RoboCop 2 Read online

  CAN A SAVAGE DRUG LORD

  DESTROY ROBOCOP?

  JUST SAY NO.

  The death drug NUKE has sparked a full-scale war in the streets of Old Detroit. The man behind the mayhem is named Cain—a cold and ruthless drug dealer who’ll stop at nothing to satisfy his hunger for power and wealth. For Cain, money is the only thing that matters. Human life is cheap.

  But Cain has a problem: RoboCop.

  He’s half man, half machine and all cop.

  A Jon Davison PRODUCTION

  AN Irwin Kershner FILM

  Peter Weller • Nancy Allen

  ROBOCOP 2

  Daniel O’Herlihy • Tom Noonan

  Belinda Bauer • Gabriel Damon

  DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY Mark Irwan

  VISUAL EFFECTS BY Phil Tippett

  ROBOCOP DESIGNED BY Rob Bottin

  MUSIC BY Leonard Rosenman

  EXCUTIVE PRODUCER Patrick Crowley

  BASED ON CHARACTERS CREATED BY

  Edward Neumeier & Walon Green

  STORY BY Frank Miller

  SCREENPLAY BY

  Frank Miller & Walon Green

  PRODUCED BY Jon Davison

  DIRECTED BY Irwin Kershner

  ROBOCOP 2

  A Jove Book / published by arrangement with

  Creative Licensing Corporation

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Jove edition / June 1990

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1990 by Orion Pictures Corporation.

  ISBN: 0-515-10410-8

  Jove Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group.

  200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.

  The name “JOVE” and the “J” logo are trademarks belonging to Jove Publications. Inc.

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  For the Gab

  and the gifts she brought

  PART

  “This world is a comedy for those who think

  . . . and a tragedy for those who feel.”

  —Horace Walpole

  [ 1 ]

  He was a cop.

  A good cop.

  His name had been Murphy once, Alex Murphy, back when he had been a man. But time and circumstances had changed all that. Now he was something more than a man, and something less, as well.

  “The Future of Law Enforcement,” he was called. A being part human, part machine that had been programmed to serve the populace.

  His world could be summed up quite succinctly, thanks to the expertise of the robotics technicians who’d pulled his bullet-riddled human body back from the brink of death and housed its remnants in a powerful metal shell.

  DIRECTIVE ONE: SERVE THE PUBLIC TRUST.

  DIRECTIVE TWO: UPHOLD THE LAW.

  DIRECTIVE THREE: PROTECT THE INNOCENT.

  The lights of Old Detroit twinkled across RoboCop’s face visor as he guided his TurboCruiser down one of the countless pockmarked, half-deserted streets of town. Crumbling shells of buildings were nestled next to stores and tenements still struggling to survive, their neon lights buzzing spastically, their doorways hanging from their hinges. Large metal gates were everywhere, put up by tenants and shop owners to keep out the lowlifes. A futile effort, thought RoboCop. The tide of miscreants was surging. The city was being consumed by a virtual tidal wave of crime.

  He pulled his TurboCruiser to a halt and climbed outside.

  He gazed up at the full moon peeking through the soot and smog that caressed the city from above.

  The moon glowed a sickly, green hue.

  “It’s made of green cheese, Daddy,” he heard a little boy’s voice call from the back of his mind. The being that was half-Murphy and half-robotics fought back a pang of hurt. He had had a son, once. A wife. A home. He’d lost all that when he became the first and only cyborg law-enforcement officer.

  He was still trying to get the inner workings of his new self and his old self to jibe, to mesh.

  There were times when the loneliness he experienced made him wince.

  He was the only one of his kind.

  What was more, he knew it.

  RoboCop marched up to a nearly empty bar and peeked inside. A bartender dozed under a blaring television screen. Robo paused in the doorway, impervious to the smell of liquor and urine that arose from the gin mill. He gazed at the TV.

  On the screen sat a parked car. A car thief resembling a weasel sidled up to the deserted vehicle and deftly slid a metal rod between the window and the door. Click. The lock gave way. The thief scrambled into the auto and took his place behind the wheel, a satisfied grin on his sweaty face.

