The Cold Light of Day (11 page)

Shock spotted an oil slick far ahead and eased to the left to avoid it. “What do you mean, winnings?”

“Jaunty bet against himself. He always did. He put fifty grand down that he’d not make it to the half-way point. Got four-to-one from The Smilin’ Aztec.”

“Why the hell would he—”

“Because if he wins the race, he doesn’t care about losing the stake, and if he loses the race, he wins the bet.”

Shock laughed. “Damn. That’s smarter than I ever gave him credit for. No wonder the drokker was always happy. Should have done the same thing myself.”

Quisling said, “Shock, you’ll hit The Crowbar in ninety seconds. Come out of it in one piece.”

“That’s the plan.” Shock shut off the comm-link and focussed his attention on the road ahead.

Here, as he approached The Crowbar, temporary seating had been erected on either side of the road, packed with thousands of cheering fans, each of whom had paid at least two hundred credits for the privilege. When it came to the Mega-City 5000, the citizens weren’t afraid to spend good money in the hope of seeing their favourite biker, even if it was only for a second or two as he or she zoomed past.

Directly ahead of Shock, the independent rider in ninth position—Gavin Sable—slowed way down. Shock cruised past him, then nudged his bike to the right and drew parallel with Tiana Valdivia in eighth, just as Valdivia had been edging to the right side of the track in order to take the first corner of The Crowbar.

This forced Valdivia to slow down and draw back. On Shock’s monitor, Valdivia fell into position right behind him, and Shock pulled his first dirty trick of the race. It wasn’t technically against the rules, but it was the sort of thing that very much divided the fans. He flipped a switch on his controls and his Blenderbike’s rear brake light came on.

Valdivia, thinking that Shock was slowing down, reacted by hitting her own brakes. It was a simple idea and Shock grinned to himself as he saw the gap between them immediately widen.

That should have been the extent of it, but Valdivia had been taken completely by surprise. She’d hit the brakes too hard, and her bike wobbled, and wavered. Its front wheel suddenly flipped to the left and then Valdivia was in the air, tumbling, her bike shedding jagged metal fragments as it spun and crashed along behind her.

Valdivia came down head-first with a noise loud enough to be heard even over the gasps of the crowd.

Shock didn’t directly see what happened next—he was already past the next corner and gaining on the rider in seventh place—but the TV cameras caught every moment of it, and relayed it to his bike’s screen.

Gavin Sable was moving too fast to safely avoid the debris from Valdivia’s bike. His front wheel collided with the fuel tank, crushing it, spraying the road with the high-octane compound.

Aw crap
, Shock thought.
Just one spark and—

A shard of Sable’s bike, later determined to be a drive-shaft, crashed down onto the road’s surface. The fuel erupted, a massive ball of white-hot flame that turned the rest of the bike—and much of Sable’s body—into burning shrapnel.

It was the biggest single-crash accident in the race’s history: ten riders killed within seconds, six of them muties.

Shock forced himself to keep calm, telling himself over and over that it wasn’t his fault. Valdivia had been too close, she’d over-reacted to the brake-light trick.
She should have been a better biker,
Shock told himself.
Who the hell allowed her to participate, anyway? There ought to be laws about that sort of thing. If you’re not up to standard, you shouldn’t be permitted to enter the race.

As Shock neared the end of The Crowbar, his screen showed him that Napoleon Neapolitan had come through the crash unharmed, his bike’s oversized wheels allowing him to ride over most of the debris with little damage.

Shock’s screen flickered and Napoleon’s face was glaring out at him. “
You
did that, Shock. That’s six of my men wiped out. Screw the rules. Screw the
race
. You’re a dead man riding.”

Fourteen

R
ILEY
M
OELLER HAD
given Dredd a list of five names, all former scavengers. Dredd recognised the names of all except one, Winston Fierro. Five years ago, when everything fell apart for Chalk in Eminence, Fierro had been temporarily seconded to a team combing the undercity, the ruins on top of which Mega-City One had been constructed.

Of the five, only Dean James Squire and Rhea Kinsley were still operating as scavengers. They had both applied for and been granted leave to return to the city and watch the race.

Fierro and the others were now unemployed, their contracts terminated one by one as the constant scouring of the Cursed Earth had picked the wastelands clean of useful materials. “All three of them are still in the city,” Control told Dredd.

