The Gauntlet Read online

  Other Books by Eoin Colfer

  AIRMAN

  HALF MOON INVESTIGATIONS

  THE SUPERNATURALIST

  THE WISH LIST

  ARTEMIS FOWL

  ARTEMIS FOWL AND THE ARCTIC INCIDENT

  ARTEMIS FOWL AND THE ETERNITY CODE

  ARTEMIS FOWL AND THE OPAL DECEPTION

  ARTEMIS FOWL AND THE LOST COLONY

  ARTEMIS FOWL AND THE TIME PARADOX

  ARTEMIS FOWL AND THE ATLANTIS COMPLEX

  ARTEMIS FOWL AND THE LAST GUARDIAN

  ARTEMIS FOWL: THE GRAPHIC NOVEL

  ARTEMIS FOWL AND THE ARCTIC INCIDENT: THE GRAPHIC NOVEL

  WARP: THE RELUCTANT ASSASSIN

  WARP: THE HANGMAN’S REVOLUTION

  WARP: THE FOREVER MAN

  Copyright © 2016 MARVEL

  Cover art © 2016 by Owen Richardson

  Cover design by Tyler Nevins

  Designed by Tyler Nevins

  All rights reserved. Published by Marvel Press, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Marvel Press, 125 West End Avenue, New York, New York 10023.

  ISBN 978-1-4847-4432-1

  Visit www.hyperionteens.com

  www.marvel.com

  Contents

  Title Page

  Other Books by Eoin Colfer

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  1. The Big Idea

  2. Prototony

  3. That Friday Feeling

  4. Game Theory

  5. A Genius and an Idiot

  6. Oh, Mandy

  7. A Long Way Down

  8. Running the Blowholes

  9. The Contingency Plan

  10. Hints and Riddles

  11. Yelp + Laugh = Yelph

  12. A Neapolitan Flatbread

  13. The Tiger and the Roar

  14. Something Fishy

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  For Seán, as promised

  A modern-day warrior mean, mean stride,

  Today’s Tom Sawyer mean, mean pride.

  —Rush

  Los Angeles, the 1980s—which were not as bad as people think

  Tony Stark paced the lacquered wooden floor outside his father’s office, chewing one stick of gum after another. For three hours he’d had to hang around waiting for a meeting with his own dad.

  It was ridiculous.

  Forcing your only son to wait on a sunny day was, teenage Tony felt sure, against some universal good-parenting guidelines. Especially since Tony was about to change the face of Stark Industries forever. All his life Howard Stark had griped that nobody ever brought him the big idea and he had to think of everything himself. Now Tony had that big idea in his backpack, and dear old dad was making him wait while he had lunch with the baby-faced governor of Arkansas.

  Howard Stark’s secretary, Annabel, sat behind her glossy wooden desk without offering so much as a word of sympathy, or even a glass of water. In fact, the only thing she sent Tony’s way was a disapproving glare so heated that Tony felt it was interfering with his elaborate hairstyle.

  “Come on, Annabel,” he said. “Ease up on the daggers. You’re melting my head.”

  Annabel did not ease up. If anything, her glare grew more intense, and she added a curled lip to the expression.

  Tony felt he should challenge this blatant antagonism. “Is this about Cissy? Is that what this is about?”

  Annabel snapped a pencil between her clenched fists. “My daughter’s name is Cecilia, not Cissy.”

  “Hey, she told me Cissy, and I was not about to argue with such a pretty girl. She told me Cissy, so I went with Cissy.”

  Annabel jumped on that. “You went with her, all right—down to the beach in the middle of the night.”

  “It was nine thirty,” said Tony. “I wanted to show Cis—Cecilia the dolphin that swims into the cove. That was it. Nothing happened. The dolphin didn’t even show up.”

  “Maybe nothing happened,” conceded Annabel, “but you have a reputation, Tony. Every mom in Malibu has your name on her watch list.”

  “Come on,” objected Tony. “I’m fourteen. Harmless.”

