Chute E37, Haven
The unlikely allies took the goblin shuttle up E37. Captain Short was none too pleased. And, upon seeing the craft, Alex could see why. While he'd be the first to admit he was nowhere near an expert, he could tell the craft wasn't sturdy.
"Uh, is this thing…safe?" He asked as they boarded.
"Well, it worked for the goblins." Artemis replied, setting a hand on his shoulder. Then he spotted the Captain in the cockpit, seeming to have a similar conversation with Foaly. "Excuse me a moment."
"Arty, what are you doing?" He asked cautiously.
"Just going to see if I can get a bit more information—it could help with the rescue mission."
With that Artemis ducked into the cockpit, settling into the copilot's seat, which Captain Short looked even less pleased about than the shuttle.
Alex sighed. "They're gonna kill each other aren't they?"
"…Probably." Butler rumbled.
"Okay, Mud Boy, listen up. I'm only saying this once." The Captain's voice said from the cockpit.
Artemis sat up in his seat. Butler ducked his head into the space. He could smell a war story. Alex quickly followed by climbing up the man's back and settling on his shoulders—admittedly not an uncommon position.
"Over the past two centuries, with the advances in human technology, the LEP have been forced to shut down over sixty terminals. We pulled out of northern Russia in the sixties. The entire Kola peninsula is a nuclear disaster. The People have no tolerance for radiation, we never built up a resistance. In truth, there wasn't much to close down. Just a grade-three terminal and a couple of cloaking projectors. The People aren't very fond of the Arctic. A bit frosty. Everybody was glad to be leaving. So, to answer your question: there's one unmanned terminal, with little or no aboveground facilities, located about twenty klicks north of Murmansk."
Foaly's voice blurted from the intercom, interrupting what was dangerously close to a civil conversation.
"Okay, Captain. You've got a clear run to the subway. There's still a bit of waffle from the last flare, so go easy on the thrusters."
With that, Butler dragged him back to the passenger area as Captain Short pulled down her mouth mike to respond. The bodyguard promptly strapped the younger boy in before taking his own seat.
Captain Short gunned the makeshift shuttle down the magnetized approach rail. The fins shook, sending twin waves of sparks cascading past the portholes. Catching his eye, Alex leaned closer to the porthole at his side. Their approach down the rail reminded him of an amusement park ride he'd gone on with his friends a couple weeks earlier. He wasn't sure if it was the restraining harness strung over his chest and shoulders or the metal rail underneath them.
"Okay. Well, let's see what this bucket can do."
Or it could be the fact that Captain Short was driving.
"Don't go trying for any records, Holly," Foaly said over the speakers. "That ship is not built for speed. I've seen more aerodynamic dwarves."
The Captain grunted. Alex got the feeling "going easy" wasn't in her nature. Especially not with his brother aboard.
Finally, the service tunnel opened into the main chute.
"Whoa." Alex gasped, pressing his palms and cheeks to the window—resulting in a warning from Artemis that he didn't hear. The vertical-turned tunnel was enormous, you could drop five Fowl Manors, with all of the surrounding lands, down this tunnel and still have plenty of room at the sides. The crimson glow from beneath them and the sharp rocks constantly smacking into them only added to the feeling he was on some sort of ride.
Then the shuttle's engines lit up and the four of them tumbled downward.
He guessed that the ride was starting.
On instinct he pressed his head into the headrest of his seat and gripped the harness straps at his shoulders. Even through the thick straps he could feel the G-force lifting him out of his seat.
The Captain Short must've decided to take Foaly's apparent advice and the craft turned horizontal and headed upward.
Both Artemis and Butler sighed in relief (which, under normal circumstances, would've greatly surprised him). Alex meant to do the same, but what came out instead was an airy, exhilarated laugh. Which earned him funny looks from the pilot and both passengers.
E37 Shuttleport
Holly steered the slammer through the chute's final section. A proximity sensor in the shuttle's nose set off the landing lights.
"Hmm," muttered Holly.
Artemis squinted through the quartz windshield.
"A problem?"
"No. it's just that those lights shouldn't be working. There hasn't been a power source in the terminal since the last century."
"Our goblin friends, no doubt."
Holly frowned. "Doubtful. It takes half a dozen goblins to turn on a glow cube. Wiring a shuttleport takes real know-how. Elfin know-how."
"The plot thickens," said Artemis. If he'd had a beard, he would have stroked it. "I smell a traitor. Now who would have access to all this technology, and a motive for selling it?"
Holly pointed the shuttle's cone toward the landing nodes.
