by Eoin Colfer
Mulch emerged from the bathroom. This time he had been applying a layer of sun block. It was the middle of the night, but the dwarf wasn’t taking any chances. If this insertion went haywire, as it probably would, then he could very well be on the run by morning.
“What’s the problem, ladies? If you’re fighting over me, don’t bother. I make it a point never to date outside my species.”
The tension deflated like a punctured balloon.
“Dream on, hairball,” said Holly.
“Nightmare, more like,” added Juliet. “I make it a point never to date anyone who lives in a dung heap.”
Mulch was unperturbed. “You’re both in denial. I have that effect on females.”
“I don’t doubt it,” said Holly, grinning.
The LEP captain unfolded a stowaway table and placed her helmet on top. She switched her helmet-cam to PROJECT, and opened the 3-D plan of the Spiro Needle. It revolved in the air, a lattice of neon-green lines.
“Okay, everyone. Here’s the plan. Team one, burn your way in through the wall of the eighty-fifth floor. Here. Team two, go in through the helipad door. Here.”
Holly marked the entrances by tapping the corresponding spot on the screen of her handheld computer. An orange pulse appeared on the floating plan.
“Foaly has agreed to help, so he’ll be with us over the airwaves. Juliet, you take this handheld computer. You can use it to conference with us on the move. Just ignore the Gnommish symbols, we’ll send you any files you need to view. Wear an earpiece though, to cut out the speakers. The last thing we need is computers beeping at the wrong moment. That little indent below the screen is a microphone. Whisper-sensitive, so no need to shout.”
Juliet strapped the credit card–sized computer onto her wrist.
“What are the teams, and what are their objectives?”
Holly stepped into the 3-D image. Her body was surrounded by strobes of light.
“Team one goes after the security and switches the vault guards’ oxygen canisters. Team two goes after the box. Simple. We go in pairs. You and Mulch. Artemis and me.”
“Oh no,” said Juliet, shaking her head. “I have to go with Artemis. He’s my Principal. My brother would stick to Artemis like glue, and so will I.”
Holly stepped out of the hologram. “Won’t work. You can’t fly and you can’t climb walls. There has to be one fairy per team. If you don’t like it, take it up with Artemis next time you see him.”
Juliet scowled. It made sense. Of course it did. Artemis’s plans always made sense. It was only too clear now why Artemis had not revealed the entire plan in Ireland. He knew she would object. It was bad enough being separated for the past six hours. But the most difficult phase of the mission lay ahead, and Artemis would not have a Butler at his shoulder.
Holly stepped back into the hologram. “Team one, you and Mulch, climb the Needle and burn through on the eighty-fifth floor. From there you place this video clip on a CCTV cable.” Holly held up what looked like a twist of wire. “Loaded fiber optic,” she explained. “Allows for remote hijacking of any video system. With this in place, Foaly can send the signal from every camera in the building to our helmets. He can also send the humans any signal he wants them to see. You will also replace two oxygen cylinders with our own special mix.”
Juliet placed the video clip in her jacket pocket.
“I will enter from the roof,” continued Holly. “From there I proceed to Artemis’s room. As soon as Team one gives us the all clear, we’ll go after the C Cube.”
“You make it sound so easy,” said Juliet.
Mulch laughed. “She always does that,” he said. “And it never is.”
At the base of the Spiro Needle
Juliet Butler had been trained in seven martial arts disciplines. She had learned to ignore pain and sleep deprivation. She could resist torture both physical and psychological. But nothing had prepared her for what she would have to endure to get into this building.
The Needle had no blind sides. There was twenty-four-hour activity on each face, so they were forced to begin their ascent from the sidewalk. Juliet pulled the van around, double-parking it as close to the wall as she could.
They went out through the sunroof, draped in Holly’s single sheet of camouflage foil. Juliet was clipped onto the Moonbelt on Mulch’s waist.
She rapped on Mulch’s helmet. “You stink.”
