Artemis Fowl and the Atlantis Complex by Eoin Colfer Page A

heretofore concealed. The bot that had flashed the message to the others allowed a charge to crackle across its skin, which it then discharged into a hillock of snow. An unfortunate snow fox leaped from the steam, tail smoking like a fuse, and made a dart for freedom.
    It’s almost comical. Almost.
    The amorphobots jiggled as though laughing and sent a few bolts of crackling blue energy after the doomed fox, carving black rents in the ground, steering the terror-stricken mammal away from the shelter of the Great Skua. In spite of the fox’s natural speed and agility, the bots anticipated its movements with incredible accuracy, sending the animal running in circles, its eyes rolling, tongue dangling.
    There was only one possible conclusion to this game of cat and mouse. The largest amorphobot droned an impatient bass command through the almost invisible gel speakers in its body and turned abruptly to continue its search. The others followed, leaving only the original bot to hunt the fox. It quickly tired of the sport and nailed the fox in mid-jump with a bolt of power, cast like a spear from its midsection.
    Murderer, thought Holly, more angry than horrified. Foaly didn’t design this .
    Foaly suddenly moved in front of her. “You’ve got that look in your eyes, Captain.”
    “What look?”
    “The one Julius Root always talked about. The I’m-about-to-do-something-incredibly-stupid look.”
    There was no time for debate. “I need to get to Artemis’s project.”
    “You can’t go. What does the LEP manual suggest in these kinds of situations?”
    Holly ground her teeth. Her two geniuses were useless; she would have to do this herself.
    “The manual, which you helped to write, would advise me to retreat to a safe distance and construct a bivouac, but, with respect, those guidelines are a pile of troll weevils.”
    “Wow. Nice respect. Do you know what the word respect actually means? I’m no book professor, but I’m pretty sure comparing my manual to a steaming pile of troll weevils does not constitute respect.”
    “I never said steaming,” said Holly, then decided that time was short and she could apologize later. “Listen, Foaly. I don’t have a downlink to Police Plaza. There are murdering blobby robots on our trail, and the only people who might be able to come up with a solution are either fast asleep dreaming or, in your case, wide awake dreaming. So I need you to cover me while I make a run for Artemis’s crate. Do you think you can do that?”
    Holly handed the centaur her backup weapon. Foaly held the gun gingerly, as though it were radioactive, which to a certain degree it was.
    “Okay. I know how this thing works, in theory.”
    “Good,” said Holly, and slithered on her belly up and onto the ice field before she could change her mind.
    Holly felt her torso numb and stiffen as she slid across the glacier. The ice stretched in front of her, carved by the prevailing wind into elegant swoops and whorls, a wind that was to her rear, making progress relatively easy considering she had until recently been suffering from several broken bones.
    Saved by magic once more.
    But now she had not a spark left in her.
    The fox’s carcass lay smoking on a bed of snow, melting a grave for itself.
    Holly tore her gaze from the pathetic mammal’s eyes, still rolled back in its blackened head, and looked instead at Artemis’s crate, which stood disregarded by the bots, but past their search line.
    I need to breach the line unnoticed. Their default sensor is heat. I’ll give them a little heat to think about.
    Holly switched on the air-conditioning in her suit, which had about five minutes left in it according to her visor readout, then selected the flare package on her Neutrino handgun. She also accidentally activated the tunes player in her helmet with a series of shivery winks. Luckily, the volume was muted and she managed to switch off Grazen McTortoor’s metal epic “Troll Sundown” before the