This thing flies without power once it is airborne. My host has seen this with her own eyes.
Her good sense told her that she should stop and allow the plane to crash into the lake. If the passengers did not drown, then her archers could pick off the swimmers. But good sense was of little use on a night such as this, when ghost warriors roamed the earth and dwarfs rode once more on the backs of trolls, so Bellico decided she must do what she could to stop this plane from leaving the ground.
She increased her pace, outstripping the other Berserkers, using her long human legs to their full advantage, and hurled herself at the troll’s midsection, grabbing tufts of gray fur with one hand and the pirate sword with the other.
Gruff howled but kept pushing.
I am attacking a troll, she thought. I would never do this with my own body.
Bellico glanced upward through the tangle of limbs and saw the whole of the moon, gleaming above. Beneath that, she saw a dwarf in considerable discomfort, changing his grip to hold on to the plane’s body, flattening himself to the fuselage.
“Go,” the dwarf instructed the troll. “Back to your cave.” That is not good, thought Bellico. Not good at all.
The plane swept up the liftoff ramp into the air. At the same moment, Gruff obeyed his master and released his grip, sending himself and Bellico skipping across the lake like skimmed stones, which was a lot more painful than it sounds. Gruff had a coat of fur to protect his hide, but Bellico covered most of the distance on a face that would have water burns for several months.
Overhead, Mulch could hold on no longer. He released a jetstream of watery fat, wind, and half-digested foodstuff that gave the solar plane a few extra feet of lift, just enough to send it soaring out over the lake.
Bellico surfaced just in time to be clocked on the forehead by what could have been a dog’s skull.
I will not think about that, she thought, and swam back toward the shore.
Artemis pumped the throttle for a second time, and the plane’s engine caught. The single nose propeller chugged, jerked, then spun faster and faster until its blades formed a continuous transparent circle.
“What happened?” Artemis wondered aloud. “What was that noise?”
“Wonder later,” said Holly, “and fly the plane now.”
This was a good idea, as they were by no means out of the woods yet. The engine was running, it was true, but there was no power in the solar battery, and they could only glide for a limited time at this altitude.
Artemis pulled the stick back, climbing to a hundred feet, and as the wider world spread out below them, the magnitude of the devastation wrought by Opal’s plan became obvious.
The roads into Dublin were lit by engine fires fed by fuel tanks and combustible materials. Dublin itself was blacked out, except for patches of orange lighting where generators had been patched up or bonfires lit. Artemis saw two large ships that had collided in the harbor, and another beached like a whale on the strand. There were too many fires to count in the city itself, and smoke rose and gathered like a thundercloud.
Opal plans to inherit this new earth, Artemis thought. I will not let her.
And it was this thought that pulled Artemis’s mind back into focus and set him scheming on a plan that could stop Opal Koboi for the final time.
They flew over the lake, but it was not graceful flight—in fact, it was more like prolonged falling. Artemis wrestled with controls that seemed to fight back as he struggled to keep their descent as gradual as possible.
They crested a row of pines and flew directly over the Berserker Gate, where Opal Koboi labored in a magical corona. Holly used the flyover as a chance to recon their enemy’s forces.
Opal was surrounded by a ring of Berserkers. There were pirates, clay warriors, and other assorted beings in the ring. The estate walls beyond were patrolled by more Berserkers. There were mostly animals on the walls—two foxes, and even some stag, clopping along the stone, sniffing the air.
No way in, thought Holly. And the sky is beginning to lighten.
Opal had given herself till sunrise to open the second lock.
Perhaps she will fail and the sunlight will do our work for us, thought Holly. But it was unlikely that Opal had made a mistake in her calculations. She had spent too long in her cell obsessing over every detail.
We cannot rely on the elements. If Opal’s plan is to fail, we must make it fail.
Beside her, Artemis was thinking the same thing, the only difference being that he had already laid the foundations of a plan in his mind.
If Artemis had voiced his plan at that moment, Holly would have been surprised. Not by the plan’s genius—she would expect no less—but because of its selflessness. Artemis Fowl planned to attack with the one weapon Opal Koboi would never suspect him of possessing: his humanity.
To deploy this stealth torpedo, Artemis would have to trust two people to be true their own personality defects.