Judge Dredd

Fire and Brimstone

© 2001 Martin Luscombe

Judge Dredd - Fire and Brimstone

Prologue

A cold wind blew down the deserted street. It swept dust across the cracked concrete and toyed with an old plastic cup, rolling it around as if trying to read the faded writing. It gave up and a short gust kicked the cup into the open, which caught the attention of a small rat-like creature that scampered over a pile of rubble to investigate.

The rat sniffed at the cup and then paused, looking up over the plaza to the east. Once the square had been constantly packed with people, travelling from one vast city-block to another. Now the towering skyscrapers had been reduced to hills of rockcrete debris. Steel girders reached out from each pile – broken, bent and twisted. People hadn’t lived here for a long time.

The rat was about to return to the cup when it heard the sound again – a quiet hissing, high up in the sky. The sound came from a dot that dropped rapidly, revealing itself to be a small shuttlecraft. The rat scarpered as the shuttlecraft pulled up sharply and gingerly landed in the ruins of Mega-City Two.

After a few moments the door opened and a woman, wearing a heavy-duty radiation cloak and carrying a small pistol, cautiously stepped out.

Katrina Dawson looked around, orientating herself. It had been eight years since she had last been here and it had looked very different then. Although rebuilding had started on the west side of the city, this area was still a radioactive hell. The familiar skyline of towers and domes had gone – there was just rubble and debris as far as the eye could see. The power that could create such destruction was awe-inspiring but also terrifying.

Her heart tightened when she recognised Enbury Hall. Shielded from the nuclear shock wave by the hundred-storey mountain of Charles Wilson block, the small ten- storey building had survived almost intact. However one of the four towers on top of the Stilton complex had fallen onto it, crushing the top couple of floors and now large cracks

1 Judge Dredd - Fire and Brimstone covered the walls, giving the impression that the whole thing could collapse at any moment.

As Katrina crossed the plaza towards it, the only sound was the steady clicking of her radiation meter, which merely added to the eerie sense of desolation. She fingered her pistol anxiously; afraid of what she would find in her old home. But she had to come – she had to see with her own eyes what they had done.

A door was leaning across the doorway like a last minute barricade. Katrina pulled it aside and turned on her flashlight. She took two steps into the foyer and stopped as a sickening odour filtered through her face mask. She directed the beam of light forwards and clenched her teeth at the sight. There were the remains of three dead bodies on the floor, all heavily decomposed. Two had been walking or running towards the stairs when they were fried by radiation. The third was behind them, possibly following them. This one was missing its right arm, which appeared to have been severed with a sharp blade, revealing the bone and muscles, which were now as black and shrivelled as the rest of the body.

Katrina glanced around the room but she couldn’t see the missing arm. If the stump was black and burnt then the arm must have been cut off before the bomb hit. He must have walked in here, following the other two, with a severed arm – bones exposed and flesh hanging raggedly. A horrible thought went through Katrina’s mind . . . he had been a zombie.

Zombie.

It was unbelievable. Ridiculous. Just as ridiculous as that day, eight years ago on holiday in Mega-City One, when Katrina watched the corny horror movie being shown on every news channel in the city. Reporters running down streets shouting into the camera as hordes of undead battled with Mega-City One judges. It was like something from a kid’s story – an evil necromagus called Sabbat had come from another dimension with the power to animate every dead body on the planet. He ordered them to destroy all the living creatures in every city in every country – it was a world war. The only way to stop them was to blow them apart but there were so many – billions and billions. They overran the cities by sheer force of numbers – they were in every street, in every block, and each victim they claimed was a new recruit for their army. The human race came close to extinction that day.

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Now that Sabbat was safely disposed of, there was no danger of the zombie coming to life but Katrina gave it a wide breath as she crossed the foyer to the stairs.

She climbed carefully. On the third floor landing she saw another body. It had two chunks of flesh bitten out of it. The chunks, both blackened and burnt, had been spat out onto the floor beside the body. The body must have been eaten by a creature a long time after the bomb exploded, perhaps quite recently . . .

She reached the fifth floor and walked along the corridor. It was dark and the paint on the walls had patches of black bubbles, but she remembered skipping along here on her way home from school. She swallowed for the first time since entering the building and tried to shut out the acrid burnt smell.

Katrina arrived at her parent’s apartment and tried the door. It was locked. She shot out the lock but the door still wouldn’t open – it was barricaded on the other side. She put her shoulder to the door and pushed. There was a grinding sound as the old dresser moved back and the door opened wide enough for her to squeeze through. She paused for a moment and then entered.

The large window on the opposite side of the room had been blown inwards and years of radioactive wind and rain had made everything grimy and streaked black.

The sofa had been pulled out into the centre of the room, burnt to a blackened husk. The vidscreen had melted and the small table in front of it was scorched. Katrina swallowed again as she noticed something lying on the floor behind the sofa. It looked like a leg.

Katrina’s knees were trembling as she walked round to the rear of the sofa and then she fell to her knees, choking with grief. The bodies of her mother and father were lying on the floor, black and decomposing. She gripped her face mask with both hands as tears ran down her cheeks. It was worse than she was expecting, worse than the bodies downstairs. The rain had washed away the burnt flakes of skin, staining the carpet with black ash. Some bacteria had digested parts of the muscles, exposing dirty yellow bone. One of the heads – it was impossible to tell who was who – had fallen apart, the jaw lying at right angles to the skull, the empty eye sockets staring into space.

It took two minutes for her to stop hyperventilating and to blink away the tears. She looked up at the ceiling and breathed deeply.

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Eventually she composed herself sufficiently to take another look at the scene and saw her father’s antique semi-automatic rifle lying beside one of the bodies. Buying that gun was the only illegal thing that he had ever done. He had bought it back in 2107 when the Hendersons, who lived five doors down the hall, had been killed by a roving gang.

Then Katrina realised – the dresser, the sofa and the position of the bodies and the gun. Her parents had barricaded themselves in. They were waiting for the zombies to attack, and then they’d shoot them to bits. They weren’t worried. They were prepared. There was only one zombie in the whole block anyway. They weren’t in danger. They were winning!

But Mega-City One – Mega-City One just saw the worst reports, just heard the people radioing for help. They thought Mega-City Two was gone. ‘Overrun’. They didn’t know that most of the people were fine – they were just staying in their apartments and they were fine. But Mega-City One decided, the judges of Mega-City One decided, that they were gone. ‘Unsalvageable.’ They decided to cut their losses. They decided to nuke the entire city. And not just Mega-City Two. They nuked South-Am City, and Brasilia, and Djakarta, and Sino-City One. They murdered two billion innocent people – families, friends, communities, entire cultures wiped out at the press of a button.

Katrina’s fists were clenched so hard that her nails were drawing blood.

They would pay.

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Chapter 1

Walter Hibble felt cool. Mauve Slapduster kneepads, Emphatically Yes jeans and a Chopper style surf jacket with ribbed shoulder pads. Way cool.

‘Hey look – Mister Coool!’

Walter stopped dead in his tracks. Suddenly he didn’t feel cool any more – he felt very very stupid. He knew he was taking a risk coming through this short cut. He had hoped that the juve gangs would think he was all right now and let him pass, or maybe they’d just be indoors watching the vid.

Stupid, real stupid.

Two juves jumped down from an overhanging ledge and looked him over critically.

‘Hey,’ one said, ‘nice jacket – I’d like one like that.’

‘Oh, Drokk,’ said Walter, backing away. His legs turned to jello and he fell to the ground.

‘He’s not giving us his jacket,’ the other one said sarcastically, drawing a long sharp knife. ‘We may have to persuade him.’

‘Oh, Grud,’ pleaded Walter as he desperately tried to pull off his jacket. ‘Here, here,’ he said but his arm had got caught and he couldn’t get the jacket off. He pulled frantically, terror in his eyes, as the first teenager also drew a knife and closed in, smiling.

But then a figure riding a large bike rounded the corner and stopped about thirty feet away. A granite voice boomed out, ‘Try persuading me, creeps!’

One of the juves looked up from Walter and dropped his knife as he recognised the uniform – a huge padded eagle on one shoulder, a large yellow shoulder pad on the other. The black uniform, the gold badge with the name ‘DREDD’ embossed on it and the helmet with it’s eye slits swept back like the eyes of a predatory eagle – the symbol of the law.

‘Judge! Run for it!’

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Both boys ran down the street and the Judge gunned his bike after them. As he passed Walter, still lying on the street, he barked, ‘Stay here.’

The juves split up – one running straight on down the street, and the other running up an entrance ramp into a city-block.

Judge Dredd swiftly caught up with the one running straight on, kicking him in the back and sending him sprawling to the ground. The juve scrambled to his feet to find himself looking into the barrel of Dredd’s gun.

Dredd tossed him a pair of handcuffs and pointed to a metal post by the roadside with a number of rings welded to it.

‘Cuff yourself to that holding post and wait to be picked up.’

The juve did what he was told and Dredd spun his bike round and raced after the other one. As he hit the entrance ramp he activated his throat mike to Justice Central; ‘Control – Dredd. Two tappers at the corner of Jefferson and Lincoln. Two years each.’

‘Roger Dredd. A H-wagon is on its way.’

At the top of the ramp was a large oval hall. It was part of a mall with shops along both sides and corridors leading further into the building. In the centre was a raised oval pool with two fountains – one at each end. It was busy with about a thousand people strolling around, too closely packed to manoeuvre a bike through.

Dredd scanned the crowd and saw the juve at the far end of the hall, running towards a small unmarked door. Dredd couldn’t get to him in time and the boy was running in between people, which blocked a clear shot at him.

Dredd came to a halt in an empty space and switched on his targeting computer. The two bike cannons mounted on either side of the front wheel swivelled upwards and suddenly blasted sixty rounds of ammunition in half a second. The people nearby screamed and dived to the floor but the bullets passed over their heads, across the hall, and shattered one of the chains suspending a large sign saying, ‘Welcome to East Side Mall’. The sign, about twelve feet high and fifty feet long, swung down and smashed into the ground just in front of the juve, blocking his route to the small door. The boy skidded to a halt, looked behind him and sprinted to his left, running around the pool towards a large corridor leading off from one side of the hall.

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Dredd headed his bike straight towards the pool and turned the throttle on hard. The bike accelerated like a rocket and hit the five steps up to the pool at forty km/h. Dredd punched the turbo boost button and the bike leapt into the air.

He burst through the spray of one of the fountains, landed on the other side of the pool and skidded to a halt in front of the fleeing juve.

Dredd got off the bike and the teenager nervously drew his knife. Dredd walked up to him and punched him hard in the jaw. There was the crack of breaking bone and the juve fell to the floor, unconscious.

Two minutes later Dredd was back at the holding post, where a large Justice Department hover-wagon was waiting for him.

‘Resisting arrest – make it three years,’ Dredd said, thrusting the juve, now semi- conscious, towards the two H-wagon judges. The juve stumbled and grabbed the shoulder of one of the judges, his eyes streaming with tears of pain.

‘ ‘e bruk mu daw.’

‘Yeah, he does that a lot,’ the judge replied, pushing the juve no less roughly into the back of the wagon.

Dredd turned his bike around and rode off. The second H-wagon judge walked towards the cab, saying, ‘Let’s go,’ but the first replied, ‘You don’t know Dredd do you? We haven’t got the victim yet.’

Walter was walking rapidly home, two blocks from the site of the mugging, when Dredd caught up with him.

‘Hey! I told you to stay back there!’

‘Oh, judge! Thank you so much. I thought I was a goner —’

‘What the drokk do you think you’re doing? Walking through a neighbourhood like this wearing fancy clothes and creds almost hanging out of your pocket – you’re asking to be mugged! Come here.’

Dredd arrived back at the H-wagon with Walter sitting behind him on his bike.

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‘Enticement to mug – two months.’

The H-wagon judges exchanged glances before pushing Walter into the wagon.

The two juves watched Walter intently as he nervously sat down between them. As the door closed he gulped and smiled weakly at their battered and rather angry faces . . .

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Chapter 2

Mega-City One was a huge metropolis. Home for 400 million people, it stretched for 1,300 km along the eastern seaboard of America. Full of skyscrapers a mile high, the city was surrounded by a massive wall, separating the citizens from the polluted Black Atlantic on one side and the radioactive Cursed Earth on the other. There was massive overcrowding and 89% unemployment. Life was harsh, most were miserable, but at least they always had warm days and clear skies, thanks to the city’s weather control system.

Mega-City One’s weather control station hovered high above the city. It was shaped like a wheel with four spokes and a central hub. The hub was four stories high and contained the main control room, eating area, stores and emergency escape pods, and the power generator and engine that kept it flying. The four spokes were just corridors that lead to the rim which contained crew quarters, storage rooms, two shuttle bays, various weather instruments and eight docking pylons. These pylons were used to service and repair some of the 30,000 atmosphere modulators that watched over the city.

The modulators were covered in air samplers, pressure gauges, wind tachometers and other complex weather instruments. They also contained the infrared heat rays, cloud seeding crystals and powered nitrogen sprayers which created thermals to divert approaching depressions, formed clouds to dispel riots and even produced an annual snow shower at Christmas.

The modulators were unmanned but the station required a team of scientists to operate it. This was not the original station – that was destroyed when a citizen went crazy and crashed it into a city block few years before. As a precaution the station now also had a small group of judges stationed on it.

It was a dead end job, usually assigned as a punishment or to injured judges until they were fit enough to return to the streets. Kyle Jackson was one of the latter – his leg had been shattered a week ago when a bomb had been hidden on his bike and blew up underneath him. Now his leg had been rebuilt, half flesh and half metal but it was still numb and as stiff as a board. Until he had recovered some mobility he worked in the

9 Judge Dredd - Fire and Brimstone shuttle bay, inspecting the supply vehicles for bombs, suspicious cargo or groups of gun- wielding terrorists.

Hah, he thought. I wish. Anything to liven up this tedious assignment.

The radar screen showed the approaching supply shuttle come into docking range. His computer had already verified its authorisation code, so he pushed the button that opened the shuttle bay doors. Then he lifted his injured leg off the computer console, stood up and hobbled over to the doors.

He stood beside the door as the shuttle glided past him and settled gently onto the floor. The rear door opened but no one stepped out. The interior was in darkness and Jackson moved closer to peer inside. He was just able to see two dark shapes when a burst of red laser light shot out of the gloom and straight through his forehead. A young man leant round the door and shot out the surveillance camera almost without looking.

Instantly, four well built men with laser pistols jumped out of the shuttle and scanned the room. Satisfied that there was no one else in the bay, one of them gave a thumbs up sign into the shuttle and Katrina came forward, holding a laser pistol across her chest. She stepped down out of the shuttle and led the four men to the door of the bay, followed by another older and less muscular man who jumped out of the shuttle carrying a plastic box the size and shape of a small suitcase.

The last two members of the team, a man and a young girl of about seventeen, came out dressed in spacesuits with jet-packs on their backs. They were each pulling a hovering anti-grav platform containing a wall-mountable missile launcher loaded with four missiles. When they had got the platforms fully out of the shuttle, they pushed them out of the main door of the shuttle bay, turned on their jet-packs and flew out after them.

Beyond the door, Katrina’s team had a choice of three directions – straight on led to the central hub of the wheel and the corridor running left and right curved round to form the rim. Without hesitation Katrina, Carl, Matt and the older man, Alec, ran straight on; Dexter went left and Tony went right.

Frost looked at the five cards in his hand. A jack, a ten, a three and two sixes. Rubbish. Across the table Harris put down the pack he had just dealt from and picked up his cards.

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A smile spread across his fat middle-aged face as he sorted them into order. Frost got up from his chair and threw his cards on the table in disgust.

‘Fifteen years of training for this? Sitting on our butts, nursemaiding a couple of scientists and a big floating hunk of metal.’

‘Hey,’ Harris replied, ‘cool off.’

‘We’re not even supposed to be gambling – I could arrest you for this.’

‘We’re not gambling – we’re just playing cards. Now sit down and play.’

‘Judges are supposed to be out catching criminals, not getting fat and drunk on synthi- hol,’ Frost said, indicating Harris’s wide girth.

‘Boy – they were right to send you up here. You really need to cool down. And for your information I was on the street busting heads while you were still in your test-tube. I’ve done my fair share of risking my neck to save some little scum who would probably knife me as soon as I turned my back —’

Harris turned his head as the door opened and Katrina stepped in.

‘Sorry – not interrupting anything am I?’ she asked.

Frost reached for his gun, but Katrina’s was already aimed. She blew a hole straight through Frost’s chest, as Carl and Matt simultaneously fired at Harris.

As she crossed the room, Katrina looked down at Frost’s dead body and asked, ‘Who said this was a dull assignment?’

Judge Neil Drake stepped through the door from his sleeping quarters onto the rim corridor still yawning. He brushed his hand through his hair and in doing so tilted his head to one side. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the barrel of a gun emerge from the third doorway along the corridor. Trained reflexes took over and he leapt back into the room before the terrorist holding the gun could see him. Suddenly wide awake, Drake assessed the situation, calculating possibilities of what had occurred, how many other judges were likely to be left alive, and his best plan of action. He picked up his boot knife from his chair and positioned himself behind the door.

He waited for a full two minutes, muscles coiled like a panther but as still as a statue, until the door slid open. The terrorist paused outside for a moment and then rolled

11 Judge Dredd - Fire and Brimstone through the doorway, spinning round to aim his gun at Drake’s hiding place. But Drake was already on top of him, diving into the attacker with his knife stabbing downwards. The terrorist fired once, shattering Drake’s shoulder before Drake’s knife embedded itself into the man’s neck.

Drake dragged the body into his bedroom and then rapidly wrapped a bandage round his shoulder. He quickly slipped into his kevlar-reinforced uniform, clipped on his utility belt, grabbed some spare ammo from his locker and then crept along the corridor towards the shuttle bay.

When he entered the bay he walked over to Jackson’s body and knelt down to examine the wound. Clean, precise, professional. These weren’t joy-killers or gang members, these people were dedicated, and they had a very specific reason for being here.

Drake climbed into the shuttle. Inside there were six holdalls, each containing twenty kilograms of high explosive. There were six detonators, all apparently set to the same frequency.

Suddenly Drake froze. He could hear the unmistakable hiss of a jet-pack. Someone was flying towards the bay from outside. Drake crouched down in the shadows, his finger on the trigger of his gun, and waited.

Alec pulled the dead body of the civilian weather scientist off of the computer console and sat down at the desk.

The control room for the station was on the top floor of the central hub. It was a large room, dominated by a vidscreen on the far wall showing the weather systems over the whole city. As usual this was currently displaying clear skies, gently swirling air pockets and wide circular isobars outlining the huge anticyclone which was constantly maintained over the city to provide its warm dry climate.

In front of it was the main control desk with five monitors, showing numerous statistics – maps of temperature, pressure, humidity, thermals, air pollution, and so on. These statistics changed every five seconds or so, eventually cycling through over three hundred displays which summarised the two and a half million separate measurements that were used to keep Mother Nature under control.

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Alec put his box on the desk and opened it – it was a laptop computer. It was already switched on and a window was open at the top of the screen, which was displaying –

Current time: September 12 12:14:27

Program Nemesis activated 26:14 hours ago.

Status: Green

Alec attached a cable from the laptop to a socket on the side of the centre monitor. In a second window at the bottom of the screen there was a simple ‘>‘ prompt. Alec typed ‘Take Over’ and hit Return. A new window opened over the top of the other two with the title ‘Program: Take Over’. At the top the words

Code Breaker:

appeared, followed by a ten digit number which changed faster than the eye could follow. After 3 seconds the number stopped, and the next line down displayed –

Searching for security virus . . .

Another second and the computer printed

Found . . . and deactivated.

Trojan Horse security virus installed.

Hidden command channel established.

Security breached.

Station network isolated.

Weather Congress locked out.

Communication lines jammed.

Program Take Over complete – 100% success.

Exit.

The window closed and the prompt reappeared. Alec then typed ‘Hello’, and another window opened.

Handshaking protocol established.

Full System Initialisation:

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All five monitors went blank for a moment and then were suddenly filled with pages of system messages as a hundred sub-programs were reset and initialised. The computer banks along the side walls whirred as their hard disks were accessed.

After thirty seconds the four side monitors restarted their statistic displays and the centre monitor summarised the initialisation –

Level 1 computer diagnostic – 100%.

All station systems operational.

Tracking stations on-line.

All instruments calibrated.

Data verified – instruments recording accurately.

All atmosphere modulators operational and responding.

Alec’s laptop computer now displayed –

Initialisation complete – 100% operational.

Station height set to 20000 m.

The room swayed as the station’s jets kicked in to lift the station well above the clouds.

Station radar and targeting system activated.

Station missiles operational and responding.

Program Hello complete – 100% success.

Exit.

Finally, Alec typed ‘Fire and Brimstone’. He looked at Katrina who was watching him carefully. She nodded slightly and he pressed Return.

Everyone’s eyes turned to the viewscreen, where all hell broke loose.

