The Arctic Incident (14 page)

“I’m coming for you, Diggums,” he muttered, crushing the capsule detonators embedded in each one.

Thirty seconds now. Root cut the piton loose, aiming a second dart at the shuttle wing. An easy shot—he made this kind of thing in his sleep in the sim-range. Unfortunately, the simulations didn’t have thermals fouling things up at the last moment.

Just as the commander loosed his dart, the edge of a particularly strong whirlpool of gas caught the shuttle’s rear, spinning it forty degrees counterclockwise. The dart missed by a yard. It spun into the abyss, trailing the commander’s lifeline behind it. Root had two options. He could rewind the cord using his belt winch, or he could jettison the piton and try again with his spare. Julius unhooked the cord; it would be faster to try again. A good plan, had he not already used his spare to get them out from under the ice. The commander remembered this half a second after he’d cut loose his only piton.

“D’Arvit!” he swore, patting his belt for a dart that he knew would not be there.

“Trouble, Commander?” asked Holly, her voice strained from wrestling with the controls.

“No pitons left, and the charges are set.”

There followed a brief silence. Very brief. No time for lengthy consultations. Root glanced at his moonomenter. Twenty-five seconds and counting.

When Holly’s voice came over the headset, it was not bursting with enthusiasm or confidence.

“Eh . . . Commander. You wearing any metal?”

“Yes,” replied Root puzzled. “My breastplate, buckle, insignia, blaster. Why?”

Holly nudged the shuttle a shade closer. Any nearer was suicide.

“Put it like this. How fond are you of your ribs?”

“Why?”

“I think I know how to get you out of there.”

“How?”

“I could tell you, but you’re not going to like it.”

“Tell me, Captain. That’s a direct order.”

Holly told him. He didn’t like it.

* * *

Dwarf gas—not the most tasteful of subjects. Even dwarfs don’t like to talk about it. Many a dwarf wife was known to scold her husband for venting gas at home and not leaving it in the tunnels. The fact is that, genetically, dwarfs are prone to gas attacks, especially if they’ve been eating clay in the mine. A dwarf can take in several pounds of dirt a second through his unhinged jaws. That’s a lot of clay, with a lot of air in it. All this waste has to go somewhere. So it goes south. To put it politely, the tunnels are self-sealing. Mulch hadn’t eaten clay in months, but he still had a few bubbles of gas at his disposal when he needed them.

The dogs were poised to attack. Slobber hung in ribbons from their gaping jaws. He would be torn to pieces. Mulch concentrated. The familiar bubbling began in his stomach, pulling it out of shape. It felt as though there were a couple of gnome garbage wrestlers going for a couple of rounds in there. The dwarf gritted his teeth, this was going to be a big one.

The handler blew a football whistle. The dogs lunged forward like torpedoes with teeth. Mulch let go with a stream of gas, blowing a hole in the rug and propelling himself to the ceiling, where his thirsty pores anchored him. Safe. For the moment.

The German shepherds were particularly surprised. In their time they had chewed their way through most creatures in the food chain. This was something new. And not altogether pleasant. You have to remember that a dog’s nose is far more sensitive than a human one.

The handler blew his whistle a few more times, but any control he might have had disappeared the moment Mulch flew through the air on a jet of recycled wind. As soon as the dogs’ nasal passages cleared, they began to leap, teeth gnashing at the apex. Mulch swallowed. Dogs are smarter than the average goblin. It was only a matter of time before they thought to scale the furniture and make a jump from there.

Mulch made for the window, but the handler was there before him, blocking the hole with his padded body. Mulch noticed him fumbling with a weapon at his belt. This was getting serious. Dwarfs are many things, but bulletproof is not one of them.

To make matters worse, Maggie V appeared at the bedroom door, brandishing a chrome baseball bat. This was not the Maggie V the public was used to. Her face was covered with a green-clay mask, and there appeared to be a tea bag taped under each eye.

“Now we have you, Mister Grouch,” she gloated. “And suction pads aren’t going to save you.”

Mulch realized that his career as the Grouch was over. Whether he escaped or not, the LAPD would be visiting every dwarf in the city come sunrise.

Mulch only had one card left to play. The gift of tongues. Every fairy has a natural grasp of languages, since all tongues are based on Gnommish if you trace them back far enough. Including American Dog.

