But those plans could wait until she was empress. For now the lemur was her priority. Without its brain fluid, it could take years to accomplish her plans. Plus, magic was so much easier than science.
Opal slotted Holly’s helmet onto her head. Pads inside the helmet automatically inflated to cradle her skull. There was some coded security, which she contemptuously hacked with a series of blinks and hand movements. These LEP helmets were not half as advanced as the models in her R&D department.
Once the helmet’s functions were open to her, the visor’s display crystals fizzled and turned scarlet. Red alert! Something was closing in. A 3-D radar sweep revealed a small craft overhead, and recognition software quickly pegged it as a human-built Cessna.
She quickly selected the command sequence for a thermal scan, and the helmet infrared detector analyzed the electromagnetic radiation coming from inside the aircraft. There was some waffle from the solar panels, but the scan isolated an orange blob in the pilot’s seat. One passenger only. The helmet’s biometric reader conveniently identified the pilot as Artemis Fowl, and dropped a 3-D icon over his fuzzy figure.
“One passenger,” murmured Opal. “Are you trying to decoy me away from the house, Artemis Fowl? Is that why you fly so low?”
But Artemis Fowl knew technology; he would anticipate thermal imaging.
“What do you have up your sleeve?” wondered the pixie. “Or perhaps up your shirt.”
She magnified Artemis’s heart and discovered a second heat source superimposed over the first, distinguishable only by a slightly cooler shade of red.
Even at that desperate moment, Opal could not help but admire this young human, who had attempted to mask the lemur’s heat signature with his own.
“Clever. But not ingenious.”
And he would need to be ingenious to defeat Opal Koboi. Bringing back the second Artemis had been a neat trick, but she should have caught it.
I was defeated by my own arrogance, she realized. That will not happen again.
The helmet automatically tuned into the Cessna’s radio frequency, and so Opal sent Artemis a little message.
“I am coming for the lemur, boy,” she said, a pulse of magic setting the suit’s wings aflutter. “And this time there will be no you to save you.”
Artemis could not feel or see the various waves that probed the Cessna, but he guessed that Opal would use the helmet’s thermal imager to see how many hot bodies were on the plane. Perhaps she would try X-ray too. It would seem as though he was trying to hide Jayjay’s heat signature with his own, but that was a transparent ploy and should not fool Opal for more than a heartbeat. When the pixie was satisfied that her prize was escaping, then how could she not follow?
Artemis banked starboard to keep Opal in the camera eye, and was satisfied to see a set of wings sliding from the slots in Holly’s suit.
The chase is on.
Time for the bait to pretend it is trying to escape.
Artemis peeled away from the estate, heading for the deep purple sea, opening the throttle wide, satisfied by the plane’s smooth acceleration. The batteries were channeling a steady supply of power to the engines without releasing one gram of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
He checked the tail camera view and was not totally surprised to find the flying pixie in his monitor.
Her control over the magic is addled by the sedative, he guessed. Opal may have had barely enough power to jump-start the suit. But soon the dart’s aftereffects will peter out and then there may be lightning bolts flaring across my wing.
Artemis turned south, following the jagged coast. The clamor and bustle of Dublin’s high-rise apartment blocks, belching chimneys, and swarm of buzzing helicopters gave way to long stretches of gray rock shadowed by the north-south rail track. The sea pushed against the shore, folding its million fingers over sand, scrub, and shale.
Fishing boats chugged from buoy to buoy, trailing white sea-serpent wakes, sailors snagging lobster pots with long-handled gaffs. Fat clouds hung ponderously at twelve thousand feet, rain brewing in their bellies.
A peaceful evening, so long as no one looks up.
Though at this altitude, Opal’s blurred flying form could be mistaken for an eagle.
Artemis’s plan went smoothly for longer than he had hoped. He made sixty miles without interference from Opal. He allowed himself a glimmer of hope.
Soon, he thought. The LEP reinforcements will come soon.
Then his radio crackled into life. “Artemis? Are you there, Artemis?”
Butler. He sounded extremely calm, which he always did before he explained just how serious a situation was.
“Butler, old friend. I’m here. Tell me the good news.”
The bodyguard sighed into his microphone, a breaking wave of static.
“They’re not coming after the Cessna. You are not the priority.”
“No1 is,” said Artemis. “They need to get him below-ground. I understand.”
“Yes. Him and . . .”
“Say no more, old friend,” said Artemis sharply. “Opal is listening.”
“The LEP are here, Artemis. I want you to turn around and fly back.”
“No,” said Artemis firmly. “I will not put Mother at risk again.”
Artemis heard a strange creaking sound and surmised that Butler was strangling the microphone stalk.
“Very well. Another location, then. Someplace where we can dig ourselves in.”
“Very well, I am on a southerly heading anyway, so why not—”
Artemis didn’t complete his veiled suggestion, as his channel was blocked by a deafening burst of white noise. The squawk left a droning aftershock in his ears, and for a moment he allowed the Cessna to drift.
No sooner had he regained control than a thudding blow to the fuselage caused him to lose it again.
Several red lights flashed on the solar panel display-plane icon. At least ten panels had been shattered by the impact.
Artemis spared half a second to check the rear camera. Opal was no longer trailing behind him. No surprise there.
The pixie’s voice burst through the radio speakers, sharp with petulance and evil intent.
“I am strong now, Mud Boy,” she said. “Your poison is gone, flushed from my system. My power grows, and I am hungry for more.”
Artemis did not engage in conversation. All his skill and quick thinking would be needed to pilot the Cessna.
Opal struck again on the port wing, smashing her forearms into the solar panels and breaking them as a child would break sheets of ice in a pool, windmilling her arms gleefully, wings buzzing to keep pace. The plane bucked and yawed, and Artemis fought the stick to pull the craft level.
She’s insane, thought Artemis. Utterly insane.
And then: Those panels are unique. And she calls herself a scientist.
Opal scampered along the wing, punching an armored fist into the fuselage itself. More panels were obliterated, and tiny fist-size dents buckled the polymer over Artemis’s shoulder. Tiny cracks ran along the dents, slit by the wind.
Opal’s voice was loud in the speaker. “Land, Fowl. Land and I may not return to the manor when I have finished with you. Land! Land!”
Each order to land was emphasized by another blow on the cockpit. The windshield exploded inward, showering Artemis with jagged chunks of Plexiglas.
“Land! Land!”
You have the product, Artemis reminded himself. So you have the power. Opal cannot afford to kill Jayjay.
The wind screamed in Artemis’s face, and the readings from his flight instruments made no sense, unless Opal was scrambling them with the LEP suit’s field. But Artemis still had a chance. There was fight left in this Fowl.
He pointed the nose downward, banking sharply left. Opal kept pace easily, tearing strips from the fuselage. She was a destructive shadow in the dimming dusk light.
Artemis could smell the sea.
I am too low. Too soon.
More r
ed lights on the instrument panel. The power supply had been cut. The batteries were breached. The altimeter whirred and beeped.
Opal was at the side window. Artemis could see her tiny teeth grinning at him. She was saying something. Shouting. But the radio was not operational anymore. Just as well, probably.