“That, my boy, is talent.”
Inside the pipe, an orange jelly pulsed gently. Occasional sparks roiled in its depths. The plasma was too dense even to spill from the hatch, and retained its cylindrical shape.
Mulch squinted through the wobbling gel.
“Deactivated, all right. If that stuff was live, our faces would be getting a nice tan about now.”
“What about those sparks?”
“Residual charge. They’d give you a bit of a tingle, but nothing serious.”
Artemis nodded.“Right,”he said, strapping on the helmet.
Mulch blanched. “You are not serious, Mud Whelp? Do you have any idea what will happen if those cannons are activated?”
“I’m trying not to think about it.”
“It’s probably just as well.” The dwarf shook his head bewildered. “Okay. You’ve got thirty yards to go, and no more than ten minutes of air in that helmet. Keep the filters closed, the air may get a bit stale after a while but it’s better than sucking plasma. And here, take this.”He plucked the stiffened hair from the keyhole.
“What for?”
“I presume you will want to get out again at the other end. Or hadn’t you thought of that, Genius Boy?”
Artemis swallowed. He hadn’t. There was more to this heroism thing than rushing in blindly.
“Just feed it in gently, remember it’s hair, not metal.”
“Feed it in gently. Got it.”
“And don’t use any lights. Halogen could reactivate the plasma.”
Artemis felt his head beginning to spin.
“And make sure you get foamed as soon as you can. The antirad canisters are blue. They’re everywhere in this facility.”
“Blue canisters. Anything else, Mister Diggums?”
“Well, there are the plasma snakes. . . .”
Artemis’s knees almost collapsed. “You’re not serious?”
“No,” Mulch conceded. “I’m not. Now, your reach is about one and a half feet. So calculate for sixty pulls and then get out of there.”
“Slightly under one and a half feet I’d say. Perhaps sixty-three pulls.” He placed the dwarf hair inside his breast pocket.
Mulch shrugged. “Whatever, kid. It’s your skin. Now, in you go.”
The dwarf interlaced his fingers, and Artemis stepped into the makeshift stirrup. He was considering changing his mind when Mister Diggums heaved him into the plasma. The orange gel sucked him in, enveloping his body in a second.
The plasma coiled around him like a living being, popping bubbles of air trapped in his clothing. A residual spark brushed his leg, sending sharp pain through his body. A bit of a tingle?
Artemis gazed out through the orange gel. Mulch was there giving him the thumbs-up. Grinning like a loon. Artemis decided that if he made it through this lunacy, then he would have to place the dwarf on the payroll.
Artemis began to crawl blindly. One pull, two pulls . . . Sixty-three seemed a long way off.
Butler cocked his weapon. The footsteps were earsplitting now, bouncing off the metal walls. Shadows stretched around the corner, ahead of their owners. The manservant took approximate aim.
A head appeared. Froglike. Licking its own eyeballs. Butler pulled the trigger. The slug punched a melon-sized hole in the wall above the goblin’s head. The head was hurriedly withdrawn. Of course, Butler had missed on purpose. Scared was always better than dead. But it couldn’t last forever. Twelve more shots to be precise.
The goblins grew braver, sneaking out farther and farther. Eventually, Butler knew he would be forced to shoot one.
Butler decided that is was time to get to close quarters. He rose from his haunches, making slightly less noise than a panther, and hurtled down the corridor toward the enemy.
There were only two men on the planet better educated in the various martial arts than Butler, and he was related to one of them. The other lived on an island in the South China Sea, and spent his days meditating and beating up palm trees. You really had to feel sorry for the B’wa Kell.
The B’wa Kell had two guards on the sanctum door, both armed to the teeth and both thick as several short planks.
In spite of repeated warnings, they were both falling asleep inside their helmets when the elves came running around the corner.
“Look,” mumbled one. “Elves.”
“Huh?” said the other, the denser of the two.
“Don’t matter,” said number one. “LEP don’t got no guns.”
Number two gave his eyeballs a lick. “Yeah, but they sure are irritable.”
