The Last Guardian

The LEP were coping the best they could, working in most cases with limited equipment. The main problem was coordination. The net of cameras and wireless hubs suspended on gossamer wire from the cavern ceiling had been upgraded three years previously with lenses from Koboi Labs. The entire network had caught fire and rained down on the citizens of Haven, branding many of them with a lattice of scars. This meant that the LEP were operating without intelligence, and relying on old radios for audio communication. Some of the younger police officers had never been in the field without full support from their precious helmets and were feeling a little exposed without constant updates of information from Police Plaza.

 

Fifty percent of the force was currently committed to fighting a huge fire at Koboi Labs, which had been taken over by the Krom automobile company. The explosion and subsequent fire had collapsed a large section of the underground cavern, and a pressure leak was barely being contained by plasti-gel cannons. The LEP had bulldozed through the rubble and bolstered the roof with pneumatic columns, but the fire was still liquefying the metal struts, and several types of toxic gas were jetting from cylinders around the compound.

 

Another ten percent of the officers were rounding up escaped prisoners from Howler’s Peak, which had, until its containment field flickered out, housed most of the criminal goblin kingpins behind Haven’s organized crime syndicates, as well as their enforcers and racketeers. These goblins were now scurrying around the backstreets of goblin town with their subcutaneous sleeper tags not responding to the frantic signals being repeatedly sent from headquarters. A few more-recently tagged goblins were unfortunate enough to have second-generation tags, which exploded inside their scalps, blowing holes in their skulls small enough to plug with a penny but large enough to be fatal to the cold-blooded creatures.

 

More of the officers were up to their eyeballs in the miscellaneous rescues, crowd control, and pursuit of opportunistic felons that went with a catastrophe of this magnitude.

 

And the rest of the LEP fairies had been put out of action by the explosion of the free cell phones they had recently won in a competition that they couldn’t remember entering—sent, no doubt, by Opal’s minions. In this manner, the evil pixie had managed to take out most of the Council, effectively crippling the People’s government in this time of emergency.

 

Foaly and his brainiacs were left in Police Plaza, trying to somehow revive a network that had literally been fried. Commander Kelp had barely paused on his way out the door to issue instructions to the centaur.

 

“Just get the tech working,” he said, strapping on a fourth holster. “Quick as you can.”

 

“You don’t understand!” Foaly objected.

 

Trouble cut him off with a chop of his hand through the air. “I never understand. That’s why we pay you and your dork posse.”

 

Foaly objected again. “They are not dorks!”

 

Trouble found space for yet another holster. “Really? That guy brings a Beanie Baby to work every day. And your nephew, Mayne, speaks fluent Unicorn.”

 

“They’re not all dorks,” said Foaly, correcting himself.

 

“Just get this city working again,” said Trouble. “Lives depend on it.”

 

Foaly blocked the commander’s way. “You do understand that the old network is vaporized? Are you giving me free rein, to coin an offensive phrase, to do whatever I need to do?”

 

Trouble brushed him aside. “Do whatever you need to do.”

 

Foaly almost grinned.

 

Whatever I need to do.

 

Foaly knew that the secret of a successful product launch was often in the name. A catchy name is more likely to pique investors’ curiosity and help the new invention take off, whereas some plodding series of letters and numbers will put everyone to sleep and ensure the product crashes and burns.

 

The lab name for Foaly’s latest pet project was Aerial Radiation-Coded Light-Sensitive Surveillance Pterygota 2.0, which the centaur knew had far too many syllables for potential investors. Rich people liked to feel cool, and embarrassing themselves by mispronouncing that mouthful was never going to help them to achieve that; so Foaly nicknamed the little guys ARClights.

 

The ARClights were the latest in a series of experimental bio-mech organisms that Foaly was convinced were the future of technology. The centaur had met considerable resistance from the Council on ethical grounds because he was marrying technology to living beings, even though he argued that most of the LEP officers now had little chips implanted in their cerebellums to help them control their helmets. The Council’s counter-argument was that the officers could choose whether or not to have the implants, whereas Foaly’s little experiments were grown that way.

 

And so, Foaly had not been given the go-ahead for public trials. Which is not to say that he hadn’t conducted any. He just hadn’t released his precious ARClights in public, not in the fairy public, at any rate. On the Fowl Estate—now, that was another matter.

 

The entire ARClight project was contained in a single battered field kit case hidden in plain view on top of a locker in the lab. Foaly reared up on his hind legs to snag the case and plonked it down on his workstation.

 

His nephew, Mayne, clopped up behind him to see what was going on.

 

“Dung navarr, Oncle?” he said.

 

“No unicorn-speak today, Mayne,” said Foaly, settling into his modified office harness. “I don’t have time.”