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  Minx saw the gun again, and then the white of a killing heat.

  The VTOL's engines threw dust and dead bodies aside in a ring of compacted air, extending spindly legs to settle on the Denver highway. On the monitor, the flyer seemed fat and docile under the targeting displays that ran through the mind of the killer.

  "Deploy recovery team," ordered the commander. "I want the unit on ice and in standby mode until we complete debrief-"

  On the screen, one of the commander's men nodded in a strange, spastic jerk, before bursting into flames. Except for one single display, all the tactical relays went dark; the remaining screen showed the other men ripped open and dying in strobe-speed murders, the VTOL looming larger as the killer loped toward it. Explosions sounded through the hull like distant thunder.

  "Abort!" the commander screamed across the room. "Do it now!"

  "I warned you!" snapped the doctor, stabbing a termination sequence into his console. "Damn you, but you did not listen!"

  Without warning, the killer's viewpoint flared brightly, a bright sodium glare washing over the dark room. Streams of information from the unit's internal systems went wild, readouts shredding into garbled confusion.

  "Whiteout..." murmured the scientist. "Neural overload!"

  "Stop it!" roared the commander, as the sound of tearing metal reached them. "Kill it!"

  The deck trembled beneath their feet as the pilot attempted to lift off, but fuel was already streaming from scored wounds in the fuselage and winglets. The VTOL wobbled in the chill air and fell back to earth, trailing smoke and flames.

  MEGA-CITY ONE, 2127

  SHAKEDOWN

  "How many is this? I've lost count." Keeble glanced at his partner in the dingy half-light of the corridor, his fist paused before the patched plasteen door of Apartment 435/G.

  Lambert consulted the data pad in her hand with a morose look. "Forty-six."

  "Feels like we've been at this forever," Keeble said in a low, fatigued tone. "Ah well, perhaps this one won't be a complete waste of effort." The dark-skinned Judge slammed his gloved hand on the door in textbook fashion, three hard knocks and then the declaration. "Justice Department, open up."

  "You said that last time. And the time before that." Fresh information crawled across the pad's screen as the sound of shuffling feet approached the door. "Huh. Evans and Donner just made an arrest six floors down. That guy who was stealing nipples? They found two hundred of them in jars of synthi-vinegar."

  Keeble nodded. "And what have we got to show for it? Couple of cases of peeping and an unlicensed crocodile. I'm sure Hershey will be pinning a medal on us for that one." The door opened and the manner of both Judges changed instantly, each law officer projecting an iron-hard, expressionless exterior.

  "Yes?" Pallid eyes peered out at them through an inch of open doorway.

  For the forty-sixth time that evening, Keeble repeated the words: "Good evening, citizen. Crime Blitz."

  And once again, he got the same reply. "But I haven't done anything."

  "We'll see," said Lambert, pushing open the door all the way. "Mega-City One Criminal Code, Section 59 (D). A Judge may enter a citizen's home to carry out routine intensive investigation. The citizen has no rights in this matter." She tried to keep the bored tone from her voice. Chet Hunklev Block was not her usual beat, but the directive handed down from Justice Central had meant that every Street Judge the city could spare was being poured into the rundown avenues of Sector 88, as part of a high visibility crackdown on crime. Double-Eight was the kind of sector that had its picture next to the word "slum" in the dictionary, a rat's nest of heavy industrial auto-factories and megway interchanges mingling with dilapidated citiblocks that dated back to the days of Chief Judge Fargo. Tonight, all across the sector, there were units of Judges kicking in doors and hauling perps away in pat-wagons for crimes that ranged up and down the statute books. The Judges were making an example of Sector 88, an object lesson to the rest of the city: you could be next.

  The resident was a small, paunchy guy, with a waddle in his walk, and he matched the interior of Apartment 435/G as if he had been extruded out of the grimy walls. He made way for the two Judges, blending into the peeling, stripy wallpaper as they began a careful and exacting orbit of the small three-room hab module.

  "Just you here?" Lambert demanded. "Any pets?"

  The citizen shook his head slowly from side to side. "No Judge. Just me."

