“I’ll kill him,” exclaimed Root pounding the control panel. “Can’t this bucket go any faster?”
Los Angeles
Mulch scaled the building without much difficulty. There were external closed-circuit cameras, but the helmet’s ion filter showed exactly where these cameras were pointed. It was a simple matter to crawl along the blind spots.
Within an hour, the dwarf was suckered outside Maggie V’s apartment on the tenth floor. The windows were triple-glazed with a bulletproof coating. Movie stars. Paranoid, every one of them.
Naturally there was an alarm point sitting on top of the pane, and a motion sensor crouching on a wall like a frozen cricket. Only to be expected.
Mulch melted a hole in the glass with a bottle of dwarf rock polish, used to clean up diamonds in the mines. Humans actually cut diamonds to shine them. Imagine. Half the stone down the drain.
Next, the Grouch used his helmet’s ion filter to sweep the room for the motion sensor’s range. The red ion stream revealed that the sensor was focused on the floor. No matter. Mulch intended going along the wall.
Pores still crying out for water, the dwarf crept along the partition, making maximum use of a stainless-steel shelving system that almost completely surrounded the main sitting room.
The next step was to find the actual Oscar. It could be hidden anywhere, including under Maggie V’s pillow, but this room was as good a place to start as any. You never know, he might get lucky.
Mulch activated the helmet’s X-ray filter, scanning the walls for a safe. Nothing. He tried the floor. Humans were getting smarter these days. There, under a fake zebra rug, a metal cuboid. Easy.
The Grouch approached the motion sensor from above, very gently twisting the neck until the gadget was surveying the ceiling. The floor was now safe.
Mulch dropped to the rug, testing the surface with his tactile toes. No pressure pads sewn into the rug’s lining.
He rolled back the fake fur, revealing a hatch in the wooden floor. The joins were barely visible to the naked eye. But Mulch was an expert, and his eyes weren’t naked—they were aided by LEP zoom lenses.
He wormed a nail into the crack, flipping the hatch. The safe itself was a bit of a disappointment, not even lead lined. He could see right into the mechanism with the X-ray filter. A simple combination lock. Only three digits.
Mulch turned the filter off. What was the point in breaking a see-through lock? Instead he put his ear to the door, jiggling the dial. In fifteen seconds the door was open at his feet.
The Oscar’s gold plating winked at him. Mulch made a big mistake at that moment. He relaxed. In the Grouch’s mind he was already back in his own apartment, swigging from a two-gallon bottle of ice-cold water. And relaxed thieves are destined for prison.
Mulch neglected to check the statuette for traps, plucking it straight from the safe. If he had checked, he would have realized that there was a wire attached magnetically to the base. When the Oscar was moved, a circuit was broken, allowing all hell to break loose.
Chute E37
Holly set the autopilot to hover at ten thousand feet below the surface. She slapped herself on the chest to release the harness, then joined the others in the rear of the shuttle.
“Two problems. Firstly, if we go any lower, we’ll be picked up on the scanners, presuming they’re still operating.”
“Why am I not looking forward to number two?” asked Butler.
“Secondly, this particular chute was retired when we pulled out of the Arctic.”
“Which means?”
“Which means the supply tunnels were collapsed. We have no way into the chute system without supply tunnels.”
“No problem,” declared Root. “We blast the wall.”
Holly sighed.“With what, Commander? This is a diplomatic craft. We don’t have any cannons.”
Butler plucked two concussor eggs from a pouch on his Moonbelt.
“Will these do? Foaly thought they might come in handy.”
Artemis groaned. If he didn’t know better, he’d swear the manservant was enjoying this.
Los Angeles
“Uh-oh,” breathed Mulch.
In a matter of moments, things had gone from rosy to extremely dangerous. Once the security circuit was broken, a side door slid open, admitting two very large German shepherds. The ultimate canine watchdogs. They were followed by their handler, a huge man covered in protective clothing. It appeared as though he was dressed in doormats. Obviously, the dogs were unstable.
