Psykogeddon

  PSYKOGEDDON

  JUDGE DREDD

  The Lady Tamara Whelpington-Smythe snatched up an unused fish knife - the fish course having not by this point arrived - and flung herself over the table, her face a snarling rictus of pure animal bloodlust and rage. She grabbed Malish's face with one clawed hand and then wrenched downwards - leaving deep, blood-spraying gouges rather than mere scratches, and bursting one of his eyes.

  Then, as Malish hitched in breath to shriek in agony, before he could even bring his hands up to his ruined face, the Lady Tamara plunged the fish knife into his remaining eye, to bury it deep inside the brain.

  JUDGE DREDD

  #1: DREDD VS DEATH

  Gordon Rennie

  #2: BAD MOON RISING

  David Bishop

  #3: BLACK ATLANTIC

  Simon Jowett & Peter J Evans

  #4: ECLIPSE

  James Swallow

  #5: KINGDOM OF THE BLIND

  David Bishop

  #6: THE FINAL CUT

  Matthew Smith

  #7: SWINE FEVER

  Andrew Cartmel

  #8: WHITEOUT

  James Swallow

  #9: PSYKOGEDDON

  Dave Stone

  MORE 2000 AD ACTION

  JUDGE ANDERSON

  #1: FEAR THE DARKNESS - Mitchel Scanlon

  #2: RED SHADOWS - Mitchel Scanlon

  #3: SINS OF THE FATHER - Mitchel Scanlon

  THE ABC WARRIORS

  #1: THE MEDUSA WAR - Pat Mills & Alan Mitchell

  DURHAM RED

  #1: THE UNQUIET GRAVE - Peter J Evans

  ROGUE TROOPER

  #1: CRUCIBLE - Gordon Rennie

  STRONTIUM DOG

  #1: BAD TIMING - Rebecca Levene

  FIENDS OF THE EASTERN FRONT - David Bishop

  #1: OPERATION VAMPYR

  #2: THE BLOOD RED ARMY

  #3: TWILIGHT OF THE DEAD

  'To those fine people, who helped me out in an hour of refrigerator need.'

  Judge Dredd created by John Wagner & Carlos Ezquerra.

  Chief Judge Hershey created by John Wagner & Brian Bolland.

  A 2000 AD PUBLICATION

  www.abaddonbooks.com

  www.2000adonline.com

  1098 7 65 4321

  Cover illustration by Clint Langley.

  Copyright © 2006 Rebellion A/S. All rights reserved.

  All 2000 AD characters and logos © and TM Rebellion A/S."Judge Dredd" is a registered trademark in the United States and other jurisdictions."2000 AD" is a registered trademark in certain jurisdictions. All rights reserved. Used under licence.

  ISBN(.epub): 978-1-84997-059-4

  ISBN(.mobi): 978-1-84997-100-3

  A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

  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.

  JUDGE DREDD

  PSYKOGEDDON

  Dave Stone

  Mega-city one, 2127

  "Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot."

  - Mark Twain

  Huckleberry Finn

  "The final catastrophe, when it comes, is effectively the result of millions upon millions of discrete events - impacting, interacting and escalating to a gestalt climax that is greater than the sum of its parts.

  "Every squalid little assault upon some individual, for some imagined slight or other, and every retaliation by that individual, contributes to a general atmosphere that makes such attack, and counterattack, more and more likely - indeed, inevitable.

  "One step leads to the next, then the next and the next... until one suddenly finds oneself a member of the faction herding people into labour camps, and building extra crematoria as a result of the conditions in those camps, and speculatively comparing the size of the ventilation ducts in the showers with a canister of gas. Without ever quite - and this is the crucial factor - understanding how it happened.

  "The crucial factor is concerned with how precisely any discrete event impacts on the triggers of its context. The catastrophe happens when it's going to happen, in the same way that it famously steam engines when it's steam engine time. It is the result of millions upon millions of individual and apparently unrelated decisions and interactions.

  "It can be imposed upon to the extent that the storm troopers kicking in the shop-fronts are wearing armbands and believe in the World Ice Theory as opposed to the delusions of some other syphilitic lunatic; it can be anticipated and imposed upon to the extent that some particular individual arranges for a sudden ice pick in a competitor... but it cannot be actively or consciously controlled.

