The Diamond Honey Badgers don’t give a shit as they attack Judges Stone and Parker on the meg-way! Psi-Judge Asaji pursues a murderer for the answer to the question, “What is Obsidian?”
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Judge Stone weaved through meg-way traffic to line herself up behind the car full of dumb punks calling themselves the Diamond Honey Badgers. To their credit, the Badger driver tried keeping Stone from behind them.
In the process, he slammed against another car, jostling the punk in the front passenger seat when he was trying to extend his old assault rifle out the window.
The punk’s head bashed into the hovercar’s roof. His gun flew out of his hands and was lost in traffic.
“Everything okay back there?” Parker asked over their helmet comm.
“Will be in a second,” Stone said.
The laser from the Lawmaster’s Cyclops canon burned into the rear of the Badgers’ hovercar. The beam carved a hole through what used to be the trunk area.
The damage also melted one of the dual hover engines under the car. The rear of the car dipped down, scraping the meg-way concrete and causing sparks.
The driver fought the vehicle, but he couldn’t bring it under control. The hovercar spun out, sideswiping two other cars before crashing headfirst into a third.
Stone stopped her Lawmaster a few cars away from the crash site. Instead of looking at the three punks shaken up in the battered hovercar, Stone looked for the second car of Diamond Honey Badgers.
The other hovercar continued its pursuit of Judge Parker, who, in turn, still followed the taxicab with the potential informant, Worthless.
“You’ve got another set of punks coming up on your eight o’clock,” Stone told Parker. “I’m going to wrap this up and join you.”
Stone took in the scene in front of her.
Cits were falling or climbing out of their cars to survey the damage to themselves and their vehicles. They were smart enough to stay back from the Badgers’ hovercar.
Vehicles behind the crash scene honked their horns and screamed ahead.
Stone tuned it out. A Justice Department drone had most likely already called in an H-Wagon and to sort out the traffic. She was here for the Badgers.
As Stone dismounted her Lawmaster, she studied the Badgers. The punk riding shotgun was half out the hovercar when it sideswiped another vehicle. His head and shoulders were a bloody stump.
The driver had slammed forward in his seat, his head putting a good dent in the windshield. The impact had battered a small hole through which the driver’s brain oozed.
Stone approached the hovercar wreckage. The rear driver’s side door opened. The Badger who was shooting shuggy fell out and onto the concrete.
He tried to get to his knees; his right leg was burnt to the bone from where the Cyclops beam tore through the hovercar.
The Judge was halfway to the punk. He pressed himself off the concrete with one hand and reached into his belt with the other. By the time he drew his blaster, Stone was on him. She kicked the gun away.
The punk rolled over onto his back and stared up into the barrel of Stone’s Lawgiver.
“You tried to kill a Judge,” Stone said. “Sentence. Death.”
“Your perp got out on twenty-seven, headed to the street,” Judge Reno said over Psi-Judge Asaji’s helmet comm.
She acknowledged him from inside the elevator. A minute later, the elevator stopped on twenty-seven, and Asaji stepped out.
Weather control had stopped the rain. Once she hit the rain-slicked street, she checked in with Reno again. He gave her directions based on MAC’s surveillance cameras.
After that, it wasn’t difficult to spot a woman in a white coat with multi-colored hair — the woman Asaji’s inaction had allowed to commit murder.
The woman led Asaji down the street past street cart food vendors, a shuggy hall, and other public works. Suddenly, she picked up speed and dashed into an alley between Karl Urban block and Errol Flynn block next to it.
Asaji picked up her pace. She also put her hand on her Lawgiver’s grip. Perhaps the woman was naturally extra cautious.
Or, perhaps, she had detected Asaji following her.
Asaji stopped at the mouth of the alley. She started to investigate the alley when she felt someone tugging at her belt. Asaji looked down and saw three juves not even out of their first ten years looking up at her.
“Not a good time,” Asaji told them.
“But we’re lost!” the juve closest to her said.
Asaji pointed to an iso-cube holding station. “Stand over there! Judges will be over shortly to help you.”
One of the other kids, one with more dirt on his face than the hair on his head, said, “But you’re here now!”
“And the lady with the funny hair said she’d give us munce every time we see her out and distract a Judge!” the third one said. The other two shoved the juve for giving the game away.
Asaji scowled. “Three months in the juve-cubes for all of you! Now get over by that holding station! You move from there I come back and shoot you!”
The juves looked at Asaji, their eyes as wide as the wheels on a Lawmaster. Asaji drew her Lawgiver. The juves dashed to the holding station and put their hands on the rungs where Judges attached handcuffs.
Asaji would never have fired on the juves; a threat was all she needed. The reputations of other Judges would get the juves away. Free of them, the Psi-Judge cautiously headed into the alley.
Judge Parker glanced over his left shoulder. He spotted the hovercar full of Diamond Honey Badgers coming up behind him. He also noted the assault rifle hanging out the front passenger window.
Up ahead, Worthless’ taxicab continued as if it hadn’t noticed the multiple car pile-up behind it.
Parker abruptly swerved his Lawmaster, weaving between two-wheeled cars. He was ahead of the Badgers’ hovercar but on the driver’s side away from the assault rifle.
The Judge then eased off the accelerator, still weaving to allow oncoming traffic to pass him. He ducked behind a truck that blocked the Badgers. A few seconds later, he saw the Badgers out in front of him.
Unfortunately, the tactic also put the taxicab further out of range.
“Judge Parker to Control,” Parker said into his helmet comm. “I need eyes on a taxicab, license plate three ‘S’ nine six! I’m distracted by some juves on the Keanu Reeves meg-way!”
A Tek Judge from control responded, saying they’d set up a drone in the area to follow the taxicab. This allowed Parker to devote all his attention to the remaining Badgers in the hovercar.
Up ahead, the Badgers looked out their windows and saw Parker behind them. The driver slammed the brakes. He didn’t realize that he would also have to steer clear of any cars behind them.
An eldster in a beat-up mini car slammed into the back of the hovercar. The Badgers shot forward, the front of their vehicle turning but not enough to miss crashing into a light truck in front of them.
When it got hit, the truck slammed its breaks, bringing both it and the hovercar to a stop.
Parker maneuvered through the confusion of misaligned cars and aimed his Lawmaster’s front canons at the hovercar.
“Attacking a Judge carries a life sentence, punks!” Parker said. “Come quietly before my partner gets here. She thinks the sentence should be death!”
Parker tuned out the honking horns, the cits pissed off at the traffic delay. All he wanted to hear was whether there would be three more dead juves in Mega-City One today.
The doors to the hovercar opened. The three Badgers crawled out with their hands up. One of them shouted, “It was all Devon’s idea!”
Judge Stone pulled up next to Judge Parker. “Devon’s probably the one with his brains all over the meg-way,” she said.
Parker looked at the juves, who were now on their knees, assuming the position as if experienced at arrest. “I think that’s enough executions for one day,” he said.
Into his comm, he asked, “Parker to Control. Where’s my taxi?”
While Judges Stone and Parker follow up on the lead in the taxicab, Judge Asaji enters a darkened alley after a murderous perp. What will she find? You’ll have to wait until Thursday!
With a little help from EN Publishing’s Judge Dredd RPG!
In addition to the Rebellion comic books “2000 AD” and “Judge Dredd Megazine,” I used EN Publishing’s “Judge Dredd and the Worlds of 2000 AD” role-playing game to help put this together. Check them out!
