That Anderson. Always making trouble, always thinking that normal regs don't apply to her. Grud knows why she's still even a Judge.
To be honest, Anderson asked herself the same thing a dozen or so times a day at least. She thought she'd left the Justice Department and even Mega-City for good before - "Cassandra's little hiatus away from us" was how Psi-Chief Shenker referred to that period, with a wry smile - but, despite herself, she had eventually returned, called back by something inside her.
She loved Mega-City One, but she hated it too. She had hated being a Judge too, had hated and fought against the monolithic authoritarian weight of the Justice Department and much of what it stood for as well, but still she had come back, realising that this was all she knew and was where she was needed most.
Like now, for instance. The last time she had come back it was because, even from halfway across the galaxy, she had sensed a premonition that the Dark Judges were going to strike once more, and she had arrived back on Earth just in time to stop Death and his three super-creep amigos from escaping again.
And this time? What was the source of that vision she had, and that growing, creepy feeling at the back of her mind? Was it linked to the Dark Judges in some way?
Anderson didn't know, but she intended to find out and, while the immediate prospect of an audience with the Chief Judge didn't exactly thrill her, she hoped that it would go some way to putting her mind at rest. Death and the other Dark Judges might be contained under the highest security in the Tomb level beneath Nixon Penitentiary, but, as the Justice Department had discovered to its cost too many times before, imprisonment or even their apparent destruction hadn't been enough in the past to reduce the deadly threat they represented to every living soul in Mega-City One.
Checking the non-stop flow of Traffic Division info-updates scrolling across the screen of her bike computer, Anderson saw that Tinto Brass was severely congested at a point a few kilometres ahead, with serious delays at the Brucie Campbell Interchange caused by fans travelling to the smashball game at the nearby Juggernauts stadium and the aftermath of yesterday's brief block war spat between the Kylie and Dannii Minogue twin conapts.
"Grand Hall of Justice - best alternative route from present location," she barked to her bike computer in the approved Justice Department tone of voice.
"Wilco. Please stand by," responded the onboard computer in a voice Anderson had long come to call Justice Department Techno-Soulless. She'd heard that some of the younger Judges coming out of the Academy these days liked to have bike computers with a selection of changeable audio circuits. Apparently some bright spark at Tek Division had even made it possible to have your bike speaking to you in a synthesised version of Dredd's own unmistakably terse and no-nonsense tones. Anderson grinned at the thought - Grud only knows what Dredd thought of that. Then she smiled to herself again at the realisation that, to many of the younger Judges hitting the streets these days, she must seem almost as much a piece of Justice Department legend - "relic" would be the more unkind term they used amongst themselves in the sector house locker rooms - as Old Stony Face himself.
A moment later, the screen on the compact instrumentation panel in front of her displayed the requested map route, with secondary and even tertiary alternatives suggested as optional extras. Anderson selected the main route and guided her Lawmaster away from the expressway and onto an off-sked ramp, keeping one eye on the scrolling flow of traffic data as she did so. Like any good Judge, she knew the city's main roadway map by heart, but the day-to-day traffic situation was so chaotic, affected by everything from freak Weather Control mishaps to major block wars, and not forgetting the seemingly random basis on which the planners down at City Hall decided to carry out roadwork repairs and construction projects, that any seemingly simple trip from A to B could end up taking in unplanned detours to C, D, E and F along the way.
She hit the off-sked ramp at an easy 150 kph, turning onto it in a casual manoeuvre that would not have met with approval from any Bike Skills tutor at the Academy of Law - and which would have quickly drawn angry beeps and honks of protest from the vehicles behind her, had she been anyone other than a Judge.
Three lanes back, unnoticed by Anderson, the hov-truck which had been following her jumped lanes to match her manoeuvre, drawing a chorus of complaint from the motorists around it. Anderson, speeding off and accelerating up to 200 kph now, didn't notice as the vehicle slid onto the sked ramp behind her, bringing its own speed up to catch her.
