Holly undipped a piton dart from her belt, screwing it into the launcher above the Neutrino’s main barrel. The launcher was spring-loaded, like an old-fashioned spear gun, and would not give off a heat flash: nothing to alarm any sensors.

The goblin was highly amused, as goblins often are just before incarceration, which explains why so many are incarcerated.

‘A dart? You going to prod us all to death, little elf?’

Holly aimed at a clip protruding from the fire-foam nozzle in the rear of the wagon.

‘Would you please be quiet?’ she said, and launched the dart. It flew over the goblin’s head, jamming itself between the rods of the nozzle clip; the piton cord stretched the length of the wagon.

‘Missed me,’ said the goblin, waggling his forked tongue. It was a testament to the goblin’s stupidity that he could be trapped in a melting vehicle during a lockdown with an LEP officer firing at him, and still think he had the upper hand.

‘I told you to be quiet!’ said Holly, pulling sharply on the piton cord and snapping the clip.

Eight hundred kilograms of extinguisher foam blasted from the diffuser nozzle at over two hundred miles per hour. Needless to say, all fireballs went out. The goblins were pinned down by the force of the already hardening foam. The leader was pressed so forcibly against the grille that his tattooed eyes were easily legible. One said ‘Mummy’, the other ‘Duddy’. A misspelling, though he probably didn’t know it.

‘Ow,’ he said. More from disbelief than pain. He didn’t say anything else, because his mouth was full of congealing foam.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Holly. ‘The foam is porous, so you will be able to breathe, but it’s also completely fireproof, so good luck trying to burn your way out.’