"D'Arvit," Captain Holly Short muttered as she surveyed the scene aboveground. Fyri was gone from site, having disappeared somewhere in the looming forest that greeted her aboveground.
She took her Neutrino 2000 out of its holster and held in a two-handed grip, reminding herself to give a good verbal lashing to the idiotic surveillance officer who'd let this particular goblin through the chute in the first place. Fyri was a wily one all right, it was a surprise he hadn't escaped aboveground sooner.
The fact that it was the middle of the day didn't help things. She hadn't seen any Mud People yet, but it was only a matter of time and if one of them should happen to see either her or Fyri, the goblin . . .the implications of that were disastrous.
Holly activated the motion sensor filter that was built into her helmet and scanned the surrounding area. A couple of times, the computer would flag a squirrel or a bird that happened to zoom by, but it was long before an orange corona in the stooped, lumpy shape of a goblin lit up her visor.
"Stop, Fyri," she shouted, not really thinking it would do much good. It didn't. Fyri bounded away, quickie widening the distance between him and Holly.
Holly was thankful for the many rigorous exercising routines she put herself through each day as she sped after the slippery goblin. It was night, which worked to her disadvantage because unlike fairies, goblins could see in the dark, and this one in particular was making the most of that, darting in and out of the inky shadows and winding his way through the trees. Holly wished she had her other helmet, the one with night vision goggles built in. It would have made the chase so much easier.
All of the sudden, the fleeing footsteps ahead of her came to an abrupt end.
"What the-" she muttered, coming to a stop. She listened closely, her delicately pointed ears, far superior to those of a human strained to pick up even the faintest sounds, but there were no footsteps at all, and the background noise of other wildlife, like crickets and other nocturnal insects, blew away any chance she had of pinpointing his location by his breathing.
"Trouble?"
It was the first time in the entire mission that Commander Julius Root had thought to contact her. "You could say that," she muttered. "I'm operating blind, and goblin boy seems to have disappeared, or at least stopped moving."
"You're operating blind?"
"It's night, and I don't have my night vision specs."
In one of his rare calm moments, Root refrained from an all out explosion and simply said, "we'll discuss your lack of oversight later. As it is, I wonder if you've considered the notion that Fyri might have climbed up into the trees.
As if on cue, Holly heard a slight rustling in the branch above her. She fired.
She missed, but the energy beam struck a branch, lighting it on fire. The flames soon spread to nearby branches, and soon a yelp of pain pierced the darkness as Fyri's hiding spot was turned into an oven. He tried to leap to another tree, but an expertly thrown buzz baton hit him square in the rump, so he miscalculated the jump and slammed into the tree trunk instead of landing gracefully on one of the branches.
Holly smiled victoriously as she approached the rogue goblin. She could already see the commendations Root would give her, how she would have another flawless arrest on her record, which was a good idea to have given how much her reputation had fallen since the Artemis Fowl debacle.
"Stand up slowly," Holly commanded, pointing her blaster straight at Fyri. "Hands behind your head. Move!"
Fyri stared at her and then a gleam appeared in his eyes. He threw back his head and let out the most bloodcurdling yell Holly had ever heard. It was so loud that it made her feel like her brain was being split in two.
It didn't take long to realize why the goblin had done this, as all of the sudden, voices, Mud People voices, pierced the night, all of them voicing in some way or another that they were going to see what was going, which was only natural given the inhuman scream that Fyri had just produced.
Most goblins are idiots, which isn't even an insult, just a fact. Their brain capacity plus a dollar might get you a gumball at one of the Mud People's gumball machines. Might. No way an ordinary goblin could have thought up a plan like that, or even managed to outsmart LEP surveillance and security systems. The thing was, Fyri was no ordinary goblin. He'd been born with an abnormality in his brain, but instead of making him even dumber, it had increased his intelligence to even higher than the average fairy. He was no genius, but he was certainly smart, which made him a dangerous opponent.
The Mud people were closing in, flashlights lit. If Holly didn't do something, they'd spot her.
A beam of light hit her foot, and she responded instantly. She shielded, making it so that the naked eye could not see her. Fyri also was quick to react. Before anyone could see him, he darted into the shadows.
"Captain Short, report. Over the intercom, it sounds like Mud People are nearby."
"Um, that's because they are. Fyri attracted their attention. I had to shield. Fyri got away."
"D'Arvit!" Root bellowed, "there's no blasted way of knowing what he'll do. The trouble that blasted goblin could cause . . ." He trailed off, letting the sentence and its implications hang in the air.
"Sir, may I have permission to return to LEPrecon HQ. I don't think that I'll be able to get him now without attracting too much attention."
