by Eoin Colfer
“What you think?” asked D’Nall, the handsome one, relatively speaking. “Maybe one of you guys should take a spin down there.”
Aymon snorted.“Sure thing. We go down and get sparked by the big one. Just how dumb do you think we are?”
“The big one is out of the picture. I sparked him myself. Sweet shot.”
“My shot set off the avalanche,” objected Nyle. The baby of the gang. “You’re always claimin’ my kills.”
“What kills? The only thing you ever killed was a stink worm. And that was an accident.”
“Rubbish,” sulked Nyle. “I meant to kill that worm. He was buggin’ me.”
Aymon swooped between the two. “All right. Keep your scales on the pair of you. All we gotta do is throw a few rounds into the survivors from up here.”
“Nice plan, genius,” sneered D’Nall. “Except it won’t work.”
“And why not?”
D’Nall pointed below with a manicured nail.
“Because they’re boarding that train.”
Four green carriages were winding in from the north, dragged along by an ancient diesel engine. A maelstrom of snow flurries coiled in its wake. Salvation, thought Holly. Or perhaps not. For some reason the mere sight of the clanking locomotive set her stomach bubbling with acid. Still, she was in no position to be choosy.
“It’s the Mayak Chemical train,” said Artemis.
Holly glanced over her shoulder. Artemis seemed even paler than usual.
“The what?”
“Environmentalists worldwide call it the Green Machine, something of an irony. It transports spent uranium and plutonium assemblies to the Mayak Chemical Combine for recycling. One driver locked up in the engine. No guards. Fully loaded, this thing is hotter than a nuclear submarine.”
“And you know about this because . . .”
Artemis shrugged. “I like to keep track of these things. After all, radiation is the world’s problem.”
Holly could feel it now. Uranium tendrils eating through the rad-gel on her cheeks. That train was poison. But it was her only chance of getting the commander out alive.
“This just keeps getting better and better,” Holly muttered.
The train was closer. Obviously. Motoring along at about ten klicks. No problem for Holly on her own, but with two men down and one next-to-useless Mud Boy, it was going to take quite a feat to get on board that locomotive.
Holly spared a second to check on the goblins. They were holding steady at a thousand feet. Goblins were no good at improvisation. This train was unexpected, it would take them at least a minute to work out a new strategy. The big hole in their fallen comrade might give them further pause for thought.
Holly could feel the radiation emanating from the carriages, burning through the tiniest gap in the radiation gel, prickling her eyeballs. It was only a matter of time before her magic ran out. After that, she was living on borrowed time.
No time to think about that now. Her priority was the commander. She had to get him out of here alive. If the B’wa Kell were brazen enough to mount an operation against the LEP, there was obviously something pretty big going on underground. Whatever it was, Julius Root would be needed to spearhead the counterattack. She turned toward Artemis.
“Okay, Mud Boy. We’ve got one shot at this. Grab onto whatever you can.”
Artemis couldn’t hide an apprehensive shiver.
“Don’t be afraid, Artemis. You can make it.”
Artemis bristled. “It’s cold, fairy. Humans shiver in the cold.”
“That’s the spirit,” said the LEP captain, and she began to run. The piton wire played out behind her like a harpoon cable. Though it had the approximate grade of fishing line, the cable could easily suspend two struggling elephants. Artemis raced after her as fast as his loafered feet could manage.
They ran parallel to the tracks, feet crunching through the snow. Behind them the train grew closer, pushing a buffer of air before it.
Artemis struggled to keep up. This was not for him. Running and sweating. Combat for heaven’s sake. He was no soldier. He was a planner. A mastermind. The hurlyburly of actual conflict was best left to Butler and people like him. But his manservant wasn’t here to take care of the physical tasks this time. And he never would be again, if they didn’t manage to board this train.
Artemis’s breath came short, crystallizing in front of his face, blurring his vision. The train had drawn level now, steel wheels spewing ice and sparks into the air.
“Second carriage,” panted Holly. “There’s a runner. Mind your footing.”
