Dredd VS Death Read online

  "You think they've maybe graduated from pet sacrifice to something more serious?" asked Judge Niles, head of the Public Surveillance Unit and, in Hershey's opinion, probably the most astute mind in the room.

  "Human sacrifice? The cult grabbing victims off the streets?" answered Hollister. "It's possible, but we think it's more likely that a lot of these are simple runaways. Juves or dropouts running off to join the cult."

  "So they're actively recruiting now?" noted Buell, the gruff and no-nonsense head of the Special Judicial Squad, the division of the Justice Department charged with rooting out corruption within the force itself. "If they're recruiting, they must be organised. Do we have any idea of the kind of numbers they might have, or how they're organising or funding themselves?"

  Hershey nodded in silent agreement. Typical Arthur Buell, his question cutting right to the heart of the issue.

  "Nothing so far," admitted Hollister. "Grud knows we've rounded up enough of these loons, but the ones we're seeing so far are strictly small fry, lone kooks picking up on the Death cult vibes on the streets at the moment, or loosely associated local groups like street gangs or the odd kook collective. If there's a central leadership or organisation to the thing, we've yet to see any real hard evidence of it."

  Ramos, the head of Street Division, shifted impatiently in his seat. "We've seen this kind of crap before, surely?" he said, with typical Street Judge bluntness. "Last month it was half the juves in the city painting red stars on their foreheads, calling themselves stuff like the 'Sons of Orlok', pledging their undying allegiance to East Meg One and swearing to avenge its destruction. This month it's worshipping the Dark Judges, and next month it'll be something else. Sick as it is, it's probably just another fad. Maintain control of it, round up a few of its most visible proponents and make examples of them, and it'll soon blow over, just like that whole 'Kool Kommunista' thing did."

  Several heads round the table nodded in quiet agreement. Hershey looked towards the man sitting on the far side of the room, seated beside Cranston and amongst the other non-Council member divisional heads. Even though the accountant and these others had no right to a vote when it came to making Council of Five decisions, Hershey still welcomed the opinions of her divisional chiefs, especially when it came to matters relating specifically to their own division's field of expertise.

  Like now, for example. When it came to anything to do with the Dark Judges, Hershey didn't believe in leaving any possibility unconsidered.

  "Psi-Chief Shenker, Death and the rest of his super-creep buddies are supposed to be your bailiwick. What does Psi-Division have to add to everything we've heard so far?"

  "Nothing much, Chief Judge," came the Psi-Chief's answer. "Whatever this supposed cult's activities involve, it doesn't seem to have generated any significant psi-presence to be picked up over the psychic white noise thrown out by a city of over four hundred million human minds."

  "Nothing at all, then?" asked Hershey, aware of the thinly veiled sharpness in her voice. Psi-Division's success in predicting city-threatening disasters had been less than stellar, most notably in the case of the so-called "Doomsday Scenario" event of the previous year, when organised crime group the Frendz almost seized control of the entire city. Like many others within the Justice Department, Hershey's faith in Psi-Division's effectiveness had been severely tested by such events, which went a long way to explaining why Shenker had swiftly lost Psi-Division's long-held seat on the Council after Hershey's election to the position of Chief Judge.

  The Psi-Chief, a quiet, slightly fussy man, paused, looking vaguely uncomfortable, before venturing an answer. "We have had one unsubstantiated pre-cog warning in the last few days, relating to a possible supernatural threat against the city, Chief Judge, although as far as we can tell, there's nothing in it yet to suggest any connection to the Dark Judges or this Death cult phenomenon."

  "Just one?" queried Hershey, puzzled and slightly irritated. Whenever possible, Psi-Division policy was to cross-check possible pre-cog warnings from any of its operatives with any secondary visions picked up from other Psi-Judges, especially those amongst the Division's supposed powerful and specially trained pre-cogs. Usually, it took verification from several other Psi-Judges before the alarm bells would start ringing loud enough to be heard here within the Grand Hall of Justice.

