Psykogeddon (2 page)

It would be a mistake to think that it made him sad and hurt, because that would imply that Robert Roberts was capable of feeling such things. He simply didn't think it was right. He didn't like it and he did not want it to happen, and so, of course, it shouldn't.

For nights Robert Roberts had lain awake, the machinery of his mind ticking and clicking over the facts of his life, incapable of translating them into any active thought or word. It was not inside him. He was not and would never, of his own volition, be able to put his thoughts into action.

And then, on that particular and otherwise perfectly ordinary night, something changed. Little Robert, simply, and without caring much, decided upon what he had to do to change the world.

As the Roberts family went through its processes of grief for their new child who had suffered crib death in the night, as their minds very carefully prevented certain thoughts from even occurring to them, Robert made himself say, do and even
think
the right things, so that his mother and father started to like him, and realise that there was nothing wrong or slightly frightening about him after all.

Except inside, of course. Where such things really count.

So sensitive did he seem, so outwardly compassionate, that in the fullness of time he was ordered to report for Justice Department Psi-Division assessment, on the possibility that this was the evidence of some nascent psionic ability that might be of use. When that day came, his doting parents passed him into the care of the Judges with shuddering, suppressed sighs of relief that they could not acknowledge even to themselves.

Over the years, the med-techs of Psi-Division tried any and all manner of means to unlock the potential in Robert Roberts's head - ultimately without success. It turned out to be the absolute reverse of success, in fact.

Little Robert didn't mind. He didn't mind about anything. And he was learning quite a few other things than what the med-techs thought they were teaching him.

And the years passed...

Backflash: 01: 28: 2125

On the bridge of
Justice One
, the flagship of the Mega-City One space fleet, hovering over the fungus jungles of a Boranos system planetoid, Efil Drago San smirked to himself as slugs stitched into human forms and bodies blew apart under hi-ex.

"How perfectly marvellous," he said. "Our erstwhile heroes triumph, victory snatched from the claws of seemingly overwhelming odds. The forces of good - or what passes for it in a naughty world - once again hold sway."

As the only one available with the expertise to get
Justice One
off the ground, he had been left in charge of the bridge to offer aerial support while Judge Dredd effected a suitably daring rescue of his Justice Department comrades, who had been kidnapped by privateers working for the Boranos Accord, from the encampment below.

It was nice to have some relative degree of freedom again. Admittedly, thought Drago San, he was currently handcuffed to the
Justice One
pilot's chair, but it was a world of improvement over the last few days, the majority of which he had spent running through the fungus jungles as a fugitive, handcuffed to Judge Dredd.

Or actually, Dredd had been doing all the running. Efil Drago San had been forced to keep up by means of the null-grav paraplegic floater that was integral to his lower body and approximated the general effect of having legs.

It had been amusing, for a while, to slow Dredd up and have his so-called disability cause all manner of complications purely for the hell of it. By this time, however, such little amusements had long since paled to the point of becoming wearisome. It really was, Drago San considered, now time to elevate his state of relative freedom a little further.

"Time to add a little something of my own to the mix, Dredd," he murmured, regarding the death and destruction on the screen as it appeared to be winding down. "Time, I rather think, to tie the spotted hankie to the pole and go."

On the ground in the shadow of
Justice One
, Dredd fast-scanned the privateer compound for further signs of danger. Everyone who was down, it seemed, was down for good. Those who weren't dead were making it very clear that they weren't about to get up and pose any kind of threat.

"Looks like the last of them, Karyn," he said. He pulled the utility knife from his boot and handing it to her. "Time we were leaving."

"Yeah." Psi-Judge Karyn took the knife and used it to cut away the collar with which the privateers had fitted her and which served as a neural-damper, rendering her psi-talent useless.

That had been the privateers' big mistake. They had assumed that a Psi-Judge without her powers was useless, and so they had not even bothered to restrain her for torture as they had with other Justice Department personnel and the
Justice One
crew. They had simply shut her up in a makeshift cell and assumed she'd spend her time cowering in the dark.

Psi-Judge Karyn, however, had been made of sterner stuff than that. She had fought her way out bare-handed for as long as it took to score some weapons, then made it to the communications hut, where she had held off all attackers long enough to send out the tracking signal that had led Dredd and Drago San through the fungus jungle to the camp. Then they had been able to sneak aboard
Justice One
and retake it.

"Let's call this Drago San guy down so's we can pick up the wounded," she said, returning Dredd's knife.

Dredd stuck the knife back in his boot and pulled his personal comms unit from his belt. "Okay. Bring her down, Drago San."

There was a moment of silence.

"Drago San?" said Dredd.

"Oh, I don't think so," came the voice of Drago San, booming from the ship's external tannoy. "I rather don't think I want to at this point."

A weapons package in the belly of
Justice One
tracked round. A high-yield pulse slammed into the grounded ship that had been used by the privateers in their initial attack.

The privateer ship erupted in a detonation that knocked Dredd, Karyn and the surviving
Justice One
crew off their feet.

"The drokk!" Karyn shouted. "What the drokk did he do that for?"

"So glad you asked, Psi-Judge Karyn," came the tannoy-voice of Efil Drago San. "One does enjoy these little chats. Now, Dredd, you'll remember that I told you that I didn't have sufficient skill to pilot a ship, unaided, between actual star systems? Well, I lied."

"Drokk!" Dredd exclaimed.

"Dear me," said Drago San. "That single word does rather seem to define our relationship, doesn't it? I go and do something, then you go and say that particular word.

