Dredd VS Death (14 page)

Being chosen for Tomb duty meant that she was no shrinking violet, and was more than capable of taking the kind of swift and cold-blooded decisions necessary for keeping the four most dangerous beings in Mega-City One safely under lock and key. She didn't hesitate, snatching for the Lawgiver stored in the specially built holster under her console desk. She had seen Burchill's combat scores, and knew that she was both quicker on the draw and a better shot.

She shot him four times, just as he drew his own Lawgiver, hitting him three times in the stomach and once in the chest. Each time she hit him, his body jerked weirdly, as if it was suspended on strings.

Also like a puppet on strings, it refused to fall down, no matter how hard it was struck.

Burchill continued moving as the bullets pummelled into him, drawing his own Lawgiver with a horrible, awkward slowness, a gruesome rictus grin fixed on his face which only seemed to grow wider as each bullet tore through him.

Finally he raised it to face her and returned fire, even as Mayer's fifth shot hit him in the throat in what should have been an instantly lethal wound. His own shot took her through a lung. She dropped to the floor, coughing blood.

She heard his weird, shuffling footsteps coming towards her across the room, heard the blood from the four or five fatal wounds she had inflicted on him pumping out of him and splashing onto the ground. She stretched out to reach for her Lawgiver, almost managing it before his boot came down hard on her fingers, breaking them all.

She sobbed in pain as he reached down to grab her under the arms, dragging her roughly across the room. She tried to struggle, but could not. She tried to call out, maybe hoping desperately to be able to reason with whatever remnant of Burchill remained in the thing which had hold of her now, but all that emerged was a choked and bloody cough.

She groaned again as he took even firmer hold of her, lifting her bodily up with a strength which he simply shouldn't have had. She saw where they were now, right at the edge of the no-go line, saw the four things in the crystalline containment cubes looking at her as their possessed servant displayed her to them, almost as some kind of offering. She felt herself being lifted up higher, suspended high above Burchill's head - and suddenly she knew what was about to happen to her.

He threw her. She suddenly found her voice again and screamed, although the sound was abruptly cut off a moment later amidst the hissing chatter of the sentry lasers as her hurled body sailed across the no-go line and was instantly cut apart in the bright tangle of laser fire.

The alarms had started going off as soon as the hidden sensors in the room had registered the sound of Lawgiver shots. A whole chorus of further, more strident ones went off now, as Burchill's body jerked round to open fire at the two control consoles, riddling them with rapid-fire Standard Execution rounds. Hi-Ex rounds unerringly found both the sentry gun sensors and then the hidden guns themselves.

Now that it was safe to do so, Burchill stepped forward to stand before his masters and do the final things necessary to release them. The alarms kept ringing, both in the Tomb and in the prison above, but Burchill knew that there was no one left up there to hear them.

Level 12. Almost there now.

The bloodsuckers had been through this level like an impossibly virulent plague, and many of the corridors were choked with the corpses of their victims. Dredd heard screams from an open iso-cube door ahead. Approaching it at a run, he glimpsed in and saw a prisoner being attacked by one of the vampire creatures, the vampire pinning down its victim and biting bloody chunks out of his neck and shoulders.

Dredd raised his Lawgiver and shot the creature through the back of the skull as he ran past, never even breaking stride. The victim was still, weakened by shock and blood loss, and looked in a bad way. Dredd didn't know who he was or what his crimes were, but even as an iso-block inmate he was due the same cold, dispassionate mercy accorded to every citizen of Mega-City One.

"Giant - Dredd. Vamp victim in urgent need of med-treatment, Cube 47, Level 12. If he's still alive when you get to him, put him into med-unit quarantine until we find out what effects there might be from a bite from these things. Same goes with any other vamp victims you find."