  Without warning, the car’s safety belt slammed across the thug’s chest like an angry tentacle. The thief continued to smile. What would they think of next? he seemed to chuckle. Then other tentacles appeared. Snap. Snap. Snap. They whipped across his chest and legs, binding him tightly to the front seat. The thief thrashed about helplessly, his eyes wide with terror.

  The dashboard of the car burrrped to life. “You have just jimmied the wrong lock,” it announced. “Welcome to the latest in family car defense.”

  RoboCop snorted as electrical flashes cascaded along the car’s windows and down the extended straps. The thief uttered a muffled scream and passed out, his nervous system twitching violently from the high-voltage surge.

  A cheerful pitchman, dressed like a used-car salesman, only worse, stepped up to the car and flung open the front door. The pan-fried body of the thief tumbled out onto the ground as the tentacles went back into hiding.

  “MagnaVolt.” The spokesman beamed. “The final word in auto security. No embarrassing alarm noise to upset the neighbors. No need to trouble the police.”

  The pitchman stepped over the smoking body and slid behind the wheel of the car, turning on the ignition. “And it won’t even run down your battery.”

  RoboCop watched as the commercial came to an end, the car and salesman driving off, majestically, down the well-lit street.

  The screen shifted to another scene. The evening news. Two TV newscasters who had for years made a determined effort to demonstrate who used the most—and most highly advanced—toothpaste appeared. Jess Perkins, a bubble-headed blonde who wore her dresses like most cars wore paint jobs, was usually the winner, although Robo theorized that most male viewers were equally dazzled by the areas below her chin. Coming in a close second, however, was Casey Wong, a crew-cut Eurasian whose smile was wide enough to have it included on most maps of the Detroit area.

  Behind the twosome, a videotape clip showed a raging inferno. In the foreground, tropical trees seemed to wither as if on cue.

  “The Amazon Nuclear Power Facility has blown its stack,” Casey announced, still wearing his mannequin smile. “As I speak, it’s irradiating the world’s largest rain forest. Environmentalists call it a disaster!”

  “But don’t they always?” Jess laughed.

  The scene changed, and Robo’s eyes narrowed as a familiar form shambled across the screen. The massive, mechanical form of the Enforcement Druid, Series 209, strode across a city street, getting one of its feet stuck in a pothole. The gigantic hunchbacked robot, its rounded torso wobbling on its two legs, whirled and swirled its arms around, waving its twenty-millimeter cannon muzzles, as it tried to regain its balance.

  “In national news today,” Jess continued, “Attorney General Marcus approved the ED 209 combat unit for deployment in five American cities, despite widespread complaints of malfunction. Casey?”

  Jess flashed Casey a perky smile.

  Casey was still wearing his last one. “The latest on Old Detroit’s police strike after this special public-service announcement.”

  The next image to appear on the screen was that of a bearded man in what appeared to be an admiral�
��s outfit. Caught by surprise, the surgeon general, E. Edward Edwards, put out his cigarette and faced the cameras, wheezing.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” came an omniscient voice, “the surgeon general of the United States.”

  “My fellow Americans,” the surgeon general said sternly, cigarette smoke still trickling from his nostrils, “a health crisis is upon us . . . And only you can put a stop to it. A new ‘designer drug’ has already made hopeless addicts of one out of ten citizens in Detroit . . . and this drug is spreading like wildfire across the country.”

  The bearded man held up a small plastic device: a NUKE ampule. “On the streets and in the schoolyards, they call it NUKE. It doesn’t cost much to buy one of these.”

  The surgeon general was replaced by an animated scene that had apparently been conceived by someone with a shaky hand and a bad hangover. Two large fingers squeezed a NUKE ampule. A small needle popped out of the plastic and embedded itself into a vein in the animated user’s neck. Then a diagram showed the liquid shooting straight up the spinal cord, sending various sectors of the brain into dayglow dementia.

  “It’s true that it will make you feel strong,” the surgeon general continued. “Confident. On top of the world. But beware . . . While its long-term effects have yet to be determined, this much is known: NUKE is the single most addictive substance on the planet.”

