The Arctic Incident

“Holly. Captain Kelp is minutes away. Hold your position. Repeat. Hold your position.”


Behind the helmet’s visor, Holly gritted her teeth in frustration. She was one step from being booted out of the LEP, and now this. To rescue Chix, she would have to disobey a direct order.

Root sensed her indecision. “Holly, listen to me. Whatever they’re shooting at you punched straight through Verbil’s wing. Your LEP vest is no good. So sit tight and wait for Captain Kelp.”

Captain Kelp. Possibly the LEP’s most gung-ho officer, famous for choosing the name Trouble at his graduation ceremony. Still, there was no officer Holly would prefer to have at her back going through a door.

“Sorry, sir, I can’t wait. Chix took a hit in the wing. You know what that means.”

Shooting a sprite in the wing was not like shooting a bird. Wings were a sprite’s largest organ and contained seven major arteries. A hole like that would have ruptured at least three.

Commander Root sighed. Over the speakers it sounded like a rush of static.

“Okay, Holly. But stay low. I don’t want to lose any of my people today.”

Holly drew her Neutrino 2000 from its holster, flicking the setting up to three. She wasn’t taking any chances with the snipers. Presuming they were goblins from the B’wa Kell triad, on a three setting, the first shot would knock them unconscious for eight hours at the very least.

She gathered her legs beneath her, and rocketed out from behind the statue. Immediately a hail of gunfire blew chunks from the structure.

Holly raced toward her fallen comrade, projectiles buzzing around her head like supersonic bees. Generally, in a situation of this kind, the last thing you do would be to move the victim, but with gunfire raining down on them, there was no choice. Holly grabbed the private by his epaulettes, hauling him behind a rusted-out delivery shuttle.

Chix had been out there a long time. He was grinning feebly.

“You came for me, Cap’. I knew you would.”

Holly tried to keep the worry from her voice.

“Of course I came, Chix. Never leave a man behind.”

“I knew you couldn’t resist me,” he breathed. “I knew it.”

Then he closed his eyes. There was a lot of damage done here. Maybe too much. Holly concentrated on the wound. Heal, she thought, and the magic welled up inside her like a million pins and needles. It spread through her arms and ran down to her fingers. She placed her hands on Verbil’s wound. Blue sparks tingled from her fingers into the hole. The sparks played around the wound, repairing the scorched issue and replicating spilt blood. The sprite’s breathing calmed, and a healthy green tinge started to return to his cheeks.

Holly sighed. Chix would be okay. He probably wouldn’t fly any more missions on that wing, but he would live. Holly lay the unconscious sprite on his side, careful not to put pressure on the injured wing. Now for the mysterious gray shapes. Holly upped the setting on her weapon to four and ran without hesitation toward the chute entrance.

On your very first day in the LEP Academy, a big, hairy gnome with a chest the size of a bull troll’s pins each cadet to a wall and warns them never to run into an unsecured building during a firefight. He says this in a most insistent fashion. He repeats it every day, until the maxim is etched on every cadet’s brain. Nevertheless, this was exactly what Captain Holly Short of LEPrecon proceeded to do.

She blasted the terminal’s double doors, diving through to the shelter of a checkin desk. Less than four hundred years ago, this building had been a hive of activity, with tourists lining up for aboveground visas. Paris had once been a very popular tourist destination. But, inevitably it seemed, humans had claimed the European capital for themselves. The only place fairies felt safe was in Disneyland Paris, where no one looked twice at diminutive creatures, even if they were green.

Holly activated a motion-sensor filter in her helmet and scanned the building through the desk’s quartz security panel. If anything moved, the helmet’s computer would automatically flag it with an orange corona. She looked up just in time to see two figures loping along a viewing gallery toward the shuttle bay. They were goblins, all right, reverting to all fours for extra speed, trailing a hover trolley behind them. They were wearing some kind of reflective foil suits, complete with headgear, obviously to fool the thermal sensors. Very clever. Too clever for goblins.

Holly ran parallel to the goblins, one floor down. All around her, ancient advertisements sagged in their brackets. TWO-WEEK SOLSTICE TOUR. TWENTY OUNCES OF GOLD. CHILDREN UNDER TEN TRAVEL FREE.