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Chapter 3

Atmosphere modulators 25382, 24326 and 24548 converged on Pulman Plaza. Each ten metres high, the modulators swept downwards and baked the rockcrete with powerful beams of infrared. Within moments the temperature was over 30 degrees and a strong thermal of hot air rose into the sky. One of the modulators broke off, rose high above the buildings and sprayed the air with freezing powdered nitrogen and particles of hygroscopic salt. The rising hot air hit this layer and cooled rapidly, giving up its invisible water vapour which condensed onto the salt, forming millions of tiny water droplets. These droplets were buffeted by the air currents, colliding and merging, growing larger. For a while they fell, only to be pushed back upwards by the increasingly powerful thermals. Within five minutes a thick black cloud had formed above the plaza.

The modulator above the cloud switched on its infrared beam and gently heated one side. This created a small low pressure area, which generated a light breeze moving from the surrounding area of higher pressure. The beam moved, slowly marking out a wide circle and the breeze followed it, swirling round and round.

Meanwhile the other two modulators stayed below the cloud pouring on the heat, intensifying the thermal. It was now rising at ten metres per second and it was lifting leaves and litter off the ground.

The thermal rose through the centre of the cloud and through the centre of the circle of wind, which began to spiral downwards creating a funnel.

Now that the crcumstances had been created, Nature took over, strengthening the thermal, spinning the tunnel of wind faster and lower.

The vortex emerged from the bottom of the cloud, twisting randomly, feeling its way down to the ground. There was a sinister hissing sound that grew louder and louder, accompanied by flashes of lightning.

The modulators moved onto their next targets as the fully fledged tornado hit the ground and the hissing suddenly became the roar of a thousand freight trains.

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In the plaza people were screaming and running but the tornado bore down on them and plucked them off the ground, flinging their bodies out of its path like rag dolls.

A hover car came too close and was hit by a bolt of lightning carrying a hundred million volts. Its controls seized and it fell into the huge vortex. Winds of over seven hundred kilometres per hour blasted the paint off the sides and twisted the metal chassis into a corkscrew. It fell into the centre of the maelstrom and for a moment, like the eye of a hurricane, the winds eased off. But the thermal was stronger than ever, lifting the car up, spinning it end over end and narrowly missing the bursts of lightning that jumped from one wall to the other. The car touched the opposite boundary and was instantly flung outwards. It hurtled across the plaza and plowed into the side of a building, exploding on contact.

The tornado crossed the plaza and approached Lara Croft Block. The thunderous wind beat against the walls but without much effect. It threw lampposts and garbage grinders at the windows and swept the screaming sunbathers off the roof, but it could not damage the two metre thick rockcrete walls.

It came closer, touching the block with its twisting body. Then the eastern face of the block was in its eye. Due to the intense thermals and suction in the centre of the tornado, the pressure outside the riot-proof windows was hundreds of millibars lower than the pressure inside. Suddenly, two hundred windows cracked and burst outwards, providing the tornado with tons of broken glass with which to spray across the plaza and slash the bodies of even more victims.

The block’s residents were sucked out and torn limb from limb. The tornado moved on and the trailing wall of wind reached into the block, got a good grip, and ripped the block to shreds.

‘Come on Hawkins, get your act together! Go under him! No, under him, uuurrgh . . .’ Joe Smythe sighed and held his hands up in disgust as Jerry Hawkins lost possession once again.

‘Dad, can we go to the Boing dome after this?’ Ervine asked, looking up from his computer screen.

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‘No – you know how your mother worries about that stuff. And put that away – this is supposed to be your treat.’

‘I didn’t want to come to an Aeroball match – it’s much better on tri-D anyway.’

‘Pass it to Gummerman! He’s in the clear! Oh, Jovus Drokk! They should replace the whole lot of you with robots.’

Ervine went back to his games computer but he was getting bored of the game, so he turned it off and looked around him. They were at the away team’s end but because of the power of the players’ jet-packs the pitch was over three hundred metres long and they couldn’t really see what was happening at the other goalmouth. Unfortunately for the Sector 54 Redskins, and his father, that’s where most of the action was taking place. There were the vid-screens of course, but that was just like watching it at home, without the comfortable armchair or the remote control.

Then Ervine looked up at the huge glass roof covering the stadium and saw an unusual sight.

‘Dad, is that a cloud?’

‘Where? Oh, yeah. You don’t see many of those nowadays.’

‘Why is it all black? Wow, it’s getting bigger.’

In fact the cloud was growing exponentially, stretching up to twelve and then fourteen kilometres in height. It seemed to be forming right above the stadium and soon blocked out most of the sunlight coming through the roof. Everyone was looking up, even the players stopped to watch it grow.

And then it started to hail.

The noise was deafening as thousands of tiny balls of ice bounced off the glass. Everyone watched transfixed until cracks began to spread across the transparent dome. People exchanged glances with their neighbours and those nearest the exits edged closer to the doors.

Then a larger hailstone hit one of the cracks and punched out a jagged shard about two feet across. One of the Redskins just managed to get out of its way as it fell to the ground and shattered into a hundred pieces.

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The referee sounded the end of game horn and ushered the players towards the entrance tunnel, but it was too late. The hailstones became heavier and smashed out about fifty panes from all over the roof. One large triangular piece plummeted downwards like an arrow and hit Jerry Hawkins in the back. The point burst through his chest, spraying blood below him. He twisted in mid-air, writhing in pain. His jetpack cut out and he fell onto the screaming crowds below.

The crowd was in a state of total panic now. Joe Smythe grabbed his son by the collar and pushed him towards the exit.

‘Keep your head down and stay close to me!’ Joe took Ervine’s computer screen and held it above his own head and leant over his son to shield him as much as possible. Glass was now falling everywhere as the whole roof shattered and collapsed. Hailstones five centimetres across fell like bullets, punching and bruising everyone.

People were climbing over each other in their fight to get to the exits. The scene at the exits was even worse – many of them had become blocked with the excessive number of people trying to fit through at the same time. Joe could see the huge mound of people at the nearest exit. Then he suddenly shielded Ervine’s eyes and looked away as a massive sheet of glass, fifty feet across, crashed down on them. He looked back and saw that the mound was now streaked with red and a couple of those on the top fell down to be trampled by those underneath.

Joe walked into Ervine, who stumbled and fell, cutting his hand on a piece of glass.

‘Ow! It hurts Daddy! Help me.’ Ervine started crying and Joe looked around him desperately. At the front of the stands there was a fence with ledge sticking out from it. Everyone else was going in the opposite direction, but Joe picked up Ervine and flattened himself against the fence. The ledge was only twenty centimetres wide but by pressing up against it, his head was protected from the hailstorm.

They stayed there for fifteen minutes, watching strangers collapse in agony, hearing bones crack from the ferocious battering and seeing the hailstones melt into water and wash rivers of blood down the steps.

Eventually the storm eased off and died away. Joe tried to stand but his knee spasmed in pain. It had been unprotected from the hail and was probably broken. He tried again, favouring his other leg and got to his feet. With one hand holding onto a seat and the

18 Judge Dredd - Fire and Brimstone other around Ervine’s shoulders he hobbled up the steps. Ervine’s hand was still bleeding but he had stopped crying, numbed by the devastation surrounding them.

‘Come on,’ said Joe. ‘We’ve got to get you to a doctor.’ He looked up into the sky, for the moment clear and sunny again, and asked ‘What the hell is going on in Weather Control?’

In Weather Control, all the terrorists were watching the main viewscreen which showed total chaos all over the city. Swirling cloud formations indicated thunderstorms, tornadoes and sandstorms blowing in from the deserts to the west – every force of nature was smashing the man-made abominations of the city. Initially, the disasters were carefully selected and positioned to cause the most damage and devastation, but soon the hundreds of individual weather systems would interact, causing unpredictable chaos that no-one would be able to stop. The longer they held out, the better.

‘It’s amazing. It’s actually working.’ Carl exclaimed. Katrina smiled slightly – a smile of sweet revenge.

After a moment she turned to Alec and asked ‘How far is Nemesis?’

‘It’s 1,800 kilometres off the coast of Africa and it’s still growing.’

‘Good. This lot will keep them busy until its much too late.’

Then Dexter ran into the room.

‘Tony’s dead. I found him in Drake’s room and there was no sign of Drake.’

‘Damn,’ Katrina said. ‘He must still be alive. OK, Carl, Matt and Dexter – hunt him down. But stick together. And start off at the shuttlebay, Jennifer and Pete should have been back by now.’

The three terrorists picked up their weapons and ran down the stairs, leaving just Katrina and Alec in the control room.

Katrina sat down, putting her pistol in her lap, and switched on the news channel.

‘Now we wait.’

19 Judge Dredd - Fire and Brimstone

Weather Congress was the ground base for the city’s Weather Control division. The main computer and atmosphere modulator repair facilities were on the airborne station; this was not much more than the public front. It contained a monitor control room, a backup computer system, an exhibition centre and offices for bureaucrats and some photogenic tri-D weathermen. But the fact of the matter was that the weather control system pretty much ran itself, much to the disappointment of its current director, Miles Quinn, who was fascinated by weather systems and often wished that he had more to do. During the last twenty minutes, however, he had suddenly become very busy indeed.

‘Sir, we have another tornado report – sector 240. It’s happening all over the city.’

‘Drokk, this is worse than the heat wave of ‘09. What the hell is happening up there?’ Quinn was in the monitor control room, watching a huge viewscreen similar to the one in the airborne station. It was being updated by three technicians inputting reports into their computer consoles. A fourth technician was trying to contact the station.

‘Still no answer. I’m getting the handshaking signal but there is nothing else getting through, either to the computer or to the operators. I can only assume that they’ve had a system wide failure up there.’

‘No, I don’t buy it. With a system wide crash, a few modulators would have gone haywire, but not this many. Something is going on —’

‘Director,’ the receptionist interrupted. ‘There is a visitor for you.’

‘I’m kind of busy right now,’ Quinn began, turning towards the doorway, but stopped when he recognised the black uniform. ‘Ahh, Judge Dredd.’

Dredd entered the control room, dripping wet, his boots squelching as he walked.

‘Care to explain what is going on out there, citizen?’

Quinn paused for a moment, watching a drop of water run down the lawman’s cheek and hang off the end of his chiselled chin.

‘We don’t know,’ said Quinn.

Not the best start, he thought.

‘We got the first phone calls about twenty-five minutes ago. A couple of reports of a tornado in sector 22. At first we dismissed it – the data that we were receiving from the modulators, via the station, showed a normal, sunny September afternoon. But then we

20 Judge Dredd - Fire and Brimstone received more reports from all over the city and we started to input them onto the map. We are still receiving clearly incorrect data from the modulators and we can’t contact the station, either the computer or the people.’

‘Can you override the station’s computer?’

‘Yes, in case of total system failure.’

‘Then do it.’

Quinn nodded to the technician trying to communicate with the station. The technician closed down the current window that he was working in, and opened up another one on the computer screen in front of him. He typed a number of commands and passwords on the keyboard, waited for a moment and, when nothing happened, he tried again. Still nothing.

‘We may have a problem,’ he said, opening up a third window.

‘What are you doing now?’ Dredd asked.

‘Trying the backdoor route. The normal comms line is for every day traffic. This one is for programmer’s access – it bypasses the normal interface.’ He typed some more commands but was left staring at a blank screen. Resignedly, he turned to Dredd.

‘We’re locked out. This isn’t a system failure. Someone is up there and they’re doing this deliberately.’

Quinn, well aware of the potential power of weather control, sat down into the nearest chair and said, ‘Oh, Grud.’

‘You’re watching Channel 99 – City-wide with Pride. We have just received news of another weather disaster and are now taking you live to Mike Campbell who is on the scene.’

‘Thank you, Sarah. I am in Sector 268 and I have to shout because, as you can see, we are experiencing a freak blizzard. It started quite suddenly about thirty minutes ago. I have been talking to some of the people who watched it form and a number of them claim to have seen Weather Control’s atmosphere modulators in the distance, but whether they were creating it or trying to dispel it is still unknown. The wind is bitingly cold here and the snowdrift behind me is six feet deep. And this isn’t the worst of it. Just two streets

21 Judge Dredd - Fire and Brimstone down the gale is so bad that visibility is completely blocked and it was deemed too dangerous to film there. Already, at least 26 people have been admitted to hospital for frostbite and there have been three vehicle crashes. And it’s likely to get worse before it gets better. Who knows how many people are buried beneath these huge snowdrifts, which cover approximately ten square kilometres? I’m no weather expert but this could go on for hours, spreading across the whole sector. I advise people to stay inside, turn up the heating and get a good window seat – you won’t see anything like this again.’

‘Thanks Mike. As yet there has been no official statement from Weather Control. In the last few minutes Judges have cordoned off Weather Congress, Weather Control’s ground base, and refused press admittance. We will keep you updated as things progress. Meanwhile, here are some messages.’

Alec Kimble was still sitting in the central chair of the weather station control room, staring blankly at the computer reports scrolling past on the monitor. He breathed deeply and looked over to where Katrina was watching the news. He recognised the blizzard as program 157 and dispassionately recalled that the reporter was right – it would continue for about two and a half hours.

His eyes broke away and looked around the room. It was all hauntingly familiar. The size and the shape of the room was roughly the same, there was the same number of desks in approximately the same positions. His eyes roamed the room and then, however much he tried to avoid it, settled on a large screen on the left hand wall, showing a view of the city below. He stared at the screen, unable to look away.

He felt the blood shrink away from his skin and a single bead of sweat roll down his forehead. In his mind’s eye the room blurred and shifted, and he was sitting in the control room of Mega-City Two’s weather control station exactly eight years and two months ago. The reports of the zombie infestation were overwhelming – rainstorms and snowstorms hadn’t stopped them so the staff of the weather control station had decided to sit it out and leave it to the citi-def forces and the judges. They had been out of communication for about two days now but assumed that the good guys were winning.

Alec slowly got up from his seat, his hand held in front of him, holding a coffee cup from eight years ago and —

No, please no.

22 Judge Dredd - Fire and Brimstone

— walked towards the screen.

‘Alec? Are you all right?’ Katrina’s voice fell on deaf ears as Alec reached the screen. He was sweating profusely now and his eyes were wide open and darting about as if a helpless spirit was trapped inside an unresponsive body.

No, I can’t face this. No.

He looked down at the elegant city blocks of Mega-City Two. He could see Katherine Stevens block in the distance and thought of little Laura, playing in the park with her friends. His mind was filled with happy thoughts —

NOOOOO!

— and then the first missile hit. Time slowed down to a thousandth of its normal speed. The nuclear fireball grew so slowly, his coffee cup took a month to fall to the ground, as more fireballs blossomed outwards, not just below him but all over the city. The fireballs grew, overlapped and mixed until the whole city was burning like the sun, and blast waves travelling at a thousand miles per hour ripped the city to shreds.

NNNOOOOOO! NNNOOOOO!

‘NNOOO!’

‘Alec!’ Strong, warm hands grabbed his shoulders, shaking him but his mind continued to scream. A palm slapped him hard across his face and his eyes slowly focused on Katrina.

Katrina held his shoulders and stared at him, eyes blinking back her tears, mouth slightly open as if desperate to say something, but unable to find the words. Alec stared back for a long two minutes, then swallowed unsteadily and held up his hand.

Katrina let go and he moved back to his console. He took a deep breath, sat down and started to read the latest reports on the disasters.

Dredd arrived at the spaceport at 1:15 p.m. He parked his bike in the Judge’s bay and walked quickly and purposefully out to the pad. Parked on the pad was a small but heavily armed H-wagon. Beside it a young female judge waited, standing to attention with her helmet held under her arm. As Dredd approached he studied her – black skin with shoulder length hair tied back behind her head. She was young, about twenty years

23 Judge Dredd - Fire and Brimstone old, only two years out of the Academy. She had a small body that was not as fit and supple as it should have been, and she was nervous. Nervous as hell.

‘Amanda Gleason reporting for duty, sir.’

‘So you’re the expert on the weather control station?’

‘I was stationed there for three months sir.’

‘Why?’

‘My partner was killed. I became hesitant and a liability to the department, so I was assigned to the weather control station until I came to terms with her death and could return to the streets.’

Quoted straight out of her psychologist’s report, Dredd thought.

‘And did you?’

Gleason paused for a moment. ‘No, sir. It wasn’t working and two weeks ago I was taken into the psycho ward for psychoanalysis.’

Dredd already knew this but he wanted her to know that he knew. He didn’t agree with psychoanalysis, preferring to just keep them too busy to think about their personal problems. ‘Well, I need someone who knows the layout and defences of that station. Think you’re up to it?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Good. You can drive,’ he said as he stepped into the H-wagon.

They stayed low, flying between buildings, to avoid detection until they were almost underneath the weather station, and then flew straight up at maximum speed. The ascent still took a few minutes, as the station was now twenty kilometres above the ground.

They burst through a thin layer of cloud and could see the wheel shaped station floating at the edge of space. As Gleason brought the H-wagon into a hovering position five hundred metres from the station she checked a read-out and told Dredd, ‘An infrared laser has just locked onto us. We’ve been targeted.’

Dredd replied, ‘OK. Let’s go.’

24 Judge Dredd - Fire and Brimstone

The scene in the control room was now very tense and alert. Two of the terrorists had returned and now waited as Katrina studied a tactical display of Dredd’s ship, which gave readings on ranges, heat-signatures and possible weaknesses in its armour. She was looking for weapon charging or laser emissions indicating a target lock but at the moment it was just sitting there.

Alec turned from his console and said ‘They’re hailing us.’

‘Put them on.’

One of the viewscreens showing a plan of the besieged city switched to the face of Judge Dredd.

‘This is Judge Dredd. Your actions have already caused the deaths of over one thousand citizens. Surrender now and you will avoid a lot of bloodshed.’

‘You won’t attack us,’ Katrina replied. ‘You need this station to disperse the weather systems we have created.’

Dredd gave no sign that he had heard her and continued, ‘We could simply blow you out of the sky. The station has no offensive capabilities.’

‘That’s OK. We’ve bought our own.’

She pressed a button on the console in front of her and two missiles streaked away from the station and impacted against Dredd’s ship. On the viewscreen Dredd’s face burst into static as his ship exploded into thousands of spinning, burning fragments which billowed outwards and then slowly fell towards the city far below.

25 Judge Dredd - Fire and Brimstone

Chapter 4

‘Yes!’ shouted Matt, punching the air. ‘The Judge is down!’ He held up his hand, which Dexter high-fived enthusiastically.

‘You’ve killed Judge Dredd,’ said Alec, more cautiously. ‘They’re going to send everything they’ve got at us now.’

‘Hmmm, maybe,’ Katrina replied, ‘but that seemed too easy . . .’

The shock wave from the explosion hit the two hovering figures and sent them hurtling towards the side of the station. Both were dressed in black spacesuits, invisible against the background of space, with silent stealth jet-packs. They hit the metal wall quite hard but both managed to hold on. Gleason quickly dodged a large chunk of debris, which crushed her previous handhold, and looked down at the plummeting, burning fragments.

‘Looks like the recording worked,’ she said.

‘Less radio chatter,’ replied Dredd. ‘Where are those maintenance hatches?’

Gleason pointed up to the right and they carefully climbed round the rim of the station using various pipes, rough panel edges and tracks for maintenance robots as handholds. Gleason slipped a few times, but Dredd’s grip was firm and secure. They eventually arrived at a small automatic hatch designed to let robots enter and leave the station to perform repairs on the station’s own sensors or on the atmosphere modulators, which could be docked at the station.

‘If they are not expecting us, it should be unlocked,’ Gleason said, as she pressed a button beside the hatch. It slid open.

So far, so good, she thought. Just don’t muck it up now.

They climbed through into a small space between the outer and inner walls of the station. It was pitch black but their torches revealed a maze of wiring, power conduits, air conditioning units and more tracks for maintenance robots.

26 Judge Dredd - Fire and Brimstone

Dredd kicked an air vent and they dropped into the corridor below.

Dredd pressed a button on the side of his helmet to open the face plate and switched off the suit-to-suit radio.

‘Where are we?’ he asked, drawing his Lawgiver from his boot holster.

‘Outer rim, just by the main shuttle bay,’ Gleason replied, copying Dredd’s actions. ‘The door is just round that bend,’ she added moving towards it. Then she stopped and turned back to Dredd. ‘Er, unless you want to check out something else first . . .’

‘That’s fine. But I’ll lead.’

Gleason glanced down at the floor and then fell in behind Dredd as he approached the door.

The door was open, allowing a clear view of the bay. The main bay doors on the opposite side were now closed. In front of them was a body covered respectfully with a grey cloth. To the left was Judge Jackson’s body, left where he fell.

Dredd and Gleason edged into the room and round the back of the shuttle, where they found the body of Judge Drake, lying on the floor of the shuttle, his Lawgiver still held in his blood soaked hand.

Gleason knelt down next to the body and touched his shoulder.

‘Oh, Neil . . .’ she whispered sadly.

