Artemis Fowl_ The Arctic Incident - Eoin Colfer [5]
Holly was saddled with Chix Verbil for a pod mate. Like most sprites, Chix believed himself God’s green-skinned gift to females, and spent more time trying to impress Holly than doing his job.
‘Lookin’ good tonight, Captain,’ was Chix’s opening line that particular night. ‘You do something with your hair?’
Holly adjusted the screen focus, wondering what you could do with an auburn crew cut.
‘Concentrate, Private. We could be up to our necks in a firefight at any second.’
‘I doubt it, Captain. This place is quiet as the grave. I love assignments like this. Nice ‘n’ easy. Just cruisin’.’
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 pod. 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 him 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 fly-by. 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 grey. 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.
‘OK, 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 grey.
‘Chix. Hold your position. Continue scanning.’
Grey? How could grey things be moving? Grey 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 grey? 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 favour, Foaly, mention it.’
‘Well, ridiculous as it sounds, someone may have found a way to beat my system.’
Holly paled. If Foaly was