3. A-Watch; S13 25/07/31: late AM through to early PM

The dull crunch of standard-issue daystick across perp head gave Judge Muller a grim satisfaction, as always.  A riot had broken out at a demo by the League of Fatties, with Fat Abolition Front activists making an inevitable appearance, and he’d been tasked away from Wily’s Tac-Team to help with crowd control. As he rose from cuffing the twitching form of the unfortunate perp, he heard his Tac-Team’s call sign go out over the Justice Department comm-net: “Judges under fire from wreckers on the Eric Pickles Slabway; badges required to provide assistance!”. “Muller responding” he said in a menacing growl, as he raced to his waiting Lawmaster…

By the time Muller arrived on scene, Wily and Kowalski had started to turn the tide of the fierce firefight. As a number of perps traded shots with the Judges, a couple appeared to be using an industrial las-cutter to get to the contents of the burning heavy juggernaut freight-bot. Some distance away hovered an unmarked H-Buggy, no doubt intended to whisk away any goodies the perps were able to liberate. 

Muller made a snap decision: “Hi-Ex!”. The special shell arced through the air and exploded with deadly force amid the perps with the las-cutters. “Mmmm, chunky salsa!” growled Muller at the grisly results.

As the remains of the perps slid down the side of the heavy transporter, Kowalski and Wily outflanked the remaining perps on their Lawmasters, killing one perp and injuring another. Faced with three Judges and with most of their gang dead or injured, the remaining wreckers gave up. Seeing this, the occupants of the H-Buggy took to the skies and rapidly disappeared. 

As the Med-Wagons patched up the wounded and the dead were bagged for Resyk, Control supplied intel on the Perps. The Grundys were known to the Department as low-level criminals housed in the Jimmy Gandolfini Block. It was clear that a crime like this would usually have been way out of their league, both in terms of ambition and capability. Muller and Wily picked out the youngest of the Grundys for closer questioning. Through a combination of intimidation (Muller) and reassurance (Wily), it became clear that the job had been planned by the eldest Grundy, Eddie. Colin (the youngest) didn’t know any details, but he did know that his mother Clarrie had been used as collateral for a loan from the Finkle Brothers. It was clear there was some sort of body sharking racket going on, but was there a connection with the Radleys?

Deciding they’d got all they could from the remaining Grundys for now, the Tac-Team headed off to Saturn Towers where the missing spacers had last been seen. Requesting further information from Control, they learned that the missing persons were one Abelard Snazz and Loogi Beezlebrot. Other than both being itinerant spacers passing through the Meg, there didn’t appear to be anything to connect them. Their rooms had been swept by Tek Squads, and nothing of interest had been found. 

Arriving at Saturn Towers, it was clear that this had been built during a short-lived craze for mid- and late-20th century sci-fi vid shows; something called Trek Wars, or some such rubbish. The flop house was staffed by a motley assortment of droids fashioned in the likeness of characters from the old vid-shows, with a set of mannerisms to match. Biting back their irritation at the appalling overacting and arched eyebrows of the droids, the team penetrated the ageing security software on the hotel mainframe. As a result, they discovered that a series of back-doors had been programmed into the system, enabling the security vid to be looped to show an empty corridor outside the spacers’ rooms at the time the spacers went missing. More intriguing still, it seemed that the data trail led back to Kimi Kardashian Block….

Whilst Muller surprised his comrades with his tech skills by setting the system to alert Control if the back-door was triggered, Wily had a hunch. Contacting one of his contacts back the Sector House in Acc-Div, it became clear that Agnes Radley had purchased a controlling share in Saturn Towers some time ago. Furthermore, the purchase had been done in such a way that the trail was difficult to follow; nothing illegal, but suspicious all the same. 

Whilst wrapping up their lines of enquiry at the flop-house, Control alerted them that a body had been found on the Demi Lovato undersked; that of Clarrie Grundy!

By the time they reached the scene, Med-Judges had bagged the stiff for transfer back to the Sector House for autopsy before dispatching to Resyk. Preliminary tests, however, had shown that the eldster’s body showed signs of recent cryostasis, and that the injuries were consistent with repeated vehicle strikes. It seemed as though the unfortunate Clarrie had been thrown from a vehicle onto the sked, although vid coverage of the area was notoriously poor. It seemed to the Tac Team that a detour to the Sector House was in order, both to replenish their ammo and to interrogate Colin Grundy in more detail…

Back at the Sector House, young Colin Grundy was thrown into an interrogation cube and left to stew in fear of what might happen next. Whilst his own mind did much of their work for them, the Judges received an updated report from Tek Div; the chemicals used to freeze Ma Grundy were used routinely by a number of sus-an businesses, but the only one in the sector was narrowed down to the local franchise of the Eternal Rest chain. Furthermore, the Eternal Rest is a legitimate business, with no apparent links to crime or to Agnes Radley’s business interests. Finally, it appeared that the Finkle Brothers were not connected to the Eternal Rest at all; in fact, the only Finkle family with two or more living  brothers appeared to be a family of DPs (Displaced Persons) who had recently been housed in Jimmy Gandolfini Block.

Turning back to poor Colin, his stammered answers to rough questioning convinced the Judges that Rock Beauchamp could perhaps shed more light on the situation, and requested the Judge-Warders to prep him for close questioning. They also determined that their next avenues of enquiry would be to visit Jimmy Gandolfini block to question the Finkles, a trip to the Eternal Rest sus-an parlour and a long-overdue visit to Agnes Radley, the self-styled queen of KK Block…

All artwork copyright of Rebellion Comics; used without permission