A/N: Apologies for the delay. To recap what's happened so far... Artemis is fighting on two fronts. In a bid to counter the machinations of the ruthless billionaire, Alexis de Miral, who has plans to reveal the fairies' existence, he is attempting to move the People to Mars. At the same time he faces an increasingly deranged Opal and her human accomplice, Xavier, who has a long-standing grudge against the fairies. Opal has conjured up an ancient power, Legion, to help her decimate humanity's armed forces to make way for an inter-species war. Situation normal for a criminal mastermind.
Chap 18: Home Sweet Home
'Time remaining: 00:30:22'
"Commander Vein," Vinyáya said over the communicator, "Council approval acquired. Empty the armoury of all Neutrinos and cart them over to the Central Bank." Vinyáya was being driven to the Bank in her private Section Eight transport.
"I'm already there. Do you want them inside the main vault?" Vein replied, his voice echoing slightly due to the building's acoustics.
Vinyáya smiled. "Acting without orders? You could be court-martialled for that."
"You say that like the Council could resist your persuasive personality."
"If I didn't know better I'd think you were bucking for promotion," Vinyáya said, her smile evident in her voice.
Vein chuckled then talked to someone out-of-range of the communicator.
"Hmmm," Vein continued, "there are two Neutrinos missing."
"Well, Holly has one but the other? You haven't seen Mulch lately?"
The Commander chuckled, it was true that, even after three years of monitoring, the reformed kleptomaniac hadn't stuck as much as a hairy toe out of line. "I doubt it was Mulch, truth be told, he's probably helped us bring in more smugglers and thieves over the last year than I thought lived in Haven, but still, I'll have a corporal look for it."
"Thanks, Commander, I'll be there in a few minutes."
"I'd hoped to be finished before you got here."
Vinyáya smiled as she closed the connection.
'Time remaining: 00:28:03'
"Ahem."
Artemis and Minerva spun round to see Theris hovering in the doorway.
"Sorry, Theris, you are welcome here for now," Artemis invited, choosing his words.
"Thank you, Mud-Boy," she replied, happily flying into the foyer after them. "Nice place, I bet it looks better with the lights on though," Theris completed, flicking the foyer light switch. The chandelier did not pour forth light.
"Electro-Magnetic Pulse," Artemis explained, "there is back up circuitry in the wine cel-," Artemis halted mid-word. Something had brushed past his leg in the darkness.
"Holly?" Artemis ventured. No reply.
"Wow! Archimedes! Back in the house!" Three heads turned in the direction of the door as Butler, carrying the explosives from the boot, shouted at something.
A ferret stood on its hind legs and looked quizzically at Butler before running back into the Manor and disappearing into the gloom.
Several eyebrows were raised as Butler entered and deposited the Phantom's cargo on the marble tiles.
"Oh. That's Archimedes, Myles's pet ferret. He's harmless. At least I think it's a he," Butler offered.
'Time remaining: 00:27:58'
'Well, I'm not going to be held responsible for Haven getting filled with magma,' thought the gnome who had taken the Neutrino. He had - rather bravely in his opinion - decided to take matters into his own hands and had taken it to the bulkhead control centre.
The centre was completely automated and was guarded by an aged elf who was asleep at his post. The gnome walked straight past him and into the centre.
The architecture was not modern but it was functional. It had been one of the first buildings built in Haven when the People moved underground. The entry arch even bore the names of the building's founders, a now old and often forgotten tradition.
The noise of hydraulic machinery humming away was a foreign one. The centre used an antiquated computer controller connected to hydraulic pistons to hold the mammoth bulkheads open. The main control unit was around here somewhere.
After a few minutes searching he found what he came for.
---
Foaly ground his teeth together, a spine-tingling sound for those who've never heard it.
This was the eighth high-strength firewall he had to penetrate to gain access to the United Kingdom's radar system, and it was getting on his nerves.
'Calm it, Foaly,' he thought to himself, 'they're just Mud Men, you could hack this system in your sleep. They always have a backdoor in these programs. Okay, access port 29, ping, run emulator…'
---
"Stand to attention!" Commander Vein shouted as Vinyáya entered the vault.
"At ease, boys. I'm just here to see all goes smoothly. Report Commander," Vinyáya said coolly.
"The building and a three block radius has been evacuated, just in case something goes wrong and this place gets left behind. We've also collected any personal belongings made of gold from civilians and had them stored in the vault. Qwan tells me that silver is too strong to be ionised so a few fairies have had to say goodbye to some pretty valuable silverware. Considering the circumstances they took it well," Commander Vein answered.
"Excellent," Vinyáya replied, "how long till we can begin ionisation?"
"We're just waiting for Qwan to arrive, he wants to check things."
---
Butler had switched the Manor's electrical wiring over to electromagnetically shielded variants using the switchboard Artemis had indicated. Once again light flooded the Manor and the grounds, surprising six elves and a Sprite.
"Oh, it is nice in here," Theris commented, looking around. "Was someone having dinner?" she asked when she saw the table set up in the dining room.
"Yes," Artemis answered, "my parents."
Holly whistled from the doorway, "Delivery, where do you want this?" Holly and six elves from the Manor Team were carting a large metallic ring onto the doorstep of the Manor. Butler rushed to help them, easily lifting the ring from their grip.
Artemis didn't invite the Manor Team in, they would have to return to Haven. Holly conversed with their commanding officer while the other members of the team deposited the silver on the Manor's doorstep.
After the Manor Team departed, Holly and Butler hefted the silver inside. Butler used brute strength; Holly preferred her Moonbelt and wing rig.
---
The gnome felt smug at his own initiative before flicking the neutrino up a few power levels and levelling the barrel at the machinery.
