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Chapter 10

"What's at Tara?" said Andrea as Foaly's face vanished from the monitor.

Artemis turned to face her. "You are aware of Tara's significance in mythological lore?"

He saw her frown at his tone and managed to keep his smile to himself. It was a small revenge for all the indignities she had forced upon his person.

"Well," said Andrea. "I know it's apparently where the fairies dance and some sort of Irish king was crowned there. I just never thought the fairy dancing bit could be a literal possibility."

Artemis inclined his head. He thought about sharing Holly's one-time observation that Tara often had so many fairies dancing that the place looked like it was underwater, but thought better of it. It was a frivolous thought. He sat down at his desk and Andrea moved to the chair across it. She drew her legs up to her chin and looked at him through a curtain of dark bangs.

"So, we've got five hours to kill. Now what do we do? And why will it be so long? I mean, these guys sound sophisticated enough for us to be saying 'Beam me up, Scotty," if you know what I mean."

"Well, I'm inclined to think we should attempt to rest. In my experience, LEP shuttles will not fit us all comfortably and this will probably be a somewhat exhausting trip. To answer your second question, it takes several hours to reach Ireland from Haven, which is the fairy capitol – though I'm sure Foaly will devise something faster someday soon," he finished, a note of levity entering his voice.

Andrea pursed her lips and nodded slowly, her eyes unfocused and staring at what Artemis knew to be her damaged leg.

"Unfortunately, I doubt they could regrow a lost human limb," said Artemis, leaning back in his chair.

Andrea looked up quickly, her face flushing crimson. "O-oh," she said, sounding flustered. "I didn't really think they could."

"If you don't mind my asking," said Artemis. "What did happen for you to become injured as such?"

Andrea was silent for several minutes, her expression sparking the impression of trapped animal, before resolving into a tense, troubled frown. She glanced up at him, her resolve apparently solidifying for a moment and her gaze dropped back to her knees.

"Car accident," she said. "I had my legs on the dashboard. A truck hit us on the driver's side and well…." She made a futile gesture at the leg. "I saw my leg snap sideways and my mum die in the space of about two seconds, then the car went up in flames. I don't remember much else."

She shook her head, tears leaking out of her eyes. "And…even in those two seconds, all I could think… all that occurred to me really…" she looked up at Artemis with a haunted expression. "All I could think was 'I'll never be able to dance again'. I mean, that's pretty fucked up, isn't? I couldn't even think about mum, or Matt… all I could think about was my dancing."

"Matt?" said Artemis, curiosity overriding his clinical thoughts. Pain such as this was hard for him to look at, and he felt his mind throwing out terms like 'survivor's guilt' and 'post-traumatic-stress' in response – almost as an attempt to divert his feelings.

"M-my little brother… he was in the b-back seat," said Andrea, her voice hitching with constricted emotion. "He didn't m-make it either. He died a week after the crash."

Artemis stood and walked around the desk, his hand finding her shoulder and squeezing. He had learned enough Diana and Holly to know that women preferred a sympathetic touch. Perhaps it would help somewhat.

"I'm sorry," he said softly, meaning it. Andrea let out a sob and leaned heavily against him, her face burying itself in his abdomen. Artemis froze, startlement making his limbs feeling like they had turned to stone. His lighting fast brain was throwing out possible actions, but most of them he managed to dismiss, knowing them to be poor taste in a situation such as this.

He was left with two possibilities that seemed prudent – gently detaching himself and perhaps fetching Juliet to cheer her up or attempting to console her on his own. The former seemed a far more appealing prospect. Vagrant displays of emotion still unsettled him, however understandable such a display was at this point. Diana rarely cried or carried on like some teenage girls her age did, but the few times he had found her as such had always been difficult occasions for him.

Artemis shook his head. His mind was not dealing with the task at hand. While he could trust Juliet to put some things right, he knew she would want to know the whys and hows and Andrea could be once more forced to explain something she had already had difficulty dealing with. He had a strong suspicion –more than that – an almost absolute certainty - that the only reason Andrea had told him the truth about her injuries was due to the massive revelations he had decided to subject her to. A secret for a secret.