“Arf,” grunted Mulch. “Arf, rrruff rruff.”

The dogs froze. One attempted to freeze in midleap, landing on his partner. They chewed each other’s tails for a moment, then remembered that there was a creature on the ceiling barking at them. His accent was terrible, something Central European. But it was Dog nevertheless.

“Aroof?” inquired dog number one.

Mulch pointed at the handler.

“Woof arfy arrooof! That human has a big bone inside his shirt,” he grunted. (Obviously, that’s a translation.)

The German shepherds pounced on their handler; Mulch scampered through the hole in the window; and Maggie V howled so much that her mask cracked and her tea bags fell off. And even though the Grouch knew that this particular chapter in his career was closed, the weight of Maggie V’s Academy Award inside his shirt gave him no little satisfaction.

Twenty seconds left before the concussors blew, and the commander was still flattened against the chute wall. They had no wing sets, and no time to get a set outside even if they had. If they couldn’t pull Root out of there right now, then he’d be blown off the wall and into the abyss. And magic didn’t work on melted slop. There was only one option. Holly would have to use the gripper clamps.

All shuttles are equipped with secondary landing gear. If the docking nodes fail, then four magnetic gripper clamps could be blasted from recessed grooves. These clamps will latch onto the metal underside of the landing-bay dock, reeling the shuttle into the airlock. The grippers also came in handy in unfamiliar environments, where the magnets would seek out trace elements and latch on like sucker slugs.

“Okay, Julius,” said Holly. “Don’t move a muscle.”

Root paled. Julius. Holly had called him
Julius
. That was not good.

Ten seconds.

Holly flicked down a small view screen.

“Release forward-port docking clamp.”

A grating hum signaled the clamp’s release.

The commander’s image appeared in the view screen. Even from here he looked worried. Holly centered a crosshairs on his chest.

“Captain Short. Are you absolutely sure about this?”

Holly ignored her superior. “Range fifteen yards. Magnets only.”

“Holly, maybe I could jump. I could make it. I’m sure I could make it.”

Five seconds . . .

“Fire port clamp.”

Six tiny charges ignited around the clamp’s base, sending the metal disk rocketing from its socket, trailed by a length of retractable polymer cable.

Root opened his mouth to swear, but the clamp crashed into his chest, driving every gasp of air from his body. Several somethings cracked.

“Reel it in,” spat Holly into the computer mike, simultaneously peeling across the chute. The commander was dragged behind like an extreme surfer.

Zero seconds. The concussors blew, sending four tons of rubble careering into the void. A drop in an ocean of magma.

A minute later the commander was strapped on a gurney in the Atlantean Ambassador’s sick bay. It hurt to breathe, but that wasn’t going to stop him talking.

“Captain Short!” he rasped. “What the hell were you thinking? I could have been killed.”

Butler ripped open Root’s tunic to survey the damage.

“You could have been. Five more seconds and you were pulp. It’s thanks to Holly that you are still alive.”

Holly grabbed a medi-pac from the first-aid box. She crumpled it between her fingers to activate the crystals. Another of Foaly’s inventions. Ice packs infused with healing crystals. No substitute for magic, but better than a hug and a kiss.

“Where does it hurt?”

Root coughed, blood splattering his uniform. “The general bodily area. Couple ribs gone.”

Holly chewed her lip. She was no doctor, and healing was by no means an automatic business. Things could go wrong. Holly knew a vice captain once who had broken a leg and passed out. He woke up with one foot pointing backward. Not that Holly hadn’t performed some tricky operations before. When Artemis had wanted his mother’s depression cured, she had been in a different time zone. Holly had sent out a strong positive signal, with enough sparks in it to hang around for a few days. A sort of general pick-me-up. Anyone who even visited Fowl Manor for the following week should have gone away whistling.

“Holly,” groaned Root.

“Okay,” she stammered. “Okay.”

She laid her hands on Root’s chest, sending the magic scurrying down her fingers.

“Heal,” she breathed.

The commander’s eyes rolled back in his head. The magic was shutting him down for recuperation. Holly laid a medi-pac on the unconscious LEP officer’s chest.

“Hold that,” she instructed Artemis. “Ten minutes only. Otherwise there’ll be tissue damage.”

