Chapter Three: Analysis

Haven Primary Production, formerly Koboi Labs

"Fabrication complete. Starting next queued item."

A LEP marked crate rolled out of the large machine and was taken by a powerful robot arm to a waiting area, where it would be loaded into a cargo gunship for delivery to Police Plaza.

"Bing bang boom, detection spire made in minutes. How'd ya like that?" boasted Foaly, obviously quite proud of Fairy manufacturing technology. Minerva smirked and Holly rolled her eyes.

The group had come here for two purposes. Firstly, they had needed to procure a spire of their own. Secondly, Foaly had volunteered to pick up a shipment of new armour suits, given that he was already heading to the factory. The armour crate was already being slung in the magnetic clamp under the aircraft, while the spire's crate would be shoved into the internal cargo bay. The gunship's pilot was, naturally, Holly, as she had not trusted Foaly with the controls ever since hearing about his 'skills' when driving a simple ground car. His ability to pilot a flying vehicle was doubtful at best, despite him developing a number of their models in the first place.

"Let's just get this thing home," Holly said, heading for the door out of the assembly room. Minerva stole one last fleeting glance at the wonder of technology that was just out of her reach, and followed the Elf. Foaly checked a few diagnostics, found the machine to be operating at full function, and left as well.

Haven City airspace, en route to Police Plaza

The cargo gunship wasn't as large or as unwieldy as some of the sky freighters that lumbered above Haven, but it still wasn't nearly as manoeuvrable as the Hurricane. Holly never really liked flying the thing, but at least she wasn't getting shot at. The ship's design was well balanced, though, which allowed it to fly effectively when fully loaded down with several tons of assorted supplies. She took the opportunity to point out various Haven landmarks as a sort of unofficial tour of the city to Minerva.

"See that half-dome embedded in the cave wall over there? That's the Weather Park. Big place, that dome is only the front end of it. Most of it is in its own cavern, and it has four sections simulating the seasons. Uses holographic tech to simulate the surface on a greater scale than the city's holo-sky. Great stuff, and admission is free as well. Might take you there later, how would you like that?"

Minerva pulled up a search on the console in front of her. The Weather Park was quite expansive, apparently. An area covered in natural looking snow and ice, another with rolling hills filled with green grass and trees, a set of drier hills leading down towards an unusually realistic beach, and a forest that seemed to be permanently in the autumn phase. That was apparently caused by genetic engineering, while nutrition to the trees was provided by a hidden system working away inside each trunk. The Fairies spared no expense in bringing a taste of the surface to their underground world.

The transport hovered over a drop off zone at Police Plaza and deposited the armour crate, followed by landing in its designated spot in the hangar. Holly dropped the rear ramp and shut down the ship, glad that the tedious piloting of the bulky thing was finally over. Foaly already had the crate's inbuilt repulsorlift online by the time she stepped into the cargo bay, allowing him to easily push it out towards the freight elevator. He set it to head down to the laboratories level when the other two got onboard, and on the way down he started typing a quick message on his wrist comm.

Mayne, get the data analysis computers warmed up, I have a package to plug in.

In came the response.

Got them coming on now. What is this package anyway? I don't remember you mentioning anything like this.

Foaly sighed. Holly idly tapped the Down button on the lift, in a futile attempt to make it go faster. Minerva had her pad out, muttering "Checkmate, Darius," under her breath.

You didn't need to know at the time. Also, tell the lab boys not to freak out, because we're bringing a human down with us.

What. :o

Just shut up and do it.

The lift finally reached the research division, and the three took their cargo and set off down the corridor. Several LEP officers wound up double taking at Minerva's presence, and one of them even edged his hand towards his pistol. An extremely dirty look at him from Holly dissuaded that course of action. They entered the lab to find the computers online, but no one around. A sticky note on the primary console revealed why.

Sorry, Uncle, but the only way for these guys to not freak out was for me to tell them that their shifts were over early and that they could go home, so they should be gone by the time you arrive.

Foaly swore under his breath and tore off the note.

"Not to worry, I designed the spire to be simple enough for one person to use," Minerva said reassuringly.

The data drives from her systems at home were already plugged into the main computer through a series of adaptors and wiring that was already tangled like a nest of inebriated snakes. The techies had no idea as to what the hell that data meant, but they had all been quite surprised about the Human technology containing such advanced code. Foaly pushed the crate to a clear spot in the centre of the analysis room and pressed a button, making it pop open with a hiss and a clang. There stood the detection spire, shiny and silver.

The three stood and looked at it for a moment. Holly was the first to speak.

"…Guys? How are we meant to get it off the crate? I don't see any forklifts in here."

Twenty minutes later

The sound of heavy, metallic footsteps and whirring came down the corridor. A pair of LEP officers on patrol turned around at the noise to see a heavy powered battlesuit stomping out of a lift and into the data analysis room, an area that wasn't exactly known for accommodating such heavily armed gear.

"What… what the hell are they doing in there?" asked one of the bewildered officers to his companion. First they had seen Captain Short, Foaly, and a human that they didn't recognize as one of Fowl's crew go in there with a big crate, and now the Captain had requisitioned a bloody battlesuit and brought it down here?

