Rico Dredd: The Titan Years Read online

  As we walked through the transparent tunnel—only occasionally glancing up to see if there was a break in the clouds—he said, “I’m going to sue them, soon as I set foot on Earth. I heard that when the Titan shuttle comes in to San Fran, there are solicitors just waiting for the prisoners. They’re all desperate to make media-deals and help the parolees sue anyone and everyone they can. And what with the hard-luck aspect you can double your income if you’re a mod, is what I heard. ‘They turned me into a monster’ kind of thing.”

  “Has anyone ever successfully sued the Department of Justice?” I asked.

  “Probably not. And I probably won’t be successful either. But I’m going to do it anyway. Make a big noise about how they’ve treated me.”

  “Maybe it would work in Mega-City Two, but not where I come from. We got rid of most of the lawyers back when—”

  Wightman slapped my upper arm and pointed ahead. “What’s this?”

  Three guards were striding quickly towards us from the hydroponic domes. “You tell me,” I said. Wightman had much better eyesight than I did—the modification process isn’t exactly precision engineering.

  “Giambalvo, McConnach and Sloane. And they’re looking at us.”

  We both stopped walking. That was just something every prisoner learned to do, one of those unwritten, unspoken rules. If a guard doesn’t give you a direct order to approach, you stand still and let them come to you. I never thought about it much, but I guess that subconsciously you’re expecting a fight, so letting the guard cover the distance, however short it might be, is a way of ensuring that they’ve expended more energy than you have before the potential trouble begins.

  When they were close enough that they didn’t have to shout, sub-warden Giambalvo said, “You two. Warden’s office. Right now.”

  Wightman said, “What for? We haven’t done—”

  McConnach’s daystick lanced out, striking Wightman square on the voicebox. He staggered back, then dropped to his knees, gagging and groaning. I’ve had that done to me more than once—by McConnach herself—and it hurts like you’ve been gargling chunks of broken glass.

  “After fifteen years anyone would think that you’d learn, Wightman,” McConnach said. “Your days of giving orders are long over.”

  Giambalvo looked at me. “We don’t have time for drokking around,” she said. “Pick up your friend and come with us.”

  Three

  IN THE THREE years since I’d arrived on Titan I’d only twice seen the warden in person. Governor Myles Dodge, seventy, completely bald—didn’t even have eyebrows—with African and Caucasian heritage. He had the look of an old-time circus strongman whose body had finally succumbed to age: a broad frame supporting a body draped with far too much loose skin.

  It was easy to get the impression that Dodge spent his days sitting in his office watching TV while he left the running of the prison to the sub-wardens and guards, and maybe that was the impression he wanted to give, for some reason. But the fact is he had his finger on the pulse, as I’d learned the first time I met him.

  That had been shortly after my modification surgery. I was in the infirmary, with sub-warden Copus in the middle of explaining certain truths to me, when the door opened and Dodge entered.

  He looked me up and down, and said to Copus, “Good job. What does he remember?”

  “About the process? Nothing.”

  I said, “Who the hell are you?”

  He ignored that, and asked Copus, “Who was on the airlock when he was brought in?”

  “Giambalvo.” Copus hesitated for a second. “So far she’s said nothing, but I don’t know her well enough to trust her.”

  “I do. She can keep her mouth shut.” He turned to me. “Dredd, I’m Governor Dodge. You understand why we did this to you?”

  “Sure, I understand.” He looked as though he didn’t believe me, so I repeated it more firmly. “I understand. The other inmates have to believe that Titan is so hostile that this was the only way to save my life.” I shrugged. “I hate it, but I get it. If they believe there’s even the slightest chance of surviving out there, they’ll spend all their time plotting their escape. That’s not going to get the ore out of the ground, and the ore is the only thing that makes this place viable.”