Dredd went over to the covered body and drew back the cloth. The body was a teenage girl, shot twice in the chest.

‘At least they weren’t all caught napping. Drake did some of our work for us,’ said Dredd. ‘But we need to know how many of them are left and where they are positioned. How long would it take to circle the outer rim?’

‘Only about ten minutes, being careful.’

‘OK. As we still have surprise on our side let’s see if we can take out a few stragglers first.’

A short distance along the corridor an open doorway led into a small room, not much more than an alcove, which served as a maintenance area for the modulator/scanner array

27 Judge Dredd - Fire and Brimstone and manoeuvring thrusters positioned below it. There were four of these areas, spread out equally around the outer rim, at mid points between the main shuttle bay, the technician’s quarters, the secondary shuttle bay and the judge’s quarters. At this one, a figure was crouched down, arming a block of explosives. He shifted his weight and winced in pain, clutching at a bandage round his thigh. Drake had hit more than one terrorist.

He completed the arming sequence and a red light lit up on the detonator. He very carefully slid it out of sight behind a bulkhead. The explosive was perfectly safe – he could have played Aeroball with it and it wouldn’t explode – but twenty kilograms of TK-7 high explosive deserved some respect.

With some difficulty he got to his feet but then froze as the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. He couldn’t be sure that he had heard anything, but he had felt something just at the edge of his awareness. Without breathing he drew his pistol with one hand and pulled out his hand-held radio with the other, and edged towards the open doorway.

Five seconds later Gleason walked into view. She sensed him and spun round but saw that his gun was already aimed at her and froze.

The terrorist activated his radio and said, ‘Kat. It’s Pete. We’ve been boarded.’

His finger squeezed on the trigger but before the bullet could leave the barrel, Judge Dredd came into view and blew a hole straight through his heart. The terrorist fell backwards, his shot ricocheting off the ceiling.

‘Damn!’ said Katrina as she picked up her radio. ‘Carl, you’ve got ten seconds. Move it.’ She let go of the transmit button and added, ‘This is happening sooner than I expected. Alec, let’s lock this place up.’

Dredd turned to Gleason with an icy stare.

‘Get it together Gleason. I don’t expect to be your bodyguard up here.’

Gleason glanced down at the floor again.

‘Sorry.’

28 Judge Dredd - Fire and Brimstone

Then they heard the sound of someone running from in front of them. Instantly they were running at full pelt towards the sound. Dredd, who was in front, just caught the sight of a terrorist turning into one of the ‘spoke’ corridors leading to the central hub. They reached the intersection to see a heavy metal door slam down half way along the corridor. Dredd fired twice – the first shot ricocheted under the door but missed the terrorist on the other side, the second bounced off the door and smashed the ceiling light. Dredd came to a halt in front of the door, pounding it with his fist.

‘Drokk! Gleason, how do we open this door?’

‘We can’t. It’s the anti-terrorist system. Everything outside the central hub is completely locked out.’

‘Damn.’

Carl appeared at the doorway to the control room breathing heavily.

‘They’re locked out.’

‘Good,’ Katrina replied. ‘We should be able to hold them for another hour or so, then we’re getting out of here. How are the systems interacting?’

Alec checked one of the monitors in front of him and said, ‘Pretty good. We have total chaos breakdown in sectors 21, 167, 178 and right over sectors 202 to 205. Anything could happen in there but it’s likely to be destructive. Most are mixing as expected. Some have cancelled each other out but that’s to be expected too. Another hour and they’ll definitely be self-perpetuating.’

‘And Nemesis?’

Alec clicked open a window on his portable computer, and checked the read-outs. ‘Still going strong. E.T.A. 2 p.m. tomorrow afternoon.’

‘Good, very good.’

‘It won’t work,’ said Gleason, now sitting at the computer console in the main shuttle bay.

‘Try it and we’ll see,’ replied Dredd.

29 Judge Dredd - Fire and Brimstone

Gleason logged into the computer and tried to access the security system. A message appeared on the screen – ‘Insufficient security clearance’.

‘I told you. I had sufficient clearance three months ago.’ She typed some more commands into the computer and added, ‘They’ve altered my clearance level. Now I’m only level one, the same as the civilian weather technicians that work here. I can access the basic systems, but I can’t open those doors.’

‘Can you program the modulators to restore the weather to normal?’

‘Probably, if I knew how. I left all that stuff to the experts.’

Gleason sat back in her chair and mulled over the problem.

‘Can’t we just fire a couple of high explosive shells at them?’

‘They’re blast doors,’ replied Dredd, ‘specifically designed to stop that sort of thing.’

‘Great, so now we’re stuck here.’

Dredd switched on his helmet mike. ‘Control, it’s Dredd. Control? No response.’

‘It’s part of the anti-terrorist system. It jams all high frequency transmissions.’

‘So now we’re stuck here,’ agreed Dredd.

Ten minutes later, Gleason was still sitting at the computer console, thoughtfully exploring the parts of the system that she could access. Dredd was searching the shuttle to see if he could find anything useful. He came out empty-handed and walked over to Gleason.

‘Anything?’ he asked.

‘Well, I was thinking – we may not be able to get into the security system directly, but there might be some other way in, through the systems that I can access. I just wish I was better with computers.’

‘It’s not my strong point. What systems can you access?’

‘Maintenance robots, basic environmental controls – heating, lighting and humidity, atmosphere simulation routines, supply re-ordering . . .’

‘Manoeuvring jets?’

30 Judge Dredd - Fire and Brimstone

‘Nope. Hang on . . .’ She was currently looking at a schematic of the station on the screen. ‘The lighting circuit is the same pattern as the main power grid. It must pull the power for the lights from the main grid.’

‘So?’

‘That means they are effectively the same system. If I close down the lighting system, the main power will switch off too.’

‘But will that open the doors?’ said Dredd.

‘Hmm, no.’ She thought for a moment and then smiled. ‘But if they want to continue to send commands to the modulators, they will have to turn it back on manually, which will reset and initialise all the systems, including the anti-terrorist defences!’

‘You sure?’

Gleason shrugged her shoulders. ‘In theory.’

‘Do it.’

Gleason typed at the keyboard and accessed the lighting controls. She went to the maintenance section and examined the read-outs.

‘It’s possible to shut down parts of the circuit in order to replace the lights. And here’s a warning saying that it will shut down that section of the power grid too. Let’s see what will happen if I say that every light on the station needs replacing.’

She typed some more commands and looked up at the ceiling. A second passed and then suddenly the room was in darkness.

Katrina was sipping a cup of synthi-caf when the lights switched off, the computer screens went blank and the constant hum of the air circulation system died away. There was a deathly silence for a moment before the emergency lights switched on, bathing the room in a dim red glow.

‘What happened?’

‘They shut down the power grid,’ replied Alec.

‘How the hell did they do that? You said they didn’t have access to the main systems.’

31 Judge Dredd - Fire and Brimstone

‘They don’t. Don’t panic though. The anti-terrorist doors are still closed and the flight system is on a separate circuit – we won’t fall out of the sky.’

‘But all the computers are down. What will happen to the modulators?’

‘They will complete their last instructions and then wait for new ones.’

‘Will the escape pods still work?’ asked Carl.

‘Yes, but if we leave without destroying the modulators they will be able to use them to fix the weather systems.’ He turned back to Katrina. ‘We need to switch the power back on. There should be a manual override in the generator room at the base of the hub.’

‘OK. Dexter and Matt – go downstairs and turn it back on.’

Dexter and Matt climbed down the stairs from the control room to the eating area directly below, and down again to the storage area. This was were the two escape pods were situated and Dexter paused to check the control panel by the door.

‘Yeah, its still got power. We can get out of here. You know, this job is just getting worse and worse. The sooner we leave the better.’

‘I’m so sorry if our technique isn’t up to your professional expectations. But some of us are doing this for a reason. Come on.’

They went down another set of stairs and arrived at the generator room. This was where the power cells for the whole station and main engine for the stabiliser jets were housed. Most of the actual equipment was behind large bulkheads that vibrated and hummed. The four six-foot high power cells were basically large batteries in which complex chemical reactions occurred and released exorbitant amounts of electricity for this relatively small station. Matt went over to them and put his ear against the metal cases.

‘Only one of them is humming. I assume that’s the one powering the jets. There should be some sort of switch on them – like a circuit breaker or something.’

Dexter joined Matt in examining the power cells. He flipped open a panel on one of them to reveal a couple of blank read-outs, a dim green light and a large red switch.

‘This it?’

32 Judge Dredd - Fire and Brimstone

‘Looks good. Let’s flip it and see.’

Dexter pushed the switch and the read-outs came to life, displaying the output power level. The case began to hum, and the main lights flickered back on.

Dredd and Gleason were crouching beside one of the anti-terrorist doors in the dim light of the emergency system, waiting patiently and silently. Then the main light above them flickered into life. Gleason glanced at Dredd but he was watching the door. After a second they heard the hiss of a pneumatic press being released and the door rose up into the ceiling.

Gleason smiled at Dredd and said, ‘Am I good or am I good?’

Dredd glanced at her and the corners of his permanent sneer raised just a fraction.

‘Yes, excellent.’

I don’t believe it, Gleason thought. He actually smiled at me.

Katrina jumped up from her seat, watching the surveillance cameras coming back on.

‘Hell, the doors are opening!’

Alec looked up from the screen in front of him and said, ‘The whole system is resetting!’

Katrina grabbed her gun from the desk and unclipped her radio from her belt.

‘Damn, we haven’t got time.’

Alec paused for a moment and said ‘I only need a few seconds . . .’

Katrina stopped and looked at him, realising what he was suggesting. She rested a hand on his shoulder and said ‘OK. Do it.’

Alec turned towards the computer screen as Katrina and Carl ran towards the stairs. Katrina spoke into her radio, saying ‘Dexter, Matt. The doors are opening. Get up here. We need to buy Alec some time.’

33 Judge Dredd - Fire and Brimstone

Dredd reached the eating area and dived down behind the solid table, while Gleason stayed by the doorway, flattening herself against the wall. Katrina appeared at the top of the stairs, shooting wildly. Without losing his cover, Dredd fired a couple of ricochet bullets at the opposite wall. The bullets bounced off and headed towards Katrina, but she had ducked behind a metal screen.

Dredd shouted ‘Cover me,’ as he dived out into the open. Gleason twisted into view, firing an intense barrage of bullets at the top of the stairs. Katrina backed off as Dredd rolled to the bottom of the stairs and fired. Luckily she had retreated to the other side and was out of sight. Instantly Dredd flipped his Lawgiver to heat-seeker and fired again before his roll took him to the safety of a computer bank.

Katrina cried out as the heat-seeker round homed in on her and bit into her leg. She rolled across the top of the stairwell, firing a machine gun at the computer bank, which burst into flames.

Gleason caught a movement out of the corner of her eye and shouted ‘Dredd!’ as the lift behind him opened. Carl, the terrorist inside, had, just for a split second, a clear shot at Dredd’s back as Dredd brought his gun round. The terrorist aimed, but Gleason was faster, rolling into the room and blasting at the lift, blowing three holes in the terrorist’s chest.

Dexter and Matt were sprinting up the lowest set of steps to the store room, machine guns at the ready.

‘What did she mean – we have to buy Alec some time?’ asked Dexter but then he realised. ‘Oh, Drokk! He’s going to blow it.’

They heard the gunfire above and took cover at the bottom of the stairs leading to the eating area. There was a pause in the firing and Matt started towards the stairs whispering, ‘Come on.’

‘And commit suicide? No way. I’m just a mercenary remember? I’m getting out of here while I still can.’

Dexter ran to one of the escape pods and opened the door. Matt turned back to the stairwell but was thrown backwards as the Judge’s bullets punched through his head.

34 Judge Dredd - Fire and Brimstone

‘Drokk!’ whispered Dexter and hurriedly closed the airlock door behind him. A second later the pod blew its explosive bolts and jettisoned away from the station.

Gleason took one step down the stairs and scanned the storage room with her gun. Satisfied that there was no one there, she retreated to the eating area telling Dredd, ‘It’s clear.’

Dredd was crouching behind the table again. Katrina hadn’t re-appeared at the top the stairs but she was still alive.

Dredd said, ‘Armour piercing’ to Gleason and set his Lawgiver to the same. Gleason only had a few general-purpose rounds left in her magazine, so took it out, substituting a different one from her belt pouch.

They fired at the ceiling on both sides of the stairwell. The bullets sliced through the metal bulkheads and cut into the human body hiding behind them. As Katrina screamed the Judges rushed up the stairs and rolled onto the floor of the control room. They were pointing in opposite directions, covering each other’s backs. Gleason faced towards Katrina’s groaning and bloody body and finished her off with two sharp armour-piercing rounds, which sliced through her head like an arrow through paper. Dredd saw Alec and fired at him, slicing off slivers of flesh and riddling the computer behind him with bullets.

The computer burst into flames and Alec fell to the floor. He painfully propped himself up on one elbow and then rolled onto his back.

‘You’re too late,’ he gasped. ‘I’ve set the self-destruct program running. It will tell all the modulators to crash into the nearest building and then blow this station to kingdom come.’

Dredd glanced at the main computer screen. It was full of acknowledgement messages from the modulators, scrolling off the screen faster than the eye could read them. Thousands of modulators had received their new orders in the split second that Dredd had been watching the screen. With a total of thirty thousand modulators over the city, they only had a couple of seconds left.

Dredd’s eyes frantically scanned the room and then rested on the ceiling. Pulling his space-suit helmet visor down he told Gleason, ‘Gleason, put your helmet on and fire a

35 Judge Dredd - Fire and Brimstone high-explosive round at the ceiling on 3.’ Gleason instantly copied him, setting her Lawgiver to high-explosive bullets.

‘1, 2, 3.’

They fired simultaneously and the two bullets exploded violently. The fireball blew downwards but then the hull was breached and the force of the explosion was sucked out into the near vacuum outside the station. The ceiling was ripped open and peeled back as the air of the room and everything in it was sucked upwards. Dredd and Gleason were lifted off their feet and rammed through the hole, Gleason smashing the back of her head on its ragged edge.

They were thrown clear of the station just as the last acknowledgements were received and the explosives detonated, ripping the entire station asunder, shattering it into a million jagged pieces, and lighting up the sky with an irradiant ball of fire and burning metal.

36 Judge Dredd - Fire and Brimstone

Chapter 5

Dexter could feel the shock waves of the explosion in the escape pod. A few fragments of metal streamed past him. Using the pods just before the station exploded had been part of the original plan – the escape pods would not be detected amongst the shower of debris. No one would pursue them and they could walk away scot-free. It was a good plan, but they had underestimated the judges. He hadn’t shared the others’ crusade but he had no love for Mega-City One, and they had paid well – he would miss them.

The escape pod had small manoeuvring jets and he flew it down to the private airstrip at the rear of the Sector 324 international airport where Katrina had stored her shuttlecraft. The group was going to use it to fly to Sino-City Two, on the site of old China, but Dexter could tell as he landed that there was a problem. A nearby city-block had collapsed onto the hangar.

He ran over to the pile of grey rubble, which was flecked with patches of colour – remnants of furniture, clothing and human bodies. There was a middle-aged woman searching the ruins, tears running down her face. Dexter pushed her out of his way and pulled at the deformed hangar door. He wrenched it open only to discover that the shuttlecraft had been completely destroyed, crushed under a large girder. He swore loudly and recovered his suitcase from the wreckage before storming off towards the main terminal of the airport.

Gleason was taken to the hospital with a fractured skull, and Dredd went back to Weather Congress to discuss the situation with Quinn.

‘Will the systems die out without any weather control?’ asked Dredd.

‘Yes, eventually,’ said Quinn. ‘However, it’s complete chaos out there. There are hundreds of separate weather systems all interacting. The results will be very unpredictable. We were really hoping that you’d recover the weather station. Without the modulators we can’t even see what is going on, let alone predict how long it will last.’

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‘What’s your best guess?’

‘Four or five days, maybe a week. But it could get a lot worse before it gets any better.’

‘Any ideas?’

‘Well, we have backup computers here. Really we just need modulators. Thousands of them,’ replied Quinn.

‘Can we get them from other cities?’

‘It’s unlikely that they would have that many spare. Maybe we could get a few hundred, but there is no guarantee that they will work with our systems.’

‘I’ll get someone at Control to get onto it.’

‘However, I was thinking – we have contracts with a couple of factories to build new modulators. They don’t produce very many but with your influence we could get hundreds of factories all over the city to make them. It would still take a few days to get a sufficient number but we could at least reduce some of the effects and save some lives.’

‘A justifiable appropriation of resources for the safety of the city,’ said Dredd. ‘Get some manufacturing blueprints and I will get authorisation from the Chief Judge.’

Melvin Ogg was a slob. He had spent the last two years sat in front of his tri-D set and saw no reason to get up now. His whole family lived in this one room – the kids, Plunkett and Cheebar, played with their toys on the floor and his wife, Ollie was quite happy just to dust and cook the food that was delivered to their door each morning. As far as Melvin was concerned, life on Welfare was good.

Normally he would spend all afternoon watching soap operas but today the news was particularly interesting. By the looks of things, the whole city was falling apart. Even the local stations had a cool tornado that was winding its way through the neighbourhood, which competed well with the huge snowstorm on the national channels.

There was some commotion outside in the corridor but Melvin didn’t pay it any attention as he switched back to Sector Five Spy – ‘Your local eye in the sky’. The camera was tracking the tornado along a wide street. Melvin frowned in concentration; there was something strangely familiar about it.

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‘Ollie, come look at this.’

Ollie stopped dusting a sparkling doorknob and looked at the tri-D.

‘Oh, that’s our block!’

‘Oh, yeah. I thought I recognised it.’ Melvin turned up the volume to compensate for the wind that had started blowing outside the window. ‘Hey, kids – our block’s on tri-D!’

‘Cool!’ exclaimed Plunkett, putting down his toy robot.

The whole family watched entranced as the commentators described the action. There were some screams and a crashing sound from down the corridor and Melvin turned towards the door.

‘Hey, keep it down out there – don’t they know that we’re on the news?’

On the tri-D set, the holographic tornado tore into the block, blowing out windows and tearing off chucks of masonry.

‘Cool special effects,’ said Plunkett as he watched the tornado move round to the opposite side of the building.

Suddenly the outside wall was ripped outwards, taking most of the ceiling and the apartment above with it. For a second, hurricane winds screamed across the room, deafening everyone and throwing rubble against the walls. But then the tornado moved on and wind died down. Ollie looked around the room and checked that everyone was still there and unhurt.

‘Wow,’ said Melvin.

Cheebar crawled over to the gaping hole and looked out across the city.

‘Mummy, what’s that?’ she asked, pointing to a small ball floating about two hundred metres away.

‘Grud, it’s a camera!’ Melvin replied and turned back to the tri-D. Sure enough he could see the destroyed section of wall on the holographic projection.

‘Golly, Murray,’ said the voice of one of the commentators. ‘Did you see that? Ripped a huge section right out of the wall.’

‘I sure did, Frank.’ the other reporter replied. ‘I certainly wouldn’t want to be in that block right now.’

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Excited beyond belief, Melvin jumped up out of his seat for the first time in years and began waving frantically out of the space where the window had been.

‘Hey, Frank, it could be my imagination but is there someone still alive in there?’

‘Hang on, let’s get a close-up of that. You’re right Murray, and he’s waving at us!’

Melvin was jumping up and down and waving manically, with his head turned to one side so he could see his own holographic image, clearly recognisable on the tri-D. The others came to the edge and started waving too, shielding their eyes from the blasting wind.

‘What a dork-wit, Murray.’

‘He sure is, Frank. Complete spug-heads, the whole lot of them.’

The tornado was still raging only a few hundred metres away. It touched the next block and tore out a few large pieces, but this block was much bigger and blocked the tornado’s path. Unable to continue, the tornado was reflected back towards the Ogg’s.

‘They should really get out of there, Frank.’

‘You’re not kidding. They’ll be goners for sure. Get back from the edge! Can you hear me? Get further into the block!’

But Melvin wasn’t listening. He was too busy raising his arm and showing the rest of the family that his tri-D image was raising his arm too. He probably wouldn’t have been able to hear the commentators’ voices over the roar of the wind anyway.

The tornado closed in again and the camera had to back away to avoid being destroyed, much to the displeasure of the family who desperately beckoned it back.

The tornado filled the frame of the camera and ripped into the block again. The whole side of the block collapsed, sliding down like an avalanche. When the dust cloud had thinned sufficiently to see, there was nothing left of the Ogg’s apartment, or any of the apartments within three floors of them.

‘What a way to go, Frank. Watched by twenty million people.’

‘Actually, Murray, I’ve just heard that that piece of personal tragedy raised our current viewing figures to twenty three million.’

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‘That’s great, Frank. I’m sure that the station will send some compensation to the relatives to thank them. But now, back to Sue in the studio.’

