Artemis Fowl - Eoin Colfer [13]
Foaly’s voice sounded in her earpiece. “T-minus twenty,” he said. “We’re on a secure channel in case the Mud People have started underground monitoring. You never know. An oil tanker from the Middle East intercepted a transmission one time. What a mess that was.”
Holly adjusted her helmet mike.
“Focus, Foaly. My life is in your hands here.”
“Uh . . . Okay, sorry. We’re going to use the rail to drop you into E7’s main shaft, there’s a surge due any minute. That should see you past the first hundred klicks, then you’re on your own.”
Holly nodded, curling her fingers around the twin joysticks.
“All systems check. Fire it up.”
There was a whoosh as the pod’s engines ignited. The tiny craft jostled in its housing, shaking Holly like a bead in a rattle. She could barely hear Foaly speaking into her ear.
“You’re in the secondary shaft now. Get ready to fly, Short.”
Holly pulled a rubber cylinder from the dash and slipped it between her teeth. No good having a radio if you’ve swallowed your tongue. She activated the external cameras and put the view on screen.
The entrance to E7 was creeping toward her. The air was shimmering in the landing light glow. White-hot sparks tumbled into the secondary shaft. Holly couldn’t hear the roar, but she could imagine it. A raw skinning wind like a million trolls howling.
Her fingers tightened around the joysticks. The pod shuddered to a halt at the lip. The chute stretched above and below. Massive. Boundless. Like dropping an ant down a drainpipe.
“Right-o,” crackled Foaly. “Hold on to your breakfast. Roller coasters ain’t got nothing on this.”
Holly nodded. She couldn’t speak, not with the rubber in her mouth. The centaur would be able to see her in the podcam anyway.
“Sayonara, sweetheart,” said Foaly, and pressed the button.
The pod’s clamp tilted, rolling Holly into the abyss. Her stomach tightened as G-force took hold, dragging her to the center of the earth. The seismology section had a million probes down here, with a ninety-nine point eight success rate at predicting the magma flares. But there was always that point two percent.
The fall seemed to last for an eternity. And just when Holly had mentally consigned herself to the scrap heap, she felt it. That unforgettable vibration. The feeling that outside her tiny sphere, the whole world was being shaken apart. Here it comes.
“Fins,” she said, spitting the word around the cylinder.
Foaly may have replied, she couldn’t hear him any more. Holly couldn’t even hear herself, but she did see the stabilization fins slide out on the monitor.
The flare caught her like a hurricane, spinning the pod at first until the fins caught. Half-melted rocks pelted the craft’s underside, jolting it toward the chute walls. Holly compensated with bursts from the joysticks.
The heat was tremendous in the confined space, enough to fry a human. But fairy lungs are made of stronger stuff. The acceleration dragged at her body with invisible hands, stretching the flesh over her arms and face. Holly blinked salty sweat from her eyes and concentrated on the monitor. The flare had totally engulfed her pod, and it was a big one too. Force seven at the very least. A good thousand-foot girth. Orange-striped magma swirled and hissed around her, searching for a weak point in the metal casing.
The pod groaned and complained, fifty-year-old rivets threatening to pop. Holly shook her head. The first thing she was going to do on her return was kick Foaly straight in the hairy behind. She felt like a nut inside a shell, between a gnome’s molars. Doomed.
A bow plate buckled, popped in as though punched by a giant fist. The pressure light blinked on. Holly could feel her head being squeezed. The eyes would be first to go— popping like ripe berries.
She checked the dials. Twenty more seconds before she rode out the flare and was running on thermals. Those twenty seconds seemed like an age. Holly sealed the helmet to protect her eyes, riding out the final barrage