Artemis Fowl and the Atlantis Complex

sliver from the view screen, sending a web of shining cracks crackling across the glass.

Holly winced. “D’Arvit. Not good. Not good.” Orion placed a hand on her shoulder. “At least we take the great adventure together, eh, maiden?”

“Not just yet, we don’t,” Holly said, leveling out the rear flaps and punching the craft through the turmoil into the wide, calm ocean.

The view screen held, for the moment, and Holly glared through it, searching for the probe’s telltale engine glare. For several moments she saw nothing out of place in the Atlantic Ocean, but then south-southwest, down ten fathoms or so, she noticed four glowing blue disks.

“There!” she cried. “I see it.”

“Shouldn’t we head for the nearest shuttle port?” wondered Foaly. “Try to make contact with Haven?”

“No,” replied Holly. “We need to maintain a visual and try to work out where this thing is going. If we lose it, then thanks to your stealth ore, it’s lost, with plenty of water to hide in.”

“That’s another jibe, young lady,” said Foaly sulkily. “Don’t think I’m not counting.”

“Counting,” said Orion. “Artemis used to do that.”

“I wish we had Artemis now,” said Holly grimly. “Fives and all. He would know what to do.”

Orion pouted. “But you have me. I can help.”

“Let me guess. Bivouac?” Orion’s face was so desolate that Holly relented. “Okay. Listen, Orion, if you really want to help, keep an eye on the com screen. If we get a signal, let me know.”

“I shall not fail you, fair maiden,” vowed Orion. “This com screen is now my holy grail. I shall wish a signal from its cold heart of wire and capacitors.”

Foaly was about to interject and explain how the communications screen had neither wires nor capacitors, but when he saw the poisonous look Holly was shooting him, the centaur decided to keep his mouth closed.

“And you,” said Holly, in a tone to match her look, “try to figure out how the great Foaly was circumvented so completely, and maybe then we can get control of that probe before anyone else gets hurt.”

That’s another jibe, thought Foaly, but he was wise enough not to say this aloud.

Down and down they went into deeper and darker blue. The probe stuck rigidly to its course, turning aside for neither rock nor reef, seemingly unaware of the tiny escape pod on its tail.

They must see us, thought Holly, pushing the pod to its limits just to keep up. But if the probe had spotted them, it gave no sign, just plowed through the ocean at a constant rate of knots, unswervingly drawing closer to its goal, wherever that was.

Holly had a thought. “Foaly. You have a communicator, don’t you?”

The centaur was sweating in the oxygen-depleted atmosphere, his light blue shirt now mostly dark blue. “Of course I do. I already checked for a signal. Nothing.”

“I know, but what kind of mini-programs do you have on there? Anything for navigation?”

Foaly pulled out his phone and scrolled through the mini-programs. “I do have a nav mi-p. All self-contained, no signal needed.” The centaur did not need to be told what to do: he unstrapped himself from the harness and laid his phone on an omni-sensor on the dash. Its screen was instantly displayed on a small screen in the porthole.

A 3-D compass appeared, and spent a few seconds plotting the pod’s movements, which Holly made sure were mirroring the probe’s course.

“Okay,” said the centaur. “We are locked in. I designed this mi-p, by the way. I earn more from this little wonder than all my LEP work.”

“Just tell me.”

Foaly dragged a little ship icon along its straight line on the screen until it reached the ocean floor. There was a pulsing red circle at the point of impact.

“That circle is pretty,” said Orion.

“Not for long,” said Foaly, paling.

Holly took her eyes off the probe for half a second. “Tell me, Foaly. What’s down there?”

The centaur suddenly felt the full weight of his responsibility. Something he had been repressing since the probe’s. . his probe’s attack.

“Atlantis. My gods, Holly, the probe is headed directly for Atlantis.”

Holly’s eyes swiveled back to the four circles of light. “Can it break through the dome?”

“That’s not what it was designed to do.”

Holly gave him a moment to think about what he had just said.

“Okay, I admit it’s doing a lot of things it wasn’t designed to do.”

“Well, then?”

Foaly made a few calculations on the screen, calculations that Artemis might have understood had he been present.

“It’s possible,” he said. “Nothing of the probe would remain intact. But at this speed it might put a crack in the dome.”

Holly coaxed a little more speed from the pod. “We need to warn Atlantis. Orion, do we have anything on the communications?”

The pod’s human passenger looked up from the screen. “Not a twitter, princess, but this light is flashing rather urgently. Does it have a special significance?”

Foaly peered over his shoulder. “The hull must have been breached in the tunnel. We’re running out of oxygen.”

For a second, Holly’s shoulders slumped. “It doesn’t matter. We keep going.”

Foaly cupped both hands around his cranium, holding in the thoughts. “No. Now we try to get outside the probe’s jamming corona. We should run for the surface.”

“What if it changes course?”

“Then it won’t hit Atlantis, and nobody will drown or be crushed. And even if it does swing back around, they’ll be ready for it.”

It went against Holly’s instincts to run. “I feel like we’re deserting those people down there.”

Foaly pointed at the screen. “At that speed, the probe will reach Atlantis in three hours. We’ll run out of oxygen in five minutes. We’ll be unconscious in six, dead in twelve, and no use to anybody.”

“I feel a little dizzy,” said Orion. “But also wonderfully elated. I feel that I am on the verge of finding a rhyme for the word orange.”

“Oxygen deprivation,” said Foaly. “Or perhaps it’s just him.”

Holly closed down the throttle. “Can we make it?”

Foaly tapped out a complicated equation. “If we go in the opposite direction right now. Maybe. If whoever is doing this has somehow boosted the jammer, then no.”

“Maybe is the best you can do?”

Foaly nodded wearily. “The absolute best.”

Holly swung the pod around with three deft maneuvers. “Best odds I’ve had all day,” she said.

It was a race now, but an unusual one where the competitors were running away from each other. The goal was simple: now that they knew where the probe was headed, Holly had six minutes to pilot the pod out of the jamming corona. Also, it would be nice to have some oxygen to breathe. Luckily, the probe was on a steep descent, so the pod should go on a steep ascent. If they managed to break the surface before the six minutes ran out, then brilliant. They’d broadcast until Haven picked up the signal. If not, since the pod wasn’t equipped with automatic pilot or broadcast facilities, the probe would be on top of the Atlantis security towers before they even noticed it, and another little negative was that they would be dead.

It’s funny, thought Holly. I don’t think my heart rate is up that much. These life-or-death situations have become almost normal for me ever since meeting Artemis Fowl.

She glanced sideways at the romantic who was wearing Artemis’s face, and he caught the look.

“Penny for your thoughts, princess. Though they are worth a king’s ransom.”

“I was wishing that you would go away,” said Holly bluntly. “And return Artemis to us. We need him.”

Orion hmmed. “That thought is not as valuable as I had imagined. Why do you want Artemis back? He is nasty and mean to everyone.”

“Because Artemis could get us out of this alive and save the people of Haven and possibly find out who murdered all those LEP officers.”