As the display turned, it cast a harsh blue light across the features of all present. Sector Chief DiMaggio was there, as were all Senior Judges. Anderson and Dredd were there, standing away from the table. Although DiMaggio had offered him command as soon as his H-Wagon touched down, Dredd had refused, saying only that he was there on behalf of the Chief Judge and would intervene only when necessary. Anderson knew that although Dredd had a genius for command he never sought it unless it was the best course of action; he much preferred the freedom to act as he knew best, which was usually smashing faces on the Street.
On the far side of the situation display from Team Wily, Tek Judge Klop shifted nervously in his seat. Whether this was due to the gravity of the situation or because of who he found himself next to, Kowalski was uncertain. Beside Kowalski, Muller and Hart stared bullishly across the room at the figure beside Klop, Kowalski easily picking up the dislike radiating white-hot from both of them. Wily stood at the head of the table, hands clasped behind his back in a parade-ground perfect stance, having just delivered his report on the Nixon Pen action. Despite the situation and the seniority of his audience, Kowalski realised that Wily was perfectly relaxed and calm, a far cry from the nervous rookie that had tripped over his own feet at morning briefing so long ago…. Kowalski caught herself; it had only been a matter of weeks, but it seemed like a year ago.
As Wily finished speaking, the figure next to Klop leaned forward from the shadows that had hidden his features. Although the lower part of his face was all whirring prosthetics, the upper part of his face was a mirror for the faces of Dredd and Hart. His eyes especially gave away their shared genetic heritage; a zeal for the Law bordering on fanaticism. Clearing his throat, the prosthetic reconstruction rendering the act into a rattling wheeze, SJS Judge Smith began to speak. ‘Sector Chief, it’s clear to me that this operation has been a monumental failure, due largely to the lack of foresight from Tac-Team. A competent team would have identified the strategic implications of the patterns of criminal activity and recommended the reinforcement of Nixon Penitentiary before it could be isolated.’ Pausing, he indicated the holographic sector map hovering before them. ‘Instead, most of our resources are tied up by planned law-breaking across this and adjacent Sectors. As you know, our resources are stretched thin across the city at the best of times. Furthermore, we have isolated zombie outbreaks across the Sector, apparently connected with the activity of so-called vampires feeding on citizens and passing on some sort of virus. Although these are easily contained, they again demand resources. It’s clear that this has been planned for some time, and that we’ve been played for fools.’ Sitting back in his chair, he regarded Wily and his team with a venomous glare. ‘This should have been preventable, with the information at hand, and it’s clear to me there’s been some collusion from within the department. I will be investigating this thoroughly, and I recommed Tac-team Wily be suspended from duty pending further interrogation.’ Muller and Hart seemed to lean forward in their seats, ready to launch themselves across the table at Smith, but sat back at a murmured word from Wily. As Chief DiMaggio opened his mouth to speak, Dredd took a step forward. ‘If it hadn’t been for the work of this group of Judges, we wouldn’t have known about the assault on Nixon Pen until it was too late, and we’d be looking for four of those Deadworld creeps instead of two. As it was, Wily and his team were first on the scene along with Anderson. As far as I can see, they conducted an exemplary operation, and this has been backed up by Anderson here’. As Smith opened his mouth once more, Dredd cut him dead. ‘The fact is that the whole department was fooled, and the post-mortem can wait for now. Tek-Judge Helsing, I think you have something to share with us?’
A crackle of static filled the room, quickly overtaken by Helsing’s clear, clipped tones. ‘Thank you, Judge Dredd. Yes, although my analyses are yet to be confirmed, it seems clear that the retrovirus causing the physical changes in the so-called vampire subjects shares much in common with the Everpet molecule’. A murmur spread through the assembled Judges as Helsing’s disembodied voice continued. ‘Although the base Everpet molecule only works on simple neurological systems, appearing to destroy any higher cognitive functions, the enhanced molecule found in the perps enhances resistance to damage and increases strength along with psychotic rage responses. It appears that each iteration of the vampire-type is an ‘improvement’ on what came before, usually through the ingenious application of thanaton particles to trigger additional mutations in the host. But each iteration appears to share certain similarities; the enhanced metabolism eventually causes catastrophic cellular collapse, leading to true death. This can be partially offset by taking in large quantities of haemoglobin, leading to the desire for human blood observed in subjects thus far. Also, the retrovirus can be passed on to victims, producing the apparent zombie effect. This can be passed on to those bitten by these quasi-zombies, but the effect is weaker each time. Therefore, we are unlikely to see a zombie outbreak on the scale of Necropolis, which may be some consolation’.
