Читать книгу Judgment Plague - James Axler - Страница 8

Chapter 1

The Geiger counter on the dashboard flashed red, ticking over into the danger zone. For a moment, DePaul’s fixed expression slipped, his eyes widening as he saw the telltale flicker that meant they had entered a patch of radioactivity.

“Chin up, rookie,” Irons said from the seat beside him. “Nothing out there I ain’t seen a hundred times.”

Irons was a magistrate in the barony of Cobaltville. He was in his mid-forties, with thick hair that had turned steel-gray, lines around his eyes and mouth, and a scar on his chin where some deviant had taken a potshot at him a dozen years before. He wore the uniform of a magistrate—black molded armor that sheathed his body like an insect’s shell, a bright red shield painted across the left breast to show his rank of office. His helmet was poised on the seat behind him, within easy reach. It was Irons’s job to monitor DePaul—a rookie magistrate in his final year of training, following in the footsteps of his father.

Irons sat next to DePaul, flashing him that fatherly smile that spoke of how he was indulging the lad, not teaching him.

Up front, Bellevue was driving the SandCat, navigating the dirt roads that reached out from Cobaltville like spokes, unpaved and unmarked. Bellevue was a tall man with skin so dark it looked like licorice, picking up the highlights of any illumination so that it seemed to have a sheen. Bellevue was twenty-five and had been active in the field for almost a decade. Like DePaul, like Irons, he had followed in his father’s footsteps, born solely for the task of being a magistrate, drilled from a young age in the ways of Cobaltville law.

“Coming up on Mesa Verde,” Bellevue said from his place at the steering wheel.

DePaul peered out the windshield at the towering sandstone structures that dominated the horizon. Brown-orange in color, the colossal rocks had been carved with windows and doors by human hands, hundreds of years before.

“Pretty different to home, ain’t it?” Irons said.

DePaul shook his head in wonder. “I’ve never seen anything like this.” It was true. He had never had cause to leave the walled confines of Cobaltville in all his seventeen years. This was his first trip beyond ville limits and out into the wild.

DePaul was a young man with jet-black hair and a narrow face. His hair was cut magistrate short and slicked back from his forehead, revealing his widow’s peak. He had dark eyes, a darker brown than his father’s, and those eyes seemed to take in every detail, every nuance of whatever was placed before them. He had been small for his age, but the late blossoming of puberty had given him taut muscles and long legs, and now he regularly outmatched his strongest classmates in any test of physical strength. He remained slender, however, giving him the appearance of a spectre when he dressed in the dark armor of a magistrate.

DePaul was well on the way to becoming a full-fledged one. He had excelled in exams, scoring top marks in knowledge and interpretation of the law. That had not come as a surprise to his father; the boy’s memory had been prodigious even at the age of ten. DePaul showed a steady hand in stress tests, was a crack shot and had survived to become last man standing in five of the six simulations he had been placed in with his classmates this year. In the remaining simulation he had come second only when one of his own team betrayed him at the finishing task.

DePaul was quick-thinking and quick to adapt, and he had displayed endurance that belied his slender frame.

Irons liked the kid, had warmed to him over the last few weeks that they had been stationed together. He had taken DePaul on a few regular patrols of the ville and down in the Tartarus Pits. The lad was all right—quiet maybe, but all right. He certainly had a memory on him; his attention to detail was up there with the best of the magistrates. He reminded Irons a lot of his father, a good mag who had taken a knock to the head during a routine pit patrol and never recovered. His son would go far, further even than the old man—Magistrate Irons was certain of that. But his recommendation would come another day, once they had completed a circuit of the Outlands and investigated rumors of a mutie farm located close to the Mesa Verde structures.

Bellevue had had less interaction with DePaul, but he remembered his father and could see the old man’s looks in the kid’s face, and his mannerisms. The youth came from good stock, and that counted for a lot.

The SandCat bumped over a patch of rough ground, its engine emitting a low rumble as it navigated the uneven terrain. Exclusive to the Magistrate Division, the SandCat was an armored vehicle with a low-slung, blocky chassis supported by a pair of flat, retractable tracks. Its exterior was a ceramic armaglass compound that could shrug off small arms fire, and it featured a swiveling gun turret up top armed with twin USMG-73 heavy machine guns.