"We'll find out soon enough. You just get me a live trader, and my mesmer will soon have him spilling his guts."
The shuttle docked with a pneumatic hiss at the bay's rubber collar formed an airtight seal against the outer hull. Butler was out of his chair before the seatbelt light winked off, ready for action. Alex, however, seemed to have more trouble with the Fairy buckles. If he got any more frustrated, he would resort to the techniques he used to get out of his car seat as a toddler—mainly kicking his legs, punching the buttons, or knowing at the straps.
"Just don't kill anyone," warned Holly. "That's not how the LEP like to operate. Anyway, dead Mud Men don't rat on their partners." She brought up a schematic depicting Paris's old city on the wall screen as Butler helped Alex detangle himself from his harness. "Okay," she said, pointing to a bridge across the Seine. "'We're here. Under this bridge, two hundred feet from Notre Dame."
"The football team or the cathedral?" Alex asked as Butler lifted him out of his seat.
"The cathedral," Holly answered. "The dock is disguised as a bridge support. Stand in the doorway until I give you a green light. We have to be careful here. The last thing we need is some Parisian seeing you emerge from a brick wall."
"You're not accompanying us?" asked Artemis.
"Orders," said Holly, scowling. "Apparently this could be a trap. Who knows what hardware is pointed at the terminal door? Lucky for you, you're expendable. Irish tourists on holiday, you'll fit right in."
"Yeah, lucky us." Alex chirped, half nervous and half sarcastic, from his brother's side.
"What leads do we have?" Artemis inquired.
Holly slid a disk into a console. "Foaly stuck his Retimager on the goblin prisoner. Apparently he has seen this human."
The captain brought up a mug shot on the screen.
"Foaly got a match on his Interpol files. Luc Carrère. Disbarred attorney, does a bit of P.I. work."
She printed off a card. "Here's his address. He just moved to a swanky new apartment. It could be nothing, but at least we have somewhere to start. I need you to immobilize him, and show him this." Holly handed the bodyguard what looked like a diver's watch.
"What's that?" Alex asked.
"A com-screen. Butler, you just put it in front of Carrère's face and I can mesmerize the truth out of him from down here. It also contains one of Foaly's doodads. A personal shield. The Safetynet. A prototype, you'll be delighted to know. You can have the honor of testing it. Touch the screen, and the micro reactor generates a six-foot diameter sphere of tri-phased light. No good for solids but laser bursts or concussion shocks are okay."
"Uh, we don't get a lot of either of those up here." Alex chirped.
Holly shrugged. "Well don't use it. Do I care?"
Butler studied the tiny instrument. "Six-foot diameter? What about the bits that are sticking out?"
Holly thumped the manservant playfully in the stomach. "My advice to you, big man: curl up in a ball."
"I'll try to remember that," said Butler, cinching the strap around his wrist. "You three try not to kill each other while I'm gone."
The Fowl boys were surprised, something that didn't happen very often in Artemis's case.
"While you're gone? Surely, you don't expect me to stay behind."
Alex's expression soured at the singular pronoun while Butler simply tapped his forehead.
"Don't worry, you two will see everything on the iris-cam."
Artemis fumed for several moments before settling into a passenger chair. Unlike Alex, whose fuming time was better described as "infinite".
"I know," the older boy said. "I would only slow you down, and that in turn would slow down the search for my father."
"Of course, if you insist…"
"No. This is no time for childishness."
Butler smiled gently. Childishness was one thing Master Artemis was hardly likely to be accused of.
"I insist!" Alex yelp abruptly. Then he leapt out of his seat and made a beeline for the exit at a speed Holly wouldn't have though was possible for him. Though she supposed that was due to the fact that every other time she'd seen him he was either asleep or on the verge of becoming so. Alex was fast, and strangely agile, but he wasn't a match for Butler's reflexes. He got about a foot past the manservant before the man snatched him up. He kicked in his arms, and even growled, for a moment before crossing his arms tightly over his chest and fuming as Butler deposited him back in his seat.
"How long do I have?" Butler asked, tousling Alex's hair apologetically.
Holly shrugged. "As long as it takes. Obviously, the sooner the better, for everybody's sake." She glanced at the boys. "Especially their father's."
Alex's disappointed scowl softened a bit.
Aside from the obvious issue of the boy's safety, one of the reasons Butler had wanted Alex to stay behind was to insure his request for Holly and Artemis not to kill each other was honored. The younger boy, naturally, knew this, and it was exactly why he'd wanted to accompany the manservant so badly. Besides, he'd never seen Paris.