When Dexter entered, the main airport concourse was in chaos. Thousands of people were packed into this relatively small space. The atmosphere was tense. Everyone was scared – some were queuing quietly, hugging their family close to them, others were shouting and shoving, and at least two areas were in open riot. No flight details were displayed on the huge screens along the far wall, just the words ‘All tickets sold out. Please go home.’

Dexter realised that he wasn’t going to get a seat by queuing patiently, and forced his way to the check-in desks of ‘Your Way’ airlines. They tried to compete with the bigger airlines by advertising that they were the only airline with no robotic staff – ‘A real smile to put you on Your Way.’

A real fear of death to put me on my way, thought Dexter, as he pulled out his gun. But when he reached the front of the line he was greeted by a metallic gaze.

‘Hey, what’s with the robots? Where are the human staff?’

‘I’m sorry sir,’ replied the robot in an artificial cheerful voice. ‘All the human employees of Your Way airlines left on the first available flight. It’s just us robots left now.’

‘I didn’t think Your Way had any robots.’

The robot smiled even wider. ‘We don’t sir. We are on loan from Mega-Wide for the duration of this present crisis.’

Dexter frowned in frustration and then held the gun up to the robot’s head. ‘Whatever. Now you are going to give me a ticket to get out of here.’

‘I’m sorry sir. All the tickets for the next two months have already been sold. The next available flight is six a.m. on November the twentieth, to Uranium City.’

‘No, I want one for today. Cancel someone else’s ticket and give me theirs, or I’ll blow your brains out.’

‘I do not have any brains, sir. And anyway, someone with a bigger gun has just hijacked the last plane.’

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Dexter looked out onto the runways and saw the only plane with the ‘Your Way’ logo taxiing out of its hangar, half an hour early. There were only four or five planes in sight and all of them were preparing to take off.

‘Arrrgh!’ screamed Dexter and shot the robot through the head. A second robot at the next desk turned to him and said ‘Sir, destroying property of Mega-Wide airlines is a serious criminal offence. Please drop your weapon and wait for the authorities to arrive.’

In reply Dexter blew a hole through its chest plate. A third robot turned to face him and he shot that one too. He flipped the gun onto automatic and sprayed bullets all along the check-in desk, leaving all five ‘Your Way’ robots as shattered piles of scrap metal.

The crowd cowered back as he swung the gun round and stormed out of the airport.

Three hours later, Ken Walker frowned at the computer screen in front of him.

‘Oh, great. Now SW16 is playing up as well. Tom, after you’ve finished there, swing it round to the South West sector will you? Number 16 just died on us.’

‘Roger that Control,’ Tom replied over the radio, the hum of his submersible’s propellers clearly audible in the background.

Walker typed some commands onto the keyboard, trying to get some response from wave sensor number SW16.

In fact, ‘wave sensor’ was a bit of a misnomer. Here at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, very few surface waves could be detected. However, the array of sensors did keep tabs on many different deep sea currents, keeping track of variations in pressure, density, temperature and pollution. Unlike the atmosphere modulators of Mega-City One, these sensors could not alter the local conditions. They just monitored what was going on, mainly for the safety of the tourists who would come to Atlantis to drive around in a rented submersible. Atlantis was the main stop off point of the Atlantic Tunnel; a transparent tube laid across the ocean floor containing a ten lane highway that connected Mega-City One to Brit-Cit. Atlantis was a huge dome half way along, packed full of restaurants, sea-life exhibits and souvenir shops.

Walker was just starting to get somewhere with SW16, when a warning beep sounded from a second console. Sighing, he slid his chair across the control room to the other screen. He read the warning message quizzically and viewed the data that had been

42 Judge Dredd - Fire and Brimstone coming in from the appropriate sensor. The data had suddenly stopped, the connection cut with no warning. Then more alerts appeared on the screen and Walker’s eyes widened in shock.

He punched the radio button and said, ‘Tom, get back inside, right now!’

He then rapidly tapped in a number on the radio keypad. There was a ringing sound and a voice answered, ‘Yes?’

‘Mr Watts, if you have any tourists outside, get them back immediately! Something really big is coming this way.’

Tom, not being one to argue with his boss, dutifully turned the submersible back towards the dome. He was wondering what sort of emergency could have got Ken all flustered like that when the submersible was hit with the force of a two-ton sledgehammer. The submersible rolled over and over as it was carried along with the massive pressure wave which was breaking the wave sensors in half. Tom desperately tried to regain control as he was propelled towards the dome at an incredible speed. He was spun upside down and then smashed into the glass wall.

His cockpit shattered, the incredible pressure crushing his body instantly. The impact had created a large crack in the wall of the dome. As the wave passed, the sea water was pressed against the crack. Like a fork of lightning the crack grew. It spread sideways and down into the thick glass. The people on the other side were already running when the first tiny squirt of water broke through. Then with an almighty crash the glass spilt asunder, a thousand gallons of water blasting through the hole in seconds. Large sections of the wall fell in; the gap was now fifty feet across. Cold salty water thundered into the room beyond, ploughing into the people, knocking them off their feet and drowning them in moments.

The wave passed by but the water continued to pour in, filling each corridor and plunging down the next. Emergency doors slammed into place and eventually contained the disaster but the water had already flooded over a tenth of the dome and killed almost five thousand people.

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As soon as Dredd heard about the Atlantis disaster, he returned to the Weather Congress. When he entered the control room, it was in chaos. About a dozen people were studying their computer screens and shouting out reports as they came in. Quinn was at the main terminal trying to build up an overall picture and figure out what had happened.

‘Ninety five percent of sensors are now inoperable.’

‘Pressure gradient at sensor N15 was 1025 mb per second.’

Quinn added the information to an image of the Atlantis complex, surrounded by spots of data positioned at the last known co-ordinates of the sensors. ‘The velocity has to be at least thirty metres per second,’ he muttered, ‘and with a depth of 3,400 metres...’ He tapped some numbers into a small calculator on his desk. ‘No, that can’t be right.’

Someone else shouted, ‘Casualties are estimated at over four thousand.’

‘I don’t want casualties,’ Quinn replied. ‘Get me wave velocities.’

‘Location of sensor SE2 confirmed at 167464 by 353292.’

‘Yes, that’s the one I want.’

‘Divers are recovering its data banks now . . . direction of wave front was 284 degrees, and speed is confirmed at 39.3 metres per second.’

‘Grud.’

‘What is it?’ asked Dredd.

Quinn twisted round in his chair, noticing Dredd for the first time.

‘Oh, Dredd. I don’t know what it is, but we could be in big trouble.’

Another technician suggested ‘A tsunami?’

‘Unlikely. I’ve got a terrible feeling that it’s another weather disaster.’

‘A hurricane?’

‘It can’t be. No storm surge is that big.’

‘We’ve had some pretty phenomenal pressures here. There’s probably at least one on its way.’

‘But we don’t know that do we? I need more information!’

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Dredd said, ‘Can’t you send up sensors in planes? We can provide some H-wagons if you need them.’

‘It wouldn’t be enough to create a decent picture. We had thirty thousand modulators, each with a hundred and fifty sensors. Someone flying through a cloud with a camera is not going to tell us anything.’

A second technician turned from his desk and said, ‘What about the spy satellites? It wouldn’t tell us air pressures or humidity but we could see what we’re dealing with.’

‘Yes, excellent. We’d need authorisation – that stuff’s top secret.’

‘You’ve got it,’ Dredd replied.

Twenty minutes later Quinn had consolidated all the available data and had called Dredd back.

‘The satellites were more useful than I was expecting. They had infrared and radar so we’ve been able to work out rough temperatures and wind speeds.’

‘And?’ said Dredd.

‘It’s a hurricane. It’s enormous – 1060 kilometres across, and moving at 146 km/h with a phenomenal storm surge. I’ve never seen anything like it. It must have been created artificially.’

‘How did it destroy Atlantis?’ said Dredd.

‘That was the storm surge. All hurricanes have a low pressure at the centre and while it is over the ocean, the surface rises to form a huge bulge. As the hurricane moves, the bulge moves with it. This is effectively a huge wave travelling at a very high speed. It pulls along the water underneath it and that’s what hit the sub and sent it into the side of Atlantis.’

‘How much damage will that cause when it reaches the city?’

‘When it comes near the shore, the surge will rear up into a wave perhaps a hundred metres high. It will slam into the eastern sea wall, compressing the air in front of it, which will be forced into every crack with sufficient power to smash the wall to pieces. And those pieces will demolish everything in their path, carried at least ten kilometres inland by the tidal wave of water. A billion tons of water will sweep away entire

45 Judge Dredd - Fire and Brimstone buildings. And then the hurricane will follow, with gusts of up to three hundred km/h that will fracture the toughest rockcrete, splitting open the walls of the city-blocks and snapping overzooms in half. The hurricane will spawn hundreds of tornadoes, each twice as devastating as the tornadoes we have encountered so far. There will be torrential rain, so intense that it will make your head bleed, which will flood the entire city for weeks. Some hurricanes have also been known to cause earthquakes. Millions will die from buildings collapsing, millions more from drowning. The total number could be over a hundred million . . .’

‘How long?’

Quinn looked at his computer screen and then turned back to Dredd.

‘Nineteen hours.’

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Chapter 6

‘Nineteen hours?’

Dredd nodded as Chief Judge Hershey finished reading his report.

‘Less now,’ he replied. ‘It will hit the eastern seaboard at fourteen hundred hours tomorrow.’

Hershey ran her hand through her hair. ‘What are our options?’ she asked.

‘It looks pretty bleak at the moment. We have contacted two hundred and sixteen factories that are suitable for manufacturing atmosphere modulators but it will take at least two more hours to set up the machines. Then they will produce five an hour, giving us about seventeen thousand. But we used to have twice that number just to maintain the status quo. Quinn estimates that we would need fifty thousand modulators and get them working two hours before it hits in order to disperse it. Anything less and they will just get torn to bits.’

‘Great, what’s the good news?’

‘Well, when the hurricane moves over land, it will run out of water and die out – it won’t affect any other cities. And it will wipe the atmosphere clean – all the smaller weather systems will die out too.’

‘There has to be something we can do. Dredd, I want you to set up a central control centre for this, here at the Hall of Justice. Keep in constant contact with Quinn and co- ordinate all of the Justice Department’s efforts. Get more factories producing modulators, ask the other Mega-Cities for help and get Tech division working through the night – I want a solution, and I want reports every fifteen minutes until I have one.’

‘Yes sir.’

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After a screenful of psychedelic colours and ear-shattering sounds, the vid-screen returned to the face of Mervin Molenski, the insanely happy host of The Wake-Up Channel.

‘Yee-hah! This is The Wake-Up Channel – twenty-four hours of hot tunes to perk you up. This isn’t just entertainment, we provide a service! Depressed, lonely, sleepy or just plain suicidal – ten minutes of The Wake-Up channel and you’ll be on top of the world! This is “Live it up” by “Eat this”.’

The heavy-duty speakers blasted out more thunderous notes, which reverberated around the hover-pod’s cabin. Steve Chappel turned from the controls to his companion in the back. He had to shout to be heard over the noise.

‘Yeah! I love this one! You know, I’d probably commit suicide if it wasn’t for The Wake-Up Channel. This job really gets to you.’

Jeff Turner nodded, his attention fixed on the viewscreen in front of him which showed a three-dimensional wire-frame representation of the ground that they were passing over.

‘Wow! Look at that,’ said Steve.

‘What?’ replied Jeff, his ears full of heavy drumbeats.

Steve turned down the music and repeated himself. ‘I said, look at that.’

Jeff wheeled his chair to the front of the storage area, craned his head over the co- pilot’s seat and looked out of the left hand window.

They were passing over a very affluent part of the sector, full of green parks and low- rise blocks. Hardly any were over twenty stories high. However, being smaller they were also weaker than the huge city-blocks and had suffered heavily from the weather disasters. Every block in sight was cracked, fractured or crumbled. But this wasn’t what Steve was pointing out. A couple of miles to the west there was a large park, a few hundred acres of grassland and woods. A lightning storm had passed over a few hours before and now the entire area was on fire, flames a hundred feet high lighting up the area like a second sun.

‘No wonder I can’t get a decent picture on the infrared,’ Jeff said.

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They circled around the park. There didn’t seem to be anyone trapped in the fire, although there was a large plaza that bordered on it to the north which was being used as an evacuation site. At least ten thousand people huddled together in the centre, keeping a safe distance from both the dangerously unstable blocks and the raging inferno in the park.

Then a bright red dot on Jeff’s viewscreen caught his eye and he turned back to his console.

‘I’ve found him. It’s that mansion at two o’clock.’

‘I see it,’ Steve replied and took the pod into a shallow dive.

The sophisticated scanners on the pod created a complex image of the house on Jeff’s screen, showing the current deformed shape of the house. Each piece of rubble was coloured to show the various stresses and torsional forces acting on it. Underneath a large section of wall was the bright red dot.

‘It looks like he’s trapped in the front kitchen with about one and a half tons of debris on top of him,’ said Jeff.

The pod landed within twenty feet of the main entrance to the mansion. Few citizens could afford houses this size. In Mega-City One the poor were very poor but the rich were incredibly rich. This house was three stories high with thirty thousand square feet of floor space and only one inhabitant – Wendell Applewhaite, executive director of News Channel Six.

Jeff picked up a hand-held PAB detector and a bio scanner as Steve climbed out of his seat and came into the rear of the pod. ‘This looks like a job for the Mark 7,’ he said walking over to the powered exoskeleton which stood against the wall. He lifted its right arm and then let it fall. It swung back and clanged against the metal wall.

‘Oh dear,’ he added sarcastically. ‘The right arm still doesn’t seem to have any hydraulics in it.’

‘All right,’ Jeff cut in, ‘I know. I should have fixed it last week, but I didn’t know this was going to happen did I? Come on, let’s find out how he is.’

Wendell was wearing his Personal Alert Beacon on his wrist so the PAB detector led them right to him. The wreckage was a little unstable but both rescuers managed to climb

49 Judge Dredd - Fire and Brimstone through to the kitchen where Wendell was lying, his legs crushed by a two feet wide beam.

‘City-wide Rescue at your service, sir,’ Steve chirped cheerfully.

‘Took you drokking long enough,’ Wendell replied, wincing with the pain that the effort to speak caused him. ‘I don’t expect to pay you people two thousand credits a month insurance and then have to wait an hour for you to show up.’

‘Sorry sir. It’s been a busy afternoon.’

Wendell was trapped under one of the beams that had supported the floor above the kitchen. He was lying on his front, face down in a pile of dust. He couldn’t feel his legs but his back ached and his rescuers gave him Niophene to ease the discomfort and prevent the pain that he may well feel when they raised the beam. Neither mentioned that the numbness was a sign that he could have broken his spinal cord and could be paralysed for life.

Ten minutes later Steve was wearing the exoskeleton and lifting a heavy beam in front of Wendell with just his left arm as Jeff inserted a steel hydraulic brace beneath it. Once the brace was securely in place, Steve let go of the beam and Jeff extended the brace. The mechanism hummed as the bar grew, raising the beam ten centimetres. There was an ominous sliding sound as the weight of the collapsed floor shifted. Then there was a creaking sound from the far corner of the kitchen and the left hand wall collapsed, blowing a huge cloud of dust through the enclosed space.

‘What the hell are you two doing?’ cried Wendell.

‘This place is more precariously balanced than we thought,’ replied Steve, now dispensing with the polite ‘sir’. ‘This is going to take longer than I expected.’

Jeff took his radar scanner from his pocket to examine the new shape of the structure.

‘Don’t worry – we’ll get you out,’ he said, wiping away some sweat from his forehead. The heat from the park fire was incredible and his back felt scorched. He turned round to look at it. The fire had reached the very edge of the park, only five hundred metres away. A wide highway separated them – made from solid rockcrete, it was an effective firebreak. Jeff gauged the height of the nearest trees – if one fell towards them, it would reach about two-thirds of the way across the road. And if the impact threw

50 Judge Dredd - Fire and Brimstone a few burning branches the rest of the way, the fire could conceivably reach the grass on this side of the highway. Jeff returned to his task, eager to get out of there as soon as possible.

It was now 6:30 p.m. and the sun was setting. Although the fire provided a lot of light, Jeff fetched a couple of lamps from the pod to illuminate the interior of the house, as Steve tested the weight of some of the surrounding beams with his exoskeleton.

Jeff selected a cross-beam that was touching the beam that lay on Wendell, and they successfully shored it up with three braces. Confident that they could now raise the beam trapping Wendell, Steve grasped the free end that was raised off the floor and Jeff inserted a spreading claw on the other side of Wendell’s legs.

The claw slowly opened, pressing against the floor and the beam. Steve lifted the other end and Jeff could see the debris shifting away from Wendell’s legs. Wendell gave a gasp as the pressure was released, but then the claw splintered the wooden floor. The claw slipped and the beam fell upon the weakened boards. The beam punched a hole in the floor and slid down into the basement. Steve let go, but it didn’t slide far, hitting the wall of the basement with such force that the kitchen wall above it crumbled. Steve raised his arms just in time to catch the beam that they had previously shored up. Jeff scrambled backwards to safety but Wendell screamed as the beam scraped across his back, still trapping him.

‘Get some more braces!’ Steve shouted. ‘I can’t hold this for long.’

Jeff ran out of the house but stopped aghast as he looked across the road. The fire in the park had created intense thermals rising up into the sky. The rising air sucked in oxygen at the base, which kept the fires burning brightly. One of the thermals began to twist and suddenly the flames were sucked upwards, writhing and twisting into a tornado of fire. The burning whirlwind was two hundred metres high and twenty metres wide. It was spinning at an incredible speed but rather than blow itself out, the spinning seemed to intensify the fire, the flame billowing fiercely and angrily. It was a firestorm – one of Nature’s rarest and most destructive forces. It was moving rapidly, superheating the air in front of it, which burst into flame as the tornado reached it. Then Jeff realised where it was heading – straight towards the plaza containing ten thousand people.

Breathlessly, Jeff stumbled back to the house and said, ‘Steve! There’s a firestorm. It’s going to kill everyone! Leave him – we have to do something!’

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Jeff ran back to the hover-pod and Steve called after him, ‘I can’t just —’.

Steve looked down at Wendell’s bemused face and then out towards the park. He couldn’t see the firestorm but he knew how much damage they could cause.

Wendell realised what Steve was considering and exclaimed, ‘You can’t leave me!’ Steve looked at him and then back towards the park. Wendell’s eyes changed from hostility to pleading. ‘Please . . .’

Steve could feel the gyro-motors in the exoskeleton whining and knew that they couldn’t hold up for much longer and he could sense Jeff prepping the hover-pod for lift- off. ‘Oh, grud. I hate decisions like these,’ he whispered to himself and then let go of the beam and jumped forward. The beam fell, splitting in two. The other supporting beams strained under the extra weight and dust fell from the ceiling as Steve ran out of the house. As he approached the pod, the house suddenly collapsed behind him. He could hear Wendell’s screams over the pounding of falling masonry. He didn’t look back.

Steve climbed into the back of the pod and Jeff immediately took off, heading for the firestorm. Jeff had read about them, but never dreamed that he would ever see one. He had never even seen a thundercloud before today. He watched the tornado of fire, fascinated and terrified. Red and orange flames swirled around the column, flickering and twisting like a living creature. The pod was passing over the forest now, surrounded by thick black smoke. The heat could be felt through the bulkhead.

Steve sat on the floor of the rear compartment, his head bowed.

‘I killed that guy’, he said.

‘No you didn’t.’ Jeff replied. ‘The beam killed him. You just failed to rescue him. Now get up here – we have bigger problems.’

Steve came forward to the co-pilot’s seat and looked out at the firestorm. It was only two hundred metres from the edge of the plaza and the people nearest the forest edge were screaming and pushing back against the crowd. Blazing brightly against the night sky, everyone could see the tornado closing in on them, but a large crowd has a lot of inertia. The people at the furthest edge were moving back into the city-blocks or running along the streets. But panic began to overcome the main part of the crowd and people

52 Judge Dredd - Fire and Brimstone began to shout and scream, pushing and shoving; some stumbling, others calling out for loved ones who had been suddenly swept away into the sea of faces.

The two rescuers hovered helplessly as the tornado reached the edge of the forest. They could see the men and women nearest the flames close their eyes from the heat and hold their hands up across their faces as the superheated air burnt their flesh.

Then the bodies burst into flame, the fire spreading from one person to another. The tornado bridged the gap and fed on its new fuel, sucking up writhing balls of flame, burning every combustible molecule in their bodies and then flinging blackened carcasses out across the crowd.

‘Oh my grud . . .’ Steve whispered, then turned to Jeff. ‘What are we going to do?’

The crowd was like ants in front of a steamroller. They were being massacred.

‘I . . . I don’t know.’ Jeff forced himself to look away from the viewscreen and scan the shelves of equipment behind him. ‘Fire, fire, how do you put out a fire?’

Heat scanners, pneumatic drills, cutting lasers, blood plasma. They had a small chemical fire extinguisher but against the firestorm it would be as effective as a water pistol. Then he had an idea.

