Dredd VS Death (29 page)

It lashed out at him with its claws. Dredd felt razor-sharp talons shred apart the armour of his eagle shoulder pad and then he was flying through the air. The bone-jarring collision with the wall only added to the damage Dredd had just suffered, but even as he fell to the floor, he was reloading his Lawgiver and taking aim at Death's monstrous new form as it bore down on him once more.

Three Hi-Ex rounds staggered it in its tracks. A raking blast of Standard Execution rounds blew out both of its eyes.

Two cadets freed now. Weak and confused though they were, they still ran to help Anderson free their remaining companions.

An Armour Piercing shot erupted though the back of the beast's head, unleashing a torrent of black, slimy matter from inside the Death-thing's skull. Double blasts of rapid-fire took away its knees. It stumbled for a few seconds as its body regenerated the damage, and then kept on coming.

Three cadets free now. They huddled together in fear as Anderson hurried to free the last of them.

Dredd protected them, standing there pumping round after round into the Death-thing's body as it remorselessly came on at him. With a hellish shriek, it lashed out with one hand, knocking the weapon from Dredd's grip, grasping him by his now empty gun-hand as it hauled him up off his feet, dangling him in the air in front of its grinning face.

Death squeezed, enjoying the spreading grimace of pain on the face of his old enemy as every bone in Dredd's hand was crushed, the broken bones grinding together under the relentless pressure of Death's grip.

Dredd blacked out for a few moments. The Death-thing dropped him with a disappointed shrug, and then prodded at the groaning figure lying at its feet. "Wake up, sinner," it hissed. "Judgement time is here at last!"

"Got that right at least, freak," Anderson challenged, standing with the four psi-cadets clustered around her. "You wanted to use these kids' abilities for your own sick reasons. Let's see how you like getting some of it back at you in return."

She and the cadets linked hands, linking minds at the same moment.

Psi-blasting was only taught to Psi-cadets in their last two years at the Academy of Law, and the cadets had just begun their training in it. Anderson had, however, had more than a few years' practice. She focussed their power through her own mind, amplifying and focussing it, adding her own considerable psychic strength to theirs.

What hit Death was the psychic equivalent of a close-range blast from a sawn-off scatter gun. His bestial form reeled back, screeching in psychic and physical pain. Injuries he had thought safely regenerated spontaneously opened up again. Wounds blossomed across his body, overwhelming this new form's ability to deal with them. Death screeched hideously again, feeling his control slipping over his host body, feeling its strange, unnatural flesh begin to rebel against him.

"Now, Dredd!" shrieked Anderson, bringing her own Lawgiver up to bear. Dredd rolled and grabbed his own fallen gun. His gun-hand was useless, and his other hand was still injured, but as long as he could hold a gun, Dredd was still to be considered completely lethal.

The two of them opened fire simultaneously, and Death's new body was destroyed utterly in a few furious seconds of combined Lawgiver fire. Death's spirit was already abandoning the thing, even before the burning, shattered fragments of it hit the ground.

"Uh-uh," warned Anderson, focusing her psi-powers again. "Your non-corporeal butt's going nowhere, except back with us."

With her mind still linked to those of the psi-cadets, she reeled Death's screaming, struggling spirit-form in with relative ease. At the last moment, she broke off all psychic contact with the others - cadets that young and inexperienced weren't up to having a super-creep like Judge Death crawling around inside their minds, Anderson wisely decided.

Death's spirit flowed unwillingly into her, held fast in the iron grip of her psi-power. It was inside her now, and she felt the old, sickeningly familiar lurch of repugnance as everything he was reached out to taint her mind and soul. With a final, wrenching mental effort, she seized hold of him and pushed him down into the dark, buried place in her mind which she had prepared for him. His screams of psychic rage filled her mind as he was forced in there and she slammed shut the mental barriers that would hold him there until she was ready to undergo the long and stressful process, assisted by a carefully chosen group of other experienced Psi-Judges, that would be necessary to extract the Dark Judge's spirit again and force it into another, more permanent prison.

Her strength gave way as soon as she knew she had Death under control. She stumbled and fell forwards, only to be caught by Dredd, who by any rights should barely have been able to stand himself.

"I'm... I'm alright," she assured him, weakly. She could still feel Death inside her mind, squirming frantically against the barriers of his psychic prison. "But I can't hold him forever..."

She gestured towards the now-deactivated portal, which showed only blank stone where minutes ago there had been the swirling darkness of the extra-dimensional void. "Whatever you've got left, use it to destroy that. Even if they ever get out again, this is one option that's not going to be available to them again. And then, after that..."

She looked at the four, still-traumatised cadets. One of them was quietly sobbing to herself. Under normal conditions, had this been a Hotdog Run or any other kind of live training mission, that would have earned a cadet a reprimand, or perhaps even have been grounds for failure and instant dismissal from the Academy. Under the circumstances, though, even Dredd wasn't going to comment.

"After that, we go home," Anderson promised.

SIXTEEN

"And the gateway in the Undercity?" asked Chief Judge Hershey.

"Destroyed also," Psi-Chief Shenker assured her.

Hershey sat back in her chair, digesting everything she had heard in the last few hours as the Council of Five had convened in special session to discuss the aftermath of the recent carnage caused by the Dark Judges' escape.

It could have been a lot worse, she reminded herself, looking at the death toll figures that scrolled across the screen of the small desk monitor in front of her. It still made for grim reading but yes, she told herself, it could have been a lot worse.

