Eoin Colfer: Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code

Holly’s auburn hair stood in sweat-slicked spikes, and her round hazel eyes dared Grub to argue.

‘No, Holly. . Captain. You leave it to me. Everything is under control.’

I doubt it, thought Holly, setting off at a run towards Police Plaza.

The city was in complete chaos. Every citizen was on the street staring at his or her dead appliance in disbelief. For some of the younger fairies, the loss of their mobile phones was too much to bear. They sank to the streets, sobbing gently.

Police Plaza was mobbed by enquiring minds, like moths drawn to a light. In this case, one of the only lights in town. Hospitals and emergency vehicles would still have juice but, otherwise, the LEP headquarters was the only government building still functioning.

Holly forced her way through the crowd, into the lobby area. The public service queues ran down the steps and out the door. Today everyone was asking the same question: What’s happened to the power?

The same question was on Holly’s lips as she burst into the Situations booth, but she kept it to herself. The room was already packed with the force’s complement of captains, along with the three regional commanders and all seven Council members.

‘Aaah,’ said Chairman Cahartez. ‘The last captain.’

‘I didn’t get my emergency juice,’ explained Holly. ‘Non-regulation vehicle.’

Cahartez adjusted his official conical hat. ‘No time for excuses, Captain, Mister Foaly has been holding off on his briefing until you got here.’

Holly took her seat at the captain’s table, beside Trouble Kelp.

‘Grub OK?’ he whispered.

‘He got a hangnail.’

Trouble rolled his eyes. ‘No doubt he’ll make a complaint.’

The centaur Foaly trotted through the doors, clutching armfuls of disks. Foaly was the LEP’s technical genius, and his security innovations were the main reason why humans had not yet discovered the subterranean fairy hideaway. Maybe that was about to change.

The centaur expertly loaded the disks on to the operating system, opening several windows on a wall-size plasma screen. Various complicated-looking algorithms and wave patterns appeared on the screen.

He cleared his throat noisily. ‘I advised Chairman Cahartez to initiate lockdown on the basis of these readings.’

Recon’s Commander Root sucked on an unlit fungus cigar. ‘I think I’m speaking for the whole room here, Foaly, when I say that all I see is lines and squiggles. Doubtless it makes sense to a smart pony like yourself, but the rest of us are going to need some plain Gnommish.’

Foaly sighed. ‘Simply put. Really simply. We got pinged. Is that plain enough?’

It was. The room resonated with stunned silence. Pinged was an old naval term from back in the days when sonar was the preferred method of detection.

Getting pinged was slang for being detected. Someone knew the fairy folk were down here.

Root was the first to recover his voice. ‘Pinged. Who pinged us?’

Foaly shrugged. ‘Don’t know. It only lasted a few seconds. There was no recognizable signature, and it was untraceable.’

‘What did they get?’

‘Quite a bit. Everything North European. Scopes, Sentinel. All our cam-cams. Downloaded information on every one of them.’

This was catastrophic news. Someone or something knew all about fairy surveillance in Northern Europe, after only a few seconds.

‘Was it human,’ asked Holly, ‘or alien?’

Foaly pointed to a digital representation of the beam. ‘I can’t say for certain. If it is human, it’s something brand new. This came out of nowhere. No one has been developing technology like this as far as I know. Whatever it is, it read us like an open book. My security encryptions folded like they weren’t even there.’

Cahartez took off his official hat, no longer concerned with protocol.

‘What does this mean for the People?’

‘It’s difficult to say. There are best and worst case scenarios. Our mysterious guest could learn all about us whenever he wishes and do with our civilization what he will.’

‘And the best case scenario?’ asked Trouble.

Foaly took a breath. ‘That was the best case scenario.’

Commander Root called Holly into his office. The room stank of cigar smoke in spite of the purifier built into the desk. Foaly was already there, his fingers a blur over the commander’s keyboard.

‘The signal originated in London somewhere,’ said the centaur. ‘We only know that because I happened to be looking at the monitor at the time.’ He leaned back from the keyboard, shaking his head. ‘This is incredible. It’s some kind of hybrid technology. Almost like our ion systems, but not quite — just a hair’s breadth away.’

‘The how is not important now,’ said Root. ‘It’s the who I’m worried about.’

‘What can I do, sir?’ asked Holly.

Root stood and walked to a map of London on the wall plasma screen.

‘I need you to sign out a surveillance pack, go topside and wait. If we get pinged again, I want someone on site, ready to go. We can’t record this thing, but we can certainly get a visual on the signal. As soon as it shows up on the screen we’ll feed you the coordinates and you can investigate.’

Holly nodded. ‘When is the next hotshot?’

Hotshot was LEP-speak for the magma flares that Recon officers ride to the surface in titanium eggs. Pod pilots referred to this seat-of-the-pants procedure as ‘Riding the Hotshots’.

‘No such luck,’ replied Foaly. ‘Nothing in the pipes for the next two days. You’ll have to take a shuttle.’

‘What about the lockdown?’

‘I’ve restored power to Stonehenge and our satellite arrays. We’ll have to risk it; you need to get above ground and we need to stay in contact. The future of our civilization could depend on it.’

Holly felt the weight of responsibility settle on her shoulders. This future of our civilization thing was happening more and more lately.

EN FIN, KNIGHTSBRIDGE

The sonic blast from Butler’s grenade had crashed through the kitchen door, sweeping aside stainless-steel implements like stalks of grass. The aquarium had shattered, leaving the flagstones slick with water, perspex and surprised lobsters. They skittered through the debris, claws raised. The restaurant staff were on the floor, bound and saturated,

but alive. Butler did not untie them. He did not need hysteria right now.

Time enough to deal with them once all threats had been neutralized.

An assassin stirred, suspended halfway through a dividing wall. The manservant checked her eyes. They were crossed and unfocused. No threat there. Butler pocketed the old lady’s weapon just the same. You couldn’t be too careful — something he was learning all over again. If

Madame Ko could have seen this afternoon’s display, she would have had his graduation tattoo lasered for sure.

The room was clear, but still something was bothering the bodyguard. His soldier’s sense grated like two broken bones. Once again

Butler flashed back to Madame Ko, his sensei from the Academy. The bodyguard’s primary Junction is to protect his principal. The principal cannot be shot if you are standing in front of him. Madame Ko always referred to employers as principals. One did not become involved with principals.

Butler wondered why this particular maxim had occurred to him.

Out of the hundreds Madame Ko had drummed into his skull, why this one? It was obvious really. He had broken the first rule of personal protection by leaving his principal unguarded. The second rule: Do not develop an emotional attachment to the principal was pretty much in smithereens too. Butler had become so attached to Artemis that it was obviously beginning to affect his judgement.