‘How much DX do we have?’

‘About ten K,’ Steve replied. ‘How is high explosive going to help?’

‘We could blow it out.’

‘Blow out that with ten kilograms of DX?’

‘We can put more than one detonator in it. It’s the same amount of energy but it is released faster so the explosion is more powerful.’

‘OK. You’re the explosives expert. How many detonators do we use?’

‘How many have we got?’

Steve climbed back into the equipment bay and opened the door to one of the cabinets.

‘Ten.’

‘That’ll do.’

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Setting the pod to hover, Jeff joined Steve and got the explosive out of its box. Together they inserted the detonators on all sides of the soft grey material, pressing a small button on the top of each to arm it. All the detonators were set to the same frequency – when the trigger signal was sent they would all explode simultaneously.

Jeff inserted the last one and looked at Steve.

‘Now we’ve got to get it inside the tornado.’

‘OK. You drive and I’ll throw.’

By the time Jeff got back to the pilot’s seat, the firestorm had travelled a third of the way across the plaza. Blackened corpses lay everywhere, and grey ash was falling on the remaining citizens, still screaming frantically. Jeff flew upwards and positioned the pod a hundred metres above the tornado.

‘Are you ready?’ he called back to Steve.

‘As ready as I’ll ever be. Open her up.’

Jeff activated his controls and opened the rear doors just a fraction. Instantly, the whole cabin was full of scoldingly hot air blasting in with the speed of a hurricane. Steve screamed as his face blistered and loose equipment was flung across the cabin. Jeff quickly closed the door and looked back to see Steve slapping at his sleeve which had burst into flame. He got the fire out and croaked towards Jeff, ‘Higher.’

‘Are you OK?’

‘I’m . . . I’m fine,’ Steve gasped

‘How’s the explosive?’

‘It’s fine. Hurry.’

Jeff flew to four hundred metres above the top of the tornado, and opened the rear doors just a crack. The air outside was still boiling hot but it was bearable for a few moments. Steve looked down into the centre of the firestorm. Arcs of lightning jumped from one wall to the other. Massive flames reached up towards him but he was beyond their grasp. An entire tree was suspended in the centre, twisting and turning in the intense winds. A strong gust sent the body of a woman up towards the pod. It struck the side of the pod with a dull thud, almost knocking Steve off his feet.

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With both hands he held out the spiked ball of explosive and, aiming for the tree, dropped it.

‘Now!’ Steve shouted, jumping away from the doors.

In one movement, Jeff shut the doors, gunned the engines forward and triggered the detonators.

They felt the explosion before they heard it. A massive force punched outwards, through the wall of the tornado, knocking the flames out of their swirling pattern. All the structure lost, the fire twisted and fell onto the crowd as the shock wave hit the hover-pod, swatting it like a fly. The two rescuers were thrown forwards as the pod tumbled through the air. The shock wave rushed downwards, pounding into the people near the base of the tornado, flattening them against the ground and knocking the wind out of them.

The pod smashed into a block, embedding itself into the rockcrete. The fire wasn’t completely out and burning pieces of vegetation fell onto the crowd, setting fire to some. But the firestorm had gone, blown out like a candle. About a thousand people had died, many more burnt severely, but nine thousand had been saved.

Inside the hover-pod Steve carefully raised his head and twisted it experimentally. His neck hurt like hell but it didn’t seem to be broken. Jeff held his palm against a cut on his forehead. He turned to Steve and said, ‘Actually, I think nine detonators would have been fine.’

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Chapter 7

Dexter Pike slouched on his sofa watching tri-D. He held the remote control in his right hand, flipping to a different news channel every few minutes. He was still wearing his jacket, soaking wet from the rain outside, and now slowly seeping into the fabric of his couch. He had accepted the fact that he couldn’t leave the city and he had resigned himself to waiting out the crisis and hoping he could sneak away in the aftermath.

Currently he was watching the ‘What I want to know show’ where some spughead was interviewing the inhabitants of a block that had been saturated with what appeared to be very strong tranquilliser gas. Apparently, a number of people had seen one of the weather-control modulators spraying a thin pink cloud above the block and within minutes people were collapsing, vomiting or quietly singing to themselves. It had also caused a number of deaths when a bus driver inhaled the gas and swerved off a three hundred metre high overzoom.

The interviewer turned to the camera dramatically and claimed that if the modulators had stores of tranquilliser gas, then this proved that the judges used this gas to subdue the population.

This particular programme came up with some ridiculous claims at times, but this time it was telling the truth. Dexter remembered when Alex had first hacked into the Mega-City One weather system and discovered this ability. They had programmed some modulators to empty their canisters over highly populated areas. Even if they didn’t manage to destroy the city, revealing dirty secrets like this would undermine the citizen’s belief in the Justice Department and might even start a civil war. And Dexter would certainly be in the front line in a war against the judges – he had his own reasons for hating the city’s self-appointed guardians.

Grimly, Dexter switched to another channel and sat bolt upright in shock. The screen showed another reporter standing in front of Dexter’s escape pod, still sitting on the airstrip in Sector 324 international airport.

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‘—was undamaged,’ the reporter said. ‘The Judges have confirmed that the pod came from the Weather Control Station, which the terrorists destroyed earlier this afternoon. Forensic teams have been examining the pod and it will only be a matter of time before the pilot is identi—‘

Dexter leapt off the sofa, switched off the tri-D and ran out the door, with the remote control still in his hand.

Judge Carter looked down at the heavily damaged Patrick Stewart block with a feeling of distaste. He hated himself and the whole Justice Department. There were people dying below him and he just sat in his H-wagon watching it all like some sick movie. But his orders were clear – the Chief Judge had spelled it out to all the judges half an hour before.

‘Twenty-one judges have died so far today in attempted rescues. This is an emergency situation. We cannot spare any judges to help with the disasters. We exist solely to enforce the law. Our primary duty at this time is to stop looters, muggers and futsies. Do not refuse to help citizens who request it, but do not put yourselves into any dangerous situations. Remember, we are a law enforcement agency, not a rescue organisation.’

We are a heartless bunch of fascists, you mean.

Carter had been having doubts about the Justice system for some months now. The system had seeped into him and taken him over, twisting him into the stereotypical hard- ass judge, like Dredd. He never used to be so brutal. Only last week he had a juve, handcuffed and submissive and he found himself smashing this kid’s face into the sidewalk for sneering at him. Wear the uniform of a judge and you become less human. You lose your compassion.

And here he was now, watching people suffering and in pain, with orders to only look for goddamn looters.

Hell, I can’t just sit here.

Carter took the controls and moved in towards the block . . .

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Mo Zinch was drunk. Today had not been a good day and now he was trying very hard to drown his sorrows. Of course, alcohol was illegal but he was a member of the Patrick Stewart block citi-def unit and he had connections. He was sitting on the roof, in his gunnery chair. Each city-block had a right to defend itself from foreign invaders (which had happened a number of times) and from other blocks (an all too common occurrence now known as block wars). Therefore, many blocks had their own military units with some impressive hardware. Mo’s responsibility was a 44-mm calibre Hottzentrough howitzer. With his apartment destroyed by a single bolt of lightning, this was the only place he could call home. His girlfriend had dumped him two days before and so the bottle was his only source of solace. This was not a good day.

He sat at the controls of the gun, looking up at the evening sky. It was still raining, but the storm had passed. He watched a judge’s H-wagon hovering nearby.

Bastards! They just sit there and watch us. Judge us. Laugh at us. They think they’re better than us. They don’t know what it’s like to live in this stinking city.

The H-wagon came closer and Mo swung the howitzer round to face it.

‘Why don’t you come down here and join the party!’

The howitzer spat four high explosive shells at the H-wagon. Two of them hit, one destroying the left engine, the other exploding just under the cockpit. Suddenly transformed into a ball of burning metal and smoke, the vehicle corkscrewed downwards and ploughed into the side of the building. Mo laughed for the first time in weeks.

Judge Carter awoke amongst a network of warped metal. Justice department H-wagons had very good safety cages and he was only shaken up, but the wagon would never fly again. The only functioning displays were a low fuel light and a warning to check that the rear door was closed. He tried the radio but it was dead. He had been thrown against the side of the cabin when he crashed and his helmet radio was broken too.

I guess I’ll have to walk then . . .

Carter got some spare ammo clips and climbed out.

He had crashed into a hover pod park. If he’d come down twenty metres to the right then he would have flown through the entrance, but he had crashed through the wall. The park was quite large, about two hundred metres across. The ceiling was ten metres high,

58 Judge Dredd - Fire and Brimstone supported by large pillars. His H-wagon had smashed into one of these pillars, spreading rubble everywhere and causing the ceiling to sag and crack.

The H-wagon itself had large gashes along the side as if a huge beast had attacked it. The front of the vehicle was crumpled and bent out of shape. Pieces of the left engine were scattered in it’s wake, and smoke rose out of the other side.

Carter stepped over a chunk of rockcrete and walked over to a computer terminal on the wall. It said that he was on floor twenty-three, out of forty. It also said that due to heavy structural damage from the storm, all the elevators had been shut down. Seventeen floors to walk up to arrest the man that had shot him followed by forty to walk down. Or walk down twenty-three, call in some back up and then fly back up there. Bearing in mind that the creep did have a howitzer up there, the second option seemed much more sensible.

He hurried over to the nearest stairwell and started down. The general level of fitness in the city meant that stairs were only used in emergencies and therefore they were popular places for mischief. Graffiti covered the walls and Carter’s keen eyes spotted a number of dried bloodstains that were at least a couple of weeks old. Normally the stairs were relatively deserted but today a number of family groups were hurrying downwards, carrying their most precious possessions, trying to escape before the next disaster struck.

On floor twenty the stairwell opened out into a large mall. There were a number of tri-D screens on the walls and each one had a large crowd gathered round it. All the screens were showing the same news bulletin, which was obviously causing a lot of concern in the crowds. Curious, Carter moved closer to hear what the reporter was saying.

‘Although we have not been able to obtain any satellite images of the hurricane, weather experts have estimated it to be up to a thousand kilometres across. Professor, is there any chance that it will blow out before hitting the city?’

The screen changed to show a middle-aged man with a neat moustache and beard.

‘I’m afraid not. Hurricanes build up over the sea and die down over the land, and we are right on the coast. Unless a miracle happens, it will hit sometime tomorrow afternoon and wipe out most of the city.’

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A collective gasp rose from the crowd, followed by a hundred whispered questions. The questions were ignored and the crowd fell silent as the reporter continued.

‘I would like to remind viewers that these conclusions come from respected weather experts based on amateur instrument readings and the reports from the Atlantis station. There is still no official statement from either Weather Congress or the Justice Department. But it is the opinion of this reporter that if we don’t get an official statement soon, then there may not be anyone left to give it to.’

This sort of news would spark off riots all over the city, thought Carter. An official statement from the Weather Congress could calm them down. But they obviously didn’t have anything reassuring to say. So, the news reports must be right – the city would be destroyed tomorrow.

I’m probably going to die tomorrow . . .

I don’t even know how I feel about that.

I’m a judge, constantly risking my life. But that’s just part of the job. I’ve never really thought about dying, and I’ve certainly never had such an imminent deadline.

Carter looked around him and he could tell that similar thoughts were going through the minds of the citizens. Some held their loved ones close, some were crying quietly and others were just staring at the vid-screen in shock.

Then Carter noticed someone else a little further down the mall. It was a middle-aged man, running from person to person, pleading them for something. The man saw Carter and ran over to him.

‘Judge! Please, you have to help me! My wife is trapped. You have to help me get her out.’

‘OK, citizen. Calm down. Where is she?’

‘This way. By the Hyper-Mart.’

The man led Carter across the mall and down a side corridor. The far wall had collapsed and a metal beam had fallen down from the ceiling. Partially buried under the pile of rubble was a young woman.

Carter ran over to her and knelt down beside her. He was no medical expert but most of the cuts and bruises seemed to be superficial, and none of her limbs were at awkward

60 Judge Dredd - Fire and Brimstone angles that would indicate she had broken a bone. However, her right arm had been crushed by a large chunk of rockcrete. Her breathing was laboured and she was obviously in pain.

‘What’s your name, citizen?’

Her husband answered for her. ‘Caitlin, Caitlin Miles. I’m Marc.’

Carter nodded at Marc. ‘We’ll need to get her out of here. This whole corridor could collapse at any time.’ He turned back to the woman and asked, ‘Where does it hurt?’

Caitlin tried to lift her head slightly and winced. ‘Just my arm. And my shoulder.’

‘OK. You’ve probably dislocated your shoulder and broken your arm.’ He reached into his belt pouch and pulled out a small canister. ‘This is a painkiller. It will make you feel better for the moment, but when we lift that rock off you, blood will flow down your arm and it will hurt again. You understand?’

Caitlin nodded as Carter sprayed the painkiller over her shoulder and as much of her arm as he could get to. After a moment she relaxed and breathed deeply.

‘Thank you.’

‘It’s not over yet. Marc, get on the other side of this.’

Carter stood over Caitlin’s legs and got hold of one end of the rock. Marc stood beside her head and got hold of the other.

‘Ready?’ asked Carter.

Caitlin nodded, her mouth tightly closed.

Marc briefly took his hand off the boulder and brushed her hair away from her face. ‘It’ll be OK.’

Both men then got a good grip on the rock and lifted it up.

Caitlin screamed and threw her head back; her eyes wide open. She flailed around with her left arm until it touched Carter’s right arm and then she grabbed on tight.

Her fingers dug into Carter’s forearm until it started to hurt. Carter could feel her sharp fingernails, but he could also feel her crushed elbow. His nerves began to cry out, his bone felt broken. He was feeling her pain as if it was his own. He looked at her face and she suddenly snapped her head forward and looked back at him. Her eyes were

61 Judge Dredd - Fire and Brimstone unfocused but her gaze never wavered. He felt that she was a long way away but looking right into his soul.

And then the moment passed.

She let go of his arm and the two men moved the chunk of masonry to one side.

Marc asked, ‘Are you OK, honey?’

Caitlin nodded as Carter sprayed some more painkiller over her wound. The bone was obviously broken but it was a clean break and as long as she didn’t move the arm too much, the painkiller would deaden the pain for a few hours – long enough to get her to a hospital.

The falling masonry had smashed the window of a nearby clothes store. Carter indicated a sarong to Marc and said, ‘Get that for me.’

Marc fetched the sarong from the window display floor and Carter started to convert it into a sling.

As Carter passed the sarong around Caitlin’s shoulders she said, ‘I saw you.’

‘What do you mean, you saw me?’ Carter replied.

‘When you were lifting the rock off me. When I grabbed your arm. I saw you somewhere else.’

‘You had one of your visions?’ Marc asked.

‘Visions?’

‘She’s a psionic. She gets these flashes every so often. A couple of years back she had a flash of a bus crash. She told the judges. They couldn’t stop it happening, but because they were there they saved twenty-one lives.’

‘So why aren’t you in the Psi Division of Justice Department?’

‘It doesn’t happen very often,’ Caitlin replied, ‘but it’s always right. I saw you being shot at with a laser cannon. The laser missed you but hit some rocks which fell down and hit you.’

‘Psi-flashes are often misinterpreted. Are you sure you weren’t just thinking about yourself?’ said Carter, finishing off Caitlin’s sling.

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‘No, it was you. The visions are stronger when the situation is similar to what’s happening now. I saw the bus crash when I was getting on another bus. It will happen, sometime tomorrow. And, don’t ask how, but I know that it will happen in the ruins of East-Meg One.’

‘East-Meg One? What would I be doing on the other side of the planet?’

‘I don’t know. You had come to get something.’

‘In East-Meg One? Tomorrow? But the hurricane will strike tomorrow. Will everyone be evacuated to East-Meg One?’

‘No, there was urgency in your thoughts. You had to get back.’

‘Get back before the hurricane hits?’

‘Yes, I think so,’ said Caitlin.

‘Get back to save the city? That’s ridiculous. What is there in East-Meg One that could save the city?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘It’s just a radioactive wasteland . . . no, wait . . . the dimension shield. East-Meg One used it in the war to protect their city from our nukes.’

‘But I thought that we did nuke them,’ said Marc.

‘Sort of. Dredd got inside the shield and set off one of their own nukes. But the shield generator could have survived. If we could get it working, it could protect our city from the hurricane. How’s your arm?’

‘Better,’ replied Caitlin. The arm was now held in a sling and carefully strapped to Caitlin’s body to reduce the chance of it moving.

‘Then we have to get you to the Chief Judge. Come on.’

Carter led the way back to the stairwell and continued down. However, on floor twelve they reached an impasse. A fire had started a few floors down and the flames were working their way up the passage like a chimney. The stairwell was quite narrow here and there was no way down. There was a door on one side and Carter held it open as the other two stumbled through, shielding their faces from the heat.

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Beyond the door was a corridor with apartments along both sides. It was empty, the citizens apparently having left the area. A wise move as the heat from the fire below could be felt through the floor. It would not be long before this floor would be on fire too.

Carter walked quickly along the corridor; Caitlin moved more slowly, careful not to jog her arm and Marc walked alongside her. The corridor turned a corner to the left. At the corner, there were two elevators but Carter walked straight by – these were shut down too. The corridor turned left again and Carter stopped. As Marc and Caitlin came round the corner, they could see why. This side of the building had collapsed. The corridor ended abruptly and became a cliff top. It was now 7:30 p.m. and it was dark outside but Carter could see the block opposite and twelve floors of rubble below. The opening was rough and ragged and did not look very stable.

Marc cautiously looked down over the edge and asked, ‘Now what?’

Carter didn’t reply and just stared out into the darkness. He took off his helmet and squinted into the distance – he was looking for something. After a minute or so he took out his gun and fired three shots into the air. He kept looking for another couple of minutes and then gave up.

‘Damn, you can never find a PSU camera when you need one.’

‘A what?’ said Marc.

‘Public Surveillance Unit. Those little hovering cameras that you see around every so often. They are supposed to keep an eye on suspects and record criminal activity. I was hoping to use one to call in some backup. Grud knows where they all are now though.’

‘So what now?’ asked Caitlin, joining the other two at the edge.

‘We’ll have to climb down,’ replied Carter.

Carter sat down on the floor and eased himself to the edge so his feet hung off the end. On the next floor down and three feet to the right there was an interconnecting wall. If he could reach it, it would provide a foothold to climb down to the next level. He turned onto his stomach and pushed himself backward with his arms. He reached out his left leg but couldn’t reach the wall. He pushed back further and slipped. He managed to stop himself from falling but now his head was level with the floor and all his weight was on

64 Judge Dredd - Fire and Brimstone his arms. Carter swung his body to the side and managed hook his foot around the wall and support it on an outcrop of masonry. With one foothold, he eased himself further down so that he was only holding on with his fingertips and then let go. The height of each corridor was about eleven feet so he fell about four feet before landing on the floor below.

Caitlin came to the edge and looked down. ‘I can’t get down there. Not with a broken arm.’

Just as she said that, she put her weight on a particular slab of rockcrete, which split and gave way. She fell backwards as the slab fell to the next floor, narrowly missing Carter.

‘The edge is very fragile,’ said Carter. ‘That whole section of corridor could collapse.’

‘You’ll have to try,’ said Marc.

Caitlin lay down on the floor on her left side, her broken right arm strapped close to her body. She shuffled to the edge as Marc lay on the floor and put his arms under her armpits and around her chest. When he was certain that he had a good grip, Caitlin pushed her hips off the edge. She now had her back against the lip, her entire weight supported by Marc. He shuffled forward, lowering her down. Her back scraped against a metal fragment in the overhang, which sliced her shirt and cut into her back.

Caitlin cried out with the pain of both the cut and her broken arm, which was being pulled out of alignment. Carter reached up and grabbed her legs.

‘OK, I’ve got her. Let go.’

Marc took his hands away and she fell. Carter fell with her, pulling her away from the edge and cushioning the blow. Even so, she had the wind knocked out of her. Carter got up but Caitlin just rolled onto her back.

‘Are you OK?’ Carter asked.

Caitlin nodded, even though her eyes were screwed up tight. Carter turned his attention to Marc. Marc hung over the edge the same way Carter had and Carter held his legs and cushioned his fall as before.

When all three were safely down, Marc had a look at the cut on Caitlin’s back.

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‘It’s not serious,’ he said after a moment, ‘but we can’t do that all the way down.’

‘Agreed,’ said Carter. ‘Stay here and I’ll find another way down.’

Carter walked along the corridor but could soon feel the heat of the fire. This corridor was the same as the one above, turning right twice and ending at the door to the stairs. Carter could see smoke pouring out from under the door and didn’t risk opening it.

He walked back, kicking open the door to each apartment and quickly searching it. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for – a rope, a radio transmitter, maybe even a signal flare. In the tenth apartment he found it and returned to the edge. Marc heard him turn the corner and saw what he was carrying. It was a sky surfboard. Similar in appearance to a normal surfboard, it had a hover unit in it. Citizens used them to surf along the air currents between buildings.