Mulch’s reply came through the cylindrical transmitter in Juliet’s ear. “To you maybe, but to a dwarf female, I am the essence of a healthy male. You’re the one that stinks, Mud Girl. To me, you smell worse than a skunk in two-monthold socks.”
Holly stuck her head through the sunroof.
“Quiet!” she hissed. “Both of you! We’re on a tight schedule, in case you’ve forgotten. Juliet, your precious Principal is stuck in a room up there waiting for me to show up. It’s five minutes past four already. The guards are due to change in less than an hour, and I still have to finish mesmerising these goons. We have a fifty-five-minute window here. Let’s not waste it arguing.”
“Why can’t you just fly us up to the ledge?”
“Basic military tactics. If we split up, then one team might make it. If we’re together, then if one goes down, we all go down. Divide and conquer.”
Her words sobered Juliet. The fairy girl was right, she should have known that. It was happening again, she was losing concentration at a vital moment.
“Okay. Let’s go. I’ll hold my breath.”
Mulch stuck both palms in his mouth, sucking any vestiges of moisture from the pores.
“Hold on,” he said, having removed his hands from his palate. “Here we go.”
The dwarf flexed his powerful legs, leaping five feet to the wall of the Spiro Needle. Juliet bobbed along behind, feeling for all the world as though she were under water. The problem with riding a Moonbelt was that along with weightlessness came loss of coordination and sometimes space nausea, too. Moonbelts were designed for carrying inanimate objects, not live fairies, and certainly not human beings.
Mulch had not had a drink for several hours, causing his dwarf pores to open to the size of pinholes. They sucked noisily, latching onto the smooth external surface of the Spiro Needle. The dwarf avoided the tinted windows, sticking to the metal girders. Though the pair was draped in a sheet of camouflage foil, there were still enough limbs sticking out for them to be recognized. Camouflage foil did not render the wearer completely invisible. Thousands of microsensors threaded through the material analyzed and reflected the surroundings, but one shower of rain could short out the whole thing.
Mulch climbed quickly, settling into a smooth rhythm. His double-jointed fingers and toes curled to grip the smallest groove. And where there were no grooves, the dwarf’s pores adhered to the flat surface. His beard hair fanned out under the helmet’s visor, probing the building’s face.
Juliet had to ask.
“Your beard? That’s a bit freaky. What’s it doing? Searching for cracks?”
“Vibrations,” grunted Mulch. “Sensors, current, maintenance men.”
Obviously he wasn’t going to devote any energy to full sentences.
“Motion sensor picks us up, we’re finished. Foil or not.”
Juliet didn’t blame her partner for saving his breath. They had a long way to go. Straight up.
The wind picked up as they cleared the buffer provided by the adjacent buildings. Juliet’s feet were plucked from beneath her, and she fluttered from the dwarf’s neck like a scarf. Rarely had she felt so helpless. Events were utterly beyond her control. Training counted for absolutely nothing in this situation. Her life was in Mulch’s hands completely.
The floors slid by in a blur of glass and steel. The wind pulled at them with grabby fingers, threatening to spin the pair into the night.
“There’s a lot of moisture up here, from the wind,” gasped the dwarf. “I can’t hold on much longer.”
Juliet reached in, running a finge
r along the outer wall. It was slick with tiny beads of dew. Sparks were popping along the sheet of camouflage foil as the moisture-laden wind shorted out its microsensors. Patches of the foil failed altogether. The effect was like patches of circuits apparently suspended in the night. The entire building was swaying too, maybe just enough to shake off a tired dwarf and his passenger.
Finally, the dwarf’s fingers locked onto the ledge of the eighty-fifth floor. Mulch climbed onto the narrow outcropping, directing his visor into the building.
“This room is no good,” he said. “My visor is detecting two motion detectors and a laser sensor. We need to move along.”
He scampered down the ledge, surefooted as a mountain goat. This was his business after all. Dwarfs did not fall off things. Not unless they were pushed. Juliet followed cautiously. Not even Madam Ko’s academy could have prepared her for this.
Finally, Mulch arrived at a window that satisfied him.