  "There is no way for a single person to start it. There is nothing a single man can do to stop it. The permutations are just too overwhelmingly innumerable for the human mind, unassisted, to grasp.

  "Unless, of course, that human mind has direct access to several others, and together they have access to ultra high-powered computational devices. Some gestalt amalgam of mind and machine..."

  - Professor Rupert Gillhooly, FMCRS

  Multiple Pathways to Singularity, or, Why Things get so Frankly Buggered

  PractiBrantic Press, 2047

  Preliminary Information: Recursive Scheming

  The dream again; the same dream. Waking cold and slick with sweat, the air pockets rattling through the ducts that wormhole through the Warren, now sounding akin to distant thunder, an explosion behind the wall or chattering teeth directly by the ear. Shadows twisting on the walls; the imagined, half-heard sound of needle-teeth on polythene.

  In the dark, the shapes take on a life of their own. The toys one could not care less about - the threadbare, boring lumps of ratty fur and polymer that seem to fade into nothing next to the new bright things bought for your new little sister - seem to watch you with their big eyes, talking in their sawdust heads (a spoon, and sharpen it and slide it inside. I want to see what's inside and I want...)

  You can almost hear the voices, buzzing and tickling inside your head, misshapen and uncrystallised, half-formed pupae crawling over the meat of the brain...

  And woke.

  For a long while little Robert remained immobile, absolutely still, his mind clicking over like cold clockwork - although "cold" is, perhaps, not the correct expression. It implies some sense of chilly, cerebral calculation and at the age of five, Robert Roberts was simply not that bright.

  There was something broken inside of him, or perhaps it had not been present from the start: an emotional dead-zone and a fundamental inability to comprehend a reality outside of him, without the intelligence or force of will to compensate. The world outside him, in some basic emotional sense, was not quite real, and so it didn't count.

  The imperfect mind of Robert Roberts ticked and clicked imperfectly over the facts of his life. The fracture in his mind precluded contact and made the giving and receiving of simple human warmth inconceivable to him, even from his mother and father. It was evident in the toys that littered the sleeping cubicle with the chilly untidiness of neglect rather than the innate entropic mess of childhood.

  The mother and father of Robert Roberts had brought him toys in the same way that they fed him and tried to make themselves like him; it was something they were supposed to do, and they were damned well going to do it, even if they couldn't find it in themselves to put their whole
hearts into it.

  The toys, perhaps as overcompensation, were more expensive than those ordinarily given to a five year-old child. They were also pristine and almost utterly untouched. Robert Roberts would pick them up (because for some unconscious reason his parents would wrap them and leave them on the floor rather than give them hand to hand - they only touched him when they thought about it consciously), unwrap them, look at them blankly, take them to his cubicle because that seemed to be expected, drop them and never so much as look at them again.

  Robert Roberts only continued to participate in this charade for the simple process of unwrapping the package and seeing what was inside. He had the unformed notion that, at some point, a package might contain something he actually wanted, though what this might possibly be he could not even begin to imagine. Robert Roberts had barely the imagination, at the age of five, to conceive that a dropped object might, at some point, hit the floor.

  Robert's parents were a perfectly ordinary and amiable couple - or rather, they were no worse than any other occupants of the Shangri La Towers, a hab-block that had become something of a sinecure for the ultra-rich of Mega-City One.

  They cannot in all justice - or even Justice - be blamed for their coldness toward their son; they were merely reacting on a primal level to the deadness within him, and would have been horrified and ashamed to learn that they were doing it.

  Similarly, in the five years since their son had been born, they had followed advisory birth control procedures without a single lapse that might result in a "mistake", for their unconscious minds looked at Robert Roberts and flatly refused to countenance another one remotely like him. They only had another child when they actively and consciously made themselves decide to have one.

  Robert had a little sister. She was called Roberta. The Roberts had a strong if somewhat limited tradition in family names, and they were sticking with it.

  For the entire history of the universe (that being the four and a half years since he had first become aware of the existence of his self), Robert Roberts knew how the only living creatures of which he was really aware had interacted with him. Now he compared it to their interactions with the new baby. He saw how they touched and talked to her, and saw their genuine pleasure and joy.

  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 privat
eers 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.