Artemis- Ice Cube Deters Amorphobots

Foaly ignored her, his attention attracted by Artemis’s Ice Cube,
which was swiveling on its base.
“It seems that Artemis’s cannon is about to fire,” he said, his
scientific interest piqued in spite of the horrible death approaching
them.
Holly grabbed the centaur’s mane, roughly dragging him to the
ground. “Face down, hold breath. How hard is that?”
“Oh,” said Foaly. “I see.”
There must have been a buildup of heat somewhere, because the
bots froze for a moment, exchanging curious chitters. The noise was
quickly drowned out by a bass heavy thump followed by a descending
whistle.
“Ooooh,” chorused the amorphobots, sprouting gel periscopes.
Foaly closed one eye and cocked his ear. “Mortar,” he proclaimed,
and then as the whistling grew louder he decided that it might be a
good idea to take a breath and cover as many orifices as possible.
This is really going to hurt, he thought, and for some reason giggled
like a four-year-old pixette.
Then the entire indent was submerged in a pancake of densely
packed nano-wafers that worked into every crack, coating the
occupants of the hole and completely obliterating any heat signatures.
The amorphobots jiggled backward, away from the mystery
substance, searched around for the beings they had been pursuing, and
then shrugged their blobby shoulders and trundled after their mother
ship, which had bludgeoned and melted its way through the surface to
the subterranean volcanoes below.
Underneath the gunky quagmire, two fairies and one human lay still,
blowing bubbles with their breath.
“It worked,” gasped Holly finally.

- The Atlantis Complex, Chapter 3