And that was when Holly’s boot connected with his chest, slamming him into the wall.
“Hey,” complained number one, bringing up his own gun. “No fair.”
Root didn’t bother with fancy spinning kicks, preferring instead to body slam the sentry against the titanium door.
“There,” panted Holly. “Two down. That wasn’t so hard.”
A premature statement, as it happened. Because that was when the rest of the two-hundred-strong B’wa Kell squadron thundered down the perpendicular corridor.
“That wasn’t so hard,” mimicked the commander, curling his fingers into fists.
Artemis’s concentration was failing him. There seemed to be more sparks now, and each shock disrupted his focus. He had lost count twice. He was at fifty-four now. Or fifty-six. The difference was life or death.
He crawled ahead, reaching out one arm and then the other, swimming through a turgid sea of gel. Vision was next to useless. Everything was orange. And the only confirmation he had that any progress was being made was when his knee sank into a recess, where the plasma diverted into a cannon.
Sixty-three. That was it. Artemis propelled himself one last time through the gel, filling his lungs with stale air. Soon the air purifiers in his helmet would be useless and he would be breathing carbon dioxide.
Artemis placed his fingertips against the pipe’s inner curve, searching for a keyhole. Again his eyes were no help. He couldn’t even activate the helmet lamps for fear of igniting a river of plasma.
Nothing. No indent. He was going to die here alone. He would never be great. Artemis felt his brain going, spiraling off into a black tunnel. Concentrate, he told himself. Focus. There was a spark approaching. A silver star in the sunset. It coiled lazily along the tube, illuminating each section it passed.
There! A hole. The hole, revealed for a moment by the passing spark. Artemis reached into his pocket like a drunken swimmer, pulling out the dwarf hair. Would it work? There was no reason this access port should have a different locking mechanism.
Artemis slid the hair into the keyhole. Gently. He squinted through the gel. Was it going in? He thought so. Perhaps sixty-percent sure. It would have to be enough.
Artemis twisted. The flap dropped open. He imagined Mulch’s grin. That, my boy, is talent.
It was quite possible that every enemy he had in the underworld was waiting outside that hatch, big nasty guns pointed at his head. At that point Artemis didn’t much care. He couldn’t bear one more of his own oxygen-depleted breaths or one more excruciating shock to his body.
So, Artemis Fowl poked his helmet through the plasma’s surface. He flipped the visor, savoring what could very well be his last breath. Lucky for him, the room’s occupants were looking at the view screen, watching his friends fight for their lives.
There are too many, thought Butler, rounding the corner to see a virtual army of B’wa Kell slotting fresh batteries into their weapons. The goblins, when they noticed him, began to think things like: Oh gods, it’s a troll in clothes! Or, Why didn’t I listen to Mom and stay out of the gangs?
Then Butler was above them, on the way down. He landed like the proverbial ton of bricks, but with considerably more precision. Three goblins were out cold before they knew they’d been hit. One shot himself in the foot, and several others lay down, pretending to be unconscious.
Artemis watched it all on the control room??
?s plasma screen, along with all the other occupants of the inner sanctum. It was entertainment to them. The goblin generals chuckled and winced as Butler decimated their men. It was all immaterial. There were hundreds of goblins in the building and no way into this room.
Artemis had seconds to decide on a course of action. Seconds. And he had no idea how to use any of this technology. He scanned the walls below him for something he could use. Anything.
There. On a small picture screen, away from the main console, was Foaly, trapped in the Operations Booth. The centaur would have a plan. He certainly had time to come up with one. Artemis knew that as soon as he emerged from the conduit, he was a target. They would kill him without hesitation.
Artemis dragged himself from within the tube, falling to earth with a thick slap. His saturated clothes slowed his progress to the monitor bank. Heads were turning, he could see them from the corner of his eye. Figures came his way. He didn’t know how many.
There was a reed mike below Foaly’s image. Artemis pressed the button.
“Foaly!” he rasped, globs of gel splatting onto the console. “Can you hear me?”
The centaur reacted instantly.“Fowl? What happened to you?”