  The surgeon general pointed to a small cage in which a white rat was rebounding off the walls like a tailed Super-Ball. “This rat received the equivalent of a single dose of NUKE only five hours ago. Its euphoria was short-lived. Now it suffers the hideous agony of NUKE withdrawal. Don’t be like him. Don’t let your children be like him. Don’t take NUKE!”

  The surgeon general sat back on his desk, nearly toppling over an ashtray. “Thanks. Have a pleasant today and a great tomorrow.”

  Robo continued to stare at the screen. Jess and Casey returned, with a large police badge superimposed on a screen behind them. Across the badge, in red, was the word STRIKE.

  “After four months,” Casey intoned, “all but a handful of our cops remain on strike, demanding better terms from OmniConsumerProducts—OCP—the corporation contracted by the city to finance and run the Detroit police department. Negotiations came to a complete stop today and the cops are angry about it.”

  The screen showed a tape of dozens of police officers picketing in front of the Old Detroit stationhouse.

  A concerned older cop, his face heavily lined from years of duty on the mean streets, faced the cameras before him. “OCP cut our salaries forty percent. They’ve canceled our pensions. And now they won’t even talk to us? God knows why, but they seem to want this strike! They want the city to tear itself apart!”

  The dozing bartender awoke at that point and casually flicked off the television. RoboCop stood, framed by the moonlight, in the doorway. The bartender looked up.

  “How’s it goin’, Robo?” the old man said, his voice more a sigh than a tone.

  RoboCop nodded casually. “Same old stuff,” he managed to say.

  “Yeah.” The bartender nodded. “Ain’t it the truth? I tell ya, it’s damned depressing watching the news. I lived here all my life and I’ve never seen things so bad. Kids, flyin’ high on that dope stuff, carrying around more firepower than I ever seen in all my years in Vietnam. Kids who should be home squeezing their zits is squeezin’ triggers instead. Bad for business, let me tell you that. Nobody around here will go out on the streets anymore, between the hopheads and the muggers—and now this police strike.”

  The bartender caught himself. “No offense, Robo.”

  “None taken,” RoboCop replied, clenching his jaw.

  Robo turned to face the smog-laden night. “Have a nice evening, sir.”

  “Oh, yeah.” The bartender smirked. “I should live that long.”

  Robo marched back to his waiting TurboCruiser, his insides churning. He fought back the anger. He attempted to suppress his frustration. Not only was his world—his world inside—coming apart at the seams, but the world—everybody’s world—seemed to be coming unglued.

  He slid behind the wheel of his car.

  He would postpone his introspection for another, more appropriate time.

  Tonight, he was just a cop.

  A cop with a job to do.

  And nobody was going to prevent him from doing it.

  [ 2 ]

  A stretch limo prowled through the cavernous streets of Detroit. In the back seat, Mayor Cyril Kuzak was not a happy man. Young and black, he had been elected as one of the people—someone who had come up from the slums of Old Detroit and was striving for the top.

  He was at the top now; but, somehow, he was still looking up at those higher up than he. He hated that.

  He ran a finger across the lapels of his thousand-dollar suit. He had all the trappings of power but was now powerless. If that was supposed to be some sort of a joke, Mayor Kuzak didn’t find it funny.

  He glanced up at the night sky. In the distance, high atop a sleek, spiraling skyscraper, the OCP logo blazed above the sleepy city. Kuzak’s limo headed in that direction.

  The figure next to Kuzak in the back seat stirred. Well-attired, button-downed Councilman George Poulos cleared his throat, as if giving a signal to the mayor. Stop daydreaming. Get your mind on business.

  Kuzak grunted back as the limo pulled up in front of the OCP headquarters. Outside the car, a few workers were hosing the graffiti off a dormant ED 209. Fucking killer trashcan, the mayor bristled to himself. He turned to Poulos.

  “Remember,” he cautioned the councilman, “I’m not here to beg!”

  Poulos had done this dance before. “Of course not.”

