“Hello, Commander,” said Artemis. “Nice to be appreciated.”
“I appreciate armpit lice more than I’m ever likely to appreciate you, Fowl. Get over it.”
Artemis could think of half a dozen withering responses to this comment off the top of his head, but he kept these put-downs to himself for the greater good.
I am fifteen now; time to behave maturely.
Holly cut through the male posturing. “Commander, is Atlantis safe?”
“Most of it,” said Trouble. “Half a dozen evac ships took a pasting. One shuttle suffered a direct hit, buried deeper than hell itself. It’s going to take months to put the pieces together.”
Holly’s shoulders drooped. “Casualties?”
“Definitely. We don’t know how many yet, but dozens.” Trouble’s brow was heavy with the weight of command. “It’s a dark day for the People, Captain. First Vinyáya and her troops, now this.”
“What happened?”
Trouble’s gaze shifted to a point off screen as his fingers tapped a V-board. “One of Foaly’s brainers did a simulation. I’m sending it to you now.”
Seconds later, a message icon pulsed on the screen of Foaly’s phone. Holly selected it, and a simple 2-D video played, depicting an outlined probe entering the Earth’s atmosphere over Iceland.
“Can you see that, Captain?”
“Yes, it’s up.”
“Good. Let me talk you through it. So, Foaly’s Martian probe shows up just below the Arctic Circle. We’re taking your word for this since we didn’t detect it, thanks to our own cloaking technology. Shields, stealth ore, all turned against us. I don’t have to tell you what happened next.”
On screen the probe sent a laser burst into a small target on the surface, then jettisoned a few bots to deal with survivors. The craft barely slowed down before plowing through the ice, taking a southwesterly course toward the Atlantic.
“Again, this part of the simulation was done without computer data. We took what you told us and also extrapolated backward from our own readings.”
Artemis interrupted. “You had readings? At what point did you start to get readings?”
“It was the strangest thing,” said Trouble, frowning. “We heeded Captain Short’s warning and ran a scan. Nothing. Then, five minutes later, up the probe pops on our screens. No shields, nothing. In fact, she was blowing heat out the vents, so we couldn’t miss her. She even blew her engine plates off. The thing was shining brighter than the North Star. And just in case we missed it, we got a tip-off from a bar in Miami, of all places. We had time enough to evacuate.”
“But not enough to reach her,” mused Artemis.
“Exactly,” said Trouble Kelp, who wouldn’t have agreed if it had occurred to him that he was agreeing with arch-criminal Artemis Fowl. “All we could do was pump up the water cannons, empty the city, and wait until the probe came into range.”
“And then?” prompted Artemis.
“Then I authorized a few practice shots along the trajectory before the probe was really in range. There shouldn’t have been enough power in them to cause any damage—the water shells dissipate over distance—but one must have held on to a bit of punch, because the probe spun off course and nose-dived straight into the seabed, taking a shuttle down with it.”
“Opal Koboi was on that shuttle, wasn’t she?” said Artemis urgently. “This is all her doing. This reeks of Opal.”
“No, Fowl, if it reeks of anyone, it reeks of you. This all started with your conference in Iceland, and now some of our best people are dead, and we have an underwater rescue mission on our hands.”
Artemis’s face was red. “Forget how you feel about me. Was Opal on the shuttle?”
“She was not,” thundered Trouble, and the pod’s speakers vibrated. “But you were in Iceland, and now you’re here.”
Holly stepped in to defend her friend. “Artemis had nothing to do with this, Commander.”
“That may be, but there are too many coincidences here, Holly. I need you to detain the Mud Boy until I can get a rescue bird up to you. It could be a few hours, so take on some ballast in the tanks and drop your buoyancy a little. You shouldn’t be spotted below the surface.”
Holly was not happy with this course of action. “Sir, Commander, we know what happened. But Artemis is right—we need to think about who made it happen.”
“We can talk about that in Police Plaza. For now, my priority is to keep people alive, simple as that. There are fairies still trapped in Atlantis. Everything watertight we have is headed there right now. We can discuss the Mud Boy’s theories tomorrow.”
