Artemis Fowl_ The Opal Deception - Eoin Colfer [62]
Mulch expertly rifled through Chix’s pockets. The sprite was not actually unconscious, but he was pretending.
A wise move. In seconds, Mulch had removed the starter chip and stuffed it into his beard. A clump of beard hair wrapped itself tightly around the chip, forming a waterproof cocoon. He also relieved Verbil of his Neutrino, though that was not part of the deal. Mulch crossed the room in two strides and jammed a chair under the door handle. That should buy me a couple of seconds, he thought. He wrapped an arm around the water dispenser while simultaneously unbuttoning his bum-flap. Speed was vital now because whoever had been watching the interview through the two-way mirror was already hammering on the door. Mulch saw a black burn dot appear on the door; they were burning their way in.
He ripped the dispenser from the wall, allowing several gallons of cooled water to flood the interview room.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” moaned Chix from the floor. “It takes forever to dry these wings.”
“Shut up. You’re supposed to be unconscious.”
As soon as the water had drained from the supply pipe, Mulch dived into the pipe. He followed it to the first joint, then kicked it loose. Clumps of clay fell through, blocking the pipe. Mulch unhinged his jaw. He was back in the earth. No one could catch him now.
The shuttlebay was on the lower level, closest to the chute itself. Mulch angled himself downward, guided by his infallible dwarf internal compass. He had been in this terminal before, and the layout was burned into his memory, as was the layout of every building that he’d ever been in. Sixty seconds of chewing earth, stripping it of minerals, and ejecting waste at the other end brought Mulch face-to-face with an air duct. This particular duct led straight to the shuttlebay; the dwarf could even feel the vibration of the engines through his beard hair.
Generally he would burn through the duct’s metal paneling with a few drops of dwarf rock polish, but prison guards tended to confiscate items like that, so instead Mulch blasted a panel with a concentrated burst from the stolen handgun. The panel melted like a sheet of ice in front of a bar heater. He gave the molten metal a minute to solidify and cool, then slithered into the duct itself. Two left turns later, his face was pressed to the grille overlooking the shuttlebay itself. Red alarm lights were revolving over every door, and a harsh Klaxon made sure that everyone knew that there was some sort of emergency. The shuttlebay workers were gathered in front of the intranet screen, waiting for news.
Mulch dropped to the ground with more grace than his frame suggested was possible and creeped across to the LEP shuttle. The shuttle was suspended nose-up over a vertical supply tunnel. Mulch crept aboard, opening the passenger door with Chix Verbil’s chip. The controls were hugely complicated, but Mulch had a theory about vehicle controls: Ignore everything except the wheel and the pedals, and you’ll be fine. So far in his career, he had stolen more than fifty types of transportation, and his theory hadn’t let him down yet.
The dwarf thrust the starter chip into its socket, ignoring the computer’s advice that he run a systems’ check, and hit the release button. Eight tons of LEP shuttle dropped like a stone into the chute, spinning like an ice skater. The earth’s gravity grabbed hold of it, reeling it in toward the earth’s core.
Mulch’s foot jabbed the thruster pedal just enough to halt the drop.
The radio on the dash started talking to him. “You in the shuttle. You’d better come back here right now. I’m not kidding! In twenty seconds I personally am going to press the self-destruct button.”
Mulch spat a wad of dwarf spittle onto the speaker, muffling the irate voice. He gargled up another wad in his throat and deposited it on a circuit box below the radio. The circuits sparked and fizzled. So much for the self-destruct.
The controls were a bit heavier than Mulch