Wear Iron (5 page)

“I mean, right now, we’re just talking, y’know?” He’d said, eyes darting this way and that. “I’m talking about a possible score, you’re listening. I ain’t named any names. You walk away now? Well, it’d be a shame to lose you, Paulie. You’re one of the best, or you were last time I checked. But if I tell you all the details... if I tell you who I’m
with
in this... I can’t let you walk, Paulie. I mean,
he
can’t.” Mooney’d lowered his voice further, looking uncomfortable in a way Strader hadn’t seen before. “He’s dangerous, y’know? The kind of dangerous that gets you paid, sure, but... you do not want to cross the man.”

Strader had finished his rotgut—regretting it even as it hit his throat—and stood, meaning to say he was out. This situation broke two of his rules. For one thing—never, ever have anything to do with the Judges. Even the corrupt ones—they were either double-bluffing you, waiting to reel you in on a sting, or they were genuinely crooked, in which case they were unpredictable and hard to work with. The whole point of Judges was that they weren’t part of the real world—they were on the monk trip, celibate, almost completely removed from society. A corrupt one wasn’t fully part of their world
or
yours—which made them dangerous. And not the kind of dangerous that gets you paid.

Not to mention that Mooney having a friend on the force was confirmation of all the whispers that had done the rounds, the ones that said he wasn’t to be trusted. So there was that.

The other rule—once upon a time he’d had them all written down—was never to say yes to a job before you know all the details. Ideally, you can massage any flaws in the details yourself, but some plans were just unworkable, and you didn’t want to be locked in to an unworkable plan. Especially with the kind of people who might decide not to let you out again. Like, for instance, bent Judges who ran protection rackets on operators like him.

He’d stood, looked Mooney in the eye, and...

“I’ll think about it.”

And now, here he was, in an empty plastic park. Thinking about it. He leaned against the artificial tree and looked up at the fizzing screens. As long as you didn’t try to pretend they were a sky, they were pretty soothing.

He
was
locked in, that was the problem. Within days, he was going to be either dead or cubed—unless he had enough money in his pocket, in cash, to pay off his debts and get out of the city before the net closed in. And now this opportunity had fallen into his lap, as if karma was paying him back somehow for the mess in Texas City.

He scowled, looking down at the sickly grass, squashing the superstition before it took root in his mind. In his experience, the day you started using words like
karma
and believe that there was any kind of balance in the universe was the day you booked your trip on the Resyk belt.

Still, a score like this would net him a cool ten million share at the absolute lowest—enough to set him up for years, maybe even enough to retire on. He could, if he wanted, buy a bar somewhere with no extradition treaties and live comfortably off the proceeds for the rest of his life. This could be his ticket out of the game. Was that something he could afford to say no to? He might not believe in karma, but he believed in the laws of probability, and a payout as big as this wouldn’t come his way again.

He looked back up, focussing on the flickering sky above his head, and decided, as a mental exercise, to assume the worst. Everything that could go wrong, would go wrong.

He assumed Mooney’s mysterious Judge-buddy was going to blackmail them—or worse, was working undercover to trap and cube them. He assumed that the plan Mooney had in mind was a drunken pipe-dream with more holes in it than a bagel factory. He assumed at least three other teams were working on heists of their own at the same time, looking to swoop in on their score—Mooney couldn’t be the only one to have noticed what was under everyone’s nose. He assumed that the Jays had closed off every angle, thought through every possible plan of attack, that he was going to the cubes no matter what he did.

Strader scowled a little more at that, the mental image too much to take. He changed it to an assumption that he’d come out of this with a bullet in the head, and felt much better—the daydream of his own brains splattered on a pristine stadium wall seemed infinitely preferable. A measure of fatality gripped him—even assuming the worst, assuming that he’d come out of this warming a cube or, preferably, riding the belt... what would he have lost? Not a thing.

He was headed in the same direction now—a little slower, that was all.

The thought was bizarrely relaxing, like a weight lifting from him. He looked down from his reverie to see that three juves had wandered into the block park through one of the entry-ways—their spiked leather jackets, a well-worn cliché that was enjoying a brief comeback, were covered with dancing brown homunculi in various sizes, amidst the words TONY HART BLOCK MIGHTY MORPHS. One of the new juve gangs.