  Dodge watched me as I spoke, nodding slowly, then said, “Your voicebox gives you an advantage over non-modified prisoners, Dredd; it’s harder to tell whether you think I’m a piece of toast. So we’re going to have to judge you by your actions, not your words. Work hard and keep your head down, and you might find yourself in my favour. The journey from Earth to Titan is expensive, so anything less than a twenty-year sentence is just not cost-effective... But say an inmate was to help keep the peace. Fewer fights means fewer injuries. That means fewer days in the infirmary and lower running costs. Something like that might weigh heavily in your favour, Dredd. It’s all economics. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “I do. Aside from the reference to toast.”

  Copus said, “Don’t butter him up.”

  “Right, got it.”

  Dodge continued, “Then there’s the opposite approach. Push against the system, the system pushes back, and no one man—no matter how impressed he is with himself—can win against the system.”

  He tapped the centre of his chest with his index finger. “The system. In case there’s any confusion.”

  The second time I met Governor Dodge was sixteen months later, when former EuroCit Judge Ren Tramatky lifted a guard’s gun and managed to deactivate its handprint scanner. Exactly how he did that we still don’t know, but the result was chaos: two guards dead and fourteen wounded, six prisoners wounded, and more than fifty almost suffocated when Tramatky realised there was no possible way to escape and blasted a hole in the mess-hall windows. I’d ordered Wightman and a couple of others to block the cracked windows with tables and plastic trays while I took down Tramatky with my bare fists. Afterwards, Dodge had called me to his office to—he said—commend me on my quick thinking. I figured he was checking up on me. Wanted to look me in the eye, see if he could work out what I was thinking. And maybe because the whole hands-off image he worked so hard to maintain kept him a further step removed from what was happening on the ground. He asked me to explain what had happened, how I thought Tramatky might have disabled the handprint scanner—I didn’t have an answer for that one—and if there was anything else I wanted to report. I wasn’t able to think of anything that might fit, so after a few awkward exchanges he concluded that we were done, and he dismissed me.

  It wasn’t until months later that I realised the real reason Myles Dodge had called me in. He liked me. Liked my company. Unlike most of the prisoners, I wasn’t permanently arrogant or terrified. I wasn’t raging against the system that put me there. I’d accepted that they’d made me into a mod without too much in the way of complaint.

  And maybe there was a philosophical connection too: pretty early in his career, Dodge had been wounded during a riot at an aeroball stadium: spine broken in four places. He’d never quite recovered, and had spent the next decade driving a desk, despite his protestations that he was strong enough to return to the streets.

  Then in 2076, Governor Nkambule decided to see what bullets tasted like, and her job was suddenly vacant... and tantalising for Dodge. Solid work, a twenty-year contract with the option to retire at the end of it, and a hefty pension.

  Judges don’t normally get paid, but the mining corporations on the outer planets’ moons are multinational, so they don’t answer to any one city. Plus it’s hard to persuade anyone to go, so the corporations tell potential guards and wardens, “We’ll put your salary aside for you, every month, in a high-interest account. When your term is done and you come back to Earth, you’ll get it all in one lump sum. You’ll never have to work another day in your life.”

  And for Dodge there was the added attraction of Titan’s low gravity, about a seventh of that on Earth. Sure, inside the prison we had
grav-plates on the floor to make it easier to get around, but they were rarely running at full-G. That had to be bliss for someone who’s suffered decades of back pain.

  So I got to thinking that maybe Dodge saw something of himself in me: we’d both wanted to be Judges, but the system wasn’t flexible enough to accept that we differed from the standard model of a Judge.

  I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong about that. Certainly, Dodge didn’t seem to have anything like that on his mind when Giambalvo and the others escorted me and Wightman into his office.

  Sub-warden Copus was already there, standing beside Dodge’s desk with his arms folded and his brow furrowed. And so was Zera Kurya.

  Copus said, “This is everyone,” but I couldn’t tell from his tone whether that was a statement or a question.

