“What are you looking for?” asked Root.
“I don’t know, Commander. Something. Anything.”
It took a few minutes, but finally Holly got it. She knew immediately that she was right. Her intuition was buzzing like a swarm of bees at the base of her neck. “Look here,” she said, enlarging Boohn’s brow. “A scale blister. This goblin is shedding.”
“So?” said Foaly grumpily.
Holly reopened Boohn’s exit file. “Now look. No blister.”
“So he burst the blister. Big deal.”
“No. It’s more than that. Going in, Boohn’s skin was almost gray. Now he’s bright green. He even has a camouflage pattern on his back.”
Foaly snorted. “A lot of good camouflage is in the city.”
“What’s your point, Captain?” asked Root, stubbing out his cigar.
“Boohn shed his skin in the visitors’ room. So where’s the skin?”
There was silence for a long moment as the others absorbed the implications of this question.
“Would it work?” asked Root urgently.
Foaly was almost dumbstruck. “By the gods, I think it would.”
The centaur pulled out a keyboard, his thick fingers flying across the Gnommish letters. A new video box appeared on the screen. In this box, another goblin was leaving the room. It looked a lot like Boohn. A lot, but not exactly. Something wasn’t quite right. Foaly zoomed in on the goblin’s head. At high magnification it was clear that the goblin’s skin was ill-fitting. Patches were missing altogether, and the goblin seemed to be holding folds together across his waist.
“He did it. I can’t believe it.”
“This was all planned,” said Holly. “This was no opportunistic act. Boohn waits until he’s shedding. Then he visits his uncle and they peel off his skin. General Scalene puts on the skin and just walks out the front door, fooling all your scanners on the way. When Boohn’s name shows up again, you think it’s a glitch. Simple, but completely ingenious.”
Foaly collapsed into a specially designed office chair. “This is incredible. Can goblins do that?”
“Are you kidding?” said Root. “A good goblin seamstress can peel a skin without a single tear. That’s what they make their clothes from, when they bother wearing any.”
“I know that. I meant, could goblins think of this all on their own. I don’t think so. We need to catch Scalene and find out who planned this.”
Foaly dialed a connection to the Koboi-cam in the Argon clinic. “I’m going to check that Opal Koboi is still under. This sort of thing is just her style.” A minute later, he swiveled to face Root. “Nope. Still in dreamland. I don’t know if that’s good or bad. I’d hate to have Opal back in circulation, but at least we’d know what we were up against.”
A thought struck Holly, draining the blood from her face. “You don’t think it could be him, do you? It couldn’t be Artemis Fowl?”
“Definitely not,” said Foaly. “It’s not the Mud Boy. Impossible.”
Root wasn’t convinced. “I wouldn’t be throwing that word around so much, if I were you. Holly, as soon as we catch Scalene, I want you to sign out a surveillance pack and spend a couple of days on the Mud Boy’s trail. See what he’s up to. Just in case.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you, Foaly. I’m authorizing a surveillance upgrade. Whatever you need. I want to hear every call Artemis makes, and read every letter he sends.”
“But, Julius. I supervised his mind wipe myself. It was a sweet job. I scooped out his fairy memories cleaner than a goblin sucking a snail out of its shell. If we were to turn up at Artemis’s front door dancing the cancan, he still wouldn’t remember us. It would take some kind of planted trigger to initiate even partial recall.”
Root did not appreciate being argued with. “One, don’t call me Julius. Two, do what I say, horsey boy, or I’ll have your budget slashed. And three, what in Frond’s name is the cancan?”
Foaly rolled his eyes. “Forget it. I’ll organize the upgrades.”
“Wise move,” said Root, plucking a vibrating phone from his belt. He listened for several seconds, grunting affirmatives into the speaker.
“Forget Fowl for the moment,” he said, closing the phone. “Trouble has located General Scalene. He’s in E37. Holly, you’re with me. Foaly, you follow us in the tech shuttle. Apparently the general wants to talk.”