  "Who did the pre-cog warning come from?" asked Hershey, suspecting she already knew the answer.

  "Well... Anderson," said Shenker reluctantly.

  There was a series of muted sighs from several Judges in the room. Although no one questioned Anderson's psi-abilities - she was without doubt Psi-Division's top operative - her reputation could only be described as... troublesome, at best. She could be irreverent, highly strung, insubordinate, even downright mutinous at times, and was becoming increasingly questioning of Justice Department methods and policy. That was Anderson all over, and Hershey knew that she wouldn't be the first Chief Judge to have problems with Psi-Judge Cassandra Anderson.

  Nevertheless...

  It had been Anderson who had dealt with Judge Death the first time he had ever appeared in Mega-City One, trapping his spirit within her own mind at a cost to herself which few here within the Council of Five chamber could ever possibly imagine.

  When the other three Dark Judges had struck, freeing Death and slaughtering the inhabitants of an entire city block, it had also been Anderson who, along with Dredd, had stopped them. The pair had followed them back to the ghastly netherworld where the fiends had originally come from, and apparently destroyed them for good.

  They had returned again once more, though, tricking Anderson into unwittingly bringing them back to life, but she had redeemed herself for that terrible mistake, devising a way of trapping them forever in extra-dimensional limbo. Or so it had seemed at the time.

  And then, in the nightmare that had been Necropolis, it had been Anderson who had enabled Dredd to deliver the killing blow, destroying the power of the twisted beings known as the Sisters of Death and allowing the Judges to take control of the Mega-City back from Death and his foul kin.

  Every time the Dark Judges had struck, Anderson had been instrumental in stopping them. There was no denying that Anderson had a special link with Death, almost certainly down to having the creep taking up joint residence in her brain for over a year, so Hershey wasn't about to ignore any chance, no matter how slight, that there was any threat to the city involving Death and the other Dark Judges.

  "There's a cult dedicated to the worship of Death on the rise in the city, and Psi-Division's top telepath has a vision about a possible supernatural threat. Coincidence?" asked Buell, making Hershey wonder if her SJS Chief didn't have a few mind-reading powers of his own.

  "Let's assume not, at least for the time being," replied Hershey, looking to Shenker. "Have Anderson brought in. I want a full face-to-face briefing from her on what it was she thought she picked up."

  "And the Church of Death?"

  "As you suggested," she told Ramos. "We come down hard on them, right across the board. Brief all the Sector Chiefs to round up any and all Death cult agitators in their sectors. Any of them who look like they might know anything get a full tour of the interrogation cubes. Until we know anything better, we assume there might be more to these munceheads than just another passing fad. Agreed?"

  There was a brief show of hands round the table. Unanimous agreement.

  "Very well," Hershey began. "Next item on the agenda, the increase in illegal alien smuggling at the spaceports. Judge Blunkett of Immigration Division will give us his report..."

  Cowed and fearful, cringing and repentant, the vampires bowed in submission before the angry figure on the altar's vid-screen.

  "With so much at stake, at this late hour, and you fools couldn't contain your blood thirst for a day or two longer?"

  Hissing in fear and contrition, the vampires grovelled even closer to the stone floor, afraid to even glance up at the figure on the vid-screen before
them.

  "Your children grow hungry and impatient," said the priest, shuffling forward in his dark green and amber cult robes to address the hidden speaker on the vid-screen. "Impatient at having to remain in hiding for so long, impatient for the glorious moment when the Dark Brethren are at last released from their imprisonment and we, their children and faithful servants can come out from the shadows and finally claim this city as our own."

  There was a keening of agreement and anticipation from amongst the congregation of vampires, some baring their fangs in murderous and barely restrained blood hunger at the thought of the slaughter to come.

  Many kilometres away, secure in his own hidden sanctum, the figure in the vid-screen sighed in thinly veiled irritation. They had their uses, these things, but ultimately they were at best a mistake on his part, yet another failed experiment on the route to his ultimate goal. Like these Death cultist fanatics whom he had found and with whom he shared at least some beliefs, he would use them to his own ends. And then, when they were of no use to him any further...

