Chapter Ten

 

 

THE PENAL COLONY’S chief power-source was the generator room. Located at the northern end of the complex, it was only accessible—without going outside—through one long, easily-defended corridor. Halfway along, Vivean Kassir and Lorne Sims had posted one of their people, Hector Boyarsky, as a sentry behind a barricade of battered steel doors and wide-bore plastic ducting. I was familiar with the stuff from digging out the lower tunnels: it wasn’t heavy, but it was almost strong enough to stop even an armour-piercing round.

“No one gets in,” Hector said. I didn’t know him well, and nor did Genoa, but it was clear he didn’t want to be there. It wasn’t warm in the corridor, but he was drenched in sweat, and his hands were trembling.

“We don’t want to get in,” I told him. “We just want to talk to Sims.”

Genoa said, “Or Kassir,” and I inwardly winced, but didn’t contradict her.

Kassir was too volatile, too close to Brennan in temperament. Any discussion with her was almost destined to end in threats of violence, if not actual violence. Hell, one time she walked over to a guy and punched him so hard in the stomach that he was pissing blood for a week. She said he deserved it, because she’d had a dream in which she’d thrown a birthday cake to him and he’d failed to catch it.

Story goes that she’d committed so many acts of violence and insubordination when she first got to Titan that the guards just kept piling on the months to the point where within the first year she’d almost doubled her sentence.

To Hector, I said, “Just let me speak to either of them.”

He dry-swallowed and shook his head. “Can’t do that.”

I began to speak, but he flinched as though I’d raised my arm to strike him—I hadn’t moved at all.

“You want this to end, Hector? I can end it. But I need their help.”

He glanced along the corridor, towards a second barricade close to the generator room’s doors. “I... No, I can’t.”

Genoa said, “Ah, drokk this. He’s not armed, Dredd. What’s he gonna do? Tell yer ma?”

She stepped around me and made to push past Hector. He put his arm out and she bumped into it and stopped walking.

She slowly turned her head to face him.

I’ve seen a lot of things, but I’ve never seen a man so absolutely terrified. He knew that he had no choice. If he didn’t try to stop us, Kassir would make sure he paid.

Genoa said, “Who scares you most, Boyarsky? Me or them?”

He muttered, “Oh sweet grud...” Then, louder, said, “Them. I’m sorry, McRitchie. I respect you, I do, but they... They’ll kill me.”

She leaned closer. “I’ll kill you.”

Hector gently shook his head. “Not the way they would. I’d rather it was you.”

I’d had enough. I swung my baton, whacked him on the side of the head. He crumpled neatly and almost silently.

From behind the second barricade, Vivean Kassir’s voice said, “We know what you want, Dredd. We’re not buying.”

“I just want this to end,” I shouted back. “We got some supplies. Enough to last an extra month, maybe. In fact, maybe even longer given that so many of our fellow inmates are no longer in the respiration club.”

Kassir stepped out from behind the barricade. She was also carrying a guard’s baton. “Got them from where?”

“The crashed freighter. You remember that?”

“Stomm. If that freighter had been carrying supplies, we’d have heard about it a long time ago.”

“Emergency rations. Plus, there was stuff we missed last time. Didn’t seem important then to recover five kilograms of mockpork jerky. Everyone hates that stuff. In a few weeks it’s going to be ambrosia. And not just that. There’s canned fruit and vegetables, dry cereals, ration packs. It’s not going to be a feast, but it’ll help keep us all alive until the ships get here.”

“If they get here. The mining company might just decide it’s easier to hold off until we’re dead.”

Genoa said, “The guards aren’t criminals. If the company abandons them, that’s a crime in sixteen different city-states. They won’t take that chance.”

Kassir walked closer. She was as tall as me, with roughly the same build. She stopped a metre in front of me and said, “State your terms.”

“We need to take down Carbonara’s people; they’ve got all the supplies.”

“This much I know.”

Genoa said, “Ye control the power throughout most of the complex... So cut the heatin’ to B- and C-Blocks. Thirty minutes, forty max, they’ll be begging yeh to turn it back on.”

Kassir shook her head. “We already thought of that. Can’t be done. We can’t isolate a couple of blocks like that.”

I nodded. I’d guessed that must be the case, or they’d have done it already. But I had a backup option. “The generator... I’ve seen it. It’s big.”

“So?”

“It’s big enough to stay warm for a few hours after you shut it down. You cluster around it, that’d keep you going long after everyone else has passed out from the cold.”

Kassir looked from me to Genoa and back. “Jovus... are you drokkin’ insane? The surface temperature out there is about negative one-eighty! If we shut down the generator and can’t get it started again, everyone would be dead in less than a day.”

Genoa stepped away from me. “She’s right, Dredd. That’s just nuts.”

“You want this to end before you starve; so do I. And freezing is a better death than starvation.”

From the doorway to the generator room, Lorne Sims called out, “The cold won’t affect him. He’s a mod.” Sims was wearing an environment suit, everything but the gloves and helmet. The gloves were tucked into his belt, and it was a safe guess that the helmet was close to hand.