“Maybe we can construct a bivouac while we’re at it,” muttered Holly.
Trouble Kelp was not one to swallow insubordination. He leaned close to the camera, his forehead stretching wide in the pinhole lens.
“Did you say something, Captain?”
“Whoever did this is not finished,” said Holly, doing a little leaning in herself. “This is part of a bigger plan, and detaining Artemis is the worst possible thing you could do.”
“Oh, really,” said Trouble, chuckling unexpectedly. “Odd you should say that, because in the message you sent earlier, you commented that Artemis Fowl had lost it. Your exact words were—”
Holly glanced guiltily at Artemis. “No need for the exact words, sir.”
“Sir now, is it? Your exact words were, and I quote— obviously since they are your exact words—you said that Artemis Fowl was ‘crazier than a salt-water-drinking troll with ringworm.’”
Artemis shot Holly a recriminating look that said:
Ringworm? Really?
Holly brushed the comment aside with a hand. “That was earlier. I have shot Artemis twice since then, and he’s fine now.”
Trouble grinned. “You shot him twice. That’s more like it.”
“The point is,” Holly persisted, “we need Artemis to help figure this out.”
“Like he figured out Julius Root and Commander Raine Vinyáya.”
“That is not fair, Trouble.”
Kelp was unrepentant. “You can call me Trouble in the officers’ club on the weekend. Until then it’s Commander. And I order you, no, I command you to detain the human Artemis Fowl. We’re not arresting him—I just want him down here for a little chat. What I certainly do not want is for us to act on any of his notions. Understood?”
Holly’s face was wooden and her voice dull. “Understood, Commander.”
“Your pod has enough juice to power the locator, no more, so don’t even think about making for the shore. You look a shade paler than death, Captain, so I’m guessing you don’t have any spare magic for shielding.”
“Paler than death? Thanks, Trubs.”
“Trubs, Captain? Trubs?”
“I meant Trouble.”
“That’s better. So all I want you to do is sit on the Mud Boy. Got it?”
Holly’s words were so honeyed that they could have charmed a bear. “I’ve got it good, Trouble. Captain Holly Short, babysitter extraordinaire, at your service.”
“Hmmm,” said Trouble, in a tone that Angeline Fowl’s son understood very well.
“Hmmm, indeed,” said Holly.
“I’m glad we understand each other,” said Trouble, with a flicker of one eyelid that could be interpreted as a wink. “I, as your superior, am telling you to stay put and not make any attempt to get to the bottom of what’s really going on here, especially not with the help of a human, especially especially not that particular human. Do you read me?”
“I read you loud and clear, Trouble,” said Holly, and Artemis understood that Trouble Kelp was not forbidding Holly to investigate further—he was actually covering himself on video in case Holly’s actions resulted in a tribunal, which they often did.
“I read you loud and clear too, Commander,” said Artemis. “If that makes any difference.”
Trouble snorted. “Remember those armpit lice, Fowl? Their opinions make more difference to me t
han yours.”
And he was gone before Artemis could trot out one of his pre-prepared retorts. And in years to come, when Professor J. Argon published the best-selling Artemis Fowl biography, Fowl and Fairy, this particular exchange would be deemed significant as one of the few times anyone got the last word over Artemis Fowl II.
Holly made a sound that was a little like a shriek, but not as girly and with more frustration.
“What’s the matter?” asked Foaly. “I thought that went pretty well. It seemed to me that Commander Trouble Kelp, a.k.a. your boyfriend, gave us the green light to investigate.”
Holly turned her mismatched eyes on him. “First of all, he’s not my boyfriend—we went on one date, and I told you that in confidence because I thought you were a friend who wouldn’t trot it out at the first opportunity.”
“It’s not the first opportunity. I held it back the time when we had that lovely tea.”
“Irrelevant!” shouted Holly, through funneled hands.
“Don’t worry, Holly, it stays in this room,” said Foaly, thinking it would be a bad time to mention that he had posted the gossip on his Web site www.horsesense.gnom.
