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Started by The Legendary Shark, 30 June, 2016, 03:07:06 PM

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The Legendary Shark



\...CONT

***

Precinct cars getting jacked wasn't unheard of, in fact it was common enough to be irritating. Juves stole cop cars on crazy dares, jackers stole them to order, gangs for revenge and jokers because they thought it was funny. The cars were all either recovered within 24 hours or never seen again. What we should have done was call it in and request a pick up, but we couldn't do that because our stolen car had an undisclosed bag of money hidden in the wheel well. The best possible outcome would be for us to find the car, and the bag, ourselves. If the judges got to it first, or other NYPD officers, or blackmailers, or the Mob, things would get sticky for us. So we called Precinct Control and logged off for an hour to follow up on an 'investigation of opportunity' while we hunted for our car.

Six p.m. on Christmas Eve and we were trudging around Base rousting hobos and low-lifes for names. It was dark but the power was still on, though not up to full strength. An icy acidic wind scythed through the city from the North Black Atlantic, chilling our bones and burning our eyes. New York was still a place back then. The old one was covered over but a new one sprang up right on top of it. The buildings were originally temporary structures printed on site and put up to house the workers employed to build the mega-blocks. The intention was to knock them down but more and more people came, claiming to be native New Yorkers reclaiming their city. It had become a city again, but a city within a megalopolis, a fungus growing around the feet of the mega structures.

On the ground, it was a maze of outdated hab-blocks, utility units, malls, alleys, waste ground, slums, and dumps. We turned the place upside down for three hours, chasing down shadows and phantoms and shimmering mirages. We rousted chop shops and pow stations, car parks and breakers' yards, hire companies and repo outfits. We rousted mechanics and accountants, jobsworths and grouches, desperadoes and junkies. Nada.

At nine p.m., it started snowing. Sol buttoned up his jacket and hitched up the collar. "Just great," he said. "Happy God damned Christmas from Weather Control, with the benevolent permission of the Justice Department." He spat onto the litter-strewn side walk and sighed. "I'm sorry I got you into this," he said.

"You got us into it," I said. "I followed you on my own."

"We could lose our badges."

I nodded. "Do time, even."

He swore. "I'll say it was all me, that I didn't tell you about the bag."

"Adding perjury won't help," I said. "I'm a good cop. I got a good record, maybe not spotless but solid. Same for you. We saw this opportunity, this unique circumstance, and we hesitated. We stumbled. But we're good cops, so we got back up and came clean. That's how we should play it. The Captain's a fair guy."

He pinched his lips between his thumb and forefinger and gave a resigned nod. "I'll call it in." He reached to turn his collar mic back on but I put my hand on his arm.

"Let's just follow up this last lead first, okay? If we don't it'll just nag at us."

He shrugged. "Sure, why not? Follow up the fantasy spun by a junkie with the scent of your two credits in his burned out nostrils that our car is simply parked in an alley because that would be a miracle, which is okay because it's Christmas, and miracles always happen at..." He paused, shining his torch into the depths of this desolate alley between desolate factories. "Detective Nördrokk, given your familiarity with said vehicle, would you say that was our car?"

"I would indeed, Detective Chance." I dabbed a finger at the graffiti and the paint was still tacky. "Not a fan of the new paint job, though. They spelled 'penis' wrong, and no way is this illustration even possible."

Sol opened the trunk and pulled the spare grav-unit out of the wheel well. The bag was still there. "Hallelujah!" He danced a jig. "We're still on!"

"No," I said. "We still have to explain why we took nearly four hours off-watch on Christmas Eve, with a department hover-car assigned to us during that time which is now a mobile obscenity charge. I know you're short of cash right now but so are we all. If we set even one foot on this path, for whatever reason, we're going to get lost, partner. So we end it. Now."

***

The Captain looked down at the bag Sol plonked on his desk. He had one arm into his overcoat. The clock on his desk said 11:17. He shook his head. "You bozos."

"Anyway, Sir," Sol said, running a hand through his thick black hair to no apparent effect, "we didn't book it in yet."

The Captain sighed and pulled his overcoat off, tossing it over the back of his chair. "So, you brought it straight to me, without even checking it in at the desk?"

Sol nodded. "It was Detective Nördrokk's idea. We've had the conversation, we've seen the uniqueness of this situation. The invisibility of this money. The Vice Squad might find some tactical advantage in that."

"You idiots have involved me in a direct violation of chain-of-evidence protocols. You've confessed to at least three counts of conspiracy and now you stand here like juves caught with your sticky fingerprints all over the cookie jar." He thumped the desk, the veins in his temples throbbed like grumbling snakes. "What is it you want? My sticky fingerprints on there too?"

"No Sir," Sol said. "We had the choice and we made it. Perhaps if we'd found the bag off duty the choices would've been different but we weren't. We were on the City's dime. So it's only fair we make it the City's choice by passing it on to you." The Captain massaged his eyes, finding himself speechless. "Anyway," Sol continued, "merry Christmas."

"Merry...?" The Captain almost exploded, then. I've never seen him come so close to losing it. "Get out," he said, and his voice was the hidden part of icebergs, "turn in your guns and badges at the front desk and stay home until I call you."

We nodded and retreated but Sol hesitates at the door. "Sir, if I can say one more thing?"

The Captain was almost quivering with rage but he'd always been a good man, and a fair cop. He licked his lips to steady them. "Go on."

"Old Nördrokk, Sir, his wife... Well, bluntly, she's losing it. It's the fear. My dad was a cop, and my mom knew that fear. Knew it every hour of every day, that the man she loved did a job that got him shot at. Every day, any day, could be the day. It grinds, Sir, that kind of fear, and I know you know it. Cilla Nördrokk has lived with that fear for nigh on four decades, Captain, and it's taking a toll. If me and Aerlig had decided other, he'd have used his half for this. To help her through it. Therapy, a holiday. Nothing sinister. Nothing frivolous. Nothing embarrassing to the PD."

"Yeah, sure. The guy's a saint. It doesn't change a damned thing and you know it."

"I don't expect it to. With me, it would've been my boy. He was on the Streetside Flyers aeroball team up until it was closed down last month. The Precinct used to fund it before the budget cuts got too tight, then the guys and the families put in for a while but there's only so much spare cash floating around out there so it folded. What are you going to do, right? Mine would've gone there. Oh, I would've used gloves and sterilising agents and untraceable stationary and anonymous donation, there would have been no link to myself or the NYPD. Crime of the century, it would have been. Would've bought the Flyers maybe half a season."

The Captain shook his head. "Look, I understand you fellas might believe you were proceeding with the best of intentions but that's beside the point. You broke protocol."

"We're not judges, Captain," Sol said. "We're cops. NYPD. We're not in charge of this neighbourhood, we're a part of it. Maybe we consider this as a windfall for the community, not just the PD. Give the notebooks to Vice, dump the cash into a good cause. Do some good. Spread a little Christmas cheer."

"Unbelievable," said the Captain. "You guys live in a dream world. Go on. Get out of my sight."

***

"That's it?" She shakes her head. "I tell you the SJS is investigating me and you tell me a story about deciding to not steal something. Why?"

"I like telling stories," he says, "it's an old man's prerogative."

"What did the Captain do with the bag?"

The old man shrugs, rubbing at his new leg again. "He never told us. Me and Sol were back at work on Boxing Day. The Captain called us up at noon, bellowing at us for being late. Vice made some serious inroads to the local Mob and an anonymous donation to a local community youth programme got the Streetside Flyers almost another two seasons, almost to a sector play-off, even winning a cup or two along the way."

She turns her j-pad back on with a grunt. "Very inspiring."

He stands out of the non-regulation armchair and picks up his empty teacup. He takes a moment to experiment with his new leg before jogging to the compact-o-kitch. The leg beeps in protest. "Ow, ow, ow," he says and curses as he props himself up against the sink.

"Let it bed in," she calls. "48 hours."

He sticks his tongue out at her and makes another cup of tea. He doesn't offer her anything. "You have to trust the people in the system," he says. "It's the one thing Sol was right about, the one thing that meant a damn about the whole NYPD, the whole Justice Department. The people in them. If the SJS are poking around, they're vetting you for a sensitive mission. If they were after you, you'd never see them coming. They want you to see them, watch how you react. It's all pretty standard."

"I guess," she says, "but it was the psis that got me thinking."

"Psi Division?"

"Yeah. Six shifts out of the last ten I've been partnered or liasoned with a psi judge. My average is two a month, maximum."

He returns to his chair, walking a little stiffly, and settles back down. "There have been some really weird rumours coming out of Psi Division lately," he takes a sip of tea. "But then what's new, right? That freakshow is just prime rumour food on a continuous basis. There was something about a giant goat last month, I seem to recall. Or was it a ram? Whatever, the usual nonsense. Lately, though, something seems to have caught their attention."

"Some of the psis mentioned a prophecy, tried to pass it off as no big thing when I overheard."

"They say it's about some super-judge, some great future leader, at the moment still a child."

"Judge Child," she says, her voice a whisper. "That's what Judge Dredd said. He was talking to the Sector Chief, said those words when I walked in then changed the subject real fast. Dredd asked me a routine question, about deployment, I answered and he left. But he looked at me for a long time before he went."

"Well," the old Instructor says, blowing the steam off his mug, "the conclusion seems logical enough. Judge Dredd is leading a team to find this Judge Child that's got Psi Division so wound up..."

Her hand flies to her mouth. "And he thinks I'm this Judge Child? This great future leader?"

He stares at her, his mouth hanging open. He shakes his head. "No," he says. "No, I don't think anybody thinks that, Judge." He laughs, then, and she frowns and demands to know what's so funny as her street comportment bubbles up. "It's that, after all these years, sometimes you are the same naive cadet I ran into under Una Stubbs all those years ago, the one who thought the robots wouldn't find her. No. I was going to say, you're being vetted for Dredd's team."

"Yes," a brief chain of chuckles escapes her control before she can adjust her grip. "That's the more likely interpretation, of course."

"I like that your first instinct was Future Queen, though," he says with a big grin, "I think that's classy."

+++

[move]~~~^~~~~~~~[/move]




The Legendary Shark

A Three Page Future Shock

In Forty Eight Parts
(With a Detailed Index)

