Chapter Five: To Break The Barrier
Opal Kaboi drew her knees to her chest, giggling wickedly as she wrapped her arms about her ankles. It was the trademark Kaboi giggle: high, chilling, malicious, anticipating. Just the sort of evil sound you would expect from an escaped prisoner.
She drew in a long breath of satisfaction, surveying her surroundings. The LEP were stupid, really; after her capture, they had merely closed down her laboratories, not destroyed them. As a further insult to her capability, they had put a trio sprite guard on the front doors. Three winged idiots!
Honestly. That was not enough to stop her!
After she had left the Arctic pinnacle, Opal had calmed down a little. Rationalize, she told herself, think small. For now. Where would the LEP expect her to go?
Laboratories. A flicker of remembrance stirred in her memory. She had been wealthy, she had had great security-tight foundations where Foaly's overblown system was only so much dust beneath her feet.
Would the LEP expect her to go there?
The pixie smiled grimly. They wouldn't, she was sure. That had been her downfall; her own laboratories had been breached and overridden by a small group of enemies! Shame and boiling anger rose in her throat, but she bit it back. Now was not the time to stew over her folly.
An hour later, sitting on an outcrop overlooking her former domain, Opal realized she had been right. Even Root, her so-called-intelligent nemesis, had put three sprites as a guard against any who wanted to chance the deserted labs.
She had rid herself of them easily.
Pity blood and brain fluid was so hard to scrub out of doormats.
Entering the silent, shadowed building, the pixie felt another wave of bile in her chest. Rage burned her eyes. Officers from Recon and Retrieval alike had destroyed everything, computers, hardware, diskettes, microns, the lot. Filth and trash were heaped in the corners. Apparently Foaly hadn't even bothered to check her superior network.
Despite her fury, Opal had to grin. The centaur was as vain as ever, a bonus to her plan. He, then, did not know about her restored ability to hack into his files.
Oh, the stupidity! It galled her to think that the entire LEP was still using his technology! Foaly had left her with the one tool she had used to disrupt the entire underground only two years ago.
"Oh, Foaly," she breathed, laughing as she made her way down a flight of stairs, "when will you learn to shelve your pride?"
Every computer on all six floors was destroyed, every file of data wiped.
Except for one.
Still laughing over the folly of her enemy, Opal descended to the lowest level, glancing furtively over her shoulder, then giggling at herself. "Silly - no one's here." Turning back to the shadowy corners, she rubbed her knuckles gleefully.
The restoration of the Kaboi Empire had begun.
As her fingers kneaded a small chip implanted in her bone, a light flicked on above the blackest shelf. It flashed green, signifying her password was still valid, and burst into light. Another green knob at the opposite side of the room met the beam in midair, causing a green arch over Opal's head.
A door flickered into being under the radiant light, its frame melded to meet the arch exactly. The pixie put her hand on the knob, and pushed. It swung open, her secret dimensional hideout.
As she surveyed the contents of the untouched room, the prisoner opened her mouth and let out a long, shrill, demonic cry of laughter. She had thwarted them, even miles away in Howler's Peak; they had not ruined the plans she had begun two years before.
Trembling with pride and anticipation, Opal let out another high-pitched giggle, which echoed and rang from the dome of her hideout, until a thousand Kabois were cackling and chuckling and triumphing with her.
It went on and on and on and on -
*
Holly sat up in bed, sweating, both hands clutching her cot quilt to her chin. She cast her eyes about the room warily. "Opal," she whispered. "What have we done?"
Cautiously, she made her way over to her wardrobe, where she suited up and left her quarters anxiously. Her dream - was it a dream? - was all the more worrying with Commander Root out of action. His Retrieval team had returned a few days before, all severely wounded by mortal combat with the troll. Their guns had been put out of commission early on; Root had made one of his first mistakes in putting shooters up front. Eight feet against three feet. The boys had been stepped on.
Hard.
Neither she nor Foaly relished the idea of telling him that not only was the best Retrieval squad out of it, Opal Kaboi was loose once more.
