Firefight on Floor 426
The synthi wood door of the apartment splintered into a thousand pieces when Dave Sputum unloaded his stub gun. Steele quips"Start to blubber punk, here comes the rubber!"
and unleashes a 3 shot burst of Rubber Ricochet rounds which floors one of the perps. Holmes tosses a stumm gas grenade into the apartment which is quickly kicked out into the hallway.
Meanwhile Judge Que decides to gain access to via the balcony nextdoor and High Exes the door of the adjoining apartment. The residents of 426-58 are stunned but get out of her way as she barrels through the pad heading for the balcony. Obstructing a Judge in the execution of their duties is a crime.
Psi-Judge Wallace has a precog vision of the perp charging out into the corridor. Pulling down their respirators the Judges in the corridor brace to engage. Steele steps into the doorway and fires 3 GP rounds striking the punk in his left arm as Holmes fires a 3 round burst opportunistically over Steele's shoulder and takes out a door handle, a light fixture and the 90inch Tri-D Set hanging on the lounge wall. After reloading Dave fires wildly at the patrol, a lucky shot slams into Holmes abdomen. As he charges down the narrow corridor of the apartment he trips over the unconcious body of his accomplice Nelson Spunge, falls flat on his face and the stub gun skitters across the floor.
Que vaults over the adjoining balcony ledges and lands in a combat stance just as Steele executes a coup de grace.
"You're the Slime, I punish the Crime!" retorts Steele and unloads a 3 shot burst into Dave's head splattering blood, bone and brain fragments across the apartment.
Wallace administers a hypo spray to Holmes gutshot, cuffs the unconcious juve and then tears off a wakey-wake strip wafting it under the punk's nose. With a splutter Nelson Spunge comes to, blinking incredulously at the blood soaked shattered remains of his family home.
"You killed Dave, you drokking gruds!!"
"Dave got in well over his head" laughs Steele, "Now tells us what you know about the Nitro-9"
Nelson explains that he has no idea what the Judge is talking about. Tech Judge Murtagh sweeps the apartment with the sniffer which comes up empty. Spunge continues to tell the judges that Dave got out of the Iso-Cubes this morning after a 3 month stretch for handling stolen goods. The pair celebrated by going to city bottom and buying some vintage comics, none of the hard stuff, just a Dandy, a couple of Beano's and a Tammy. The dogeared contraband publications sit incriminatingly on the nearby coffee table being avidly read by one of Dave's eyeballs.
As the adrenaline fades from her bloodstream Que peers over the balcony. Running along the pedway some 10 floors below is a strange 2 foot tall blue mammal with a turtle shell pursued by two YPs, a girl with long red hair and a boy with pair hair, dressed in white uniforms emblazoned with a red "R" closely followed by a large beige cat. Passing this off as a reaction to the stumm gas she refocuses her attention on the apartment.
The Judges bag Dave's stub gun, seal the apartment with CS tape, radio in for a clean up crew and escort the juve down to the holding post outside the block entrance. After a quick trip to the block's med centre to dig the bullet out from Judge Holmes they decide to continue their investigation into the other resi with known Nitro-9 experience, Tom Vampire and confront Nigel Faraway who is on stage at the brexit rally in the atrium.
Interview with a Vampire
Steele's intimidating gait parts the riotous assembly like a red hot hammer through synthi-butter. A master of public speaking, Faraway milks the opportunity for all it is worth before gesturing the Judges to meet him back stage. Steele gets straight to the point and asks Faraway what he knows about the High Explosive heist whose trail leads directly to this block. Faraway explains that this is a peaceful gathering and his motives are honest and true. Perhaps the Judges should investigate what's really going on and visit the real agent provacateurs in Merkel Mansions, Mitterand Habitat and Berlusconi Block. The Judes demand to interrogate Faraway's volunteer Tom Vampire.
Faraway exits through the curtains and a few moments later Vampire emerges. A tall, thin 28 year old man dressed in an immaculate suit enters. Sweat beads across his bleached skin and drips from his top lip smearing the laughable drawn on pencil moustache he wears as an affectation.