"Permission granted Short. Report back ASAP. Foaly wants the chance to brief you on some new equipment he's designed for the LEP. All the officer's were already briefed, so we might as well get you up to date."
"Understood."
When Holly made it back underground, she was almost immediately approached by the genius centaur known as Foaly. He seemed to be trotting in place, a surefire sign that he was excited about something.
"Hey Foaly. I heard-"
"That I had something to show you? Yes I do, come with me please." He grabbed Holly's hand rather abruptly and practically dragged her to the conference room. On the table was piled a couple of devices, no doubt what Foaly was trying to show her.
"Well, go on, what is it?"
If possible, Foaly's smile grew even wider as he reached over and picked up a funny looking handgun of sokme sort. It was small, and the barrel was unusually thin, it also had a large black box mounted on the top, possibly a battery.
"A gun."
"Its only the latest in non-lethal weaponry. I call it the TED, Thermal Energy Discharger. You see, when you shoot someone, a tiny beam of superheated solar plasma shoots out, but instead of burning right through the target, it redistributes itself upon contact. The result is that for about eight tenths of a second, the target is engulfed in superheated energy. The effect is quite interesting. It immediately vaporizes all moisture on the epidermis, and even some underneath, which of course effects the nerves. All moisture on the eyes is also evaporated, leaving the target blind. So you have a blind target whose entire body feels like its being stuffed into an oven."
"Seems a little cruel."
Foaly shrugged, "What can I say, it incapacitates them. The blindness and pain are of course temporary, and the TED should be a pretty good deterrent against trying to escape from the LEP."
"Hmm, is that it?"
"Not quite." Foaly set down the TED and trotted back a little bit so that he could pick up the second item he'd set there . It looked like an ordinary digital wristwatch "This is the APITA."
"Another acronym?"
"Hey, it's the 21st century, that's how its done. Anyway APITA stands for Automatic Photon Inducing Teleportation Device. It converts all of the particles that compose your body to photons, allowing for the wearer to literally travel at the speed of light. Its instant transmission."
"Any cons to this amazing device?"
"Well, you remain in photon particle mode for two seconds before the device automatically reverts you back and stops you, because otherwise, you wouldn't be able to revert back at all. Also, you cannot teleport through opaque or reflective objects, like walls or mirrors. It runs on magic so naturally, your magic will be depleted the more you teleport, but its still quite a useful device. You can navigate mentally too."
"Sounds good." Holly took the APITA from Foaly and strapped it on, putting the TED in a spare holster on her belt after that. "We'll see if they're useful on my next mission."
"They will be, trust me, they will be."
Giselle sat up, withdrawing her head from the high-tech microscope with which she'd been analyzing the residue of the melting money. She sighed.
"Any progress yet?" asked Cameron.
"no. It's a completely foreign substance, and I can't think of anything that could be modified into such a convincing counterfeit of hard cash, and then set to degenerate."
Cameron frowned. There were very few things that could puzzle Giselle, and if this was one of them, he had to wonder about exactly what kind of person they were dealing with. "Do you want me to get the tape?" he asked, referring to the recorded footage of the exchange.
"Yeah, maybe I can glean some information from that."
A few minues later, Giselle was sitting in her room looking at the tape. The technology was state of the art, and the quality of picture and sound was unbelievable.
"OK," she muttered, "so the Bentley pulls up, and then the big guy gets out with the suitcase." She watched as Cameron and Carrie asked for the briefcase, watched as they gave the man the disk. She watched as-
"Wait, Hold it!," she almost shouted. Startled, Cameron immediately paused the tape.
"What is it, Giselle?"
"Look. Right there in the car. You can only see it for a second, but there's another person in there."
"So?"
Giselle furrowed her brow in concentration. "I'll bet," she said, "that the man you were dealing with is just the go between man, and the guy in the car is who we really want, AF." It was part educated guess, and mostly pure instinct, but Giselle had learned over the years to always trust her instincts, as they rarely let her down.
She watched the rest of the footage, making a mental note here or there, and then shut the television off, turning her chair so that it faced her desk where her laptop lay. She hooked it up to her television and, using some more state of the art technology, downloaded the frame in which the large, Eurasian man's features were clearly shown, as well as the best profile and angle shots. Once those screenshots were on her computer, she set to work. It was a simple matter to hack into the files of all of the major agencies in Europe, and even many of the American ones like the CIA and the FBI, setting a program that would match the face she now had on her computer with any pictures that were anywhere in the databanks of any agencies. Five minutes later, she got a match.
As she scrolled down the webpage, a wicked grin appeared on her face.