She had quit the LEP because Julius’s replacement had actually accused her of murdering the commander. Holly figured with a boss like that, she could do the Fairy People more good outside the system. It was starting to look like she had been dead wrong. In her time as LEPrecon Captain she had been involved in putting down a goblin revolution, thwarting a plan to expose the subterranean fairy culture to the humans, and reclaiming stolen fairy technology from a Mud Man in Chicago. Now she was tracking a fish smuggler who had skipped out on his bail. Not exactly national security stuff.
“What about shin extensions?” said Mulch, interrupting her thoughts. “You could be taller in hours.”
Holly smiled. As irritating as her partner was, he could always cheer her up. Also, as a dwarf, Mulch had special talents that came in very handy in their new line of business. Until recently, he had used these skills to break into houses and out of prisons, but now he was on the side of the angels, or so he swore. Unfortunately, all fairies knew that a dwarf’s vow to a non-dwarf wasn’t worth the spit-sodden handshake that sealed the deal.
“Maybe you could get a brain extension,” Holly retorted.
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Mulch chortled. “Oh, brilliant. I must write that one down in my witty retorts book.”
Holly was trying to come up with an actual witty retort, when their target appeared at the motel room door. He was a harmless-looking pixie, barely two feet high, but you didn’t have to be tall to drive a truck of fish. The smuggling bosses hired pixies as drivers and couriers because they looked so innocent and childlike. Holly had read this pixie’s profile, and she knew that he was anything but innocent.
Doodah Day had been smuggling livestock to illegal restaurants for more than a century. In smuggling circles he was something of a legend. As an ex-criminal, Mulch was privy to criminal folklore and was able to supply Holly with all kinds of useful information that wouldn’t find its way into an LEP report. For instance, Doodah had once made the heavily patrolled Atlantis–Haven run in under six hours without losing a fish from the tank.
Doodah had been arrested in the Atlantis Trench by a squad of LEP water sprites. He had skipped out en route from a holding cell to the courthouse, and now Holly had tracked him here. The bounty on Doodah Day was enough to pay six months’ rent on their office. The plaque on their door read: Short and Diggums. Private Investigators.
Doodah Day stepped out of his room, scowling at the world in general. He zipped his jacket then headed south toward the shopping district. Holly stayed twenty steps back, hiding her face underneath a hood. This street had traditionally been a rough spot, but the Council was putting millions of ingots into a major revamp. In five years, there would be no more goblin ghetto. Huge, yellow multi-mixers were chewing up old sidewalks and laying down brand new paths behind them. Overhead, public service sprites unhooked burned-out sun strips from the tunnel ceiling and replaced them with new molecule models.
The pixie followed the same route that he had for the past three days. He strolled down the road to the nearest plaza, picked up a carton of vole curry at a kiosk, then bought a ticket to the twenty-four hour movie theater. If he stayed true to form, Doodah would be in there for at least eight hours.
Not if I can help it, thought Holly. She was determined to get this case wrapped by close of business. It wouldn’t be easy. Doodah was small, but he was fast. Without weapons or restraints, it would be almost impossible to contain him. Almost impossible, but there was a way.
Holly bought a ticket from the gnome attendant, then settled into a seat two rows behind the target. The theater was pretty quiet at this time of day. There were maybe fifty patrons besides Holly and Doodah. Most of them weren’t even wearing theater goggles. This was just somewhere to put in a few hours between meals.
The theater was running The Hill of Taillte trilogy nonstop. The trilogy told a cinematic version of the events surrounding the Hill of Taillte battle, where the humans had finally forced the fairies underground. The final part of the trilogy had cleaned up at the AMP Awards a couple of years ago. The effects were splendid, and there was even a special edition interactive version, where the player could become one of the minor characters.
Looking at the movie now, Holly felt the same pang of loss as she always did. The People should be living aboveground; instead they were stuck in this technologically advanced cave.
Holly watched the sweeping aerial views and slow motion battles for forty minutes, then she moved into the aisle and threw off her hood. In her LEP days, she would simply have come up behind the pixie and stuck her Neutrino 3000 in his back, but civilians were not allowed to carry weapons of any kind, and so a more subtle strategy would have to be employed.
She called the pixie from the aisle. “Hey, you. Aren’t you Doodah Day?”
The pixie jumped from his seat. He fixed his fiercest scowl on his features and threw it Holly’s way. “Who wants to know?”
“The LEP,” replied Holly. Technically, she had not identified herself as a member of the LEP, which would be impersonating a police officer.
Doodah squinted at her. “I know you. You’re that female elf. The one who tackled the goblins. I’ve seen you on digital. You’re not LEP anymore.”
Holly felt her heartbeat speed up. It was good to be back in action. Any kind of action.
“Maybe not, Doodah, but I’m still here to bring you in. Are you going to come quietly?”
“And spend a few centuries in the Atlantis pen? What do you think?” said Doodah Day, dropping to his knees.
The little pixie was gone like a stone from a sling, crawling under the seats, jinking left and right.