by Gerry Destine

~~~^~~~


PAGE ONE

PAGE ONE: FRAME ONE: The near future, twenty or thirty years from now. A dismal and sombre place. Muddy, swampy, cold, beset by a constant late afternoon December rainstorm. A tired and gloomy cityscape hunches beneath the withering, lowering sky. It's gloomy but there aren't many lights on yet, and few are very bright. The brightest, like a star, is coming from a group of cowering residential tower blocks, mostly dwarfed by towering architecture and swathed in glooms and rain.

CAP:    Sheffield. In a bit, anyway.

CAP:    Not nah.

CAP:    Sorry. I should say, not now. Not at present.


PAGE ONE: FRAME TWO: One of the smaller dismal high-rises, all drab held together with shadows, but with one window near the top shining like a star. It is dwarfed by larger, equally gloomy corporate towers bearing a few names like ROTHFELLA and ROCKERCHILD, TRANS-HYPER-GLOBAL and HYPER-TRANS-GLOBAL and GLOBAL-HYPER-TRANS and suchlike homogeneities and meaningless logos.

CAP:    But soon.


PAGE ONE: FRAME THREE: In one window, near the top of the small dismal high-rise, Gerry Destine sits at his desk typing into a laptop. The light from his window shines a little more golden, a little brighter than the rest.

CAP:    Right soon.

CAP:    Shite. Promised me'sen Ah wouldn't seh that.



PAGE ONE: FRAME FOUR: Gerry's apartment is small, Spartan. Warm but not quite warm enough. Damp. The place is rife with books of all sorts. Gerry looks up from the laptop, annoyed at the interruption of someone hammering at his door.

CAP:    Gerry wouldn't have said that.

SFX (KNOCK AT DOOR):    RATTA-RATTA-RATTA  BOK-BOK-BOK

GERRY:  Damn this rabble of bloody... rrrr... What!?


END OF PAGE ONE.



PAGE TWO.

PAGE TWO: FRAME ONE: Gerry flings open the door to reveal Bob and Bill, big, out of shape guys dressed in old hoodies and jeans, with matching bandanas and surgical masks. Gangsta types, but drab gangstas.

CAP:    Gerry's got more class.

GERRY:  Somebody better be actually on Christballing fire or melting, man! I shit you the fuck not!

GERRY (LONG JOIN):  What do you want?


PAGE TWO: FRAME TWO: Bob and Bill are feeling awkward. They have horrible news and don't quite know how to break it.

BOB:    Christ, Gerry, I've been knocking for half a f...

BILL (CUTS BOB OFF):    Will you... Jesus.

BILL (JOIN):    It's Lorrey, Gerry.       She's, dead, mate.


PAGE TWO: FRAME THREE: Gerry isn't phased at all by this news.

GERRY:  First off, Bob, I heard. I ignored.

GERRY:  And second off, Bill, I know. I killed her.

CAP:    Like I said. Class.


PAGE TWO: FRAME FOUR: Bob and Bill exchange sideways glances as Gerry gestures towards his laptop, a look of concern on his haggard face.

GERRY:  In my Future Shock. In my story. It's perfect. The perfect twist. The key. The way to the Last Page.

CAP:    He never quits, this one.

CAP:    Thinks he can write his way out. Against me!



PAGE TWO, FRAME FIVE: Bob and Bill are shot through the heads simultaneously. From nowhere. The writer done it. T'was me, was I, for these paper lives are mine to fry. They are killed instantly. Gerry is so wrapped up explaining his own genius that he does not notice.

GERRY:  It all starts in frame one, where an impoverished writer cruelly shunned by the most...

SFX (BULLET IMPACTS):   THWAP THWEP

GERRY:  Anyway, that's all... The point is, he goes to this remote Ilkley crossroads at midnight on the thirteenth day before Hallowe'en to...

CAP:    But then, I got class, an' all.


PAGE TWO: FRAME SIX: Gerry finally notices as Bob and Bill fall to the floor, lifeless, spurting blood from their fatal head wounds.

GERRY:  Guys? Oh.

CAP:    I love this bit. When they realise.




END OF PAGE TWO


PAGE THREE

PAGE THREE: FRAME ONE: Gerry points directly out of frame at me, the reader. He is angry. He is real. His desk-lamp makes him shine a little brighter than his drab surroundings.

GERRY:  This is you, isn't it?

GERRY:  You knew that killing her would lead to the perfect twist... but killing these two would ruin it. Damn. This is not what I meant, damn you.

GERRY:  Now I'll have to expand it into a series... yes... multiple parts... time travel... resurrection... bring her back... escape...(TRAILING OFF.)



PAGE THREE: FRAME TWO: Behind the windows of the apartments surrounding Gerry's, people are having their own, quieter personal experiences. But Gerry's window is still the brightest, still the most golden.

CAP:    Suspect you reckon you've rumbled me by now.

CAP:    The old Threadbare Metaphor himself. Or not. I'd shake hands but, tha' knows.


PAGE THREE: FRAME THREE: The dreary block in which Gerry lives, and countless like it, are dwarfed by the dreary blocks around them. Each block contains a thousand desperate souls. Each window shines like a star, mostly dim with a few brighter ones scattered about, but Gerry's is the brightest of all.

CAP:    Or I might say that not all devils are red and may inhabit a more... pleasingly unripened wavelength of the spectrum.

CAP:    Anyway. That's Sheffield for tha'. For you, sorry. Gerry's version, anyway.

CAP:    A bit too grim for my tastes but he seems to enjoy it.


PAGE THREE: FRAME FOUR: Sheffield, miserable and grim, huddles beneath a howling winter storm. It's going dark. But lights are on all over the city. One or two shine bright, but Gerry's still shines brightest of all - the Pole Star of hopes and dreams.

CAP:    Odd how sommat so drab shines so bright.

CAP:    There's nowt like getting it right, is there?

GERRY (UNSEEN, FROM HIS MINISCULE WINDOW):  This is my narrative! Get away! Get away! I write you in as a voice in my head I must vanq...(FADING TO INCOHERENCE.)

THE END
[move]~~~^~~~~~~~[/move]




The Legendary Shark

Guts
20~~~^~~~22
PART I
Mandatory Incident Report, Saturday September 17th 2118
Ordered by: Judge Dredd

Appellant to: Street Assessment #2118/09/17/306-9b, Cadet Judge Bond, Colin - SN 144871-12 [cs29C, cg4.5]

Report begins:

On the day of the incident in question, I was assigned 9b level street assessment under Judge Dredd, one of the final challenges before my graduation in three weeks. If I graduate. I guess this whole situation puts that option into a garbage grinder.

Our patrol began at 18:00. Judge Dredd was waiting in the Academy jump bay with two Lawmasters when I arrived. Although I was five minutes early, I believe Judge Dredd was irritated. He growled something about "dedication" and then zoomed off, leaving me to catch up using a cold Academy Lawmaster - and you know how hard they are to start.

Yeah, yeah - I know. Keep to the facts. No personal comments or undue embellishments. Well, drokk that. Judge Dredd's already flunked me, I've disobeyed orders and I went off-grid for over two hours. I'm pretty much done and I always hated writing dry, soulless reports so I might as well go out with a bang. So, bridges burned, on with the report.

In the first hour we dealt with a traffic wreck, a hab fire, and a malfunctioning robot [separate reports attached, see Support File]. Judge Dredd was unimpressed by my performance, speaking only to criticise. But he's Judge Dredd, man, you know? He's blown entire cities up. He's done it all. How the Hell do you impress a judge like that? He ought to be banned from carrying out assessments. Just keep him pointed at the bad guys. For my part, I think his criticisms were unjustified. I pulled three citizens from a burning hab, six from a burning mo-pad, and lured the robot into exactly the right spot for Judge Dredd to shoot it. Which he took his time doing, I might add. The thing almost had me before he got it. And it fell on me. He didn't even help me up; just re-charged his Lawgiver, called Tek Division for a pick-up and then zoomed off again, covering me in dust and gravel.

The sun set just after 19:00 and we were called to several more challenging situations: a robbery at a branch of Bling Me, Sunshine! Jewellers, a mob shoot-out at Happy & Golucky's Bar 'n' Mill, a kidnapping in Billy Connolly Block, three suicide attempts, nine murder scenes, and the hi-jacking of a municipal drudge-crawler [separate reports attached, see Support File]. After the mob shoot-out, Judge Dredd was definitely displeased with my performance. I took the lead into the building and paused to make a tactical assessment. Judge Dredd steamed past me and went in shooting, going all "Surrender or die, creeps!" on their asses. I immediately backed him up and between us we killed all fifteen perps; eleven were eliminated in the initial firefight and the final four executed under standing warrants upon their surrender. It was a perfectly efficient and professional operation, but all Judge Dredd could do was criticise my initial decision to gather tactical data. "A judge needs guts, Bond," he said. Cheeky spugger. I got your guts. I got your guts right here.

I defend my decision to pause on entering Happy & Golucky's Bar 'n' Mill to gather tactical data because - THAT IS WHAT WE ARE TAUGHT. We already had the element of surprise and a fairly rough idea where the perps were, but pinpointing them precisely before going in would have been tactically sound. Judge Dredd, though, has done a gazillion of these things. He knows in his gut where everyone is. It's instinct with him. I don't got that yet. So I have to rely on my training, no matter what Old Stoneface says. Yeah, I wrote that. Bridges burned, remember?

At around 01:30 there's a lull and we take the opportunity to eat hotties from a street vendor and watch the Saturday night revellers trying not to get noticed. He doesn't speak to me, not a word. He eats his hottie quickly and mechanically, his concentration always on the citizens meandering from bar to bar. Sometimes he'd catch the eye of somebody being too loud or point his daystick at a citizen thinking about urinating in a shop doorway and they'd put their heads down and scamper along their ways. If I'm honest, and I assure you I am, it was a masterclass in street presence.

At 01:33:17, Judge Dredd received a call on the frequency we were both locked to [helm-rec data attached, see Support File], which said, "Dredd? Manners. The Sub-Committee's meeting now, they brought it forward."

Dredd glanced at me and then took the conversation to a private channel. "Who's chair?" He nodded, listening, still watching the crowd. He scowled and the nearest passing citizens dropped their eyes a little lower. "She deserves better," he said. "Dredd out."

"Dredd to Control," he said after barely a pause. Control answered and he said, "I'm going off patrol to tie up a few things. Might be a while." Control confirmed his message and advised him to check in every hour. "Roger and out." He turned his comms off, ate the last of his hottie and threw the wrapper in a garbage chute. He held his hand out for my empty wrapper too, which surprised me, and tossed that into the chute after his own. Then he turned to me and said, "Cadet Bond, this assessment is suspended. Return to the Academy and await further instructions."

I was shocked.

"Sir," I protested. "I'm shocked! I protest! This is a twenty-four hour assessment, we're not even halfway through!"

"Follow your orders, Cadet," he said, growling like a Heavy Metal Kid on a cold morning, "and don't forget that the assessment isn't actually over until you're out of my sight, understand?"

I could do nothing but comply. Just as his manner and the sheer granite reality of his presence cowed the citizens, so it cowed me. But only for a moment - I am, or was almost a judge, after all, and judges are not so easily cowed. I would play along, but something was wrong. I could feel it in my gut. "Yes, Sir," I said, and started my Lawmaster, thinking to ride out of sight and then follow him.

He placed a restraining hand on my forearm. "Leave the bike," he said. "Slave it to mine then call in for a pick-up. Academy's about three kay away if you decide to walk it, but if you do just remember that you may be dressed like a judge, but you ain't a judge yet. Pick-up's safer, walking's quicker. Your choice."

As I was slaving my Lawmaster to Judge Dredd's, he opened up his comms again. "Dredd to Cursed Earth Monitoring Network," a pause, "any activity out there?" He listened for a long moment, periodically giving a slight shake of the head, until finally saying, "That'll do. Send the co-ordinates to my Lawmaster." Then he zoomed off, my own riderless Lawmaster zooming off after him. Leaving me alone. In Mega City One. At the ragged end of a Saturday night. I might say Judge Dredd was showing faith in my ability to not get killed trying to cross three kilometres of the City, or I might say it's a dereliction of care and put a complaint in. I know. Too late. Bridges burned.

With two mystery communications and the unexplained suspension of my 9b, not to mention his theft of my bike, I felt that something was deeply wrong. Was Judge Dredd under the influence of some malign extra-dimensional xenophage, like the ones we learn about in xenosuppression class? Was he being blackmailed, in one of the forms we learn about in judicial weaknesses class? Or was the unthinkable happening? Like some sad case history in SJS studies class, was Judge Dredd himself selling Justice Department Lawmasters to the underworld? Whatever the case might turn out to be, I resolved to follow him and flagged down a taxi. Using my helmet display to monitor his personal transponder, and the transponders of the two Lawmasters, I followed him to the Geek Street Euthanasium. I halted the taxi out of sight and sent it away, keeping watch on the two empty Lawmasters parked at the foot of the drab building's drab front steps.

I waited for what seemed like hours until, at 02:49, Judge Dredd emerged from the building supporting a frail old woman in a judge's uniform. With the zoom in my visor, I easily identified her. That's what you want me to keep quiet about, isn't it? Another dirty little Justice Department secret. But don't worry, I won't spill the beans. I may not be graduating any more but I still have my honour at least.

Of course, Judge Dredd found me out instantly because I'd rushed dampening my own transponder. He put you-know-who on my Lawmaster then marched directly over to my hiding place and shoved me up against a wall. "What the Hell are you doing here, Cadet?"

I put up my hands. "I thought you might be in some kind of trouble, Sir!" I said, in my best Academy smart-speak.

Okay, of all that has gone before and all that follows, this is the one bit you won't believe. But I swear, with my right hand on Fargo's toe and my lips on the Eagle's beak, it's true. He smiled. I know, I know, everyone says he never smiles. Probably genetically incapable of it, some kind of early clone thing. But he did it. It admittedly wasn't a very big smile, or a particularly encouraging one, being in its nature more of a reverse scowl, if you can picture such a thing. The corners of his mouth twitched up like tortured insects for a mere fraction of a moment, but it was definitely a smile.

"So you came to rescue me," the smile was gone but he released his grip. "Commendable."

"Sir, I've obviously stumbled onto something..."

"No, Cadet," he said, "you haven't. You will return to the Academy immediately, turn in your gun and badge, and have a full Mandatory Incident Report in my stack by 05:00."

I sighed. "Yes, Judge Dredd." I couldn't even muster up the courage to apologise as he barked into his comm.

"Academy Faculty, Dredd." A pause. "Cadet Bond needs a pick up, Code 0. He's dampened his transponder so get the co-ordinates from mine until he fixes his own." He shot me a glance and I removed my helmet to re-tune the transponder.

Then he strode back to you-know-who, who was wandering back up the steps. He took her, more gently than one might think possible, and steered her back to my Lawmaster. An Academy flivver piloted by a sour Judge Tutor MacKrae arrived just as the two Lawmasters hurtled off into the night, towards the deeply shadowed West Wall.

MacKrae brought me back to the Academy, berating me for the whole, mercifully short flight. All my equipment has been taken from me as, under Code 0, my status as a Justice Department cadet has been suspended and my chances of graduation reduced to whatever word describes something less likely than inconceivable. So that's street judge out. Maybe I'll get to be a cube guard or even end up in a cube myself. If I'm really lucky, I might get sent to Traffic or PSU. All because of that damned old dinosaur. All because I don't match up to a legend.

So, that's my report, Judge Dredd. My last official duty as a Street Judge cadet.

And I do have guts. You're reading them.

Drokk you and goodnight.

The information I have recorded in this report is, to the best of my knowledge and ability, a true and accurate account.
Cadet Judge Colin Bond (suspended).