Haven City was waking up for morning trade. Although to call it morning was a bit misleading, as there was only artificial light this far underground. By human standards, Haven was barely more than a village, having fewer than ten thousand inhabitants. But in fairy terms, Haven was the largest metropolis since the original Atlantis, most of which lay buried beneath a three-story shuttle dock in the new Atlantis.
Commander Root’s LEP cruiser cut through the rush-hour traffic, its magnetic field automatically shunting other vehicles out of the way into slots in the slow lane. Root and Holly sat in the back, wishing the journey away. This situation was becoming stranger by the minute. First of all, Scalene escapes, and now his locater shows up and he wants to talk to Commander Root.
“What do you make of this?” asked Root eventually. One of the reasons he made such a fine commander was that he respected his officers’ opinions.
“I don’t know. It could be a trap. Whatever happens, you can’t go in there alone.”
Root nodded. “I know. Even I am not that stubborn. Anyway, Trouble will probably have the situation secured by the time I get there. He doesn’t like waiting around for the brass to arrive. Like someone else I know, eh, Holly?”
Holly half grinned, half grimaced. She had been reprimanded more than once for ignoring the order to wait for reinforcements.
Root raised the soundproof barrier between them and the driver.
“We need to talk, Holly. About the major thing.”
Holly looked her superior in the eyes. There was a touch of sadness in them.
“I didn’t get it,” she blurted, unable to hide her relief.
“No. No, you did get it. Or you will. The official announcement is tomorrow. The first female major in Recon history. Quite an achievement.”
“But, Commander, I don’t think that . . .”
Root silenced her with a wave of his finger. “I want to tell you something, Holly. About my career. It’s actually a metaphor for your career, so listen carefully and see if you can figure it out. Many years ago, when you were still wearing one-piece baby suits with padded backsides, I was a hotshot Recon jock. I loved the smell of fresh air. Every moment I spent in the moonlight was a golden moment.”
Holly had no trouble putting herself in the commander’s shoes. She felt exactly the same way about her own surface trips.
“So I did my job as well as I could—a little bit too well, as it happened. One day I went and got myself promoted.”
Root clamped a purifier globe around the end of a cigar so the smell would not stink up the car. It was a rare gesture.
“Major Julius Root. It was the last thing I wanted, so I marched in to my commander’s office and told him so. ‘I’m a field fairy,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to sit behind a desk filling out e-forms.’ Believe it or not, I got quite agitated.”
Holly tried to look amazed, but couldn’t pull it off. The commander spent most of his time in an agitated red-faced state, which explained his nickname, Beetroot.
“But my commander said something that changed my mind. Do you want to know what that was?”
Root plowed on with his story without waiting for an answer. “My commander said; ‘Julius, this promotion is not for you;it’s for the People.’” Root raised one eyebrow. “Do you see what I’m getting at?”
Holly knew what he meant. It was the flaw in her argument.
Root placed a hand on her shoulder. “The People need good officers, Holly. They need fairies like you to protect them from the Mud Men. Would I prefer to be zipping around under the stars with the wind in my nostrils? Yes. W
ould I do as much good? No.”
Root paused to suck deeply on his cigar, the glow illuminated the purifier globe. “You’re a good Recon officer, Holly. One of the best I’ve seen. A bit impulsive at times, not much respect for authority, but an intuitive officer, nonetheless. I wouldn’t dream of taking you off the front lines if I didn’t think you could serve the LEP better belowground. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Commander,” said Holly glumly. He was right, even if her selfish side wasn’t ready to accept it just yet. At least she had the Fowl surveillance to look forward to before her new job anchored her in the lower elements.
“There is a perk to being a major,” said Root.
“Sometimes, just to relieve the boredom, you can give yourself an assignment. Something on the surface. In Hawaii, maybe, or New Zealand. Look at Trouble Kelp. He’s a new breed of major, more hands-on. Maybe that’s what the LEP needs.”
Holly knew that the commander was trying to soften the blow. As soon as the major’s acorns were on her lapel, she wouldn’t get aboveground as much as she did now. If she was lucky.
