after diving out of his rival’s way, opened the throttle again and rocketed down the almost-empty street in pursuit of Napoleon’s bike.

  “SHUT DOWN THE race—now!” Goodman roared at his assistant. As Judge Brannigan reached for his communicator, Goodman added, “Jam the TV feeds and arrest every rider on the Mutant and Spacer teams. All their support people, too... Hell, arrest them all. Round up everyone connected with the race—easier to sort them out in the cubes.”

  Goodman dropped back into his seat, staring at the screens in front of him. One screen showed the casualty figures. Fifty-eight dead. As he watched, it was updated. Sixty-five dead. Sixty-seven. He mentally pictured his InstaFeedback approval rating dropping as the body-count rose.

  Seventy dead, hundreds injured. And that was just the citizens watching the race: it didn’t include Percival Chalk’s victims.

  “TV feeds jammed, sir, but I think it might be too late. The word’s already spreading through the social networks.”

  “Shut them down, too.”

  There had been worse days in his tenure as Chief Judge, and he had no doubt that worse days yet were still to come, but this one was personal. He’d opened the race. The citizens associated it with him, and by extension the entire Justice Department. The Mega-City 5000 was official. Stamped with the Department’s metaphorical seal of approval.

  Already, only minutes after the murder of Travis Cannon, there was chaos on the streets. As always, opportunistic low-lifes were rioting and looting, taking out old grievances on other citizens. In Sectors 52 and 180, citizens had torn down the barriers and were on the track, oblivious to the bikers hurtling toward them at two hundred kilometres per hour.

  The bikers themselves were side-swiping each other, trying to slam their opponents into the barriers or even into the crowd.

  “Riot foam,” Goodman said to Brannigan.

  “H-wagons already on the way, sir,” the assistant said. Then he added, “Sir... there is a way to quell the riot before it really gets going.”

  “Knew I kept you around for some reason. What is it?”

  “We declare a winner. Make the citizens think it’s all over. We can blame the attack and the subsequent loss of feed on dissidents.”

  Goodman nodded. “That might work.”

  “One problem. Before they left the track, the leaders were still a couple of hours away from crossing the finish-line. And that’s where the biggest crowds are. If they don’t see their favourites cross the line, they’ll never believe it.”

  “Then to hell with subterfuge. We’re going to defy tradition and tell the citizens the truth for once. They never believe what we say anyway.”

  Sixteen

  AS THE JUSTICE Department analysts had predicted, Percival Chalk’s souped-up Chameleon left the Mega-City 5000 route at Sector 102, but instead of heading straight for Sector 115 and passing over the uninhabitable region surrounding the Trent river, it took a wide curve to the west, sticking to the populated areas.

  Dredd’s Lawmaster roared down the dead centre of the track, sirens blaring, as thousands of panicked spectators scrambled over the barriers to escape other rioters, or to just cause some mayhem of their own.

  Walton’s voice said, “Dredd—make a choice. Go after the race leaders or follow Chalk. My team here will support you all the way, whatever you decide, but right now we can only give our full attention to one of them. It’s your call.”

  “Chalk,” Dredd said. “Send a H-wagon after the bikers. Tell them to shoot on sight.”

  “You prefer them wounded or dead?”

  “I want them stopped.”

  “Understood. Dredd, drop your speed—there’s a wagon approaching you from behind, ramp down.”

  Dredd’s screen showed the craft hurtling along the track behind him, only four metres above the ground. His radio buzzed again. “Judge Dredd, this is H-Wagon 22. Control instructed us to give you a lift. Prepare to ditch the bike and grab on as we pass.”

  “Negative,” Dredd said. “You’re taking me and the bike. Get in front of me, match my speed. And watch out for civilians.”

  The craft passed overhead, the ramp in its undercarriage so close to Dredd he could have reached up and brushed it with his fingertips. The H-wagon dropped down ten metres in front of Dredd, keeping pace with him. He nudged the Lawmaster’s accelerator a little, and screeched to a stop on the ramp. The H-wagon’s co-pilot and engineer grabbed hold of the bike as the ramp rose back into the craft. The H-wagon was already rapidly gaining altitude.

  “You okay?” the engineer asked. “You must have been doing over—”

  Dredd climbed off the bike. “Engine’s running hot, fuel’s low. Give it the works.”

  He pushed past the co-pilot and dropped into the man’s vacant seat. “Chalk?”

  The pilot tapped a screen in front of Dredd. “That’s him. There’s eight wagons on his tail. Nine, counting us. There’s no way he’ll escape—that monstrosity just can not have the range and speed we do.”

  Dredd activated his helmet radio. “Walton, what’s the situation with Chalk’s last target?”

  “Winston Fierro wasn’t home. Neighbour said he was planning to be at the race’s finish-line. I’ve already issued his ID to the spy-cams. We’ll find him.”

  We’ve been assuming that Chalk is going after Fierro because Moeller gave us his name, Dredd thought. But it could be a bluff. “Call off all the H-wagons but the two closest to Chalk. Send one after the bikers. The others are better employed dealing with the crowd.”

  “Won
’t be so easy to herd Chalk with just three of you up there.”

  “Chalk was a weapons dealer, Walton. We don’t know what he’s carrying. More H-wagons in the air just gives him more targets.” Dredd checked the monitors. Far ahead, already over Sector 111, the modified Chameleon was keeping low, never more than a hundred metres above ground level.

  Dredd patched the screen into the lead H-wagon’s camera feed. It showed the Chameleon zipping back and forth between the sector’s blocks and skyscrapers, always too close to them for the H-wagons to risk opening fire.

  To the pilot, he said, “We’ll never catch him by following his path. We need to meet him at his destination.”

  “Right. Fierro’s block—the Abbitat Habitat in Sector one-fifteen.”

  “What if that’s not his destination?” Dredd called up a map of the city’s southern sectors, then contacted Walton. “There were four others with him in Eminence. Rose, Morante, Kinsley and Squire. They’re all dead.”

  “This much I know,” Walton said. “Point?”

  “We’ve been assuming that Winston Fierro is next on his list because he’s on the race’s route. But five years ago Fierro had been temporarily assigned to a different team exploring the undercity.”

  “And we know from Judge Meacham’s report that Chalk wasn’t alone in Joanne Vanderbilt Block. You think maybe Fierro’s the other man? That’s possible. If Fierro wasn’t in Eminence, he couldn’t betray Chalk.”

  On the screen in front of Dredd, Chalk’s vehicle dipped and soared, dodging left and right as it wove a complex path through the tangled junction of two dozen elevated highways, known locally as The Knot. The other H-wagons were having difficulty anticipating its path.

  “I think I know what he’s planning,” Dredd said. “We need to head him off. Take us up,” he told the pilot. “High arc, top speed. Head for the finish-line.”