“Nice doggies,” said Mulch, slowly unbuttoning his back flap.
Chute E37
Holly nudged the flight controls, inching the shuttle closer to the chute wall.
“That’s as near as we get,” she said into her helmet mike. “Any closer and the thermals could flip us against the rock face.”
“Thermals?” growled Root. “You never said anything about thermals before I climbed out here.”
The commander was spread-eagled on the port wing, a concussor egg jammed down each boot.
“Sorry, Commander, someone has to fly this bird.”
Root muttered under his breath, dragging himself closer to the wingtip. While the turbulence was nowhere as severe as it would have been on a moving aircraft, the buffeting thermals were quite enough to shake the commander like dice in a cup. All that kept him going was the thought of his fingers tightening around Mulch Diggums’s throat.
“Just a few feet,” he gasped into the mike. At least they had communications, the shuttle had its own local intercom. “A few more feet and I can make it.”
“No go, Commander. That’s your lot.”
Root risked a peek into the abyss. The chute stretched on forever, winding down to the orange magma glow at the earth’s core. This was madness. Crazy. There must be another way. At this point the commander would even be willing to risk an aboveground flight.
Then Julius Root had a vision. It could have been the sulphur fumes, stress, or even lack of food. But the commander could have sworn Mulch Diggums’s features appeared before him, etched into the rock face. The face was sucking on a cigar and smirking.
His determination returned in a surge. Bested by a criminal. Not likely.
Root clambered to his feet, drying sweaty palms on his jumpsuit. The thermals plucked at his limbs like mischievous ghosts.
“Ready to put some distance between us and this soon-to-be hole?” he shouted into the mike.
“Bet on it, Commander,” responded Holly. “Soon as we have you back in the hold, we’re out of here.”
“Okay. Stand by.”
Root fired the piton dart from his belt. The titanium head sank easily into the rock. The commander knew that tiny charges inside the dart would blow out two flanges, securing it inside the face. Five yards. Not a great distance to swing on a piton cord. But it wasn’t the swing really. It was the bone-crushing drop, and the lack of handholds on the chute wall.
Come on, Julius, sniggered Root’s Mulch rock mirage. Let’s see what you look like splattered against a wall.
“You shut your mouth, convict,” roared the commander. And he jumped, swinging into the void.
The rock face rushed out to meet him, knocking the breath from his lungs. Root ground his back teeth against the pain. He hoped nothing was broken, because after the Russian trip, he didn’t even have enough magic left to make a daisy bloom, never mind heal a fractured rib.
The shuttle’s forward lights picked out the laser burns where the LEP tunnel dwarfs had sealed the supply chute. That weld line would be the weak spot. Root slotted the concussor eggs along two indents.
“I’m coming for you, Diggums,” he muttered, crushing the capsule detonators embedded in each one.
Thirty seconds now. Root cut the piton loose, aiming a second dart at the shuttle wing. An easy shot—he made this kind of thing in his sleep in the sim-range. Unfortunately, the simulations didn’t have thermals fouling things up at the last moment.
Just a
s the commander loosed his dart, the edge of a particularly strong whirlpool of gas caught the shuttle’s rear, spinning it forty degrees counterclockwise. The dart missed by a yard. It spun into the abyss, trailing the commander’s lifeline behind it. Root had two options. He could rewind the cord using his belt winch, or he could jettison the piton and try again with his spare. Julius unhooked the cord; it would be faster to try again. A good plan, had he not already used his spare to get them out from under the ice. The commander remembered this half a second after he’d cut loose his only piton.
“D’Arvit!” he swore, patting his belt for a dart that he knew would not be there.
“Trouble, Commander?” asked Holly, her voice strained from wrestling with the controls.
“No pitons left, and the charges are set.”
There followed a brief silence. Very brief. No time for lengthy consultations. Root glanced at his moonomenter. Twenty-five seconds and counting.
When Holly’s voice came over the headset, it was not bursting with enthusiasm or confidence.