“Okay,” he said, his voice strained through Juliet’s earpiece. “We got a sensor with a dead battery.”
His beard hair latched on to the windowpane. “I don’t feel any vibration, so nothing electrical running and no conversation. It seems safe.”
Mulch trickled a few drops of dwarf rock polish onto the toughened pane. It liquefied the glass immediately, leaving a puddle of turgid liquid on the carpet. With any luck the hole would remain undiscovered over the weekend.
“Ooh,” said Juliet. “That stinks nearly as much as you do.”
Mulch did not bother returning the insult, preferring instead to tumble indoors to safety.
He checked the moonometer in his visor.
“Four-twenty. Human time. We’re behind schedule. Let’s go.”
Juliet hopped through the hole in the window.
“Typical Mud Man,” said Mulch. “Spiro spends millions on a security system, and it all falls apart because of one battery.”
Juliet drew an LEP Neutrino 2000. She flicked aside the safety cap and pressed the power button. A button light changed from green to red.
“We’re not in yet,” she said, making for the door.
“Wait!” hissed Mulch, grabbing her arm. “The camera!”
Juliet froze. She’d forgotten the camera. They were barely a minute inside the building and she was already making mistakes. Concentrate, girl, concentrate.
Mulch aimed his visor at the recessed CCTV camera. The helmet’s ion filter highlighted the camera’s arc as a shimmering gold stream. There was no way past to the camera itself.
“There’s no blind spot,” he said. “And the camera cable is behind the box.”
“We’ll just have to huddle close together behind the camouflage foil,” said Juliet, her lip curling at the idea.
Foaly’s image popped onto the computer screen on her wrist. “You could do that. But unfortunately, cam foil doesn’t work on screen.”
“Why not?”
“Cameras have better eyes than humans. Did you ever see a TV picture on television? The camera breaks down the pixels. If we go down that corridor behind camouflage foil, we’re going to look like two people behind a projector screen.”
Juliet glared at the screen. “Anything else, Foaly? Maybe the floor is going to dissolve into a pool of acid?”
“Doubt it. Spiro is good, but he’s not me.”
“Can’t you loop the video feed, pony boy?” said Juliet into the computer’s microphone. “Just send them a false signal for a minute?”
Foaly gnashed his horsy teeth. “I am so unappreciated. No, I cannot set up a loop unless I am on site, as I was during the Fowl siege. That is what the video clip is for. I’m afraid you’re on your own up there.”
“I’ll blast it, then.”
“Negatory. A neutrino blast would certainly knock out one camera, and possibly chain-react along the entire network. You may as well dance a jig for Arno Blunt.”
Juliet kicked the skirting board in frustration. She was stumbling at the first hurdle. Her brother would know what to do, but he was on the other side of the Atlantic. A mere twenty feet of corridor separated them from the camera, but it might as well have been a mile of broken glass.
She noticed that Mulch was unbuttoning his bum flap.
“Oh, great. Now the little man needs a potty break. This is hardly the time.”
“I’m going to ignore your sarcasm,” said Mulch, lying flat on the floor. “Because I know what Spiro can do to people he doesn’t like.”
Juliet knelt beside him. Not too close.
“I hope your next sentence is going to begin with, ‘I have a plan.’”
The dwarf appeared to be aiming his rear end.
“Actually&”
“You’re not serious.”
“Deadly. I have quite a considerable force at my disposal here.”
Juliet couldn’t help smiling. The little guy was a dwarf after her own heart. Metaphorically. He was adapting to the situation, just as she would.
“All we have to do is swing the camera about twenty degrees on its stand, and we have a clear run to the cable.”
“And you’re going to do that with&wind power?”
“Precisely.”
“What about the noise?”
Mulch winked. “Silent but deadly. I’m a professional. All you have to do is squeeze my little toe, when I give you the word.”
In spite of arduous training in some of the world’s toughest terrain, Juliet was not quite prepared to be involved in a wind offensive.
“Do I have to participate? It seems like a one-man operation to me.”