He was still quietly marvelling at this uncharacteristic leap-of-faith when a renewed wave of sobbing heaved through Andrea's body, bringing him forcibly back to the present. He patted her back awkwardly and following an instinct whose origin was a mystery to him, alternately stroked her hair gently.

Gradually, Andrea seemed to calm down and collect herself. Artemis offered her a pressed handkerchief from his pocket and she blew her nose noisily and wiped her eyes.

"I'm sorry…" she said in a watery voice, not looking at him. "I mean…"

"Do not apologize," he said, "this is –

"No, I am really sorry – God I totally ruined your shirt – and I lost it and -"

"This is nor-"

"I'm such a mess and fuck, I'm just – oh god, I'm sorry -"

"Andrea," Artemis knelt in front of her, grasping her shoulders to distract to force her to focus on him. She did so with difficulty, her eyes still watering. "Andrea, do not apologize to me. There is no need."

Andrea bit her lip, looking torn between guilt and embarrassment. Artemis met her gaze, struggling to think of what to say next. He forced a smile – it felt slightly wooden on his face, a spark of inspiration hitting him.

"As for the shirt – you can buy me a new one when we solve this case. I'm sure your refined sense of artistic sensibilities make you far more qualified than a- " He felt himself stumble over the next word "- a nerd such as myself to make choices in fashion."

Andrea stared at him, her expression flickering with consternation. Then she smiled faintly.

"Maybe," she said softly. "I don't think I can afford the shirts you wear though."

Artemis considered that. "I will make an exception then. You may buy whatever you wish."

Andrea's tear streaked face took on a somewhat speculative look. Artemis decided, knowing her track-record, that he did not wish to give her creativity much room or time to exercise itself. She could be imagining him in something lurid and tacky for her own amusement.

"It is quite late," he said. "Perhaps we should get some rest."

Andrea nodded and rubbed her eyes. "You're probably right."

They stood as one, Artemis releasing her shoulders. The lights had been dimmed in the hallways, telling him that everyone else had gone to bed. He saw her to the stairs and bade her goodnight. Turning away, he was halfway down the hallway toward his own rooms before it struck him that this evening was the first time he had addressed her by her given name.

Haven

Twig made a pit stop for some spinach and grub curry on his way to the shuttle terminal. He looked down at the take-out box with an amused frown. He had never been fond of spinach as a child, but his mother had insisted upon him eating it.

"You'll grow big and strong when you eat it," she had said, her eyes twinkling. "You want to get into the LEP don't you?"

Well, he was in the LEP. And he had grown tall and strong, though Twig knew even his mother had not expected the extent that her middle son's height would reach. They were a family of average height elves before he had come along. He was not quite in the human range, but that didn't stop his brothers – Temp and Trip - from ribbing him about it. They weren't as tall as he was, but they were just as sturdy and with Temp a full-fledged warlock, they were a pair to be reckoned with should he take offense. Thankfully, he no longer bothered to.

Smiling at that thought, he made his way to the LEP terminal. Palming and carding his way through the access point, he looked for a quiet place to wolf down his curry. Thankfully, Shuttle Twelve – one of the biggest shuttles in the LEP fleet - was parked in a deserted corner and he hunkered down outside the open hatch and opened his food.

"Oh, that smells good," a voice directly behind him nearly made him drop it and he clutched at the container frantically as he spun around, swearing under his breath. A dwarf was standing in the hatchway, his eyes gleaming with interest. Twig resisted the temptation to hug the curry to his chest. He didn't like the way the dwarf was looking at it.

"Mulch Diggums?" he asked. The dwarf wasn't wearing an LEP uniform or the uniform of one of the mechanics.

The dwarf grinned, massive teeth on display. "In the flesh. I only sign autographs for females though. You're Holly's replacement then?"

Twig ignored the joke – at least, he thought it was a joke - and nodded. "I suppose so. My job is to pilot the shuttle to Tara for yourself and a couple of mudmen and then onto wherever, once Mr. Fowl briefs me on the mission."