She was on Joey Ramone Undersked, travelling east towards Sector 44. From there, she would cut off at Linneker Junction, catching the Tushingham Expressway for half a sector until she hit Slab 12 with its For Justice Department Use Only express lanes, which would allow her to open up the throttle and cruise all the way to the Grand Hall at a cool 350 kph. In less than fifteen minutes, she figured, she'd be pulling into the Grand Hall's motor pool levels.
When it came to beating the big city traffic, Anderson mused to herself, there were times when being an agent of a rigidly authoritarian law enforcement regime definitely had its advantages.
A juve skysurfer swooped in low above her, buzzing the speeding traffic below him and briefly mooning a party of outraged-looking elderly Brit-cit tourists sitting on the top deck of a strato-bus. He laughed at their reaction and briefly posed theatrically for the cameras of the delighted party of Hondo-cit tourists sitting behind the more uptight Brit-citters, and then hit the uplift throttle on his board, zooming back upwards and making the complex task of juggling high-speed aerodynamics with balancing the requirements of the skyboard's notoriously delicate and unreliable anti-grav field look as easy as riding an escalator.
Anderson supposed she should call the incident in to Control and have an aerial unit pick him up. Grud knows a stickler like Dredd would already have done it as soon as he spotted him, probably with good justification. Pulling illegal low-level flying stunts like that, the juve was a danger to himself and others, and maybe a few months in the Juve Cubes would cool his heels a little and do him some good.
On the other hand, she thought, watching the skysurfer accelerate away, dodging with masterful skill through two lanes of aerial traffic and then gliding gracefully up across the strong thermal updrafts from the stacked rooftops of the giant city blocks below, Anderson couldn't help but marvel at the momentary illusion of complete freedom the juve seemed to represent.
"Enjoy it while it lasts, kid," she murmured to herself. "Trust me, the rest of life in this city is all downhill from where you are now."
Distracted by her thoughts and the skysurfer's antics, she didn't even notice the hov-van pull almost level with her in the lane opposite. It was the psi-flash, screaming through her brain with nerve-shredding intensity, that warned her scant moments before the panel door at the side of the van nearest her slid open and a hail of automatic weapons fire was blasted out at her at near point-blank range.
Anderson swerved.
And braked. Hard.
She ducked too, leaning forward fast and hugging the chassis of her Lawmaster as a hot stream of bullets passed through the space where her head had been a brief moment ago.
The gunfire raked down the side of the bike. Anderson's violent swerve manoeuvre took her away from most of it, but she still heard shots ricocheting off the bike's armoured bodywork or shattering its sidelights. Something punched into the calf of her leg, while another red-hot shell tore painfully into the tough, bullet-resistant material of her Judge boot.
No biggie, she thought to herself. I'm a Judge. I've been shot plenty of times before.
She veered away from the van, into the next lane and the path of traffic flowing in the other direction, forcing her to violently swerve again to avoid smashing into oncoming vehicles. A bright red Foord Strato screamed by, passing close enough for Anderson's Lawmaster to leave scrape lines along the length of its gleaming paintwork. Anderson caught a lighting-speed glimpse of the horrified expressions of the car's occupants - mother, father and their population regs-permitted two juves - and then they were gone before they could realise just how close they came to having Psi Division's top telepath smeared all over the front of their family car.
She was behind the van now, wondering how long it would be before back up might arrive, wondering if she could stay alive long enough for it to matter. By now, some of the cits in the passing cars might be making emergency calls to the Justice Department. Roving spy-in-the-sky anti-crime surveillance cams might already have picked the incident up, beaming the images of it back to the local Sector House Control, while the Traffic Division cameras would surely have picked up something of it, although, unless a human supervisor was present, it might take the autobot programs that each monitored the images from thousands of such cameras some time to realise what was happening.
A personal heads-up call from her probably wouldn't do any harm at this point either, she thought.
"Control - Anderson. Am under attack, Joey Ramone U-sked, between Fred Fellini and Pete Bogdanovich Interchanges. Perps are driving a black, late-model Kryton-Skesky hov-truck. Am in pursuit and still under fire."