  He broke off from that distracting, if not entirely unpleasant, train of thought, reminding himself that there were still important matters to be attended to first, and that these creatures he had created and these ignorant fools he had gathered to him were still the only tools he had at hand to carry out those matters.

  "Believe me," he told the coven, the more conciliatory and understanding tone in his voice evident even over the static interference of the heavily code-scrambled vid-link. "I understand your impatience, and there is no one more eager to see our Dark Lord and his Holy Brethren returned to us, but there is still work to be done first, and we cannot afford any more mistakes now. If the Judges discover our plans, everything we've worked for up until this moment will have been pointless. You understand me? The Dark Ones will remain held prisoner by the unbelievers, and you will have failed them in the holy duty they have asked of us."

  "I... I understand," the Death cult priest said, bowing his head in fearful contrition.

  Fear and religious awe, the figure on the vid-screen marvelled to himself. That's how to make these fools do as you want. Keep them properly subdued, remind them who it is that they believe speaks through you and dress up everything you say in the right amount of portentous-sounding quasi-religious gobbledygook, and you can get them to do just about anything.

  Even die for you, he thought with a smile. As would be amply demonstrated soon enough.

  "Excellent," he said aloud. "Contain your hunger and impatience just a little longer, my children. I know the serum I provide you with is not enough to satisfy you, but I promise blood enough to feed the hunger of all of you, just as soon as the psi-witch is no longer a danger to us."

  "Anderssssson..." Her name was a collective hiss of pure hatred from the members of the coven.

  "Yes, Anderson," affirmed the figure on the vid-screen, further stoking the fires of the vampire coven's hatred. "The witch who has defied our masters time and time again, the one who has always been there to lead the Judges against them. The one who has even foolishly believed that she had actually succeeded in destroying that which cannot be killed!"

  The coven snarled and hissed in rage at these reminders of past transgressions against their holy masters. The figure on the vid-screen waited a few moments for the sounds of their anger to abate.

  "You still have her under surveillance?" he asked the priest, who nodded eagerly. "Then do our masters' bidding - and kill her!" commanded the figure on the vid-screen. "This time, when the Dark Judges are set loose to continue their holy work, Judge Anderson will not be there to stop them!"

  Sitting there secure in his hidden sanctum, he leaned forward, hitting the switch to kill the vid-link, cutting off in mid-snarl the coven's predictable sounds of enthusiastic and bloodthirsty approval.

  He tapped his fingers lightly on the console keyboard, calling up the floor plans which it had cost him much effort and money to secure from the supposedly impregnable Justice Department computer files.

  He looked over the precious schematics for perhaps the thousandth time, mentally tracing out the pre-planned entry points, his eyes automatically seeking out those vital places which a hundred or more detailed computer simulation assaults had shown to be the most tactically vital or weakly defended. There would be casualties during the attack, of course, but that wasn't really going to be too much of a problem, was it? Not when he had a small army of death-obsessed fanatics and bullet-resistant vampire servants at his disposal?

  Allowing himself a small smile of satisfaction, he closed his eyes and thought of the glorious transformation that would soon be his.

  He was so close now, so close, and, the blundering incident at the med-supply repository aside, everything was going perfectly to plan.

  "So much for that plan," muttered DeMarco to herself, drawing herself further into the shadows of the doorway from where she had been keeping hidden watch for most of the last few hours.

  Another vehicle drew up, depositing a further group of figures outside the seemingly derelict dockside warehouse which she now knew to be the headquarters of the Church of Death.

  In truth, the place wasn't much to look at, just another run-down old pre-Atomic Wars building in a street full of similar abandoned heaps in a neighbourhood almost now completely derelict due to the pollution overspill from the lethally toxic waters of the nearby Black Atlantic shore. But then again, DeMarco reminded herself, if she was setting up a secret and highly illegal cult dedicated to the worship of a mass-murdering, extra-dimensional super-freak, wouldn't this be exactly the kind of generally forgotten place she'd choose to hide out in too?

