Eclipse Read online

  "They know what's going on down here," said Foster grimly.

  Kessler made a sound like a sigh. "Chief Judge, we cannot maintain this state for more than a few more hours. As it is, all Judges are executing your command to hold and contain the fighting, but losses are increasing exponentially. We must be proactive!"

  Che considered this, rubbing his damp palms together. "If we contain the rioters, they will burn themselves out eventually. These... incidents must be kept isolated..."

  "With respect, sir," Foster broke in. "It's not working. We're seeing more eruptions of conflict, not less."

  "You have a suggestion?"

  "I do, sir," Foster took a breath before continuing. "We should declare a State of Emergency and petition the members of the treaty states for assistance-"

  "Are you mad?" Kessler spat. He jerked a thumb at the ceiling and the sky beyond the dome. "They're waiting up there to storm the city and gather up the scraps, but are you proposing we just open the door to them right now?"

  Foster coloured. "The global partnership treaty states that signatories must provide strategic help if Luna-1 calls for it."

  "Yes and once they're here in our city, they'll dig in and take over!" Kessler retorted, rounding on the Brit-Citter. "Luna-1 doesn't need help to quell this riot - it needs decisive action, now!"

  "It's not a riot any more, Kessler," rumbled J'aele. "It's anarchy."

  "Exactly!" The SJS officer looked back at Che. "Which is why the time for passivity is over! Chief Judge, you must authorise a full mobilisation to war footing."

  "War?" snapped Foster, "With who? Our own citizens?"

  "Your citizens?" Kessler said without turning, "Your citizens live on a little island on Earth, Foster. I'm talking about saving the people of Luna-1." He stepped closer to Che and pressed both hands down on the Judge-Marshal's desk, his monocle glinting. "Do as Foster says, declare a State of Emergency, but authorise a suspension of the Lunar Constitution and martial law. Give me sanction to do what it takes and I promise you, this city will be subdued by nightfall!"

  "At what cost?" demanded the Tek-Judge.

  "At any cost," Kessler retorted coldly. "If we choose any other course of action, we risk appearing weak before the rest of the world. We - Luna-1 - cannot take that risk."

  Che broke away from Kessler's hard gaze with a near-physical effort. Weakness. It was the one thing that the Judge-Marshal feared above all else, the one thing that Tex had been able to avoid by his sheer force of will. If Che appeared to be weak now, then everything around him would come crashing down. He would fail and Luna-1 would pay the price. "By order of the Chief Judge-Marshal of Luna-1," he intoned, fighting to keep his voice level, "as of now all Justice Department forces are to go to Defence Condition One status. The city's borders are to be sealed. Use of discretionary lethal force is authorised."

  Foster and J'aele said nothing, both of them shocked into silence.

  Kessler's lip tugged in a slight smile of victory. "I will need to deploy heavy weapons and combat firearms to all officers. With your permission, sir, I'd like to take direct command of the operation."

  Che nodded. "Yes, yes. You understand what must be done, Kessler. I place my trust in you." The Chief Judge seemed to sag in his chair.

  J'aele found his voice. "Sir, I must beg that you reconsider!"

  "You are dismissed!" Che barked, with sudden violence. "We will not be seen as weak! I want order imposed on Luna-1!"

  Kessler gave a curt nod and strode out of the office, with Foster and J'aele following in a heavy silence.

  Once he was alone, Che moved to a concealed cabinet behind Tex's desk and opened a small cooler where a bottle of old Earth whisky lay. Taking a glass in a trembling hand, he poured himself a large shot and bolted it down his throat in one sharp go. He found himself staring at the star-and-moon sigil behind the desk.

  "Santa Maria," he whispered to the empty room, "forgive me."

  "This?" Judge Hiro snapped at the robot, "You called me from a barricade under fire to show me this?" He stabbed his finger at the shape of a broken-down moon rover as other droids in the airlock garage hauled the dark, silent vehicle into the maintenance bay.

  The robot supervisor missed his angry tone. "It rolled to a halt just outside airlock four. Regulations demand that a Judge be present when any such unaccounted-for vehicle arrives at a city dome entrance-"

  Hiro waved the droid into silence. "Yes, yes, whatever. Just open it up and I'll be on my way. There's a million psycho cits on the streets and I still have a full clip of ammo." He patted the Hornet hand cannon slung over his shoulder with affection. "War is coming and I aim to be on the winning side."