They were moving out away from Cobaltville on a routine patrol of the surrounding areas. Forays like this were a necessary chore, to ensure there was nothing brewing in the lands near the ville that might challenge the baron’s rule. Baron Cobalt was very shrewd and protective concerning the retention of his power.

Bellevue turned the wheel and the SandCat’s engine growled with a low purr as it bumped over a patch of loose shingle and began to ascend a slope behind the Mesa. Some of this land had been used for research by the barons; some of it might even now be in use, for all the magistrates in the SandCat knew. Bellevue just stuck to the path and followed the target beacon that his onboard software had set before him.

A moment later, the armored vehicle nudged over the incline and began to descend toward a ragtag sprawl of tents surrounding a cattle pen.

“Well, lookee here,” Bellevue muttered as he pumped gas to the engine.

The pen was populated not by cattle but by muties. There were at least fifty of them, and they each wore a see-through plastic, one-piece suit as they sat or lay sprawled out in the scorching midday sun like sunbathers. The muties were humanoid, and looked human enough, except that beneath their transparent coverings they were utterly hairless and their skin was red and cracked, with blisters and sores all over. That may have been the effect of the sun, though some of it was a natural defense for these types. Called sweaties, they oozed a poisonous compound from their sweat glands that, when imbibed, had a hallucinogenic effect on humans. People farmed them sometimes, distilling their sweat and selling it. The plastic jumpsuits they wore had a greenhouse effect, Magistrate Irons knew, and there would be a collection rig set in the rear that gathered the sweat they generated. The poor bastards were so ill-treated and so hot that they could hardly move. It was all they could do to lie there in the dust as the sun beat down on their roasting bodies, cooking them alive.

It was more than the magistrates had expected from the Deathbird’s fly-past report. Bellevue eased off the accelerator and the SandCat crept slowly toward the half-dozen tents that were set out beside the pen.

“What is this?” DePaul asked.

“Sweat farm,” Irons told him, reaching for his helmet. “We’re going out there, rookie. You’re going to need your helmet.”

Obediently, DePaul reached for his head gear. “They’re muties, right?”

Irons nodded.

DePaul had never seen a mutie before, not in the flesh, anyway. “Then what are they doing here? What are they doing to them?”

“It’s a drugs op,” Irons explained, checking that his sin eater pistol was loaded. “They make the muties sweat, then the farmers here take that sweat and refine it, sell it on.”

“Why?” DePaul asked, pushing his helmet down over his face. The Magistrate casque was black and covered the wearer’s skull all the way down the back. The front covered the top half of the user’s head, before meeting with a dark-tinted visor that protected and hid the eyes, leaving only the mouth on display. The result was intimidating, turning the mags into near-faceless upholders of the law.

“People want to get away from what they are,” Irons explained, “especially here in the Outlands. Trust me, kid, it ain’t much of a life that these people have.”

“But they’re breaking the law,” DePaul stated, “which means we stop them.”

“Be glad of it, too,” Irons said, “if any of that stuff is destined for Cobaltville streets. Which it probably is.”

Beyond the SandCat, the illegal ranchers were exiting their tents, watching the familiar mag vehicle pull up. They were a motley crew, six in all, dressed in undershirts and shorts, one woman among them with her hair—blond dreadlocks—tied back with a rainbow-patterned bandana. They all wore breath masks over their mouth and nose, and several openly wore blasters holstered at their hips.

“You got this?” Bellevue asked, as he pulled the SandCat to a halt.

“Sure, me and the rookie can handle these mooks,” Irons assured him. Then he gestured to the turret gun, above and behind where he and DePaul sat. “Keep your trigger finger handy, though.”

“Always do,” Bellevue confirmed, flipping open the secondary control panel on the dashboard that operated the twin USMG machine guns.

Irons swung back the gull-wing door of the SandCat and stepped out onto the dirt, with DePaul following a moment later. DePaul glanced behind them as he did, imagining he might still be able to see the golden towers of Cobaltville waiting like an oasis in the distance. He couldn’t; they were too far from its protective hub.