Runner? Artemis glanced behind. The second carriage was coming up fast. But the noise was blurring his vision. Was that possible? It was terrific. Unbearable. There, below the steel doors. A narrow board. Wide enough to stand on. Barely.
Holly alighted easily, flattening herself against the carriage wall. She made it look so effortless. A simple skip, and she was safe from those pulverizing wheels.
“Come on, Fowl,” shouted Holly. “Jump.”
Artemis tried, he really did. But the toe of his loafer snagged on a sleeper. He stumbled forward, pinwheeling for balance. A painful death came rushing up to meet him.
“Two left feet,” muttered Holly, grabbing her least favorite Mud Boy by the collar. Momentum swung Artemis forward, slamming him into the door.
The piton cord was slapping against the carriage. Only seconds left before Holly departed from the train as quickly as she’d arrived. The LEP captain searched for a strongpoint to anchor herself. Root and Butler’s weight may have been reduced, but the jerk, when it came, would be more than sufficient to drag her from the locomotive. And if that happened, it was all over.
Holly hooked one arm through an external rung, wrapping slim fingers around her wrist. She noticed magical sparks playing over a rip in her suit. They were counteracting the radiation damage. How much longer could her magic last under these conditions? Constant healing really took it out of a girl. She needed to complete the power-restoring Ritual. And the sooner the better.
Holly was about to unclip the cable and attach it to one of the rungs when it snapped taut, pulling her legs from beneath her. She held on grimly to the rung, fingernails digging into her own skin. On reflection, this plan needed a bit of work. Time seemed to stretch, elastic as the cord, and for a moment, Holly thought her elbow would pop right out of its socket. Then the ice gave, and Root and Butler were twanged out of their icy tomb like bolts from a crossbow.
They slapped against the side of the train, their reduced weight keeping them aloft, for now. But it was only a matter of time before what little gravity they had pushed them under the steel wheels.
Artemis latched on to the rung beside her.
“What can I do?”
She nodded at a shoulder pocket.
“In there. A small vial. Take it out.”
Artemis ripped open the Velcro flap, pulling out a tiny spray bottle.
“Okay. Got it.”
“Good. It’s up to you now, Fowl. Up and over.”
Artemis’s mouth dropped open. “Up and . . .”
“Yes. It’s our only hope. We have to get this door open to reel in Butler and the Commander. There’s a bend in the track two klicks back. If this train slows down even one revolution, they’re gone.”
Artemis nodded. “The vial?”
“Acid. For the lock. The mechanism is on the inside. Cover your face and squeeze. Give it the whole tube. Don’t get any on yourself.”
It was a long conversation under the circumstances. Especially since every second was a vital one. Artemis did not waste another one on good-byes.
He dragged himself to the next rung, keeping the length of his body pressed close to the carriage. The wind was whipping along the length of the train, tiny motes of ice in every gust. They stung like bees. Nevertheless Artemis pulled his gloves off with chattering teeth. Better frostbite than being crushed beneath the wheels.
Upward. One rung
at a time, until his head poked above the carriage. Every shred of shelter was now gone. The air pounded his forehead, forcing itself down his throat. Artemis squinted through the blizzard, along the carriage’s roof. There! In the center. A skylight. Across a desert of steel, blasted smooth as glass by the elements. Not a handhold within fifteen feet. The strength of a rhino would be of no use here, Artemis decided. At last an opportunity to use his brain. Kinetics and momentum. Simple enough, in theory.
Keeping to the front rim of the carriage, Artemis inched onto the roof. The wind wormed beneath his legs rising them nearly an inch from the deck, threatening to float him off the train.
Artemis curled his fingers around the rim. These were not gripping fingers. Artemis hadn’t gripped anything bigger than his cell phone in several months. If you wanted someone to type Paradise Lost in under twenty minutes, then Artemis was your man. But as for hanging onto carriage roofs in a blizzard, dead loss. Which, fortunately, was all part of the plan.