“Eh . . . Commander. You wearing any metal?”
“Yes,” replied Root puzzled. “My breastplate, buckle, insignia, blaster. Why?”
Holly nudged the shuttle a shade closer. Any nearer was suicide.
“Put it like this. How fond are you of your ribs?”
“Why?”
“I think I know how to get you out of there.”
“How?”
“I could tell you, but you’re not going to like it.”
“Tell me, Captain. That’s a direct order.”
Holly told him. He didn’t like it.
* * *
Los Angeles
Dwarf gas—not the most tasteful of subjects. Even dwarfs don’t like to talk about it. Many a dwarf wife was known to scold her husband for venting gas at home and not leaving it in the tunnels. The fact is that, genetically, dwarfs are prone to gas attacks, especially if they’ve been eating clay in the mine. A dwarf can take in several pounds of dirt a second through his unhinged jaws. That’s a lot of clay, with a lot of air in it. All this waste has to go somewhere. So it goes south. To put it politely, the tunnels are self-sealing. Mulch hadn’t eaten clay in months, but he still had a few bubbles of gas at his disposal when he needed them.
The dogs were poised to attack. Slobber hung in ribbons from their gaping jaws. He would be torn to pieces. Mulch concentrated. The familiar bubbling began in his stomach, pulling it out of shape. It felt as though there were a couple of gnome garbage wrestlers going for a couple of rounds in there. The dwarf gritted his teeth, this was going to be a big one.
The handler blew a football whistle. The dogs lunged forward like torpedoes with teeth. Mulch let go with a stream of gas, blowing a hole in the rug and propelling himself to the ceiling, where his thirsty pores anchored him. Safe. For the moment.
The German shepherds were particularly surprised. In their time they had chewed their way through most creatures in the food chain. This was something new. And not altogether pleasant. You have to remember that a dog’s nose is far more sensitive than a human one.
The handler blew his whistle a few more times, but any control he might have had disappeared the moment Mulch flew through the air on a jet of recycled wind. As soon as the dogs’ nasal passages cleared, they began to leap, teeth gnashing at the apex. Mulch swallowed. Dogs are smarter than the average goblin. It was only a matter of time before they thought to scale the furniture and make a jump from there.
Mulch made for the window, but the handler was there before him, blocking the hole with his padded body. Mulch noticed him fumbling with a weapon at his belt. This was getting serious. Dwarfs are many things, but bulletproof is not one of them.
To make matters worse, Maggie V appeared at the bedroom door, brandishing a chrome baseball bat. This was not the Maggie V the public was used to. Her face was covered with a green-clay mask, and there appeared to be a tea bag taped under each eye.
“Now we have you, Mister Grouch,” she gloated. “And suction pads aren’t going to save you.”
Mulch realized that his career as the Grouch was over. Whether he escaped or not, the LAPD would be visiting every dwarf in the city come sunrise.
Mulch only had one card left to play. The gift of tongues. Every fairy has a natural grasp of languages, since all tongues are based on Gnommish if you trace them back far enough. Including American Dog.
“Arf,” grunted Mulch. “Arf, rrruff rruff.”
The dogs froze. One attempted to freeze in midleap, landing on his partner. They chewed each other’s tails for a moment, then remembered that there was a creature on the ceiling barking at them. His accent was terrible, something Central European. But it was Dog nevertheless.
“Aroof?” inquired dog number one.
Mulch pointed at the handler.
“Woof arfy arrooof! That human has a big bone inside his shirt,” he grunted. (Obviously, that’s a translation.)
The German shepherds pounced on their handler; Mulch scampered through the hole in the window; and Maggie V howled so much that her mask cracked and her tea bags fell off. And even though the Grouch knew that this particular chapter in his career was closed, the weight of Maggie V’s Academy Award inside his shirt gave him no little satisfaction.
