Captain Short whirled, but the blast doors were already closing. The fireproof barriers were automatically triggered by a thermo sensor in the chute. When a flare passed by below, six-foot-thick steel doors shut the access tunnel off from the rest of the terminal. They were trapped in here, with a column of magma on the way. Not that the magma would kill them, there wasn’t much overspill from the flares. The superheated air would bake them drier than autumn leaves.
The goblin was standing on the tunnel’s edge, oblivious to the impending eruption. Holly realized that it wasn’t a question of the fugitive being crazy enough to fly into the chute. He was just plain stupid.
With a jaunty wave the goblin hopped into the chute, rising rapidly from view. Not rapidly enough. A twenty-foot-thick jet of roiling lava pounced on him like a waiting snake, consuming him completely.
Holly did not waste time grieving. She had problems of her own. LEP jumpsuits had thermal coils to disperse excess heat, but it wouldn’t be enough. In seconds a wall of dry heat would roll in here, and raise the temperature enough to crack the walls.
Holly glanced upward. A reinforced line of ancient coolant tanks were still bolted to the tunnel roof. She slid her blaster to maximum power and began sinking charges into the bellies of the tanks. This was no time for subtlety.
The tanks buckled and split, belching out rancid air and coolant traces. Useless. They must have bled out over the centuries, and the goblins had never bothered replacing them. But there was one. A black oblong, out of place among the standard green LEP models. Holly positioned herself directly underneath and fired.
Three thousand gallons of coolant-enhanced water crashed onto her head, at the very moment a heat wave came billowing in from the chute. It was a curious sensation to be frozen and burned almost simultaneously. Holly felt blisters pop on her shoulders only to be flattened by water pressure. Captain Short was driven to her knees, lungs starving for air. But she couldn’t take a breath, not now, and she couldn’t raise a hand to switch on her helmet tank.
After an eternity the roaring stopped, and Holly opened her eyes to a tunnel full of steam. She activated the de-mister in her visor and got up off her knees. Water slid in sheets from her nonfriction suit. She released her helmet seals, taking deep breaths of tunnel air. Still warm, but breathable.
Behind her the blast doors slid open, and Captain Trouble Kelp appeared in the gap along with an LEP Rapid Response team.
“Nice maneuver, Captain.”
Holly didn’t answer, too absorbed by the weapon abandoned by the recently vaporized goblin. This was the prize pig of rifles, almost two feet long, with a starlite scope clipped above the barrel.
Holly’s first thought had been that somehow the B’wa Kell were manufacturing their own weapons. But now she realized that the truth was far more dangerous. Captain Short pried the rifle from the half-melted rock. She recognized it from her History of Law Enforcement in-service. An old softnose laser. Softnoses had been outlawed long ago. But that wasn’t the worst of it. Instead of a fairy power source, the gun was powered by a human AA alkaline battery.
“Trouble,” she called. “Have a look at this.”
“D’Arvit,” breathed Kelp, reaching immediately for the radio controls on his helmet.
“Get me a priority channel to Commander Root. We have Class A contraband. Yes, Class A. I need a full team of techies. Get Foaly, too. I want this entire quadrant shut down. . . .”
Trouble continued spouting orders but they faded to a distant buzz in Holly’s ears. The B’wa Kell were trading with the Mud Men. Humans and goblins working together to reactivate outlawed weapons. And if the weapons were here, how long could it be before the Mud Men followed?
Help arrived just after the nick of time. In thirty minutes there were so many halogen spotlights buzzing around E37 that it looked like a GolemWorld movie premiere.
Foaly was down on his knees examining the unconscious goblin by the escalator. Foaly was the main reason that humans hadn’t yet discovered the People’s underground lairs. He was a technical genius who had pioneered every major development from flare prediction to mind-wiping technology. Every discovery made him less respectful and more annoying. But rumor had it that he had a soft spot for a certain female Recon officer. Actually, the only female Recon officer.
“Good job, Holly,” he said rubbing the goblin’s reflective suit. “You just had a firefight with a kabob.”
“That’s it, Foaly, draw attention away from the fact that the B’wa Kell fooled your sensors.”