Strader gave them a quick look-over, checking to see if they had any real weapons. They weren’t carrying stutterguns—a bitter smile crossed his face at the thought—but they’d have switchblades on them at the very least. The toughest-looking of the three, a girl of about sixteen with torn-off sleeves, subdermal implants running up her forearms and jet-black eyes—eyeball tattoos, Strader realised, and found himself wincing in sympathetic pain—had the tell-tale bulge of a shoulder holster under one of her lapels. He supposed that made her the leader; the other two, a couple of barely-pubescent boys—one shorter than she was and still covered in a layer of babyfat, the other tall and gangly—seemed like they were just along for the ride, playing entourage.

Suddenly, the girl turned, looking at Strader with a snarl, revealing that her teeth had been filed down to points. “What you wincin’ at, geeko?” Strader sighed gently, irritated with himself. He’d been caught staring—never a good thing with juves.

The two boys with her grimaced and postured in turn, trying to one-up each other. “Sorry.” Strader set his face in what he hoped was a smile. “Didn’t mean anything by it.” His eyes flicked over her shoulder holster, and he found himself wondering just how much practice she’d had with it. She was young, but they started early these days.

“You know that’s our tree, geek?” She spat, hitting the toe of his shoe. The file teeth gave her a slight lisp, which on someone else might have seemed comical. She gave him a hard stare with her jet-black eyes, and he quietly stepped to the side.

“Sorry. I’ll go somewhere else.” He was smiling, keeping his tone pleasant, ingratiating, but he had a feeling he already knew how this would end. The fingers of his gun hand twitched, and he felt the iron hanging, heavy with bullets, in his jacket. Waiting for its turn to speak.

“Who said you could leave?” The girl took a step closer, and the boys, swapping glances, reached into their jacket pockets and pulled out a pair of plasteen-handled flick-knives, cheap mail-order crap from the back of a Citi-Def magazine. Strader felt his mind numb, as it had in the jewellery store when things had gone bad. Rationally, he knew there was still a way to escape the situation without violence, to keep hiding out peacefully in this quiet, near-derelict block while he considered his next move. But at the same time, he felt his hand slide closer to the concealed holster in his jacket.

Once he made the move—once he drew—it would all happen very quickly. He had no doubt he was faster than the girl, although she was close enough that she might be able to leap on top of him before he could aim—at which point those file teeth would probably bite into his neck. He had a feeling she’d done that before. But assuming she didn’t think of that, he had enough in the magazine to put two into her and then deal with both of the boys before they could—

“Hey!”

Strader turned towards the sound of the voice—a deep, rough growl, like gravel passing through an industrial hopper—and he felt ice shoot up his spine, freezing him in place.

It was a Judge. More—it was
the
Judge, the one from the jewellery store, the kid.

Dredd.

He’d been scary—scarier than a kid with a badge should have been—when Strader had glimpsed him through the closing doorway in the jeweller’s. There, he’d been all lean, violent muscle and black leather, all purpose—but there was something even more terrifying about him now, as he strode across the livid fake grass to meet them, fists swinging almost jauntily at his sides.

Strader didn’t know how he knew.

But he knew that face wasn’t meant to be smiling.

“Well, well, well,” Dredd grinned, and there was a cruel joy in that deep gravel voice that made Strader shudder. Dredd smiled with his teeth, pearly white and incongruous against the black of the uniform. He flashed his grin at Strader, and for a moment Strader wondered why his hand was back at his side, why he hadn’t gone for his piece and fired a bullet through that visor already. But there was another part of him that knew with a cold, hard certainty that Dredd could drop to a firing position and put a hole right through his heart without even breaking his stride. Without losing that smile.

“Take a step back, Paul,” Dredd said in that deep, dark voice, and Strader felt his blood ice over in his veins.

“What?”

But Dredd wasn’t listening—he’d already turned his attention to the three juves. “You know, you three are a long way away from the hundred and sixtieth floor. That’s home turf for you Morphs, right? Down here belongs to the Mister Bennett Boys.”