  Her original plan had been to sneak into the place and reconnoitre it, to discover if it really was the cult's headquarters and see if she could find any clue about the whereabouts of the Caskey girl.

  The constant flow of people in and out of the building - she had counted over fifty people arriving or departing in the last hour alone - had swiftly put paid to that idea.

  "Grud, this place is almost as busy as Remembrance Square on Apocalypse Day," she muttered to herself again, as the warehouse's loading doors screeched up noisily and a medium-sized hov-truck slid forward into the street outside. Its rear panel doors were still open, and DeMarco saw a small platoon of figures in the now-familiar garb of the Death cult scrambling aboard. One of them suddenly looked round, straight toward where she was hiding, and DeMarco hurriedly pressed herself deeper into the shadows of the doorway.

  Still, the brief moment she had seen the cultist's face was enough time for her street Judge-trained instincts to get a glimpse of the creep, and she registered a shockingly pale and gaunt face with fierce, red-rimmed eyes and...

  "Fangs?" she breathed to herself, wondering just what she had gotten herself into here. She was also pretty sure that almost all of then had been armed with a mixture of firearms: stump guns and automatic spit guns, the weapons of choice amongst most of Mega-City One's criminal fraternity.

  She supposed that this was the point when she should do what any good cit was required to do, and call in a crime report to the Justice Department. Leave it to the Judges, that's what ordinary citizens were supposed to do. There was just one problem with that theory: Galen DeMarco didn't consider herself to be just another ordinary cit. She was an ex-Judge - she had been a Sector Chief before she left the Department, for Grud's sake, in command of a force of hundreds of Street Judges and responsible for the safety of the millions of inhabitants of an entire city sector - and she still had an experienced Judge's training and instinct, so no way was she just going to turn and walk away, leave it for someone else to deal with like a good little cit was supposed to.

  Besides, she reminded herself, she was a Private Investigator, and she had a job to do and a responsibility to her client. And to her client's daughter, the still-missing Joanna Caskey.

  DeMarco had gone to town on one of these "Friends of Thanos" creeps at Joanna's college, and, a
fter searching his apartment (illegal entry: minimum five-year sentence, the Judge part of her mind dutifully reminded her) and finding a large stash of highly illegal narc-stims there (failure to report a crime: automatic minimum five-year sentence) she was fairly sure that the girl was here, and probably being held against her will. Apparently, her unwilling informant had told her, there was something special about the Caskey girl's aura, and she had been chosen for some unspecified "special purpose".

  None of which DeMarco much liked the sound of at all. She told herself that even if she called it in now, the Judges might still not arrive in time to stop whatever was going on in there.

  No, she decided, she had to get in there herself, find the girl and discover what exactly these creeps were up to. Then, she promised herself, she'd put in a call to the Judges, once she had done her duty to her client and got the Caskey girl safely out of there.

  There was a guard left at the still-open loading doors. He was wearing robes with identifiable Church of Death markings (membership of an illegal organisation: five years), was openly carrying a well-worn pump-action stump gun (possession of an illegal weapon: two years) and, even as DeMarco watched, paused to light up a cigarette (illegal smoking in a public place: one to three years mandatory).

  "Creep sure is racking up the crime count," DeMarco murmured to herself. "At this rate, he'll probably be catching up with me soon."

  The guard was standing with his back to her now, looking along the street while taking a long draw on his cigarette, although DeMarco wondered why he even bothered smoking the thing down here. If he wanted to dramatically cut his lifespan and pollute his body with lethally toxic substances, then a few good big lungfuls of the stuff that passed for air down here would do the job just as easy.

  Reaching into her pocket to make sure that her pistol with its add-on stun beamer (unregistered modification of a licensed firearm: six months to a year, that little Judge voice reminded her) was still there, she slipped quietly from her hiding place and began sneaking across the street towards the guard's unprotected back.