+++
+++

Cont.../
[move]~~~^~~~~~~~[/move]




The Legendary Shark

/...cont.

PART II
Voluntary After Action Report, Wednesday September 21st 2118
Ordered by: Judge Tutor MacKrae

Appellant to: Street Assessment #2118/09/17/306-9b(ext_A), Ex Cadet Judge Bond, Colin - SN 144871-12 [cs29C, cg4.5](Disc.)

Report begins:

I know I have to write this report and that if I don't you'll squeeze it out of me anyway, and so write it I will - because I shouldn't be here, in this cube, and you need to hear my side of it. But first, I have a few things to say.

Firstly, I object most strenuously to being held in a common cube when simple confinement to my quarters at the Academy would have sufficed. The food in here is worse than dehydrated sand, the guards single me out for punishments and the rest of the inmates periodically take it in turns to try and kill me. The last one came at me with a toilet brush he'd chewed to a point. The cheeky drokker very nearly had my kidney out. It's not good enough and, I believe, a violation of Section Nine, paragraphs six through eighteen of the Penal Code - 'no Justice Department perp will be placed in the general population.'

Secondly, I feel compelled to point out that the holovizors inside the cubes are presenting misleading information. As a final year cadet at the Academy of Law, I know what the law is - and all this bullstom on the holos? That's not it. It misleads inmates into thinking they have no rights at all. Fundamentally, the information is all correct but is presented in a deeply deceptive way. This not what I was taught in incarceration and execution class. I believe at least some of the aforesaid presentations breach the Simple Lawful Applications and Representations Act of 2097.

Finally, and most importantly, I have heard rumours that clones who wash out of the Academy are broken down into their constituent nutrients and fed into the new clone vats. Also that failed cadets risk lobotomies to remove our more destructive training or knowledge. I would like you to scotch these rumours. I don't want to be liquidized or lobotomized. I want to do my time, whatever it's going to be (and it can't be much, because I didn't do much), and then set up in private security or something. Maybe private eye work. Bodyguarding. Something where I can still use my skills to do good. Within the law, of course.

Right, my report:

I'd just finished typing my Mandatory Incident Report [attached, see Support File] into my j-Pad with ten minutes to spare before Judge Dredd's 05:00 deadline, when you, Judge Tutor MacKrae, burst into my quarters. "Hup, hup," you said - you always say that, and nobody knows why. "Hup, hup, Bond. Draw your gear and report to airpad three, now! Come on, lad - hup, hup!"

"I thought I was suspended?" I said.

"You were, now you ain't. Hup, hup - Dredd's waiting."

I gaped. "Judge Dredd? But... Oh... I'd better just..." I reached for my j-Pad but he pulled me away.

"Yes, yes. Hup, hup," you said, bustling me out of the room at the double, steering me towards this level's quartermaster's office. "Dredd said you deserved to finish your assessment and wants you on a transport, urgent."

"Where am I going?"

"The Cursed Earth," you said. "Just remember your hotdogs and you'll be fine. Draw your stuff, hup, hup now, transport's inbound, five out."

Six minutes later I found myself aboard a Justice Department long-range pat-wagon, still fastening my pads, lancing away from the brightly lit City and out into the night-infested wilderness of the Cursed Earth. Also aboard were three seasoned street judges, Parle, Cooper, and Croton, a surly med judge named Crowe, a smart-ass tek judge named Gordon who wanted us to call him Flash, and a couple of pilots, whose names I never caught because they were killed on impact when a missile blew the pat-wagon out of the purpling sky.

The wagon came to rest on its belly, a little over a hundred yards from Judge Dredd. We were all momentarily stunned but the sound of Lawgiver fire from outside brought us round. Parle flung open the door and leaped out, Cooper and Croton followed her and I followed them. The situation soon became clear. Judge Dredd was holding a tribe of mutant cannibals at bay, the body of Chief Judge McGruder at his feet, his Lawgiver firing like a slow jack-hammer, every shot a lethal one. Our training took over and we charged the tribe, overwhelming them with superior tactics and firepower. Those who stood and fought died, the rest ran away. I was every bit a part of the action, but when I glanced back Judge Dredd wasn't even looking. He was handing McGruder's body over to the surly Crowe and Judge Cooper, who sustained a broken wrist in the crash, to carry into the wagon.

"What's the damage?" Dredd gestured towards the downed pat-wagon.

"Engine two's scrap," said Gordon, "engine one's damaged but not over bad. Flight deck controls are pretty banged up, pilots' airbags failed and they hit the consoles pretty hard. Hull's twisted but seems sound. She'll be a pig to fly with two and a half engines and a bent spine but I reckon we can get her home."

"How long?"

Gordon rubbed his chin. "Two or three hours, maybe more depending on what crops up. We can have another ship out here in forty-five minutes if you prefer."

Judge Dredd shook his head and checked his Lawgiver. "Negative. You, Crowe and Cooper stay here and fix the ship. Parle, Croton, Bond, with me. Somewhere out there is a creep with surface-to-air missiles. We need to take that creep out." He then strode over to what looked like a patch of bare earth and reached down to pull a chain, which in turn pulled open a rusty old trap door which gaped out of the ground with a grating yawn. "You can come out now," he shouted into the gaping hole in the ground.

Presently, a dozen dazed Helltrekkers emerged into the brightening pre-dawn chill. They could have asked us to take them back to the City. After everything they'd been through, watching three of their number tortured, cooked, and eaten and facing the same fate themselves before Judge Dredd showed up, nobody would have blamed them. But they elected instead to fix their tractor and make speed to catch back up with the rest of their trek. Citizens. They're all insane.

Judge Dredd called me to him. "Assessment, Cadet?"

"Tracks are scattered but tend towards the north-west. However, local tribal tactics tend towards initially fleeing away from the rally point and so I suggest we strike out to the north-east and ambush them when they circle back," I said.

He grunted. "You think these cannibals have a rocket launcher? They were using home-made shotguns and crossbows."

"They could've picked one up, Sir, there's still plenty of dangerous junk lying around out here. Besides, they seem to be our only suspects."

"Is that so?" Judge Dredd mounted his Lawmaster while Parle and Croton retrieved their own Lawmasters from the wagon. "What about the creep with the scanner on the ridge, three o'clock?"

I made the rookie mistake of turning my head to look and was just in time to see a distant figure duck out of sight. Judge Dredd growled out a sigh. "Sorry, Sir," I said.

He started his Lawmaster. "Parle, Croton, follow the cannibals, teach 'em some table manners. Bond, with me."

Parle and Croton gunned their Lawmasters after the fleeing cannibals, beacons flashing and sirens blaring, headlamps on maximum illumination in the pre-dawn gloom, being all very shock and awe. Judge Dredd, me following on my recovered Lawmaster, which was now covered in cold sticky blood, sped towards the ridge in stealth mode. By the time we crested the ridge, the sun was rising at our backs. The ridge was the lip of an old crater, about a mile wide, cut out of a shattered and twisted landscape befouled with the dessicated bones of a dead city. The rising sun turned the tallest ruins to gold, splashing a skein of beauty over the malignant panorama.

Judge Dredd gunned his lawmaster down the other side of the ridge, into the still benighted crater, following footprints through the infra-red scanners in his helmet. If he noticed the extraordinary resplendence of the scene, he certainly never said anything. The base of the crater, still in gloom, was covered with a layer of rippled and fractured glass that crunched and splintered under the tyres of our Lawmasters and glistened and glowed in our infra-reds. Short, tough grasses and dense, thorny bushes grew sporadically between the older cracks in the glass. Above us, in the distance, around the still dark edges of the crater, the tallest ruins shone gold so that it seemed we were venturing towards the middle of some Narcissistic god's discarded crown.

He braked his Lawmaster to a halt and I parked alongside him. He pointed. "Structure."

I couldn't see it for a moment, so well did it blend in with the undulating crater floor. "I see it," I said. "Bike cannon?" He might have smiled again at that point, but it was dark and probably not.

"Standard pincer," he said. "You go left, I go right. Keep this kinda' distance, set your Lawmaster to level two back-up and proceed on foot. Look for ways in." He rode off, without waiting for a reply.

The structure turned out to be little more than a synthi-tin shack hidden by piles of rocks and a convincing paint job. There were security cameras and trip-lasers, but these were easy for our Lawmasters to detect and hack before we moved in to discover no windows and only one door. Judge Dredd gestured for me to kick it in, which I did. The door fell away easily with my first kick, which is always sweet. There's nothing worse than when one hinge clings on or the door breaks in two so that it needs another kick out of the way. Judge Tutor Hale said those kinds of things were dead seconds, precious wasted seconds that could get you killed. Anyway, I made sure to kick hard and sharp, just like old Hale See-Sir taught us, and the door just fell perfectly.

We were inside in a flash, Lawgivers at the ready, to find the shack had only two bearded occupants. They were wearing scruffy overalls and both had their hands up. I forced them to their knees and cuffed them while Judge Dredd scanned the shack. "Rocket launcher," he said once the two prisoners were secure. I looked around and saw the launcher, on a rack with a range of other munitions from mines to pistols. The rest of the shack was a fight for space between spartan comforts and a confusion of scientific scanners and recording devices.

"Names," Judge Dredd barked.

"A... Abel Brockman, Sir, that's me. Professor of anthropology at MCU. Tenured," he added in a significant tone, as if it might make a difference.

"Doctor Delby Dane, Judge Dredd Sir," the other kneeling scientist gulped, making his unkempt black beard wobble. "I'm just the assistant," he said, beginning to babble. "I just pilot the drones and organise the data, I don't do any of the shooting or..."

Brockman, his wild red beard bristling, nudged Dane with his shoulder. "Be quiet, you idiot! I'll deal with this..."

But Dane's babble had only just begun and Judge Dredd let it continue, looking down at the man like a looming thunderhead at the edge of town. "It was all his idea. He set it up, and it was all great, then they tried to eat us and so Abe..."

Brockman lunged at Dane, intent on biting his ear off, but I stunned him into submission with a hefty crack from the back of my hand.

"Abe decided to provide for them, to keep them away from us."

"The cannibals?"

"Yes," Dane said. "They're called the Nosh-Monstas tribe. They have a fascinating..." Dredd growled and gestured for more pertinent information. "Yes, of course. Abe, Professor Brockman, he started by shooting animals and leaving the carcasses for the tribe's scavengers to find. But it soon became clear that eating human flesh isn't a necessity for the Nosh-Monstas but a holy ritual, so we were back on the menu again.

"What he did next, he did without my knowledge, I swear. He killed a man, a lone prospector, and left the body for the tribe. They left us alone after that, but only for three months, so Abe did it again. An itinerant dentist and his daughter, this time. I tried to talk him out of it, I swear." Dane began to cry.

Judge Dredd grabbed Dane's hair and pulled his head back to snarl into his face. "The helltrekkers?"

Dane sobbed. "He took out their tractor's drive train with a mine, the tribe did the rest."

"And the pat-wagon?"

Dane nodded. "That too. It was him. It was all him. Please, you have to believe me."

"An' you just sat on your butt and watched, huh?" Judge Dredd's gravel-grinder of a voice said. "How long you two been out here? How many poor saps have you fed to these ghouls?"

"Three..." Dane sobbed, his beard wet with tears and snail trails of silvery snot, "three years... Scores of people, scores. Maybe a hundred. Grud help me. He said he'd kill me in my sleep if I didn't..."

Judge Dredd let go of the sobbing man's hair and looked at me. "Sentencing?"

"Gross misuse of official City academic funding, ten years. Use of a non-regulation research structure and unlicensed establishment and erection of said structure, nine months. Multiple premeditated homicides carried out over a period of three years, death."

Judge Dredd nodded. "Have you anything to say before I carry out your sentences?"

Dane had lots to say but was crying so hard he couldn't get anything out before a double-tap ended his sobbing forever. Professor Brockman called us stupid and short-sighted, said that science would remember him and that our brains were too feeble to grasp the importance of his research, but his presumably superior brain was soon all over the floor and his important research on fire as we tossed a couple of incendiary rounds in after we left.

"Might have been a mistake to torch all that data, Sir," I hazarded. "Information on the culture and, I mean, tactics of this tribe could help us learn."

He definitely didn't smile this time but, looking into the gloomy crater under the rising sun and seeing Parle and Croton riding towards us said, "I don't think that's gonna be a problem, Cadet."

The two rode to a halt in front of us and Parle took off her helmet. "Saw the smoke," she said, "figured you might need support."

"Nope," said Judge Dredd. "Bond and I got it all squared away. You?"

Parle picked a loose strand of windblown hair from her mouth. "I think we've spoiled their appetite. They won't be lickin' their lips at the next helltrek they see, at any rate, they'll be away like singed jackrabbits."

Judge Dredd called his bike to him and ordered a return to the pat-wagon, which objective was achieved without incident.

I could have described the journey back to the downed pat-wagon, there, but instead I want to touch upon a clerical matter. Cadets at the Academy are very busy, and have very many essays and reports to write. Missing a deadline for an essay or especially a report is worse than submitting an incomplete document. And why am I telling you this, Judge Tutor MacKrae, when you are well aware of the rules? I'll tell you for why - because what happened next was entirely your fault. You see, there's an app on the Academy server that autosubmits essays and reports automatically on the deadline, whether it's complete or not.

I didn't have time to switch off autosubmit on that damned report I wrote. The one where I just let rip because I thought Judge Dredd had failed me and that I wasn't going to be a judge any more. The one where I was petulant and angry. But then you come in telling me that Judge Dredd's asked for me and I think that maybe I've been a bit rash, so I try to delete the report but you pull me away before I can do it. But I think it's fine, I'll delete it later and take the demerit for submitting late. But I forgot about the autosubmit.

He read my report on the pat-wagon as it shuddered home at less than half speed. He never said a word.

And that's why I'm here in this cube, isn't it? Because Old High and Mighty can't take a joke. And if you want to know where McGruder's body is, I don't know. Last I saw she was laid out on a bunk in the pat-wagon. As soon as it landed I was arrested and brought to this drokking cube.

So, there's your report. We're all caught up. This is not how I saw my last three weeks going.

The information I have recorded in this report is, to the best of my knowledge and ability, a true and accurate account.
Ex Cadet Judge Colin Bond.

++++++++++
[move]~~~^~~~~~~~[/move]




The Legendary Shark



It oozed out of his chest, a hideous thick oil as dark as arseholes at midnight and hot like enraged hemarroids. Horrified, he dabbed his finger into the vile substance and cautiously brought it to his nose.

It smelled like chocolate.

The demon swore. That wasn't the effect it was after at all.

[move]~~~^~~~~~~~[/move]




The Legendary Shark

The Doings of Rufus Muldoon
Lou Zoo
Part One
~~~^~~~


