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out. Dredd caught the sound of pulse-fire from the upper levels and the
smashing of glasseen. As he swooped around, the Judge saw a juve using
the confusion to steal a Tri-D projector from an electronics store. Dredd
knocked him to his knees with a kick as he passed the opportunist thief.
"Control, gotta kid in a blue radorak down outside the Gizmonics store,
level one. Have someone pick him up. Looting, two years mandatory."
Twisting the Krait's throttle, Dredd guided the bike up in a spiral climb.
"Am in pursuit of Rodriguez."
"Copy, Dredd," came the voice of the dispatcher. "J'aele's on the way
from the roof. He'll meet you there."
On the thirty-sixth floor, Dredd set the zipper to hover mode and
dismounted, weaving through burnt planters and the heat-scorched
corpses of citizens. He found the M-Haul offices a smoking ruin.
Kontarsky was at the doorway, fumbling at a medpack. Foster lay nearby,
groaning weakly.
"He'll live," the Sov-Judge said. "The shot just grazed him." She nodded
in the direction of a large kneepad boutique. "Rodriguez went in there.
He's got hostages."
"What the drokk happened?"
Kontarsky gave a weak shrug. "He was fine one second and the next..."
J'aele approached from the stairwell with a trio of Special Judicial
Service Judges. The Justice Department's internal affairs division, the SJS
were notorious for their ruthless nature and the zeal with which they
pursued errant Judges. The silver skull designs on their uniforms earned
them the nickname "Reapers" from street officers. "We'll take it from
here," said one of them. "SJS Chief Kessler's orders."
Dredd shook his head. "Negative. Rodriguez is one of my team. I'll deal
with him. Kessler can take it up with me if he doesn't like it."
The SJS officers hesitated. Each of them knew Dredd by reputation and
each of them knew he and Kessler had crossed swords before. Before any
of them could object, J'aele handed Dredd a laser rifle. "Take this. It's
more accurate than the STUP-gun. You'll be able to knock him out with
one shot."
Dredd accepted the weapon with a grim nod.
8. CORPUS DELICTI
Dredd passed through the archway and into the garishly lit interior of
Forbidden Knee - The Kneepad Store For Those Who Dare! - crouching
low to minimise his silhouette. The Mauley laser rifle was pressed close to
his chest, charged and ready to spit searing coherent light with a single
trigger-squeeze. The Judge paused, weighing his options and considering
the terrain. Forbidden Knee was one of the larger retail units in the
Shoplex, with favoured positioning on the thirty-sixth floor. As such, it
was crammed with hundreds of display cabinets and racks of high fashion
kneepads that dangled down from the ceiling on thick cords. Even on
distant Luna-1, the twenty-second century's most popular item of clothing
was still a hot seller.
A high-pitched scream cut through the air and Dredd tensed. Stores
like this tended to attract juves and he was sure that if Rodriguez had
hostages, they'd be young ones. A small flicker of movement caught his eye
and Dredd raised the rifle, bringing the vu-sight to bear. J'aele had
already configured the weapon to urban fighting mode and Dredd toggled
the compact scope from normal vision setting to X-ray. Someone was
moving behind one of the larger displays and the gunsight rendered the
solid object in a misty, see-through form. The Judge could clearly see the
figure now, a woman on her knees, shoulders gently shaking as she
sobbed.
Dredd made a mental note of her position and moved deeper into the
store. Once in a while, Dredd heard a random series of pulse blasts and
saw energy bolts lancing into the ceiling. One lucky shot caught a
suspended display rack and sent a dozen Tommy Mutiefinger kneepads
tumbling to the floor, to burn there in an expensive little bonfire.
Rodriguez was shouting and ranting, but it was difficult for Dredd to get a
sense of what he was saying - some of the words were in English, but the
majority of his tirade was being conducted in a guttural SouthAm
street-speak dialect.
A quiet voice whispered from his helmet speakers. "Dredd, Kontarsky
here. I've handed Foster over to the Med-Judges. I am making my way up
the service corridor behind the kneepad store."
"Understood." Dredd subvocalised, letting the sensors in his helmet
mike enhance and relay his words. "Keep him from using the back way to
make an escape. I'll take him out of play."
"Copy." Dredd sensed the weariness in Kontarsky's voice, the self-doubt.
She had been in charge here and now Rodriguez's sudden burst of insanity
would reflect badly on her judgement.
Dredd shifted the rifle again, part of him considering the number of
other Judges that he had seen go off the edge in his career. Officers who
used to be good law enforcers like Sieever or Gibson, men that Dredd had
personally had to deal with. It was perhaps one of the worst tasks that a
Judge could ever be faced with, something that no civilian outside the
kinship of the law could ever truly understand. The constant pressure of
upholding the legal system, of passing judgement on hundreds of
thousands of people throughout the course of a single career, sometimes
these things proved too much to handle. Rodriguez, with the lax morals
in-bred from years of living in the licentious Pan Andes and his volatile
temper, had clearly crossed that line. Dredd shut down the train of
thought with a grimace. In these circumstances, doubt could be a killer.
Dredd resolved to mention this to Kontarsky later in his field report.
"Stop crying!" Rodriguez bellowed at someone out of Dredd's line of
sight, the SouthAm Judge suddenly appearing in a gap between two cash
terminals. "I'll kill you if you don't stop your stinkin' noise!"
With the X-ray scope, Dredd could see the shape of a cowering teenager
behind the tills and he pulled the rifle's stock firmly into his shoulder as
Rodriguez raised his STUP-gun to press it against the weeping juve's
head. "You're all in it against me, eh?" the rogue Judge spat. "Every one of
you filthy putas trying to get into my head with your chattering!" He
pressed his free hand to the side of his helmet, as if he were trying to block
out a noise that only he could hear. "Shut up!"
In the instant Rodriguez's index finger tightened on the trigger of the
pulse pistol, a handful of outcomes raced through Dredd's mind: he could
call out, distract Rodriguez, try to reason with him. With a careful shot,
Dredd might be able to hit the SouthAm Judge's hand and sear off his
fingers with a laser bolt, disarming him, or he could take the safety shot,
the clearest and simplest approach that wouldn't risk the lives of any more
citizens.
The rifle sent a pencil-thin streak of hot light down an ionised tunnel of
air, making a sound like bones cracking. Dredd's shot melted a penny-cred
sized hole in the faceplate of Rodriguez's helmet, cutting instantly through
the cartilage in his nose and into the soft interior of his addled brain. The
laser bolt made the Judge's skull pop as the superheated steam inside it
expanded. All this occurred in less then a thousandth of a second, before
Judge Miguel Juan Olivera Montoya Rodriguez collapsed to the floor of
Forbidden Knee like a discarded rag doll.
"All units, be advised," Dredd said aloud. "Threat has been neutralised.
Repeat, neutralised."
Although Chief Judge Ortiz was hundreds of thousands of kilometres
away, broadcasting from the Pan Andes Conurb's Justicia Centrale, the
distance did nothing to mute the volume with which he roared at his
opposite number on Luna-1. "What kind of rinky-dink operation are you
running up there, Tex?" he asked, his face filling the monitor screen in the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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