The Arctic Incident

“The money,” he shouted at Kamar. “Up there. The flare.”


Kamar was after him in a heartbeat, shouting instructions into the radio. Someone had to reach that money. Who cared about a drowning Irlandskii when there was five million dollars to be claimed?

Root pointed at Holly the moment Artemis Senior had been shot. “Go!” he ordered.

Captain Short activated her wings, launching herself off the hilltop. Of course what they were doing here was against all the regulations, but the Council was cutting Foaly a lot of slack having more or less convicted him of treason. The only conditions were that the centaur be in constant communication, and that every member of the party be fitted with remote incineration packs, so that they and all their fairy technology could be destroyed in the event of capture or injury.

Holly followed events on the submarine through her visor. She saw the shot hit Artemis Senior in the shoulder, knocking him against the larger Russian. Blood registered in her field of vision, still warm enough to be picked up by her thermal imager. Holly had to admit. It looked effective. Maybe Artemis’s plan could actually work. Maybe the Russians would be fooled. After all, humans generally saw what they wanted to see.

Then things went horribly wrong.

“He’s in the water!” shouted Holly into her helmet mike, opening the wing rig’s throttle to the max. “He’s alive, but not for long, unless we get him out.”

Holly skimmed silently over the glistening ice, arms crossed over her chest for speed. She was moving too fast for human vision to pin her down. She could be a bird, or a seal breaking the waves. The submarine loomed before her.

On board the Nikodim, the Russians were evacuating, clambering down the tower ladder, feet slipping in their haste. And ashore, the same. Men breaking cover, crashing through the frosted undergrowth. The commander must have set the flare. Those Mud Men would be delirious to find their precious money, only to have it dissolve in seventy-two hours. That would just about give them time to deliver it to their boss. Odds were he wouldn’t be happy with disappearing cash.

Holly skimmed the sub’s keel, safe from radiation in her suit and helmet. At the last moment, she flipped upward, shielded from the northern shore by the conning tower. She popped the throttle, hovering above the ice hole where the human had fallen in. The commander was talking into her ear, but Holly didn’t reply. She had a job to do and no time for talk.

Fairies hate cold. They hate it. Some are so phobic about low temperatures that they won’t even eat ice cream. The last thing that Holly wanted to do right now was to put so much as a toe into that sub-zero, radioactive water. But what choice did she have? “D’Arvit!” she swore, and plunged into the water.

The microfilaments in her suit deadened the cold, but they could not dispel it entirely. Holly knew that she had seconds before the temperature drop slowed her reactions and sent her into shock.

Below her, the unconscious human was as pale as a ghost. Holly fumbled with her wing controls. A touch too much on the throttle could send her too deep; not enough, and she would fall short. And at these temperatures, she only had one shot only.

Holly hit the throttle. The engine buzzed once, sending her ten fathoms down. Perfect. She grabbed Fowl senior by the waist, quickly clipping him on to her Moonbelt. He hung there limply. He needed an infusion of magic, and the sooner the better.

Holly glanced upward. It seemed as though the ice hole was already closing. Was there anything else that could go wrong? The commander was shouting in her ear, but she shut him out, concentrating on getting back on dry land.

Ice crystals spun themselves across the hole like spiders’ webs. The ocean seemed determined to claim them.

I don’t think so, thought Holly, pointing her helmeted head at the surface, and opening the throttle as far as it would go.

They crashed through the ice, landing on the slatted surface of the sub’s forward deck. The human’s face was the color of the surrounding landscape. Holly crouched on his chest like a predatory creature, exposing the supposed wound to the night air. There was blood on the deck, but it was Artemis Junior’s own blood. They had pried the cap from a hydrosion shell, and half filled it with blood taken from Artemis’s arm. On impact the fizzer had knocked Artemis Senior off his feet, sending the crimson liquid spiraling through the air. Very convincing.

Of course, being thrown into the freezing waters had not been part of the plan.

The shell had not penetrated the skin, but Mister Fowl was not safe yet. Holly’s thermal imager showed that his heartbeat was dangerously slow and weak. Holly laid her hands on his chest.

“Heal,” she whispered. “Heal.”

And the magic scurried down her fingers.

Artemis couldn’t watch Holly’s rescue attempt. Had he done the right thing? What if the hydrosion shell had penetrated? How could he ever face his mother again?