Sharkey couldn't drokkin' believe it! Him and his crew were down on Level 10 somewhere, heading downwards all the time. They'd lost a couple of guys along the way - Long Louie had got shivved in the riot they'd had to blast their way through up in Level 33 and good ol' Marv had been jumped by one of those bloodsucker freaks somewhere in the 20s, and, boy, was Sharkey not in a hurry to run into any more of those freaks - but they were still in pretty good shape and on course to reach one of the lower level exits outta the Pen.

They had just shot their way through a security point down here - two Judge-Wardens had tried to stop them, but Sharkey and a few scatter gun blasts had nixed that idea - when Sharkey caught sight of him on one of the vid-monitor screens.

Dredd! Right here in the Pen, running along a corridor somewhere.

Sharkey glanced at the monitor reading. Level 11, Sub-section 4A, it said. Sharkey grinned. That was only one level above them, and, better still and judging by the direction he was heading towards the level exit drop-tube, Dredd was heading straight this way.

Sharkey wasn't big on all that Holy Church of Grud prayer-mumbling stuff, but he decided there and then that someone up there must like him. First of all they get him sprung from his cube, and now they obligingly drop Dredd right into his lap, and if that wasn't just too sweet, then Sharkey didn't know what was.

Of course, he'd added to his Judge-fragger score a couple more times today, but all the ones he'd killed had been Judge-Wardens, and Sharkey didn't really think they rated that much higher than those other kinds of phoney Judges who drove the med-wagons and handed out the parking tickets.

But Dredd... Well, he was the biggest, baddest Judge of them all, wasn't he? So fragging him would make Sharkey the biggest, baddest Judge-killer of them all, wouldn't it, and then there wouldn't be anyone laughing behind his back at him no more, would there?

Besides, Sharkey reminded himself sourly, thinking of that paper lung in his chest and the pain it caused him every time he breathed, him and Dredd had some history together, and he still owed the lawman some payback, didn't he?

He picked up his scatter gun and checked its load. Plenty of shells left, more than enough to take care of business, even with a tricky drokker like Dredd.

"Gonna be a change of plan, boys," he told his crew. "Got some unfinished business to settle up before I get us out of here."

Burchill's hands moved over the small control console, their movements stiff and awkward. The four shadowy beings in the crystalline containment cubes focussed their powers more heavily upon him, redoubling their efforts to remain in control of his mind and body. The material their prisons were composed of blocked virtually all their powers, and the vassal's body had sustained too much damage to allow them to keep it alive for very much longer. Time was running short, but they were too close now to even think of the possibility of failure.

"Release us!" hissed the voices in Burchill's head, forcing his body to carry out the Dark Judges' bidding.

He hit the final command key and a robot arm unfolded from its cradle in the chamber roof, smoothly snaking down towards the four crystals held in their heavy mechanical restraints. The restraining grips holding the crystal cubes in place were built into the deepest foundations of the iso-block building, and were designed to survive even a major earthquake. Nothing had been left to chance that might allow the creatures held here to be accidentally released, but it had always been hoped that sometime in the future a means might be found to destroy the Dark Judges' disembodied spirits once and for all. With that in mind, there had to be a way of opening up the virtually indestructible crystals to get to the things contained inside them, since the crystals protected the Dark Judges from harm just as much as they protected the city from their escape. The holding chamber's designers had no doubt imagined the deliberately engineered release of the creatures taking place under carefully controlled conditions, with a large number of Psi-Judges on hand to keep them under psychic control. What was happening now was probably beyond their worst nightmares.

A lance of stellar-hot laser energy shot out from the las-drill attachment on the end of the robot arm, cutting into the ultra-dense material of the nearest crystal's surface with a piercing sonic shriek. In just over a minute, its work was done and it was already moving on to the next crystal in line as a thin stream of what looked like greasy smoke poured out of the tiny, centimetre-wide hole that had been las-drilled through the wall of the crystal.

As the other three Dark Judge spirits writhed in impatience, the smoke from the first crystal coalesced in mid-air, slowly reforming itself into the familiar visage of the greatest enemy Mega-City One had ever faced.