He let loose with a wide stream of high-energy Neutrinos. The hydraulics groaned and burst, releasing the high pressure fluid that held open the mechanism for the Lockdown bulkheads.
Around Haven Lockdown bulkheads slid into place, isolating Haven from the outside world. Unfortunately, the Neutrino pulse followed the quickest route to earth. This happened to be through the control circuit interface of the computer and the city power grid.
---
"Yes, that's it. Just over there. Left a bit-," Qwan instructed as the workers used an A-frame to position the last Time-stop emitter.
"Perfect!"
Then the sunstrips went out, plunging Haven into total darkness.
---
"Gotcha!" Foaly said triumphantly, leaning back in his modified swivel chair and selecting a particularly juicy carrot from the stash beneath his console.
Sniffing the carrot, he let out a satisfied sigh and bit into it, just as the lights and his entire computer system lost power.
Foaly blinked several times just to make sure he hadn't gone blind. Then he swore. A dwarf two miles away heard him.
---
"We have twenty-five minutes in which to prepare, I suggest we work quickly. Butler, we'll need the welding equipment and supplies from the workshop," Artemis directed as they sat around the conference table. Butler nodded and left. "Holly, if I could borrow your helmet I could set up a live feed from Haven, that way we can synchronise our efforts. Minerva, if you could look over the specs for the Time-stop portal, I'd appreciate your input."
"Certainly."
Theris had struck up a strange friendship with Archimedes and was quietly whispering to him while she hovered overhead.
---
Haven Central Power Distribution Centre
"The power surge originated in sub-grid forty-seven. Nodes thirty-two through sixty-seven have been fried. Re-routing is complete. Power transfer from Atlantis in three, two, one."
Throughout Haven sunstrips re-ignited, flooding the city, once again, with light.
---
"It's no use. The transistors are completely fused. And there are no replacement parts to boot, that is unless one of you techies keeps a rutile-based semiconductor under your tunics?" The head techie declared, dejected.
"If the other emitters were hooked up to the grid, then won't they be damaged too?" No. 1 asked Qwan.
"More than likely. If we can't project the dematerialization field over Haven then that's it, especially with such a high concentration of gold slap bang in the middle," Qwan replied.
"How does the emitter work?" No. 1 said, curious.
"Well, I'm guessing here since I've only had a glance at the specs, but it looks like the emitter projects an energy field that is interwoven with magic. We were so close, if only there were a way of projecting a strong enough field over all of Haven," Qwan explained with a sigh.
"Well," No.1 mused, "what about that?"
No. 1 stuck out a stubby finger and pointed to something overhead.
"Well I-" Qwan said, thinking, "I think … you might be on to something."
---
"No, no, no-" Foaly said, hitting his head on the console with each repetition. So engrossed was he, he failed to notice Commander Vinyáya enter Headquarters.
"Foaly! Report!" Vinyáya demanded. She was a leader and knew that the best way to handle situations like these was not to molly-coddle people but to force them into action.
"I lost it. Everything. The computers went down. I lost the connections. Equipment was damaged by the surge," Foaly explained.
"Foaly! All of Haven is counting on you! If you don't get those missiles fired then there will be no energy for the Time-Tunnel and by morning-" Vinyáya began.
"No, you don't understand. There isn't enough time, I could do it if I had time but -" Foaly shook his head and swallowed, "sixteen servers are down, we've lost ninety-seven percent of our connections top-side. Finding an active link into the Mud-Man systems would be like looking for a beetle in a dwarf's beard."
"Think Foaly, think. There must be a way. Some way, a backdoor, a direct satellite link, a floating server. I can get you the staff and equipment but you have to find a way," Vinyáya urged.
"Wait a minute," Foaly said, he was remembering an old project he'd been working on. It was risky, there were more bugs in it than Mulch's breakfast but it could be the only way.
Hope filled him as he spoke, "Get me the mind wiping equipment from storage room six." Vinyáya looked puzzled. "I don't have time to explain right now," Foaly declared as he re-booted his console. "Just trust me."
And she did.
---
"I can't lock onto a fairy satellite signal," Artemis said, frustrated.
"Try the lower bands, we sometimes switch over to them if background noise gets too loud," Holly offered.
"What is Adaminium?" Minerva asked, looking up from poring over all available data on the Time-Stop Portal.
"It's an alloy of Titanium, Carbon and Ununhexium, I think. It's been a while since I've done high school chemistry," Holly answered, wracking her brains.
Despite the fact that the question of how the fairies had managed to create stable Ununhexium was burning her tongue, Minerva returned the schematic.
---
"You want to do what?"
"We need to use Haven's power grid to project the energy field. Thankfully the second Portal wasn't hooked up to the grid at the time but every emitter in Haven was damaged. The only way to project a field strong enough to cover the entire city is to use the power grid," Qwan explained.
"The cables are insulated, they can't project E.M. fields."
"They aren't insulated against magic," Qwan stated.
---
"Risky, huh?" Vinyáya said as she watched a techie attach electrodes to Foaly's skull.
"It's the only way. A normal wipe reads the subject's memories and selectively erases those flagged by the system. Instead of erasing them, this new program interprets them as instructions and executes them," Foaly explained.
"So why haven't I heard about this before now?" Vinyáya asked.
"There have been some issues with neural feedback," Foaly said simply as he raised a helmet covered with electrodes preparatory to slipping it on his head.
Vinyáya laid a hand on Foaly's arm before he could slip the helmet on. "Foaly, is this dangerous?"
"Dangerous? Yes. Life threatening? No," Foaly answered, not looking at her. Vinyáya let go and Foaly took a breath before donning the helmet.
A/N: That's all for this chapter... I'll write when I can but keep an eye on my Drabble Bank...