Eoin Colfer - Artemis Fowl and the Atlantis Complex

“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.”

“I grant you that,” said Orion, miffed. “But his sonnets are heartless, and that opera house he designed was totally self-indulgent.”

“Yep, that’s what we need now,” Foaly chimed in. “Opera-house designing skills.”

“Oh yes, traitorous steed,” said Orion testily. “Probe-designing skills would be much more useful.”

Holly sounded a quick burst on the klaxon for attention. “Excuse me, gentlemen. All this arguing is consuming oxygen, so could we all please be quiet?”

“Is that a command, beloved?”

“Yes,” whispered Holly ominously. “It is.”

“Very well. Then quiet it shall be. I would rather cut out my own tongue than utter one more word. I would sooner behead myself with a butter knife than speak a single-”

Holly gave in to a baser instinct and jabbed Orion in the solar plexus.

That was wrong, she thought as the boy drooped in his harness, gasping for breath. I am going to feel guilty about that later.

If there was a later. There was plenty of power in the fuel block, just no air in the tanks and no recycling facility to scrub the carbon dioxide from the exhaled air. The pod was supposed to be a short-term option only. It hadn’t been designed for actual missions; the hull could crack under the pressure of steep ascent long before the fuel ran out.

So many ways to die, thought Holly. Eventually, one of them is going to get us.

The digital depth gauge was spinning backward from 10,000 meters. They were in an Atlantic trench, never before seen by human eyes. Shoals of strange luminous fish swarmed around them, easily keeping pace, butting the hull with the fleshy glowing bulbs in their transparent bellies.

Then the light changed and the fish were gone, darting away so quickly it was as though they had simply dematerialized. In their place were seals and whales and fish like silver arrowheads. A chunk of blue ice rolled past, and Holly saw her mother’s face in its planes and shadows.

Oxygen deprivation, she told herself. That’s all it is.

“How long?” she asked Foaly.

The centaur checked the oxygen levels. “Based on three conscious beings-nervous conscious beings I might add-rapidly consuming the air, we’re going to be short a minute or two.”

“You said we could make it!”

“The hole in the tank is expanding.”

Holly beat her fist on the dash. “D’Arvit, Foaly. Why does it always have to be so hard?”

Foaly spoke calmly. “Holly, my friend. You know what you have to do.”

“No, Foaly. I don’t.”

“Yes, you do.”

Holly did know. There were three conscious people breathing hard. Foaly alone took in more oxygen than a bull troll. It only took one person to steer the ship and send the message.

It was a tough choice, but there was no time to agonize over it. She felt for a squat metal cylinder in one of the rings on her belt and pulled it out.

“What’s that, sweetness?” asked Orion, who had just recovered from the belly jab.

Holly answered the question with one of her own. “Would you do anything for me, Orion?”

The boy’s face seemed to light up. “Of course. Absolutely anything.”

“Close your eyes and count to ten.”

Orion was disappointed. “What? No tasks? Not even a dragon to slay?”

“Close your eyes if you love me.”

Orion did so immediately, and Holly prodded him in the neck with a battery-powered Shokker. The electrocuted boy slumped in the harness, two electrode burns smoking gently on his neck.

“Nicely done,” said Foaly nervously. “Not in the neck for me, if you don’t mind.”

Holly checked the Shokker. “Don’t worry. I only had enough charge for one.”

Foaly could not suppress a sigh of relief, and when he glanced guiltily across at Orion, knowing that really he should be the unconscious one, Holly hit him in the flank with the second charge.