James Axler: Judgment Plague

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Copyright

Chapter 1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What is this?” DePaul asked.

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