The Cold Light of Day
JUDGE DREDD: YEAR ONE
THE
COLD LIGHT
OF DAY
Michael Carroll
An Abaddon Books™ Publication
www.abaddonbooks.com
First published in 2013 by Abaddon Books™, Rebellion Intellectual Property Limited, Riverside House, Osney Mead, Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK.
Editor-in-Chief: Jonathan Oliver
Commissioning Editor: David Moore
Cover: Darren Douglas
Design: Simon Parr & Sam Gretton
Marketing and PR: Michael Molcher
Publishing Manager: Ben Smith
Creative Director and CEO: Jason Kingsley
Chief Technical Officer: Chris Kingsley
Copyright © 2013 Rebellion. All rights reserved.
Judge Dredd created by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra.
ISBN (epub): 978-1-84997-530-8
ISBN (mobi): 978-1-84997-531-5
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.
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Whiteout
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Psykogeddon
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More 2000 AD Action
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Durham Red
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Crucible
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Strontium Dog
Bad Timing
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Fiends of the Eastern Front
Operation Vampyr
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The Blood Red Army
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Twilight of the Dead
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Mega-City One
2080 AD
One
D
REDD DISMOUNTED HIS
Lawmaster and switched his helmet’s speakers to noise-cancellation mode, to muffle the roar of the crowd. It made a difference, but not as much as he’d have liked.
Though the streets were teeming, a wide clearing had automatically formed around him—it happened any time he stood still for more than a few minutes, as though the crowd was a living organism that regarded a Judge as an unwelcome infection. He turned slowly, watching the citizens at the edge of the clearing.
Every citizen had something to hide, something they felt guilty about. Something that made them sweat when a Judge was nearby.
Once, a few days after they graduated from the Academy of Law, Judge Gibson had said to him, “Joe, I’m starting to think that the whole
city
stinks of sweat. You get that? You walk up to a citizen and, bam, he’s got pit-stains. Happened to me a dozen times already.”
“Cite them for public hygiene violations,” Dredd had suggested.
“Sure. Give them
another
reason to be scared of us. That’ll help.”
Now, nearly a year into the job, Dredd had seen his share of terrified citizens. Even today, with all the excitement building for the annual Mega-City 5000 race, the citizens grew quiet as the Judges moved among them, bubbles of silent panic filtering through the throng.
A man waving a large “Spacers Suck!” flag saw Dredd, quickly looked away, and was now standing very still, the crowd’s chant of
“Mutants Forever!”
dying in his throat on the first syllable.
The short, bald man next to him said, “‘Moo’? Whaddaya mean, ‘Moo’? That some kinda
insult
? You sayin’ the Muties are cows? ’Cos if you
are
, pal, you an’ Freddie Fist here are gonna be gettin’ to know each other real drokkin’ intimate!”
Dredd placed his hand on the bald man’s shoulder. “Maybe Freddie Fist would like a date with Debbie Daystick.”
The bald man swallowed audibly. Under his breath he muttered, “Oh, sweet Jovus!” Then, louder, “No, Judge. Just makin’ banter, that’s all.”
“Banter, huh?” Dredd hauled the man out of the crowd. “Name and address.”
The man’s eyes were wide, his head already studded with beads of perspiration. “Ted-Teddy LeFevre. Apartment fifty-four, Winker Watson Block. I swear, I didn’t mean anything! I’m not the violent type.”
“How many warnings have you got, LeFevre?”
“None, Judge. I promise.”
“You’ve got one now. Threatening behaviour.” He grabbed LeFevre by the collar, pulled him closer. “We’re watching you. Understood? Might find myself dropping by Winker Watson Block tomorrow. How’s that sound to you? What are you hiding, LeFevre?”
“Nothing! I swear! I
super
-swear! I’ve never been in trouble with the law!”
“Until now. You’re on the watch-list, citizen.” He let go and shoved the man back into the crowd, then continued on his way.
Almost every Judge in the city was on the streets today, patrolling the crowd. Arrests and spot fines were already up two hundred per cent on the average day, and it wasn’t yet eight o’clock in the morning.
Dredd spotted a familiar glint of light off to his left—the tell-tale reflection of sunlight on a Judge’s helmet—and strode in that direction. The crowd parted around him: a Judge rarely had to ask a citizen to move out of the way.