The closest to Moeller’s apartment was Marshall Rose, resident of James Blocker Block. Control confirmed to Dredd that Rose was at home: thirty minutes ago he’d gone online to order a Mega-City 5000 souvenir thermal underwear set during one of the race’s many commercial breaks.

Dredd was minutes away from the block when his radio buzzed. “Dredd? This is Judge Franklyn, at Blocker... It’s not good news. Rose is dead. So’s his partner and three friends who were with them watching the race. Not more than a few minutes, I’d say—blood’s still dripping down the walls. Perp came in through the door, shooting. Took Rose down with a large calibre. Likely the same point-seven-six recoilless from the diner. We’re pulling the block’s security cams and I’ve called for back-up to run a door-to-door on the block, but I wouldn’t hold out any hope.”

Dredd was already veering off into a cross-street. “Acknowledged, Franklyn. Stay on the scene until forensics can identify the friends.”

Dredd checked his bike’s screen. The next closest potential target was Avril-Jane Morante. He called up her citizen’s ID card, showing a stocky woman with blonde hair: Dredd recognised her as one of the other hostages from the mayor’s warehouse in Eminence.

Should have been a full investigation
, Dredd said to himself. There had been no reason to suspect Percival Chalk of anything beyond the killing of Mayor Genesis Faulder, but as the only Judge present, Ruiz should have ordered a complete background check on the other hostages.
Sloppy work. Even if Ruiz
had
been beaten and tortured, she should have known better than to believe their side of the story without checking it out.

Avril-Jane Morante’s block was on the west side of Sector 179, and right now Dredd was sixty-four kilometres away in Sector 55. On a normal day, it would take him twenty minutes to cover that distance. Today, traffic was a lot lighter because everyone was watching the race... But Sector 179 was cut right down the middle by the fastest stretch of the Mega-City 5000.

“Dredd to Control. I require an air-lift. Get a H-wagon to my location ASAP.”

“Nearest available H-Wagon is in Sector 40, Dredd. ETA fifteen minutes.”

“Not good enough. Find the closest
un
available one and
make
it available.”

“You’re still looking at twelve minutes minimum, Dredd. What’s your destination?”

“Joanne Vanderbilt Block, Sector 179.” Already, Dredd could hear the roar of the crowd gathered around the race’s route.

“Understood. I’ll—” The voice of Control was cut off, and another voice said, “Dredd—this is supervisor Walton. Word from Judge Meacham at Vanderbilt. Citizen Morante is dead. Meacham is in pursuit of two male suspects, one matching the description of your perp. They’re still in the block. I’ve ordered it to be sealed but current response times are slow.”

“Drokk...” Dredd focussed on the road ahead. To get from his current location to Joanne Vanderbilt Block, he’d have to cross the race line at some point. There were underpasses and flyovers, but nothing that wouldn’t take him too far out of the way. The fastest route was straight through. “Walton, I’m westbound on Avenue Double-A, four minutes ten away from the track.”

“I see you, Dredd. But—”

“Order the crowd-marshals to clear me a path through to the track, and shift the barriers wide enough for me to pass through. Two metres should be enough. Same on the other side. I’m cutting across the track.”

“Recommend against that action, Dredd. The race leaders have just emerged from The Crowbar, and right now they’re going hell-for-leather to establish their positions. That’s a four-hundred kilometre stretch... By the time they reach your position they’ll be touching five hundred KPH. Cutting across them would be—”

“You’d better be getting it done while you’re talking to me, Walton,” Dredd snarled. “Three minutes fifty.”

Walton muttered, “Grud-damn it...” and began shouting orders. “It’s in progress, Dredd. No guarantees. You hit the barriers at the speed you’re going and there’ll be another Judge for us to bury, if we can find all the pieces.”

Ahead of Dredd, Avenue Double-A straightened out, giving him a clear run to the race’s route.

A
S HE PEELED
out of the last curve on The Crowbar, Shock slammed on his Blenderbike’s accelerator and afterburners at the same time. Ahead of him, Vavavoom Grupp was in sixth place, less than a second behind Travis Cannon.

Behind Shock, Napoleon was coming up fast, his custom-built machine sailing past Aposcar Kresky in eighth as though he were standing still.