"Well hey, would you look at that, our shift's over. Let's go," replied the other in a way that sounded distinctly like he was changing the subject and trying to leave the area before something exploded.

The first officer didn't argue.

"Alright, here we go!" Holly said as she grasped the bottom of the spire in her large mechanized hands. The suit was designed to be able to lift some pretty hefty loads, and the spire's weight shouldn't even strain it. She lifted the device slowly, trying to be as precise as possible while wearing an armour suit that was never built to be precise or subtle. She only had to move it off the crate, and once it was off Foaly pulled away the now-empty container, allowing Holly to set the spire down.

"Right, now we can get this hooked up," she said as she stepped away into a clear spot. She deactivated the battlesuit and let the plating at her back fold away, giving her room to hop out of the thing. She had been given a bit of trouble when she tried to sign it out of the armoury, as there hadn't been any sort of combat situation or testing imminent that would require the heavily armed and armoured suit. This whole business gave Holly a thought.

"Hey, Foaly, if you took the guns off and stripped a bit of the armour, I think we've got a good load lifter for the civilian market. Give me a cut of the profits for the idea."

"Uh, you do know that we've had suits like that on the market for the last two hundred years, right?" came Foaly's voice from the far side of the room, accompanied by the sounds of various cables being plugged into their sockets.

"Wait, we do?"

"Holly, you're not the sort of person who looks through industrial equipment catalogs."

"And you are?"

" Well, yes, actually."

"Neeeerrrd."

The final cable went in, and Minerva went up to the primary control console.

"Artemis, your legacy may change the whole world for the better…" she said quietly, as she activated the spire. It began humming softly, and a series of coloured lights winked on across its surface.

Foaly leaned towards Holly's ear.

"You think we should tell her about the clone?"

"No, not yet. She's already accepted his death, and if the clone fails the effects on her psyche could be unpredictable," she whispered back, with Minerva being too engrossed in her work to hear them.

After the initial set up, the three met in Foaly's lab.

"The power of your computers has made for an incredible upgrade in the spire's capabilities. I'm already seeing far more detections and with more accuracy than ever before. We can cross-reference this new data with my old findings and get our research done far faster!" Minerva said excitedly as she tapped on a borrowed Fairy wrist holocomputer.

"While the spire will gather and sort its results automatically, reading it will be more difficult. I've prepared a document containing instructions on how to do so for your analysts. I think the ones best suited to this work would be the ones who were involved in your Demon containment program. Also, try to bring in Qwan and Number One. Their knowledge of dimensional physics would be quite helpful."

She closed the holocomputer.

"I think my work is done for now. Holly, mind showing me around town?"

The Elf pulled up a map on her own holocomputer.

"I think I've got some ideas. How are you for some snow?"

Holly's armour had some pretty damn good internal climate control, and she could easily forgo the winter clothing offered at the entrance to the snow biome. Minerva, on the other hand, had to wait for the shop to manufacture a set of clothes in her size, with her status as a human making things quite awkward with the staff. She was getting a whole lot of odd looks from them and various bystanders, but they seemed to take pride in their clothing machine's flexibility, easily adjusting for the height of a relatively tall human. The snowy land was surrounded by a dome of finely tuned holograms that created a seamless simulation of a blue sky with a few scattered clouds. The technicians in charge of the systems could program weather schedules, allowing for a realistic cloud accumulation system to augment the snow dispensers hidden behind the holograms. This kept the area's snow in pristine condition without needing any big, obvious snow making machines spewing stuff all over the place.

The crunch of snow underfoot punctuated their conversation.

"I must say, Holly, this is quite impressive. Some places in human cities have similar facilities, but nothing on this scale or detail. You could spend days just wandering about this park's biomes. And… hello now, is that Number One over there?"

Holly turned to see where her friend was pointing. Indeed, it appeared that the ugly-cute imp was here today as well, honing his telekinetic skills with the construction of a structure of some kind. He had seen them, too, and he bounded over to them, apparently forgetting about his work. This had resulted in him absent mindedly dropping a big pile of snow right on top of a pair of watching children, eliciting cries of surprise and then delight as their little heads popped out of the heap.

"Hey Holly, you've brought Minerva down here? Brilliant, I've been wanting to talk… communicate… converse… no, just talk with her. Qwan and I have been working very well together, and we actually went to a base on the moon to research its effects on Demon physiology! Oh, the low gravity, the lightness of it all! And it gave me quite a buzz. Almost wound up teleporting straight out to the surface once before getting a suit on. Anyway, what's up? What's happening? How's the… buttscuttler?"

Holly smirked.

"First off, One, it's called scuttle-butt. Secondly, you just buried a couple of kids. And thirdly, I think Minerva actually has a proposition for you." She nodded at the blonde.

"Number One, remember your work with Limbo and dimension theory alongside Qwan? Well, I've got a project with Foaly regarding a similar field, and you can really help move things along."

"I'll do it."

"But… I didn't even explain just what it is about."

"Sounds interesting to me, and that's what matters!"

Minerva sighed and pulled out her holocomputer.

"I'm forwarding a document with the details to you now. So… how about you show me how you've been doing with your construction effort here?"

And so an armoured Elf, a parka wearing Human, and a not-wearing- much-at-all Imp stood in the snow, building a structure that would serve as a fort for many children and their snowball fights.