"Now, my first thought was to use the guns of your own ship to simply wipe you out, but on the whole, I think I'd rather prefer to leave you stranded here on this ultimately quite inhospitable planet." He chuckled. "The water, I gather, is drinkable - I notice from the bioscan-analysis - but the flora and fauna are completely incompatible with the humanoid metabolism. I estimate the first acts of attempted cannibalism within two weeks of the foodstuffs in the compound running out.

"I have half a mind to hang around in orbit to watch, don't you know. So far as I'm concerned, it would be a small reminder of home."

"Oh yeah?" Dredd growled. "I don't think so." He raised his personal comms-unit again. "Computer. Internal countermeasures system, now."

"Complying
,"
came the voice of the
Justice One
computer system.

"Dear me, what?" Drago San got no further, because at that instant a collection of servo-powered blades burst from their housings in the ceiling and halted a bare millimetre from his throat. "Oh, I say!"

"Failsafe anti-personnel countermeasures have been deployed," came the voice of the computer system. "You will relinquish command-codes to authorised Justice Department personnel immediately."

The blades clicked threateningly.

"I relinquish command-codes to authorised Justice Department personnel immediately," said Efil Drago San, dispiritedly but swiftly.

"Thank you, unauthorised user," said the computer-system, as the thrusters of
Justice One
changed tone and wound down. "Automatic landing procedures commencing. Have a nice day."

"You never told me that you had those kinds of lethal countermeasures on board, Dredd," said Drago San indignantly. "Why would you neglect to tell me that you had those kinds of lethal countermeasures on board? Who knows what I might have done to trigger them, in all innocence, purely in the course of flying the support you yourself asked me to give?"

"You never asked," said Dredd. "A Judge's Lawgiver explodes if anyone but him touches it. You think we don't do the same with other stuff?"

"Strikes me," Drago San said, "that you could have used them when those erstwhile privateers were overrunning the ship."

"Activating them then wouldn't have stopped us being overrun," Dredd told him. "And it would have left us all stranded. They're for when some traitorous drokker tries to take over the helm."

"Now really, Dredd." Drago San exclaimed. "I resent that. That's criminal mastermind profiling, that is. I was of inestimable use to you, and now you simply chain me up again like an... urk!"

This last comment was rudely interrupted as Dredd gave the cuffs securing him to Drago San a more than necessarily vicious yank.

"I don't deal in your pathetic attempts to twist the truth, Drago San," he said. "I just deal with what's in front of me - and what's in front of me is a creep who'd turn traitor at the drop of a hat."

"Once again, Dredd, I must protest." Drago San turned thoughtful. "What kind of hat? Is it a nice one? I must admit that, on occasion, I could rather do with a new hat."

They had been making their way back through the ship toward the brig, where a
Justice One
crewman was tinkering with a collection of servo-powered blades in a cell.

"We're reinstalling the security countermeasures here, for the time being," Dredd told Drago San, "where they'll do the most good. First thing you do on the voyage home that I don't like, they start to slice and dice. Welcome to the mechanism of Mega-City Justice, Drago San."

Secondary Information: Dying on the Inside

Somewhere, someone is screaming that a tiny arm is hanging out of the pupil of their left eye. Pale and thin to the point of being skeletal, the homunculus within waves desperately with the last of its dying strength.

Arfie knows what "homunculus" means. It means "little man". Arfie knows things like that. In fact, he knows that it's the little men inside people's heads, looking back at you from behind their eyes, that make them real.

This has gotten Arfie into trouble at times. More times than he can count. It's why he's in trouble now.

A lot of people simply do not have these little men inside. This means that, although they might be walking around and talking - talking all the time, in some cases - they are not truly real and alive. You can do what you like to them.

The Judges hadn't liked that, for some reason. They especially hadn't liked it when Arfie cut up some empty people to see what made them go. He'd only wanted to see what made them move and breathe and act like they were alive when they had nothing inside.

They just didn't understand. A squad of them had burst into his con-apt as Arfie was peaceably flushing the last remains of a Fattie he had seen in the Eighteen Wheeler Velodrome, and had brought home on the promise that he had a big pie in the refrigerator. They had shot him in the leg. It had hurt worse than anything he had ever felt before.

They had their helmets on, so you couldn't see if there was anything inside them or not. Probably not, because otherwise they would have understood. They'd have understood that all the blood and blubber might look nasty, but it wasn't truly real, from a real person, and so it didn't count.

Instead, they had shackled him and dragged him out onto the walkway outside the con-apt. Arfie hadn't liked not being able to move his hands, and his leg was hurting very much. But that wasn't the worst thing that happened.

The worst thing was the Justice Department hover-wagon floating by the walkway, as if it had any right whatsoever to be there.

Arfie knew about hover-vehicles, obviously. He isn't stupid. But there had never been a hover-wagon outside his con-apt door before. It was just impossible for there to be one now. It was as if the whole world had gone fundamentally wrong.

He tried to explain this to the Judges.

"Jovus drokk!" one of them shouted. "He's having a total stomm-fit! Trank him and get him into the Meat Wagon!"

A Judge had pressed something cold and sharp against his neck. There was a hiss... and then just blank. Not darkness, but sheer nothingness. The world had just switched off.

It had switched on again here, some while ago, in this little room.

The walls might once have been white, but now they're grimed with a patina of filth from human use. Human bodies - whether something truly
real
lives inside them or not - have quite obviously been stored here over the years while waiting to be taken somewhere else.