  The robot crew worked the rover's door. Hiro gave the vehicle's registration a cursory glance - the code indicated an industrial unit, probably a runaway from a factory dome. The SJS-Judge snatched a torch from the supervisor and climbed inside. He expected to see a desiccated corpse, probably some idiot who had set out with the rover on auto-drive without filling up on air first. Instead, the first thing he noticed was the head of a hunter-killer droid, speared in the windscreen glass by a drill-bit. Hiro was about to say something when the cold metal shape of a pistol pressed into his temple.

  "Hello again," said Dredd. "Remember me?"

  Hiro had an L-Wagon parked outside, his partner, Wright, was inside. Kontarsky shot the other SJS officer with a stun bolt and took the flyer up into the air. Dredd made sure that Hiro was safely handcuffed in the crew compartment behind her.

  The Sov-Judge flew fast and low, swinging between towers and citi-blocks, making a fast beeline for the angular shape of the Spike.

  Dredd considered the Hornet he'd taken off the SJS-Judge. "What are you doing with this? It's not standard issue."

  Hiro snorted. "It's not exactly a 'standard issue' day, Dredd. Look out the window, you'll see what I mean."

  The senior Judge looked down on the streets flashing by beneath them and saw they were alive with fire and explosions. Omni-Tanks fired frag shells into crowds of armed citizens, Cyclops lasers sizzled through glasseen and steel and everywhere lay the dead, some torn apart by bullets, others trampled by mobs. "Grud! It's a warzone down there! What the drokk happened?"

  "Che grew a spine," Hiro retorted. "The SJS are in operational control now, Dredd. Kessler's going to make sure the cits learn a lesson in humility."

  The hollow thud of an explosion floated past the flyer and Kontarsky swore softly. "Multiple missile hits on Edward Norton Block to the south. I see five Mantas firing on the ruins."

  Hiro shrugged. "Can't make an synthi-omelette without breaking-"

  Dredd silenced him with a look. "Kessler likes the taste of blood, doesn't he?"

  "You ought to know."

  The senior Judge looked away. "Where are we?" he asked Kontarsky.

  "Landing now," she replied.

  Neither the Sov-Judge nor Dredd saw Hiro touch a blister on his glove, instantly sending an alert signal to Justice Central.

  The vast needle of the Luna-1 Computer Hub Tower, known throughout the metropolis as the Spike, loomed large in the cockpit window. Hiro sneered.

  "You won't be able to touch down without a clearance code. They'll blast you out of the sky first."

  Dredd threw Kontarsky a nod and she pushed the throttle to maximum, zooming toward the tower like a bullet. "It's not a problem," Dredd was almost casual. "We brought a key."

  The Sov-Judge took the L-Wagon into a controlled crash-landing on the seventy-seventh floor of the Spike, shattering a wall of glasseen panels to touch down in the middle of a small atrium. She feathered the controls enough to nose it through walls and into the arena-like command centre at the tower's core. Computer technicians and servo-droids scattered as the flyer's hatch opened.

  Dredd waved his STUP-gun at Hiro's head. "Stay here. Don't get cute."

  The SJS-Judge said something foul enough to earn him a dozen conduct demerits, but Dredd was already gone, climbing down af
ter Kontarsky.

  She menaced a quivering compu-tech with an icy glare. "Show me the main data processing monitor, now." The operator nodded a worried assent and led her to a panel. Dredd noted Kontarsky's method with approval. She had clearly picked up a few pointers from him on intimidation.

  "Run a sweep," Dredd told her. "Look for anything anomalous."

  She nodded. Having glimpsed the commands on the XF6 screens at the Oxy-Dome, Kontarsky now knew exactly what to search for - and in a few moments, she had found it.

  The Sov-Judge highlighted a series of tiny data strings hidden in the streaming virtual traffic of the hub. To Dredd they looked like single bubbles picked out of a churning foam of information. "Here. These match what we saw earlier."

  Dredd considered the screen. "If these hidden commands have been here all the time, why didn't J'aele and Tek Division spot them?"

  "It's ingenious," she marvelled. "The signals cloak themselves in the background chatter. Unless you know exactly, precisely, where to look for them, you'd think they were just glitches or junk data."