'Tweren't nothin' ta me as Hooligan Hawkins out of Radscar Chasm saved Paw's life once durin' some unpleasantness over in Bane County. There was a heap of unpleasantness over in Bane County twenty year ago, an' Hooligan Hawkins was generally to be found at the bullseye of most of it, according to Gramma at least. Paw said Hooligan was a monster of a man with a skeleton of teak, a skin of dino-hide an' hair like needlerose thorns, but with the heart of an old fashioned saint. Hooligan was strenuously urging slaves to freedom when Paw got caught in the crossfire and would've been perforated if not for the big man's interposition. But this is all ancient historics and, like I said, 'tweren't nothin' ta me.

What was somethin' ta me was this life-debt Paw owed Hooligan, and it was somethin' ta me because Paw couldn't help on account of his mouldy leg and sent me instead. Paw'd received a letter delivered by a fancy courier with a uniform, cap an' bow tie on a slathered hoss as said "Life in danger - come quick! HH" 'Course, I tried to argue with Paw, I'd been fixing to go with Clancy Bosseye and his gang up to Scabcrust Swamp to hunt chemigators, but when Paw sets his mind on somethin' he's immovable as a Big Meg eagle guy, mouldy leg or no. In an ucharacteristic fit o' generosity, Paw let me take all his guns (except Bessie, o' course) and most of the ammo. Ma gave me a couple of good quality knives from her prized collection an' Gramma lent me her second-best blunderbuss. My brothers an' sisters also chipped in with pistols and rifles and even our baby Gommy gave me his scattapult. All you fancy big city tycoons might look down your noses at us Cursed Earth folk, but we're just as civilized as you are, an' our families pitch in. Even cousin Boobon gave me some biscuits for the ride and two grenades.

The journey was a long one, and with all the guns an' biscuits I'd brung a second hoss, Paw's own Thunderclap, to carry it all. Thunderclap and General Leer, my own hoss, didn't get along. Leer, havin' the ability ta speak, regarded hisself as superior to Thunderclap, who was old and miserable and didn't give a rattler's spit what Leer thought anyways. Leer tormented old Thunderclap all the way by flickin' his tail in his face, suddenly stoppin' fer no good reason an' generally bein' mean. No matter how many times I boxed his ears, the General persisted. Old Thunderclap was an old hoss with old legs and he'd seen what happened to hosses with broke legs and was smart enough to be scared of fallin' over. He was also smart enough to know that he couldn't beat Leer in a fight but that din't stop him dreamin'.

One week and seven days in, near halfway there, just west of Sandstormville on the Whisperin' Plains where the razorgrass grows tall as trees, some dang reprobate shot a hole in the neb of my favourite hat and shouted, "Stop! In the name of Lou Zoo!"

"Who in Tarnation are you?" I demanded, flushin' up. "An' why did you shoot my dang hat?"

"I'm the law around here, is who I am," he said, riding out of the tall grass on the back of a mighty big cockerel, "an' I shot yer hat to get yer attention, dummy."

I bristled at that kinda' talk in those days. Still do, on occasion. "Lawman or not," I said, "if you carry on in such an unfriendly manner, dischargin' firearms when a simple 'halloo' would be more'n enough, you an' me are gonna fall out."

He reigned in his bird and dismounted, keeping a rifle on me all the while. "You stay where you are," he said, but didn't come any closer. The giant cockerel started pecking at the ground for tumourmaggots and sufferworms. "What's in all the bags?" He nodded his shiny, knobbly head towards Thunderclap. Big mistake. In that instant, I had a cocked pistol on him.

"None o' yore damn business," says I.

He turned yellow with anger in the face but his spine held a mite longer. "Are you threatening an officer of Lou Zoo's holy law?"

"Not if you go away," I said, "an' leave me to my own doin's." He gulped and put up his rifle before slippin' it back into its saddle holster and re-mounting his big rooster, which clearly didn't enjoy it. I kept my gun on him the whole time.

Once mounted, he cleared his throat. "I will have to report this," he said, "and you should be aware that all the land from Clearwater Dream to the Acidbog Range is under the jurisdiction of His Divine Highness, Lou Zoo, and that you are subject to arrest if you do not produce legit-ee-mate freedom permits."

"I don't need no Papers to be free," I said, then shot his hat off. He yelped and spurred his big chicken away at an impressive rate. General Leer, who remained characteristically quiet durin' the encounter so's best to judge the wind, shouted some choice profanities after the receeding, hatless lawman. "Quiet you," I said, and boxed his ears. Thunderclap snickered and Lee tried to trip him up but instead only stumbled hisself, which din't improve his mood any. He spent the next three days grumbling about his rights an' bein' extra-mean to Thunderclap, who remained miserably aloof. I pushed 'em both pretty hard until Acidbog Range was behind us and we were all the way up into the Glasstop Hills.

You fancy city tycoons might think all you have are wonders and all we Cursed Earth folk have are ruins, but there's powerful beauty out here. Powerful beauty. Now, I ain't no poet, we got Uncle Carbuncle for that, but those Glasstop Hills sure are a wonder to see. Just the tops of the tallest hills got glassed by the bombs an' now they shine like great diamonds sticking out of an unbroke green meadow of grabweed. I had to keep stopping to pull the grabweed away from the hoss's legs until I remembered two sets of ankle-spikes one of my sisters gave me. I fitted them to the beasts, neither o' whom relished the idea, an' thereafter progress was more fraught but a lot quicker. Until the cockerel-riding officer, with a new, fancier hat and accompanied by a deputy ridin' a big duck, once again barred my Path.

"Halloo," said the officer. "Papers, please," he continued. Both had their hands on their holstered pistols.

"Ain't got none," I said. "Don't need none." They'd been lying in ambush and my hands were still on the General's reigns, too many seconds away from my own six-shooters.

The officer smirked and his deputy, a worried-looking young man trying to grow a beard, gulped. "Anyone without valid freedom permits is to be placed into the general herd immediately for assessment and duty allocation. He shifted slightly in his saddle. "Do you concur, Sergeant Branson?" The young deputy gulped again and then, failin' ta find any words in 'im, nodded. "Then, by the powers invested in me by His Divine..." The giant duck quacked, which startled the rooster. In that few seconds of distraction, I drew both my irons an' shot their hats off. They Panicked a bit so I gave 'em a few warnings, drilling a feather or two, until they ran away to a humiliatin' tirade from General Leer. This time, I didn't box his ears.

Both the hoss's moods improved once we moved beyond the Hills an' back to sand an' rock with no need for the ankle-spikes. The General recited poems about the nobility of liberty but still acted mean to Thunderclap, who remained miserably aloof. We kept up a good Pace, and the hosses were smart enough to know why.

One day out, we came upon a homestead in a crater at the edge of the Booth's Mirror glasslands and Paid a visit, hoping to trade for water. A wide road led down from the crater's lip to the sturdy buildings at its centre. On each side of the neatly gravelled road, and all around the crater walls, crops and flowers of amazin' variety flourished in neat squares. Berries and cereals and fruits and nuts. My belly rumbled but I reached for the last of my biscuits and started chomping.

The first inhabitant I met was a young boy, maybe nine or ten, who emerged onto the road with bright red lips and an armful of ripe strawberries. Strawberry juice stained his grubby white overalls and for a moment he was too enamoured of his pilfered feast to see me. When he did see me, he screamed and high-tailed it towards the houses, which by then weren't so far away. I pulled the hosses to a halt and dismounted, shifted my coat to cover but not conceal my six shooters, and waited. A woman, also in a grubby white overall, was dragged through one of the doors by the strawberry thief. She was struggling and chastising the boy, wagging a finger at the stains on his lips while he hauled at her sleeve. The strawberry thief stopped trying to drag the woman and pointed at me. She ran out of anger and looked at me. I waved.

The white-overalled woman shoved the strawberry thief back through the door and shouted something after him. Someone handed her a rifle and she checked it was loaded before turning and marching straight towards me. I kept my hands relaxed but ready and she cocked the rifle. I raised my hands, she pointed the rifle at my chest. "Speak," she said.

I took off my hat, always remindful of showing the proper respect. "Yes, Ma'am." I cleared my throat. "My name is Rufus Muldoon, Ma'am, an' I'm just on my way to the Rifts..."

"I don't care," she said. "Why are you here?"

"I was hopin' to trade for water," I looked at the strawberries scattered on the neat gravel roadway, "an' maybe a little food. I got a few silver coins, some Meg-creds..." Two men in white overalls emerged from the hedges separating the fields from the road, one to either side of me, both armed. "I ain't no varmint, Ma'am," I said, but I could see she wasn't convinced. "Your place, your rules," I said. "I need water, Ma'am, and I'm prepared to Pay for it, but I ain't prepared to just take it, either. That kinda' thing ain't right."

"Pretty words," she said. More white-overalled people began to emerge from the buildings in a practised Pattern, each of them armed, all of them focussed on me.

"I'm sorry we couldn't do business, Ma'am," I said. Not looking at the guns, I put on my hat and turned to re-mount the General.

She slapped my shoulder, spun me back around and offered her hand. "Call me Caddy," she said. "Come on, follow us back and then you can tell me all about why you're trying to get to Hooligan Hawkins." I tried not to show my astonishment but my wide open mouth gave me away. She put her hands on my elbows and looked me up and down. "My, but you are a big one, aren't you? A really quite impressive mutant." I glowered at her and she threw her hands to her mouth. "Person! A really quite... I mean, a really very impressive person. I'm sorry, I sometimes can't keep up with the... anyway," she held out her Palms, fingers stretched wide. "Mister Muldoon, would you accept an invitation to visit Nu New Eden Crater Cooperative Community Homestead?"