  Annabel actually snorted, which was new for the normally demure secretary. “Harmless? Boys like you are never harmless. You are the opposite of harmless.”

  “That would be harmful,” said Tony, who had never learned the talent of keeping his mouth shut, even while chewing gum.

  “That’s right,” said Annabel. “And maybe you haven’t done any harm yet. But you will.”

  Tony was a little stunned.

  He had been in this outer office maybe a thousand times, and all Annabel had ever said to him was “Good morning, Master Stark,” or “I’ll tell your father you’re here, Master Stark.”

  Now it was all laser eyes and insults. Could it be that Annabel had a point? Could it be that he, Tony Stark, boy genius and all-around charmer, was actually harmful in some way?

  Every mom in Malibu had his name on a list?

  They would soon cross his name off that list if they knew what was in his backpack.

  “Cecilia is a great gal,” he said, giving some of his all-around charm a try. “I would never harm her.”

  Annabel straightened some papers on her desk that already looked pretty straight. “First,” she said, “don’t call my daughter a gal. This is twentieth-century California, not the Wild West. Second, maybe you won’t harm her, but you probably won’t call her, either. That’s how cruel boys like you operate, isn’t it, Master Tony?”

  Tony squinted suspiciously. When Annabel called him Master Tony, it did not sound like she meant Master Tony. It sounded like she meant exactly the same thing that his mom meant when she called him Anthony, which was pretty much the same as his father meant when he called him anything—as though every variation of his name was an accusation of something.

  Tony!

  Anthony!

  Master Stark!

  All disapproving.

  Tony could hear his father’s voice now.

  “Tony! Get your head out of the clouds.”

  Actually, he could hear his father’s voice as Howard Stark, back from his three-hour lunch, steamrolled through reception, the customary thunderhead scowl pasted on his face.

  “Tony, let’s go. This better be good, because I don’t have all day.”

  Tony hitched his backpack a little higher.

  “It’s good, Dad. Real good,” said Tony, thinking, He’s gonna make me partner when he sees this.

  “It better be,” said Howard Stark, pushing through the double doors into his office. “Annabel, hold my calls,” he said over his shoulder, then added, “For three minutes. Shouldn’t take more than that.”

  Tony swallowed. It would take him two minutes to get the device set up. That left one minute for the pitch.

  He squared his shoulders.

  One minute is all you need, boy genius, he thought, and he followed his father into the office, or, as the employees of Stark Industries referred to it in whispers, the Lion’s Den.

  Howard Stark was not a fan of California architecture. Floor-to-ceiling windows were not his thing. In his opinion, more looking out meant less looking in, which for years Tony had thought was stating the obvious, until he realized that by “looking in” his father meant thinking or inventing.

  Having said that, his dad was doing his share of looking out right now, staring at Tony as though he were an alien who had just come through a wormhole.

  “What the hell is that?” he s
aid eventually, pointing in the vague direction of his son’s head.

  “That’s my head, Dad,” said Tony. “And this Q&A is not coming out of my three minutes.”

  “Not your head, Tony. The thing on your head. Are you wearing a wig?”

  “A wig?” said Tony, injured. “Come on, Dad. A little gel, maybe, but not a wig. This is the latest style. There’s an English band called Duran Duran; maybe you’ve heard of them?”

  “No, I have not,” said Howard Stark, settling into his leather office chair. “Modern music is just old music dumbed down for a dumb generation—though that governor guy blows a pretty mean saxophone, they tell me. He’ll be president one day, mark my words.”

  When other people said “mark my words,” it was a kind of vague prediction not to be taken seriously. When Howard Stark said it, it meant he planned to use his fortune and influence to make whatever event he had marked happen, and you could bet your last dime on its coming true.

  Mr. Arkansas doesn’t know what’s about to hit him, thought Tony.

  Howard was not finished with his hairdo lecture. “I bet that style you’ve got going there takes, what, an hour to get right? That’s an hour of gaping at yourself in the mirror. Looking out, Tony. Looking out, when you could be looking in.”

