/...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.
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