Eoin Colfer: Artemis Fowl. The Arctic Incident

WEST BANK, HAVEN CITY, THE LOWER ELEMENTS

The traditional image of a leprechaun is one of a small, green-suited imp. Of course, this is the human image. Fairies have their own stereotypes.

The People generally imagine officers of the Lower Elements Police

Reconnaissance squad to be truculent gnomes or bulked-up elves, recruited straight from their college crunchball squads.

Captain Holly Short fits neither of these descriptions. In fact, she would probably be the last person you would pick as a member of the LEPrecon squad. If you had to guess her occupation, the catlike stance and the sinewy muscles might suggest a gymnast or perhaps a professional potholer. But take a closer look, past the pretty face, into the eyes, and you will see determination so fiery it could light a candle at ten paces, and a streetwise intelligence that made her one of Recon’s most respected officers.

Of course, technically, Holly was no longer attached to Recon. Ever since the Artemis Fowl Affair, when she had been captured and held to ransom, her position as Recon’s first female officer had been under review.

The only reason she wasn’t at home watering her ferns right now was that Commander Root had threatened to turn in his own badge if Holly was suspended. Root knew, even if Internal Affairs wasn’t convinced, that the kidnapping had not been Holly’s fault, and only her quick thinking had prevented loss of life.

But the Council members weren’t particularly interested in loss of human life. They were more concerned with loss of fairy gold. And according to them, Holly had cost them a fair chunk from the Recon ransom fund. Holly was quite prepared to fly above ground and wring Artemis Fowl’s neck until he returned the gold, but that wasn’t the way it worked: the Book, the fairy bible, stated that once a human managed to separate a fairy from his gold, then that gold was his to keep.

So, instead of confiscating her badge, Internal Affairs had insisted Holly handle grunt work — somewhere that she couldn’t do any harm. Stakeout was the obvious choice. Holly was farmed out to Customs and Excise, stuck in a Cham pod and suckered to the rock face overlooking a pressure-elevator chute. Dead-end duty.

That said, smuggling was a serious concern for the Lower Elements Police. It wasn’t the contraband itself, which was generally harmless junk — designer sunglasses, DVDs, cappuccino machines and such. It was the method of acquiring these items.

The B’wa Kell goblin triad had cornered the smuggling market and was becoming increasingly brazen in its overground excursions. It was even rumoured that the goblins had constructed their own cargo shuttle to make their expeditions more economically viable.

The main problem was that goblins were dim-witted creatures. All it would take was for one of them to forget to shield and goblin photos would be bouncing from satellites to news stations around the world. Then the Lower

Elements, the last Mud-Man-free zone on the planet, would be discovered.

When that happened, human nature being what it was, pollution, strip-mining and exploitation were sure to follow.

This meant that whichever poor souls were in the Department’s bad books got to spend months at a time on surveillance duty, which is why Holly was now anchored to the rock face outside a little-used chute’s entrance.

E37 was a pressure elevator that emerged in downtown Paris, France.

The European capital was red-flagged as a high-risk area, so visas were rarely approved. LEP business only. No civilian had been in the chute for decades, but it still merited twenty-four seven surveillance — which meant six officers on eight-hour shifts.

Holly was saddled with Chix Verbil for a pod mate. Like most sprites, Chix believed himself God’s green-skinned gift to females, and spent more time trying to impress Holly than doing his job.

‘Lookin’ good tonight, Captain,’ was Chix’s opening line that particular night. ‘You do something with your hair?’

Holly adjusted the screen focus, wondering what you could do with an auburn crew cut.

‘Concentrate, Private. We could be up to our necks in a firefight at any second.’

‘I doubt it, Captain. This place is quiet as the grave. I love assignments like this. Nice ‘n’ easy. Just cruisin’.’

Holly surveyed the scene below. Verbil was right. The once thriving suburb had become a ghost town with the chute’s closure to the public. Only the occasional foraging troll stumbled past their pod. When trolls began staking out territory in an area, you knew it was deserted.

‘It’s jus’ you an’ me, Cap. And the night’s still young.’

‘Stow it, Verbil. Keep your mind on the job. Or isn’t private a low-enough rank for you?’

‘Yes, Holly, sorry, I mean, yes, sir.’

Sprites. They were all the same. Give him a pair of wings and he thought he was irresistible.

Holly chewed her lip. They’d wasted enough taxpayers’ gold on this stakeout. The brass should just call it a day, but they wouldn’t. Surveillance duty was ideal for keeping embarrassing officers out of the public eye.

In spite of this, Holly was determined to do the job to the best of her ability. The Internal Affairs tribunal wasn’t going to have any extra ammunition to throw at her if she could help it.

Holly called up their daily pod checklist on the plasma screen. The gauges for the pneumatic clamps were in the green. Plenty of gas to keep their pod hanging there for four long, boring weeks.

Next on the list was thermal imaging. ‘Chix, I want you to do a fly-by.

We’ll run a thermal.’

Verbil grinned. Sprites loved to fly. ‘Roger, Captain,’ he said, strapping a thermoscan bar to his chest.

Holly opened a hole in the pod and Verbil swooped out, climbing quickly to the shadows. The bar on his chest bathed the area below with heat-sensitive rays. Holly punched up the thermoscan program on her computer.

The view screen swam with fuzzy images in various shades of grey. Any living creature would show up, even behind a layer of solid rock. But there was nothing, just a few swear toads and the tail end of a troll shambling off the screen.

Verbil’s voice crackled over the speaker. ‘Hey, Captain. Should I take ‘er in for a closer look?’

That was the trouble with portable scanners. The further away you were, the weaker the rays became.

‘OK, Chix. One more sweep. Be careful.’

‘Don’t worry, Holly. The Chix man will keep himself in one piece for you.’

Holly drew a breath to make a threatening reply, but the retort died in her throat. On the screen. Something was moving.

‘Chix. You getting this?’

‘Affirmative, Cap. I’m getting it, but I dunno what I’m getting.’

Holly enhanced a section of the screen. Two beings were moving around on the second level. The beings were grey.

‘Chix. Hold your position. Continue scanning.’

Grey? How could grey things be moving? Grey was dead. No heat, cold as the grave. Nevertheless.

‘On your guard, Private Verbil. We have possible hostiles.’

Holly opened a channel to Police Plaza. Foaly, the LEP’s technical wizard, would undoubtedly have their video feed running in the Operations’ booth. ‘Foaly. You watching?’

‘Yep, Holly,’ answered the centaur. ‘Just bringing you up on the main screen.’

‘What do you make of these shapes? Moving grey? I’ve never seen anything like it.’

‘Me neither.’ There followed a brief silence, punctuated by the clicking of a keyboard. ‘Two possible explanations. One, equipment malfunction. These could be phantom images from another system. Like interference on a radio.’