Eoin Colfer - Artemis Fowl and the Atlantis Complex

“Be quiet, goodly beast. Be quiet, both of you.”

Holly could not afford to be distracted, so to shut out the babbling Orion, she talked herself through what she was doing, recording it all on the ship’s log.

“Still going through the ice, an incredibly thick vein. No radar, or sonar, just following the lights.”

The light show on display through the porthole was both eerie and colorful. The probe’s engines shot beams along the carved ice, sending rainbows flickering across the flat planes. Holly was sure she saw an entire school of whales preserved in the glacier, and maybe some kind of enormous sea reptile.

“The probe maintains its course, a diagonal descent. We are transitioning from ice to rock now, with no discernable delay.”

It was true: the increased density seemed to have no effect on the probe’s laser cutters.

Foaly could not resist a smug comment. “I know how to build ’em,” he said.

“But not how to control ’em,” Holly rejoined.

“You have displeased the princess,” cried Orion, thrashing in his harness. “Were it not for these accursed bonds. .”

“You would be dead,” said Foaly, completing the sentence for him.

“Good point,” Orion conceded. “And the princess is calm now, so no harm done, goodly fellow. I must mind my knight’s temper. Sometimes I rush to battle.”

Holly’s ears itched, which was purely from stress, she knew, but that didn’t stop them itching.

“We need to cure Artemis,” she said, wishing for a free hand to scratch. “I can’t take much more of this.”

The rock face flashed by outside in a confusing meld of grays and deep blue. Ash, pulverized stone, and chunks of debris spiraled down the tunnel wall, further impairing Holly’s vision.

She checked the escape pod’s communications station without much hope.

“Nothing. No contact with Atlantis; we’re still blocked. The probe must have seen us by now. Why no aggressive action?”

Foaly squirmed in a harness built for two-legged creatures. “Oh yes, why no aggressive action? How I long for aggressive action.”

“I live for aggressive action!” thundered Orion squeakily, which was unusual. “Oh, how I pray that dragon will turn ’round that I may smite it.”

“Smite it with what?” wondered Foaly. “Your secret birthmark?”

“Don’t you mock my birthmark, which I may or may not have.”

“Shut up, both of you,” snapped Holly. “The light’s changed. Something is coming.”

Foaly smooshed his cheek against the rear porthole. “Ah yes. I expected that.”

“What did you expect?”

“Well, we must be below sea level by now, so what’s coming would be a great big bit of ocean. Now we’ll see just how well I did design that probe.”

The light bouncing off the tunnel wall had suddenly become dull and flickering, and a huge booming whoomph vibrated through the pod’s walls. Even Orion was struck dumb as a solid tube of water surged upward toward them.

Holly knew from her training that she should relax her muscles and ride the impact, but every cell in her body wanted to tense up before contact.

Keep the nose straight, she told herself. Cut through the surface. Underneath is calm.

The water closed around them like a malevolent fist and shook the pod, battering its occupants. Everything that was not bolted down became a missile. A toolbox gave Foaly a nasty welt, and Orion’s forehead was punctured by a fork that left tiny wounds where it had struck.

Holly swore like a sailor as she battled to keep the nose down, fighting the fury of nature, talking to the pod as though it were an unbroken bronco. A rivet pinged from its housing and ricocheted around the cabin, knocking a 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.