impossible, though not everybody was equally reluctant to accept this.
The centaur’s mobile tech shuttle had been commandeered by Internal Affairs.
This operation now fell under their jurisdiction because an LEP officer was suspected of a crime. All LEP personnel had been ejected from the shuttle, but Foaly was allowed to stay simply because he was the only one able to operate the surveillance equipment.
Commander Ark Sool was an LEP gnome who went after suspect police fairies.
Sool was unusually tall and thin for a gnome, like a giraffe in a baboon’s skin. His dark hair was slicked straight back in a no-nonsense style and his fingers and ears boasted none of the golden adornments generally so beloved of the gnome families. Ark Sool was the highest-ranked gnome officer in Internal Affairs; he believed that the LEP was basically a bunch of loose cannons, presided over by a maverick. And now the maverick was dead, killed apparently by the biggest loose cannon in the bunch. Holly Short may have narrowly avoided criminal charges on two previous occasions. She would not escape this time.
‘Play the video again, centaur,’ he instructed, tapping the worktop with his cane.
Most annoying.
‘We’ve looked at this a dozen times,’ protested Foaly. ‘I don’t see the point.’
Sool silenced him with a glare from his red-rimmed eyes. ‘You don’t see the point? The centaur doesn’t see the point? I don’t see where that’s an important factor in the current equation. You, Mister Foaly, are here to press buttons, not to offer opinions. Commander Root placed far too much value on your opinions, and look where that got him, eh?’
Foaly swallowed the dozen or so acidic responses that were queuing on his tongue. If he were excluded from this operation now, he could do nothing to help Holly.
‘Play the video. Yessir.’
Foaly cued the video from E37. It was damning stuff. Julius and Holly hovered around General Scalene for several moments. They appeared to be quite agitated. Then, for some reason, incredible as it sounded, Holly shot the commander with some kind of incendiary bullet. At this point they lost all video feeds from both helmets.
‘Back the tape up twenty seconds,’ ordered Sool, leaning in close to the monitor.
He poked his cane into the plasma screen. ‘What’s that?’
‘Careful with the cane,’ said Foaly. ‘These screens are expensive. I get them from Atlantis.’
‘Answer the question, centaur. What is that?’ Sool prodded the screen twice, just to show how little he cared about Foaly’s gizmos.
The Internal Affairs commander was pointing to a slight shimmer on Root’s chest.
‘I’m not sure,’ admitted Foaly. ‘It could be heat distortion, or maybe equipment failure. Or perhaps just a glitch. I’ll have to run some tests.’
Sool nodded. ‘Run your tests, though I don’t expect you’ll find anything. Short is a burnout, simple as that. She always was. I nearly had her before, but this time it’s cut and dried.’
Foaly knew he should bite his tongue, but he had to defend his friend. ‘Isn’t this all a bit convenient? First we lose sound, so we don’t know what was said. Then there’s this fuzzy patch that could be anything, and now we’re expected to believe that a decorated officer just up and shot her commander, an elf who was like a father to her.’
‘Yes, I see your point, Foaly,’ said Sool silkily. ‘Very good. Nice to know you’re thinking on some level. But let’s stick to our respective jobs, eh? You build the machinery and I operate it. For example, these new Neutrinos that our field personnel are armed with?’
‘Yes, what about them?’ said Foaly suspiciously.
‘They are personalized to each officer, am I right? Nobody else can fire them. And each shot is registered?’
‘That is correct,’ admitted Foaly, all too aware where this was leading.
Sool waved his cane like an orchestra conductor. ‘Well then, surely all we have to do is check Captain Short’s weapons log to see if she fired a shot at the precise time indicated on the video. If she did, then the film is authentic, and Holly Short did indeed murder her commander, regardless of what we can or cannot hear.’
Foaly ground his horsy teeth. Of course it made perfect sense. He had thought of it half an hour ago, and he already knew what the cross-referencing would reveal. He pulled up Holly’s weapons log, reading out the relevant passage.