Mulch squinted at the target, adjusting his posterior accordingly.
“This is a precision burst. I need a gunner to pull the trigger, so I can concentrate on aiming. Reflexology is a proven science with dwarfs. Every part of the foot is connected to a part of the body. And it just so happens that the left little toe is connected to my—”
“Okay,” said Juliet hurriedly. “I get the picture.”
“Let’s get on with it, then.”
Juliet pulled Mulch’s boot off. The socks were open-toed, and five hairy digits wiggled with a dexterity no human toes possessed.
“This is the only way?”
“Unless you have a better idea.”
Juliet gingerly grasped the toe, its black curly hairs obligingly parting to allow her access to the joint.
“Now?”
“Wait.” The dwarf licked his forefinger, testing the air. “No wind.”
“Not yet,” muttered Juliet.
Mulch fine tuned his aim. “Okay. Squeeze.”
Juliet held her breath, and closed her fingers around the joint. The pressure sped up Mulch’s leg in a series of jolts. The dwarf fought to keep his aim true in spite of his thrashings. Pressure built in his abdomen and exploded through his bum flap with a dull thump. Juliet could only relate the experience to crouching beside a mortar. A missile of compressed air shot across the room, heat blur surrounding it like waves of water.
“Too much topspin,” groaned Mulch. “I loaded it.”
The air ball spiraled toward the ceiling, shedding layers like an onion.
“Go right,” urged Mulch. “Right, a bit.”
The unlikely missile impacted against the wall a meter ahead of its target. Luckily, the ricochet clipped the camera box, sending it spinning like a plate on a stick. The intruders waited with bated breath for it to settle. The camera finally creaked to a halt after a dozen revolutions.
“Well?” asked Juliet.
Mulch sat up, checking the camera’s ion stream through his visor.
“Lucky,” he breathed. “Very lucky. We have a path straight through.” He slapped his smoking bum flap. “It’s been a while since I launched a torpedo.”
Juliet took the video clip from her pocket, waving it in front of her visor, so Foaly could see it.
“So, I just wind this around any old cable? Is that it?”
“No, Mud Maid,” sighed Foaly, comfortable in
his familiar role as unappreciated genius. “That is a complex piece of nanotechnology, complete with micro filaments that act as receivers, broadcasters, and clamps. Naturally, it leeches its power from the Mud Men’s own system.”
“Naturally,” said Mulch, trying to keep his eyes open.
“You need to ensure that it is firmly clamped to one of the video cables. Luckily its multi-sensor does not have to be in contact with all the wires, just one.”
“And which ones are the video wires?”
“Well&all of them.”
Juliet groaned. “So I just wind it around any old cable?”
“I suppose so,” admitted the centaur. “But wind it tightly. All the filaments have to penetrate.”
Juliet reached up, selected a wire at random, and wound the clip around it.
“Okay?”
There was a moment’s pause while Foaly waited for reception. Below the earth, picture-in-picture screens began popping up on the centaur’s plasma screen.
“Perfect. We have eyes and ears.”
“Let’s go then,” said Juliet impatiently. “Start the loop.”
Foaly wasted a minute delivering another lecture. “This is much more than a loop, young lady. I am about to completely wipe moving patterns from the surveillance footage. In other words, the pictures they see in the surveillance booth will be exactly as they should be, except you won’t be in them. Just be careful never to stand still or you’ll become visible. Keep something moving, even if it’s only your little finger.”
Juliet checked the digital clock on the computer face. “Four-thirty. We need to hurry.”
“Okay. The security center is one corridor over. We take the shortest route.”
Juliet projected the schematic into the air. “Down this corridor here, two rights, and there we are.”
Mulch strode past her to the wall.
“I said the shortest route, Mud Girl. Think laterally.”
The office was an executive suite, with a skyline view and floor-to-ceiling pine shelving. Mulch hauled back a section of the pine and knocked on the wall behind it.
“Plaster board,” he said. “No problem.”
Juliet closed the door behind them. “No debris, dwarf. Artemis said we weren’t to leave any trace.”
