Merv was glad to oblige, sinking a blue power slug into Artemis’s chest. The Irish boy dropped in midlecture.
“What have you done?” shouted Holly, dropping to Artemis’s side. She was relieved to find a steady heartbeat under the bloodied shirt.
“Oh no,” said Opal. “Not dead, merely painfully stunned. He is having quite a day, young Artemis.”
Holly’s pretty features were distorted by grief and outrage as she glared at the small pixie. “What do you want from us? What else can you do?”
Opal’s face was the picture of innocence. “Don’t blame me. You have brought this on yourself. All I wanted to do was bring down fairy society as we know it, but oh no, you wouldn’t have it. Then I planned a couple of relatively simple assassinations, but you insisted on surviving. Kudos to you for evading the bio-bomb, by the way. I was watching the whole thing from sixty-five feet up in my stealth shuttle. Containing the solinium with an LEP helmet. Good thinking. But now, because you have caused me so much trouble and exasperation, I think I will indulge myself a little.”
Holly swallowed the fear that was crawling up her throat. “Indulge yourself?”
“Oh yes. I had a nasty little scenario planned for Foaly—something theatrical involving the Eleven Wonders. But now I have decided that you are worthy of it.”
Holly tensed herself. She should go for her gun, there was no other option. But she had to ask; it was fairy nature: “How nasty?”
Opal smiled, and evil was the only word for that expression. “Troll nasty,” she said. “And one more thing. I am telling you this because you are about to die, and I want you to hate me at the moment of your death as much as I hate you.” Opal paused, allowing the tension to build. “Do you remember the sweet spot on the bomb I strapped to Julius?”
Holly felt as though her heart had expanded to fill her entire chest. “I remember.”
Opal’s eyes flared. “Well, there wasn’t one.”
Holly went for her gun, and Merv hit her in the chest with a blue charge. She was asleep before she hit the ground.
CHAPTER 6
TROLL NASTY
Under the Atlantic Ocean, Two Miles off the Kerry Coast, Irish Waters
Ten thousand feet below the surface of the Atlantic, an LEP sub-shuttle was speeding through a minor volcanic trench toward the mouth of a subterranean river. The river led to an LEP shuttleport where the subshuttle’s passengers could transfer to a regular craft.
The craft had three passengers and a pilot. The passengers were a dwarf felon and the two Atlantis marshals who were transporting him. Mulch Diggums, the felon in question, was in high spirits for someone in prison clothes. The reason being that his appeal had finally come through, and his lawyer was optimistic that all charges against his client were about to be quashed on a technicality.
Mulch Diggums was a tunnel dwarf who had abandoned the mines in favor of a life of crime. He removed items of value from Mud People’s houses and sold them on the black market. In the past few years his destiny had become intertwined with those of Artemis Fowl and Holly Short, and he had played a key part in their adventures. Inevitably this roller-coaster lifestyle had come crashing down around him as the long arm of the LEP closed in. Before he had been led away to serve the remainder of his sentence, Mulch Diggums was permitted to say good-bye to his human friend.
Artemis had given him two things: one was a note advising him to check the dates on the original search warrant for his cave. The other was a gold medallion to be returned to Artemis in two years. Apparently Artemis wished to resurrect their partnership at that time. Mulch had studied the medallion a thousand times, searching for its secrets, until his constant rubbing wore down the gold plating to reveal a computer disk beneath. Obviously Artemis had recorded a message to himself. A way to return the memories that the LEP had taken from him.
As soon as he had been transported to the Deeps Maximum Security Prison outside Atlantis, Mulch had put in a request for a counsel call. When his state-appointed attorney had grudgingly turned up, Mulch advised him to check the dates on the search warrant leading to his original arrest. Somehow, amazingly, the dates were wrong. According to the LEP computer, Julius Root had searched his cave before obtaining a search warrant. The warrant nullified this and all later arrests. All that remained was a lengthy processing period and one last interview with the arresting officer, and Mulch would be a free dwarf.