“I’m putting my neck on the block here, Holly, recommending you for major. Your career so far has been, eventful, to say the least. If you intend to turn the promotion down, tell me now and I’ll withdraw your name.”
Last chance, thought Holly. Now or never.
“No,” she said. “I won’t turn it down. How could I? Who knows when the next Artemis Fowl will turn up?”
In Holly’s ears, her voice sounded distant, as though someone else were speaking. She imagined the bells of lifelong boredom clanging behind her every word. A desk job. She had a desk job.
Root patted her on the shoulder, his huge hand knocking the air from her lungs. “Cheer up, Captain. There is life belowground, you know.”
“I know,” Holly said with an utter lack of conviction.
The police cruiser pulled in beside E37. Root opened the car door, began to disembark, then stopped.
“If it makes any difference,” he said quietly, almost awkwardly, “I’m proud of you, Holly.” And he was gone, out the door and into the throng of LEP officers training their weapons on the chute entrance.
It does make a difference, thought Holly, watching the commander instantly take command of the situation. A big difference.
The chutes were natural magma vents that stretched from the earth’s core to the planet’s surface. Most emerged under water, supplying warm streams that nurtured deep-sea life, but some filtered their gasses through the network of cracks and fissures that riddled the dry land surface. The LEP used the power of magma flares to propel their officers to the surface in titanium eggs. A more leisurely shuttle trip could be taken in a dormant chute. E37 emerged in downtown Paris, and until recently, had been the chute used by goblins in their smuggling operations. Closed to the public for many years, the chute’s terminal had fallen into disrepair. Currently, E37’s only occupants were the members of a movie company that was making a TV film about the B’wa Kell rebellion. Holly was being portrayed by three-time AMP winner, Skylar Peat, and Artemis Fowl was to be completely computer generated.
When Holly and Root arrived, Major Trouble Kelp had three squads of tactical LEP arranged around the terminal’s entrance.
“Fill me in, Major,” ordered Root.
Kelp pointed to the entrance. “We have one way in, and no way out. All the secondary entrances have long since subsided, so if Scalene is in there, he has to go through us to go home.”
“Are we sure he’s there?”
“No,” admitted Major Kelp. “We picked up his signal. But whoever helped him to escape could have sliced open his head and removed the transmitter. All we know for sure is that someone is playing games with us. I sent in a couple of my best Recon sprites and they came back with this.” Trouble handed them a sound wafer. The wafers were the size of a thumbnail and were generally used to record short birthday greetings. This one was in the shape of a birthday cake. Root closed his fingers around the wafer. The heat from his hand would power its microcircuits.
A sibilant voice issued from the tiny speaker, made even more reptilian by the cheap wiring.
“Root,” said the voice. “I would speak to you. I would tell you a great secret. Bring the female, Holly Short. Two only, no more. Any more, and many will die. My comrades will see to it . . .” The message ended with a traditional birthday jingle, its cheeriness at odds with the message.
Root scowled. “Goblins. Drama queens, the lot of them.”
“It’s a trap, Commander,” said Holly without hesitation.
“We were the ones at Koboi Labs a year ago. The goblins hold us responsible for the rebellion’s failure. If we go in there, who knows what’s waiting for us.”
Root nodded approvingly. “Now you’re thinking like a major. We’re not expendable. So what are our options, Trouble?”
“If you don’t go in, many will die. If you do, you might.”
“Not a nice set of options. Don’t you have anything good to tell me?”
Trouble lowered his helmet’s visor, consulting a mini-screen on the Perspex. “We managed to get the terminal’s security scanners back online and ran substance and thermal scans. We found a single heat source in the access tunnel, so Scalene is alone, if it’s him. Whatever he’s doing in there, he doesn’t have any known form of weaponry or explosives. Just a few beetle bars and some good old H2O.”
“Any magma flares due?” asked Holly.
Trouble ran his index finger along a pad on his left glove, scrolling down the screen on his visor. “Nothing for a couple of months. That chute is intermittent. So Scalene is not planning to bake you.”