‘A surfboard?’ asked Marc ‘Aren’t those things only designed for one person?’

‘I reckon it can hold three,’ Carter replied.

Carter turned it on and it hovered two feet above the floor. Caitlin and Marc sat on the front of the board and Carter stood on the back. The board slumped and its engine whirred much louder but it stayed aloft.

Marc looked up at the rather comical picture of a fully uniformed Judge balanced on the sleek surfboard like some delinquent juve.

‘Have you ever flown one of these before?’

‘No. How hard can it be?’

Caitlin and Marc exchanged glances and gripped the surfboard tightly.

The surfboard was controlled by a single pad at the rear of the board. The pad could be tilted back and forth by the foot of the surfer. He would tilt it back to accelerate and forward to brake. The surfer could turn left and right and pitch up and down by shifting his weight in the opposite direction. Of course, these controls were balanced for a single rider of a specific weight and skill level. This board was a racing model designed for a 75kg man.

Carter pressed the accelerator and the board jumped forward over the edge. But the board interpreted the extra weight at the front of the board as a forward shift and tipped into a steep dive. Caitlin slipped and almost fell off the board. This sudden movement

66 Judge Dredd - Fire and Brimstone made the board tip to the left and sent it into a spiral. Carter took his foot off the accelerator and leant back as far as he could. Marc bent over to the right and the board stopped spinning, but it was still heading down. Marc, quickly realising how the board worked, swung his legs up onto the board and lay flat along its length. He called out to Caitlin to do the same. As she did so the board levelled out and headed straight for the wall of the opposite block. Carter leant to the right and the board tipped into a 30-degree turn which almost threw Marc off. The board scraped its base against the wall and then dipped downwards again. It picked up speed and was only seconds away from ploughing into the ground. Carter quickly leant backwards and the surfboard tipped up throwing Carter off the back end. He fell ten feet to the ground as the board crashed into a pile of rubble.

Carter stood up carefully and tested his joints. His back was bruised but he hadn’t broken anything.

‘Are you OK?’ he called out to Caitlin and Marc.

‘No,’ Marc replied, holding his chest.

Carter came over and felt Marc’s chest.

‘All the ribs are still there. You haven’t broken anything. It’ll just hurt for a few days.’

‘So, I guess we can call that a success,’ said Marc, looking back up to the twelfth floor corridor. ‘But you need some more lessons.’

‘Point taken,’ replied Carter as he helped Caitlin to her feet.

Carter saw a taxi cab coming towards them and hailed it.

‘Grud,’ said the taxi driver. ‘What happened to you three?’

‘I need to borrow your radio,’ said Carter as he sat in the front seat.

‘Sure, Judge,’ the driver replied, handing it over.

Carter punched in the Justice Department frequency and called Control.

‘Control, this is Judge Carter. There is a dangerous citizen on the roof of Patrick Stewart block. He used the citi-def howitzer to shoot down my H-wagon. Approach with extreme caution.’

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‘Roger that Carter,’ the radio replied. ‘But it will be at least half and hour before we can get any firepower there. There is a full-scale riot nine blocks down from you. Are there any casualties?’

‘Negative, Control. Just destruction of Justice Department property at present. Also, please advise the Chief Judge that I need to speak with him urgently. I will be at the Hall of Justice in twenty minutes.’

‘Acknowledged.’

Carter put down the radio microphone and motioned to Caitlin and Marc to get in the cab. Then he turned to the driver again.

‘We need to get to the Hall of Justice as quickly as possible.’

‘Roger that, Judge. Hold onto your hat.’

They arrived at the Hall of Justice at 9 p.m. Carter led the way inside, followed by Caitlin, Marc and the taxi driver. He walked up to the reception desk and talked to the duty judge.

‘Judge Carter. I need to talk to the Chief Judge.’

‘She’s in briefing room 6A. It is being used as the control centre for this weather crisis.’

‘Thanks. Come on you two,’ said Carter looking at Marc and Caitlin.

‘And him?’ asked the desk judge, indicating the taxi driver.

‘Oh, yeah. Possession of a banned vid-slug, out of date tax disc and speeding.’

‘But you said you were in a hurry,’ protested the driver. ‘I just thought—‘

‘Three years.’

‘Preposterous. East-Meg One has been a radioactive wasteland for eighteen years. There is no evidence that there are any workable dimension shields still there. If there had been our scientists would have recovered them and we would have built our own system by now.’

‘But Chief Judge, I think it’s worth investigating,’ said Carter.

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Up to this point in the conversation, Caitlin had been silent, but now she spoke up.

‘Chief Judge . . .’

‘Yes?’

‘In my vision I could feel what he felt. There was a sense of urgency. He had found something and had to get it back to the city before the hurricane hit. But I couldn’t read his thoughts, I don’t know what he found.’

‘And why should we believe the wild imagination of a clearly traumatic citizen?’ asked Dredd.

‘It’s not her imagination,’ spoke up Marc. ‘She saved twenty-one lives—‘

‘Yes, yes, we have already heard about the bus crash,’ said Chief Judge Hershey. ‘Dredd, how are the modulators coming along?’

‘The factories have all started producing, but we have less than a thousand modulators at the moment.’

‘And have Tech division come up with a better plan?’

‘No.’

‘OK Dredd, I want you to lead an expedition to East-Meg One. Take Carter, Mrs Miles and a small team. I want you airborne within half an hour. If there is any chance that Carter’s idea could save the city, you have to find it. Remember, we only have seventeen hours.’

‘Yes sir.’

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Chapter 8

Caitlin sat in the H-wagon, staring at the opposite wall as one of the judges fixed up her arm. His badge said his name was Taylor, although he hadn’t introduced himself. He was a bulky, muscular man, clearly more at ease shooting people and breaking heads than playing nursemaid. They were in a passenger compartment behind the cockpit. A total of five Judges sat on the two benches along each wall. Taylor, herself and Gleason were on one side, Carter, Dredd and Marsh on the other. At the end of the compartment were two storage lockers and the door into the main cargo area. They had taken one of the largest H-wagons as they didn’t know how big the shield generator would be.

The H-wagon hit some turbulence and lurched to one side.

‘Hey, man,’ Taylor called out to the pilot, ‘cut it out. I’m trying to concentrate here.’

‘Hey “man” yourself,’ the pilot, a woman, replied. ‘I’m trying to concentrate too. I’ve never seen so many downbursts, cross winds and thermals. Just be thankful that we haven’t hit a building yet. It’ll get easier when we’re over the ocean and above the troposphere.’

‘Oh I see, Mitchell,’ said Taylor, finishing off with Caitlin and going up front to the cockpit. ‘So if I do this, then we’re going to crash?’

Taylor covered Mitchell’s eyes and she fiercely elbowed him in the ribs. Momentarily winded, Taylor let go of her and rubbed his chest.

‘Ooo, bitchy.’

‘Sit down, Taylor,’ ordered Dredd and Taylor silently returned to his seat next to Caitlin.

Caitlin still hadn’t taken her eyes off the far wall. Gleason was sitting beside her and noticed that she was very withdrawn. Judges got used to this stuff, but it was rare for a citizen to break her arm, see her home destroyed and then be selected for a dangerous mission to save the entire city.

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‘Hey, you OK? How’s the arm?’ asked Gleason.

Caitlin looked at Gleason. ‘Umm . . . better, thank you.’

‘That’s a field brace that he’s put on you,’ Gleason said, indicating the metal rods that now encased Caitlin’s arm. ‘You should be able to run, jump, even fall on it and it’ll keep the bones aligned and cushion the blows so it doesn’t hurt. But don’t try to do any push-ups.’

‘Thank you.’

‘And while you’re at it, don’t go head-butting any metal bulkheads.’ She removed her helmet to reveal the large bandage wrapped around her head.

‘That looks painful,’ said Caitlin.

‘Miracles of modern painkillers. At times of national crisis, Judges don’t get any sick leave.’ Gleason quickly glanced at Dredd, and then looked away again.

They sat in silence for a while. The H-wagon cleared the city and accelerated into the stratosphere. There were no windows by which she could gauge their progress but Caitlin had been told that the trip would take about four hours, at Mach 2.

About ten minutes later, Caitlin felt stiff and stretched her legs out. Gleason glanced down and realised that Caitlin was only wearing one shoe.

‘When did you lose your shoe?’ she asked.

‘Oh, umm . . . sometime in the block . . . It didn’t seem very important. I didn’t want to worry anyone about it.’

‘Well, you can’t walk around East-Meg One like that.’

Gleason got up and opened one of the storage lockers.

‘Here, you can have my spares,’ she said, tossing a pair of Judge’s boots at Caitlin.

‘Thanks.’

Caitlin began to put the boots on, and then looked up at Gleason. ‘Umm, this may seem like a stupid question, but what is a dimension shield?’

‘Don’t ask me – I just work here. Beyond an old lesson on foreign defensive systems when I was about fifteen, I can’t tell you much. That’s why we bought Marsh – he’s Tech division. Marsh, what is a dimension shield?’

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‘It’s a plasma-infusion shield that bridges two alternative dimensions. Basically, if anything hits the shield, then it is transported to an alternative dimension. East-Meg One developed it to protect their entire city from our nuclear missiles during the Apocalypse War eighteen years ago. We eventually destroyed East-Meg One and assumed that the shield generator was lost. Since then we have made progress in dimension travel, but haven’t had any success in developing a shield. But this is a valid idea – theoretically it could be used to protect our city from the hurricane.’

‘What will happen to the people in the alternative dimension?’ asked Caitlin.

‘I have no idea. We fired a huge number of nukes at East-Meg One during the war before we realised that they had the shield. They would have been transported across and totally obliterated any civilisation there at the time. I don’t know which alternative dimension the original shield was set up for, but it’s likely that the area is still uninhabitable today. In that case, the hurricane would just blow itself out over a radioactive desert. There may be a few survivors around and they will get hit hard, but my conscience can live with that because I know that there are 400 million people in this dimension that are definitely going to die if this doesn’t work.’

‘So what do you think the chances are of finding a generator that can be repaired?’

‘Unlikely. Very unlikely.’

Caitlin spent the rest of the journey trying to get some rest. The judges didn’t seem to need it. Taylor relaxed, Marsh read through technical papers on dimension travel and Dredd sat silently, coiled like a spring. No one talked.

They arrived at 1:30 am Mega-City One time – late morning in East-Meg One, situated in the middle of what used to be Russia. The first they knew of it was when Mitchell called out, ‘Somebody better tell me what we’re looking for, because we’re here.’

There were no windows in the passenger compartment, so everyone, lead by Dredd, moved forward and looked out of the forward screen. The area was devastated. They were flying five kilometres above the ground but could clearly see the smashed and pulverised remains of hundred storey buildings, stretching out as far as the eye could see.

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Dredd turned to Caitlin and said, ‘We’re going to need some more information. Where is this generator?’

‘I don’t know. I didn’t realise that it would be this big.’

‘It’s six hundred kilometres across. We can’t search all of it. Do you recognise any of the buildings? Was there any notable landmarks in your vision?’

‘No, sorry. It all looks the same.’

Dredd dismissed her and turned to the pilot.

‘All right. Standard spiral search pattern. Start in the centre and work out. Grud knows what you’re looking for. Unusual rooftop structures, heavily fortified buildings. We’ll have to check them all.’

In fact, it only took twenty minutes.

‘What’s that haze over there?’ asked Mitchell, indicating an area roughly five kilometres wide in the distance.

‘I don’t know,’ replied Taylor. ‘Morning mist?’

‘Take us in closer,’ said Dredd.

They approached some buildings at the edge of the haze. Strangely, instead of the buildings becoming clearer and less hazy, they became more blurred and out of focus.

‘It’s a hologram,’ said Mitchell. ‘Someone’s put a hologram over the whole area. Up close we can see it, but it would conceal whatever is underneath from our satellites.’

‘Let’s see what they’re hiding,’ said Dredd.

The H-wagon edged closer still. Now they were only fifty metres from one of the buildings, but it was clearly not a real building. The image was pixelated like a computer picture that has been magnified too much. The shape was a little distorted too – it seemed that someone had taken a flat photograph from the air and then warped it into a dome shape for the hologram.

The H-wagon touched the hologram and passed straight through.

‘Oh, my God,’ breathed Mitchell.

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Under the hologram there was a dimension shield. Not just a broken, abandoned generator, but a fully operational energetic and powerful shield. The shield was in the shape of a dome, not much smaller than the hologram. It was bright silvery-blue in colour with constant flashes of lightning skating across the surface. Five kilometres in diameter, it dwarfed the H-wagon and made all the occupants pause for breath.

‘Wow,’ said Carter.

‘We’re going to need a bigger H-wagon . . .’ said Taylor.

‘Whoever turned this on isn’t going to like us switching it off and walking away with the generator,’ said Marsh.

‘We’ve got a more basic problem than that,’ said Gleason.

‘What do you mean?’ Marsh asked.

‘Well, anything passing through the shield is transported to the alternative dimension, right? Including sound, light, radio waves, anything?’

‘Yes.’

‘So there’s no way we can contact them or they can be aware of us. And presumably the controls and power supply are inside the shield?’

‘I assume so.’

‘So how do we get inside?’

Mitchell landed the H-wagon beside the shield. There was a distance of about one hundred metres between the hologram and the shield. This created a small corridor, with the blue shield on one side and the fuzzy hologram on the other. The corridor was virtually empty, with only a few scattered ruins.

‘Radiation is still pretty high. Make sure you wrap up warm out there,’ said Mitchell.

The others covered themselves in radiation-proof cloaks before Mitchell opened the door. Mitchell stayed in the H-wagon as the others climbed outside.

Outside they could hear the shield buzzing and smell the electricity in the air.

Dredd looked up at the shield and turned to Marsh.

‘This is your field of expertise. How do we get in?’

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‘Hmm . . . Wait here,’ Marsh replied. He walked closer to the shield and scanned the ground for a stone about the size of his fist. He picked one up and threw it at the shield. It hit the surface and disappeared in a flash of electricity. Marsh returned to the group, and said ‘Hmm . . .’

‘That was your plan?’ said Carter. ‘Great plan.’

‘OK, everyone spread out,’ ordered Dredd. ‘Report anything useful.’

Taylor accompanied Marsh in following the shield around to the left. A few hundred metres along there was a small house cut in half by the shield. Marsh got as close as he dared to the shield to examine the ragged end of the remaining bricks.

‘It’s some kind of charged plasma. It has cut the bricks in half and the ends have melted slightly, just like it had been hit by a plasma cannon. It must require a phenomenal amount of energy to keep it going.’

‘Whatever you say, doc. Does it extend inside the house too?’

‘Good idea. Let’s check it out.’

The two judges stepped through an empty window frame into the living room of the house. Taylor walked forward to the far wall and kicked the kitchen door open. The door swung back and touched the shield. Then it was suddenly ripped off its hinges and sucked into the shield in an explosion of sparks. The shield was only half a metre into the kitchen and bathed the living room in a silvery-blue glow.

‘We’re not going to get through this way,’ said Taylor. ‘Let’s get back to the others.’

The others hadn’t had much luck either. Dredd and Gleason had followed the shield in the other direction and found nothing. Caitlin and Carter had checked out the hologram generator with similar results.

‘It was just a big square box,’ said Carter.

‘Not even any power cables?’ asked Marsh.

‘No, but it wasn’t big enough to have its own generator. The power must come from inside the shield – the cables must be underground.’

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‘Underground?’ said Dredd. ‘So the shield doesn’t extend below ground level?’

‘That would make sense,’ said Marsh. ‘If we could find a tunnel that goes under the shield . . . but East-Meg One never had sewers or a subway system.’

‘But they had basements,’ said Taylor.

The whole group ran back to the house that Taylor and Marsh had found. A quick look round the remaining part of the house didn’t reveal any stairs going down to a basement or underground cellar, but they may have been on the side of the house now inside the shield. Dredd ordered everyone out and fired two explosive rounds at the floor of the living room. The explosions made the house shake violently and a pile of rubble slid off the roof. When the dust had cleared however, there was a hole in the living room floor leading down into darkness. Dredd kicked at the loose edge to enlarge the hole and dropped down. The others followed him and saw that the shield did not extend into the basement. They were able to cross under the barrier and climb the basement stairs to emerge inside the shield.

It was dark inside as no sunlight penetrated the shield. The inside surface of the shield was a dark blue, which gave the appearance of twilight, even though it was the middle of the day outside. All the streetlights were on and many extra floodlights had been set up. So, although the sky was quite dark, the ground was well illuminated. This was what passed for daytime for the remaining citizens of East-Meg One.

Gleason looked around at the ruined buildings and said, ‘What a horrible place to live. A radioactive wasteland.’

‘It’s not that bad,’ replied Carter. ‘It’s not a wasteland any more. They’ve cleared the rubble off the streets and reinforced the worst of the buildings. There is definitely civilization here.’

‘And it’s not radioactive either,’ said Taylor, looking at the radiation counter sewn into his radiation cloak. ‘It’s not as low as Mega-City One, but it would be safe to live here without these cloaks.’

‘That must be why they are using the shield,’ said Carter. ‘The survivors of the war must have been dying from radiation poisoning when they found the shield generator. If

76 Judge Dredd - Fire and Brimstone they could repair it, all they needed was a good power source and they’d be set up for life.’

‘East-Meg One used underground nuclear reactors with phenomenal amounts of shielding. There was bound to be a few still operational after the war,’ said Marsh.

‘A stable base, no radiation, protection from wild animals and dust storms, and no judges. Sounds perfect.’

‘Don’t bet on it Carter,’ said Dredd. ‘I’ve seen some of the judicial systems that evolved in small towns in our own radioactive wastelands. Give me the judges any day.’

‘So what now?’ asked Taylor. ‘Do we just walk in and take it?’

‘Reconnaissance first,’ replied Dredd. ‘We need to find out if this shield can cover the city, what we would need to take with us and whether we can fit it all in the H-wagon before we need to worry about how we are going to get it.’

‘Well, I say we go that way,’ said Marsh, pointing to the tallest building in the area where a thick beam of plasma was shooting up from the roof to the shield’s surface.

A full minute after they headed off towards the generator, a small boy chanced another look from the window of a neighboring building. He had exploring near the shield’s edge and had hid there when he heard the judge’s voices. Now the coast was clear, he ran off down a side street.

It took the judges fifteen minutes to reach the building with the shield generator. It turned out to be an old Sector House for the East-Meg One’s judges. It had survived the war relatively unscathed, but it had clearly been repaired in a number of places since then. Interestingly there had been no attempt to repair the damaged signs and judge’s symbols carved into the sides. The people who lived here now had no wish to recreate their past – this was no longer a sector house.

The group sneaked into the rear of the building and found an express elevator to the roof. On the roof, Marsh had a chance to examine the generator in some detail. It was roughly a dome shape, about six metres high. It was metallic, with a number of tubes and bunches of wires running across the surface. At the top there was an opening from which

77 Judge Dredd - Fire and Brimstone a stream of white-hot plasma two metres wide blasted upwards to the shield itself. The generator was humming so loudly that they could feel the vibration through the floor. It drew all its power from two large cables that snaked across the roof and down the stairs.

‘Yes, I see,’ said Marsh. ‘The generator is not attached to the building. Just disconnect the power and we should be able to winch it into our cargo hold. It seems to be the same shield used to protect East-Meg One in the war rather than a smaller copy, so it may be able to protect the whole of Mega-City One. I would need some time to experiment with the controls though.’

Then a new voice disrupted his concentration. ‘Back away from the generator, judge.’

Marsh turned round to see a middle-aged man at the top of the stairs. He was dressed in casual clothes but held the gun of an East-Meg One judge. Two other men came up the stairs behind him, also brandishing weapons.

‘How did you get in here?’ the man demanded. He spoke in English, but with a heavy Sov accent.

‘We tunneled under the shield through the basement of a house,’ Taylor replied. ‘Your efforts to isolate yourselves from the rest of the world weren’t quite as successful as you hoped.’

‘Who are you?’ Dredd asked.

‘Alexi Karkov, and I’m in charge around here. Why have you come here?’

‘We need your shield generator. It’s the only defense against a hurricane that will destroy my city.’

‘Hah! We would have nothing to stop the radiation. It would kill us.’

‘We are prepared to relocate you in Mega-City One.’

‘You mean relocate us to an iso-cube. We were all part of the army that invaded your city. We are still criminals in your eyes, and you’re not the forgiving type.

‘You captured us after you wiped out our families. The only reason you didn’t lock us all up then was because you didn’t have enough cells. You exiled us here to die, and thousands did die. Some tried to make it across the desert to East-Meg Two – we never heard from them again. The rest of us lived as scavengers but with this atmosphere,

78 Judge Dredd - Fire and Brimstone radiation medicine was more valuable than food. I was lucky – I had worked on the shield and I managed to repair it. I saved as many as I could. It’s a hard life here but I prefer it to your jail cells.’