I nodded, "Sure thing, Miss Caddy," I said. She turned away with a wave and walked back to the farmhouse. We didn't talk on the stroll to the farm. She was too far ahead and General Leer wouldn't shut up about being hungry and kept on tormenting Thunderbolt into the bargain. Thunderbolt was finding it more difficult to remain miserably aloof and was becoming more grumpily aloof, even going so far as to blow on the General's tail to make him think he had radflies on it and make it flick. Whenever the General looked around Thunderbolt slipped back into miserable aloofness. The General couldn't imagine Thunderbolt capable of such petty torment, but I could tell from the distracted nature of his complainin' that he entertained doubts.

Back at the farm, the hosses wuz led off to stables to be fed and watered and fussed over by young grooms. Miss Caddy promised me my supplies would be safe and invited me into one of the big main buildings put together from cut stones covered in whitewash and not shy with its high, wide windows and upper floor balconies. Inside was fancy furniture and gadgets, like them Mega City Palaces you hear about. They was all from Mega City One, as it turns out, except the sprogs born here. A Helltrek that found a good spot and dug in for the long-haul. They used their technology, and a few contracted air-drops, to bring the crater to life. Miss Caddy was tellin' me all about it when the first bullet came through a window and put a hole in her second-best coffee pot.

"Freedom permits," a familiar voice shouted. "Now!" I glanced out of the window and saw the officer on the giant cockerel, his deputy on his duck, and at least half a dozen others mounted on various giant birds and pointin' harmful devices in our direction. A shot coughed outside somewhere and then others and I assumed the farmers started fighting back. The gunfire spread and an officer fell from his bird but this time they stood their ground and gunned down any opposition.

Miss Caddy screamed through the shattered window, "Stop! Stop it! We surrender!" She grabbed a white tablecloth and waved it through the jagged gash. "Please stop killing my people! Please! We surrender!" I growled and gripped my pistols in my fists but she put a hand on my arm. The officer on the rooster called for his men to cease fire and the surviving farmers, their white overalls stained with blood, threw down their weapons.

Miss Caddy told me to stay put and, leavin' her gun behind, left the house with her hands held high. "What do you want? Allies? Trade?"

The officer on the rooster drew himself straight. "His Divine Highness, Lou Zoo, has claimed all the lands from the Broken Arches to the Chaos Rifts as his jurisdiction. Everything and everybody in this place now belongs to His Divine Highness and must possess valid freedom permits or be taken to..."

"And how does one obtain these freedom permits?" Miss Caddy cut in.

The officer Paused, like he'd been slapped, and said, "What?"

"These Papers of yours, how much do they cost?"

"They are..." The officer searched his memory. "A gift from His Divine Highness."

"That sounds very benevolent of him," she said.

The officer clasped his hands together and smiled like he was seeing angels. "Oh, His Divine Highness, Lou Zoo, is most benevolent indeed."

"So, how do we get this benevolent gift from His Divine Highness? I imagine there are forms to fill in. Possibly interviews. What's the administrative route?"

The officer's face hardened and he said, "If His Divine Highness, Lou Zoo, has not already issued your permits then He has decided in His wisdom that you are unworthy of them, and must be added to the general herd for assessment and task allocations." As he spoke, I spotted some movement in the bushes and gripped my six shooters a little tighter.

"That doesn't sound very benevolent to me," said Miss Caddy, her hands still held high.

"Enough of this," the officer said, adjustin' his position in the saddle. "Bring all your people out now and no more will die."

"What, now?" Miss Caddy spread her raised hands a little. "You mean like, 'now' now or now 'as long as it takes to gather everyone together?' We're pretty spread out."

The officer sighed. "Slave, my Patience is at an end. If you do not..."

Miss Caddy raised her hands as high as she could and called out, "Okay, okay - I'll do it now!" On her last shouted word she dived for cover and a volley of fire cut into the officers. The farmers who had thrown down their weapons to reinforce the ruse snatched them up and joined in. The officers fired back and used their combat trained birds to rake and peck at the farmers with fatal results. I thought it only polite to join in and stepped through the broken window, took careful aim, and shot the officer on the cockerel's fancy new hat off. He glared at me across the battlefield and then called into his lapel, whereupon a mass of mounted reinforcements swarmed over the lip of the crater. But the farmers had organised themselves while Miss Caddy delayed proceedings and a heavy machine gun opened up on the reinforcements from the roof of one of the farm buildings, scattering them into the surrounding fields, where they were slowed down but harder to pinpoint.

Enough got to the front line to make a Saturday night of it and everybody did their bit. The Crater was big, and some of the farmers were still coming in to defend the buildings. The rest were assigned to defend the fields and doggedly slowed the reinforcements' advance. I tried to get to the officer on the rooster but the battle kept getting in the way. I could see him but I couldn't get to him so's I could punch him fer shootin' at me. He spoke into his lapel again, pointing at the machine gun on the roof, and a sick like death come on me when I figured what he was up to. I managed to shoot three drones down but there was a swarm and it wasn't enough.

With the machine gun gone, the reinforcements regrouped and charged in. The farmers stood their ground and stuck to their defence plan. All the while the officer on the rooster barked orders into his lapel, directin' his troops. As the fighting reached a crescendo, I heard him shouting, "Send in the reserves! Send them all! Send them now!" Moments later, a mass of armed officers riding giant birds came whooping and yee-hawing over the lip of the crater and down the road to the heart of the colony. A few farmers took up positions in the hedgerows to snipe at this reserve force, but they were too few and, without the machine gun, in minutes we were outnumbered. We didn't even have time to re-load so some of us used our guns as clubs. I used my fists and the knives Ma gave me.

I rarely lost a scrap in those days, but this time there was just too many of 'em. Something like a concrete post wrapped in velvet hit me in the back of the head and then some cheeky miscreant shot me in the backside. I was forced to the ground by six of them, four by the time I actually hit the deck with another bullet and a knife in me, and then the giant cockerel clamped its foot onto my chest, digging its claws in. The officer looked down from the saddle and deliberately drew and cocked his pistol. "His Divine Highness, Lou Zoo, has no place in his benevolent heart for those who reject his benevolence," he said, and pointed the gun at my chest. The instant before he pulled the trigger, spoiling his aim a tad, a bullet slapped into his own forehead and emptied his brains out the back of his head. The officer's bullet sliced a hole in my side and ricocheted into my hand, breaking a couple of bones. My vision began to swim but I somehow took in that help was here and that the tide of the battle had turned. These new combatants, well armed and well drilled, made short work of the officers and, with the help of the farmers, were driving them away like spooked bisonoids.

A big man with dark ridged skin and thorns growing out of his head knelt next to me and examined my wounds. "Sorry we took so long, Kid," he said through a throat filled with brambles. He looked up. "Miss Caddy. I'm glad you're still with us."

I tried to focus but I couldn't see her properly, only the blur of her white overalls, with a faint nebulae o' red clouds, topped by the black smudge of her hair. "Will he be alright, Hoolie?"

Hoolie's voice came from very far away. "He'll be fine, but we have to get everyone out of here and into the research outpost. It's started, Caddy. This is it."

Caddy's answer was distant thunder blurred by the wind, then the wind stopped and night fell like a bucket of ink down an undertaker's chimney.



End of Part One
[move]~~~^~~~~~~~[/move]




The Legendary Shark

The Doings of Rufus Muldoon
Lou Zoo
~~~^~~~
Part Two



I came to, briefly, a few times on the way to the research outpost. My head still swam but I could make out Miss Caddy tending to my wounds, other injured people around me, the realisation that I was lying on an agricultural trailer being towed by a tractor with General Leer trotting alongside, berating my weakness. I woke up for good at dusk but Miss Caddy wouldn't let me sit up and fussed about giving me a wet towel to suck, mopping my brow and checking my bandages. For a moment my thoughts strayed to my own true love back home and I imagined it was she tending my wounds with such devotion, forsaking her duties at the schoolhouse to nurse me back ta health. My headache eased and I discovered Miss Caddy treating the other injured people on the trailer with equal if not deeper care and the fantasy soured like nightmoth's milk in the sun.

"Back with us, then," said General Leer. "Thought you were going to sleep all the way there, lazy bastard."

I looked around at the column of people and vehicles moving with the trailer. "Where's Thunderclap?"

The General snorted to dismiss the subject. "Who cares? Inferior old nag."

"He's my Pa's hoss," I said, showing him my fist, "I care. So where is he?"

"Daft old drudge got hisself killed in the fight. Walked right into it like the moron he was. Huh. Normies."

The news came shocking hard. "That's powerful sad," I said, "Pa's gonna kill me." Before I had time to ask for details, Miss Caddy came back with a bowl of hot broth which she fed me with a spoon. She asked me how I was feeling and I said I was okay but sad about Thunderbolt.

She nodded. "I saw it. Some folk say horses are dumb, but old Thunderbolt knew the score all right."

General Leer snorted and scoffed. "He was a hoss, he knew nothing."

"He knew to kick open the door of his stall when the stables caught fire," she said.

"Sheer panic," the General said.

"And then kick the door of your stall in as well."

"Coincidence."

"So that you could run away like all the other horses whose stall doors he kicked in before the stables collapsed in a fiery ruin."

I glared at the General. "You left him behind? To die in a fire?"

The General snorted and bobbed his head. "Of course I left him, he was just a hoss. I'm a strategist, see, not a tactician. And my strategy was to save my own skin at any cost, in which endeavour I clearly succeeded."

"Besides," said Miss Caddy, "the fire didn't kill him. He got all the other horses out before the fire got too bad and then ran into the battle. What killed him was the guy on the giant rooster who almost did for you. He was gunning for your friend there," she waved a hand towards the General, "when Thunderclap kicked the rooster in a place roosters don't like to get kicked, giving him the chance to continue with his strategy."

"Preposterous," General Leer muttered.

"The officer shot Thunderclap and the rooster ripped him apart with its spurs, by which time your brave talkin' horse was hidin' behind a tractor."

The General snorted again. "Romance," he said. "In truth he was just running around in a mindless panic, kicking out at anything that moved; a giant rooster, you or me, anybody. It wasn't planned. You make it sound like he sacrificed himself to save me, which is ridiculous." He trotted along in silence for a while, my glare borin' inta him something fierce. "Apart from being mentally incapable of such a sacrifice, he hated my guts anyway," he said at length. "He would never have done such a thing. Had no reason to. Preposterous idea. Impossible."

The march continued through the night, Miss Caddy explaining that the situation warranted the risk. The medications and the well-sprung sway of the trailer lulled me to sleep as the most glorious of the night stars pierced the high chem clouds above me. My dreams were full of shadows and blurs but eventually the feel of the sunrise on my face tempted me awake.

"We're nearly there," Miss Caddy said. I followed her gaze to a Mega City One research outpost on the floor of a wide rift in the Cursed Earth, one of many such rifts in this territory. The column was nearly half way down into the rift, utilising a wide cut ridge as a snaking ramp, and the ugly plascrete outpost was easy to see on the rift floor below. It followed usual Justice Department planning regulations and was built to be easily defended. Around the perimeter a perfectly square line of scorched rock betrayed an invisible energy barrier. Inside the invisible fence was an entirely visible fence made of reactive razor wire and then a wide area of featureless sand beyond which the buildings of the outpost began. Bunker-like in appearance, the thirty or so buildings hunkered in three circles around the central control tower, the lowest on the outside like a dumpy pyramid.

I saw another column similar to ours heading to the outpost from a distant part of the rift's floor and others were arriving singly or in small groups. The place looked deserted but fer the odd shadow flashing past a narrow window. Before the sun reached its zenith, we were approaching the gates of the 'MEGA CITY ONE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT LICENSED RESEARCH OUTPOST 1061b - "DORK'S RIFT" - NO UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY - USE OF LETHAL FORCE APPROVED.'

End of Part Two



The Doings of Rufus Muldoon

Lou Zoo

~~~^~~~

Part Three



Once inside the outpost, a fat Justice Department medic patched me up good as new. Say what you like about them there bucket-hatted fascists, they sure know how to un-broke broke bones. He even offered me the choice of leavin' no scars, but I elected to keep 'em 'cos of honour an' all. After I was fixed I went right for Hooligan Hawkins.

