Eclipse Read online

  JUDGE DREDD

  ECLIPSE

  His ribs singing with pain, Dredd tried to scramble to his feet as the leader jetted across the distance between them. His STUP-gun had fallen out of arm's reach when he'd been thrown, and now unarmed and injured, he saw the blocky shape of the armoured suit coming at him like a guided missile.

  Dredd's suited fingers closed around something by his side, and by reflex he pulled it from the moondust to brandish it like a spear. Unable to stop in time, the leader impaled herself on the spike, and Dredd rammed it home through her faceplate, turning it into a window of red ruin. She slumped backward into a heap, and only then did Dredd realise what he'd used as a makeshift weapon. Lanced through the suit's helmet was a steel rod that ended in a metallic flag of Stars and Stripes.

  JUDGE DREDD

  #1: DREDD VS DEATH

  Gordon Rennie

  #2: BAD MOON RISING

  David Bishop

  #3: BLACK ATLANTIC

  Simon Jowett & Peter J Evans

  #4: ECLIPSE

  James Swallow

  #5: KINGDOM OF THE BLIND

  David Bishop

  #6: THE FINAL CUT

  Matthew Smith

  #7: SWINE FEVER

  Andrew Cartmel

  #8: WHITEOUT

  James Swallow

  #9: PSYKOGEDDON

  Dave Stone

  MORE 2000 AD ACTION

  JUDGE ANDERSON

  #1: FEAR THE DARKNESS - Mitchel Scanlon

  #2: RED SHADOWS - Mitchel Scanlon

  #3: SINS OF THE FATHER - Mitchel Scanlon

  THE ABC WARRIORS

  #1: THE MEDUSA WAR - Pat Mills & Alan Mitchell

  DURHAM RED

  #1: THE UNQUIET GRAVE - Peter J Evans

  ROGUE TROOPER

  #1: CRUCIBLE - Gordon Rennie

  STRONTIUM DOG

  #1: BAD TIMING - Rebecca Levene

  FIENDS OF THE EASTERN FRONT - David Bishop

  #1: OPERATION VAMPYR

  #2: THE BLOOD RED ARMY

  #3: TWILIGHT OF THE DEAD

  For Adam, Ashley, Jael, Jim, Scott, Mark and Luffy, John, Nick, Toby, Andy and the Big Finish crew, all of you laws unto yourselves.

  Acknowledgements:

  With thanks to John Wagner, Ian Gibson, Mike McMahon, Brian Bolland, John Smith, Paul Marshall, Rob Williams and Pete Dougherty for their portrayals of Judge Dredd and Luna-1 throughout the history of 2000AD.

  A 2000 AD PUBLICATION

  www.abaddonbooks.com

  www.2000adonline.com

  1098 7 65 4321

  Cover illustration by Colin Wilson.

  Copyright © 2004 Rebellion A/S. All rights reserved.

  All 2000AD characters and logos © and TM Rebellion A/S."Judge Dredd" is a registered trade mark in the United States and other jurisdictions."2000 AD" is a registered trade mark in certain jurisdictions. All rights reserved. Used under licence.

  ISBN(.epub): 978-1-84997-055-6

  ISBN(.mobi): 978-1-84997-096-9

  A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  JUDGE DREDD

  ECLIPSE

  JAMES SWALLOW

  Judge Dredd created by John Wagner & Carlos Ezquerra.

  Chief Judge Hershey created by John Wagner & Brian Bolland.

  Judge-Marshal Tex, Judge-Marshal Che, Arthur Goodworthy Jr. and Mister Moonie created by John Wagner & Ian Gibson.

  Judge Kessler created by John Smith

  LUNA-1, 2126

  1. MOONFALL

  Calvin Spinker hated the Moon. Hated it. Hated, hated, mother-drokking, spugging, snecking hated the big airless ball of dirt with every fibre of his being. He hated the way that you'd bounce like a low-rent Boing freak if you forgot to wear gravity boots or stepped clear of a street with g-plates. He hated the stupid mock seasons they had inside the Luna-1 domes, with synthi-snow, sprinkler rains and holographic rainbows. He hated how every damn thing imported from Earthside cost ten per cent more than the drab local produce, and some days he swore he'd wreck the next servo-bot that offered him a "Moon Pie" at the Eat-O-Mat.