  The Judge drew his pistol and set the gun's power pack to cycle. "The Spike is shielded from electro-magnetic pulses from outside?" he asked the technician. He got a wary nod in return. "But not from inside, right?" Again, the man gave a nod. Dredd switched the pistol into self-destruct mode. "Where's the main router hub?"

  The sweaty little man pointed to a column of pulsing circuitry that ran along the length of the Spike. "Uh, there... But it's beam-shielded! You can't just shoot it!"

  "I'm not going to," Dredd replied and tossed his STUP-gun into the access channel surrounding the column. The weapon clattered against the hub and began to emit a keening whine. "I'd advise you take cover."

  Kontarsky rolled under the console just as Dredd's pulse pistol overloaded. The computer centre was lit by an actinic blue flash that turned the room into a still monochrome image and then everything went dark.

  Everything.

  17. NEGATIVE RETURN

  "Sneck!" yelled Foster from the saddle of his Skymaster. "Look at that!"

  To his left, flying behind him, Tek-Judge J'aele felt his gut tighten as every light in Luna-1 went out. It was like a huge blanket of darkness racing across the city below them. From the Apollo Territory in the north to Crater in the south, a wave of black enveloped the colony dome. J'aele's gaze flicked to the screen between his handlebars, the direct link to the central records computer at the Grand Hall of Justice - and instead of the usual train of data and readouts, there was an error message: Data link lost.

  The only illumination came from torches down on the street, the odd headlight beam from a vehicle or the twinkling orange-yellow reflections from a fire. At first, the Simba City Judge suspected an EMP weapon, but such a thing would have knocked out the controls of their Zippers as well and sent them plunging toward the ground. "It's Dredd," he said with grim certainty. "Who else could it be?" Overhead, the arc of a rising Earth was clearly visible through the dome, shining a dusky light over the metropolis.

  Foster's voice carried through the rushing air. "Judge Hiro's beacon signal is steady at the Spike. We're close."

  J'aele nodded. "Let's move. If we don't get to him first, Kessler's SJS are going to have Dredd's head before we find out what he's-"

  The Tek-Judge's words died in his throat. Just a suddenly as it had done dark, Luna-1 was coming back to life, lights and holos flashing back into being in a cascade of brilliant colour.

  "Total elapsed downtime, eighty-three point one-five seconds," Kontarsky read the figures from her wrist chronograph. "This is wrong. The system should take at least four minutes to recover and reboot itself."

  "I thought you said this would work, Kontarsky," Dredd growled.

  "It should have!" she shrilled. "There's no explanation why it wouldn't!"

  Around the control room, video screens blinked on in a surge of white static.

  "Oh oh oh, but there is!" A synthetic voice quacked out of the speakers. "Nice try, Judges, but oh so wrong, wrong, wrong!" The Moon-U caricature dropped into frame, wearing a parody of Kontarsky's East-Meg uniform. It toyed with an impossibly long rad-cape and strode around in a mocking lockstep, flipping from screen to screen around the room. "U think I'd let U pull the plug on my home town? No way Joe-Joe! Moon-U is 2 smart 4 U 2!"

  The Sov-Judge stared at the control panel in front of her, where the city's data stream raced past in a roiling rush of numbers. "Impossible! There's no way they could have hacked into the system so fast after a shutdown! It can't happen!"

  "No, it can't," Dredd agreed, an ice-cold certainty building up inside him. "Tek-Division have been scouring the city for a hideout for these hackers and they found nothing..."

  Moon-U capered around and tripped over its cape in a pratfall. "Can't catch me. He, he, he!"

  "But what if there is no hideout?" Dredd continued. "What if there are no hackers? Moon-U's not some computer geek's cartoon puppet... It's alive! There's no other explanation!"

  Kontarsky gasped. "An artificial intelligence? A self-aware program living inside the Luna-1 network..."

  Moon-U shrugged off the East-Meg outfit and toyed with a floppy T-shirt it wore underneath. The computer graphic imp studied a huge pocket-watch. "Tick-tock, tick-tock, Joe Dredd! Took U long enough 2 figure it out out out! Moon-U ain't a hacker... Moon-U is the hack!"

  One of the sweaty technicians shook his head. "But that kind of intelligent software is banned under the Turing Accords!"

