The Arctic Incident

Any B’wa Kell goblins attempting to storm the Koboi building would have been met with DNA-coded stun cannons, which scanned an intruder before blasting him. There were no blindspots in the building, no place to hide. The system was foolproof.

But the goblins didn’t have to worry about that. The laboratories’ defenses were actually to keep out any LEP officers who might come snooping at the wrong moment. It was Opal Koboi herself who was funding the goblin triad. The attacks on Koboi were actually a smokescreen to divert suspicions from her actions. The tiny pixie was the mastermind behind the battery operation and the increased B’wa Kell activity. Well, one of the masterminds. But why would an individual of almost limitless wealth possibly wish to associate with a goblin tunnel gang?

Since the day of her birth, nothing much had ever been expected of Opal Koboi. Born to a family of old-money pixies on Principality Hill, she would have made her parents quite content had she attended private school, completed some wishy-washy arts degree, and married a suitable vice president.

In fact, her father, Ferall Koboi’s, dream daughter would have been moderately intelligent, quite pretty, and of course, complacent.

But Opal did not display the personality traits Ferall would have wished for. By the age of ten months she was already walking unaided; by a year and a half she had a vocabulary of more than five hundred words. Before her second birthday she had dismantled her first hard drive.

Opal grew to be precocious, headstrong, and beautiful—a dangerous combination. Ferall lost count of the times he had sat his daughter down, advising her to leave business to the male pixies. Eventually, Opal refused to see him at all. Her blatant hostility was worrying.

Ferall was right to be worried. Opal’s first action in college was to ditch her history of art degree in favor of the male-dominated Brotherhood of Master Engineer. No sooner was the scroll in her hand than Opal set up shop in direct opposition to her father. Patents quickly followed. An engine muffler that doubled as an energy streamliner, a 3-D entertainment system, and of course her specialty, the DoubleDex wing series.

Once Opal had destroyed her father’s business, she proceeded to buy the shares at rockbottom prices, and then incorporate her businesses under the banner of Koboi Laboratories. Within five years, Koboi Laboratories held more defense contracts than any other company. Within ten years, Opal Koboi had personally registered more patents than any fairy alive, except for the centaur Foaly.

But it wasn’t enough. Opal Koboi yearned for the kind of power that hadn’t been held by any single fairy since the days of the monarchy. Luckily, she knew someone who might be able to assist her with that particular ambition. A disillusioned officer in the LEP, and a classmate from her college days. A certain Briar Cudgeon.

Briar had good reason to despise the LEP. After all, they had allowed his public humiliation at the hands of Julius Root to go unpunished. Not only that, but he had been stripped of his commander’s acorns after his disastrous involvement in the Artemis Fowl affair. It had been a simple matter for Opal to slip a truth pill into Cudgeon’s drink in one of Haven’s swankier eateries. To her glee, she found that the delightfully twisted Cudgeon was already formulating a plan to topple the LEP. Quite an ingenious plan, as it happened. All he needed was a partner. One with large reserves of gold and a secure facility at her disposal. Opal was happy to supply both.

Opal was curled catlike in her hoverchair, eavesdropping on Police Plaza, when Cudgeon entered the facility.

“Well?” demanded Cudgeon with customary bluntness.

Koboi didn’t bother to turn around. It had to be Briar. Only he had the necessary access chip to the inner sanctum implanted in his knuckle.

“We lost the last shipment of power cells. A routine LEP stakeout. Bad luck.”

“D’Arvit!” swore Cudgeon. “Still, no matter. We have enough stored. And to the LEP, they are simply batteries, after all.”

Opal took a breath. “The goblins were armed . . .”

“Don’t tell me.”

“With softnoses.”

Cudgeon pounded a worktop. “Those idiots! I warned them not to use those weapons. Now Julius will know something is afoot.”

“He may know,” said Opal placatingly. “But he is powerless to stop us. By the time they figure it out, it will already be too late.”

Cudgeon did not smile. He hadn’t in over a year. Instead, his scowl grew more pronounced.

“Good. My time is at hand.”

Opal Koboi had installed mole cameras in the LEP network when her engineers were upgrading their system. The units operated on precisely the same frequency as Police Plaza’s own surveillance cameras, plus they drew power from the heat leaking from the LEP’s fiber optics. Completely undetectable.

“Perhaps we should have simply manufactured the batteries ourselves,” mused Cudgeon.

“No. Just to build a factory would have set us back two years, and there’s no guarantee that Foaly wouldn’t have discovered it. We had no choice.”

Koboi swiveled to face her partner.