Chute E37
Twenty seconds left before the concussors blew, and the commander was still flattened against the chute wall. They had no wing sets, and no time to get a set outside even if they had. If they couldn’t pull Root out of there right now, then he’d be blown off the wall and into the abyss. And magic didn’t work on melted slop. There was only one option. Holly would have to use the gripper clamps.
All shuttles are equipped with secondary landing gear. If the docking nodes fail, then four magnetic gripper clamps could be blasted from recessed grooves. These clamps will latch onto the metal underside of the landing-bay dock, reeling the shuttle into the airlock. The grippers also came in handy in unfamiliar environments, where the magnets would seek out trace elements and latch on like sucker slugs.
“Okay, Julius,” said Holly. “Don’t move a muscle.”
Root paled. Julius. Holly had called him Julius. That was not good.
Ten seconds.
Holly flicked down a small view screen.
“Release forward-port docking clamp.”
A grating hum signaled the clamp’s release.
The commander’s image appeared in the view screen. Even from here he looked worried. Holly centered a crosshairs on his chest.
“Captain Short. Are you absolutely sure about this?”
Holly ignored her superior. “Range fifteen yards. Magnets only.”
“Holly, maybe I could jump. I could make it. I’m sure I could make it.”
Five seconds . . .
“Fire port clamp.”
Six tiny charges ignited around the clamp’s base, sending the metal disk rocketing from its socket, trailed by a length of retractable polymer cable.
Root opened his mouth to swear, but the clamp crashed into his chest, driving every gasp of air from his body. Several somethings cracked.
“Reel it in,” spat Holly into the computer mike, simultaneously peeling across the chute. The commander was dragged behind like an extreme surfer.
Zero seconds. The concussors blew, sending four tons of rubble careering into the void. A drop in an ocean of magma.
A minute later the commander was strapped on a gurney in the Atlantean Ambassador’s sick bay. It hurt to breathe, but that wasn’t going to stop him talking.
“Captain Short!” he rasped. “What the hell were you thinking? I could have been killed.”
Butler ripped open Root’s tunic to survey the damage.
“You could have been. Five more seconds and you were pulp. It’s thanks to Holly that you are still alive.”
Holly grabbed a medi-pac from the first-aid box. She crumpled it between her fingers to activate the crystals. Another of Foaly’s inve
ntions. Ice packs infused with healing crystals. No substitute for magic, but better than a hug and a kiss.
“Where does it hurt?”
Root coughed, blood splattering his uniform. “The general bodily area. Couple ribs gone.”
Holly chewed her lip. She was no doctor, and healing was by no means an automatic business. Things could go wrong. Holly knew a vice captain once who had broken a leg and passed out. He woke up with one foot pointing backward. Not that Holly hadn’t performed some tricky operations before. When Artemis had wanted his mother’s depression cured, she had been in a different time zone. Holly had sent out a strong positive signal, with enough sparks in it to hang around for a few days. A sort of general pick-me-up. Anyone who even visited Fowl Manor for the following week should have gone away whistling.
“Holly,” groaned Root.
“Okay,” she stammered. “Okay.”
She laid her hands on Root’s chest, sending the magic scurrying down her fingers.
“Heal,” she breathed.
The commander’s eyes rolled back in his head. The magic was shutting him down for recuperation. Holly laid a medi-pac on the unconscious LEP officer’s chest.
“Hold that,” she instructed Artemis. “Ten minutes only. Otherwise there’ll be tissue damage.”
Artemis applied pressure to the pack. His fingers were quickly submerged in a pool of blood. Suddenly the desire to pass a smart remark utterly deserted him. First physical exercise, then actual bodily harm. And now this. These past few days were turning out to be quite educational. He’d almost prefer to be back in Saint Bartleby’s.
Holly returned quickly to the cockpit, panning the external cameras toward the supply tunnel. Butler squeezed into the copilot’s chair.
“Well,” he asked. “What’ve we got?”
Holly grinned. And for a second her expression reminded the manservant of Artemis Fowl.
“We’ve got a big hole.”
“Good. Then let’s go visit an old friend.”