  “I’m here to demand action!” Kuzak declared, as if trying to convince himself. “I’m here to get action!”

  The two men walked toward the cathedrallike entrance of the building and made their way to the elevators leading up to the chambers of the head of OCP: a silver-haired despot known to everyone as, simply, the Old Man.

  As the elevator slid up its clear tubeway, Kuzak fumed. He had quite a few things to tell that old fart. Who the hell did he think he was, messing around with Kuzak’s city? With the police? With the people?

  The elevator door swung open. A young, fresh-faced executive named Johnson opened the door to the inner sanctum for the two men. Johnson grinned like the Cheshire cat. It was crisis time, but hell, he had been with the Old Man through many a crisis. In fact, he had been promoted due to his ability to stay uninvolved. Kuzak scowled as he walked into the room. The place resembled a high-tech version of a mead hall from the days of Camelot. Damn if it wasn’t big enough to go bowling in. Kuzak continued to frown as he quickly calculated the cost of the room. Probably cost more than he made in a goddamned year.

  Johnson kept his grin intact.

  “It hardly befits the dignity of my office that I have to come to you, Johnson,” Kuzak muttered.

  “My apologies for the slight inconvenience, Your Honor,” Johnson said, smoothly.

  Poulos rolled his eyes and followed Kuzak into the room. A poker-faced attorney, Holzgang, leaned against a desk. The Old Man sat in his throne of a chair, facing a massive window and gazing out on the sprawling city below. He didn’t acknowledge either visitor’s presence.

  Kuzak was still playing hardball with Johnson. “Slight?” he said, amazed and angry. “Twenty minutes in crosstown traffic isn’t so slight! Not when you’re the mayor of a major American city!”

  The Old Man let go with an exasperated sigh; Kuzak was oblivious to it. Poulos slid into a chair and faced Johnson. “Let’s get to business, shall we?” he opened. “When are you going to start paying the cops so they’ll get back to work?”

  The reptilian lawyer slithered into the chair opposite Poulos. “We’re not a charity. The city owes us more than thirty-seven million dollars.”

  The mayor’s jaw dropped open with a crack. He eased himself into a nearby chair. “You’ve got to cut us
some slack . . .”

  The lawyer shrugged. “A deadline’s a deadline. Sorry.”

  “How are we supposed to raise that kind of money with things the way they are?” Kuzak demanded.

  The Old Man spun his chair around and faced the assemblage for the first time. There was a small sneer curling around his lips. “You aren’t,” he said, the sneer turning into a full-fledged smirk.

  Kuzak glanced at Johnson. “What the hell is he talking about?”

  “We don’t expect you to pay,” the Old Man stated, firmly.

  Holzgang flipped open a file folder before him and held up a wad of papers. “I refer you to our contract, Your Honor: ‘In the event of default, OCP shall have the uncontested right of foreclosure on all city assets.’ ”

  Kuzak’s Adam’s apple began break-dancing. Poulos’s face went white. He grabbed the papers from Holzgang’s hands, gulped, and faced the mayor.

  “You signed that? You twit!” he screamed.

  Kuzak tried to hang tough. “Don’t call me a twit. I’m the mayor!”

  Holzgang deftly took the papers out of Poulos’s trembling hands. He smiled at the mayor.

  Kuzak was outraged. “You’re saying that we miss one payment, and you can foreclose?”

  Holzgang nodded. The Old Man was delighted with himself. “We can, and we will. We’re taking Detroit private.”

  “You deliberately undermined our credit!” Kuzak said, seething.

  “That was the easy part,” Holzgang replied.

  The dawn of understanding began to flicker in Kuzak’s eyes. “And you engineered the police strike! You bastards! You want Detroit to collapse! Just so you can raid it like you would any other corporation!”

  Johnson chuckled in the Old Man’s direction. “I thought he’d never get it.”

  Kuzak was too angry to be frightened. “Do you know how many people are dying in the streets out there? You—you’re nothing more than a pack of murderers!”

  Holzgang cleared his throat. “I’d advise you to say nothing further. It might be actionable.”