Mulch's grin, if possible, grew even wider. "Ah, so you're our personal chauffeur!"

Twig felt something twitch on his face at Mulch's mocking tone, but the truth of it was a little too stark to deny. He shrugged and took a couple bites of curry. Closing the box, he gestured for Mulch to preceed him into the shuttle. He started looking for a refrigeration unit for the curry box, then caught sight of the hungry spark in Mulch's eyes as the dwarf turned to face him.

Better not, he thought. Heading for the cockpit, he stowed the curry box within line-of-sight of the pilot's seat, under the other chair. Mulch sat on that seat, his grin still firmly in place as Twig started up the engines and ran through the system checks. Fairies on the shuttle hanger floor scurried about, readying the craft for takeoff.

"Take it away, monsieur chauffeur!" said Mulch in a mockingly regal voice and waving his hand as Twig pulled out the steering column and teased the craft into the air. Twig felt his fingers tighten on the handgrips, vaguely imagining them to be Diggums neck. He hadn't flown this shuttle before and he found it somewhat clunky as he slowly maneuverered towards the entrance to E37, taking his directions from the hanger's control booth.

Foaly's voice soon overroad the sprite giving him directions from the booth as they eased into the guided shaft leading to the chute.

"Alright you two, there's a flare due in twenty minutes, so communications will be down temporarily, but if you move smartly, you'll be able to avoid the heat easily."

"Roger that," said Twig, tongue between his teeth as he cleared the last of the guide rails. "And estimated contact time will be…?"

E37 yawned open ahead of the shuttle, a faint orange glow far below the only hint of the oncoming flare.

"About seventy minutes," said Foaly. "Keep sensors peeled regardless, Corporal. We don't want any more crashes. Foaly out."

Mulch, who had been looking like he was going to make some sort of funny remark, was suddenly sober. Twig flipped a few switches and felt the engines hum. Touching the controls, the shuttle began a swift rise towards the surface under his guidance. Twig didn't have eyes to spare for his passenger between the controls and the sensor readouts, so they rode in silence for the first several minutes, each absorbed in their own thought process. Also, there was a strange blip on the sensors off their rear port side. It was a good distance away, on the far side of the chute, but keeping pace with them. A sensor malfunction…? Or something else….?

"What do you make of that?" he asked, jerking his head at the screens. Mulch squinted at the readouts.

"I don't know," he said. "I didn't see anything last time, so I wouldn't know what to look for."

"You were shot down?" inquired Twig bluntly.

Mulch shrugged and scratched his head, his vibrating hair parting obligingly to allow him access to the scalp. "Foaly says so. There wasn't much of the shuttle left, but I've known Holly long enough to know she wouldn't crash a shuttle on her own. So yeah, shot down is the best guess after an equipment malfunction – and you know which one Foaly doesn't want to admit to if he doesn't have to."

Twig smiled slightly. He could imagine.

"How'd you survive it though?" he asked.

"Holly mostly. She yelled for me to get into the pod – the escape pod – and then 'Boom!'. That's the last I remember for awhile. I came to with the pod clamped to the chute wall. I thought Holly had died, but I found her below me a couple hours later. She'd jettisoned her pilot's seat – sheer luck where it landed. Her magic had healed the worst of it, but you know how hot the Atlantis Sub-Tunnel is. It sucked her magic dry within a day and we didn't have any water."

Twig winced. The dwarf would have been able to find moisture, but no wonder the Major was in such bad condition. A high-speed impact and total dehydration in the middle of a furnace.

"But evidence points to an attack on the shuttle, due to Major Short's warning," he said, raising an eyebrow at Mulch.

"Hard to say," said Mulch. "She could have seen a catastrophic malfunction and not have had time to spring and fix, let alone warn me. Foaly didn't pick anything up on his sensors other than normal traffic in the main chute."

"And you were in the sub-tunnel because…?"

Mulch shrugged. "Hey, she's a recon jock. The sub-tunnel is full of crust formations and stalactites or whatever. It's a pilot thing."