  But above all, the thing Calvin Spinker hated the most about the Moon was the air.

  It had this sickly smell to it, see, this kinda plastic tang that reminded him a little bit of burning insulation or melting plasteen. It was everywhere. He couldn't take a breath without the stink being right there in his nostrils. He'd tried nose filters, strong cologne, even breathing through his mouth for weeks on end, but nothing could make the smell go away. If Calvin thought hard enough about it, he would start to feel sick. He knew that out there in the airless wilderness of the lunar plains there were domes half-buried in moondust where the stale, used breath from millions of Luna-cit lungs was being sucked in and reprocessed. Then they pumped it back out, used it to supplement the raw oxygen that was flown in by astro-tankers, and channelled it back down to where Calvin could breathe it again. Back down to here, to Kepler Dome on the outer rim of Luna-1's conurbation. The top-level domes, places like Kennedy, Armstrong and Lovell, of course they would get the pure new air straight away. Not the reused gases he was breathing - no sir, those rich fat cats with their thick stacks of credits, they got the fresh air. Spinker hated them too, now that he considered it.

  Sometimes Calvin would get giddy thinking about how many times the breath he was taking in right now had been recycled, scrubbed and sent around the system. How many lungs had it already gone through? What sort of people had tainted it before he got it? How the hell was anyone going to stay sane when all they had to live on was second-hand air?

  For what must have been the millionth time in his life, Calvin thought about going home, getting back to Earth and starting over somewhere where you didn't have to pay to breathe in and out. Okay, maybe the air wouldn't be that clean, but at least it would be free. You see, he hadn't chosen to live in Kepler. He'd been on the Moon reluctantly clearing up a divorce settlement with his stupid ex-wife when Judgement Day had happened. Spinker had been trapped here, stuck without a place to stay or anywhere to go. He didn't know the ins and outs of it, but Calvin understood in his vaguely moronic way that back on Earth, some weirdo from the future - this guy called Sabbat or something - this dingus had made the dead rise from their graves and start tearing up stuff. He still remembered the day he walked into the Luna-1 starport only to be told that all flights to Earth had been cancelled "due to zombie infestation". When he asked the robo-clerk when the next shuttle to Mega-City Two would be leaving, the machine told him simply: "That destination no longer exists."

  It wasn't until a day later he found out what that actually meant. MC-2, his home, a massive city-state that covered most of North America's Western Seaboard, was gone, nuked out, vaporised. Overnight, he was a refugee. So Calvin was forced to stay in Luna-1 and eventually the city council found him a one-pod hab in Kepler. And there he sat, day after day, nursing his hatred and breathing in this repellent, germ-laden air.

  But today, Spinker looked up from his cup of cold synthi-caff and something like confusion crossed his greasy knot of a face. Confusion, because he couldn't detect the stinky stale smell any more. Confusion, because the oxymeter in the ceiling of his hab that rattled around the clock had gone silent. Calvin stood on a chair and held his hand underneath the air vent, feeling for the telltale trickle of cool breathing gas that forever cycled through it.r />
  Nothing. Not a single breath.

  Then Calvin Spinker started to panic, and as his vision started to fog as carbon dioxide filled the cramped little bedsitting room, he found himself desperately wishing, praying, pleading for just one more lungful of that hated, loathsome air.

  While Calvin and his neighbours choked to death, a different kind of panic was rising in a frenzied tide on the streets outside the apartment block. Ernesto Diaz did his best to hide beneath the counter in his corner café and not wet his pants.