‘You have no choice,’ said Dredd. ‘Under the Security of the City Act, I am requisitioning the generator, by force if necessary.’

Karkov raised his gun, expecting Dredd to make a move, but it was Taylor who moved first. He drew his gun and fired at the power cables feeding the generator. They exploded in a shower of sparks and the plasma stream abruptly stopped. Karkov’s men quickly aimed at Taylor, but then the shield dissipated, allowing the blinding mid-day sunlight in for the first time in thirteen years. Karkov and his men cried out and covered their eyes, as the judges drew their guns. Karkov’s men fired randomly but the judges dived to the ground. Caitlin fled and cowered behind the generator.

Dredd rolled to his feet and closed in on Karkov, when a small door opened on the other side of the roof. Dredd glanced over his shoulder as three more men burst through the door. Two had makeshift crossbows, but the third had an advanced laser assault rifle which he fired repeatedly into the air. All the judges were facing away from him and knew they were easy targets. They froze and dropped their guns.

Dredd activated his helmet mike to call in the H-wagon but as he was about to speak he felt the barrel of Karkov’s gun on his neck.

‘Don’t . . . ’ warned Karkov.

Within moments Karkov had disarmed all the judges and disabled all their communication devices.

‘Now what am I going to do with you? I don’t kill people in cold blood any more . . . How long before this hurricane hits your city?’

‘Twelve hours,’ replied Dredd.

‘Then I’ll just keep you here. In twelve hours time, you won’t need the shield any more. We can repair the damage you caused and throw you outside.’

‘You’ll be responsible for killing 400 million people.’

‘Your city is responsible for many more deaths than that. The hurricane shall bring divine justice. My conscience will be clear.’ Karkov smiled. ‘You can try to hunt me

79 Judge Dredd - Fire and Brimstone down if you wish. But once we have blocked off that basement, this will be the only place on Earth that you can’t reach. I will die a very old and happy man.’

Karkov turned to one of his men and said, ‘This used to be a Sector House. There are cells on level five that should hold them. Take them there, and watch them closely.’

As they were being ushered into one of the cells, Carter turned sarcastically to Dredd.

‘Dredd, why do you keep blowing up cities? You’re not making any friends you know.’

Before Dredd could answer, the guard hit Carter on the back of the neck with his crossbow. Carter cried out and fell to the floor.

‘No talking,’ the guard said as he closed the heavy steel door behind them.

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Chapter 9

One thousand seven hundred kilometres off the coast of Mega-City One, an atmosphere modulator was seeding the air. This modulator had not come from Mega-City One, it had come from the ruined city of Brasilia. It was one of a constellation of a thousand modulators, all salvaged from the cities destroyed on Judgement Day. They had been working flat out for two days now, creating and nurturing the hurricane that the terrorists had dubbed Nemesis. This was their coup de grâce. The other weather disasters had just been a delaying tactic – a decoy to keep the judges attention on the city as the behemoth grew over the ocean.

It was up to its full strength now; the winds were hurricane force at a radius of five hundred kilometres, but the weather system extended far beyond this – its outermost isobars were already merging with those over the city. The spiralling arms of dense clouds wound tightly around the eye. Viewed from space it looked almost serene, but below the clouds, the atmosphere was in turmoil. Rain lashed downwards, as the wind howled and roared. Where it touched the ocean, the storm churned up the water into immense waves that smashed into each other with the force of freight trains.

The extreme low pressure over the whole area caused the sea to rise. This was normal with hurricanes but this hurricane was not normal. It was artificial, carefully designed to cause as much damage as possible when it hit land. In this hurricane, the sea level in the centre was twenty metres higher than at the edge. The hurricane pulled this vast amount of water along with it at 150 kilometres per hour. This was the storm surge that had destroyed Atlantis, and when the hurricane reached the shore it would throw the whole lot at the city walls in a massive tidal wave that would sweep away the coastal sectors.

The hurricane rapidly bore down upon the city. Unfortunately, a Mega-City One pleasure cruiser was in its path. The captain knew of the danger but with a maximum speed of only 35 knots, he could not get out of the way in time. When the rain began to fall the passengers left the decks, especially as the rain over the polluted Atlantic was often corrosive. As the black clouds closed in, waves formed on the surface and rolled in

81 Judge Dredd - Fire and Brimstone towards the ship. Soon everyone on board could hear the storm screeching at them. The waves grew from slaps against the side to massive strikes that rocked the whole ship. The gale smashed against the portholes, shattering the glass and hurtling inside. The wind tore sheets of metal from their supports. Water was forced into every crack, splitting them open. The ship sunk fast as water flooded in – freezing, smothering, suffocating.

The ship was 100,000 tons of metal but the hurricane broke it apart like it was made of matchwood, and then continued on towards Mega-City One.

In the cell, Caitlin was crying.

‘Are you OK?’ asked Gleason.

‘What am I doing here? Yesterday I was sitting at home, watching tri-D with Marc. Now I’m in a jail cell on the other side of the planet waiting for the city to be destroyed.’

Gleason didn’t know what to say.

‘You’ll be fine. It’ll work out,’ she said, without much conviction.

The room was about fifteen feet square with two beds, a chair, a toilet and a wash basin. There were no windows; illumination came from two strip lights on the ceiling. The door was solid steel with a small window at head height and a food slot at waist height. The other judges unobtrusively examined the cell for possible weak points.

‘Analysis?’ asked Dredd quietly.

‘We’re stuffed,’ replied Taylor.

‘Has anyone got anything more constructive to say?’ said Dredd.

‘It doesn’t look good,’ said Carter. ‘The cell is old – it probably hasn’t been used for eighteen years – but it’s still solid.’ He glanced out through the window in the door. From his vantage point by the washbasin, there was no one visible at the moment. ‘The guard is moving around outside but doesn’t go far.’

Taylor had his back against the wall next to the door and added, ‘I can see him – he’s leaning against the wall about five feet along the corridor.’

‘And seeing that they only have to keep us here for twelve hours,’ continued Carter, ‘I can’t see any way of getting out in time.’

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Taylor had his hands behind his back and his fingers brushed against something on the wall. He turned round and saw a thin plastic tube running from floor to ceiling along the door archway. It led up to the strip lights on the ceiling and concealed the power circuits for the lights. It was bolted to the wall, but it had moved when Talyor’s fingers brushed against it. The bolts were loose after years of decay.

Taylor pulled at the tube and it gave a little. He took off his gloves and managed to get his fingers around it. He pulled hard and the entire tube came away from the wall. He pulled at the wires and held a length of them in his hands. ‘A garrotte?’ he asked Dredd.

Dredd’s eyes followed the wires up to the lights and said, ‘No, you’d never get it round the guard’s neck. I have a better idea.’

After checking that the guard wasn’t looking, he stood on the chair and pulled one of the strip lights off the ceiling. The wires were still attached to one end and the light stayed on.

Dredd backed into the corner beside the door, holding the light in both hands.

‘Taylor, attract the guard. Carter, when he’s in position, open the food slot.’

Taylor knocked on the window in the door and shouted, ‘Hey! Are we going to get some food in here? Hey!’

The guard came into view and said, ‘Shut up, scum.’

But while the guard was looking through the window at Taylor, Carter opened the food slot below it and Dredd thrust the light strip through the slot and into the guard’s stomach.

The light smashed, electrocuting the guard, and Dredd shoved the broken glass into the guard until he bled. Stunned, the guard fell.

‘Catch him!’ shouted Dredd, and Carter caught hold of the guard before he fell out of reach. By putting two hands through the slot, Carter managed to hold the guard up with one hand and reach the key card for the cell with the other. Then he pushed the guard away and inserted the card into the lock.

The door clicked and swung open.

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The guard was clutching his stomach in pain, but he was still conscious, and tried to aim his crossbow at the first person that came through the door. But Dredd was too quick for him – he had closed the distance between them and snatched the crossbow from his hands in less than a second. Dredd smashed the butt of the crossbow into the side of the guard’s head, knocking him out, and led the others down the corridor.

‘What’s the plan?’ asked Taylor, running alongside Dredd.

‘Recover our weapons and communicators and then contact the H-wagon,’ Dredd replied. ‘With the H-wagon’s weapons we will be able to take the generator easily.’

‘OK. But where are our weapons?’

‘I don’t know, but I think he does.’ Dredd indicated to an East-Meg One judge walking into his field of view at the end of the corridor. Instantly, Dredd shot him with the crossbow. The man fell down clutching his side in agony. Dredd ran to him and grabbed him by the throat.

‘Where are our weapons?’ Dredd demanded.

The man didn’t reply. Dredd slammed him into the wall and pointed the crossbow at his head. The man cried out in pain and gasped, ‘OK – Armoury. Two floors up. Third door on right.’

Dredd kept a firm hold on the man and pushed him towards the stairs.

As the group went up, Caitlin turned to Gleason and asked, ‘Does he have to be so rough?’

‘We wouldn’t have found out where the weapons were if he wasn’t,’ said Gleason. ‘When we get to the top of the stairs, stay back. We are going to have to fight our way in.’

Dredd walked quietly along the corridor, still holding the injured man by the neck. When they reached the door to the armoury Dredd whispered, ‘How many?’

‘ . . .Two,’ the man replied.

Dredd indicated to Gleason and Taylor, who positioned themselves on the other side of the door.

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Dredd kicked the door open and thrust his hostage forwards into the room. The man fell to the ground, crying out to his comrades. There were in fact four men in the room, which was about 20 feet across. Two were standing and two were sitting at a table in the middle of the room. One of the men standing up was the only one with a weapon – the laser rifle that had been used on the roof. He spun round, aiming at Dredd’s hostage. By the time he had recognised the injured man, Dredd had shot him in the neck.

Gleason dived into the room, rolling across the floor and jumping onto the other standing man as he reached for the weapon rack behind him. The impact sent him sprawling onto the floor.

Dredd didn’t bother reloading his crossbow – he discarded it and ran into the room, heading for the laser rifle that his previous target had dropped. But one of the sitting men was faster and managed to pick up the rifle before Dredd reached him. Dredd snatched the rifle and both men held onto it, each trying to wrench it from the other’s grasp.

Taylor, Carter and Marsh rushed into the room as well, Taylor and Marsh taking on the remaining man, and Carter helping Gleason.

Gleason’s opponent twisted round on the floor and violently thrust his elbow into Gleason’s face. She cried out and fell back, blood pouring from a broken nose. Carter stabbed his elbow into the man’s back and the man collapsed again.

Dredd suddenly head butted the man he was fighting with. Stunned, the man let go of the rifle and Dredd swung the butt heavily into his face, knocking him out.

Marsh and Taylor had safely pinned the forth man against the table, but no-one was watching Dredd’s original hostage who had crawled back to the doorway and picked up the crossbow that Dredd had discarded. His hands slippery with his own blood he loaded another bolt. As he raised the crossbow his eyes blurred. Unsure of his aim, he pulled the trigger anyway, and shot Gleason in the back.

The bolt passed straight through her reinforced uniform and emerged from her chest. She struggled onto her knees and reached out behind her for something to hold onto, but lost her balance and toppled backwards.

Dredd turned and shot the man, killing him instantly.

Marsh and Taylor tied up the three survivors, as Carter examined Gleason.

‘How is she?’ asked Marsh.

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Carter closed her eyes with the palm of his hand and replied, ‘She’s dead . . .’

‘That’s unfortunate,’ said Dredd. ‘She could have been a fine judge.’

But they didn’t have time to grieve yet. The judges recovered their own weapons and destroyed the others so that they couldn’t be used against them.

Dredd reattached his helmet microphone and tried to raise the H-wagon. There was no answer.

‘It could be the building. It may be blocking the signal,’ said Taylor.

‘Or they may have turned the shield back on,’ said Marsh.

‘I hope not – this is going to be a lot harder without the H-wagon. Let’s get outside and try again,’ said Dredd.

They returned to the stairwell where Caitlin was waiting for them. They ushered her on without saying what had happened to Gleason, but she didn’t need to ask. She could see it in their eyes. She moved on quickly but quietly, her head hung low.

The fight in the armoury wasn’t very loud, but it had attracted the attention of other East-Meg One citizens. As the judges ran down the stairs, they could hear footsteps coming along the corridor above them.

‘They’re here! They’ve escaped!’ a voice cried out from the doorway. Carter was bringing up the rear and fired an incendiary round at the general area. It struck the banister and burst into flame. The flame billowed out in all directions, causing the owner of the voice to swear and dive back into the corridor.

‘That should dissuade them for a couple of minutes,’ said Carter.

They were only seven levels above the ground and quickly reached the large foyer at the bottom of the building. The symbol of the East-Meg One judges, a black star, had at some time been displayed prominently on the rear wall and on the front desk. Both stars had been removed, but a faded outline showed where they used to be. Otherwise, the foyer had been kept in good condition – the floor had even been polished. But the judges didn’t pay much attention as they ran across it and through the main doors.

Outside, the morning sun was shining brightly. Clearly the shield had not been switched back on, and Dredd tried his microphone again.

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‘Dredd to Mitchell. Dredd to Mitchell. Come in, Mitchell . . . still no answer. There must be something wrong.’

But then they heard the sound of a jet engine and the familiar sight of the H-wagon came into view in the distance. Dredd fired an incendiary into the air and the H-wagon approached.

The group moved out into the middle of the street to await the landing, Carter keeping an eye out for snipers in the surrounding buildings. Taylor was watching the H-wagon and cocked his head to one side. It seemed to be coming in a bit too fast. Then he realised.

‘That’s not an approach path – it’s an attack run. Move!’

The judges ran for the nearest building as the H-wagon strafed the street with laser fire.

The building that they ran to was only two stories high and was in pretty bad shape. There was no door in the doorway, which allowed the judges to enter quickly.

Taylor reached the door first, followed by Dredd, then Marsh. Caitlin stumbled and nearly fell, causing Carter to turn to her and grab her arm. She shook him off and ran ahead of him towards the doorway. She passed through as another laser blast hit the building just above her. The blast knocked out a section of wall, which fell forward into the building, landing on Carter as he brought up the rear.

Carter was knocked to the ground. He landed awkwardly on his elbow with his full body weight on it. The rubble hit his shoulder and the combination was too much for his upper arm, which snapped in two.

Carter cried out and then realised that he was re-experiencing the pain that he had felt when Caitlin had her premonition. Or rather, this was the pain that he had pre-experienced then.

Caitlin turned back to him and offered her hand to help him shuffle away from the open doorway. She looked into his eyes and also realised that this was the moment which she had seen. Cater sat down against a wall and sprayed some painkiller along his arm.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, as if accepting the blame for this entire situation.

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Carter wasn’t very good at figuring out time paradoxes – if he hadn’t broken his arm now, then they would have never known about the generator and would never have come here in the first place. Maybe he was fated to break his arm here.

But Caitlin hadn’t seen any further into the future than this – whether they were fated to return with the shield generator was anyone’s guess, but at the moment it looked unlikely.

‘Where is it?’ asked Dredd.

‘I don’t know,’ replied Marsh, trying to look out of a window without exposing himself to the H-wagon’s fire. ‘I can’t see it.’

‘Then we’ll assume it’s hovering, waiting for us to emerge.’

‘Whoever is flying it now won’t be used to flying H-wagons,’ said Marsh. ‘It won’t be as manoeuvrable, if we can use that to our advantage.’

‘What do you think they did with Mitchell?’ asked Taylor.

‘Hopefully, they just captured her,’ said Dredd. ‘They must have sent out a search party when they captured us. It depends on how much she resisted.’

‘At that point they were just planning on keeping us here,’ said Carter, ‘but now we’ve pissed them off. We’ve killed two of them and they’re out for revenge. Even if they did capture her originally, they might kill her now.’

‘We need to get out of here,’ said Marsh.

‘Agreed,’ replied Dredd. ‘Out in the open or in a deserted building we’re sitting ducks. It’s only a matter of time before they start shooting the building to get to us. We need to take the battle back to them. If we can make it back to the Sector House then we’ll be safe from the H-wagon and we can take hostages.’

‘I’m in no shape for a running battle,’ said Carter, still sitting on the floor. ‘I can’t shoot left-handed.’

‘OK – hole up here.’ Dredd pointed at Caitlin. ‘You stay with him.’

Carter and Caitlin moved to a small corner near the centre of the building, away from any exterior walls, where they hoped that they would be protected from the H-wagon’s guns.

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Dredd quickly surveyed the building and found a spot that was quite close to the front door, but where he could see the back door.

‘Ready?’

Marsh and Taylor nodded. Dredd fired an explosive round at the back door and all three ran for the front door.

The rear door was ripped from its hinges and sent flying outwards. The H-wagon, which had been hovering over the roof, swooped down into the street behind the building to get the best shot at anyone coming through the door. However, at this angle the pilot could not see the three judges exiting the building from the other side. But the building was only two stories high and it did not shield the entire street from the pilot’s view. He saw the judges when they were three-quarters of the way across and swept the H-wagon forward. As soon as he was clear of the building, he fired the lasers. The solid beams of light punched into the ground, sending up clouds of rubble. The lasers quickly closed in on the three judges. Just as Dredd and Marsh reached the entrance to the old Sector House, Taylor was hit in the back. The beam sliced through him and exited through his chest. He fell to the ground, his momentum causing him to slide a few feet along the concrete, smearing a line of thick red blood along the ground.

Marsh turned to look at Taylor’s body and slowed down slightly. Dredd charged into him, pushing him into the safety of the Sector House.

Inside the foyer Marsh turned to Dredd and said, ‘We’re not going to make it are we?’

‘Get Karkov and the rest will follow,’ Dredd replied, his voice as hard and confident as ever. If he was concerned about the odds, he didn’t show it.

They ran across the foyer and up the steps at the rear.

‘Karkov will probably be in some sort of control room – a conference room or a crisis situation room,’ said Dredd. ‘It will be large, centrally located and probably below floor five. Otherwise he’ll be in the Sector chief’s office, which will be on the top floor – they always are. As soon as the H-wagon pilot tells them we’re back in this building, they will be monitoring the elevators, so we’ll use the stairs.’

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They ran up the stairs three at a time. On the fourth floor landing, there was a wide corridor leading into the centre of the building, which they took. It ended at a T-junction. Both men flattened themselves against the corridor walls just before the junction, one on each side, both holding their guns in readiness. From this position, each of them could see in one direction along the top corridor.

‘Clear,’ said Dredd.

‘Clear,’ said Marsh.

Dredd pointed his gun down the corridor and they both proceeded along it. At the end of the corridor was an open doorway. Suddenly, a man appeared at the end and fired three rounds down the corridor. Dredd flattened himself against a door halfway along the corridor – the recessed doorway gave him some cover. Marsh ran across the corridor and kicked at a door on the opposite side. It burst open and he took shelter behind the door.

Then Marsh looked around the room that he was in. In the far corner were a young woman and a boy, about eight years old. The boy held onto his mother and they both stared at Marsh, unsure of what he was going to do.

Marsh stared at them for a moment, and then walked over to them and grabbed the boy by the arm. The woman tried to pull him back but Marsh raised his gun and she let him go. Marsh pulled the boy to the doorway and shouted down the corridor, ‘I’ve got one of your children. I don’t want to look like the bad guy here, but if we don’t get that shield, a hundred million people will die. We’re running out of time. I’m prepared to kill one person if it will save a hundred million.’ Marsh forced the boy out into the corridor and pointed his gun at the boy’s head. ‘Put down your weapons and surrender.’

‘Nicolai!’ said a voice from the end of the corridor. ‘It’s OK, Nicolai. They won’t hurt you.’

The man that had fired at them threw his gun along the corridor. Dredd and Marsh approached, Marsh still holding the boy at gunpoint. In the room at the end, there were three men; one of them was Karkov. None of them had weapons and Marsh let the boy go. He ran to Karkov, who knelt down and hugged him closely.

Dredd pointed his gun at Karkov. ‘Call off the H-wagon.’

Karkov looked up at Dredd and said, ‘OK. You win.’

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Chapter 10

The H-wagon was parked on the roof, with Mitchell back in control. Marsh was looking over the connections to the generator, figuring out how to disconnect it. Dredd and Karkov looked on.

‘What will happen to us?’ Karkov asked.

‘We will take everyone to Mega-City One,’ replied Dredd. ‘Those of you who played a part in the War will be sentenced and imprisoned. The remainder will be re-housed in the city.’

‘And me?’

‘You created the shield. Without it, East-Meg One would never have declared war on us in the first place. Yours is the most serious crime of all. Usually, the sentence for causing the deaths of 300 million people would be instant death. But we will need your help to activate the shield. If you use the same technology to save 400 million then the sentence could be changed to life imprisonment.’

‘That doesn’t sound any better. You have killed my friends and destroyed my home. Why should I help you?’

‘Because your remaining friends will be in Mega-City One when the hurricane hits. If you don’t save them, they will die. It will be your fault.’

‘But it’s you who will put them in danger in the first place. I will mourn them but I will blame you for their deaths, not me.’ Karkov glanced at Marsh’s tampering. ‘Figure it out yourselves.’