Napoleon and the other surviving Muties had been bombarding Shock with obscenities and threats constantly since the accident in The Crowbar, and Shock’s screen showed that public opinion had completely turned against him.

Even if he won the race, he’d be despised. There would be no big-name sponsorship deals.

For a moment, he considered pulling out. There was still time to pretend that he hadn’t grasped the extent of the crash. He might just be able to get out of this mess and save face. Might even find a way to persuade everyone that his brake light came on as the result of a malfunction, not a deliberate action.

But now he wanted to win. He wanted that more than the money any sponsorship deals might bring. He wanted to win so that next time he met that smug drokker Napoleon Neapolitan face-to-face, he could brush it off like it was no big thing.

And it wasn’t just for him. The Spacers was one of the city’s largest biker gangs. A thousand members were rooting for him, desperate to finally shut those damn Muties up once and for all.

A warning message flashed on his screen: “Caution—track compromised! Cut speed and prepare to stop!”

Yeah, right,
Shock thought.
Easy enough to hack into a bike’s computer and send fake messages. Clever trick, Napoleon, but you’re not fooling me.

He wiped the warning message off the screen and called up the positions. Napoleon was in eighth place now, only a kilometre behind Shock, and maintaining his speed. All of the other racers were slowing down.

Okay,
that’s
not good
, Shock thought.
If the warning was real, then—

Directly ahead of him, something large, dark and fast streaked across the track.

Shock swore and slammed on his brakes. The Blenderbike’s speed dropped to three hundred, two hundred, one-fifty...

And Napoleon Neapolitan’s giant-wheeled monstrosity shot past him.

“Drokker!” Shock screamed. He jerked back on the accelerator again, ramped it up to full speed as he passed a barely-glimpsed gap in the barrier. Napoleon was already a dot in the distance.

D
REDD’S
L
AWMASTER ROARED
along Avenue Double-A and he tried not to notice the horrified expressions on the thirty-citizen-deep crowd as he approached the narrow gap the Judges had forced between them.

Three more Judges were heaving frantically at the temporary barrier, trying to shift it aside before Dredd reached them. Dredd knew he could tear it to shreds with his bike’s cannons, but that would be disastrous for anyone standing nearby. He eased his fingers toward the Lawmaster’s brakes, though he knew that at this speed he’d never be able to stop in time.

With a last shove, the three Judges shifted the barrier just barely wide enough for the Lawmaster: it lost some chrome as it passed through, and then Dredd was darting across the track toward the gap on the other side, aware that any number of fast-moving bikers could be barrelling toward him from the right.

He kept his eyes straight ahead. No point looking—if one of the bikers was going to crash into him, at the speed they were all travelling he’d get a fraction of a second of warning, nowhere near enough time to get clear.

Then he was on the other side, his Lawmaster coming within a centimetre of clipping one of the Judges who was trying to keep the crowd back.

“I’m through,” Dredd said to Control.

“I see that,” Walton said. “Damn. Should have had money on you, Dredd.”

“Gambling’s illegal, Walton. What’s the situation with Chalk?”

“Still not confirmed that it
is
him. Judge Meacham’s got the suspects pinned down in the block’s multi-storey parking lot. He reports that the suspects are armed. All interior cams are down. No fault reports logged—must have just happened.”

Dredd slowed his bike to ease it around a corner. “Send Meacham’s current position to my bike and patch me through to him.” He ramped up the speed again. Joanne Vanderbilt Block was directly ahead.

“Meacham here,” a voice over the radio said.

“Meacham, this is Dredd. I’m your back-up. Status?”

“Parking lot’s full—overflowing, in fact. I’m on level twenty-six. Perps are somewhere above me. All exits are sealed. The only way out is through me.”

“Acknowledged. ETA two minutes. Don’t let him get past you.”

“Wasn’t planning on it.”

Joanne Vanderbilt Block was a mid-sized building, ninety storeys tall, clad in polished plasteen—designed to be resistant to graffiti and general weathering—and home to over one hundred thousand citizens. Running vertically through the building’s core was its parking lot. Although few of the block’s citizens actually owned vehicles, they still guarded their parking spots with extreme vigour and took great offence to anyone using them. Except on occasions like the Mega-City 5000, when the residents hung a huge, hand-painted banner from the roof announcing that parking for the day was available at only twenty credits per vehicle, per hour.