The Judge Read online

  The men hauled B back to the top of the hill, and then started loading another rocket. “Okay, it’s time,” said the judge. He stepped over to the metal pipe and punched a series of numbers into the control panel. It started beeping.

  “One minute,” he said. They crawled back into the chamber and locked the door. The life support systems came on, quickly replacing the smoke with clean oxygen. They removed their masks.

  “You think this thing will protect us when that bomb goes off?” said Charlie.

  “It might,” said the judge. “Or we might just get cooked. Or, it could get damaged and leave us to die horribly, with our blood boiling and the vacuum of space sucking our eyeballs out of their sockets.”

  Charlie looked a little sick. “Maybe we should just let them shoot us.”

  The second rocket struck the crumbling house, and the basement started to collapse. Shrapnel rained down on the room, and burning floorboards began dropping to the floor. One of them struck the control panel on the bomb, and knocked it off.

  “Hell,” said the judge. “Charlie, why didn’t it go off?”

  Charlie squinted through the small window on the box. “The wires pulled apart,” he said. “We can activate it manually, if we can get to it.”

  It took both of them to get the door open, and they had to crawl under a burning post in order to get out. The judge kicked a board aside as he reached the post. “These two, Charlie?” he said, grabbing the wires.

  “Ah, if it isn’t my best friend in the whole world!” The judge barely had time to recognize B’s voice before the phase-blast hit him in the chest. In an instant he was on the ground. Smoke was rising from his chest and the judge felt a tingling sensation spreading across his torso.

  Charlie’s face hovered over him. “Judge, are you okay? Can you hear me Judge?”

  The judge felt the laser burns on his chest, fought against the crushing feeling in his lungs. “Get out of here, Charlie,” he wheezed. “Get in the box.”

  “No way, Judge.”

  The judge twisted to look up, and saw B and several of his buddies gathering at the hole that used to be the corner of the cabin. They were all carrying blasters. “They’re gonna execute us,” Charlie whispered.

  The judge shook his head. “That’s not part of the plan. Get it the box, Charlie. Do it, now, dammit!”

  Charlie’s resistance crumbled. He fought back tears as he squeezed the judge’s hand one last time and then went scurrying back beneath the ruins. Phase-blasts landed around him, but they couldn’t penetrate the debris.

  “Dammit!” B shouted. “Someone crawl down there and get him!” The gangster turned his attention back to the judge just in time to see the older man twisting two wires together at the top of the pipe.

  “Guilty,” the judge said, his face twisted in a desperate half-grin. B’s eyes went wide. The wires touched, forming a lethal circuit that sent a small electrical pulse through nearly a mile of old-fashioned copper wire, deep into the heart of the moon. There, the signal activated the trigger on one of humankind’s most ruthless high-power explosives, a device called a triple-stage antimatter bomb.

  B had just enough time to realize that he was going to die, and then the entire moon exploded. Seconds later, the space that had been occupied by Eliza 7 was little more than an asteroid field. At least thirty of the most notorious criminals in the known universe had been vaporized in an instant.

  Somewhere, at the far end of the system, a remote scientific observatory took note of the explosion and requested permission to investigate. As the group of scientists readied their shuttlecraft, a computer started doing preliminary scans. It found little more than asteroids and small debris from what used to be a very large ship.

  There was one more thing, though. It was a sort of metal box, an old heavy-duty escape pod from the early days of space freighting. It had an emergency beacon that was sending out a modulating radio signal.

  *

  Inside the pod, Charlie opened a bottle of whiskey and poured himself a shot. “This one’s for you Judge,” he said. “You were a man of true principles.” There were tears in his eyes as he threw it back. He stared out across the barren solar system, wondering what would become of the universe. It was a chance for a new start, a chance for humanity to remake its image among the rest of the intelligent life forms. He just hoped they were smart enough to do it. Not everyone had the judge’s principles.

  The End

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