Holly pulled up her hood and ran toward the fire exit. That’s where Doodah would be going. He went this way every day. Every good criminal checks the exit routes in whatever building he visits.
Doodah was at the exit before her, crashing through the door like a dog through a hatch. All Holly could see was the blue blur of his jumpsuit.
“Target on the move,” she said, knowing her throat mike would pick up whatever she said. “Coming your way.”
I hope, thought Holly, but she didn’t say it.
In theory, Doodah would make for his bolt hole, a small storage unit over on Crystal Street, which was set up with a small cot and air-conditioning unit. When the pixie got there, Mulch would be waiting. It was a classic human-hunting technique. Beat the grass and be ready when the bird flies. Of course, if you were human, you shot the bird, then ate it. Mulch’s method of capture was less terminal, but equally revolting.
Holly stuck close, but not too close. She could hear the pitter-patter of the pixie’s tiny feet scurrying along the theater’s carpet, but she couldn’t see the little fellow. She didn’t want to see him. It was vital that Doodah believe he had gotten away; otherwise he wouldn’t make for his bolt hole. In her LEP days, there would be no need for this kind of close-up pursuit. She would have had complete access to five thousand surveillance cameras dotted throughout Haven, not to mention a hundred other gadgets and gimmicks from the LEP surveillance arsenal. Now there was just her and Mulch. Four eyes and some special dwarf talents.
The main door was still flapping when Holly reached it. Just inside, an outraged gnome was flat on his behind, covered with nettle smoothie.
“A little kid,” he complained to an usher. “Or a pixie. It had a big head, I know that much. Hit me right in the gut.”
Holly skirted the pair, shouldering her way onto the plaza outside. Outside—relatively speaking. Everything was inside when you lived in a tunnel. Overhead, the sun strips were set to midmorning. She could trace Doodah’s progress by the trail of chaos in his wake. The vole kiosk was overturned. Lumpy gray-green curry congealed on the flagstones. And lumpy gray-green footsteps led to the plaza’s northern corner. So far, Doodah was behaving very predictably.
Holly pushed her way through the ragged line of curry customers, keeping her eyes on the pixie’s footsteps.
“Two minutes,” she said for Mulch’s benefit.
There was no reply, but there shouldn’t be, not if the dwarf was in position.
Doodah should take the next service alley and cut across to Crystal. Next time, she resolved, they would go after a gnome. Pixies were too fast. The fairy Council did not really like bounty hunters, and tried to make life as difficult for them as possible. There was no such thing as a licensed firearm outside the LEP. Anyone with a weapon, without a badge, was going to prison.
Holly rounded the corner expecting to see the tail end of a pixie blur. Instead she saw a ten-ton yellow multi-mixer bearing down on her. Obviously Doodah Day had finished being predictable.
“D’Arvit!” swore Holly, diving to one side. The multimixer’s front rotor chewed through the plaza’s pavement, spitting it out at the rear in inch-perfect slabs.
She rolled into a crouch and reached for the Neutrino blaster, which had been on her hip, until recently. All she found was air.
The multi-mixer was swinging around for a second run, bucking and hissing like a mechanical Jurassic carnivore. Giant pistons thumped, and rotor blades carved scythe-like through whatever surface fell beneath
their blades. Debris was shoveled into the machine’s belly to be processed and shaped by heated plates.
It reminds me a bit of Mulch, thought Holly. Funny what crosses your mind when your life is in danger.
She backpedaled away from the mixer. Yes it was big, but it was slow and unwieldy. Holly glanced upward to the cab, and there was Doodah expertly manipulating the gears. His hands flashed across the knobs and levers, dragging the metal behemoth toward Holly.
All around was pandemonium: shoppers howling, emergency sirens sounding. But Holly couldn’t worry about that now. Priority one. Stay alive. Terrifying as this situation might be to the general public, Holly had years of LEP training and experience. She’d escaped the grasp of far quicker enemies than this multi-mixer.
As it turned out, Holly was mistaken. The multi-mixer was slow as a whole, but some of its parts were lightning fast. For example, the containment paddles—two ten-foot-high walls of steel that slotted out on either side of the front rotor to contain any debris that might be thrown up by the rotor blades.
Doodah Day, an instinctive driver of any vehicle, saw his opportunity and took it. He overrode the safety and deployed the paddles. Four pneumatic pumps instantly pressurized and literally blew the paddles into the wall on both sides of Holly. They bit deep, sinking six inches into the stone.
Holly’s confidence drained down into her boots. She was trapped with a hundred curved strip blades tearing up the ground before her.
“Wings,” said Holly, but only her LEP suit had wings, and she had given up the right to wear that.
The paddles contained the vortex created by the blades and turned it back on itself. The vibration was terrific. Holly felt her teeth shake in her gums. She could see ten of everything. Her whole world was bad reception. Beneath her feet the blades greedily chewed the pavement. Holly jumped at the left-hand paddle, but it was well lubricated and slipped out of her grasp. Her luck was equally bad with the other paddle. The only other possible avenue was straight ahead, and that wasn’t really an option, not with the deadly rotor waiting.