Chapter 1

Gobelon frowned and tugged at his beard. He was the HMFIC of the compound. Officially, that meant His Majesty's Final Implementation Counselor, but unofficially (and universally among the elves) it meant Head Mother Fucker In Charge. He had held that position for some two hundred thirty years, during which he'd developed a sort of gut instinct for when things were not running well.

His gut was warning him right now.

"Something's wrong," he said, suddenly.

Gelwenil, his beautiful, if somewhat prickly minded executive assistant lifted her eyes from the global map on the computer screen and looked at her boss.

"What kind of something?" she asked.

"I don't know yet," said Gobelon. "What's the tracking telemetry look like?"

She looked back at the screen, at the little box below the word "Gwedhes," which was Elf for "Telemetry." It was green.

"Looks fi-" She stopped, having almost, but not quite said "fine" as the light went from green to amber, and then almost immediately to red.

"He's off course," she said, a little breathlessly.

Gobelon turned to a big, blue button on the wall, that had the Elven words for "DO NOT PUSH" on it, plain as day. In two hundred thirty-three years nobody had ever pushed that button. He hated the idea that it was going to be pushed on his watch ... but he reached out and his palm slapped it firmly.

Every manner of siren, klaxon, bell, whistle, light and other audible and visual warning signal ever developed, went off like it was World War Three.

Actually, thought the HMFIC of Santa's compound at the North Pole ... it was worse.

The initial hysterical response by a number of elves quickly gave way to efficient activity. This had never happened, but that didn't mean there wasn't a procedure to deal with it. Gobelon stayed right there in the command center. He could have overseen things from the balcony of his office, but he wanted to be there, on the floor, looking at the screens as things were learned, and decisions had to be made.

It became clear almost immediately, though, that the sleigh was on its way back home. It was much too early for that. Only a third of the presents had been delivered, according to the sensors on the sleigh, and the GPS readouts that were scrolling across Merilinor's screen like sunlight ticking off the miles as it sped away from Sol. Other workstations, that had other screens, were reporting all sorts of things. The reindeer were all alive and well. The sleigh bells were all functional. The runners on the sleigh hadn't iced up. Fuel was optimal. Satellite imagery confirmed that the sleigh was, indeed, returning to the pole, so the GPS hadn't malfunctioned. Everything, in fact, looked perfect.

Except Santa wasn't answering the comm, and the sleigh was on its way back to the North Pole.

"Égilin!" barked Gobelon.

"Sir!" piped a perky female Elf.

"Conditions under which the sleigh would return with no communication taking place?"

"Santa's unconscious," said Égilin immediately. "The failsafe has kicked in."

"Couldn't it be a malfunction?" asked the HMFIC, who was in charge of Santa's workshop when Santa wasn't there.

"There's a backup radio, and we have the rights to five different frequencies. He's not answering because he can't. And he can't because he's unconscious," said Égilin smoothly.

Gobelon turned to a short, wide Elf who could not, for some reason, grow a beard. He was sitting rigidly in front of a screen that required he sit on a stack of books to see.

"Caraphinnor?" asked the boss.

"Vital signs are within parameters," squeaked the short Elf. "Pulse is a little low, at 68. Blood pressure is 140 over 90, but that's been normal for him for the last seventy-five years. Breathing is down a little, but oxygen levels are fine. According to my readouts, the old man is fine."

"Then why isn't he answering when we call him?"

"Sir, I work vital stats, not communication," said Caraphinnor, sounding injured.

Gobelon didn't look over at the comm console. He'd hovered over it for the first five minutes as tests were run seven or eight times. All of them had produced data that said the radio was working flawlessly ... on both ends. Santa just wasn't using it.

The head Elf sighed. They'd know soon enough. The manual said that if the sleigh went on autopilot and started back to the pole - something that had never happened in the history of Christmas - the after burners kicked in. That meant it would be touching down on the North Pole landing strip within twenty minutes.

The problem was ... it should be landing on a rooftop in Lichtenstein then, instead.

SSG Collins couldn't have been prepared to hit mother Earth four seconds after his chute opened. Even on a high altitude low opening jump, which only the special ops guys did, and which he had yet to get a chance to attempt, you had ten to twelve seconds after the chute deployed to prepare to land.

It didn't take a genius to figure out that something really bad had gone wrong.

The first thing he noticed, though, was that while he had hit the ground (impossible!?) hard ... the ground seemed to sway under him, which lessened the impact appreciably. The next thing he realized was that the wind was blowing again, just as strong as it had been before he jumped. You didn't feel the wind, hanging from a parachute.

He looked up. His chute wasn't overhead.