  "Yeah," Dredd added. "Smart programs don't just grow on trees. That thing is way beyond the capacity of someone like Moonie."

  "Well, thanks 4 playing," the cartoon chirped. "But now Moon-U's got things 2 do, places 2 go, go, go..."

  Kontarsky's face froze as she studied the data stream. "Dredd, look at this. I think there is something else here, something encrypted in the AI's source code."

  "Hey!" Moon-U shifted, appearing with a towel wrapped around it, a shower cap on its head, brandishing a bath sponge. "No peeking! Can't a program get some privacy? Moon-U's all naked!"

  "Shut that thing up!" Dredd barked at the technician, peering at Kontarsky's screen. The Sov-Judge indicated an intermittent line of data and Dredd watched it scroll past. "Looks like a comm signal."

  "It is," Kontarsky replied. "It's encoded into every Moon-U transmission. Every time that moronic gnome appears on a public screen somewhere, it is putting out a series of subsonic pulses. They are just below the range of human hearing."

  "Moronic? How rude!"

  "Subliminals, just like Maktoh said," Dredd replied, his face tightening with annoyance. "Drokk! This thing isn't just stirring up the riots - it's causing them!"

  "And that's Moon-U's Q 2 zoom! Bye, bye, bye!" With a puff of digital smoke, the deformed figure disappeared, the screens returning to their normal settings.

  Dredd tapped on the console. "We've got to get this information to Che. This changes everything. Now we know what that Moon-U is, we've got a fighting chance of stopping it."

  They sprinted for the L-Wagon resting in the atrium. Dredd stepped through the hole Kontarsky's landing had made in the wall and into the sights of four guns.

  "Hands on your helmet, Dredd," said Foster, stepping into view. "Nice and easy."

  J'aele gestured at the Sov-Judge. "You too, Kontarsky."

  Freed from his cuffs, Hiro made a threatening move with his Hornet street cannon. He leered at the Mega-City Judge. "Nothing to say, Dredd? No pithy comeback? You've sealed your fate with this little stunt. How many people do you think your blackout has killed?"

  "A lot less than your SJS brutality!" Kontarsky snarled. "I saw what you skull-heads are doing out there! You make the East-Meg Secret Korps look like choirboys!"

  Hiro glanced at Wright, who looked uncomfortable - perhaps because the woman was telling the truth, or perhaps from the after-affects of her stun blast. "Don't be so gutless. Citizens only understand one thing: naked force. If some have to die for
us to underline that, then so be it."

  Foster gave him a sharp look. "What the spug are you made of, man? Whatever happened to 'serve and protect'?"

  "Scarface only believes in serving himself, isn't that right?" said Dredd. "Or maybe it's not Kessler who is holding your leash?"

  Hiro crossed the distance to Dredd in a flash, the Hornet at his chest. "Shut up, old man! You're a relic, just like Tex! Once Luna-1 is under new management, it'll be men like me who'll be in charge!" He gave an icy smile and cocked the weapon. "Maybe I should save Kessler the trouble of an execution detail and cap you right now."

  "Hiro," said Wright, "drop the gun." The other SJS-Judge aimed his pistol at his partner's head.

  "What?" Hiro exploded. "You're siding with them? You're weaker than I thought you were! You disgust me!"

  "Compassion isn't a weakness," Wright's voice was level and hard. "I always suspected you were dirty, but I never could believe it until now. You're in it with Moonie, aren't you?"

  "Wright, don't be a fool! This is bigger than you know!"

  The SJS officer shook his head. "I said drop it."

  Hiro snarled and spun in place, turning the gun toward him. Dredd saw the opening and lashed out, planting a perfect nerve-strike in Hiro's throat. The SJS officer crumpled into a heap.

  Wright frowned. "I am so sick of that guy."

  Dredd stepped over Hiro's unconscious form and scooped up his gun. Foster and J'aele exchanged glances. "Uh, Dredd," said the Brit-Judge. "Technically you're under arrest now."

  "Maybe later," Dredd replied, nodding at Kontarsky. "Bring these two up to speed." As the Sov-Judge conversed with the other men in urgent tones, Dredd approached Wright. "I thought you SJS types stuck together."

  "I had my fill of Kessler's orders," Wright replied. "He's got Che to suspend the constitution, but it's just made things worse. The streets are running red out there."