As Helsing finished speaking, another Judge stood and addressed the assembled Judges. ‘Judge Gimlet from Acc-Div, Sector Chief’. Giving Wily a nod, the female Judge continued. ‘Working on the data provided by Tac-Team Wily and Judge Helsing, my team have been able to uncover further information on Everpet and uncover some interesting facts. Everpet is owned by Dr Dick Icarus, formerly known as Vernon Martins. Martins graduated from Meg-U in 2101 with a first-class honours in Biochemistry, specialising in age-retardation and cell regeneration. Everpet was established in 2105. Martins has no criminal record, but spent time in a kook cube following the death of his wife and child in the Necropolis disaster of 2112.’ Judge Gimlet let that hang in the air for a moment, allowing the links to slot into place before continuing. ‘Martins, now Icarus, returned to his work on the Everpet molecule with renewed enthusiasm following his release. Interestingly, although the pet regeneration product is a commercial success, the company has always traded at an enormous loss with huge amounts of money put into ‘research projects’. Particular care seems to have been taken to obscure the ownership of a site in the very heart of Sector 13, near to the BoJo Johnson Luxy-Block where Martins’ owns a penthouse suite.’
At this point, Tek-Judge Klop took up the story. ‘As well as funding off-books research, large amounts of creds have been transferred to overseas accounts and then transferred back into the Meg as charitable donations to fringe religious organisations, many of which we’ve now been able to link to…’ ‘…The Church of Death’ came Dredd’s voice, with a grinding finality. ‘It was there all along, if we’d thought to look. But that’s for later. Right now, we have a probable location for the center of Martins’ web of insanity, and one other piece of actionable intel’. Anderson leaned forward to speak. ‘Since the release of the two Dark Judges, Psi-Div has been working overtime to track those drokkers down. Although they’re keeping a worryingly low profile, we’ve located what seems to be the main headquarters of the Church of Death. There’s been a big spike in emotional charge from the Black Spug weirdos who’ve started congregating there over the past several hours. Strain on our resources mean we haven’t been able to stamp on it as we’d like to, and now there’s just too many of the perps on-scene for us to intervene without precipitating a riot we’re not equipped to handle. Although it might just be a diversion, it’s possible this is where the Dark Judges plan to take physical form. For now, we’re trying to keep a watch everywhere at once and we can’t afford to tip our hand too soon. That’s all we have’.
Glancing at Dredd, Sector Chief DiMaggio stood and leaned forward, harsh holographic lines playing across his craggy features as he placed his fists on the display surface. ‘So we have two likely avenues of enquiry, with most of our resources tied up just stopping the whole Sector going to stomm. Wily, what do you recommend?’ Momentarily taken aback, Wily took a moment to come to a decision. ‘My Tac-Team will head for Martins’ bolt-hole, Sector Chief. My gut feeling is that this thread needs to be pulled hard to see what else turns up.’ Hart also spoke up, having been uncharacteristically deep in thought during the previous exchanges. ‘Tek-Judge Helsing, a moment. As the retro-virus seems to work only on dead or dying tissue, do you think a dose of anagathic compound such as adifax might slow it down at least?’. After a brief, crackling silence, Helsing responded, almost succeeding in keeping the surprise from his voice. ‘Why yes, Judge Hart, it may be that a modified version of adifax could cause cells to reject the Everpet retro-virus. We’ll need to do some further tests, but you may have something there. Good work, Judge Hart!’. Hart rose to his feet, unable to resist sneaking a glance at his gene-father Dredd for some sign of approval. Just before Dredd turned away to speak to Anderson, he thought he caught something…no, he couldn’t be sure. Shrugging, he turned to his team-mates, only to see Muller looking at him with something approaching… what, sympathy? No, nothing so weak. They regarded each other with a grudging respect, which was all that either of them would ever offer the other.
Within minutes, Tac-Team Wily were heading out on their Lawmasters towards the probable location of Martins’ secret hideaway. As they rode, they saw ample evidence of the pressure being put on the Department by current events. Here, a group of juves surrounded a citizen infected with the zombie virus, poking it with sticks until it finally lashed out and caught one of them, sinking its fangs into the juve’s neck as he squealed. By the time a Judge arrived on scene, the juves were taunting two zombies. There, a group of Black Spug fans smashed up a robo-bus whilst blasting out the dissonant strains of their favourite bands, until a pat-wagon full of Judges showed up and beat them bloody with their daysticks. But Tac-Team Wily ignored it all; they had a mission that could mean life or death for millions.
As the Judges rode into the area around the BoJo Luxy-Block, they noted an increased presence of private security personnel patrolling the streets. Though rentacops like these might impress the well-heeled locals, who saw them as another way to signal their wealth, they produced only feelings of mild contempt in a Judge. In front of the local citizens, who affected pinstripe suits, bowler hats and other fripperies associated with the Brit-Cit elite they idolised, the priv-secs swaggered and preened, showing off their stun weapons and polished body armour. But as the Tac-Team roared by, the rentacops looked away and made sure they couldn’t be mistaken as any sort of threat; they all knew one of their kind who’d ended up in a med-bay or even Resyk after believing their own propaganda a little too much.