“And secondly,” continued Holly, “maybe Trouble did give me the backhanded go-ahead, but what good is that to us in the middle of the Atlantic in a dead lump of metal?”
Artemis glanced skyward. “Ah, you see, I might be able to help you there. Any second now.”
Several seconds passed by without any significant change in their situation.
Holly raised her palms. “Any second? Really?” Artemis couldn’t help being a little peeved. “Not literally. It might take a minute or so. Perhaps I should call him.”
Fifty-nine seconds later, something bonged against the pod’s hatch.
“Aha,” said Artemis, in a way that made Holly feel like punching him.
Over the Atlantic; Two Hours Earlier
“This is not a bad ship, as it happens,” said Mulch Diggums, pushing a couple of buttons on the stolen mercenaries’ ship just to see what they did. When one caused the contents of the sewage recycler to be dumped on an innocent Scottish deep-sea trawler below, the dwarf decided to stop pushing.
(One of the fishermen happened to be making a video of gulls for his university media course and caught the entire descending blob of waste matter on film. It seemed to anyone who saw the tape as though the ponging mass just appeared in the sky then dropped rapidly onto the unfortunate sailors. Sky News ran the video with the headline: Panic on the Poop Deck. The segment was largely dismissed as a student prank.)
“I should have guessed that one,” Mulch said, without a trace of guilt. “There’s a little picture of a toilet on the button.”
Juliet sat hunched over on one of the passenger benches that ran along one side of the cargo bay, her head tipping the ceiling, and Butler lay flat on the other one, as it was the most practical way for him to travel.
“So Artemis has been shutting you out?” she asked her brother.
“Yes,” replied Butler dejectedly. “I’d swear he doesn’t trust me anymore. I’d swear he doesn’t even trust his own mother.”
“Angeline? How could anyone not trust Mrs. Fowl? That’s ridiculous.”
“I know,” said Butler. “And I’ll go one better. Artemis doesn’t trust the twins.”
Juliet started, bumping her head on the metal ceiling. “Oww. Madre de dios. Artemis doesn’t trust Myles and Beckett? That’s just ridiculous. What terrible acts of sabotage are three-year-olds supposed to commit?”
Butler grimaced. “Unfortunately, Myles contaminated one of Artemis’s petri dishes when he wanted a sample for his own experiments.”
“That’s hardly industrial espionage. What did Beckett do?”
“He ate Artemis’s hamster.”
“What?”
“Well, he chewed on its leg for a bit.” Butler shifted in the cramped space. Fairy crafts were not built to accommodate giant, shaven-headed, human bodyguards. Not that the shaved head made much difference.
“Artemis was livid, claimed there was a conspiracy against him. He installed a combination lock on his lab door to keep his brothers out.”
Juliet grinned, though she knew she shouldn’t. “Did that work?”
“No. Myles stayed at the door for three days straight, tapping away until he came across the correct combination. He used several rolls of toilet paper writing down the possibilities.”
Juliet was almost afraid to ask. “What did Beckett do?”
Butler grinned back at his sister. “Beckett dug a bear trap in the garden, and when Myles fell in, he swapped him a ladder for the code.”
Juliet nodded appreciatively. “That’s what I would have done.”
“Me too,” said Butler. “Maybe Beckett will end up as Myles’s bodyguard.” The light moment didn’t last long. “Artemis isn’t taking my calls. Imagine that. I think he’s changed his SIM, so I can’t track him.”
“But we are tracking him, right?”
Butler checked his touch-screen phone. “Oh yes. Artemis isn’t the only one with Foaly’s phone number.”
“What did that sneaky centaur give you?”
“An isotope spray. You just spray it on a surface, then track it with one of Foaly’s mi-p’s.”
“Meepees?”
“Mini-programs. Foaly uses it to keep an eye on his kids.”
“Where did you spray it?”
“Artemis’s shoes.”
Juliet giggled. “He does like ’em shiny.”
“Yes, he does.”
“You’re starting to think like a Fowl, brother.”
Mulch Diggums called back from the cockpit. “Gods help us all. That’s what the world needs, more Fowls.”
