Eleven

 

 

ONCE WE WERE all inside the sealed-off corridor and the air had been restored, one of the marines opened an inner door and said, “Follow me. Single file.”

It was the same route I’d taken earlier with Vine.

The marine walked ahead of us, and the other behind us. There was almost no way to tell them apart, not counting different notches and scratches on their armour. No insignia, no numbers, no different blocks of colour.

Wightman must have been thinking along the same lines, because as we passed a third marine standing guard outside a door, he asked, “So, your visors have a HUD that tells you who’s who, right?”

He didn’t respond to that, but fell into step alongside the one trailing us.

We were channelled into a large, empty room off the main corridor where a fourth marine was waiting. Again, he was wearing armour identical to the others’, but I said, “A pleasure to see you again, Sears.”

No reaction, but I was sure that under his helmet he’d be angry. I wasn’t about to admit that I recognised a particular scratch on his left boot.

Sears said, “Remove your environment suits and leave them in this room, along with any and all weapons or electronic equipment on your person.”

“I’m sub-warden Martin Copus. I want to speak to Colonel D’Angelo.”

“Just do as you’re instructed, sub-warden.”

Wightman and I waited as the others stripped off their suits, then we were all very efficiently and thoroughly searched and frisked. That’s something you get used to very quickly as a prisoner: we were frisked every time we returned from the mines or from outside. It soon gets so that if they forget about the frisking, you feel left out.

The marines spent a few moments with me and Wightman, examining our cybernetic enhancements, then they ordered us out into the corridor—I noticed that Sears locked the door as he left—and again marched us through the base.

Our path took us past the infirmary, through a narrow mess-hall, and into an empty hangar that clearly doubled as the base’s gymnasium: basketball hoops had been attached to opposite walls and court-lines had been crudely spray-painted on the floor.

Sears said, “Stand in the centre of the room. You will not speak.”

Sloane asked, “Why not?”

The soldier closest to him slammed him in the stomach with the butt of his rifle.

Copus jumped forward and was instantly the target of three further weapons.

Then the door opened again, and another marine entered, accompanied by a slender, slightly awkward-looking young man in a somewhat creased dress uniform: he’d clearly been wearing it under an environment suit. Watching his bearing, I concluded that this man had never seen combat.

The young man nodded to Sears, who said. “This is Colonel Peter D’Angelo.”

Colonel D’Angelo said, “You will all be silent unless directed otherwise.” He slowly turned to look at Copus. “Is that clear, or is a further demonstration required?”

The sub-warden nodded. “It’s clear. But, look, what the drokk is this?”

A handgun boomed twice and everyone flinched. Copus staggered backwards, clutching his left shoulder. “Son of a...” He collapsed into a sitting position.

One of the soldiers stepped forward and pressed the muzzle of his gun right into the centre of Copus’s forehead. “You heard the colonel—not one more drokkin’ word!”

The colonel said, “Stand down, Lancaster.” The soldier stepped back, leaving a scorch-mark on Copus’s face where the still-hot muzzle had burned it.

The colonel said, “One of you tend to his wound.”

Zera Kurya crouched down next to Copus and tore open his shirt. “Clean shot, clipped the muscle. No major damage as far as I can see.” She glanced around. “Steripatch?”

One of the marines pulled a pack of steripatches from a pouch on her belt and tossed it to Kurya. She peeled off the backing from a patch, and slapped it over the wound.

Colonel D’Angelo gestured to Vine. “Come forward, First Lieutenant Vine and Corporal Armando.”

Vine and Armando stepped up to him.

To Armando, he said, “You are a disappointment, soldier. A failure.” The colonel’s eyes narrowed as he turned to Vine. “You broke protocol, Lieutenant.”

She didn’t respond to that. I don’t blame her; they’d just shot Copus for speaking up.

“This is a covert operation and your primary goal is to keep it that way. You invited civilians onto the base. You are hereby stripped of your rank and will be court-martialled.”

D’Angelo moved away from Vine and peered at the rest of us. “Huygens Base is a highly classified facility; you were never supposed to know of its existence. This facility was established at the same time as your prison, along with a direct link connecting the base to your emergency system. That link was supposed to be used only in extreme circumstances. But Captain Harrow used that link to initiate contact with Governor Dodge eight years ago. I believe that Dodge was under the impression that said contact was sanctioned and within the purview of Harrow’s mission. Harrow’s personal logs show that she and Dodge had an arrangement to supply this base with fresh fruit and vegetables in return for the use of certain unspecified equipment.” D’Angelo walked up to Copus and looked down at him. “What equipment?”

