The Eternity Code (Artemis Fowl 3)

Holly drew her Neutrino 2000 from its holster. “I’ll just have to trip this switch myself.”

Captain Short sealed her helmet and climbed into the wagon’s cab. She avoided touching metal wherever possible, because even though microfilaments in her LEP jumpsuit were designed to disperse extra heat, microfilaments didn’t always do what they were designed to do. The goblins were on their backs, pumping fireball after fireball into the roof panels.

“Knock it off!” she ordered, pointing her laser’s muzzle through the mesh.

Three of the goblins ignored her. One, possibly the leader, turned his scaly face to the grille. Holly saw that he had gotten eyeball tattoos. This act of supreme stupidity probably would have guaranteed him promotion had the B’wa Kell not been effectively disbanded.

“You will not be able to get us all, elf,” he said, smoke leaking from his mouth and slitted nostrils. “Then one of us will get you.”

The goblin was right, even if he did not realize why. Holly suddenly remembered that she could not fire during a lockdown. Regulations stated that there were to be no unshielded power surges, in case Haven was being probed.

Her hesitation was all the proof the goblin needed.

“I knew it!” he crowed, tossing a casual fireball at the grille. The mesh glowed red and sparks cascaded against Holly’s visor. Over the goblins’ heads, the roof sagged dangerously. A few more seconds and it would collapse.

Holly unclipped a piton dart from her belt, screwing it into the launcher above the Neutrino’s main barrel. The launcher was spring-loaded, like an old-fashioned spear-gun, and would not give off a heat flash. Nothing to alarm any sensors.

The goblin was highly amused, as goblins often are just before incarceration, which explains why so many are incarcerated.

“A dart? You going to prod us all to death, little elf?”

Holly aimed at a clip protruding from the fire foam nozzle in the rear of the wagon.

“Would you please be quiet,” she said, and launched the dart. It flew over the goblin’s head, jamming itself between the rods of the nozzle clip. The piton cord stretched the length of the wagon.

“Missed me,” said the goblin, waggling his forked tongue. It was a testament to the goblin’s stupidity that he could be trapped in a melting vehicle during a lockdown with an LEP officer firing at him, and still think he had the upper hand.

“I told you to be quiet!” said Holly, pulling sharply on the piton cord and snapping the clip.

Eight hundred kilograms of extinguisher foam blasted from the diffuser nozzle at over two hundred miles per hour. Needless to say, all fireballs went out. The goblins were pinned by the force of the already hardening foam. The goblin leader was pressed so forcibly against the grille that his tattooed eyes were easily legible. One said MOMMY, the other DUDDY. A misspelling, though he probably didn’t know it.

“Ow,” he said. More from disbelief than pain. He didn’t say anything else, because his mouth was full of congealing foam.

“Don’t worry,” said Holly. “The foam is porous, so you will be able to breathe, but it’s also completely fireproof, so good luck trying to burn your way out.”

Grub was still examining his hangnail when Holly emerged from the van. She removed her helmet, wiping away the soot with the sleeve of her jumpsuit. The visor was supposed to be nonstick; maybe she should send it in for another coating.

“Everything all right?” asked Grub.

“Yes, Corporal. Everything is all right. No thanks to you.”

Grub had the audacity to look offended. “I was securing the perimeter, Captain. We can’t all be action heroes.”

That was typical Grub, an excuse for every occasion. She could deal with him later. Now it was vital that she get to Police Plaza and find out why the Council had shut down the city.

“I think we should get back to HQ,” Grub offered. “The intelligence boys might want to interview me if the humans are invading.”

“I think I should get back to HQ,” said Holly. “You stay here and keep an eye on the suspects until the power comes back on. Do you think you can handle that? Or are you too incapacitated with that hangnail?”

Holly’s red 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 toward Police Plaza.

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

Police Plaza was mobbed by inquiring 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 apart from those, the LEP headquarters was the only government building still functioning.

Holly forced her way through the crowd, into the lobby area. The public service lines 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 situation room, 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 ll 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. Mr. 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 okay?” he whispered.

“He got a hangnail.”

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

Foaly, a centaur, trotted through the doors, clutching armfuls of disks. Foaly was the LEP’s technical genius, and his security innovations were the main reason that humans had not yet discovered the subterranean fairy hideaway. Maybe that was about to change. The centaur expertly loaded the disks, opening several windows on a wall-size plasma screen. Several 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 had been 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.