Right on cue, she was reaching for her Lawgiver even as the rear doors of the van burst open. She saw her attackers clearly this time. Four of them, wearing familiar-looking green and amber robes, and aiming their weapons at her.
Death cultists, she realised with a chill. In her book, at least, the Church of Death had just become something much more than another passing craze amidst Mega-City One's usual quota of harmless loons and jaded thrill-seekers.
She swerved again as they opened fire. What they lacked in accuracy, they more than made up for in sheer ferocity of firepower. Spit shells smacked into the rockcrete surface of the sked, gouging huge chunks out of it, or smashed into the front of her Lawmaster, shattering against its array of powerful headlights or ricocheting off its densely armoured eagle badge facade. One lucky shot drilled through the armoured casing of her bike computer and the thing died with a noisy electronic squawk, cutting off any reply that she might have been expecting to hear back from Control.
Stray shots flew everywhere, causing mayhem amongst the traffic behind her. She veered off again to a position directly behind the hov-truck, drawing her attackers' fire directly back upon herself and away from the other vehicles on the road. She wasn't in a hurry to get killed today, but she didn't want innocent cits to get hit by any bullets meant for her.
In doing so, she caught an unexpected break. Her attackers had completely emptied their magazines and were now struggling as fast as they could to reload their guns.
I'm being attacked by a hit-squad of amateurs, she thought to herself. If these creeps kill me now, I'll probably never live it down.
She could see them clearly. The hood of one of them slipped back, and she saw a shockingly pale face, a pair of red eyes staring at her in hatred, a mouth snarling open to reveal...
Fangs, she wondered to herself, remembering the things from her psi-flash nightmare?
The cultist raised his reloaded spit gun to fire at her again.
"Not going to happen, freak," Anderson said, beating him to the punch, as she raised and fired her Lawgiver at him.
As was normal with Psi-Judges, she wasn't the greatest shot the Justice Department had ever seen. The extra-intensive psi-training at the Academy of Law came at the expense of some of the other regular skills taught to all Judge cadets, and she was never going to be able to beat someone like Dredd on a sector house firing range - but, nine times out of ten, her Lawgiver shots went exactly where she wanted them to. This time was no exception.
The two shots punched into the white-faced freak's chest, knocking him backwards. A second later, though, he was back on his feet, reaching for his dropped weapon and snarling in even greater hatred.
Body armour, thought Anderson. That's what he must be wearing under those robes. There's a couple of light and flexible armour types - stuff like the new shokk-hard jackets favoured by Mega-Mob blitzers - that can stop anything up to a Lawgiver AP round.
Then Anderson saw the freak's face again, felt for a moment the burning hatred in those unnatural red eyes and sensed the awful hunger behind that hatred, and suddenly knew that, no, there was no armour hidden underneath those robes. She had just put two shots straight into this freak's chest cavity, and it hadn't even phased him.
The other three were getting ready to fire again too. One of them was fumbling with an object in his hand, and Anderson got another psi-flash as, in her mind's eye, she saw the object leave the cultist's hand; saw it explode against the front of her bike; saw both her and the Lawmaster burning furiously, wreathed in unquenchable flames. Saw herself falling screaming from the saddle as she burned alive in agony, her body smashing into the surface of the road and then lying there lifeless and yet still burning. By the time the nearest back-up unit arrived a few minutes later, there would be hardly anything left of her to scrape up and deliver to Resyk.
Phosphor bomb! her mind screamed to her in warning at the weapon in the cultist's hand.
Her own hand stabbed the handlebar-mounted fire control switch for her Lawmaster's main armament, sending out a long, roaring stream of shells from the twin-linked cannons on the bike's front. Large-calibre shells raked the rear and interior of the hov-van, ripping through metal bodywork and human flesh with equal ease. The phosphor grenade, blown out of its owner's hand, exploded inside the van with devastating effect, and Anderson had to manoeuvre hard to avoid the ferocious fireball which suddenly burst out of the vehicle's open rear doors.