  The morning had begun like any other. Ernesto had climbed down from his Komfy-Koffin capsule bed in the roof space and rolled open the shutters to declare Diaz's Hotties open for business. He'd had the usual thin crowd of early risers and a few grey-faced workers on their way to the zoom terminal that would take them into the city proper, off to toil in the mines or the oxy cracking yards. By mid-morning, he had the mock-meat sausages on the grill sizzling up a treat, and he was filling the dispensers with synthi-mustard and thinking about the lunchtime rush; it started then. He happened to look out the window, noting with studied disinterest a lone Judge outside the vacant store near the pawn shop - she'd rousted a couple of go-gangers and had them cuffed to a holding post. Ernesto frowned. He didn't like those punks, but he had to admit they'd done him a big favour by setting fire to the local branch of Luney Lunch.

  Across the street from Diaz's store was a holographic billboard that was forever on the fritz. This week it had been running a recruitment advertisement for one of the ice mining concerns down in Clavius, but the braying voice of the announcer choked off in mid-sentence and the screen disintegrated into a storm of flickering pixels. Ernesto caught it out of the corner of his eye and looked up. A new image appeared on the billboard screen, a computer-generated cartoon character with a stylised moon for a head. It winked - right at him, so it seemed - and spoke in a chatty, conspiratorial manner. Every word the 'toon spoke was repeated in a ticker-tape stream along the bottom of the screen.

  "Hey friend," it began, and now Diaz was sure it was talking to him. "Where do U go if U want 2 know what's up, up, up? Lemme tell U. Right here! Right now! Listen up, up, up! Moon-U has all U need to know, no matter what the Big Helmets say!" The little figure now sported a T-shirt with the words "Moon-U" emblazoned on it, and he struck a comic pose as a bumbling parody of a Luna City Judge ambled on screen. For a second, Ernesto looked around and saw that everyone on the street had stopped what they were doing to watch the billboard. From his vantage point at the café counter, he could see the Moon-U cartoon appearing on another public screen up at the Sagan Street crosswalk, and repeated here and there in the windows of the discount electrical store and on the back of some juve's telly-jacket.

  "Shuddup!" drawled the caricature Judge in a thick Texas City accent, listing back and forth as if he was drunk. "Ya little runt! I ain't lettin' you flap yo lips-"

  Moon-U gave Diaz a broad wink and out of nowhere produced a massive hammer that had the words "ten tons" written on it. Unbidden, hysterical laughter bubbled up out of Ernesto as the moon-faced figure used it to flatten the comic Judge into a bloody pulp. Someone chortled. "Yeah! Right on! Smash those Judges!"

  Diaz saw the female Judge on the street corner speaking urgently into her belt mic.

  "Quick! I gotta tell U before they get me!" Moon-U hissed urgently. "The Judges never did a thing for U, did they? And now they're gonna cut off the air!"

  A ripple of anger and fear spread through the audience, and Diaz felt his heart tighten. Suddenly, strident voices were shouting.

  "They can't do that! Stinkin' Judges!"

  "They never liked Kepler, just 'cos we ain't a rich dome-"

  "If those sneckers come down here, we'll bust 'em in the head-"

  "They always pick on us! We gotta show them!"

  "Ooh no!" cried Moon-U, and he pointed up at the dome ceiling hundreds of metres above them. "Look out!"

  Like everyone else on the street, Diaz had looked up, and there he had seen something that made his blood run cold. At the very crest of the transparent glasseen dome, just as there was in every Luna conurb, a disc-shaped oxygen processor managed the airflow for Kepler, a train of green indicator lights forever marching around its base to signify its safe operation. The green lights winked out one by one and turned red. A muffled klaxon hooted: the air-warning siren.

  Ernesto suddenly felt sick with fear. He stumbled back into the café, the mustard jar falling forgotten from his nerveless fingers. His mind was racing, caught in a whirl of emotions. Just seconds ago, he'd been laughing inanely at the cartoon without a care, but now he felt like his world was coming to an end. His head swam with nausea and anxiety.

  He gripped one of the counter stools for support and dared to take another look out into the street.

  Ernesto had a ringside view.