Finally, the day had come. Mulch was being shuttled to Police Plaza for his meeting with Julius Root. Fairy law allowed Root one thirty-minute interview to squeeze some kind of confession from Mulch. All the dwarf had to do was stay quiet, and he would be eating vole curry in his favorite dwarf chophouse by dinnertime.
Mulch closed his fist around the medallion. He had no doubt who was pulling the strings here. Somehow, Artemis had hacked the LEP computer and changed his records. The Mud Boy was setting him free.
One of the marshals, a slight elf with Atlantean gills, sucked a slobbery breath through his neck, letting it out through his mouth.
“Hey, Mulch,” he wheezed. “What are you going to do when your appeal is turned down? Are you gonna crack up like a little girl? Or are you gonna take it real stoic, like a dwarf should?”
Mulch smiled, exposing his unfeasibly large number of teeth. “Don’t worry about me, fishboy. I’ll be eating one of your cousins by tonight.”
Generally the sight of Mulch’s tombstone teeth was enough to freeze any smart-aleck comments, but the Marshal was not used to back talk from an inmate.
“Keep at it with the big mouth, dwarf. I have plenty of rocks for you to chew back in the Deeps.”
“In your dreams, fishboy,” retorted Mulch, enjoying the banter after months of kowtowing.
The officer rose to his feet. “It’s Vishby, the name is Vishby.”
“Yes, fishboy, that’s what I said.”
The second officer, a water sprite with batlike wings folded behind his back, chuckled. “Leave him alone, Vishby. Don’t you know who you’re talking to? This here is Mulch Diggums. The most famous thief under the world.”
Mulch smiled, though fame is not a good thing when you’re a thief.
“This guy has a whole list of genius moves to his credit.”
Mulch’s smile faded as he realized that he was about to be the butt of more jokes.
“Yeah, so, first he steals the Jules Rimet trophy from the humans and tries to sell it to an undercover LEP fairy.”
Vishby sat rubbing is hands in glee. “You don’t say? What a brain! How does it fit in that itty-bitty head?”
The sprite strutted along the shuttle’s aisle, delivering his lines like an actor. “So then he lifts some of the Artemis Fowl gold, and lays low in Los Angeles. And do you want to know how he lays low?”
Mulch groaned.
“Tell me,” wheezed Vishby, his gills unable to suck in air fast enough.
“He buys hisself a penthouse apartment and starts building a collection of stolen Academy Awards.”
Vishby laughed until his gills flapped.
Mulch could take it no longer. He shouldn’t have to put up with this; he was virtually a free fairy, for goodness’ sake. “Hisself? Hisself? I think you’ve spent a bit too long under water. The pressure is squashing your brain.”
“My brain is squashed?” said the sprite. “I’m not the one who spent a couple of centuries in prison. I’m not the one wearing manacles and a mouth ring.”
It was true. Mulch’s criminal career had not exactly been an unqualified success. He had been caught more than he’d escaped. The LEP was just too technologically advanced to evade. Maybe it was time to go straight, while he still had his looks.
Mulch shook the chains that shackled him to a rail in the holding area. “I won’t be wearing these for long.”
Vishby opened his mouth to respond, then paused. A plasma screen was flashing red on a wall panel. Red was urgent. There was an important message coming through. Vishby hooked an earphone
over his ear and turned the screen away from Mulch. As the message was delivered, his face lost every trace of levity. Several moments later, he tossed the headphones on the console.
“It looks like you’ll be wearing those chains for a bit longer than you thought.”
Mulch’s jaw strained against the steel mouth ring. “Why? What’s happened?”
Vishby scratched a strip of gill rot on his neck. “I shouldn’t tell you this, convict, but Commander Root has been murdered.”
Mulch couldn’t have been more shocked if they had connected him to the underworld grid.
“Murdered? How?”
“Explosion,” said Vishby. “Another LEP officer is the prime suspect. Captain Holly Short. She’s missing, presumed dead on the surface, but that hasn’t been confirmed.”