Twig nodded, understanding completely. He had eschewed the main chutes more than once for the more dextrous and challenging secondary tunnels. E37 was good for speed runs, but it lacked a little in variety. Gunning the engines, he brought the shuttle up to cruising speed and keyed for partial autopilot. He would control the steering but the ship's computer would calculate the most efficient cruising speeds in light of the winds and pressure fronts in the tunnel. Hopefully the heat from the flare would give them a bit of a boost.

Holding the steering wheel with his knees, he reached for his curry. Against regulations, he knew. But Twig had heard enough about Artemis Fowl related missions to guess that this was going to be his last quiet moment for awhile. He'd just managed to get the box open when an ear-splitting proximity alarm rent through the shuttle.

"D'arvit!" he shouted, dropping his food and grabbing the controls. A streak of sinister blue light arched across the chute in front of them.

"What the hell is that?" demanded Mulch, shielding his eyes.

"Unknown objects rapidly approaching off the port side!" snapped Twig, throwing the throttle sideways into a complicated dance that sent the shuttle bucking and twirling. "Foaly must've had extra sensors installed! There's no way that's a standard issue alarm!"

"It just saved our skins though!" gasped Mulch.

More streaks of light shot past them, impacting into the side of the chute with audible, jaw-rattling WHUMPHS.

"It's like a meteor shower!"

"Except we're not above ground! What the hell!" Twig could barely read the sensors out of the corner of his eye as he struggled to avoid the arcing shower of lights, their approach showing as shadowy blips on the screens in front of him. He was having better luck following them visually. Forcing the shuttle into a steep dive out into the middle chute, Twig wrenched the rig sideways, swearing as the G-force compensators struggled to keep up with them. Mulch was just as foul mouthed, his hands clinging to the arm rests of the seat.

Zigzagging back and forth, Twig did his best to avoid the missiles, for the lack of a better word. One clipped the back tailfin and a sinister sizzling echoed through the shuttle and all of the systems flickered, sending them into a gut-wrenching drop before emergency power kicked in. Twig felt his throat seize as he reoriented the shuttle – the chute ahead of them was almost a solid wall of blue light, the origin invisible. Behind him, he knew the flare was quickly bringing up the rear.

Dancing the shuttle around another missile, he struggled to decide where to go. To go back was suicide; the shuttle wasn't equipped for a hot shot ride, even if the magma could've done something about the missiles. Ahead was a spider web of crisscrossing missiles and the nearest secondary tunnel was three kilometers up, diverging out towards the Spanish coast, near Gibraltar. He'd have to take the shuttle through and try to get to the second tunnel as fast as possible.

Taking a deep breath, Twig picked the area with the lightest concentration and gunned the engine, praying that this wasn't going to be a trap. His mind was wiped nearly blank as he cleared the first volley, the only points of contact with reality being the feeling of his hands on the steering column and the burst of light and sound that were the missiles and the dim awareness of profuse swearing in the seat to his right. For a moment, the shuttle rocked backwards as Twig threw it into a hard reverse, a missile missing the viewscreen by mere inches. The proximity gave no more insight into the missile's composition than the sensors had, the brightness searing his eyes. Sparks of magic obliterated his vision for half a second as the damaged retina was quickly repaired. The half-second nearly cost them the shuttle and another distinct sizzling noise echoed through its hull, the lights and controls flickering. Thankfully, it had been a graze. Twig choked up his tongue. It felt like he had nearly swallowed it. All of his stress went to his throat. They had a kilometer to go.

Twenty seconds.

Twig flipped the shuttle and it bounced sideways. The alarm was still tearing up their ears. Ten seconds.

Righting the shuttle, he gritted his teeth. Just a little more to go, a few more missiles to avoid. He could see the side tunnel, a jagged dark shape in the chute's wall. Too small to warrant dedicated lights, he punched the headlights button as they blew into the tunnel.

Twig almost collapsed onto the steering wheel from relief, even if his training prevented any such emotional reactions. Clear sailing. No missiles in the tunnel. He punched up the rear camera, and saw the missiles still lighting up the main chute like fireworks behind them. So it wasn't something following them. Twig knew he was a decent pilot, a damn decent pilot after that. But he wasn't just how much more he would have been able to handle. He suspected not much more.