  A cluster of citizens had surrounded the Judge. They were jeering at her and waving their fists; even one of the cuffed punks on the holding pole dared to lash out at her with a swift kick. Diaz couldn't make out what they were saying, but the meaning was clear. The Judge drew her daystick in a single fluid movement and brandished it in a wide arc, stabbing at the air with her free hand. Whatever she said appeared to have no effect; some of the people grabbed pieces of garbage and threw them.

  The Judge blurred; Ernesto heard the high-pitched crack of the stick as it broke bone, and one of the citizens spun away trailing blood, hands pressed to a ruined face.

  "Gee, that was a nasty thing 2 do," said the billboard.

  With a roar, the crowd surged forward and the blue-black of the Judge's uniform vanished under a dozen kicking, punching, yelling bodies. Ernesto had to choke back bile when he saw something ragged and bloody - a limb, maybe? - go arcing up into the air to land on the pedway.

  The screen began to show pictures, images from street cameras in different parts of Kepler, places that Diaz recognised like the zoom terminal, the shoplex on Clarke Avenue, the free clinic. There were people brawling everywhere, not just picking on Judges, but each other, fights breaking out all over as buried rivalries and petty disputes were given sudden, bloody purpose. He watched as the guy from the used droid place on the corner strangled some ugly kid with his bare hands, slamming the boy's face into the road over and over even after it was clear he was dead. Ernesto threw up and stumbled behind the counter to conceal himself, trying not to choke on the sickly cooked smell of the frying hotties.

  He lost track of time; all he could hear was the rolling murmur of the mob outside, incoherent shouts and snarls melding into a landscape of violent noise. Glass broke and people screamed. Once, a brick shot over his head and smashed the bio-lume sign over the counter, showering him with flecks of plastic. Then there was a new sound that joined the rioting: the staccato popping of gunfire.

  Diaz knew that sound all too well. He'd grown up in Banana City where the law of the spit gun had been the only law there was, but he had got out, gone to the Moon and found a life that, while not exactly better, was just a little less lethal. But now that sound brought it all flooding back to him, and Ernesto's gut knotted.

  He took a careful look over the top of the counter and saw someone brandishing a pistol, cracking off shots at random, shooting out what windows were still intact or putting rounds into fleeing figures. The street, which before had been a decrepit permacrete avenue lined with dull little shops and limp moon-palm trees, was now a war zone. Cars were burning, sending palls of sooty smoke up to cluster in a thick disc at the apex of the dome, consuming vital draughts of oxygen. Plasteen lay in drifts around the yawning shop fronts and here and there dead bodies were lying like knots of discarded rags.

  Ernesto flicked a glance up at the billboard, where images of the rioting continued to cycle, over and over. The only constant was the Moon-U logo, a laughing lunar face, in the bottom right corner. The man with the gun paused and fiddled with the weapon, and Diaz felt a sneer forming on his face. The half-witted idiot couldn't even work
a snecking spit gun! What kind of moron was he? Without realising it, Ernesto drew up from behind the counter and moved to the door of the café to get a better view. The acrid smoke from the flaming cars tickled his nostrils with the scent of burning battery chemicals. His jaw hardened and a new bloom of hatred blossomed in his chest, hot and fierce. Clearly this jerk-o with the gun had no idea how stupid he was! Firing a gun inside a sealed dome, how idiotic was that? Sure, it would be a million to one chance that a bullet might penetrate a weak spot and cause a blow-out, but who would be Munce-brained enough to risk it?

  Diaz's fear melted away and in its place was anger, pure and simple. His hands closed around the hilt of the knife he used for chopping up the hotties and he strode out into the street, spitting in fury. "Hey! Stupido! You wanna get us all killed?"

  The gunman glanced up at him. "Get lost," he snarled back, and then he noticed the name of Ernesto's café on the cook's apron. "Diaz's Hotties? You're Diaz?"

  "Yeah!" Ernesto brandished the knife, feeling potent and deadly. "What you gonna do about it, pendejo? I'm gonna cut you up and cook you!"

  The other guy laughed nastily. "You know what? Your hotties suck, man. I liked Luney Lunch much better."