made a mental note to find out who was on duty in Control these days. The backchat was crossing the line to the point where a reprimand was in order. If not a boot up the drokking ass.
For the moment, he slapped the switch in his Lawmaster's micro-console that would trigger the jump plate, which shot into the air, taking the Lawmaster and Dredd with it.
Embedded into the basic architectural structure of Mega-City One were items that only members of the Justice Department could use. There were fast-tracks running parallel to the Interways and access hatches to hab-blocks, to efficiently deliver a Judge precisely where he needed to go.
The jump-plate was a null-grav elevator designed to deposit a Judge and his bike on the Cantilever City trading platform.
With the fail-safes off, the Lawmaster shot past the platform entirely, to the tune of several hundred metres. At the apogee of its lift, Dredd hit another control, tripping the one-shot detonation-thrusters designed to give it boost when jumping over obstacles.
The Lawmaster leapt upwards again. As it reached the top if its arc, Dredd swung his boots onto the saddle and jumped, gaining the final, crucial impetus to bring a girder in the Cantilever City support-structure within reach of an outflung hand.
Behind him the Lawmaster fell, tumbling, to glance off Carlos Ezquerra and smash into the trading platform below.
Dredd hauled himself up onto the girder. He was on the same approximate level as the perp, who was now bringing his Screaming Meatgun up and around to loose a round of plasma-slugs at him.
"Stomm!" Dredd hauled his respirator from a belt pouch and smacked it over his lower face, rendering his uniform effectively airtight.
The polycarbonate body-armour armature inside the Judge's uniform had recently been upgraded with an inset tracery of statically-charged microfilaments to mask the biometric signatures to which Meatgun slugs were so attracted. And with the respirator on, the last breath of Dredd's humanity was concealed.
The plasma-slugs hesitated in the air and then shot downwards. More bad luck for the people below, but it couldn't be helped.
Time to go to work.
In the Justice Department-approved propaganda holo-vids, there was a way these situations always went:
The psycho-perp is blasting away, gibbering psychotically all the while, when Heroic Judge arrives on the scene. Heroic Judge is then very careful to shout: "Stop in the name of the Law! This is your last warning! Be aware that you have voided any subsequent claim under the Health and Safety Statutory Procedures of Mega-City One!"
The perp, of course, ignores this and carries on firing - shouting how he'll never be taken alive and so forth - until his head is spectacularly blown off by a single well-aimed shot courtesy of Heroic Judge.
Then a graceful fall of the body from its vantage point and onto a vehicle of some kind, the alarm of which goes off.
This tends to beg the question: just what the drokk does the Heroic Judge think he's doing? Drokking around and wasting time by shouting things - and not to mention practicing his sharp-shooting on a small target like a head - while the perp is busily taking lives all the while and should be taken out as soon as is humanly possible.
Any putative holo-vid audience would have at this point been disappointed, to say the least.
Now that he had a clear line of sight, Dredd pulled his Lawgiver from his boot and pumped three rounds into the perp, aiming for the main mass of the body just to be sure.
There was a decided lack of spasms and agonising screams. The creep just slumped against the flex securing him to the support. Scratch one problem.
The Meatgun was still clutched in a lifeless hand. There was nothing suspicious about this in itself, but Dredd didn't like the idea of leaving a weapon on the body without confirming a clean kill.
He clambered over the support structure, dropping down onto the perp's vantage point and placing a
For the moment, he slapped the switch in his Lawmaster's micro-console that would trigger the jump plate, which shot into the air, taking the Lawmaster and Dredd with it.
Embedded into the basic architectural structure of Mega-City One were items that only members of the Justice Department could use. There were fast-tracks running parallel to the Interways and access hatches to hab-blocks, to efficiently deliver a Judge precisely where he needed to go.
The jump-plate was a null-grav elevator designed to deposit a Judge and his bike on the Cantilever City trading platform.
With the fail-safes off, the Lawmaster shot past the platform entirely, to the tune of several hundred metres. At the apogee of its lift, Dredd hit another control, tripping the one-shot detonation-thrusters designed to give it boost when jumping over obstacles.
The Lawmaster leapt upwards again. As it reached the top if its arc, Dredd swung his boots onto the saddle and jumped, gaining the final, crucial impetus to bring a girder in the Cantilever City support-structure within reach of an outflung hand.
Behind him the Lawmaster fell, tumbling, to glance off Carlos Ezquerra and smash into the trading platform below.
Dredd hauled himself up onto the girder. He was on the same approximate level as the perp, who was now bringing his Screaming Meatgun up and around to loose a round of plasma-slugs at him.
"Stomm!" Dredd hauled his respirator from a belt pouch and smacked it over his lower face, rendering his uniform effectively airtight.
The polycarbonate body-armour armature inside the Judge's uniform had recently been upgraded with an inset tracery of statically-charged microfilaments to mask the biometric signatures to which Meatgun slugs were so attracted. And with the respirator on, the last breath of Dredd's humanity was concealed.
The plasma-slugs hesitated in the air and then shot downwards. More bad luck for the people below, but it couldn't be helped.
Time to go to work.
In the Justice Department-approved propaganda holo-vids, there was a way these situations always went:
The psycho-perp is blasting away, gibbering psychotically all the while, when Heroic Judge arrives on the scene. Heroic Judge is then very careful to shout: "Stop in the name of the Law! This is your last warning! Be aware that you have voided any subsequent claim under the Health and Safety Statutory Procedures of Mega-City One!"
The perp, of course, ignores this and carries on firing - shouting how he'll never be taken alive and so forth - until his head is spectacularly blown off by a single well-aimed shot courtesy of Heroic Judge.
Then a graceful fall of the body from its vantage point and onto a vehicle of some kind, the alarm of which goes off.
This tends to beg the question: just what the drokk does the Heroic Judge think he's doing? Drokking around and wasting time by shouting things - and not to mention practicing his sharp-shooting on a small target like a head - while the perp is busily taking lives all the while and should be taken out as soon as is humanly possible.
Any putative holo-vid audience would have at this point been disappointed, to say the least.
Now that he had a clear line of sight, Dredd pulled his Lawgiver from his boot and pumped three rounds into the perp, aiming for the main mass of the body just to be sure.
There was a decided lack of spasms and agonising screams. The creep just slumped against the flex securing him to the support. Scratch one problem.
The Meatgun was still clutched in a lifeless hand. There was nothing suspicious about this in itself, but Dredd didn't like the idea of leaving a weapon on the body without confirming a clean kill.
He clambered over the support structure, dropping down onto the perp's vantage point and placing a
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