The Church of Death was officially no more, its members either dead or locked up for life in the cubes. EverPet had been shut down, and Icarus's secret research work seized by the Justice Department before anyone else could try to replicate it. Even before Justice Department med-scientists had started going through it in detail, Judge Helsing had been able to successfully replicate a cure for the effects of Icarus's retrovirus. There would be no more outbreaks of any plagues of undead in Mega-City One for the foreseeable future.

Harsh lessons had also been learned. A new prison to hold the Dark Judges had already been built. Death and his three brethren would be its only inmates, and the facility's location was a closely guarded secret, even within the ranks of the Justice Department. Security procedures at the facility would be ultra-rigorous, with several systems of fail-safes in place. There could hopefully never be a repeat of the events that happened at Nixon Pen.

"We've heard all the reports now," Hershey announced to her assembled Division heads. "Does anyone else have anything to add?"

Ramos cleared his throat noisily and shifted in his seat. Hershey looked expectantly towards her head of Street Division. She could already half-guess what he was going to say.

Ramos pointed to the thick stack of files on the table in front of him. "With respect, Chief Judge, we've had full reports on all the facets of this incident, from all the senior Judges involved. Giant. Helsing. Grud, even Anderson managed to file something..."

Hershey interrupted him. "If you're wondering about Dredd, I remind you that his preliminary report is there in front of you, along with all the others."

"Yes, his preliminary report," emphasised Ramos, who was infamous in the Justice Department for his strict belief in the importance of proper paperwork. "But when can we expect to see his complete report?"

Despite the gravity of the events they had been discussing here at the Council meeting today, Hershey still had to fight to suppress a slight smile as she answered Ramos's query.

"The Meds tell me Dredd is still undergoing speedheal treatment. I'm sure, however, he'll be looking forward to catching up on his paperwork and submitting a full written report to the Council when he returns to active duty in a few days' time."

"But, Dredd, you can't leave the med-bay yet! You've got to give the speedheal time to take full effect, and the Chief Judge's office said that they were to be informed before-"

Dredd's only response was a trademark menacing glower as he hit the activate switch and the elevator doors slid shut in the face of the panicking young Med-Judge.

Riding the elevator down to the Sector House motor pool level, Dredd activated his helmet radio. He was immediately immersed in the non-stop flow of comms data that was the strangely comforting background buzz to the daily life of every Street Judge in the city.

"Item: suspected mob blitz reported, Tony Soprano Skedway..."

"Item: riot by Human League anti-droid agitators in progress, Robot of the Year Show. Riot squad in attendance, Judge Giant commanding..."

"Item: multiple vehicle pile-up, Mo Mowlam Megway. Extra meat and med wagons required urgently. Sounds like a real mess down there on Mowlam..."

"Item: Justice Central reminds all units that there's a full moon tonight. Expect an increase in futsie crimes and general psycho activity. Additional kook cube space has been allocated for tonight's quota of loon-related arrests..."

Dredd flexed the muscles of his gun-hand as he listened to the litany of item reports. The speedheal treatment had been a perfect success, reknitting the broken bones in the hand in almost record time, and the Meds had assured him there was no nerve damage, but the hand still felt slightly stiff and unresponsive to Dredd's own hyper-critical sense of self-judgement. What might seem more than good enough to anyone else was more often than not completely insufficient for the exacting standards Dredd set for himself.

What he needed, he decided, was something to give him a chance to test his combat responses and Lawgiver-handling skills under real combat conditions.

"Item: block war flaring up at the Minogue Conapts. Looks like Kylie and Dannii are renewing hostilities again. Units already at the scene requesting Senior Judge assistance."

The elevator doors opened, and Dredd walked out to where the vehicle pool Tek-chief had a fully fuelled and ammo-loaded Lawmaster already waiting for him.

"Control - Dredd. I'll take command at the Minogues. I'm on my way."

His brethren at times fought and raged against the even more restrictive confines of their new place of imprisonment, but Death remained still and silent, content for the time being to merely observe the conditions of the barriers and wards that held them in check, and study the minds of their human jailors.

Slowly, imperceptibly, the thinnest, most invisible tendrils of his psychic aura crept out to explore the limits of this new place and of the living minds that inhabited it. He was patient, never rash or greedy, and his slowly expanding knowledge of all that was happening around him passed beneath the psychic perceptions of the batteries of Psi-Judges who were there day and night to keep watch over him and his brothers.

There were possibilities even here, Death sensed. Dim and remote they may be right now, but Death was patient in a way in which his still-living jailers were not, and after all he had all eternity to wait and plan, if need be.

"Patience, brothers," he consoled the others, whispering to them in a voice so quiet that it existed at a level never even suspected by the living. "One day we will be free again, I promise, and then our great work will begin again."

On the other side of the dimensional void, in the empty silence of Deadworld, something stirred amongst the jumbled litter of ancient bones that was all that remained of the original victims of the Dark Judges.

Death had been wrong when he had thought he had seized control of an empty vessel when his spirit had flowed in to take possession of Icarus's retrovirus-mutated corpse. Some vestige of the body's original owner had lingered, remaining trapped and helpless within the prison of its own dead flesh, powerless to intervene as the Dark Judge had claimed that same flesh for himself.

That same remote vestige had survived the destruction of its body, but in being freed from that dead flesh, it found it had merely exchanged one prison for another, larger one. It wandered the far reaches of its new prison, receiving no response to its increasingly frantic entreaties for help.

Dr Dick Icarus, aka Vernon Martins, had achieved his wish at last. Here in the empty, still spaces of Deadworld, he would live forever, lingering bodiless and alone for all eternity, with nothing but the dead bones to hear his whispered, begging pleas to be granted the oblivion he now so desperately craved.

THE END