They all shared a guilty laugh at that.
The mercenary gyro tracked the Gulf Stream north to the coast of Ireland, moving at slightly more than twice the speed ever achieved by the Concorde, then swung in a long northwesterly arc into the North Atlantic as its computer zeroed in on Artemis’s footwear.
“Artemis’s shoes are walking us right to him,” said Mulch, chortling at his own joke. The Butlers did not join in the mirth, not from any loyalty to their employer, who enjoyed the occasional joke, but because Mulch’s mouth was packed with the contents of the shuttle’s cooler box, and they had no idea what he had just said.
“Please yourselves,” said Mulch, spattering the inside of the windshield with chewed sweet corn. “I make the effort to speak in humanese, and you two joke snobs won’t even laugh at my efforts.”
The shuttle rocketed along, six feet above the wave tops, its anti-grav pulses burrowing periodic cylinders into the ocean’s surface. The engine noise was low and could have been mistaken for a whistling wind, and to any smart mammals below who could see through the shields, the shuttle could be mistaken for a very fast humpback with an extra-wide tail and a loading bay.
“We really lucked out with this bucket,” commented Mulch, his mouth mercifully empty. “She’s more or less flying herself. I just put your phone into the dock, opened the mi-p, and off she went.”
The craft behaved a little like a tracker dog, suddenly coming to a dead stop whenever it lost the scent, then casting its prow about furiously until the isotope showed up again. At one point it had plunged into the ocean, burrowing straight down until pressure cracked the fuselage plates, and they lost a square foot of shielding.
“Don’t worry, Mud Men,” Mulch had reassured them. “All fairy craft have sea engines. When you live underground, it makes sense to build watertight ships.”
Juliet had not ceased to worry: from what she remembered, reassurance from Mulch Diggums was about as reliable as a cocktail from the Pittsburgh Poisoner.
Fortunately, the underwater jaunt hadn’t lasted too long, and soon they were flitting across the wave tops once more without incident, except for the time when Mulch forgot his promise not to press mysterious buttons and almost crashed them into the sun-flecked seas by r
eleasing the emergency-brake mini-parachute cluster.
“It was calling me, that button,” he offered as his excuse. “I couldn’t resist.”
The jolting stop had shunted Butler along the bench. He slid the entire length of the fuselage into the cockpit divider. Only his lightning reactions stopped him from getting his head jammed in the railings.
Butler rubbed his crown, which he had clipped on a bar. “Take it easy, or there will be consequences. You said it yourself: we don’t need you to fly the ship.”
Mulch guffawed, giving a nasty view of his cavernous food pipe. “That’s true, Butler, my freakishly large friend. But you certainly need me to land it.”
Juliet’s laugh was high and sweet and seemed to ricochet off the curved metal walls.
“You too, Juliet?” said Butler reproachfully.
“Come on, brother. That was funny. You’ll laugh too when Mulch plays back the video.”
“There’s video?” said Butler, which just set the other two laughing again.
All of this laughing did nothing to delay Butler’s reunion with his principal, Artemis Fowl. A principal who no longer trusted him and who had probably lied to him, sending Butler to another continent and using Juliet to ensure that he would travel.
I believed that my own baby sister was in danger. Artemis, how could you?
There would be tough questions asked when he finally caught up with Artemis. And the answers had better be good or, for the first time in the history of their families’ centuries-long relationship, a Butler might just walk away from his duties.
Artemis is ill, Butler rationalized. He’s not responsible.
Maybe Artemis was not responsible. But he soon would be.
The mercenaries’ shuttle finally jerked to a halt over a spot of open ocean just above the sixtieth parallel. It was a spot that seemed no different than the square gray miles that stretched away on all sides, until the anti-grav pillar plowed through six feet of water below, revealing the arrowhead escape pod.
“I love this ship,” Mulch crowed. “It makes me look smarter-er than I am.”
The surrounding waters churned and boiled as the invisible pulses tested the surface and compacted the waves enough to keep the ship hovering in place. Down below, the pulses would sound like bell clappers on the pod’s skin.