Artemis applied pressure to the pack. His fingers were quickly submerged in a pool of blood. Suddenly the desire to pass a smart remark utterly deserted him. First physical exercise, then actual bodily harm. And now this. These past few days were turning out to be quite educational. He’d almost prefer to be back in Saint Bartleby’s.

Holly returned quickly to the cockpit, panning the external cameras toward the supply tunnel. Butler squeezed into the copilot’s chair.

“Well,” he asked. “What’ve we got?”

Holly grinned. And for a second her expression reminded the manservant of Artemis Fowl.

“We’ve got a big hole.”

“Good. Then let’s go visit an old friend.”

Holly’s thumbs hovered over the thrusters. “Yes,” she said. “Let’s.”

The Atlantean shuttle disappeared into the supply tunnel faster than a carrot down Foaly’s gullet. And for those who don’t know, that’s pretty fast.

Mulch made it back to his hotel undetected. Of course, this time he didn’t have to scale the walls. It would have been more of a challenge than Maggie V’s building. The walls here were brick, very porous. His fingers would have leeched the moisture from the stone and lost their suction.

No, this time Mulch used the main foyer. And why wouldn’t he? As far as the doorman was concerned, he was Lance Digger, reclusive millionaire. Short, maybe. But short and rich.

“Evening, Art,” said Mulch, saluting the doorman on his way to the elevator.

Art peered over the marble-topped desk.

“Ah, Mister Digger, it’s you,” he said slightly puzzled. “I thought I heard you passing below my sight line only moments ago.”

“Nope,” grinned Mulch. “First time tonight.”

“Hmm. The night wind, perhaps.”

“Maybe. You’d think they’d block up the holes in this building. All the rent I’m paying.”

“You would, indeed,” agreed Art. Always agree with the tenants: company policy.

Inside the mirrored elevator, Mulch used a telescopic pointer to push
P
for the penthouse. For the first few months he had jumped to reach the button, but that was undignified behavior for a millionaire. And besides, he was certain that Art could hear the thumping from the security desk.

The mirrored box rose silently, flickering past the floors toward the penthouse. Mulch resisted the urge to take the Academy Award out of his bag. Someone could board the elevator. He contented himself with a long drink from a bottle of Irish springwater, the closest to fairy pure it was possible to get. As soon as he had stowed the Oscar he would run a cold bath, and give his pores a drink. Otherwise he could wake up in the morning glued to the bed.

Mulch’s door was key coded. A fourteen-number sequence. Nothing like a bit of paranoia to keep you out of prison. Even though the LEP believed that he was dead, Mulch could never quite shake the feeling that one day Julius Root would figure it all out and come looking for him.

The apartment decor was quite unusual for a human dwelling. A lot of clay, crumbling rock, and water features. More like the inside of a cave than an exclusive Beverly Hills residence.

The northern wall appeared to be a single slab of black marble. Appeared to be. Closer inspection revealed a forty-inch flat-screen television, a DVD slot, and a tinted glass pane. Mulch hefted a remote control bigger than his leg, popping the hidden cabinet with another complicated key code. Inside were three rows of Oscars. Mulch placed Maggie V’s on a waiting velvet pad.

He wiped an imaginary tear from the corner of his eye.

“I’d like to thank the Academy,” giggled the dwarf.

“Very touching,” said a voice behind him.

Mulch slammed the cabinet door shut, cracking the glass pane.

There was a human youth beside the rockery. In his apartment! The boy’s appearance was strange even by Mud Man standards. He was abnormally pale, raven-haired, slender, and dressed in a school suit that looked as though it had been dragged across two continents. The hairs on Mulch’s chin stiffened. This boy was trouble. Dwarf hair is never wrong.

“Your alarm was amusing,” continued the boy. “It took me several seconds to bypass it.”

Mulch knew he was in trouble then. Human police don’t break into people’s apartments.

“Who are you, hu—boy?”

“I think the question here is, who are you? Are you reclusive millionaire Lance Digger? Are you the notorious Grouch? Or perhaps, as Foaly suspects, you are escaped convict Mulch Diggums?”

Mulch ran, the last vestiges of gas providing him with an extra burst of speed. He had no idea who this Mud Boy was, but if Foaly had sent him, then he was a bounty hunter of one kind or another.