The other Judge was female, tall and slender, maybe ten years older than Dredd. She nodded at him as he approached, and glanced at the name on his badge. “Dredd. Don’t know you, do I?”
Dredd returned the nod. “Judge Safford. No, we’ve never met. Crowd behaving themselves?”
“Been on the clock three hours now. Sixteen arrests. You?”
“Just came on.” They stood side-by-side and looked toward the cordoned-off street. The crowd was packed twenty-deep on this side of the street, probably twice that on the other side.
“This your first one?” Safford asked.
“Yeah. Word is it gets pretty intense.”
“
Intense
doesn’t cover it. It’s a foregone conclusion that either the Spacers or the Muties will win, so most of the cits don’t care about who hits the finishing post first. They just want to see some carnage. Word of advice: once the bikers reach this point, watch for dunks and taps. The crowd gets so wild you could probably barbecue a baby and they wouldn’t notice.”
“Dunks and taps,” Dredd said. “Got it.”
“How long have you been on the streets, Dredd?”
“Almost twelve months.”
“Class of ’79. Good year, I heard. You’re one of the
twins
, right? Heard you both scored top marks pretty much all the way through the academy.”
“That’s right.”
“Then tell me what laws are being broken right here, in front of you.”
“None,” Dredd replied. “But there’s potential.”
“There always is. Specifically?”
Dredd nodded toward a middle-aged man holding a mini-cam. “Illegal recording of a sponsored event. Can’t arrest him until the race actually starts.” To their left, a hottie-vendor who was far-too-casually wheeling her cart away. “Probably unlicensed trader. Possession of a hottie-cart isn’t illegal. We’d need to witness her exchanging goods for creds before we can arrest her. Same with the two juves behind us. Both wearing new, identical, home-made Spacers t-shirts, both carrying full backpacks. Bootleggers.”
Safford turned to look. “Huh. Missed that myself. Not bad.” She turned back and nodded toward a man wearing a long coat. “And
you
missed that guy. Bulge in his coat. Possible concealed weapon.”
“I saw him,” Dredd said. “Mid-fifties, pasty skin, sallow eyes, slight tremor in his hands, rash of small blisters on the side of his neck, trouble keeping his head raised. He’s in the advanced stages of a flesh-wasting disease, probably Lundsgaard Syndrome. The bulge under his coat isn’t a gun. It’s his med-pack. Sufferers of Lundsgaard Syndrome can’t process certain proteins—the med-pack does it for him.”
“Impressive,” Safford said.
“Not really. He was in your line of sight—you couldn’t have missed him. Figured you’d already checked him out. The fact that he’s not in cuffs, and that he hasn’t moved away from us, tells me he’s not breaking the law.”
“I mean, impressive that you correctly diagnosed his condition. You training for med?”
“No. But I read the textbooks, pay attention to the lessons.”
Judge Safford smiled. “You
can
relax a little now and then, Dredd. You’re not in the Academy any more. No need to keep hitting the books. You’re not a Judge twenty-four-seven.”
“Can’t say I agree with that, Safford,” Dredd said. “A Judge is always on duty.”
Another smile. “You’ll learn soon enough. Can’t keep your shoulder to the grindstone all the time. All work and no play makes Dredd a dull boy.”
“Disagree with that, too. The grindstone is what keeps a Judge
sharp
.” He stepped away. “Be seeing you, Safford.”
As he moved on through the crowd, he could sense Judge Safford watching him. She was like a lot of the older Judges he’d met. They thought of him as naive, idealistic. Green around the edges.
Didn’t bother him, as long as it didn’t stop them doing their job.
He spotted a dunk sidling toward a young couple—the man’s wallet was clearly visible in the back pocket of his trows—before the dunk just as smoothly shifted direction and sidled off. Dredd turned around and spotted a man of a similar age hurriedly looking away; the look-out, who’d warned his pal there was a Judge present.
Already, the look-out was slipping through the crowd, heading in the opposite direction from the pick-pocket.
Can’t catch both, not in this crowd...
Dredd took a deep breath, and bellowed, “Halt!”
The look-out skidded to a stop, as did every citizen in earshot.
Dredd pointed to the look-out. “You. Stay put! Got that?”
The man nodded feebly, and Dredd turned and ran in the other direction.
He’d only had a few seconds to glimpse the pickpocket, mostly from behind, but that was all he needed to recognise him again.