The thought made her cringe.
But he would have to be told. Sooner or later. Especially if her vision wasn't false, and the pixie had returned to her laboratory.
There was one way to be sure.
Stealthily, silently, Holly made her way through the almost-empty highways towards the Ops Booth. Foaly, who insisted that he worked "late hours", snored softly on a plaid couch that the commander had always described as tasteless.
Snickering at the memory, the elf slipped past her sleeping friend to the experiment rooms in the back. She knew that Foaly's new idea, to use the mesmer on animals, had more to it than the Council would admit. The centaur had already taken the tested theory to them twice. Both times he had been rejected. Use of mesmer on fellow creatures - aside from humans - was strongly discouraged.
Tonight, however, the Captain would risk it.
Plucking a translator from the shelf, she smiled to herself and walked into a small chamber, where sat one of the only species of life underground; a swear toad.
"Shit," it said, looking up at her.
Holly's translator crackled, until she heard the toad in Gnomish instead of. . . well, swear toad language. "What do you want?" the toad was saying.
A thought struck the elf and she went to get another translator. No point in ordering this creature about if it couldn't tell what she was saying.
Positioning the new crescent next to where she thought its ear was, she said, "I am an elf. I won't hurt you."
Amusingly, her words crackled out of the translator as, "Bleeding hell!"
The swear toad went cross-eyed. "Fu-"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Holly snarled as this was transformed into "Elves are the enemy!" Somehow, she wasn't surprised by its reaction.
As she picked it up, the toad bit her thumb until it drew blood, saying, "Damn asshole!"
There was no translation for this. The captain supposed she ought to be grateful - swear words in Gnomish shattered the eardrums - but all she found was hatred for this contemptible little thing. "I feel the same," she muttered, gingerly holding the critter at arm's length.
It snorted, swore, and peed on her.
The remnant of Holly's patience could be found fifty miles away and counting. "You wretched brat, you wait till I-"
"Yes?"
Foaly stood in the doorway, watching the elf as she slung the swear toad away from her, dripping urine and red with rage.
Upon seeing him, she blushed and snarled. "One word, pony-boy. One word of this spreads through the LEP and I kick some butt."
The centaur snickered. "More like Root everyday, aren't you, bushy?"
The captain was about to inquire about her new nickname when she remembered that Mud Men had a winter hemlock called holly. Sullenly, she pointed at the swear toad. "Can you," she said, breathing hard, "remove this - thing - or at least get it to shut up?"
"I can do both," Foaly remarked. "I can also get a plug for him, if you like."
Holly bit back a chuckle as she looked down at her sodden suit. "That would be lovely."
"Bit cruel though."
"Maybe, but it'll make me feel better."
"What were you planning on using him for?"
Hesitantly, Holly told him about her dream, and how she was going to mesmer the toad to go to Kaboi Labs so she could see if it was only a vision.
"It was so real though, Foaly," she finished.
He was already picking out an eye-cam. "Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. With Root out, we have to be extra careful. Muddling along without a commander is hard. I can't wait till you get your own commander acorns."
Seeing her amazed look, he added, "Don't you ever tell Julius I called muddling without him hard. He'll gloat for a year."
"No - of course not - Foaly, what commander acorns???"
Startled at her surprise, Foaly affirmed his belief. "You're the first ever girl in Recon. Look at the younger female elves; you're their idol. You have wit, you keep your head, you're smart and brave. It's only a matter of time before the Council realizes how many times you've saved their -"
"- asses," put in the swear toad, who was listening with interest through the translator.
The centaur grinned. "Exactly." Thoughtful, Holly drew herself up. "Then let's get started. Kaboi could bring the whole Council to their knees with her labs."
"Damned f-" the toad interrupted. ("By the way, if you get a plug, I'll feed it to you.")
Laughing, the captain remarked, "Did that sound exactly like a certain snobbish centaur in this vicinity to you, Foaly, or is it just me?"
Turning his back, Foaly pretended not to hear.