“Five seconds, Foaly. I need a plan or we’re all dead.”
Foaly nodded curtly. “I’ve got one ready. Put me on all screens.”
“What? How?”
“Press the conference button. Yellow. A circle with lines shooting out, like the sun. Do you see it?”
Artemis saw it. He pressed it. Then something pressed him. Very painfully.
General Scalene noticed the creature flopping from the plasma pipe. What was it? A pixie? No. No, by all the gods. It was human.
“Look!” he cackled. “A Mud Man.”
The others were oblivious, too interested in the spectacle on screen. But not Cudgeon. A human in the inner sanctum. How could this be?
He seized Scalene by the shoulders. “Kill him quickly.”
All the generals were listening now. There was killing to be done.
The human stumbled to one of the consoles, and they surrounded him, tongues dangling excitedly. Sputa spun the human around to face his fate.
One by one the generals conjured fireballs around their fists, closing in for the kill. But then something made them completely forget the injured human. Cudgeon’s face had appeared on all the screens. And the B’wa Kell executives didn’t like what it was saying.
“Just when things are at their most desperate, I shall instruct Opal to return weapons control to the LEP. The B’wa Kell will be rendered unconscious, and you will be blamed for the entire affair, providing you survive, which I doubt.”
Sputa whirled on his ally.
“Cudgeon! What does this mean?”
The generals advanced, hissing and spitting.
“Treachery, Cudgeon! Treachery!”
Cudgeon was not unduly worried.
“Okay,” he said. “Treachery.”
It took Cudgeon a moment to figure out what had happened. It was Foaly. He must have recorded their conversation somehow. How tiresome. Still, you had to hand it to the centaur. He was resourceful.
Cudgeon quickly crossed to the main console, shutting off the broadcast. It wouldn’t do for Opal to hear the rest of it. Particularly the part concerning her tragic accident. He really would have to cut out this grandstanding. Still, no matter. Everything was on track.
“Treachery!” hissed Scalene.
“Okay,” admitted Cudgeon again. “Treachery.” And directly after that he said, “Computer, activate DNA cannons. Authorisation Cudgeon B. Alpha alpha two two.”
On her hoverchair, Opal spun with sheer joy, clapping her tiny hands in delight. Briar was sooo ugly, but he was sooo evil.
Throughout Koboi Labs, robot DNA cannons perked up in their cradles and ran swift self-diagnostics. Apart from a slight drain in the inner sanctum, everything was in order. And so, without further ado, they began to obey their program parameters and target anything with goblin DNA at a rate of ten blasts per second.
It was swift, and as with everything Koboi, efficient. In less than five seconds the cannons settled back into their cradles. Mission accomplished: two hundred unconscious goblins throughout the facility.
“Phew,” said Holly, stepping over rows of snoring goblins. “Close one.”
“Tell me about it,” agreed Root.
Cudgeon kicked Sputa’s sleeping body.
“You see, you haven’t accomplished anything, Artemis Fowl,” he said, drawing his Redboy.
“Your friends are out there. You’re in here. And the goblins are unconscious, soon to be artificially mind-wiped with some particularly unstable chemicals. Just as I planned.” He smiled at Opal hovering above them. “Just as we planned.”
Opal returned the smile. At another time, Artemis would have been forced to pass a snide comment. But the possibility of imminent death was occupying his thoughts for the moment.
“Now, I simply reprogram the cannons to target your friends. Return power to the LEP cannons, and take over the world. And nobody can get in here to stop me.”
Of course, you should never say something like that, especially when you’re an arch villain. It’s just asking for trouble.
* * *
Butler hurried down the corridor, catching up with the others outside the inner sanctum. He could see Artemis’s predicament through the door’s quartz pane. In spite of all his efforts, Master Artemis had still managed to place himself in mortal danger. How was a bodyguard supposed to do his job when his charge insisted on jumping into bear pits, so to speak?
Butler felt the testosterone building in his system. One door was all that separated him from Artemis. One little door, designed to withstand fairies with ray guns. He took several steps backward.
Holly could tell what he was thinking. “Don’t bother. That door is reinforced.”
