Artemis Fowl (4) and the Opal Deception by Eoin Colfer

Author:Eoin Colfer [Colfer, Eoin]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781368036993
Published: 2018-11-06T00:00:00+00:00

Tara, Ireland; Dawn

The fairy shuttleport in Tara was the biggest in Europe. More than eight thousand tourists a year passed through its X-ray arches. Thirty thousand cubic feet of terminal concealed beneath an overgrown hillock in the middle of the McGraney farm. It was a marvel of subterranean architecture.

Mulch Diggums, fugitive kleptomaniac dwarf, was pretty marvelous himself, in the subterranean area. Butler drove the Fowl Bentley north from the manor, and on Mulch’s instructions, slowed the luxury car down five hundred yards from the shuttleport’s camouflaged entrance. This allowed Mulch to dive from the rear door straight into the earth. He quickly submerged below a layer of rich Irish soil. The best in the world.

Mulch knew the shuttleport layout well. He had once broken his cousin Nord out of police custody here, when the LEP had arrested him on industrial pollution charges. A vein of clay ran right up to the shuttleport wall, and if you knew where to look, there was a sheet of metal casing that had been worn thin by years of Irish damp. But on this particular occasion, Mulch was not interested in evading the LEP; quite the opposite.

Mulch surfaced inside the holographic bush that hid the shuttleport’s service entrance. He climbed from his tunnel, shook the clay from his behind, got all the tunnel wind out of his system a bit more noisily than was absolutely necessary, and waited.

Five seconds later, the entrance hatch slid across, and four grabbing hands reached out, yanking Mulch into the shuttleport’s interior. Mulch did not resist, allowing himself to be bundled along a dark corridor and into an interview room. He was plonked onto an uncomfortable chair, handcuffed, and left on his own to stew.

Mulch did not have time to stew. Every second he spent sitting here picking the insects from his beard hair was another second that Artemis and Holly had to spend running from trolls.

The dwarf rose from the chair and slapped his palms against the two-way mirror inset in the interview room wall.

“Chix Verbil,” he shouted. “I know you’re watching me. We need to talk. It’s about Holly Short.”

Mulch kept right on banging on the glass, until the cell door swung open and Chix Verbil entered the room. Chix was the LEP’s fairy on the surface. Chix had been the first LEP casualty in the B’wa Kell goblin revolution a year previously, and had it not been for Holly Short, he would have been its first fatality. As it turned out, he got a medal from the Committee, a series of high-profile interviews on network television, and a cushy surface job in E1.

Chix entered suspiciously, his sprite wings folded behind him. The strap was off his Neutrino holster.

“Mulch Diggums, isn’t it? Are you surrendering?”

Mulch snorted. “What do you think? I go to all the trouble of breaking out, just to surrender to a sprite. I think not, lamebrain.”

Chix bristled, his wings fanning out behind him. “Hey, listen, dwarf. You’re in no position to be making cracks. You’re in my custody, in case you hadn’t noticed.

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