The Arctic Incident

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.”