The manservant didn’t answer. He couldn’t. The real Butler was submerged beneath layers of adrenaline and brute force.
With a roar, Butler charged the entrance, concentrating all of his considerable might in the triangular point of his shoulder. It was a blow that would have felled a medium-sized hippopotamus. And while this door was tested for plasma dispersion and moderate physical resistance, it was certainly not Butler-proof. The metal portal crumpled like tinfoil.
Butler’s momentum took him half way across the inner sanctum’s rubber tiling. Holly and Root followed, pausing only to grab some softnose lasers.
Cudgeon moved fast, dragging Artemis upright.
“Don’t move, any of you, or I’ll kill the Mud Boy.”
Butler kept right on going. His last rational thought had been to disable Cudgeon. Now this was his sole aim in life. He raced forward, arms outstretched.
Holly dived desperately, latching on to Butler’s belt. He dragged her like cans behind a wedding car.
“Butler, stop,” she grunted.
The bodyguard ignored her. Holly hung on, digging in her heels.
“Stop!” she repeated, this time layering her voice with the mesmer.
Butler seemed to wake up. He shook the caveman from his system.
“That’s right, Mud Man,” said Cudgeon. “Listen to Captain Short. Surely we can work something out here.”
“No deals, Briar,” said Root. “It’s all over, so just put the Mud Boy down.”
Cudgeon cocked the Redboy. “I’ll put him down all right.”
This was Butler’s worst nightmare. His charge was in the hands of a psychopath with nothing to lose. And there was nothing he could do about it.
Artemis’s phone rang.
“I think it’s mine,” said Artemis automatically.
Another ring. Definitely his cell phone. Amazing the thing worked at all really, considering what it had been through.
Artemis ripped open the case.
“Yes?”
It was one of those frozen moments. Nobody knew what to expect.
> Artemis tossed the handset at Opal Koboi. “It’s for you.”
The pixie swooped low to catch the tiny cell phone. Cudgeon’s chest heaved. His body knew what was happening even if his brain hadn’t figured it out yet.
Opal placed the tiny speaker to her pointed ear.
“Really, Foaly,” said Cudgeon’s voice. “Do you think I’d go to all this trouble to share power? Oh no, as soon as this charade is over, Miss Koboi will have a tragic accident. Perhaps several tragic accidents.”
All color drained from Opal’s face.
“You!” she screeched.
“It’s a trick!” protested Cudgeon. “They’re trying to turn us against each other.”
But his eyes told the real story.
Pixies are feisty creatures in spite of their size. They put up with only so much, and then they explode. For Opal Koboi, it was explosion time.
She manipulated the Hoverboy’s controls, dropping in a steep dive.
Cudgeon didn’t hesitate. He put two bursts into the chair, but the thick cushion protected its pilot. Opal Koboi flew straight at Cudgeon’s head.
When the elf raised his arms to protect himself, Artemis slid to the floor. Briar Cudgeon was not so lucky. He was borne aloft by the wildcat pixie, desperately pumping the Redboy’s trigger. Opal was past caring about the laser beam that grazed her ribs. Her sole aim in life was to destroy her treacherous partner.
They whirled around the chamber, ricocheting off several walls before crashing straight through the open plasma panel.
Unfortunately for Cudgeon, the plasma was now active. He had activated it himself. But this irony did not occur to him as he was fried by a million radioactive tendrils. Koboi was lucky. She was pitched from the hover-chair and lay moaning on the rubber tiles.
Butler was on the move before Cudgeon landed. He flipped Artemis over, checking his frame for wounds. A couple of scratches. Superficial. Nothing a shot of blue sparks wouldn’t take care of.
Holly checked Opal Koboi’s status.
“She conscious?” asked the commander.
Koboi’s eyes flickered open. Holly shut them with a swift rabbit punch to the forehead.
“Nope,” she said innocently. “Out cold.”
Root took one look at Cudgeon, and realized there was no point checking for vitals. Maybe he was better off. The alternative would have been a couple of centuries in Howler’s Peak.