Finally, the team drew up outside a nondescript luxy-block in the center of the residential area. The block itself was built to resemble a picture-postcard of a Brit-Cit stately home, with a large synthi-turf area out front, a plasti-gravel driveway and a fountain burbling merrily to itself in the centre. Surrounding the whole was a plascrete wall rendered to look like red brick; someone had clearly spared no expense to make this place blend in. Although Sector Control was inundated with requests for materiel, Muller was able to secure the use of a spy-in-the-sky to give the place a once-over. It quickly became clear that the front of the two-story building was just that; a front. Immediately behind the frontage was a utilitarian, single-level grey building reaching some 100m beyond. From the air, it was camouflaged by a simple holo-projection of a slated roof, but as soon as the spycam swooped lower, the vid-feed crackled and disappeared; clearly the building had some auto-defence capabilities.
As Muller, Kowalski and Wily considered this, a massive ‘whoom!’ sounded and a wash of super-heated air swept over them, leaving an acrid tang of ozone in its wake; the tell-tale result of a Cyclops laser being discharged. Whilst the others had viewed the vid-feed, Hart had become impatient and bellowed a command to surrender to all inside the block. Receiving no response, he’d merely grunted and directed his Lawmaster to destroy the gate and, as it turned out, much of the flanking walls. Although Wily might despair of Hart’s execution, he couldn’t deny the results and the team rode past the smoking remains up to the front door. Leaning forward from his bike, Muller pressed the intercom with one gloved finger. Hearing no response, he used his Department-issue key card to gain entry. Remaining on their bikes as the door slowly opened, the team could see a utilitarian reception area with a simpering droid in attendance. Immediately behind the droid was a doorway leading towards the back of the structure; as the Judges assessed the situation, the door to the rear smashed open and two vampire creatures bounded towards them! Without hesitation, the team opened up with their bike cannons, shredding the vampires and coincidentally everything else in their arc of fire. As their weapons cycled down with a whine, pieces of rockcrete fell from the ceiling, smashing to the floor. The droid, or what remained of it, buzzed and smoked on the floor. The door itself had been vapourised, and a corridor could be seen leading off to the rear of the building. Dismounting, the team picked their way through the rubble. As they did so, Hart noted some delivery crates lying undamaged and took some of their contents for later analysis.
Entering the corridor, a makeshift barricade could be seen blocking the far end, beyond which was what appeared to a service elevator. Before they could move forward, however, a bloodthirsty howl sounded and another pair of vampire creatures sped towards them, backed up by a group of Church of Death cultists firing spit guns wildly, yelling madly. A well-placed hi-ex round silenced the cultists, but the vamps proved a tougher proposition. Within the narrow confines of the corridor, the Judges’ usual tactic of deploying hi-ex proved dangerous as the funnelling of the blast caught Kowalski off-guard and threw her bodily back into the reception area, injured. Thinking quickly, Muller switched his aim to the already-weakened ceiling above the furthest of the creatures, collapsing the roof and pinning it to the floor under a reinforced girder. Meanwhile, Hart and Wily deployed Standard Execution rounds to great effect, dispatching the lead vamp with only minor cuts and bruises in return.
As Wily saw to Kowalski’s concussion, Muller used his Lawmaster’s computer to hack into the security feeds in the facility. It was surprisingly compact, and appeared to only have two levels below this one. Each level consisted of a number of labs, each occupied by droids busily producing vials of glowing green liquid in glass vials; easily enough to infect the city! The lowest of the levels was slightly different, however; at the far end of the central corridor, flanked by labs, was a plain grey blast door leading to…what? The security cams didn’t cover that far, which was enough for the team’s danger sense to go into overdrive.
Warily, the team descended in the lift, pausing only to spray the pinned vampire with Boing!(TM) which rendered it spinning helplessly in a sphere of impenetrable wonder plastic. As they reached the bottom level, they team approached the far door with caution. As they did so, however, they each felt a familiar, sickening sensation, as if sour milk was seeping into every pore. The last time they’d felt this was in the presence of SJS Judge Smith’s ‘blank’ associate. Although this was merely uncomfortable for three of the team, it proved too much for Kowalski. Along with her concussion, the pressure of the blank zone caused her to fall back to the lift, barely restraining the desire to vomit.