"Freeeeeeedommmmm!" Judge Death hissed in triumph, over the shriek of the las-drill and the continuing chorus of warning alarms.

KOOM!

Dredd rolled for cover as the scatter gun spoke loudly again. The desk he had been sheltering behind just a moment ago exploded, throwing shredded paperwork and a spray of cold synthi-caf into the air around him.

"Remember me now, Dredd? Thought you'd seen the last of Sharkey McCann, didn't you?" called the voice from up the corridor. "You made a big mistake last time we met, lawman. Shoulda made a better job of your aim last time you pulled a trigger on me. You only get one chance with a guy like Sharkey!"

Sharkey McCann? Who the drokk was Sharkey McCann, Dredd wondered? He'd put tens - Grud, maybe even hundreds - of thousands of perps into the cubes in his time. His ability to recognise perps from memory alone was legendary within the Justice Department, but even he couldn't be expected to remember every two-cred punk and small-time jerk who had crossed his path during his forty years on the streets.

Still, at least all this dumb creep's jawing had allowed Dredd to get a good fix on his position.

"Ricochet!" he commanded, firing a single shot up the corridor. It hit the far wall of the foyer area at the end and rebounded back at an angle. He heard a choked-off scream of pain and surprise, followed by the sound of something hitting the floor.

"Sharkey!" The call came from one of the other armed perps, who came popping up from behind the overturned desk he had been sheltering behind. Dredd wasn't about to pass up the gift of a free target, and sent him sprawling back behind the desk again with a single shot.

Another creep broke cover from behind a doorway off the foyer, firing two shots with his scatter gun. The weapon was set on wide spray. Dredd ducked as he felt the sizzling flurry of hot lead rip through the air around him. He tracked the target, manually adjusting his shell selector setting as the creep ducked behind the open, heavily armoured door of a high-security interrogation cube. The creep might have thought he was safe from harm there, but the Armour Piercing shell that Dredd put through the thick metal slab of the door said otherwise. A second later, there was the sound of another body hitting the floor.

Dredd strode forward out of the abandoned Judge-Warden duty station area where the perps had thought they'd had him bottled up in. He hadn't killed them all, but experience told him he'd more than made his point. The three remaining, terrified-looking perps standing there waiting for him with their hands in the air and their guns dropped at their feet obviously agreed.

Dredd glanced down at the corpse of what he assumed was Sharkey McCann on the ground at his feet, noting the surprised look on the creep's face and the bullet hole dead centre in his back which had gone through to find the creep's heart.

"How's my aim this time, creep?" he asked the corpse as he tossed three set of handcuffs to the three surrendered perps.

"Cuff yourselves to the wall over there," he commanded, gesturing towards the holding bars on the side of the room. "Judges are on their way. If you're not here when they arrive, I guarantee I'll come looking for you."

Dredd ran on down the corridor. He was halfway down it when his memory put the name and face together. Sherman "Sharkey" McCann: sentenced to life back in 2016, for the murder of a Judge.

A Judge-killer, then. So no big loss there.

Still, the incident had been yet another troubling distraction along the way. A delay which might yet cost the city dear.

The scream of the las-drill died away as soon as its job was done, and the robot arm glided smoothly on to the last of the crystal containment cubes. The same stream of foul smoke poured out of the hole to coalesce into shape beside the other disembodied Dark Judges.

The spirit form of Judge Fear took his place alongside Death and Fire, as the drill went to work on the final crystal containing the spirit of Judge Mortis.

Now that it was now longer needed, the lifeless body of Psi-Judge Burchill lay discarded on the ground nearby, like a puppet with its strings most definitely cut.

The late Judge-Warden Mayer had been right in thinking that anyone wanting to access the Tomb level from the main prison building would have needed ten different security clearances even to make it to the elevator entrance. Sometimes, though, there were exceptions.