  Keeble approached the kitchen alcove and his nose wrinkled. "What is that smell?" A pungent aroma that pitched itself somewhere between wet dog and stale gym socks seemed to concentrate itself in the far corner of the room, around the washer-dryer unit. Keeble opened the oval loading hatch and the stench reached out and swatted him.

  Lambert caught a whiff and grimaced. "Ugh. Any worse and I'd need a respirator! What have you got in there, citizen?"

  "Just my smalls, uh, sir. I, uh, like to jog." The little guy stared at the floor. "I have a glandular problem."

  "No doubt," said Keeble, breathing through his mouth. The smell was everywhere. The Judge managed a closer look before his eyes began to water, spying the shapes of rotten underwear piled within the washer. "Do yourself a favour and use the industrial laundroteria on level fourteen. This is a borderline health hazard."

  "Tried that, sir," said the man. "Got banned."

  Lambert met Keeble's gaze and nodded to the exit. "That's an order. Other than that, you can consider yourself... clean."

  In the thin, yellow light cast by the lamps in the corridor, a huge, angular figure became visible, filling the doorway. "I don't think so," he said.

  Keeble blinked and looked at Lambert, who was shaking her head as if she'd just been given the worst news possible. "Dredd," murmured the other Judge. "Perfect."

  Keeble had never seen him before in the flesh, just the odd glimpse on a monitor or when a newsflash painted his stone-cut aspect on a street-screen. It wasn't difficult to match that larger-than-life legend to the man who stalked into the apartment after them, hooded eyes peering into every shadowed corner of the room.

  "Sloppy technique, Keeble," said the senior Judge, addressing him like a cadet on his first patrol. "You're missing something."

  Lambert considered protesting, but from the corner of her eye she saw the citizen shift nervously, a tiny, almost invisible tell on his face, and she knew Dredd was right. The Judge let her handcuffs slip into her palm as Dredd went on.

  "Smell that?" Dredd pointed a finger at the washer. "If that's just underwear in there, I'm Otto Sump."

  "I..." began the resident, but he fell silent when Dredd shot him a leaden glare.

  "Don't lie to me, creep, unless you want another three years on your ticket."

  Gingerly, Keeble removed the largest pair of soiled u-fronts Lambert had ever seen from the washing machine - and from inside a packet of something greenish-white and gelid flopped on to the greasy flooring. "It... looks like-"

  "Cheese," said Dredd, sounding out the word like a curse. "Limberger, maybe. Gorgonzola? A prescribed food product." He prodded the perp in the chest. "That's way too much for personal consumption, creep. You're dealing. That's ten years' cube time."

  The sweaty little guy erupted into a flurry of motion, hands flapping and denials spilling out of his mouth. Lambert caught him by the wrist and cuffed him in one smooth action, propelling the criminal on to his knees.

  "It's just cheese!" he shouted, eyes welling. "There's nothing wrong with it!"

  "Just cheese?" Dredd repeated. "It's class two contraband, that's what it is." He glanced at Keeble. "Almost let that one slip by. Don't get complacent."

  "Sorry, Dredd," the other Judge glowered from beneath his helmet. "Won't happen again."

  "He's got customers on this floor, count on it. Why don't you encourage him to share that information with you?"

  Keeble nodded and crouched next to the perp. Extending his daystick, he began a hushed but intensive interrogation of the man.
<
br />   Lambert followed Dredd back out to the corridor. "I didn't think a senior officer like you would draw this kind of detail. Kicking in doors and busting small fry... Not exactly Angel Gang calibre."

  "This bust is all about visibility," Dredd grunted. "Puttin' the fear of Grud into the cits."

  The younger Judge's face soured. "Well, excuse me for speaking my mind, but if the Council of Five wanted to shake up this sector, then we ought to be kicking in Ruben Cortez's front door, not some cheese-loving spug."