A millisecond before his finger joints parted company, Artemis let go. The slipstream shot him straight into the skylight’s metal housing.
Perfect, he would have grunted had there been a cubic centimeter of air in his lungs. But even if he had said it, the wind would have snatched away any words before his own ears heard them. He had moments now before the wind dug its fingers beneath his torso flipping him onto the icy steppe. Cannon fodder for the goblins.
Artemis fumbled the acid vial from his pocket, snapping the top between his teeth. A fleck of the acid flew past his eye. No time to worry about that now. No time for anything.
The skylight was secured by a thick padlock. Artemis dribbled two drops into the keyhole. All he could spare. It would have to be enough.
The effect was immediate. The acid ate through the metal like lava through ice. Fairy technology. Best under the world.
The padlock pinged open, exposing the hatch to the wind’s power. The hatch flipped upward, and Artemis tumbled through onto a pallet of barrels. Not exactly the picture of a gallant rescuer.
The train’s motion shook him from the barrels. Artemis landed face up, gazing at the triple-triangle symbol for radiation stamped on the side of each container. At least the barrels were sealed, though rust seemed to have taken hold on quite a few.
Artemis rolled across the slatted floor, clambering to his knees alongside the door. Was Captain Short still anchored there, or was he alone now? For the first time in his life. Truly alone.
“Fowl! Open the door, you pasty-faced mud weasel!”
Ah well. Not alone, then.
Covering his face with a forearm, Artemis drenched the carriage’s triple bolt with fairy acid. The steel lock melted instantly, dripping to the floor like a stream of mercury. Artemis dragged the sliding door back.
Holly was hanging on grimly, her face steaming where radiation was eating through the gel. Artemis grabbed her waistband.
“On three?”
Holly nodded. No more energy for speech.
Artemis flexed his digits. Fingers, don’t fail me now. If he ever got out of this, he would buy one of those ridiculous home gymnasiums advertised on the shopping channels.
“One.”
The bend was coming. He could see it out of the corner of his eye. The train would slow down or derail itself.
“Two.”
Captain Short’s strength was almost spent. The wind rippled her frame like a wind sock.
“Three!”
Artemis pulled with all the strength in his thin arms. Holly closed her eyes and let go, unable to believe she was trusting her life to this Mud Boy.
Artemis knew a little something about physics. He timed his count to take advantage of swing, momentum, and the train’s own forward motion. But nature always throws something into the mix that can’t be anticipated.
In this case the something was a slight gap between two sections of the track. Not enough to derail a locomotive, but certainly enough to cause a bump.
This bump sent the carriage door crashing into its frame like a five-ton guillotine. But it looked as if Holly had made it. Artemis couldn’t really tell because she had crashed into him, sending them both careering into the wooden siding. But she seemed to be intact, from what he could see. At least her head was still attached to her neck, which was good. But she did seem to be unconscious. Probably trauma.
Meanwhile, Commander Root had just activated his piton-cord winch when he received a most unexpected poke in the eye.
Artemis knew that he was going to pass out too. He could tell by the darkness eating at the corners of his vision.
He slipped sideways, landing on Holly’s chest. This had more severe repercussions than you might think. Because Holly was also unconscious, her magic was on autopilot. And unsupervised magic flows like electricity. Artemis’s face made contact with the fairy’s left hand, diverting the flow of blue sparks. And while this was good for him, it was most definitely bad for her. Because although Artemis didn’t know it, Holly needed every spark of magic she could muster. Not all of her had made it inside the train.
The goblin D’Nall removed a small rectangular mirror from his tunic, and checked to see that his scales were smooth.
“These Koboi wings are great. You think we’ll be allowed keep ’em?”
Aymon scowled. Not that you’d notice. Goblin lizard ancestry meant that facial movement was pretty limited. “Quiet, you hot-blooded fool!”
Hot-blooded. That was a pretty serious insult for one of the B’wa Kell.
D’Nall bristled. “Be careful, friend, or I’ll tear that forked tongue right out of your head.”