I found him in the wide yard just inside the razorwire fence, arguing with two judges. From what I could gather, the judges didn't want to let this here rabble in an' Hooligan believed otherwise.

"There's an army coming," was the thrust of Hooligan's impassioned argument.

"An' you're leadin' it," was the bucket-hatted paranoid response.

Hooligan spotted me and waved his gnarly hand. "Here," he said. "Come over, tell these guys what you saw."

"Why in tarnation did you send for my Paw?" I said, clenchin' my fists.

Hooligan stiffened and the two judges drew their nightsticks.

"You got all these folks," I gestured towards the hundreds of muties, normies, and groupies waiting outside the reactive razorwire gate, "to save yer damned life but you call for my Paw? What with his leg as it is?" I stepped up to Hooligan's nose, his mahogany brown eyes glowed. "I was given to understand as this life-debt was only to be called-in under direst of unjust circumstance, not as some kinda' general call to arms."

He stood his ground, I'll give him that. "This is the direst of circumstance," he said. "Lou Zoo is coming. His forces are spreading like a cancer. Those who cannot be controlled are enslaved, those who can become enforcers, conquerors. They are marching to engulf us all, including me - surely the direst of circumstance?"

"I said unjust circumstance," I said, "an' it seems ta' me that all this is your own doin', no doubt your slave-freein' activities brought about this very circumstance, which seems very just ta' me. If you poke yer finger into a whipperwasp nest an' get stung, that ain't unjust. That's just damned foolish."

He raised his hands and backed away. "Look," he said, pinching the bridge of his nose, "at the time I sent that note, I was in Lou Zoo's dungeon and things were looking mighty bleak. Old Typhoon, your Pa, was my last throw of the dice. Three guys died just to get the message out. And then," he gestured to the masses behind him and the relatively few of our convoy who came inside vouched for by the Nu New Crater's farmers and shrugged. "And then things kinda' took a turn."

"An' I say that nullifies the debt, calculatin' for yore changed circumstance an' the dangers I faced gettin' here and the ones to come on the way back."

"Ah," he said. "But you forget, I saved your life."

"This is irrelevant," said one of the judges. "Just gather all your people together, including this daft ox, and get the drokk out of here, okay?"

"You didn't save my life!" I laughed. "I was just about ta' twist that big chicken offa me an' pound that miscreant from here to Sunday, but you went an' ruined my fun. Ain't no debt there, old man."

The judge opened his mouth to speak but the other put her hand on his arm. "That fits with Tyler's intel."

"Tyler's still in the med-bay," the first judge snapped back. He gathered himself for a moment. "But you're right. I thought it was just... Damn it." He stroked his chin. "All right," he said. "Tell me again. Be specific."

"I can't," Hooligan said, "but I know there's mind control involved. Only about ten percent of people seem to succumb to it, but it's enough. That ten percent become cold and heartless, obedient to Lou Zoo, and he makes sure they're the only ones armed. He enslaves the rest to service himself and his army."

I adjusted my hat and interrupted, this high-falutin' talk not to my liking. "Far as I can figure it, I'm free to go," I said. The judges looked at each other and nodded. Hooligan frowned. "Good," I said. "Then I'm gonna' get the General and ride on home, an' I'd appreciate a full canteen and rations if you can spare 'em. I understand if not, an' I'm just as happy to ride off without us havin' to shoot at one another."

"My boy," Hooligan said, "in three days, maybe two, there are going to be tens of thousands of brainwashed, savage soldiers converging on this outpost because Lou Zoo wants it for his castle. Join us," he said, loud for all to hear. Even the two judges seemed intrigued. "Join the battle to destroy this evil army and free the slaves of this false messiah forever, lend your heart and sinew, your soul and your six-shooters, to the side of freedom and light!"

The judges chuckled.

"Uh-uh," I said. "This fight's all yours an' I ain't one for fallin' into no line spun by some tyrant or freedom fighter or lawman." I looked at the judges, whose expressions was suddenly harder. "So I'm goin' back home to tend the ranch seein' as Paw can't do it with his mouldy leg and needs my help more'n you do right now. So, any chance of that water and rations?" The female judge nodded and tapped her communicator to talk to the outpost's quartermaster and within a half-hour I was on General Leer's back with what little remained of my equipment, a generous supply of water and Justice Department rations and even a couple of boxes of ammo. Sometimes, those fascist bucket-hats do surprise, I can tell you that.

Hooligan tried one last time to stop me on the way out, grabbing at the General's reigns, makin' him swear somethin' so fierce as even the judges blushed. "It's not too late to change your mind," he said. "The way you fought today... We could really use you."

"Yeah," says I, "use. I ain't gettin' dragged into no war as don't concern me or mine. We Muldoons don't fight for nobody but other Muldoons. We don't get used by nobody else an' we certainly don't shoot at nobody we ain't fell out with and we never kill nobody that don't deserve it."

"But the savage army..." Hooligan said, covered in desperate before the eyes of the judges and his own army of freed slaves.

"You said they wuz mind controlled," I said. "Far as I see it, that makes 'em just victims, an' I ain't gonna' open fire on no victim, that ain't right or proper. If you wanna' do that, it's yore own damn choice. Don't drag me inta' it."

"But... but to get out of here you'll have to get past tens of thousands of vicious soldiers!" Hooligan's plea was heartfelt and clearly moved the crowd, but us Muldoons stick to our guns. "What will you do, when they find you?"

I shrugged. "I'll tell 'em the same thing I just told you," I said. "I ain't joinin'. Then I guess we'll take it from there." Then I spurred General Leer into motion and he strutted out of the gate and through the assembled throng singing filthy anthems all the way. I would've boxed his ears but I was too busy laughing. Sometimes, that old hoss judged the mood just right.


End of Part Three
[move]~~~^~~~~~~~[/move]