‘Of course, not everyone will die,’ continued Dredd. ‘There are always survivors in every disaster. Scavenging through the ruins, fighting over a tin of dog food. You probably know better than most what that is like. Do you want to put your friends through that again? Do you want to put your children through that?’

Karkov stared at Dredd quietly.

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‘Then again, after such a disaster, Justice Department would be severely under- manned. Your son might make a good judge . . .’

Karkov’s eyes narrowed. ‘You bastard, Dredd. All right, I’ll save your drokking city, but leave my son alone. If you harm him, I will hunt you down and kill you, even from beyond the grave.’

Within an hour, the generator had been dismantled and loaded into the hold of the H- wagon. It was now 1:30 p.m. East-Meg One time, 4:30 a.m. in Mega-City One. Nine and a half hours until the hurricane would strike the east wall of the city.

For the previous hour Karkov had been fully occupied, making sure that all the necessary equipment had been packaged without any of it getting damaged. It was only after they had lifted off that Marsh had a chance to ask him how the shield actually worked.

‘The shield is like a soap bubble,’ explained Karkov. ‘An interface between two mediums that constricts to the smallest surface area. But instead of soap, it is unstable, highly volatile plasma. The plasma is in constant flux, phasing in and out of existence. The generator creates plasma with two resonant frequencies – one is the fundamental frequency for this dimension and the other for the destination dimension. The plasma interacts and forms a bridge between the two dimensions.’

‘Yes, we have done some work with inter-dimensional gates that use a similar principle.’

‘So just wrap the sheet of plasma from your gate into a dome. Create enough plasma and the dome will cover a city, totally isolating it from the rest of this dimension.’

‘How do you create that much plasma?’

‘We use the generators. We use some powerful nuclear reactions, but I don’t know if one generator will be able to protect Mega-City One. We used twelve generators to cover East-Meg One during the bombardments. If we pump up the power output to way above maximum, one generator may be able to cover your city, but the field will be much weaker and the secondary systems are almost certain to blow.’

‘Can we replace them in situ?’

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‘You’d have to be crazy to open up the generator and remove critical components while it’s operating.’

‘But it could be done?’

‘Theoretically. But the engineer would have to really know what he was doing.’

‘Well, that’s not a problem – the engineer will be you. Now how do we shape the plasma into a dome?’

‘You’ll need stabilisers. They hover in the air before the shield is activated. As the plasma hits them, they focus it and aim it towards the other stabilisers. They are very simple devices – I have bought specifications for them with me. You will need to get your factories producing them quickly. We will need at least two thousand of them.’

‘We can do that. We have already requisitioned hundreds of factories to build weather modulators. What happens to the stabilisers when the shield is switched on?’

‘They are in the centre of the shield and are half phased – they exist half in this dimension and half in the other, maintaining the shield’s integrity in both . . .’

The trip back passed quickly for Marsh and Karkov as they discussed the shield’s components. Mitchell transmitted the blueprints for the stabilisers back to Mega-City One and the factories switched from atmosphere modulators to shield stabilisers. The rest of the crew tried to get some sleep. It was going to be another busy day.

They arrived back in Mega-City One at 8:45 a.m. The edge of the hurricane was due to hit the city wall at 2 p.m. Marsh and Karkov had already decided on the best place for the generator – the roof of Clarence Goodman Memorial Block. A group of judges were waiting for them and helped unload the heavy machinery as quickly as possible.

As Dredd disembarked, he was met by the Chief Judge.

‘Well done, Dredd. But what do you think the chances are of this idea working?’

‘Fifty - fifty. I saw the shield activated in East-Meg One, and if it can be made to cover the entire city then it will protect us. But it’s a pretty big if. How has it been here?’

‘More of the same – tornadoes, snowstorms, thunder and lightning. It has scared a lot of the citizens and now news of the hurricane has leaked out, there have been riots

93 Judge Dredd - Fire and Brimstone breaking out all over. This piece of hope may help. I’ll put out an announcement that we have the situation under control and tell them not to panic.’

‘And if it doesn’t work?’

‘Then we won’t be around to worry about it. Stay here and keep me informed of your progress.’

Dexter Pike was in a bar – he didn’t know which one. He had a bottle – he didn’t know what of – and he was content to drink himself to oblivion, just before oblivion arrived and wiped this city off the face of the earth.

A young woman came up to him and said, in a drunken voice, ‘Hey – wanna dance? We might all be dead by tomorrow.’

Dexter ignored her and she put her hand on his left arm. ‘Hey.’

Dexter span around as if he had been bitten and yanked his arm away from her. ‘Frag off!’ The woman backed off and Dexter returned to his bottle. ‘Goddamn miserable city. I’ll be happy when you’re all dead.’

There was a tri-D set above the bar. It had been showing some sort of game show, which Dexter hadn’t been listening to. But now the program was interrupted by a special announcement by the Chief Judge.

‘May I have your attention please. I have good news. The Justice Department has been working on a way to control the various weather phenomena that have been affecting our city since the weather control system was destroyed by terrorists yesterday morning. In approximately four hours, we will erect a force shield over the city that will protect us from anything the atmosphere can throw at us.

‘Do not be alarmed when you see the shield forming, or if you experience power failures in the region of Clarence Goodman Memorial Block, as the generator will draw a large amount of current.

‘Until this time, please stay inside for your own protection. Thank you.’

Dexter threw his bottle across the room. ‘No way!’ He shook a finger at the tri-D set. ‘You’re not going to get out of this one. No drokking way.’

With a sudden clarity of purpose, he stormed out of the bar.

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Chief Judge Hershey was not happy. During the last five hours, they had successfully set up the generator and positioned most of the stabilisers but some factories were running behind schedule and there was a huge snowstorm over the entire north-west hab zone which made flying impossible. The stabilisers built in that area were grounded and useless – they were redirecting stabilisers from other areas to the edges of the snowstorm and hoped that the plasma would cross the affected area without dispersing. They only had about twenty minutes left – it was going to be close.

Hershey, Dredd, Karkov and a number of other senior judges co-ordinating the work were in the city-block’s main power control room, twenty floors down from the roof. It was the best place to monitor and control the power supply to the generator. Karkov was studying a computer image of the city, monitoring the positions of the stabilisers and relaying instructions to one of the judges, who passed it on to the small army of workers, both judges and civilians, who were building and setting up the machines.

‘How much longer?’ asked Hershey impatiently.

‘Grud knows,’ replied Karkov. ‘We won’t get them all positioned in time. We’ll keep working until the last moment and then switch it on and hope for the best.’

Dredd was pacing back and forth behind them. He didn’t like waiting, especially when the future of the city was at stake. He decided to make one last check on the generator.

Dredd took the elevator up to the top floor. This was above the penthouses. Right under the roof, there was a large maintenance area. This housed the main power generator for the block. The only way up to the rooftop was to cross this area and to go up another set of steps on the far side. At the moment large cables trailed from the power generator, up the stairs to the shield generator on the roof. No power was passing through them yet but the connections had been tested – it was the first thing they had set up when they arrived. The area should have been deserted but Dredd caught some movement in the corner of his eye.

‘Hey!’ he shouted, and a figure dressed in black bolted from behind the generator up the stairs.

Dredd ran after him, activating his throat mike at the same time.

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‘Ash, this is Dredd. There is an unidentified person in the generator room. Get someone up here to check the power cables.’

Dredd ran up the stairs into a torrential rainstorm. The sky was dark and foreboding. The water fell in sheets and was blown in all directions by an angry twisting gale. The shield generator itself was a huge hulking mass, glistening in the rain. It suddenly occurred to Dredd that the shield generator was never designed to operate in the rain. He hoped it was waterproof.

Dredd saw the man running to the far edge of the roof and aimed his gun at him.

‘Hold it!’

The man stopped running but didn’t turn round. Dredd glanced beyond him and saw a sky surfboard leaning against the parapet. Clearly, that was how he had reached the roof without being noticed. The man desperately rummaged in his coat pocket, withdrew a small box and span round, holding it high in his right hand.

‘Get back!’ he shouted, struggling to make himself heard above the howl of the wind. ‘I’ve armed the bomb. If I let go of this button, the whole power grid will blow.’

Dredd moved forward, keeping his gun trained on the man.

‘You stupid idiot! We’re trying to save the city here.’

The man backed up until he walked into the parapet. Dredd kept closing.

‘I know, but you would kill me anyway.’

As Dredd came closer he recognised the man, and said, ‘You’re the terrorist who escaped from the weather station. Dexter something.’

‘Dexter Pike.’

‘Why do you want to destroy the city?’

‘You really want to know?’

‘Actually, no.’ Dredd was within five feet of Dexter now, and suddenly threw his gun on the ground. Dexter looked down in surprise and Dredd leapt at him, grabbing both Dexter’s hands, but most importantly, closing his fist around Dexter’s right hand and keeping pressure on the button on the remote control.

‘It’s over,’ hissed Dredd.

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‘Not yet,’ replied Dexter. Then Dredd noticed that there was something wrong with Dexter’s left hand. It was soft and boneless. Dexter suddenly yanked his arm downwards. His wrist stretched and tore. His left hand was synthetic – rubber and plastic. Dexter pulled free his real arm, which ended in a sharp, bony claw, and ripped it across Dredd’s chest.

The claw bit deep, gouging a furrow an inch deep and snapping two ribs. Dredd fell back into a pool of water, clutching at the gash. Dexter stepped backwards, holding the claw out in front of him. It was a direct extension of his arm – the two bones of his forearm were fused together, curving round to form a hook, the inner edge of which was sharp and serrated. He had no wrist and moved the claw from the elbow. The claw was not covered in skin, but it was difficult to see how far his skin reached as the end was covered in strands of synthi-flesh and Dredd’s blood, which the rain washed into red, viscous streaks running down his arm.

Dredd clenched his teeth, seemingly more in anger than in pain. ‘You’re a mutant.’

‘Yes, I’m a mutant. I was born like this – I had no choice in it. But you’d throw me out of the city and condemn me to a painful death in the desert.’

‘It’s the law. I don’t make it, I just enforce it.’

‘Well, you can all go to hell. The people who make it and the people who enforce it. The whole damn city can go to hell!’

Suddenly Dredd lashed out, kicking Dexter viscously in the kneecap. Dexter’s leg was crushed against the parapet. The bone snapped and Dexter fell forward. Dredd reached up with both hands and grabbed Dexter’s right hand, preventing him from dropping the remote control.

Before Dexter had finished falling, Dredd rolled to his left, throwing Dexter to the side. Dexter twisted in mid air and landed heavily on his back. Dredd continued rolling until he was on top of Dexter.

Dexter’s right hand was trapped in Dredd’s, but his claw was free and he stabbed it into Dredd’s side. It entered under the ribcage and sunk in deep. Five inches of bone were embedded into Dredd’s intestines. Dredd yelled and recoiled from the pain, letting go of the remote control.

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Dexter rolled Dredd onto his back and withdrew the claw. A gush of blood poured out onto the rooftop, mixing with the water that still poured down from the sky. Dredd clutched at the hole in his side, trying to stem the flow.

Dexter drew back and Dredd swung his left fist at Dexter’s head. Dexter jerked his head backwards and the fist missed his face but it hit his right hand, knocking the remote control to the ground.

Dredd looked at the control in shock and then back to Dexter. There was no explosion. Dredd looked back at the control and realised that it wasn’t a remote control for a detonator – it was a remote control for a tri-D set.

‘It was a decoy,’ Dexter said, rising to his feet and hobbling on his good leg. ‘I didn’t even know I had it with me, but I had to stop you looking around downstairs.’

Dredd rolled onto his knees and slowly got up, gritting his teeth with the agonising pain. His head was bent down and his left hand cupped his side wound.

Dredd raised his head and looked at Dexter square in the eyes. Dexter saw the sweat running down from under Dredd’s helmet, but rather than feel he was looking at a wounded, helpless animal, Dexter suddenly realised that he had no surprises left and no where left to run.

Dredd punched him. It was a lightning punch and a hard punch. One second his right hand was down by his hip, the next it was smashing through Dexter’s teeth.

Dexter’s head flew backwards, unbalancing him and tipping him over the edge of the parapet. He fell twenty stories before bouncing off a sloping roof and falling another thirty to the street below.

Dredd felt the wind picking up speed and looked out towards the ocean. Clarence Goodman Memorial Block was two kilometres from the coast and Dredd could easily see the east wall. And in the distance, he could see a swell of water, a bulge heading towards him at 150 km/h. The hurricane was almost here. Then a voice came over his helmet radio, ‘Dredd – we have a problem.’ Dredd picked up his gun and hobbled down the stairs. Judge Ash was looking at something round the back of the power generator. He looked up and saw Dredd. ‘Grud, what happened to you?’

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‘No time. What’s the problem?’ ‘I just found it. It’s a bomb, and it looks like it’s armed. I guess it’s triggered when the power comes on.’ Dredd glanced quickly out of the window at the approaching storm surge. It was definitely closer. Then Dredd turned back to the bomb. It was quite basic and obviously home-made. A number of boxes were connected together with wires. A few wires had been pulled out from the thick power cable and entered one of the boxes.

‘I’m no good with bombs,’ said Ash. ‘We should have had the bomb squad here.’

Dredd flipped the bullet selector on the side of his gun to armour piercing and shot two rounds through one of the boxes. He spun round to look out the window and shouted into his microphone, ‘Now! Turn it on now!’

Dredd watched the storm surge closing in. It had reached shallow water now and reared up into a wall of water fifty metres high.

Then the floor began to shake as the power generator was switched to maximum output, pumping electricity up to the shield generator on the roof.

Suddenly a bright beam of plasma shot out from the top of the shield generator. The beam was molten orange but so bright that it temporarily blinded anyone who was looking directly at it. It hit the first stabiliser hovering one kilometre above it. This stabiliser split the plasma into sixty smaller beams that spread out horizontally. Each of these beams hit another stabiliser, which split the beam down further. As well as splitting and directing the beams, each stabiliser had its own plasma reactor that reinforced and amplified the beams. The plasma spread outwards in a criss-cross pattern, an orange web cloaking the city. There were no stabilisers at the edges of the city and the plasma fell under its own weight until it touched the ground, earthing the massive electrical charge.

The wave could still be seen through the web, now reared up to seventy metres high and rushing at full speed towards the city. It was less than one kilometre away and the top was breaking into white foam. Wind roared in at 200 km/h as the hurricane finally arrived.

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As the plasma web touched the ground, sparks of lightning jumped across the gaps in the web with deafening cracks. The citizens cowered in fear, certain that this was the end of the world.

Each lightning strike ionised the air and a beam of plasma followed the lines of ionisation, linking up different strands of the web. The initial beams were straight and powerful whereas these were weaker and jagged. Each beam then grew barbed feelers, reaching out across the sky, linking up with other feelers and closing the gaps in the web.

The web became a lattice and then a honeycomb as the gaps closed up. Then the wave burst through the eastern side of the shield, just as the holes closed up completely. A flash of light raced across the surface of the shield, changing its colour from orange to a silvery-blue. This activated the shield, dividing the sky into two dimensions, isolating the city from the world outside. It sliced the wave in half. The rear half was sent into another dimension. The front half, its driving force gone, but its momentum intact, fell forwards. The majority of the water slammed into the east wall, but some washed over the top, sweeping down into the streets. Thousands of tons of water smashed through overzooms, crushed people against walls and burst through apartment windows. It was the final blow of the terrorists’ campaign, but it killed another 240 people.

Dredd and Ash looked out at the shield, glistening above them. It was dark outside, but it was peaceful. The howling wind and incessant rain had stopped. There was still the loud humming of the two generators but it was a constant, reassuring sound, rather than the random, violent sounds of the last two days.

The shield appeared stable for the moment, but it was unknown how the constant battering on the other side of the shield would affect it. And the shield generator was running at a much higher capacity than it was designed for. Karkov would be monitoring it carefully but it seemed that, for the moment at least, the city was safe.

Ash turned to Dredd and said, ‘Thank Grud that you knew how to disable the bomb.’

‘It was simple,’ Dredd replied. ‘The detonator was separate from the explosive and he didn’t have time to booby trap it. Destroy the detonator and the bomb is harmless. Weren’t you taught that at the Academy?’

‘Well, yeah, but that was a long time ago.’

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‘That’s no excuse. Your hesitation could have cost the lives of millions of citizens. You’re off the streets until you have passed a full evaluation.’

Ash sighed. ‘Yeah, you’re right. I should have known what to do.’

Dredd tried to take a step towards the elevator, but winced in pain. ‘Wait here,’ said Ash. ‘I’ll call in the medics to see to that wound.’

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Epilogue

Twenty-six hours later, Dredd was called back to the generator. His wound had been patched up and he could now walk normally. He had been told to take it easy for two days, but, Dredd being Dredd, he was already back on the streets.

When he arrived on the roof he was met by the Chief Judge who said, ‘It’s failing.’

Just then, a massive lightning strike travelled across the dome that opened up a huge gash in the shield like a knife. For a moment, dark clouds could be seen on the other side. Some rain fell through to the city and then it closed up again.

Karkov came over to Dredd and explained, ‘The lightning is a huge short circuit. It’s been doing it for six hours now. The holes started an hour ago. The whole thing will collapse within thirty minutes.’

‘What’s the weather like outside?’ asked Dredd.

‘We have no idea. The shield blocks all sensors and communications.’

Marsh was standing at a makeshift console on the roof, monitoring the shield generator.

‘Capacitors 4 and 12 just blew,’ Marsh announced. He flipped a couple of switches on the console and added, ‘I’ve cut them out of the circuit and switched to backups.’

Another judge, Bishop, opened two panels on the side of the generator and pulled out two boxes about the size of his head. They were white with black scarring at one end. He placed them in a rack to the rear of the generator. He then turned to a second rack of similar white boxes without any scarring, picked up two and slotted them into the panels in the generator.

‘We are running so high that the capacitors keep overloading,’ said Karkov. ‘But we’ve got the procedure for swapping them down now. We’ve extended their life expectancy to about four hours each and we’ve got a regular supply of new ones now.

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Although it got hairy at about 1 a.m. when we were running on only a third of the total complement while new ones were being made.’

There was a loud crackling sound from a new cable that ran across the floor and a deep crump from inside the generator. Marsh shouted, ‘We’ve lost the secondary primer!’

‘Dammit!’ said Karkov. ‘Bishop, get that access port open.’

Bishop ran over and helped Karkov to remove a metre square access panel about one foot off the floor. Behind it was a narrow crawl space, leading into the centre of the generator. Bishop climbed into the passageway on his stomach and crawled into the machine. About five metres along was a chamber with two cones approximately a metre long, each made from four doughnut shapes of decreasing size. He released two catches on the side of the left hand one and lifted it out of its cradle.

Marsh shouted, ‘Move it – the primary’s getting overloaded.’

‘Then reduce the shield strength,’ Karkov replied. ‘We don’t have any more spares.’

A lightning flash raced across the surface of the shield, followed by another, and then another. Before Marsh had a chance to reduce the power, the primary primer shattered, spraying Bishop with shrapnel. The constant hum of the generator spluttered on and off and a huge tear split the shield, enlarging rapidly as the edges disintegrated. The tear had spread over twenty percent of the radius when the generator responded to Marsh’s controls. The power was reduced and the column of plasma lost some of its ferocity. The shield, which had been bright blue, dulled and lost its shine. The hole zipped shut and, for the moment, the shield was complete again.

Karkov and Dredd pulled Bishop out of the crawl space. His face and hands were severely cut, but he would survive. Karkov climbed in and Dredd handed him the only spare primer. Inside the passageway, Karkov could feel the energy of the generator pounding all around him. With no primer, the plasma wasn’t being controlled or tempered and explosions were randomly occurring within the plasma mixture which shook the plates that Karkov was lying on.

He slotted the primer in place, engaged the catches and threw the fuse switch. Suddenly, plasma that was in the process of exploding travelled through the primer, shattering it and exploding outwards. A white-hot fireball engulfed Karkov and blasted

103 Judge Dredd - Fire and Brimstone out of the access panel. Karkov was killed instantly and Dredd had to dive backwards to avoid being caught in the blast.

‘Shut it off!’ shouted Dredd. ‘Shut it all off now!’

Marsh was already typing. Computer acknowledgements appeared on the screen as the systems shut down. The power eased and died. The main pulse beam from the generator to the shield faded and disappeared. The shield disintegrated as all of the stabilisers stopped phasing and came fully into this dimension. The generator continued to burn, unrepairable.

For a moment, the city sat, exposed at last to the dark clouds covering the sky. Watching, waiting for judgement to be passed on it.

Then the rain fell.

It was a light rain that washed the streets and freshened the air.

It was over.

Chief Judge Hershey came over to Dredd and looked up at the sky, feeling the rain on her face.

‘Well done, Dredd. Once again, you’ve saved the lives of 400 million citizens.’

‘Maybe now I can get back to arresting them.’

And with that Dredd walked away, back to the streets.

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