Kassir glanced back at Sims. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying Dredd’s a snake, but he’s not an idiot. And he’s no coward.” He beckoned me closer. “Let’s talk.”

As I moved towards him, Kassir put her hand on my shoulder to stop me. It wasn’t immediately obvious from her grip whether she was threatening me or just grabbing my attention. “You killed him, didn’t you?”

“What?”

“Brennan. That’s why you’re here and he’s not.”

That confirmed my long-held suspicion that Kassir was in love with Brennan. She was almost twice his age, but it’s said that love doesn’t recognise temporal barriers. From the way I’d seen Brennan treat her, it was a pretty safe bet Kassir’s feelings weren’t reciprocated and never would be. Sometimes, love is like trying to catch your own shadow in a jar.

Brennan probably didn’t even realise why Kassir was so loyal to him.

I was on the edge of telling her what had happened to him, how he’d finally snapped and shown his true self. But I decided to save that for another time. Always good to have something in the bank. “He’s not dead. He’s safe. For now.” I let her stew on that while I asked Sims, “Who does Carbonara have backing her up?”

He began to rattle off a list of names, and Genoa raised her hands to stop him: “Pull the brakes on that, there. Who does she have who’s a threat?”

Sims said, “It’s not a matter of who, it’s how many. We figure at least sixty. Maybe as many as eighty.”

Genoa and I exchanged a glance, and I’m sure we were thinking the same thing: we’d been expecting to have to deal with maybe ten of the pastor’s acolytes, fifteen at most, and even that would be a lot more than she usually had.

Genoa said, “She’s got the supplies. Food buys a lot of faith.”

I heard voices from the doorway behind Sims, and asked him, “Who do you have in there?”

His eyes narrowed at that. “What the drokk difference does that make?”

“Basic strategy, spugwit. If you don’t know who your allies are, how are you supposed to be able to recognise your enemies?”

“Yeah. Always the same with you, Dredd. You want everyone to believe you’re a step ahead of them. You’re not the only one who can strategise.”

Genoa said, “I don’t think that’s a real word.”

Sims ignored her. To Kassir, he said, “They want to shut down the generator, everyone else freezes, then we all go and take the supplies from Carbonara. Good plan. We’ll take it.” A grin stretched out across his face. “And we don’t need these drokkers alive to use it.”

I had been expecting that. If they’d known me better, they’d have understood that I don’t respond well to threats, and I certainly don’t go anywhere without a backup plan.

Just as Kassir shifted her stance and raised her baton, preparing to strike out at Genoa, I raised my own arm and shot Sims in the face.

I’d taken a risk with the Kolibri replica, but I’d been almost certain it would pay off. Whoever had owned the gun before me had kept it clean; that was a good indication that it still worked.

I liked it a lot. Sure, it didn’t have the power, accuracy, range or versatility of a Lawgiver, but a gun small enough to conceal in your hand? A very, very useful tool. It might well be my new favourite weapon.

My shot was actually a little off. Maybe I was out of practice, but more likely it was because the Kolibri’s barrel-length is just too short to permit perfectly accurate aim. I hit Sims square in the forehead. I’d been aiming for his left eye. That still bugs me a little, but it’s not healthy to dwell on stuff like that. The outcome was the same anyway: Sims toppled over backwards, dead, and Kassir flinched.

That flinch was enough for Genoa. She was a head shorter than Kassir and maybe twenty kilos lighter, but she was faster and even more vicious.

Even though my instincts were yelling at me to just finish Kassir, I overrode them and I stepped back to watch the fight.

Genoa’s first move was her trademark elbow to the stomach. If she’d been fighting a male, that would have been immediately followed by a punch to the groin. Instead, and because Kassir was still armed with a baton, Genoa formed her fingers into a point and jabbed up at Kassir’s right armpit. There’s a handy nerve-cluster there, and if you strike it with enough force, the target’s arm will spasm and she’ll drop her weapon.

Genoa caught the baton before it hit the ground, but as she was adjusting her grip on it, Kassir slammed a foot into her kidneys with enough force to almost knock Genoa sideways.

Next came a blur of swings, blocks, strikes and dodges from both of them and I had to resist the urge to offer suggestions.

Vivean Kassir was tough, but no match for Genoa Amin. The fight’s decisive move was a powerful swing of the baton that was almost stopped by Kassir’s front teeth.

Almost.

Kassir staggered backwards, spitting out blood and fragments of broken teeth through split lips. She tried to swear at Genoa, but it was hard to understand what she was saying.

Genoa wrapped it up with a spinning, contorted leap: her right foot crashed into Kassir’s already-weakened jaw, then it was followed by a baton-strike to the temple.

As Kassir crumpled to the ground, Genoa straightened herself up, flexed her arms a little, then crouched to use Kassir’s shirt to wipe the blood off the baton. As she did so, she casually asked me, “So, Rico, I’ve been wonderin’. When, exactly, were ye planning to tell me that yeh were carryin’ a drokkin’ gun?”