‘Weapon registered at zero nine forty, HMT. Six pulses at zero nine fifty-six, and then one level-two pulse fired at zero nine fifty-eight.’
Sool slapped the cane into his palm in triumph. ‘One level-two pulse fired at zero nine fifty-eight. Exactly right. Whatever else happened in that chute, Short fired on her commander.’
Foaly leaped out of his specially tailored office chair. ‘But a level-two pulse couldn’t cause such a big explosion. It practically caved in the entire access tunnel.’
‘Which is why Short isn’t in custody right now,’ said Sool. ‘It will take weeks to clear out that tunnel. I’ve had to send a Retrieval team through El, in Tar a. They will have to travel overground to Paris and pick up her trail from there.’
‘But what about the explosion itself?’
Sool grimaced, as though Foaly’s question was a bitter nugget in an otherwise delicious meal. ‘Oh, I’m sure there’s an explanation, centaur. Combustible gas, or malfunction or just bad luck. We’ll figure that out. For now, my priority, and jours, is to bring Captain Short back here for trial. I want you to liaise with the Retrieval team. Feed them constant updates on Short’s position.’
Foaly nodded without enthusiasm. Holly was still wearing her helmet. And the LEP helmet could verify her identity and relay a constant stream of diagnostic information back to Foaly’s computers. They had no sound or video, but there was plenty of information to track Holly, wherever she might go in the world, or under it. At the moment, Holly was in Germany. Her heart rate was elevated, but otherwise she was OK.
Why did you run, Holly? Foaly asked his absent friend silently. If you’re innocent, why did you run?
‘Tell me where Captain Short is now,’ demanded Sool.
The centaur maximized the live feed from Holly’s helmet on the plasma screen.
‘She’s still in Germany — Munich, to be precise. She’s stopped moving now.
Maybe she will decide to come home.’
Sool frowned. ‘I seriously doubt it, centaur. She’s a bad egg, through and through.’
Foaly ground his teeth. Good manners dictated that only a friend referred to another fairy by species, and Sool was no friend of his. Or anyone’s.
‘We can’t say that for sure,’ said Foaly through his clenched teeth.
Sool leaned even closer to the plasma screen, a slow smile stretching his tight skin.
‘Actually, centaur, you’re wrong there. I think we can safely say for sure that
Captain Short won’t be coming back. Recall the Retrieval team immediately.’
Foaly checked Holly’s screen. The life signs from her helmet were all flatlining.
One second she was stressed but alive, and the next she was gone. No heartbeat, no brain activity, no temperature reading. She couldn’t have simply taken off the helmet, as there was an infrared connection between each LEP officer and helmet. No, Holly was dead, and it hadn’t been natural causes.
Foaly felt the tears brimming on his eyelids. Not Holly too.
‘Recall the Retrieval team? Are you insane, Sool? We have to find Holly. Find out what happened.’
Sool was unaffected by Foaly’s outburst. If anything, he appeared to enjoy it.
‘Short was a traitor and she was obviously in collusion with the goblins. Somehow her nefarious plan backfired and she has been killed. I want you to activate the remote incinerator in her helmet immediately, and we’ll close the book on a rogue officer.’
Foaly was aghast. ‘Activate the remote incinerator! I can’t do that.’
Sool rolled his eyes. ‘Again with the opinions. You don’t have authority here, you just obey it.’
‘But I’ll have a satellite picture in thirty minutes,’ protested the centaur. ‘We can wait that long, surely.’
Sool elbowed past Foaly to the keyboard. ‘Negative. You know the regulations.
No bodies are left exposed for the humans to find. It’s a tough rule, I know, but necessary.’
‘The helmet could have malfunctioned!’ said Foaly, grasping at straws.
‘Is it likely that all the life-sign readings could have flatlined at the same moment through equipment