Root’s cheeks glowed like two heating coils. “D’Arvit,” he swore. “I thought our goblin troubles were over. I’m tempted just to send in tactical and take a chance that Scalene is bluffing.”
“That would be my advice,” said Trouble. “He doesn’t have anything in there that could harm you. Give me five fairies, and we’ll have Scalene in a wagon before he knows he’s been arrested.”
“I take it the sleeper half of the seeker-sleeper is not working?” said Holly.
Trouble shrugged. “We have to suppose it’s not. The seeker-sleeper didn’t function until now, and when we got here the wafer was left out for us. Scalene knew we were coming. He even left a message.”
Root punched his palm with a fist. “I have to go in. There’s no immediate danger inside, and we can’t assume that Scalene hasn’t come up with a way to carry out his threat. I don’t have a choice, not really. I won’t order you to come with me, Captain Short.”
Holly felt her stomach lurch, but she swallowed the fear. The Commander was right. There was no other way. This was what being an LEP officer was all about. Protecting the People.
“You don’t have to order me, Commander. I volunteer.”
“Good. Now, Trouble, let Foaly and his shuttle through the barricade. We may have to go in, but we don’t have to go in unarmed.”
Foaly had more weaponry crammed into the back of a single shuttle than most human police forces had in their entire arsenal. Every inch of wall space had a power cable screwed into it or a rifle dangling from a hook. The centaur sat in the center, fine-tuning a Neutrino handgun. He tossed it to Holly as she entered the van.
She caught it deftly. “Hey, careful with that.”
Foaly snickered. “Don’t worry. The trigger hasn’t been coded yet. Nobody can fire this weapon until its computer registers an owner. Even if this weapon did fall into goblin hands, it would be useless to them. One of my latest developments. After the B’wa Kell rebellion, I thought it was time to upgrade our security.”
Holly wrapped her fingers around the pistol’s grip. A red scanner light ran the length of the plastic butt, then switched to green.
“That’s it. You’re the owner. From now on that Neutrino 3000 is a one-female gun.”
Holly hefted the transparent gun in her fist. “It’s too
light. I prefer the 2000.”
Foaly brought the gun’s specifications up on a wall screen. “It’s light, but you’ll get used to it. On the plus side, there are no metal parts. It’s powered by kinetics, the motion of your body, with a backup mini-nuke cell. Naturally it’s linked to a targeting system in your helmet. The casing is virtually impregnable, and if I do say so myself, it’s a cool piece of hardware.”
Foaly passed a larger version of the gun to Root. “Every shot is registered on the LEP computer, so we can tell who fired, when they fired, and in what direction. That should save internal affairs a lot of computer time.” He winked at Holly. “Something you’ll be glad to hear.”
Holly leered back at the centaur. She was well known to IA. They had already conducted two inquiries into her professional conduct, and would just love the opportunity to conduct a third. The one good thing about being promoted would be the looks on their faces when the commander pinned those major’s acorns to her lapel.
Root holstered his weapon. “Okay. Now we can shoot. But what if we get shot?”
“You won’t get shot,” insisted Foaly. “I’ve hacked into the terminal scanners, I’ve planted a couple of sensors of my own, too. There’s nothing in there that can harm you. Worst-case scenario, you trip over your own feet and get a sprained ankle.”
Root’s complexion reddened all the way down his neck. “Foaly, do I have to remind you that your sensors have been fooled before, in this very terminal, if I remember correctly.”
“Okay, okay. Take it easy, Commander,” said Foaly under his breath. “I haven’t forgotten about last year. How could I with Holly reminding me every five minutes?”
The centaur hefted two sealed suitcases onto a workbench. He keyed in a number sequence on their security pads and popped the lids. “These are the next-generation Recon suits. I was planning to unveil them at the LEP conference next month, but with a real-live commander going into action, you better have them today.”
Holly pulled a jumpsuit from the case. It glittered briefly, then turned the color of the van walls.