“We won’t have a tongue between us if those elves escape!” retorted Aymon.
It was true. The generals did not take disappointment well.
“So what do we do? I got the looks in this outfit. That must make you the brains.”
“We shoot at the train,” interjected Nyle. “Simple.”
D’Nall adjusted his Koboi DoubleDex, hovering across to the squad’s junior member.
“Idiot,” he snapped, administering a swift slap to the head. “That thing is radioactive, can’t you smell it? One stray burst and we’ll all be ash floating on the breeze.”
“Good point,” admitted Nyle. “You’re not as stupid as you look.”
“Thank you.”
“Welcome.”
Aymon throttled down, descending to five hundred feet. It was so tempting. One tightly focused burst to take out the elf clinging to the carriage, another to dispatch the human on the roof. But he couldn’t risk it. One degree off target, and he’d sucked his last stink-worm spaghetti.
“Okay,” he announced into his helmet mike. “Here’s the plan. With all the radiation in that carriage, chances are the targets will be dead in minutes. We follow the train for a while just to make sure. Then we go back and tell the general we saw the bodies.”
D’Nall buzzed down beside him. “And do we see the bodies?”
Aymon groaned. “Of course not, you fool! Do you want your eyeballs to dry up and fall out?”
“Duh.”
“Exactly. So are we clear?”
“Crystal,” said Nyle, drawing his softnose Redboy handgun. He shot his comrades from behind. Close range, point blank. They never had a chance. He followed their bodies to earth on full magnification. The snow would cover them in minutes. Nobody would be stumbling over those particular corpses until the polar caps melted.
Nyle holstered his weapon, punching in the coordinates for the shuttle terminal on his flight computer. If you studied his reptilian face carefully, it was just possible to make out a grin. There was a new lieutenant in town.
CHAPTER 9
NO SAFE HAVEN
Operations Booth, Police Plaza
Foaly was sitting in front of the LEP mainframe waiting for the results of his latest search. Extensive laser brushing on the goblin shuttle had revealed one complete and one partial thumbprint. The complete print was his own. E
asily explicable, as Foaly personally inspected all retired shuttle parts. The partial print could well belong to their traitor. Not enough to identify the fairy who’d been running LEP technology to the B’wa Kell, but certainly enough to eliminate the innocent. Cross-reference the remaining names with everybody who had shuttle-part access, and the list got considerably shorter. Foaly twitched his tail contentedly. Genius. No point in being humble about it.
At the moment, the computer was crunching through personnel files with the partial print. All Foaly could do was twiddle his thumbs and wait for contact with the surface team. The magma flares were still up. Very unusual. Unusual and coincidental.
Foaly’s suspicious train of thought was interrupted by a familiar voice.
“Search complete,” said the computer, in Foaly’s own tones—a little vanity. “Three hundred and forty-six eliminated. Forty possibles remaining.”
Forty. Not bad. They could easily be interviewed. Another opportunity to use the Retimager. But there was another way to narrow the field.
“Computer, cross-reference possibles with level-three clearance personnel.” Level-three clearance would include everybody with access to the recycling smelters.
“Referencing.”
Cudgeon knocked on the booth’s security glass. Now, technically Cudgeon shouldn’t be allowed in Ops, but Foaly buzzed him through. He could never resist having a crack at the ex-commander. Cudgeon had been demoted to lieutenant following a disastrous attempt to replace Root as Recon head honcho. If it hadn’t been for his family’s considerable political clout, he would have been booted off the force altogether. All in all, he might have been better off in some other line of work. At least he wouldn’t have had to suffer Foaly’s constant teasing.
“I have some e-forms for you to initial,” said the lieutenant, avoiding eye contact.
“No problem, Commander,” chuckled the centaur.
“How’s the plotting going? Any revolutions planned for this afternoon?”
“Just sign the forms please,” said Cudgeon, holding out a digi-pen. His hand was shaking.
Amazing, thought Foaly. This broken-down shell of an elf was once on the LEP fast track.