  "Cortez will get his." Dredd's words dripped with acid. Lambert was right: Cortez, the man they nicknamed "The Eye" on the streets, had fingers in every piece of Sector 88's illicit economy, but a network of corporate double-blinds and legal connections had kept the criminal from ever standing trial. He was adept at finding men to take the fall for his crimes, and more than a dozen undercover Wally Squad Judges had ended up dead trying to pin something on him. The continued existence of creeps like Cortez was an affront to Dredd, and it had been one of the reasons he wanted to be seen on the streets of Double-Eight tonight. He was serving notice; the law was not to be disrespected.

  "Not soon enough," said Lambert, tapping in an arrest code on the data pad.

  Six apartments away, Wesson closed the front door to his hab with shaking hands, terrified that the mag-lock would make too much noise as he did. He pressed the door shut with damp-palmed hands and stood there in the gloom, his chest heaving and his heart pounding. He had left it too late, typically for him, fretting and worrying and finally doing nothing until the thing he was afraid of was right on top of him. Judge Dredd, for sneck's sake! Not that it mattered which Judge it was, Wess's bad luck meant that whatever random algorithm the lawmen were using to choose which doors they knocked on, his would be one of them. Wess Smyth had learned very early on in his sorry little life that if something could go wrong, it would go wrong.

  He wandered back into the bedsitting room, wringing his hands, calculating the scale of malfeasance in his apartment. Tobacco crumbs on the floor by the bed where he'd enjoyed a cherootie instead of smoking it at the Black Lung Smokatoria on 543rd Street; half a can of Boing®; a couple of back issues of the banned BiteFighters magazine; all those pens he'd taken from the post office; oh, and how could he forget, the sachet of zzip crystals he'd palmed from Bennie Freemish down on Floor 96. Wess felt a horrid pressure building in his bladder and he rocked back and forth in place, suddenly consumed by the fear that he'd be arrested in the toilet stall if he gave in to his bodily needs.

  He had to get out, and get out now. But where was he going to go? Down on the ground level, there were roving Judge patrols at every exit, with X-ray booths and sweat-scanners ensuring that nobody got away from Chet Hunklev Block without submitting to a search. The decrepit building was sealed tighter than a drum, and even if he could get to the underground parking levels, Wess had left his ageing podcar at that shuggy place down in the skid district. He had to find an alternative exit.

  Wess felt the curious mix of excitement and abject terror that came on him in moments like this. He might be barely stopping himself from soiling his underwear, but by Grud, he felt alive! All through his life, Smyth had got himself through by the skin of his teeth, and he knew that today would be no different. Wess took a deep breath and stuffed the Boing® can and the zzip pack in his pocket before dialling a string of numbers on his vu-phone. In apartment 427/T, down the hall from Smyth's squalid flat, another phone began to ring; it trilled twice before a reedy voice snarled out an aggressive "Yeah?" In the background, he could hear a musichip player pumping out a bleak, moan-filled dirge.

  Wess's phone had long ago lost its camera, and the audio was so poor it made him sound like he was eating soy-chips while he spoke; he preferred it that way, keeping his identity hidden from outsiders. "Yeah?" repeated the voice.

  "This is a friend," Wess told his neighbour, "with a warning. Judge Dredd is on his way to your apartment with a strike team. They know all about the plan. They know all about what you're doing." He hung up before they could ask any questions or guess at who he actually was. Smyth pressed his ear to the door and heard the faint sounds of disturbance from 427/T, mostly running feet and raised voices, followed by anguished shushing and more arguing. Wess didn't know the four teenagers who lived in 427/T very well, but he had crossed paths with them once or twice in the wee hours of the morning, usually when he was slinking back from Bendy's with empty pockets or after being thrown out by his girlfriend Jayni. Each time, he'd seen them shifting what were clearly industrial chemical containers into the tiny hab. They'd shaken him down for credits in the elevators, the four of them grinning and brandishing shivs, and to his eternal embarrassment he'd folded like a deck of cards.

  Wess didn't have any idea what they were up to over there, but he had done enough illegal things to know the look of it on someone else. Hopefully, they were doing something dangerous enough to cause a distraction.

