The Arctic Incident

Holly relented. It wasn’t easy growing up without a father. She knew. Her own father had passed away when she was barely sixty. More than twenty years ago now.

“Okay, Mud Boy, listen up. I’m only saying this once.”

Artemis sat up. Butler’s head appeared in the cockpit. He could smell a war story.

“Over the past two centuries, with the advances in human technology, the LEP have been forced to shut down over sixty terminals. We pulled out of northern Russia in the sixties. The entire Kola peninsula is a nuclear disaster. The People have no tolerance for radiation, we never built up a resistance. In truth, there wasn’t much to close down. Just a grade-three terminal and a couple of cloaking projectors. The People aren’t very fond of the Arctic. A bit frosty. Everybody was glad to be leaving. So, to answer your question: there’s one unmanned terminal, with little or no aboveground facilities, located about twenty klicks north of Murmansk.”

Foaly’s voice blurted from the intercom, interrupting what was dangerously close to a civil conversation.

“Okay, Captain. You’ve got a clear run to the subway. There’s still a bit of waffle from the last flare, so go easy on the thrusters.”

Holly pulled down her mouth mike. “Roger that, Foaly. Have the rad suits ready when I get back. We’re on a tight schedule.”

Foaly chuckled. “Take it easy on the thrusters, Holly. Technically, this is Artemis’s first time in the chutes, seeing as he and Butler were mesmerized on the way down. We wouldn’t want him getting a fright.”

Holly gunned the throttle quite a bit more than was absolutely necessary.

“No,” she growled, “we wouldn’t want him getting a fright.”

Artemis decided to strap on his restraining harness. A good idea, as it turned out.

Captain Short gunned the makeshift shuttle down the magnetized approach rail. The fins shook, sending twin waves of sparks cascading past the portholes. Holly adjusted the internal gyroscopes, otherwise there’d be Mud Men vomiting all over the passenger area.

Holly’s thumbs hovered over the turbo buttons.

“Okay. Well, let’s see what this bucket can do.”

“Don’t go trying for any records, Holly,” said Foaly over the speakers. “That ship is not built for speed. I’ve seen more aerodynamic dwarfs.”

Holly grunted. After all, what was the point in flying slowly? None whatsoever. And if you happened to terrify a few Mud Men along the way, well that was just an added bonus.

The service tunnel opened onto the main chute. Artemis gasped. It was an awe-inspiring sight. You could drop Mount Everest down this chute, and it wouldn’t even hit the sides. A deep red glow pulsed from the earth’s core like the fires of hell, and the constant crack of contracting rock smacked the hull like physical blows.

Holly fired up all four flight engines, tumbling the shuttle into the abyss. Her worries evaporated like the eddies of mist swirling around the cockpit. It was a flyboy thing. The lower you went without pulling out of the dive, the tougher you were. Even the fiery demise of Retrieval Officer Bom Arbles couldn’t stop the LEP pilots from core diving. Holly held the current record. Five hundred yards before dipping the flaps. That had cost her two weeks’ suspension plus a hefty fine.

Not today though. No records in a slammer. With the G-force rippling the skin on her cheeks, Holly dragged the joysticks back, pulling the nose out of vertical. It gave her no small satisfaction to hear both humans sigh with relief.

“Okay, Foaly, we’re on the up ’n’ up. What’s the situation aboveground?”

She could hear Foaly tapping a keyboard.

“Sorry, Holly. I can’t get a lock on any of our surface equipment. Too much radiation from the last flare. You’re on your own.”

Holly eyed the two pale humans in the cockpit. On my own, she thought. I wish.





Paris


So, if Artemis wasn’t helping Cudgeon in his quest to arm the B’wa Kell, who was? Some tyrannical dictator? Perhaps a disgruntled general with access to an unlimited supply of power cells? Well, no. Not exactly.

Luc Carrère was the human responsible for selling batteries to the B’wa Kell. Not that you’d know it to look at him. In fact, he didn’t even know it himself. Luc was a small-time French private eye who was well known for his inefficiency. In P.I. circles, it was said that Luc couldn’t trace a golf ball in a barrel of mozzarella.

Cudgeon had decided to use Luc for three reasons. One, Foaly’s files showed that Carrère had a reputation as a wheeler-dealer. In spite of his ineptness as an investigator, Luc had a knack for laying his hand on whatever it was the client wanted to buy. Two, the man was greedy and had never been able to resist the lure of easy money. And three, Luc was stupid. And as every little fairy knows, weak minds are easier to mesmerize.