*
Opal Kaboi scowled as the results of her survey flashed up on the computer screen. Apparently, a year before, the last of her ties to Foaly's network had been erased. Had she known this had caused a large delay in rescuing Artemis Fowl from a nonexistent fictional world, she might have been satisfied. As it was, she found herself annoyed.
No matter - she could hack into the system again. Typing in the code as she remembered it, Opal fed his computer system number into her data.
1165811. . . 1165811. . .
The digits rolled on the screen in Gnomish, and then she was through. Stupid fool - he hadn't even erased his former password.
Idiot.
Smugly, she paged through his files, wondering what the fool had been up to. A document called "Records of Fowl travel" caught her eye; she clicked on it. Her smugness turned to interest and then to astonishment as she began to read the reports aloud.
" 'Artemis Fowl has been sent to Middle-Earth through an irresponsible wish on unsupervised elf healing magic.' 'Artemis Fowl is endangered by the Orc armies in the nonexistent world and an eight-hour time limit.' 'Artemis Fowl has been recovered through the reprogramming of a bio-bomb. . .' holy shit!" Opal shrieked.
This was it. Nonexistent worlds. . . Orc armies. . . This, by God, was how she would return to power.
In style.
Jumping from her seat at the computer, the pixie paced. It was perfect. Elf healing magic. . . Her mind raced. She needed an elf. A wounded elf, so she could use his magic to summon the evil forces of Middle-Earth and cover Haven with a second darkness. ((A/N: I love that phrase!))
Turning back to the files, she selected the most recent entry; "Troll Defeats #1 Retrieval Team."
As she read, her bliss grew. The top LEP squad was out of commission, and Julius Root, her old nemesis, was badly hurt, with a head wound, sluggish thigh bleeding, and a broken arm.
Clapping her hands in glee, Opal Kaboi laughed. Healing magic would allow her to summon an army. Root, her enemy, was injured. Their best men were mostly unconscious. Above all, she had technology that surpassed that dim centaur's.
Everything was perfect.
Haven would be hers in a fortnight. All she needed was blood.
Blood and a bio-bomb. . .
Opal Kaboi drew her knees to her chest, giggling wickedly as she wrapped her arms about her ankles. It was the trademark Kaboi giggle: high, chilling, malicious, anticipating. Just the sort of evil sound you would expect from an escaped prisoner.
She drew in a long breath of satisfaction, surveying her surroundings. The LEP were stupid, really; after her capture, they had merely closed down her laboratories, not destroyed them. As a further insult to her capability, they had put a trio sprite guard on the front doors. Three winged idiots!
Honestly. That was not enough to stop her!
After she had left the Arctic pinnacle, Opal had calmed down a little. Rationalize, she told herself, think small. For now. Where would the LEP expect her to go?
Laboratories. A flicker of remembrance stirred in her memory. She had been wealthy, she had had great security-tight foundations where Foaly's overblown system was only so much dust beneath her feet.
Would the LEP expect her to go there?
The pixie smiled grimly. They wouldn't, she was sure. That had been her downfall; her own laboratories had been breached and overridden by a small group of enemies! Shame and boiling anger rose in her throat, but she bit it back. Now was not the time to stew over her folly.
An hour later, sitting on an outcrop overlooking her former domain, Opal realized she had been right. Even Root, her so-called-intelligent nemesis, had put three sprites as a guard against any who wanted to chance the deserted labs.
She had rid herself of them easily.
Pity blood and brain fluid was so hard to scrub out of doormats.
Entering the silent, shadowed building, the pixie felt another wave of bile in her chest. Rage burned her eyes. Officers from Recon and Retrieval alike had destroyed everything, computers, hardware, diskettes, microns, the lot. Filth and trash were heaped in the corners. Apparently Foaly hadn't even bothered to check her superior network.
Despite her fury, Opal had to grin. The centaur was as vain as ever, a bonus to her plan. He, then, did not know about her restored ability to hack into his files.
Oh, the stupidity! It galled her to think that the entire LEP was still using his technology! Foaly had left her with the one tool she had used to disrupt the entire underground only two years ago.