Copus shrugged. “This is the first I’ve heard about it.”

“You’re lying. Do so again, and the next shot will do permanent damage.”

Copus used his uninjured arm to wipe a bead of sweat from his forehead. “Harrow agreed to recalibrate the base’s satellite to scan the moon for iridium deposits. Our own scanners can penetrate eighty metres at most, depending on the bedrock. The satellite is much more powerful. The data she returned meant we were able to almost double our yield.”

The colonel took all this in without a word. His body language was hard to read, but it seemed to me that he wasn’t discovering anything he didn’t already know.

He returned to Vine. “You understand what you have done, Lieutenant? The breach of security you have committed? Permission to speak.”

“Sir, I—” She abruptly cut herself off, inhaled deeply through her nostrils, and stared unblinking at the slender Colonel. “Salome Pamelina Vine. Marine Corps, First Lieutenant. Serial number M-triple-zero-two-four-seven-four-zero-one.”

D’Angelo frowned at her. “You will respect the chain of command, Vine. This is a critical situation and your forthcoming court-martial will not be derailed or delayed by any attempts to claim ignorance or duress. You will answer any and all questions to the fullest of your ability and the best of your knowledge. Subsequent discovery of failure on your part to disclose any related pertinent evidence will be considered an act of sedition or sabotage.”

I looked across the room towards Wightman, who looked back and gave me a slight shrug. Everyone else was watching D’Angelo and Vine.

I broke the silence. “I have a question.”

Colonel D’Angelo started to turn towards me, but stopped, as though he’d concluded that I wasn’t worth the effort. “If that prisoner speaks again, I’ll consider it to be a deliberate attempt to hinder this investigation.”

No one responded to that, so D’Angelo said, “You are all confined to this room until further notice.”

He left, followed by all of the marines except Armando and Vine. The hiss of the closing door was followed by the unmistakeable sound of the lock engaging.

McConnach began, “So... what the drokk is that all—”

Armando softly but sharply said, “Room’s bugged. No cameras in here, but they could be listening.”

Takenaga approached Copus, and as she helped him to his feet softly asked, “Ideas?”

Standing in the centre of the room, Vine looked at all of us in turn. “The corporal is right. The colonel’s people will be listening. But it doesn’t matter because he’s going to execute us all anyway, just as soon as he’s sure you haven’t spoken to anyone else.”

Wightman asked, “Why? What does he think we’ve done?”

Corporal Armando said, “You know about me. That’s all. You know I exist.” He looked down at his cuffed hands. “I’m proof of the project’s failure.”

Vine nodded. “The purpose of Huygens Base is to build a better soldier. It has to be done out here, far from the reach of anyone on Earth. Covert factors from Mega-City One, Mega-City Two and Texas-City working together... it’s more than enough to have the Sov-Blocks and every other city worried.” She turned to me. “A lot of the work was inspired by you, Dredd.”

I said, “I’m far from the first prisoner to have his body modified.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about. A long time ago Morton Judd put into action his plans to build better Judges. You and your brother were the success that inspired Colonel D’Angelo to do the same with the marines. There’s a facility on Oberon that’s growing clone embryos from heavily-tweaked DNA. I’ve seen what they have so far...” She barely suppressed a shudder. “The results are not promising. They’re a long way from success. That’s why D’Angelo has turned to body-modification instead. Again, inspired by you.”

“How so?”

“Captain Harrow’s reports mentioned discovering you out in the Bronze, almost dead. She wrote that if you and... Guildford, was it? ...If you’d swapped places, you would almost certainly have survived long enough to make it back to the prison on foot.”

Wightman said, “Wait, stop! For Grud’s sake, the more she tells us, the more likely it is that the Colonel will want to execute us!”

“That’s inevitable,” Armando said. “I know this is worth nothing, but I’m sorry. It was my malfunction that sparked this. Everyone in this room will die and D’Angelo will craft a credible reason. He has almost limitless resources and he’ll do anything to prevent his superiors from learning the truth.”

McConnach asked, “How long do we have?”

Vine said, “As soon as he’s certain that we didn’t make contact with the prison, that’s it. He’ll give the order.”