A rancher from the group spoke up, his voice sounding artificial through the plastic of the breath mask, his thumbs hooked in his belt loops, a smug grin on his mustached face. “You lost, Magistrate?”

“No, sir,” Irons replied, eyeing the group. Six people wasn’t enough for a farm like this; given the number of tents, he’d expect at least eight, maybe more if they employed extra muscle. He made a subtle gesture with the fingers of his left hand, enough that DePaul knew he needed to stay alert.

Behind Irons, the rookie looked around, scanning the tents and the plains, the high ridges of the mesa that loomed close by. Plenty of places to hide.

“Then you maybe come to see me,” the farm spokesman said, “but I not remember inviting you. Did I invite you?”

Irons disliked the man already. He was cocky—too cocky, even for a bandit. He thought he had the upper hand here and he wasn’t afraid to let the magistrates know that.

“This here is illegal incarceration,” Magistrate Irons said, gesturing to the pen where the muties agonised in their sweatsuits. “And you are on barony land. Now, we could do this easy or we could do it hard. I’m a little long in the tooth for hard, so what say you let these poor wretched creatures go, and close up this stinking operation, and I won’t cause you any more aggravation.”

“You think you’re going to cause me aggravation?” the cocky rancher challenged, taking a step toward Irons and the SandCat.

DePaul saw a movement over to his left in the distance. Someone was crouching there, behind a cluster of sand-beige rocks as tall as a man.

Irons stepped forward, too, pacing toward the edge of the cattle pen, with DePaul following.

“I’ve made you the offer,” Irons explained. “It’s nonnegotiable. Pack up your tents, close your farm and move on. Otherwise, I won’t hesitate to bring the full force of the law down on you.”

The rancher laughed. “Hah, full force o’ the law? What’s that mean—you and the kid here?”

“Yeah,” Irons said, turning to the rancher. “Me and the kid.” His eyes were hidden by the visor, and yet the rancher could make no mistake that he was being stared at.

“Bored,” the man said. Then he shrugged and made as if to turn his back on the two mags. The shrug was a practiced move, intended to disguise the way his right hand was reaching down for the blaster holstered at his hip. But he never got the chance to unleather it— DePaul saw it and moved quicker, his right arm coming up, hand pointing at the rancher over the shoulder of his instructor. With a practiced flinch of his wrist tendons, DePaul brought the sin eater pistol into his hand from its hidden sheath in his sleeve, propelled by the mechanism he wore strapped there.

A compact 9 mm automatic, the sin eater was the official sidearm of the Magistrate Division, and was recognized even way out in the Outlands. The weapon retracted from sight while not in use, its butt folding over the top of the barrel to reduce its stored length to just ten inches. The holster operated by a specific flinch of the wrist tendon, powering the blaster straight into the user’s hand. The weapon’s trigger had no guard; the necessity for one had never been foreseen, since the magistrates were believed to be infallible. Which meant that as the gun touched DePaul’s hand, the trigger was depressed and a burst of 9 mm titanium-shelled bullets spit from the muzzle, cutting down the rancher even as he grabbed the butt of his own pistol.

The man toppled to the dirt with an agonized cry, his hand still locked on the pistol he had not had the chance to draw. His breath mask was shattered, blood gushing over his jaw.

All around, the other ranch hands were reaching for their own weapons, some worn proudly on their hips, others stuffed in hidden places in their waistbands or tucked into the pockets of their pants.

Irons had his blaster in his hand a moment later, reeling off shots at the nearest of the illegal farmhands as they reached for their guns. Above and behind him, the twin USMG-73s came to life on the roof of the SandCat, sending a relentless stream of bullets into the ranchers as they ran for cover. The woman with the blond dreads went down in a hail of fire, and so did another of the farmhands, his chest erupting with blood as the SandCat’s bullets drilled through him. Everyone else ran for cover, including the two magistrates, as bullets flew back and forth between the two groups.

Irons and DePaul were behind the armored side of the SandCat in seconds, a trail of bullets cutting the ground all around them.

“Quick thinking,” the older man said as his partner reloaded his pistol.

“Saw him reach,” DePaul said. “Made the decision without hesitation, the way they taught me in the academy.”