Carefully, the remainder of the team approached the door and pushed it open. Beyond was darkness; as their helmets began to cycle into night-vision mode, two widely-spaced red lights could be seen moving slowly upwards. As their night-vision came online, the source of the lights could be seen: a war-droid! As it rose to its feet, each of the Judges automatically recalled information that had been drummed into them at the Academy. Manufactured by Quartz Industries towards the end of the Volgan Wars some 140 years ago, these beasts were of course illegal in MC-1, but collectors and perps always found a way. Having been around for so long, there were thousands of different official variants, not accounting for the ‘specials’ built by wackos and nutjobs into customising these angels of death. Which meant they had no clue what the thing was capable of. All of this went through their minds in the moments it took for the droid to climb to its feet and roar its deafening war-cry; the rest was up to them.
As Wily and Muller moved into the room, they fanned out left and right to take advantage of cover from the storage containers within. Wily called out tactics to his team: ‘these things are designed for frontal assaults, so armour is usually weaker at the back. Flank it!’. Taking him at his word, Hart barrelled past him at full speed, moving to the right of the war-machine and diving over some boxes. Assessing him as the nearest threat, the droid turned and extended its hammer arm, a nozzle opening at the end and dousing him in burning fluid. His suit absorbing most of the heat, Hart readied himself to leap at the thing. Sighing, Wily tried to use Ricochet rounds to reach the machine’s weaker rear armour to no avail. Meanwhile, Muller took a moment to assess the structure of the room, seeing that the north-east corner appeared less sturdy; perhaps if he could lure it in there, he could repeat the trick he’d used earlier on the vamp…
His train of thought was broken as Hart leapt howling through the air and landed on the droid, intending to stuff his Lawgiver under his chin and use Hi-Ex, consequences be drokked. But the droid’s designers had foreseen such an eventuality and built in a one-use, high voltage anti-personnel shock system. As electricity crackled over his burning form, Wily and Muller could hear Hart’s teeth crack as his muscles spasmed until he was thrown backwards against the wall. Again, he was saved by his body suit and readied himself to leap back into the fight. Meanwhile, Wily and Muller continued to pound the droid with AP rounds, with Wily causing some serious damage. Now assessing Wily as the main threat, the droid advanced towards him as a mini-gun attachment popped up from his left shoulder. Immediately, the weapon sprayed automatic fire at Wily, driving him to his knees. Looking upwards, he saw the thing loom over him as Muller readied a Hi-Ex round. Seeing he was in the blast radius, Wily merely grunted ‘Do it, Muller!’, to which Muller replied ‘I intend to.’
The resulting explosion drove Wily further back, but mercifully didn’t cause any significant harm. The now-recovered Hart and Muller continued to target the droid’s weak points until finally it crashed to the floor, almost crushing Wily in the process. As he pushed himself upright, he saw the light finally die in the venerable war-machine’s optics.
Again, the team approached the door at the far end of the room, expecting more of the same. Instead, they saw what appeared to be a simple office, with piles of vid-plaques and old-fashioned paper books and journals scattered around in apparent confusion. At the far end of the room was an ornate desk, behind which sat the thin form of Dick Icarus, also known as Vernon Martins. ‘I wondered how long it would take you to get here’ he began in an almost conversational tone. As the team advanced into the room, Muller barked at Martins to stand up and put his hands on his head. Wily scanned the titles of the scattered material; amongst the inevitable papers on biochemistry and virology could be seen titles covering the Dark Judges and the last time they’d invaded the city during the so-called ‘Necropolis’ disaster. Muller barked another order, but again Martins seemed lost in his own thoughts. ‘I’m going to live forever, you see. The Dark Judges have shown me the way, and I’ve taken it. You will all die, but not me; eternal life awaits!’ Wily thought Martins looked a million miles from a crazed mastermind. He looked thin and unwell, and more than a little sad; sad and old, grieving for his lost family. But such things meant little to Hart; seeing Martins’ failure to comply, Hart launched himself across the desk to grab Martins. In the following tussle, Hart found Martins was a little stronger than he looked, but not much. When Muller entered the fray, nightstick in fist, Martins was easily outclassed. Especially when Muller caved in his skull with an enthusiastic blow.
Martins went down as if pole-axed, which to all intents and purposes he had been. Switching from subdual to trying to keep Martins alive, the team half-carried, half-dragged the unconscious Martins back to the waiting lift. As they left the room, the team noticed a cage in the corner of the room containing a chained female mutant, a large glowing third eye in the middle of her forehead. The sensation of sour milk shut off instantly as she closed this third eye; Martins had clearly been using her to keep his secrets safe from Psi-Div.
As soon as the Judges reached ground level, their helmet comms crackled into life. ‘…please respond. This is Sector Control, relaying a priority one message to Tac-Team Wily from Judge Dredd. Please respond!’ As soon as Wily called in their sitrep, he and his Judges were directed to rendezvous immediately with Judge Anderson near to the suspected headquarters of the Church of Death in District One. Things were about to get even more interesting…
No comments:
Post a Comment