  Inside apartment 427/T, the four members of the Global Anarchist Army were loading spit-guns and scribbling down their manifestos, arguing over which of them got to record their suicide message first and shifting the drums of crude napalm they had been making in the hab's bathtub. Theirs was not a large group of freedom fighters by any stretch of the imagination, and for the most part their list of anti-establishment "acts" had largely been restricted to the daubing of graffiti in the 'tweenblock plaza and the odd act of opportunistic vandalism; but membership of the GAA had given the four of them some sense of belonging, some camaraderie that had been forever denied to them by the bigger and less anaemic teens in the serious block gangs. For the most part, the GAA had spent their time listening to DedRok music and writing morose poetry with moody, repetitive imagery - that was until one of their members had found the keys to his mother's citi-def home militia locker, and looted the contents. Along with some hazardous chemicals stolen from the local tox-dump, they had finally reached a status that could be classed as dangerous; and so they had decided to write some more poetry about how everyone would be so upset when they were dead. Unfortunately for them, this rather inward-looking viewpoint had meant they were utterly unaware of the Justice Department's random crime sweep on their block. Unaware until now.

  Dredd's head came around like a seeker scope tracking a target, and it took Lambert a second before she realised what the senior Judge had noticed. "Music's stopped." Dredd nodded, his hand slipping toward the Lawgiver pistol holstered in his boot. "It's probably nothing," Lambert added, drawing her own weapon.

  "Probably," said Dredd, inching closer to apartment 427/T. His tone did little to convince Lambert that he agreed with her. Part of Lambert's mind wanted to sneer at the elder Judge's sudden change of behaviour. It seemed ridiculous that anything more dangerous than a go-ganger with a switchblade could be hiding in this shanty block. Another, deeper tactical sense told her that Dredd was on to something. It was undeniable; the man had been on the street for longer than Lambert had been alive, and even if Old Stony Face wasn't some kind of psyker, Dredd had an uncanny predictive ability that other lawmen could only dream of developing. Grud, thought the Judge, it's true what the Academy instructors used to say. Dredd can actually smell a crime happening.

  He halted and drew a bead on the door of 427/T. "This is Judge Dredd! Come out with your hands in the air!"

  At the sound of Dredd's voice, every member of the GAA panicked. All their tough talk, every promise to stick it to the Judges and their corrupt government, all of it crumbled into the mealy-mouthed bravado it had always been. Suddenly, they were all scared kids; and scared kids make mistakes. A finger too tight on a spit-gun trigger, a nervous twitch. Dredd's stern command was followed by a screech of accidental weapon fire as hot rounds tore though the plasteen door. There were ricochets too, the kind of factor that a real terrorist would have known about, and one of them sank into the jerry-rigged napalm buckets, with a catastrophic ignition. The blowback threw superheated air out of the apartment and blew do
ors off their hinges down the length of the corridor.

  "Lambert, down!" Dredd tackled the other Judge to the floor as a sheet of orange combustion rolled overhead, clinging to the ceiling. Fire licked along the walls like grasping tendrils, and ripped into the open doorway of the hab where Keeble and the perp were standing. Dredd caught the sound of burning, curdling flesh inside and heard a strangled yell of agony.

  Smyth was punched to the floor by a hot fist of gas, rolling across the threadbare carpet as his front door sailed off its hinges and into the sofa bed. The primitive fight-or-flight reflex that had kept Wess alive for the past thirty-odd years kicked in with gusto, and suddenly the petty criminal was on his feet, running into the singed, still smouldering corridor. From the corner of his eye he saw a shrieking man-shape made of flames as it stumbled out of apartment 427/T. Wess threw himself into the smoke, bouncing off the walls, feeling his way toward the spinal shaft of the citiblock.

  The burning citizen's screams were horrific; the improvised napalm, a recipe plucked from the pages of a dog-eared banned militia manual, had worked far better than the erstwhile members of the GAA had ever hoped. Dredd's jaw set in a grim line as he fired a single standard execution round into the skull of the unfortunate victim, cutting off the wailing in mid-cry.

  Lambert rolled to her feet, pulling down her respirator. "Where's the damn extinguishers?" She punched an emergency switch on the wall, but the fire alert klaxons and the corroded retardant spray nozzles in the ceiling remained silent. "Drokk! Nothing works in this fleapit!"