"Oh, Foaly," she breathed, laughing as she made her way down a flight of stairs, "when will you learn to shelve your pride?"
Every computer on all six floors was destroyed, every file of data wiped.
Except for one.
Still laughing over the folly of her enemy, Opal descended to the lowest level, glancing furtively over her shoulder, then giggling at herself. "Silly - no one's here." Turning back to the shadowy corners, she rubbed her knuckles gleefully.
The restoration of the Kaboi Empire had begun.
As her fingers kneaded a small chip implanted in her bone, a light flicked on above the blackest shelf. It flashed green, signifying her password was still valid, and burst into light. Another green knob at the opposite side of the room met the beam in midair, causing a green arch over Opal's head.
A door flickered into being under the radiant light, its frame melded to meet the arch exactly. The pixie put her hand on the knob, and pushed. It swung open, her secret dimensional hideout.
As she surveyed the contents of the untouched room, the prisoner opened her mouth and let out a long, shrill, demonic cry of laughter. She had thwarted them, even miles away in Howler's Peak; they had not ruined the plans she had begun two years before.
Trembling with pride and anticipation, Opal let out another high-pitched giggle, which echoed and rang from the dome of her hideout, until a thousand Kabois were cackling and chuckling and triumphing with her.
It went on and on and on and on -
*
Holly sat up in bed, sweating, both hands clutching her cot quilt to her chin. She cast her eyes about the room warily. "Opal," she whispered. "What have we done?"
Cautiously, she made her way over to her wardrobe, where she suited up and left her quarters anxiously. Her dream - was it a dream? - was all the more worrying with Commander Root out of action. His Retrieval team had returned a few days before, all severely wounded by mortal combat with the troll. Their guns had been put out of commission early on; Root had made one of his first mistakes in putting shooters up front. Eight feet against three feet. The boys had been stepped on.
Hard.
Neither she nor Foaly relished the idea of telling him that not only was the best Retrieval squad out of it, Opal Kaboi was loose once more.
The thought made her cringe.
But he would have to be told. Sooner or later. Especially if her vision wasn't false, and the pixie had returned to her laboratory.
There was one way to be sure.
Stealthily, silently, Holly made her way through the almost-empty highways towards the Ops Booth. Foaly, who insisted that he worked "late hours", snored softly on a plaid couch that the commander had always described as tasteless.
Snickering at the memory, the elf slipped past her sleeping friend to the experiment rooms in the back. She knew that Foaly's new idea, to use the mesmer on animals, had more to it than the Council would admit. The centaur had already taken the tested theory to them twice. Both times he had been rejected. Use of mesmer on fellow creatures - aside from humans - was strongly discouraged.
Tonight, however, the Captain would risk it.
Plucking a translator from the shelf, she smiled to herself and walked into a small chamber, where sat one of the only species of life underground; a swear toad.
"Shit," it said, looking up at her.
Holly's translator crackled, until she heard the toad in Gnomish instead of. . . well, swear toad language. "What do you want?" the toad was saying.
A thought struck the elf and she went to get another translator. No point in ordering this creature about if it couldn't tell what she was saying.
Positioning the new crescent next to where she thought its ear was, she said, "I am an elf. I won't hurt you."
Amusingly, her words crackled out of the translator as, "Bleeding hell!"
The swear toad went cross-eyed. "Fu-"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Holly snarled as this was transformed into "Elves are the enemy!" Somehow, she wasn't surprised by its reaction.
As she picked it up, the toad bit her thumb until it drew blood, saying, "Damn asshole!"
There was no translation for this. The captain supposed she ought to be grateful - swear words in Gnomish shattered the eardrums - but all she found was hatred for this contemptible little thing. "I feel the same," she muttered, gingerly holding the critter at arm's length.
It snorted, swore, and peed on her.
The remnant of Holly's patience could be found fifty miles away and counting. "You wretched brat, you wait till I-"
"Yes?"
Foaly stood in the doorway, watching the elf as she slung the swear toad away from her, dripping urine and red with rage.