The Legendary Shark

The Doings of Rufus Muldoon
Lou Zoo
~~~^~~~
Part Four


The journey home was uneventful for nearly a day and a half. Just shy of the first fractures of the Booth's Mirror glasslands, I'd climbed a knoll to scout the road and bivvied to pass the noon when a slavering maniac riding a huge pheasant came storming to the top of the knoll, claiming it as his own. I observed the lack of any signage to the contrary and invited him to either leave or pipe down.

"But this is my vantage point," he said, his voice shrieking and flecks of foam on his cracked lips. "It's part of my patrol route! Mine! Until I see the first swarms of His Divine army on the horizon, heralding glory! Then I move forward a day and wait again! You can have the knoll then!"

"Well, says I, "I ain't stoppin' you using the place, it's plenty big enough. Just keep the noise down, okay? I like to nap at noon."

He seethed and his pheasant shifted from foot to foot and ruffled its colourful tail feathers. "Why do you not run? Why do you not flee in terror before the onslaught of the jurisdiction of His Divine Highness, Lou Zoo?"

"Friend," I said, rising to my feet and putting my hands on my guns. He gaped at me with a kind of restrained fury. He was unused to people not fleeing before him and his hands were nowhere near his own guns. "Friend, do what you want but leave me out of it." I was young, then, and didn't always think before I spoke. "Like I told the last lot, I ain't joinin'." His expression told me instantly what I'd sent wrong.

"You have information about Dork's Rift!" he screamed. "Tell me! Tell me now!"

I drew one of my six-shooters and the maniac twitched but wasn't fool enough. "I ain't sayin' nothin' about anythin'," I said. "Now back off or you an' me's gonna fall out."

"No," he said, but still didn't reach for his iron, his whole body surgin' with restrained anger. "I must detain you. Report you. Turn you in for questioning. What you know may prove invaluable and get me promoted over that bastard Leroy. Drop your gun. Do it. Drop it now. You're under arrest."

"I'm sorry, old fella," I said, and shot the pheasant twice in its head. By the time it finished kicking I had the slavering maniac on his backside in the dirt, rubbing his jaw and demanding his gun and comms back. I gave him back his gun but kept all the ammo and gave him his comm but kept its battery. "Now I can either tie you up until I've finished my nap or you can run away. That way," I said, knowing that he was shook up and pointing in the wrong direction, "is that very high god-emperor of yours. That way," I said, pointing in another wrong direction," is the way I'm going. I suggest we stick to those routes." I touched the loop of rope hanging from the General's saddle. "What's it to be?"

He ran away and I spent a relaxing couple of hours in the shade watching him fade. When I was sure he was gone, I took me forty winks then saddled up the General for the afternoon's traversin's. If the slavering maniac didn't get his bearings he'd be onto Dork's Rift by morning and those fancy Justice Department flying sensor platforms might just pick him up, giving them a fair shot at an advanced warning. Maybe making up for disappointin' Hooligan an' puttin' right my blunder. We may be rough, us Cursed Earth folk, but we try to do the right thing. The judges would want the varmint alive at any rate, for information, so that gave him a fightin' chance too. Never found out what happened to him, proper.

For the next few hours I went my own way following a circuitous route to avoid patrols of slavering maniacs, who bumbled about so bad as to be seen a mile off. I had to keep moving through the night as camping invited discovery even in this broken desert, but the patrols continued to bumble and use powerful torches so was twice as easy to spot in the dark. Even so, by mornin' there was too many of 'em to avoid any more an' the General an I concluded that a change of tactics was in order. So we found us a cave an' hid in it.

We had us a couple of close shaves before two slavering maniacs explored our bolt-hole a mite more deeply than the last lot. They pinned us down and the big one, the slavering maniac built like a bull with flaring nostrils and quivering flanks, got alongside the General and held a gun to his head. I threw down my gun and the little one, the slavering maniac built like a bundle of sticks with a look of furious glee on its face, slapped a white oval onto my neck faster'n a radtler in heat. "Be one with the Divine Army!" He looked into my eyes with furious expectation, with twitching, wide eyes and a tight elastic grin.

"I will not," I said, and ripped the patch away, threw it into the dirt and ground it under my heel.

They both gasped and shouted in unison. "Uncontrollables!" They closed in and the General and I got into it. "They must become slaves to glory of... Ow!"

The little one was frustratin' in his dexterity and speed and it took me an age to get the last word while the General had to kick the big one so many times he got a cramp but in the end we prevailed. They gnashed and spat at us but I took their guns and comms and then ripped the patches off their necks. They were instantly different men. The little one started laughing and the big one started crying. There was a long and tearful expression of gratitude and readjustment which, although no doubt a touching episode in the hands of a more romantic author, increased our chances of being discovered by the minute because they'd gone and left a giant partridge each directly outside the cave.

"We could take him prisoner," the big one said. "Both of them."

I put my hand on my gun but the little one shook his head. "Wouldn't work," he said. "We'd have to hand him over to the local slave hub immediately and return to the vanguard. It doesn't get any of us out of this, only deeper in."

"Maybe in is out," the big one said. "Go with it until we spot an out."

"I ain't bein' turned over to no slavers, an' that's final," I said, my hand on my gun.

"No, no, of course not," said the little one. He turned his head to one side and then waved his hand. "Unless," he said, "the prisoner wasn't a prisoner, but an uncontrollable volunteer? If we find one of those, we have standing orders to escort him directly to His Divine Highness."

I drew my gun but left it pointing at the ground. "I ain't bein' turned over to no emperor, neither."

The big one straightened and his nostrils flared. "But His Divine Highness is at the rear of the army."

The little one nodded with enthusiasm, and I noticed how the barely restrained, furious anger they first showed now burned less brightly but burned nevertheless, a well-tended stove in place of a raging inferno. "This will get us all the way to the back of the army, no questions asked," he said, and then looked at me. "It's up to you, but I reckon we got a better shot together. We get you through the lines, you're our excuse for doin' so."

Believin' them sincere, an' not overly terrified by their plan, while going it alone terrified the pants offa me (though I'd never say it at the time), I agreed and very soon after our ruse met its first test. The slavering maniac commander in charge of a fifty-strong forward patrol of skirmishing slavering maniacs riding ornery giant sparrows melted away at the explanation and we passed through without hardly missin' a step. We'd been keeping up a fair lick, one of the unslavering lunatics on their partridges to each side, because the standing orders stipulated "immediately" so the ruse called for speed. We galloped past the captain and the big one bellowed, "Uncontrollable volunteer!" Whereupon the slavering maniac captain, his face contorted with barely restrained rage, waved us through and continued with his forward advance as if nothing occurred.

The second test took more finesse, but the unslavering maniacs pulled through with colours, and partridges, held high. We found our way blocked by a solid wall of a thousand slavering maniacs riding hawks and their commander, a slavering maniac brigadier riding a kestrel who commanded us to halt under pain of death despite the big one's bellowing pronouncement. "You are following the standing order concernin' uncontrollable volunteers, correct?" His face was contorted with rage, as if every word he said offended his own soul and filled him with a rampant fire he couldn't use but only suffer.

The unslavering maniacs mimicked the ticks and rage. "Immediately!" The little one waved his hands. "The standing orders specifically say "immediately," sir!"

"We can't keep His Divine Highness waiting!" The big one bellowed, his flanks twitching and his partridge eager to get running again.

"Indeed not," the brigadier spat. "But the regulations also stipulate safely, so in order to facilitate that I must assign you a guard." He turned in his saddle and shouted for a sergeant, whose hawk strutted up and initially put the partridges on edge. "Assign fifty men to escort this..."

"No," the big one bellowed out the word while the little one could only mouth it. "That would draw too much attention. We two are loyal soldiers of the Divine Army, serving under the benevolence of His Divine Highness, Lou Zoo, long may he cast his bounties upon us!"

The brigadier and the sergeant both repeated that last phrase with a fury that branded every word.

"The two of us are protection enough," the little one said, pretending to swell with furious pride but still the brigadier would not relent and revised his escort down to five, including the sergeant on the hawk, which was teasing the partridges by licking its lips. "The battle for Dork's Rift is about to begin. We have to assume the enemy knows this and has prepared countermeasures, which may include unorthodox tactics. Judges may have infiltrated our lines to sow chaos or execute some wider plan, and we must guard against this."

The big one grunted angrily but the little one puffed himself up even more. His partridge, becoming irritated with the hawk, snapped at it so unexpectedly that the hawk took a step or two back before it checked itself, almost throwing the slavering maniac sergeant from his saddle. "Brigadier, His Divine Highness has put you in charge of a finely calculated number of men and given you specific orders to follow with those men," the little one said, now not havin' to simulate his anger so much. "If you assign men away from the task to which His Divine Highness has set them, you may undermine the whole Divine Plan."

"For want of a nail!" The brigadier screeched, the rage in him fairly vibrating his limbs, and his kestrel screeched with him. Then he waved his hand and shouted, as if each word sliced into his gullet, "Open up there! Let them through!"

The third test fell upon me, and I did my best. A lone slavering maniac riding a cocky falcon came out of nowhere as we paused at a waterhole. "So here you are," he said, lookin' me in the eye.

"We're taking him straight to His..."

"Quiet," the slavering maniac slashed the air with his hand. "I am a member of His Divine Highness's personal guard, dispatched to find you and bring you before His Benevolent Magnificence for personal divine judgement."

"But we..." the big one said, unsure in his imitation of restrained fury. The personal guard locked his eyes onto the big one's and his protest dried up and blew away like autumn radgrass. He turned his attention back to me and the anger in this one was hotter than the rest but somehow steadier, like a solid white hot alloy compared to a furiously bubbling cauldron of glowing iron. "So you're the Uncontrollable Volunteer. Do you have a name?"

I nodded, mindful of my prior loose talk, and punched him in the face. He went down with a satisfying thump and a couple more blows yielded his gun and comms, which I gave to the unslavering maniacs. I reached down and pulled the strip from the personal guard's neck. He didn't react but continued to shield his face with his forearms for a second or two before glancing up at me. I lowered my fist but kept him pinned to the ground with my other hand. "How do you feel?"

He laughed. "I feel fine," he said. "Free of it, at last." I let him up, right fist cocked and ready, but he was concentratin' on rubbin' his chin. He nodded at me and the unslavering maniacs and said, simply, "Thanks."

"Do you know how to get out of here?" The little one leaned forward in his saddle, towards the personal guard, but the big one wasn't so sure.

"There's something wrong with him," he said, nostrils twitching, "he's too calm. I don't trust him."

"Personal guard to the most powerful man in the Cursed Earth," the personal guard said, pointing at himself. "We have to be especially resilient. And yes, I can get us out of here and away from that awful tyrant. All we have to do is get past the rearguard and the reserves, and the outer pickets, and we're home free."

"We'll need a plan," the little one said.

"As a member of the Personal Guard Unit attached to the Office of His Divine Highness, Lou Zoo, I am escorting this exceptionally gifted Uncontrollable Volunteer to a top-secret training facility in Shard County." He pointed to our necks. "Well need dummy patches," he said. "The rearguard are on the lookout for unorthodox tactics more than the van, they're more likely to notice missing patches. It's a disgrace you got this far." He saw my expression darken and cleared his throat. "Professionally speaking, of course. I was on the security committee, looking out for Justice Department infiltrators. I never guessed you'd be simple deserters."

"I ain't no deserter," I said, balling my fists. "My family is where my loyalty lies, and it's to them I'm goin' with or without you. Whatever side you're on, I ain't joinin'."

The personal guard shook his head and held up his hands before pointing east. "I'm going that way," he said, "strait across Booth's Mirror."

"There's no cover out there," I said, "it's called after a mirror for a reason. It's too flat and too bright, we'd stand out for miles, even under a full moon."

"The Divine army believes this too, because mostly it's true. There's a series of ridges in the glass, smooth furrows formed when the glass cooled, nothing more than wrinkles, but some of them will hide a man in shadow to the knees and others over his head. This imperfection cuts right through the glasslands, getting us past the reserves and the rearguard, leaving only the pickets to deal with - and they'll be looking the other way."

"And you just so happen to know this way?" The big one crossed his arms.

The personal guard tapped the side of his head and smiled the smile of the crat that got the octorat. "Planning meetings," he said. "Lots of restricted recon images. The image of the Wrinkle Line was taken at noon, so they had few shadows and looked shallow and were deemed a low priority feature, unlikely to be used as an infiltration route by the judges. So they're not keeping a special eye on it." We looked at him for a minute and he shrugged. "I'm going through the wrinkles and if I'm spotted I'm going to bluff my way past. I'd like for you guys to come with me because I think it'd improve my chances. Unless any of you has a better idea?"

We didn't and were soon into the wrinkles, smooth furrows in the glass virtually invisible from any distance and deep enough to conceal us to at least head height, provided we all led our mounts on foot, which they clearly enjoyed. When the channels were too wide to conceal us, we kept to the shadows of one wall until noon the next day, when most of the shadows fled and we had to hide in a particularly resilient shade until we could switch sides. The glare and shadows of the glass, and its otherwise unbroken nature throwing back the image of the swirling skies, hid us just as well as it highlighted the few patrols that often passed within feet of us like a radrat mistaking a tasty camouflaged chembunny for a rock.

The noon wore on and I couldn't get a proper nap for the big one worrying. Wondering why the patrols hadn't seen us, why we hadn't seen more patrols nor hide or hair of the reserves, or the rearguard. He was worried about us being led into a trap but wise enough to keep his voice down near patrols. The personal guard defended himself at first but gave up after the same arguments rose again and again. The little one took the personal guard's side but I just wanted to doze and they were at least polite enough to let me try, none of them askin' after my loyalties.

When the shadows were right, we had to risk a dash across open ground, smooth and featureless and bright, to get to the shadows on the other side. The wrinkle was only eight foot deep, but a hundred foot wide. No patrol would've been able to miss us, but we timed it right and none came near so's we could get into the mid-afternoon shadows an' continue our penumbral peregrinations. As the shadows lengthened, I came aware that the wrinkle were in had become significantly deeper and significantly narrower, allowing us to pass only one at a time. The big one pointed it out first and kept on as how he didn't like it, and when the top of the wrinkle finally closed over to form a roughly circular tunnel, I was beginning to incline towards his perspective. The personal guard kept going, having made his feelings on the matter clear before we set off. We dithered, though, the big one, the little one and me. Perfect place for a trap, we agreed. Has "ambush" written all over it. We've come too far to turn back and, even if we do turn back, what then? Re-enlist? And what if he's telling the truth and this is just a happy trick of cooling glass? At least none of the patrols will see us in here. Unless they patrol in here.

We drew our pistols and strode into the dark.

After maybe half a mile, the tunnel began to widen and get brighter until we could see the personal guard walking in front of us. We lost him in the glow and then the tunnel let out all of a sudden to a great bubble in the glass, with a roof thin enough to let the last of the day's sunlight set half of it on fire. We could only stand and gawp. I ain't seen nothin' so beautiful since Chastity Lightfoot's own eyeballs. By the time I noticed the tent pitched in the middle of this crystal cathedral, it was way too late.

It was a big tent, to be sure, with a solid wooden frame. The inner parts were two stories high and in the middle a third large storey rose to an audacious point where, it seemed certain, lived Lou Zoo. By the time I realised this we had guns to our heads and were being clapped in irons. The personal guard tapped at the fake patch on his neck and smiled. "The thing about uncontrollable volunteers," he said, "is that we don't need these to be loyal. At least the real ones don't." He nodded to the other guards. "Bring him," he pointed at me. "His Divine Highness must cast his benevolence upon him. As for these two," he sneered down at the unfrothing maniacs, "have them re-patched and bring them along." They struggled but it was futile and as soon as new patches were forced on their necks they once again ignited with restrained rage, obedient as beaten dug pups, so obedient as to be released from their shackles and detailed to force me into walkin', which I allowed them to do as it din't seem right to hit 'em after all we'd bin through.

End of Part Four
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The Legendary Shark

The Doings of Rufus Muldoon
Lou Zoo
~~~^~~~
Part Five


The re-frothing maniacs tried to push me to my knees in the top storey of the tent, before the enthroned figure of a man wearing the most ridiculous hat I've ever seen, all covered in fairy lights an' with a way too wide brim you could grate uncut wheels of Auntie Scrotie's mushroom-milk cheese on without skinnin' your thumbs. I refused to go down, though the big one was even stronger'n he looked. Not hittin' 'em was one thing, but there has to be limits. Muldoons don't kneel just because we're tell't.

"How dare you decline to kneel before your god and salvation, infidel," Lou Zoo said with exaggerated disdain. "I should..."

"Just who in tarnation are you?" I said, cutting him off and widening his eyes. "And what the Hell are you playing at clapping me an' the General in irons like it was all the proper an' done thing?"

"Silence when you talk to me," he said and then, laughing, nodded to several burlier and more experienced frothing maniacs who shoved everyone else out of the way and forced me down with clubs to the head and the backs of my knees. He pushed himself away from the ornate wooden throne and his ridiculous hat wobbled and swayed so that he had to bob his head to the same rhythm so it wouldn't drop over his eyes in spite of the sturdy leather chinstrap, pulled what to me would be uncomfortable tight. "The initial stages of the attack on Dork's Rift are underway," he said. "The energy field has been nullified and the reactive razorwire fence is about to be breached. Then it's down to who has the most bullets, and that's me."

"That's a kinda' shitty thing you're doing there," I said, "but I don't see it's my business."

"I don't care what you see," he said, leaning his face close to mine while his personal guards kept me painfully locked in place with their clubs. "Tell me what you know about Dork's Rift. I know you've been there and any information you give me might prove invaluable in the final push." I pressed my lips tight shut and curled a nostril for emphasis. "Shorting out the energy shield, disabling the perimeter batteries, breaching the razorwire - the cost has been very, very high. But if you can tell me what it's like, if there are any secret ways in or out, any weaknesses in design or personnel?" He nodded again and his personal guards angrily twisted my bones against each other. "Last chance to get out of this with your soul," he said. "No? Nothing? No answer for Lou from the Zoo? Oh well, your choice."

He turned back to his throne and opened a hidden drawer in one of the arms. He reached inside and pulled out a red patch before turning back to me with the patch held up between his fingers. "Lou from the travelling zoo studied the animals, got to know them. Then one day a ship fell out of the sky with a dead thing in it, something neither mutie nor normie, and a very powerful cerebral amplifier, which I first adapted to the animals in my travelling zoo to make them do incredible tricks and perform incredible feats for the amusement of paying customers. The credits poured in until, one morning, I was almost shanghaied into a slave convoy and had to abandon my zoo to get away. That's when I decided to adapt..."

"Look, High Lord of Whoever You Are, I ain't joinin' an' that's that," I said. "Ain't no good gonna come from rough-housing neither. Your fight ain't my fight so just let me go on my own way and I'll let you go on yours."

Lou Zoo pursed his lips and the pressure on my bones increased until I felt sure something was fixin' to snap. "Very well, long story short. The white patch only works on some people, the red one works on everybody. He leaned forward and carefully stuck the red patch to my neck. I let the rage engulf me and the pain in my bones elate me.