Foaly tried on one of the helmets. “Not the B’wa Kell. No way. Too dumb. Goblins just don’t have the cranial capacity. These are human manufacture.”
Holly snorted. “And how do you know that? Recognize the stitching?”
“Nope,” replied Foaly, tossing the helmet to Holly.
Holly read the label. “Made in Germany.”
“I’d guess that this is a fire suit. The material keeps the heat out as well as in. This is serious, Holly. We’re not talking a couple of designer shirts and a case of chocolate bars here. Some human is doing some serious smuggling with the B’wa Kell.”
Foaly stepped out of the way to allow the technical crew access to their prisoner. The techies would tag the unconscious goblin with a subcutaneous sleeper. The sleeper contained microcapsules of a sedative agent and a tiny detonator. Once tagged, a criminal could be knocked out by computer if the LEP realized he was involved in an illegal situation.
“You know who’s probably behind this, don’t you?” said Holly.
Foaly rolled his eyes. “Oh let me guess. Captain Short’s archenemy, Master Artemis Fowl.”
“Well, who else could it be?”
“Take your pick. The People have been in contact with thousands of Mud Men over the years.”
“Is that so?” retorted Holly. “And how many that haven’t been mind-wiped?”
Foaly pretended to think about it, adjusting the foil hat jammed on his head to deflect any brain-probing signals that could be focused his way.
“Three,” he muttered eventually.
“Pardon?”
“Three, okay.”
“Exactly. Fowl and his pet gorillas. Artemis is behind this. Mark my words.”
“You’d just love that to be the case now, wouldn’t you? You’d finally get the chance to get your own back. You do remember what happened the last time the LEP went up against Artemis Fowl?”
“I remember. But that was last time.”
Foaly smirked. “I would remind you that he’ll be thirteen, now.”
Holly’s hand dropped to her buzz baton.
“I don’t care how old he is. One zap with this, and he’ll be sleeping like a baby.”
Foaly nodded toward the entrance. “I’d save my charges if I were you. You’re going to need them.”
Holly followed his gaze. Commander Julius Root was sweeping across the secured zone. The more he saw, the redder his face grew, hence the nickname Beetroot.
“Commander,” began Holly. “You need to see this.”
Root’s gaze silenced her. “What were you thinking?”
“Pardon me, sir?”
“Don’t give me that. I was in Ops for the whole thing. I was watching the video feed from your helmet.”
“Oh.”
“Oh hardly covers it, Captain!” Root’s buzz-cut gray hair was quivering with emotion. “This was supposed to be a surveillance mission. There were several backup squads sitting on their well-trained behinds only waiting for you to call. But no, Captain Short decides to take on the B’wa Kell on her own.”
“I had a man down, sir. There was no choice.”
“What was Verbil doing out there in the first place?”
For the first time, Holly’s gaze dropped. “I sent him out to do a thermal, sir. Just following regulations.”
Root nodded. “I just talked to the paramedic warlock. Verbil will be okay, but his flying days are over. There’ll be a tribunal of c
ourse.”
“Yes, sir. Understood.”
“A formality, I’m sure, but you know the Council.”
Holly knew the Council all too well. She would be the first LEP officer in history to be the subject of two simultaneous investigations.
“So what’s this I hear about a Class A?”
All contraband was classed. Class A was code for dangerous human technology. Power sources for instance.
“This way, sir.”
Holly lead them to the rear of the maintenance area, to the shuttle bay itself.
A translucent restricted-access Perspex dome had been erected in the shuttle bay. Holly pressed through the frosted entrance flaps.
“You see? This is serious.”
Root studied the evidence. In the shuttle’s cargo bay were crates of AA batteries. Holly selected a pack.
“Pencil batteries,” she said. “A common human power source. Crude, inefficient, and an environmental disaster. Twelve crates of them right here. Who knows how many are in the tunnels already?”
Root was unimpressed. “Forgive me for not quaking in my boots. So a few goblins get to play human video games. So what?”
Foaly had spotted the goblin’s softnose laser. “Oh no!” he said, checking the weapon.
“Exactly,” agreed Holly.
The commander did not appreciate being left out of the conversation. “Oh no!” he mimicked them. “I hope you’re just being melodramatic.”