  “I have been looking in,” said Tony hurriedly, eager to stop this style lecture in its tracks before his three minutes were up. “And I’ve come up with something.”

  Howard crossed his arms and grunted softly. The message was clear: I’ll believe that when I see it.

  Yeah, well, you’re about to see it, old man, thought Tony. Prepare to experience the awe.

  And while he shrugged off his bag, he also thought that as soon as he was partner he’d be able to say that kind of stuff out loud.

  Tony laid the bag on his father’s desk, then unzipped the main compartment. He reached inside gently, as if to cradle a newborn kitten, but what his hands came out with was a small flying machine with a bulbous nose and two sets of low-slung wings with inset rotors.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “A model airplane. Big deal, right? But this is so much more than a model.”

  Tony was prepared for his father to be unimpressed. What he was not prepared for at this point was for his father not to be unimpressed. Or rather: impressed.

  “Wait a minute,” said Howard Stark, literally jumping from his chair. “Wait just one minute, young man.”

  Howard Stark hurried around the desk and grabbed the plane right out of Tony’s hands.

  “This is…” he said, turning the craft over in his hands. “I don’t believe this. Have you been in my files? The battery, the cameras…”

  Tony pulled the miniature plane from his father’s grasp. “No, I haven’t been in your files. This is all me, Dad. One hundred percent Tony. I call it the Tanngrisnir, which was the goat that pulled Thor’s chariot. Not that I believe in any of that stuff, but I needed a name, and I know you like the Greek classics.”

  “Norse,” corrected Howard absently. “Thor is a Norse god, but never mind that now. How did you put this together?”

  For a second Tony’s usual stream of patter dried up, because it seemed as though the moment he’d dreamed about for so many years (i.e., impressing Pop) had finally showed up, and now that it was there, he didn’t want to blow it.

  Three minutes, he told himself. Get cracking.

  “I combined all the traditional sensors for weight efficiency. Magnetometers, gyros, and accelerometers, in one little box.”

  “I see,” said Howard, taking the Tanngrisnir gently from his son. “You did all this at home?”

  “Yes, in my room.” This was not as tough a task as it sounded, because Tony Stark’s room had more tech in it than most universities. “The brain is a tiny embedded computer, which I control with this.” Tony pulled a gray box from his pocket. “This is a prototype of something called a Game Boy. It’s not really your thing, Dad.”

  Howard surprised him. “Nintendo’s revolutionary gaming device. That’s not even coming out for a couple of years. How did you get hold of it?”

  “I have my sources, Dad,” said Tony mysteriously. “I modified the program, boosted the output and—here’s the clever part—linked it to a communications satellite so I can fly the TOT—Tony’s Tanngrisnir, that is—halfway around the world on one battery charge. And what the TOT sees, I see on this dinky little screen. What do you think?”

  Howard Stark’s features aligned themselves into an expression Tony had never seen before.

  Was it?

  Could it be?

  Admiration.

  Maybe there would even be a hug? The first one since he’d turned ten.

  “I am impressed, Tony,” said Howard finally. “You’ve saved me eighteen months on our drone program with this combination sensor alone. All this time we were working in parallel, and I never knew. That is inefficient resource management. I need to pay closer attention to your work.”

  Being labeled a resource to be managed was not exactly the warm embrace Tony was hoping for, but it was infinitely preferable to being ignored completely.

  Howard Stark tugged his glasses from his breast pocket and studied the cargo bay. “Just one question for you.”

  “Sure, Dad, fire away.”

  “That’s kind of the problem. I don’t see a mount for the missile….Or is the TOT itself the missile?”

  Tony frowned. “Missile? Dad, there’s no missile. The Tanngrisnir is a delivery system for medical aid. With the TOT I can drop malaria vaccines into a war zone with no loss of life. I can flit over minefields with a microcargo of penicillin or blood plasma. With a thousand TOTs I can avert a famine from my bedroom.”