I knew that it was time to make some sort of move, but exactly what I could do, I wasn’t sure. So I said, “That could be bad... if he suspects that one of us did talk to someone at the prison, then he might just decide to wipe them out too.” As I spoke I turned in a slow circle, examining the room. No windows, and the only way in was the doors through which we’d entered.

“Except of course that until a couple of minutes ago, all we knew was that this was a base, not what it was for. That’s on you, Vine.” I looked at Takenaga, put one finger to my lips and beckoned her forward. “And you too, Armando. If you hadn’t lost control... But why don’t you do that again? Go berserk and break us out of here?”

Takenaga stopped in front of me wearing a puzzled expression. I gestured that I wanted the pen in her pocket, and she reluctantly handed it over.

I crouched down and snapped the pen in two, still speaking: “But you can’t, can you? Something triggered that, some part of the experiment. That’s what he’s covering up. Not that you’re a failure, because clearly you’re not. You’re rational and in control.” I popped out the pen’s ink capsule and used the edge of the lid to prise the stopper from the capsule. “But still. You took down over thirty of your fellow soldiers without getting so much as a scratch and there’s no way all of them were caught unaware.” I put the pen’s nib flat on the floor under my heel, then slowly rocked back until I heard a tiny crack.

Inside was a circuit board half the size of a fingernail clipping that held the tiniest lithium battery in common use, not much bigger than a grain of salt. “Some of them had to have heard the gunfire, right?”

Not a lot of people knew that everything they wrote with their handy, disposable ball-point pen was logged in the pen’s memory circuits, and there was a reason for that: if they did, they’d stop using those pens. There’ve been a number of cases where the evidence provided by such pens has proven vital. Not many cases, but even one perp caught is worth it. So the people don’t know that their pens are logging their words, and they’ll never find out, because Judges are rarely required to reveal the source of their evidence.

By now, everyone was crowded around me, but I tried not to let that distract me. This was tricky enough as it was, let alone having to do it while keeping up a running diatribe to distract whoever might be listening.

“Still, I’m betting that Colonel D’Angelo isn’t too pleased that his prototype super-soldier was beaten by a former Judge who hasn’t been on the streets in years.” I pulled the battery away from the board, then motioned for everyone but Armando to step back.

“He’s not going to take that lying down.” As I said that, I gestured for Armando to sit down next to me.

He looked puzzled, but curious, and did as I suggested. I made a circular motion with my index finger to indicate that he should roll onto his side, and when he did, I lay down almost flat on my stomach with my face close to the handcuffs on his wrists.

The pen’s ink capsule contained about eight drops. Just about enough.

I’d never done this before, and certainly hadn’t ever expected to do it in full view of sub-warden Copus, but we weren’t left with a lot of choice. “Maybe he should have just recruited Judges, right? Let the Academy of Law train his troops for him and then pick the best. If he’d come to me after I graduated, I would have said yes.”

Each set of cuffs had an electronic lock that responded to a coded—and uncrackable—signal from its corresponding key. But every electronic device needs a source of power, and in the cuffs that was a battery attached to the internal lock, the whole thing shielded in the cuffs’ tough titanium-polymer shell. But batteries run down and have to be replaced or recharged; the polymer shell couldn’t be permanently sealed.

Holding Armando’s arms steady with one hand, I dripped some ink from Takenaga’s pen onto the underside of the cuffs, at the seam, all around the tightly-fitting battery cover.

I silently counted the seconds while some of the ink filtered its way down into the cuffs, then at the six-second mark I dropped the pen’s tiny lithium battery onto the ink.

The ink is marketed as safe—absolutely non-toxic, non-corrosive—and that’s true. But it is highly conductive. The ink seeped into the cuffs’ battery compartment, short-circuiting and discharging the battery. That shuts down the cuffs completely; a safety measure in case the prisoners attempt to break them open.

But the cuffs’ circuitry is smart enough to know that the battery will have to be recharged at some point, and it can’t be recharged if the prisoner is still wearing the cuffs: you don’t let the prisoners have access to the charger. So to make sure that happens, if the circuitry detects only the tiniest trickle of power, it’ll register that as an almost-discharged battery and use that last burst of power to open the lock.

Corporal Armando’s cuffs went click, and fell open.

I stepped back, and everyone else in the room was staring at me.

Have to tell you, having my mouth sealed up was the only thing that kept me from grinning like an idiot.