One of the disadvantages to being the youngest was that his family, Fowl or Butler, tended to over shelter him. Alex had seen little, if anything, outside of Ireland.
One of the advantages, however, was the fact that he could sulk about it. Artemis had to be logical, he had to recognize why he couldn't get his way in this situation, and he had to accept that and move on. Alex had no such responsibilities. He could fume for as long as he wished—even if could understand why.
Alex's disappointed scowl had its own way of keeping his companions in line. More than once he caught the Captain looking at him wearily out of the corner of her eye, she made no comments and looked away almost immediately every time he caught her. Artemis was similar but in a different way. He threw sideways glances at him whenever his gaze wasn't locked on the monitor, but out of slight sympathy and frank concern, and when Alex caught him he would hold the gaze coolly for a moment before returning to the monitor. As for the silence, well Artemis was his brother, he didn't really need to say anything.
So the three of them stood there in mutual silence watching the feed from Butler's iris cam. Alex was reluctant to change his mood, but no one had the energy to be mad or upset all the time. And Paris was amazing.
While it didn't take Butler long to get to rue Bonaparte, the Parisian was not nearly as punctual.
"Is he even home?" Alex asked after he got bored looking of the view of Carrère's balcony.
"He's only been there for a few minutes," Artemis replied, vaguely amused.
"Well how long do we have to wait?"
Artemis rolled his eyes, a smirk playing on the corners of his mouth. "Just be patient, Alex." He said, placing a hand on the younger boy's shoulder.
Holly watched the exchange with surprise and slight awe. It wasn't something she would've expected from the Fowl boys—or Artemis, at least. It was just so…normal.
Unfortunately, "being patient", in this scenario, didn't work well with Alex, as his brother knew. A few minutes later he'd taken to fiddling with a few of the paperclips on the desk molding them into various shapes. Once he managed to get one into an L shape, crunching one end down to the table like a catapult. Suddenly, the tiny piece of contorted metal shot up from its place under Alex's fist and bounced off of Artemis's cheek. The older boy blinked in surprise at the impact before turning, stone-faced to his brother.
"Really?"
Alex flashed his widest, most innocent-looking grin.
That managed to hold him for about twenty minutes. Then, with the paper clips confiscated, he began banging his head on the surface of the desk. Artemis, still stone-faced, simply retrieved one of the leftover passenger pillows and placed it under the boy's forehead as if this were an everyday occurrence. After a few moments Alex ceased, resting his face on the pillow.
"You realize this is defeating the purpose." Alex commented, his voice muffled by the fabric.
"That was my intention, seeing how the purpose is to crack your skull open." The older boy said.
Holly found herself suddenly giving the scene her undivided attention, just from the surprise at hearing Artemis crack a joke. Alex glanced up from the pillow, glaring at his brother. Artemis met the gaze, trying, and miserably failing, to conceal his grin. Alex yanked the small pillow out from under him and rapidly began smacking his brother with it. Artemis, though caught off guard at the first hit, immediately threw his arms up to block the second and began backing out of range, to which Alex responded by following him.
Holly was unsure what to do. Diplomacy, especially amongst young siblings, had never been her strong point. Then her eyes caught the monitor, where a chunky Parisian was leaning against the ornate railing. A quick ID check confirmed it.
"That's our boy." She said through the intercom. In an instant the Fowl brothers were back in their respective seats, postures erect and faces blank.
"Is he alone?"
"I can't tell." The intercom replied in a robotic monotone.
"Just a sec." Holly said before her fingers went to the keyboard, pretending not to notice Alex looking over her shoulder. After a second the monitor visual jumped into a completely different spectrum.
"Infrared," Alex chirped.
"That's right," Holy said. "You know the drill. Hot equals red, cold equals blue. It's not a very strong system, but the lens should penetrate an outer wall."
"Uh, what exactly would fit your description of a 'strong system'?" Alex asked as Butler looked over the apartment.
"Okay. All clear, I'm going in." the intercom said.
"Affirmative. Watch your step. This is a bit too convenient."
"Agreed."
On the screen, Butler rose from his seat to cross the cobbled street to the four-story apartment building. Artemis, sensing his brother would return to head banging if something exciting didn't happen, decided to engage in some trivia.
"Well Alex, you're an expert in this area. How should Butler best get past the building's security?"
"You mean the intercom? Easy, put a shoulder to the door."
"Why?"
"The building's two centuries old Arty. If I can do it with the pantry door at home, it should be no problem for Butler."
Another mystery solved, Artemis thought as the events played out on the screen exactly as Alex predicted.