  Tony activated the Game Boy and flew his creation right out of Howard’s hands.

  “Look how maneuverable it is. That’s because I used rotors and wings. The TOT can do anything, Dad. This is our chance to move away from weaponry. This is Stark Industries’ chance to do something good.”

  Howard’s face hardened, and Tony knew he’d blown it.

  “Something good? Something good, you say? So keeping this country safe isn’t a good thing?”

  “No, Dad, that’s not what I meant.”

  “Because the only reason you can sit in your bedroom single-handedly averting famine is because I keep your bedroom, and this entire country, safe.”

  The hoped-for hug seemed very far away now. “I know that, Dad. I know you do.”

  “And still, knowing that, you waltz in here and casually suggest that it’s time for Stark Industries to do something good.”

  Tony felt his heart sink. He had been so close to breaking through his father’s barriers. But with a few badly chosen words, he had raised those barriers to an all-time high.

  “Dad, listen….”

  But Dad was not in the mood for listening. He was in the mood for delivering another lecture.

  “Tony, what you fail to understand is that…”

  We are at war, thought Tony, his heart sinking even further.

  “…we are at war,” said Howard Stark, right on cue. “And just because you can’t see the enemy does not mean that they are not out there.”

  And I just bet me and my hippie friends are blind to the dangers.

  Howard Stark was on autopilot now. “Of course, you and your hippie friends have no idea what’s really going on.”

  Tony attempted an intervention. “Dad, no one even says the word hippie anymore.”

  Howard steamrolled over him. “No, no. You’d much prefer to fritter away the freedom that I provide by finding ways to undermine me. Coming in here with this gadget to save Stark Industries.”

  Tony brought the TOT in for a landing on his father’s desk. “Forget it, Dad. It’s just a toy. It doesn’t matter.”

  Surprisingly, something Tony said seemed to penetrate. “A toy? Just a toy…” Howard held out his palm.

  “Spit,” he ordered.

  Maybe thi
s is code for something, thought Tony.

  “Spit,” said Howard again. “The gum. Now.”

  What could Tony do but obey? He spit the gum onto his father’s palm.

  “A toy, you say,” muttered Howard, his hands busy with the TOT. “Let’s see what our enemies can do with a toy.”

  “Dad, I get it, okay? There’s no need to freak out.”

  Howard laughed. “Freak out, Tony? Nobody says that anymore.” He rummaged in his desk and found what he was looking for, then stuck it to the bottom of the TOT with the blob of chewing gum.

  “Now, let’s see, let’s see,” said Howard, almost feverish in the throes of his demonstration. “What have we got? What do we have?” Tony’s father went over to his small bulletproof window, opened it, and gazed into the parking lot. “Yes, there it is. My DeLorean. I love that monstrosity, Tony, love it. But let’s send it back to the future, shall we? Why not?”

  And he tossed the TOT outside. A year’s work, right out the window.

  “Dad!” shouted Tony, rushing to look. But his father held him back.

  “You better get flying, Son. Tick-tock.”

  Tony whipped up the Game Boy and managed to take control of the TOT an instant before it crashed into the parking lot’s asphalt. Even from a dozen floors up they could hear the craft’s motors whine in protest at the rough handling.

  “Well done,” said Howard, and some part of Tony appreciated the rare compliment even in a moment already jam-packed with emotions. “Nicely handled under pressure. And there will be a lot of pressure when you’re averting famine and so forth. But not crashing is the least of your worries. The mission is your priority, and in this case your mission is my DeLorean. Everyone in that car has been affected by a fatal virus, and your little plane is carrying the antidote. But this is a time-sensitive mission, Tony. You need to land the TOT on my DeLorean’s roof in thirty seconds, or everyone in that car is dead.”

  Tony wasn’t sure what was actually going on. Was this a real test, or just a lesson? Either way, he was not going to fall at the first hurdle. Or second hurdle, if you counted the expert and cool way he’d regained control of the plummeting TOT.

  Land on the DeLorean, he thought. No problem, Pop.