Irons nodded, satisfied with the rookie’s reasoning.

The turret of the SandCat continued to send bullets at the retreating farmers, the sound brutally loud as it echoed from the distant mesa walls. Another of the farmers went down when he poked his head out from behind a pressured canister used to collect the mutie sweat. A moment later a bullet clipped the container and it went up in a burst of expelled gas, hissing like some colossal snake as it spewed its contents into the air.

Without warning, a line of bullets rattled against the side of the Sandcat, inches from the magistrates’ heads. Both mags turned, searching for the sniper.

“Spotted someone hiding in the shadows of the rocks,” DePaul commented.

“I saw him, too,” Irons agreed. “We need to pick him off if—”

DePaul was on his feet and running toward the rock face immediately. “Cover me!” he called back.

Irons ducked as more bullets slapped against the ceramic armaglass side of the SandCat. Then he was around its front edge, blasting his sin eater again as another of the farmhands tried to sneak up on him. His play was backed by Bellevue on the turret, whose bullets cut another of the ranchers down before he could take two steps out from cover.

* * *

DEPAUL RAN, the sin eater thrust before him as he ascended the incline toward where the sniper was hiding in the long shadow of the mesa. A bullet whizzed past him, while two more flicked against the ground just a few feet behind. DePaul weaved, shifting his body left and right as more bullets cut the air. He was taking a heck of a chance here, he knew, but sometimes a chance was all you had.

The sniper kept firing, three more bullets burning the air just feet from the sprinting magistrate rookie. Then there came a lull; he guessed the gunner was reloading.

DePaul scrambled up the dry and dusty incline, his rubber-soled boots dislodging loose soil and small stones as he hurried toward the sniper’s hiding place. He saw a head appear between two boulders to his left, a flicker of silhouette glimpsed only for a moment. He ran at the nearest one, keeping his balance as he clambered up its side. The rock was fifteen feet in height and the faded orange color of sand.

DePaul reached the top in seconds, the sound of his footsteps lost in the continued reports of blasterfire coming from the ranch. He crouched down, peering over the side. The sniper was down there, kneeling behind the rock, eye to the scope of his rifle. He had dusty blond hair and wore a kerchief over his mouth and nose to stop him from breathing in the dirt that was being kicked up by the wind. He had obviously lost his target in that brief moment when he had reloaded and the rookie magistrate had clambered out of sight.

Steadying himself, DePaul leaned forward with his Sin Eater and squeezed the trigger, sending a swift burst of fire at his would-be killer. The sniper gave a startled cry as bullets rained down on him from above, but before he could react, one drilled into his skull and he sank down like a wet sheet of paper.

Still crouching atop the rock, DePaul turned, scanning the area all the way back to the ranch. The gunfire was easing now, the constant blasts replaced by occasional bursts of sound as Irons and Bellevue mopped up the last of the farmhands. There was no one else about. Whatever other security the farm had employed had been drawn into the firefight and killed.

DePaul scrambled back down the rock, marching around to its far side and checking on his target. The man was dead, eyes open but unfocused, blood pooling beneath his head. DePaul took the man’s rifle and checked him over, swiftly and professionally, for other weapons, finding a hand pistol and a knife. He stripped him of these before making his way back down to the farm compound, by which time the senior magistrates had finished containing the farmers.

“You did good today, rookie,” Irons told DePaul as he saw him approach. He was disarming the dead ranchers, tossing their guns behind him into the open door of the Sandcat. Bellevue sat on the lip of the seat, taking stock of the illegal weapons.

“Thanks,” DePaul said. “Sorry I missed the main action.”

“You got the main action,” Irons corrected. “Nailed it. That sniper woulda had both our heads if you hadn’t moved so quickly. You did yourself proud.”

“What happens now?” he asked, gazing around at the farm and the dead bodies left in the wake of the firefight. There was a scent in the air this close to the pen, sweet like refined sugar. It was mutie sweat, buckets of it, waiting to be processed and sold.

“We’ll free the muties,” Irons told him, “and leave for the birds and wolves these poor saps who thought they could take on magistrates.”

DePaul nodded. His first patrol of the Outlands had been a success.