"We need to get to Artemis. Now," said Mulch weakly. "Above ground, in human traffic so we can't be tailed."

Twig nodded. He had been thinking the exact same thing.

Andrea woke suddenly, unsure of what had disturbed her rest. Her dreams had been restless, but thankfully they had not dwelled much on the past. A strange, muted glow suffused the room, making her blink as her eyes struggles to reconcile it. She could see the edges of the bed posts and the lamp on the night table next to the bed in the semi-darkness.

Suddenly, the lamp – which Andrea suddenly realized was not the lamp - moved, coming around the bed, throwing into sharp relief a squat figure, its hairy form casting shadows on the bed.

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" The shriek tore from her throat as she seized the nearest pillow – a solidly stuffed bolster - and threw it with all her might. The hairy figure toppled over with what sounded like a curse.

"Diggums!" said a man's voice and there was a flash of light as the curtain was pushed aside. A different figure jumped from the window sill, feet landing with a dull thump. Andrea shrieked again, seizing the next pillow and flung it in his direction, quickly scrambling for the opposite side of the bed where she knew her prosthetis lay on the floor.

There was a groan from the floor and the second figure ran forwards.

"STOP!" shouted Andrea, advancing awkwardly across the bed on her remaining knee and the stump, holding the artificial limb like a baseball bat. The second figure froze.

Running footsteps thundered up to the door and it crashed open, the lights flicking on. Butler filled the doorway, his gun drawn. Andrea suddenly noticed that the second man was nowhere to be seen.

"There was two…!" she gasped, casting about with the prothethis, but Butler was already holstering his weapon and shaking his head, his amusement clear on his face.

"I picked the wrong window," said the hairy figure on the floor in an aggrieved tone. "I thought Artemis would be happy to see me."

"I'm sure he is," said Butler, crossing the room to help the little hairy thing to his feet. "But it would have been better for everyone if you had simply knocked on the front door."

Andrea suddenly understood. These two figures were some of the fairies. Or at least, the hairy one was, thought if there was anyone less fairy-like that she had imagined, this little hairy man was it. There was no telling where the other one went. She looked about suspiciously, pulling the covers over her legs.

"And that mud-girl knocked me over!" continued the little hairy man. "She could have damaged me, Butler, I'm sure of it!"

Butler rolled his eyes. "I doubt it, Mulch."

There were more footsteps and all three of them turned as one towards the door. Artemis appeared, a bathrobe over his pyjamas.

"Mulch," he said sternly. "What on earth were you doing up here?"

The little figure – Mulch - shrugged. "I thought I'd say hello. I thought this was your room, but evidently I was wrong."

Artemis stroked his chin, evidently trying to hide a smile. "It used to be my room, but Andrea is using it now."

The little figure turned to her. "Andrea, is it?"

Andrea nodded, pulling the covers tighter around herself. "You're… Mulch?"

The small man grinned, showing a bewildering array of teeth. "In the flesh. Name's Diggums. Mulch Diggums."

Andrea cast around, looking. "And the other guy, who's he?"

Artemis looked sharply at her, then at Mulch.

"You're not alone?" said Artemis.

"One of the Recon guys is with me," said Mulch. "Hell of a pilot, he shielded when Butler came in."

"Well, you're welcome to reveal yourself," said Artemis. Andrea noticed his eyes zeroing in on a corner of the room. She squinted, following his line of sight. The wood panelling seemed to have an odd shimmer to them. This shimmer suddenly resolved itself into a solid figure, dressed in a green jumpsuit, emblazoned with strange writing. He was a good deal taller than Mulch, and a full-face helmet obscured his features. Andrea glanced at Artemis and saw that he was looking mildly startled. Her eyes were drawn back to the fairy when he buzzed up his helmet's visor.

"Corporal Twig Riggins," he said, inclining his head, his brown eyes watching them all carefully. "At your service."

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