When questioned under birdie lie detector, Vampire testifies that his explosives knowledge comes from his first and only job 10 years ago when he was on a fatberg cleaning crew in the sewers. They used Nitro-9 to blow up the more stubborn blockages which set like plas-crete. His rap sheet is clean save for a jay walking incident 5 years ago. The lie detector barely registers off the 0 scale and a frustrated Steele tells Vampire that if he hears anything to call it into the sector house immediately.
Holmes puts in a call to Tech Judge Carson who informs them that they have recovered some partial DNA from the abandoned Judge uniforms and have MAC, the Justice Department's super computer cross matching it with Sector 55 residents. He estimates only a 1 in 5 chance of a positive match and it will take a couple of days for the program to finish running. Perhaps there is another way, her stoolie Vinny the Spiv might know something so she arranges to meet him after her shift ends at his regular haunt the "La Cuccaracha" bar in Jessica Alba Conapts.
Destruction Derby on Meg-Way 5555
With Nitro-9 leads drying up, recently graduated Psi-Judge Wallace advises that his instructors at The Academy used the mantra "If in doubt, roll out" meaning that they should mount up and look for trouble. As they gun their lawmasters an urgent call comes in for an escort duty from the spaceport. 45 minutes later they are talking to the Fidget Spinner World Series loadmaster Trevor Wombat. He has a problem, he is due at the omni dome in 2 hours for tech inspection and he has 7 heavy haulers each loaded up with 4 spinners waiting for an escort. Each of the spinners sits on the back of the loader, their armour plated, bladed and spiked shilouettes reminiscent of sleeping dinosaurs strapped down and covered with tarpaulin. The fans at the Omni Dome are in for a real destructive treat tonight.The convoy is a wide load and takes up 3 lanes as it heads out at a steady 80mph on Meg Way 55-55. Steele and Holmes are up front and Que and Wallace bring up the rear. The first few clicks go without incident until a slow driving Old Person in a white compact bubble car blocks their path. Holmes rides alongside and taps on the glass. The OP gips the wheel like her life depended on it and the sudden shock of a Judge demanding her to pull over makes her jerk the steering wheel in fright. The white compact fishtails wildy out of control and veers right before crashing into the guardrail. The car's safety foam pre-emptively triggers safely encapsulating the interior in a rigid shell. Holmes slaps a slow driving citation on the magled vehicle and chases after the convoy.
Que spots that a strap has come loose on hauler 4 and orders Wombat to strap it down. A crewman emerges from a hatch in the cab and attempts to tighten the strap just as the truck rolls over a pothole. The jolt throws the hapless tech into the air and leaves him dangling from the strap inches from the road and the haulers huge tyres. Que quickly rides alongside and wrestles the tech onto the back of her lawmaster.
Wallace drives expertly up to grip the crew ladder and orders his bike into auto mode. He climbs onto the bed of the truck and tightens the loose strap. As he finishes he gets another psychic vision. 3 perps are about to jump onto the convoy from the bridge ahead.
The call comes too late for Steele as his bike thunders under the bridge but Que takes a well aimed longshot and hits one perp square in the center of mass and he falls backwards onto the bridge. The remaining perps leap. One lands on the cab of hauler 3 and rolls onto the flat bed, the second bounces off the bed and slams into the windscreen of hauler 4 before being crushed under its wheel like roadkill. Wallace scans the back of hauler 3 but can see no sign of the remaining perp.
Steele side slips right and slows down to bring him alongside the truck. Even above the roadnoise and the rumbling drone of the heavy hauler he can hear the unmistakeable sound of a turbine spooling up. Suddenly the straps and tarpualin explode like confetti as the spinner tears off it's protective wrapping and careens sideways off the flat bed passing over the stunned Steele, shredding innocent motorists to pieces as it clears a path of destruction ahead.
Steele pulls back to a safe distance, selects Armour Piercing rounds and fires a close knit burst at the spinners glass-steel canopy. The rounds bounce harmlessley off the glistening dome, these machines are not just common citi cars, they are built like tanks and designed to destroy each other.
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