"While we're on the subject, why exactly do you need to break into the pantry at three in the morning every night?" Artemis inquired as Butler dealt with a group of teenagers on the stairwell.
"If you fell asleep and missed dinner every other night you'd be pretty hungry at that time too." Alex replied, still looking bored.
Artemis wasn't surprised at hunger being his brother's motivation—Alex was always hungry. He was, however, surprised at how the boy had done the act to retrieve food on his own, rather than simply wake Butler or himself to get him something. In the earlier days of their father's disappearance that was just what he'd done; Butler's brain had long since learned to wake itself up at the sounds of soft, 6-year-old footsteps approaching his room. Lately though his brother seemed to favor ramming down doors than disrupting their sleep cycles. It seemed to bring home how much Alex had grown up over the last three years.
"That doesn't look good."
Alex's voice brought Artemis back to the present, where he noticed on the monitor screen the door to Carrère's apartment was ajar.
Butler entered cautiously, the rest of them watching through the man's viewpoint on the monitor. The apartment walls were lined with open crates. Battery packs and fire suits poked through the Styrofoam packing. The floor was littered with thick wads of currency.
"Are you a friend?"
Alex shrank behind the desk at the line. It was Carrère. He was slumped in an oversized armchair, a weapon of some kind nestled on his lap. Needless to say it looked sketchy, and Alex never handled scary scenes very well.
Butler approached cautiously. "Take it easy."
The Parisian raised the weapon, making Alex shrink down further. Artemis put a hand on his shoulder.
"I asked if you were a friend."
Butler cocked his own pistol. "No need to shoot."
"Stand still," ordered Carrère. "I'm not going to shoot you, just take your photo maybe. The voice told me."
Alex looked up at his brother questioningly at the last comment.
"Get closer. I need to see the eyes." Holly said into the intercom.
Obediently Butler holstered his weapon, taking a step forward. "You see, no one has to get hurt here."
"I'm going to enhance the image," said Holly. "This may sting a bit."
Holly pressed a few more buttons on the keyboard before the image on the screen was suddenly magnified by four. To Alex it was quite impressive since he was still baffled the iris cams could get audio feed much less infrared vision. For a moment he forgot about the danger of the situation.
"He's been mesmerized," Holly pronounced after briefly studying the man's pupils. "Several times. You see how the iris has actually become jagged. You mesmerize a human too much, and they can go blind."
Both boys studied the image themselves.
"What does that mean? You can's mesmerize him again?" Alex asked.
"It means that it doesn't matter." Holly answered. "He's already under a spell. That particular Mud Man is just following orders. His brain doesn't know a thing about it."
Well, the fear was back.
Artemis moved to grab the mike stand, but Alex was faster. "Butler! Get out! Now!"
Butler didn't move and Holly managed to get the microphone out of the younger boy's grip.
"Butler, listen carefully. That gun pointed at you is a wide-bore low-frequency blaster. We call it a bouncer; it was developed for tunnel skirmishes. If he pulls that trigger, a wide-arc laser is going to ricochet off the walls until it hits something."
"I see," the robot-voice intercom said.
"What did you say?" Carrère asked. Alex shrunk back behind the desk.
"Nothing. I just don't like having my photo taken." The intercom said.
A spark of Luc's greedy personality surfaced. "I like that watch on your wrist. It looks expensive. Is it a Rolex?"
"You don't want this," the intercom said again, Butler seemed reluctant to part with the com-screen. "It's cheap. A piece of trash."
"Just give me the watch,"
Butler peeled back the strap on the instrument on his wrist.
"If I give you this watch, maybe you can tell me about all these batteries."
"It is you! Say cheese," squealed Carrère. Alex made a similar sound, abeight a shorter and more frightened one, as the man forced his pudgy thumb into the undersized trigger guard and pulled.
What happened next may've made more sense to Butler, as the man who initiated it, but from the shuttle everything just happened too fast. Suddenly, the Safetynet was right next to the bouncer, containing the blast in a six-foot static bubble. It was quite a sight, one that distracted Carrère long enough for Butler to disarm him.
"You can open your eyes now."
It was then that Holly realized that at some point Alex had abandoned his seat and hidden himself behind Artemis, his head sheltered by the older boy's blazer and his face shoved into his side. At his brother's words Alex hesitantly turned to look up at the screen.
"Start the engines," the intercom said. "The Sureté are going to be all over this place in minutes. Foaly's Safetynet didn't stop the noise."
"Roger that." Holly replied. "What about Monsieur Carrère?"
Butler dumped the dazed Parisian flat on the carpet.
"Luc and I are going to have a little chat."