  Governor Dodge looked around, nodded, and said, “We have a situation, and you people are going to resolve it. Four days ago a freighter outbound towards Mimas suffered a catastrophic failure. Its crew managed to regain enough control to steer it towards Titan. One hour ago it breached our atmosphere. That slowed its descent a little, but not enough. It hit the ground hard... and our long-range scanners are picking up possible life signs.” He looked directly at me. “You and Wightman are going out to find the crash site and retrieve any survivors and supplies. Kurya is here because back in East-Meg One she was a top-rated Med-Judge.”

  Wightman said, “Yeah... I don’t think so. I’ve just come off a shift. There’s no law that says we have to...” He noticed Dodge’s scowl and slowed to a stop. “Damn it. All right.”

  I asked, “Where did the ship hit?”

  “A few kilometres south of Brunel’s Ridge.”

  I knew enough about Titan’s geography to get an inkling of what we were facing. “That’s got to be five hundred kilometres from here.”

  Giambalvo said, “Closer to six hundred.”

  Copus glanced at Dodge-who very slightly shook his head-then Copus turned back to us. “Since our friends in Texas-City have yet to deliver on the shuttles they promised us eight drokkin’ years ago, we’ve got to go overland. The rescue party is the seven of us here. Not counting the warden, of course.”

  Giambalvo said, “Sir, I can’t. The low gravity outside... you know how much it affects me. I was invalided out of the Department because my sense of balance is shot to stomm. In the low gravity it gets even worse.”

  “The transport has grav-plates, Giambalvo. You’ll be okay.”

  “I won’t be able to function effectively. I recommend Takenaga take my place. She understands discretion. Plus she’s logged more time on the surface than I have.”

  Copus exchanged another look with Dodge, but this time the warden nodded. “All right,” Copus said. “Find her, brief her. Sloane, you’re the driver—get down to the compound and requisition the best vehicle you can find. Nothing smaller than a four-tonne. The freighter’s complement is seventeen. It’s unlikely that they all survived, but we have to prepare for that.”

  Sloane said, “The big bus would do it...” He checked his watch. “It’s due to head out on the next shift.”

  “Okay. Tell the quartermaster to talk to me if he gives you any trouble.”

  As Sloane and Giambalvo left, Copus turned to me, Wightman and Kurya. “You all know how dangerous it is out there. We’re aware that with danger there comes opportunity. Any of you even think about turning on us, you’ll find yourselves—”

  Kurya cut him off. “We understand. We are still prisoners.”

  Wightman asked, “Just wondering, chief. Do we get anything for this? I mean, we’re risking our lives.”

  Governor Dodge said, “We’ll talk about that when you return. They...”

  He looked away as his voice trailed off, and that was when I knew that they were lying. This was not a rescue mission.

  This was something else.

  Something a lot more dangerous.

  Four

  “THE BIG BUS” was the name given to the prison’s most powerful vehicle. It wasn’t the largest—that was our General Dynamics H88 Crawler, which could haul a hundred tonnes of ore at a maximum speed of fifteen kilometres per hour—and it wasn’t the fastest, which was a Mega-City One Justice Department Lawmaster that had been modified to run on sand. We only had one of those, and it wasn’t going to be much use for this mission.

  The Big Bus was a double-width version of our standard personnel carrier. Range of over three thousand kilometres and capable of carrying a hundred passengers in relative comfort, if all the seats were installed, one-sixty in misery if they weren’t.

  The reason it was double-width—actually wider than it was long—was that it had once been two standard vehicles, and some engineering genius had bolted them together. The original plan had been to join them end-to-end, but the surface of Titan is pitted with so many crevasses and craters that the long bus would have got stuck every time it crested a hill.

  Wightman knew a lot more about engineering than I did, and he’d always wanted to travel on the Big Bus.

  In the airlock, as we waited for Kurya to seal her environment suit, Wightman was growing more and more excited, like a kid on his Birthday Eve. “You know how intricate a differential gearbox is in a normal vehicle? This one has got to be ten times as complex!”

