The Arctic Incident

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 pods. 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 a fairy 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 flyby. 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 gray. 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.

“Okay, 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 gray.

“Chix. Hold your position. Continue scanning.”

Gray? How could gray things be moving? Gray 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 gray? 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.”

“The other explanation?”

“It’s so ludicrous that I hardly like to mention it.”

“Yeah, well do me a favor, Foaly, mention it.”

“Well, ridiculous as it sounds, someone may have found a way to beat my system.”

Holly paled. If Foaly was even admitting the possibility, then it was almost definitely true. She cut the centaur off, switching her attention back to Private Verbil. “Chix! Get out of there. Pull up! Pull up!”

The sprite was far too busy trying to impress his pretty captain to realize the seriousness of his situation. “Relax, Holly. I’m a sprite. Nobody can hit a sprite.”

That was when a projectile erupted through a chute window, blowing a fist-sized hole in Verbil’s wing.

Holly tucked a Neutrino 2000 into its holster, issuing commands through her helmet’s com-set.

“Code 14, repeat code 14. Fairy down. Fairy down. We are under fire. E37. Send warlock medics and backup.”

Holly dropped through the hatch, rappelling to the tunnel floor. She ducked behind a statue of Frond, the first elfin king. Chix was lying on a mound of rubble across the avenue. It didn’t look good. The side of his helmet had been bashed in by the jagged remains of a low wall, rendering his com-set completely useless.

She needed to reach him soon, or he was a goner. Sprites only had limited healing powers. They could magic away a wart, but gaping wounds were beyond them.

“I’m patching you through to the commander,” said Foaly’s voice in her ear. “Stand by.”

Commander Root’s gravelly tones barked across the airwaves. He did not sound in the best of moods. No surprises there.

“Captain Short. I want you to hold your position until backup gets there.”

“Negative, Commander. Chix is hit. I have to reach him.”