"I only saw the medical bay," I spat out the words like venom, "and the gate in the wire. I was only there an hour or two." Lou Zoo nodded and the clubs were removed. He motioned for me to stand and I obeyed, a little unsteady due to the chains. Lou Zoo gestured for them to be removed and one of his personal guards, also wearing a red patch, swooped in with a key. As the chains fell to the floor like doom in a jar, I stole a pistol and shot Lou Zoo's hat off, or tried to. The bullet smashed a fairy light but the chinstrap kept it firmly in place. His personal guards paused for a moment, as if uncertain what to do, and then pounced on me to a man, getting in each other's way and making them easy to hit but increasing hard to avoid. The only ones not joining in were Lou Zoo himself and my two erstwhile companions. "Help me out, you two," I shouted. "You busted outta this once, you can bust out again." They tried to tear the patches away but the very attempt caused them intense pain and they could no more touch the patches than they could touch the belly of a lit plasma furnace.

I managed to put another bullet into Lou Zoo's ridiculous hat and this time it crackled and caught fire. The personal guards stuttered and then redoubled their efforts but the re-frothing maniacs took advantage of the stutter to tear their own patches off despite the agony. I was gettin' overwhelmed at this point but the de-re-frothin' maniacs put a passel more bullets into Lou Zoo's ridiculous hat reducing it, an' most of his head, to holes. Most of the personal quards quit fightin' then, shakin' their heads like they was waking from a whiskey sleep, but a few elected ta keep fightin' me. I guess they wuz just blowin' off steam but I was happy to oblige in helpin' to clear their heads of mad, an' nothin' clears your head of mad like a good, strong thump in the head.

The whole thing just ran out of oomph, then. Everybody just split up and went their own ways, singly or in groups. The General and I set out with a group movin' in the same direction and we didn't need to stick to the wrinkles because there was no more patrols, just random groups of confused folk trying to figure out which way wuz home. Our group passed out of Booth's Mirror and into the Shatterplains towards the southern flank of the Glasstops, growing smaller all the time as folk struck out in directions more relevant to 'emselves. The de-re-frothin' maniacs stuck with me all the way to a crossroads in the Whisperin' plains. One direction led to Bursttown, where the little one was from, another to Sandstormville, where the big one lived, and straight ahead to the distant Stunbolt Hills an' Brokendream Creek, my own neck o' the woods.

Not bein' one for goodbyes, I jest kept ridin' at the crossroads, wavin' my hat without lookin' back. Whether they lingered together or spurred their partridges on without goodbyes I've never known. The General was uncharacteristically quiet all the way home an' I didn't have to box his ears hardly at all. In rare moments of conversation, he revealed as how it was Thunderclap's demise plaguing his thoughts an' makin' him doubt what it means to be a hoss. This put me in mind of Paw and the leathering he'd give me when I told him about losing his old hoss, not ta mention all his guns and baby Gommy's scattapult.

We hit the familiar Throughchem Trail high in the Stunbolts, a day an' a half from home, before meetin' another soul. "Halt," this other soul said, "in the name of the Law!"

I reigned the general to a halt and snarled at the speaker, my hand on my gun. "An' just who in tarnation do you think you are as you can give me orders, Judge Jackson?"

The old man, his threadbare uniform mainly held together with string, tape an' good intentions, parked his awkward homespun Lawmaster and turned the engine off. "Looks like you got a couple of six-shooters there, Citizen," he said, removin' his dinged old helmet to reveal a dinged old face with righteous concern hanging off it.

"I ain't no citizen," I said, "an' my irons are my own concern. How many times we gonna' have the same conversation, Jackson? An' how many times do I have ta tell ya? I ain't joinin'."

He never showed fear or weakness, old Jackson, not once in all the years I knew him. "We're gonna' keep havin' this conversation until you realise the foolishness of carrying lethal sidearms in public, young Rufus. Guns encourage more guns, an' guns is dangerous."

I nodded. "On that last point I can agree wholehearted, havin' recently..."

"Only responsible hands should carry guns, Rufus; responsible, highly trained, official hands," he said in his steady, level growl. "Why, only days ago a small force of beleaguered judges repelled an attack by a horde of cybernetic aliens at least a million strong, freeing countless slaves into the bargain."

I frowned. "Izzat so?"

"Damn straight," he said. "They're already saying that the Battle of Dork's Rift will go down in the annals of Justice Department history. That's what happens when guns are used properly, boy, by the certified experts."

"I'm sure they did their part," I said, spurring the General back into lazy motion. "But it was me stopped the army, me an' two other guys. A big guy an' a little guy."

"An' me," said the General and then, after a beat, "an' ol' Thunderclap, Grud rest the old bastard."

"Throw them away, young Rufus Muldoon," Jackson called after us. "Leave the guns to the professionals."

I drew a pistol and fired two shots into the air before whoopin' loud and spurrin' General Leer to a gallop. The old long-walker might have shouted something about a fine after us but I couldn't hear and that night we camped in the familiar bowl of Trotter's Bilge, confident of arriving home by late afternoon the followin' day.

Mid mornin' we came on Sunnyday Trotter an' a couple of her hands drivin' a herd of force-grown clonemorks to the meat market over at Clagnuts. It wuz slow work on account of the poor beasts havin' malformed legs, eyes that pointed in different directions an' brains full o' holes an' midnight shadows. The youngest were a week old, force-grown from egg to maturity in old Magnus Trotter's clone tanks an' decanted only yesterday. The ones decanted more'n a week ago were already bulging with tumours. "More meat for the grinders," Sunnyday laughed, slapping one of the hobbling clonemorks on its rump, throwing it into a panicked, staggering trot.

"You hear about the goings-on over at Dork's Rift?"

"Some," I said.

She brought her hoss nearer to mine and fell into step. General Leer, not usually a fan of such closeness, bobbed his head and behaved hisself, meek as a lamb. "They say the judges saved the world from an alien invasion. There was a big battle, apparently. All very heroic."

"No doubt," says I, then proceeds to give her my account of the goings-on. When I'm done, she just grunts and slaps a couple of confused clonemorks into panicking in the right direction.

"I guess that might explain the rumours of a sudden bounty of birdmeat over Bane County way," she said, "an' some kinda' rash o' public ass-kickin's and recriminations over some political movement as went too far."

"I guess it might," I said.

We parted near Per Dishin's Frames and by late afternoon we were on Typhoon's Bluff, looking down on our modest homestead. The young 'uns were playing on the stoop under the eagle eye of Gramma, which flitted from book to knitting to children and back again, missing nothing. The rest were scattered about the place, tending to the fields an' seein' to the hosses. Young Gommy spotted me first while he was taking a break from half-heartedly weeding the cabbage bushes and, always glad of any distraction from his chores, began pointing and shouting and running to tell the others. I smiled and was about to spur the General onto the back path when my eye caught a detail I hadn't earlier registered: a fresh dug empty grave in the family plot.

I knew Paw was gone to his ultimate freedom then, felt it in my belly.

End of Part Five


The Doings of Rufus Muldoon

Lou Zoo

~~~^~~~

Epilogue

The mould in Paw's leg hadn't stayed in Paw's leg, and that's what did for him.  Ma'd put the body on ice til I got home for the funeral. He died a few days ago, at the exact same time as Thunderclap, or so Gramma later calculated usin' her occult numbers an' a big spliff. "They'll be ridin' the Heavenly Plains right now, Typhoon Muldoon an' Thunderclap, robbin' God's banks an' raisin' seven shades of Heavenly hell," she further mythologised with a cackle, and it was a myth I could live with. It seemed better than a man who once took down two judges and a camel in the same bare-knuckle MMA cage fight being killed by mould.

That's why I told you this story, I guess, to set the record straight after seein' a bootleg Justice Department documentary about the Battle of Dork's Rift as was so full of rubbish it actually stank. Not for myself, ain't nothin' ta me whether you believe it or believe that Justice Department version; the totalitarian version or the uncensored version. That's for y'all ta decide fer yerselves an' ain't my business. I wanted to set the record straight for the big guy, and for the little guy, who turned out to be in deep water with their wives, who they'd delivered into the hands of the slavemasters as soon as they wuz patched. I wanted to put the record straight for all the ex-slavering maniacs and all the ex-slaves, who are still grumpy with each other to this day in certain regions. And I wanted to put the record straight for my Paw who, though he never got to leather me one last time for losing Thunderclap, all his guns, and Gommy's scattapult, hopefully took with him the sure knowledge that I'd discharge his sacred debt with true Muldoon honour.

Whether he knows I defeated a tyrant in a ridiculous hat, saved Dork's Rift and freed all the slaves I don't know, but I do know I did right by him an' his teachin's.

An' that's what really happened durin' the famous and most desperate last stand Battle of Dork's Rift. For another flagon, I'll tell you the tale of what happened when Ma learned of diamonds hidden in the very glass bubble where Lou from the Zoo pitched his tent...

~~~^~~~
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JohnW

#39
Ah Jesus.
In all fairness, Shark.
Nigh-on twelve thousand words? Have mercy.
And here's me with my mental capacity shrinking by the day.
I'll read this as and when, but I felt I should offer some immediate feedback because I know you'll be waiting at your computer with pleading eyes and your tongue hanging out (because that's exactly what I'd be doing, you can be sure).
So I've only read Part 1, which I think was pretty big of me, given that there aren't any pictures except for that one right at the end of Part 5.

Stray observations:
Part 1 should be broken into shorter parts. Three-and-a-half thousand words is too big a chunk of prose to be reading off the screen.

Your dagnabbit backwoods pastiche is sustained well. There are, however, one or two hints that the author is not from the irradiated arsehole of Tennessee or wherever. For instance, I think it should be 'rooster' rather than 'cockerel', and perhaps some hardwood native to North America rather than teak. Roaming the Lancastrian teak forests on your giant cockerel as is your custom, such minor details no doubt slipped by you.
'Box his ears' also sounds quite English to me. I could go on. I suppose the only cure is to immerse yourself in hillbilly literature – if there is such a thing.

The Cursed Earth seems perfectly quaint and picturesque – hardly cursed at all – which gives the whole piece the flavour of a folk tale or fairytale. (Intentional?)

Oh yeah – and it's 'reins' rather than 'reigns'.

But having read Part 1, I fully intend to read Part 2, and you can't say fairer'n that.
Just don't rush me.
Why can't everybody just, y'know, be friends and everything? ... and uh ... And love each other!

Hawkmumbler

Legendary Shark Presents: Droid Strife

He's our very own Samuel Beckett by way of Henry Darger.

JohnW

I had to look up Henry Darger.

from Wikipedia:
QuoteHe has become famous for his posthumously discovered 15,145-page fantasy novel manuscript called The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What Is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion, along with several hundred drawings and watercolor illustrations for the story
Fifteen thousand-plus pages? Yikes.
Back in my early teens I'd have turned up my nose at any work of fantasy that didn't come in at least three substantial volumes. Literature had to have substance, dammit. But that was a long time ago, and even then there were limits, by God.

(If The Legendary Shark ever gets hailed as a latter-day Darger, I will naturally be there to tell how I alone first recognised his genius. If I'm to gain any sort of literary recognition in this life, I don't care whose coat-tails I ride on.)
Why can't everybody just, y'know, be friends and everything? ... and uh ... And love each other!

The Legendary Shark

Thanks, guys. Now I've posted it I can only see errors - I should have shut Notepad down and come back to it later.

I write this drivel because I enjoy it, and it's 99% for my own amusement. I post it here because some folk might find a moment's amusement, or at least distraction, in it. And, frankly, a wider audience isn't likely to get it. So this story is just for me and you.

I deliberately mix my own voice in. Although it's all founded on established Dreddverse principles, I don't want it to be like anything else, I want it to be me. So, if it helps, imagine the bleak times after the Atom Wars, when the world was in upheaval and countless masses of displaced people lurched around the globe seeking sanctuary and respite. Is it not conceivable that in this tempestuous chaos, a hardy column of refugees from a destroyed Blackburn might forge a path around half the earth to finally wash up at the feet of the Stunbolt Hills, there to carve out a life for their sen?

Anyway, thanks again. I hope you enjoy the rest of it and that the glaring errors don't ruin your enjoyment too much. Please make sure your tray is in an upright position and thank you for dreaming with Sharky's House of Dreams.

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Funt Solo

Quote from: J.Ware on 01 June, 2023, 06:46:44 PMThe Cursed Earth seems perfectly quaint and picturesque – hardly cursed at all

Ouroboros is to blame, probably:




++ A-Z ++  coma ++

Definitely Not Mister Pops

It's always very pleasing when one of Tooth's greatest frames makes an appearance
You may quote me on that.