Upon seeing him, she blushed and snarled. "One word, pony-boy. One word of this spreads through the LEP and I kick some butt."
The centaur snickered. "More like Root everyday, aren't you, bushy?"
The captain was about to inquire about her new nickname when she remembered that Mud Men had a winter hemlock called holly. Sullenly, she pointed at the swear toad. "Can you," she said, breathing hard, "remove this - thing - or at least get it to shut up?"
"I can do both," Foaly remarked. "I can also get a plug for him, if you like."
Holly bit back a chuckle as she looked down at her sodden suit. "That would be lovely."
"Bit cruel though."
"Maybe, but it'll make me feel better."
"What were you planning on using him for?"
Hesitantly, Holly told him about her dream, and how she was going to mesmer the toad to go to Kaboi Labs so she could see if it was only a vision.
"It was so real though, Foaly," she finished.
He was already picking out an eye-cam. "Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. With Root out, we have to be extra careful. Muddling along without a commander is hard. I can't wait till you get your own commander acorns."
Seeing her amazed look, he added, "Don't you ever tell Julius I called muddling without him hard. He'll gloat for a year."
"No - of course not - Foaly, what commander acorns???"
Startled at her surprise, Foaly affirmed his belief. "You're the first ever girl in Recon. Look at the younger female elves; you're their idol. You have wit, you keep your head, you're smart and brave. It's only a matter of time before the Council realizes how many times you've saved their -"
"- asses," put in the swear toad, who was listening with interest through the translator.
The centaur grinned. "Exactly." Thoughtful, Holly drew herself up. "Then let's get started. Kaboi could bring the whole Council to their knees with her labs."
"Damned f-" the toad interrupted. ("By the way, if you get a plug, I'll feed it to you.")
Laughing, the captain remarked, "Did that sound exactly like a certain snobbish centaur in this vicinity to you, Foaly, or is it just me?"
Turning his back, Foaly pretended not to hear.
*
Opal Kaboi scowled as the results of her survey flashed up on the computer screen. Apparently, a year before, the last of her ties to Foaly's network had been erased. Had she known this had caused a large delay in rescuing Artemis Fowl from a nonexistent fictional world, she might have been satisfied. As it was, she found herself annoyed.
No matter - she could hack into the system again. Typing in the code as she remembered it, Opal fed his computer system number into her data.
1165811. . . 1165811. . .
The digits rolled on the screen in Gnomish, and then she was through. Stupid fool - he hadn't even erased his former password.
Idiot.
Smugly, she paged through his files, wondering what the fool had been up to. A document called "Records of Fowl travel" caught her eye; she clicked on it. Her smugness turned to interest and then to astonishment as she began to read the reports aloud.
" 'Artemis Fowl has been sent to Middle-Earth through an irresponsible wish on unsupervised elf healing magic.' 'Artemis Fowl is endangered by the Orc armies in the nonexistent world and an eight-hour time limit.' 'Artemis Fowl has been recovered through the reprogramming of a bio-bomb. . .' holy shit!" Opal shrieked.
This was it. Nonexistent worlds. . . Orc armies. . . This, by God, was how she would return to power.
In style.
Jumping from her seat at the computer, the pixie paced. It was perfect. Elf healing magic. . . Her mind raced. She needed an elf. A wounded elf, so she could use his magic to summon the evil forces of Middle-Earth and cover Haven with a second darkness. ((A/N: I love that phrase!))
Turning back to the files, she selected the most recent entry; "Troll Defeats #1 Retrieval Team."
As she read, her bliss grew. The top LEP squad was out of commission, and Julius Root, her old nemesis, was badly hurt, with a head wound, sluggish thigh bleeding, and a broken arm.
Clapping her hands in glee, Opal Kaboi laughed. Healing magic would allow her to summon an army. Root, her enemy, was injured. Their best men were mostly unconscious. Above all, she had technology that surpassed that dim centaur's.
Everything was perfect.
Haven would be hers in a fortnight. All she needed was blood.
Blood and a bio-bomb. . .