The obvious conclusion was that he was hung up on the tail of the plane. But there was some data that didn't fit with that explanation, primarily that he knew his chute had opened, and he'd fallen some three or four seconds. That wasn't long enough, according to the mission brief. Not even close. Another problem was that he was sitting on something. But the wind was blowing way too hard if he was on the ground. It felt like the chute was trying to jerk his spine out of his body.

All this evaluation happened within a second or two. He executed the drill instantly, and without thinking. His right hand reached for the knife and he dragged its razor edge across the lines threatening to kill him. He felt each one part, and felt how that affected the way the wind was dragging him. As soon as the last one whipped away, and the awful drag eased, he pulled his reserve chute with the other hand. He felt the handle pull away, and the pack open.

Nothing happened.

No jerk.

No blossoming reserve chute.

And somehow ... he was still sitting on something.

For lack of anything better to do, he looked around. Then he blinked. In the direction the wind was still coming from, he saw eight reindeer ... in harness ... running as if there was a pack of polar bears chasing them. The problem - well, one of the problems - was that their hooves were running on ... nothing.

He looked sideways.

Open air.

He twisted around to look behind him, and found what the wind was pushing him up against. It was a huge, red, velvet bag.

He stood up and looked down. The "ground" he had landed on, and had been sitting on ... looked for all the world like Santa Claus.

It was then, that his reserve chute fell far enough out of its pack that the blistering wind caught it, and the canopy whipped open, jerking SSG Robert Collins off Santa's sleigh.

Almost.

The straps of his web gear caught on a curved gilded projection on the side of the sleigh and he stopped with a jerk that he thought would break his neck. He heard snorts from the reindeer and tears filled his eyes as the chute tried to pull him one way, while the reindeer and sleigh kept pulling him the opposite way. He felt like straps were cutting his body into four or five pieces.

Again, instinct served him though, as he used the knife that was still in his right hand to cut the shrouds of his reserve chute, his brain told him he was committing suicide. He had, after all, only one reserve chute.

But when the chute whipped away on the wind, and the terrible forces trying to rip him apart vanished, all he could do was give a sigh of relief. He looked rearward automatically, trying to pick out the bundle of cloth that had been his reserve chute. Instead, he saw twin jets of flame coming from the rear of the sleigh that looked, for all the world, like the kind of flames jet fighters spewed when they were in afterburner mode.

After he rested for a few seconds, he laboriously climbed back into the sleigh, getting away from the heat and roar of the flames, and squeezed in between the big red bag and the back of the seat on which a thoroughly dead looking Santa Claus was almost reclining.

Bob had no idea how long he sat there, stunned, in shock, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. He assumed he was having some kind of hallucination, at first. But the whipping wind - which seemed to have tripled in speed somehow - and the pains he was still feeling where straps had cut into his body, made that seem unlikely.

Of course he didn't, for a second, believe that he was actually on Santa's sleigh. Yes, it was Christmas Eve. Yes, he was obviously still up in the sky. Yes, there appeared to be reindeer pulling the sleigh. But it had to be some kind of mechanical device ... an advertising gimmick, maybe ... an unauthorized aircraft ... made to look like Santa's sleigh?

He rubbed his face. That felt real enough. He was pretty sure he didn't yet understand what was going on, but whatever it was, the flight seemed stable. In fact, it didn't seem quite as cold as it had a little while before. Were they losing altitude?

Remembering his altimeter, he pulled his wrist up and peered at it. 800 feet. The jump plan had been to jump at 2,000 feet, which was a little higher than the normal 1,200 feet done in a day jump. He was sure he'd left the plane at that altitude. That meant he had been supposed to hit the ground in roughly forty seconds.

Except that he wasn't hanging from a parachute any more.

He leaned, to peer over the side of the sleigh. In the moonlight, all he could see was the kind of white that meant complete snow cover.

But the jump zone was in Bavaria ... where it was cold, but there had been no snow all winter.

He lifted his head to see the lights of a runway, directly ahead.

It was impossible. How did this thing fly? Where were the wings? Where were they?

In a daze, he held on tight, but the touch down was like landing a double axel on virgin ice. The green and red (?!) runway lights flashed past him. They were heading toward what looked for all the world like a castle made of ice.

He was pretty sure it couldn't get any weirder.

Until the sleigh stopped ... and a dozen elves swarmed all over the sleigh. Three of them climbed over the edge of the sleigh right into his lap.

They stopped, as if frozen by some magical, super-cold wind. Except the wind wasn't blowing any more.

They stared. The only reason Bob was able to keep it together at all, was because one of the three fainted dead away, while one of the others yelled, "Holy crap!"

Then some kind of vehicle arrived, driving up alongside the sleigh. On top of it was a flat surface with a railing all the way around it. On that were half a dozen more Elves. One of them stood a little taller than the others, and wore a more ornate costume than the others. He had a long, white beard. And his eyes blazed like red hot coals.

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The Bob Claus

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