  He took the lead as we left the prison’s hangar and headed towards the bus. Not caring whether or not Kurya and I understood—or cared—he launched into his lecture: “Your standard wheeled car has wheels on both sides, right? This means that when it’s turning, the wheels on the inside of the curve have a shorter distance to travel than those on the outside of the curve, which means they have to turn slower. Now, in most cases only the rear wheels have drive—the front ones aren’t connected to the engine. So when it’s turning, the front wheels can turn however much they need to, no problems there, but the rear wheels are connected to the engine via a common drive-shaft. So the whole mechanism needs to work in a way that the engine provides different rates of power to the inside and outside wheels. It gets even more complicated with a four-wheel-drive vehicle.” We’d reached the bus; Wightman had already dropped to his knees and was peering underneath the chassis. “But in this case it’s way more complicated because all the wheels are driven—”

  “We get it,” I told him.

  Wightman twisted around and lowered himself onto his back, started shimmying underneath the bus. “Man, I’d love to see the schematics for this. Two separate engines, sixteen wheels, four drive-shafts! Just the braking system is giving me palpitations! I tell you I was planning to retrain as a Tek-Judge? I always got along better with machines than with people.” He drew up his legs, dug his heels into the dirt, then pushed himself further under the bus. “Rico, go get me a flashlight. I want to see how they’ve linked up the two suspension systems.”

  Kurya nudged my arm, and I looked up to see Copus and Takenaga approaching, cautiously making their way across the packed-dirt ground.

  I kicked the sole of Wightman’s boot. “No time for that. Come on.”

  Copus seemed particularly unsteady, but I quickly realised why. As second-in-command to Dodge he delegated work to the other wardens. He rarely left the prison himself, and wasn’t used to the low gravity.

  “Move it,” Copus barked at us. “Departing in ninety seconds.”

  I grabbed Wightman’s ankle and dragged him back out.

  We followed Kurya onto the bus, and the engines coughed into life as the airlock doors closed and sealed behind us.

  Guard Ernie Sloane was at the controls, flipping switches and checking read-outs more efficiently than usual. Copus was standing with his back to the windshield, already removing his helmet. McConnach was near the back, kneeling on one seat while she rummaged through an emergency pack on the seat behind it, and in the alcove behind Sloane, Takenaga was checking the seals on the weapons rack.

  Copus said, “Sit down, strap in, and hold on tight. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover and not a lot of t
ime.”

  Takenaga asked, “So what is this? Giambalvo said something about a crashed freighter.”

  “Not yet.” Copus glanced at Sloane. “Gun it.”

  I’d barely lowered myself into a seat before the bus surged forward.

  In the seat in front of me, Wightman muttered, “Holy crap!” and turned around to stare at me with wide eyes. “Talk about torque! I had no idea this bugger could move this fast!”

  Sloane called back, “We should hit a cruising speed of about one-thirty, but the topographical data beyond the four-hundred-K radius is pretty sketchy. Rough estimate for our ETA—and don’t hold me to this—is approximately six hours.”

  Takenaga said, “ETA already has the word ‘estimated’ in there. You don’t need to repeat it, much less add ‘rough’ and ‘approximately.’”

  Sloane laughed. “Hah, yeah. That does sound a bit vague, doesn’t it? But we’re going to be crossing terra incognita so there’s no way of knowing what we’re going to hit.”

  Softly, Takenaga said, “Can’t be terra incognita. This isn’t Terra.”

  Wightman winked at me and whispered, “Remember I told you she was pedantic?”

  Copus called out, “All right, everyone listen up. McConnach? I’m talking to you too.”

  “Double-checking the supplies, boss,” she called back. “We’re supposed to do it before we leave, but—”

  “Turn around and pay attention, McConnach. Now.”

  My guts started to churn. They’d already been troubling me, but now they were hitting the spin-cycle.

  Copus said, “Mister Sloane, disengage the vehicle’s radio, GPS tracking, and the transponder.”

  “Eh... No.”

  “Do it, Mister Sloane. That’s an order.”

  “Sir, if I do that, then I’m driving blind. It’s not like there are road signs on this planet.”

  Takenaga muttered “moon” under her breath.