فصل پنجم

CHAPTER 5: DADDY’S GIRL

KOBOI LABORATORIES, EAST BANK, HAVEN CITY, THE LOWER ELEMENTS

KOBOI Laboratories was carved from the rock of Haven’s East Bank. It stood eight storeys high, surrounded by half a mile of granite on five sides, with access from the front only. Management had beefed up their security, and who could blame them? After all, the B’ wa Kell had specifically targeted Koboi for arson attacks. The Council had gone so far as to grant the company special weapons permits – if Koboi went under, the entire Haven City defence network went under with it.

Any B’ wa Kell goblins attempting to storm Koboi Laboratories would have been met with DNA-coded stun cannons, which scanned an intruder before blasting him. There were no blind spots in the building, no place to hide. The system was foolproof.

But the goblins didn’t have to worry about that. The Laboratories’ defences were actually designed to keep out any LEP officers who might come snooping around at the wrong moment. It was Opal Koboi herself who was funding the goblin triad. The attacks on Koboi were actually a smokescreen to divert suspicions away from her own personal dealings: the tiny pixie was the mastermind behind the battery operation and the increased B’ wa Kell activity. Well, one of the masterminds. But why would an individual of almost limitless wealth possibly wish to associate with a goblin tunnel gang?

Since the day of her birth, nothing much had ever been expected of Opal Koboi. Born to a family of old-money pixies on Principality Hill, her parents would have been quite content had young Opal done nothing more than attend private school, complete some wishy-washy Arts degree and marry a suitable vice-president.

In fact, as far as her father, Ferall Koboi, was concerned, a dream daughter would have been moderately intelligent, quite pretty and, of course, complacent. But Opal did not display the personality traits Ferall would have wished for. By the age of ten months she was already walking unaided, by a year and a half she had a vocabulary of over five hundred words. Before her second birthday she had dismantled her first hard drive.

Opal grew to be precocious, headstrong and beautiful. A dangerous combination. Ferall lost count of the times he sat his daughter down, advising her to leave business to the male pixies. Eventually Opal refused to see him at all. Her blatant hostility was worrying.

Ferall was right to be worried. Opal’s first action in college was to ditch her History of Art degree in favour of the male-dominated Brotherhood of Engineers Masters. No sooner was the scroll in her hand than Opal set up shop in direct opposition to her father. Patents quickly followed. An engine muffler that doubled as an energy streamliner, a 3D entertainment system and, of course, her speciality, the DoubleDex wing series.

Once Opal had destroyed her father’s business, she proceeded to buy shares in it at rock-bottom prices, and then incorporated her businesses under the banner of Koboi Laboratories. Within five years, Koboi Laboratories held more defence contracts than any other company. Within ten years, Opal Koboi had personally registered more patents than any fairy alive. Except the centaur Foaly.

But it wasn’t enough. Opal Koboi yearned for the kind of power that hadn’t been held by any single fairy since the days of the monarchy. Luckily, she knew someone who might be able to assist her with that particular ambition. A disillusioned officer in the LEP, and a classmate from her college days. A certain Briar Cudgeon… Briar had good reason to despise the LEP; after all, they had allowed his public humiliation at the hands of Julius Root to go unpunished. Not only that, but he had been stripped of his commander’s acorns after his disastrous involvement in the Artemis Fowl Affair… It had been a simple matter for Opal to slip a truth pill into Cudgeon’s drink in one of Haven’s swankier eateries. To her glee, she found that the delightfully twisted Cudgeon was already formulating a plan to topple the LEP. Quite an ingenious plan as it happened. All he needed was a partner. One with large reserves of gold and a secure facility at her disposal. Opal was happy to supply both.

Opal was curled, catlike, in her hoverchair, eavesdropping on the goings-on in Police Plaza when Cudgeon entered the facility. She had installed mole cameras in the LEP network when her engineers were upgrading their system. The units operated on precisely the same frequency as Police Plaza’s own surveillance cameras, plus they drew power from the heat leaking from the LEP’s fibre optics. Completely undetectable.

‘Well?’ demanded Cudgeon, with customary bluntness.

Koboi didn’t bother to turn around. It had to be Briar. Only he had the necessary access chip to the inner sanctum, implanted in his knuckle.

‘We lost the last shipment of power cells. A routine LEP stakeout. Bad luck.’

‘D’ Arvit!’ swore Cudgeon. ‘Still, no matter. We have enough stored. And to the LEP, they are simply batteries after all.’ Opal took a breath. ‘The goblins were armed…’

‘Don’t tell me.’

‘With Softnoses.’

Cudgeon pounded a worktop. ‘Those idiots! I warned them not to use those weapons. Now Julius will know something is afoot.’ ‘He may know,’ said Opal placatingly. ‘But he is powerless to stop us. By the time they figure it out, it will already be too late.’ Cudgeon did not smile. He hadn’t in over a year. Instead his scowl grew more pronounced.

‘Good. My time is at hand… Perhaps we should have simply manufactured the batteries ourselves,’ he mused.

‘No. Just to build a factory would have set us back two years, and there’s no guarantee that Foaly wouldn’t have discovered it. We had no choice.’ Koboi swivelled to face her partner. ‘You look terrible. Have you been using that ointment I gave you?’ Cudgeon rubbed his head tenderly. It was bubbled with horrific lumps. ‘It doesn’t work. There’s cortisone in it. I’m allergic.’ Cudgeon’s condition was unusual, perhaps unique. The previous year he had been sedated by Commander Root during the Fowl Manor siege. Unfortunately, the tranquillizer had reacted badly with some banned mind-accelerating substances the former acting-commander had been experimenting with. Cudgeon was left with a forehead like melted tar, plus a droopy eye. Ugly and demoted, not a great combination.

‘You should get those boils lanced. I can barely stand the sight of you.’

Sometimes Opal Koboi forgot who she was talking to. Briar Cudgeon was not the usual corporate lackey. He calmly drew a customized Redboy blaster, firing two bursts into the hoverchair’s arm. The contraption whirled across the stippled rubber tiles, coming to rest leaving Opal sprawled across a bank of hard drives.

The disgraced LEP elf caught Opal by the pointed chin. ‘You better get used to looking at me, my dear Opal. Because soon this face will be on every view screen under this planet, and on top of it.’ The tiny pixie curled her fingers into a fist. She was unaccustomed to insubordination, not to mention actual violence. But at moments like this she could see the madness in Cudgeon’s eyes. The drugs had cost him more than his magic and looks, they had cost him his mind.

And suddenly he was himself again, graciously helping her up as though nothing had happened.

‘Now, my dear, progress report. The B’ wa Kell is eager for blood.’

Opal smoothed the front of her catsuit. ‘Captain Short is escorting the human, Artemis Fowl, to E37.’ ‘Fowl is here?’ exclaimed Cudgeon. ‘Of course! I should have guessed that he would be suspected. This is perfect! Our human slave will take care of him – Carrère has been mesmerized. I still have that power.’ Koboi applied a layer of blood-red lipstick. ‘There could be trouble if Carrère is captured.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Cudgeon assured her. ‘Monsieur Carrère has been mesmerized so many times that his mind is blanker than a wiped disk. He couldn’t tell any tales, even if he wanted to. Then, once he has done our dirty work for us, the French police will lock him up in a nice padded cell.’ Opal giggled. For someone who never smiled, Cudgeon had a delicious sense of humour.