The three of them had backed up a little—the boys were shooting nervous glances at their leader, visibly sweating, the hands holding the knives rammed deep in the pockets and out of sight—it was pretty clear they hadn’t signed up for this. Up until now, they’d been playing pretend, making believe that they were grown-ups, that they knew what they’d do when things got serious—and now it was real, now they were a heartbeat away from years of cube-time, they’d remembered they were just kids after all.

The girl didn’t say a word.

“So I guess this is an initiation. You three go back with a scalp, and you get to keep those jackets. Am I right?” Dredd was still smiling, the deep voice genial, amused. He jerked a thumb in Strader’s direction. “Grandpa over there, maybe? Let me see if I understand—you weren’t going to hurt him. You were just going to get his tie. Or his wallet. Or maybe his thumb.”

“It ain’t l-like that—” the taller of the boys stammered, looking helplessly at the girl—she shot him a look back with her jet-black eyes, shutting him up.

Strader could see how Dredd was narrowing his focus in his body language. He was concentrating entirely on the girl now—she was the key to the situation. Strader couldn’t work out why Dredd was taking the approach he was, though. He took another step back, away from whatever was about to happen.

“Sure it is,” Dredd said, almost crooning, flashing another smile. “Come on, sweetheart. You think I don’t see that pistol you’ve got strapped to your shoulder?” The smile dropped, and Strader held his breath. “Here’s how it is,” Dredd said, very quietly. “You three are heading to the cubes. Nothing you can do about that. But there’s two ways you can do this. Easy or hard.”

The girl opened her mouth, ready to spit venom, but something in Dredd’s eye shut her up. He let her have the moment, and then carried on speaking. “The easy way, you go away for about six months. No more. That’s the lowest end of the weapon possession charge—if you hand over what you’ve got right now. That’s me being nice.” He smiled again, and there was something in that smile that made Strader want to run for one of the exits—but he knew he wouldn’t make it three feet.

“The hard way... we go high end on the weapon possession, add in a little mugging, intent—you can get real finickity with intent, that’s one of the first things you learn at the Academy. We could go right up to attempted murder. Thirty years.” He cocked his head, looking her up and down. “With those teeth and that eyeball-ink, I could get away with fifty. You can’t even imagine that kind of time, can you?” He smirked. “Half a century without seeing a human face.”

One of the boys broke down in tears. The other looked white, ghostly, and like he might vomit at any second. Strader looked at the girl, and saw that her eyes had gone very wide, and her bottom lip was starting to tremble. It was one thing to be defiant in the face of the law when it was implacable and intractable, Strader knew. When you were given the choice, like this—comply or face the consequences—it was the easiest thing in the world to knuckle under. To take the deal.

“Just show me the gun. You too, boys.” Dredd’s voice was soft—softer than Strader would have believe that cracked-gravel larynx capable of. There was something wrong about all this—about the whole approach—but Strader couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

The girl blinked, those big black eyes suddenly seeming very large and vulnerable, not menacing at all. Then, hand shaking, she reached into her jacket, gently sprung the clasp on the holster, and very slowly—making sure not to point it at anyone—she drew the gun out.

Dredd shot her.

He moved so fast Strader didn’t realise what he was looking at at first. One minute, the Judge was standing, hands empty, quietly cajoling—the next, he was in a crouch, the gun in his hand, barrel smoking, and the girl was stumbling back a pace, the gun clutched in her hand and a dark red puncture wound right in the middle of her forehead. The back of her head was gone.

As the girl toppled back, the bright red of her blood staining the livid green of the plastic grass, Dredd aimed and fired twice more. The smaller of the two boys had time for a scream, shrill and hideously truncated.

And then Dredd slid the Lawgiver back into its boot holster, straightened up, and turned back to Strader. “You saw it,” he smiled. “Well, you were never here, but you get the point. They drew on me. I had no choice.”

“You...” Strader swallowed hard, mouth dry. “You killed them.”

“Kill shot’s the safe shot, Paulie. That’s what they drum into you at the Academy.” He smiled, glancing over the cooling corpses. “Pretty good shot placement, don’t you think? Dead centre, head or heart—perfect as always, that’s what they used to say about me. Maybe I should go back to the Academy shooting range one of these days—don’t you think? Give the instructors a thrill.”