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  “Really?” Polaski replied, irritated. “No wonder they call you ‘smart’ AIs.” She tugged her cap lower over her eyes. “I’ll do the flying. You concentrate on getting those weapons offline.”

  “They’re launching fighters,” Haverson warned. On the viewscreen the Covenant flagship now filled half the display, and six Seraph fighters emerged from the belly of the massive ship. “I’ve still got active signals from twenty of the Moray mines. Their momentum is carrying them within range. Tracking…locked on…maneuvering.” Tiny puffs of fire overlapped the teardrop-shaped Seraph fighters as they exploded. Haverson laughed. “Bull’s-eye!”

  “Forward weapons systems and shields are disabled,” Cortana said.

  “The doors are open,” Polaski murmured. “We’re invited in. It’d be damn impolite to say no.”

  The flagship filled the display.

  “Collision imminent,” Cortana warned.

  Sergeant Johnson got to his feet. The Chief knew better and stayed where he was on the deck. He grabbed on to the Sergeant’s leg.

  Polaski cut the engines and hit the maneuvering thrusters. The Longsword spun 180 degrees. With the ship now pointed backward, she pushed the throttle to maximum, and the engines thundered in full overload. The hull strained against the sudden reverse deceleration.

  The Chief hung on to the floor with one hand; with the other he held on to the Sergeant and kept him from flying across the ship.

  Polaski changed the viewscreen to a split view—fore and aft. She maneuvered with the ship’s thrusters, adjusting their approach to the launch bay opening. Onscreen the small opening grew larger alarmingly fast. “Hang on—hang on!”

  The engines whined and the ship slowed…but it wasn’t going to be enough.

  They entered the launch bay at three hundred meters per second. Flames from the Longsword’s engines washed over Grunt technicians as they vainly attempted to scramble out of the way. Their methane-filled atmosphere tanks popped like fire-crackers.

  Polaski cut the power. The ship slammed into the wall.

  The Master Chief, Sergeant Johnson, and Locklear crashed into the pilot’s and ops seats in a heap.

  Grunts approached the ship with plasma pistols drawn, the weapons glowing green as the aliens overcharged them. Covenant Engineers struggled to put out fires and repair burst conduits.

  “Shield reenergizing in place over the launch bay,” Cortana announced. “External atmosphere stabilizing. Please feel free to get up and move around the cabin.”

  Locklear scrambled to his feet. “Yeah!” he whooped. The young Helljumper yanked his MA5B’s charging lever and racked a round into the chamber. “Let’s rock!”

  “Good work, people,” the Chief said, standing. He readied his own assault rifle. “But that was just the easy part.”

  Chapter Seven

  1750 Hours, September 22, 2552 (Military Calendar)

  Aboard Unidentified Covenant Flagship,

  Soell System, Halo Debris Field.

  Plasma bolts impacted on the Longsword’s hull and splashed across the windshield. The packets of glowing energy sizzled across the cockpit and etched cloudy, molten trails into the glass.

  A legion of Grunts hunkered behind docked Seraph fighters and fuel pods. Some darted in and out of cover and fired ghostly green bolts of plasma at the Longsword.

  “I got ’em,” Polaski said and flipped a switch.

  The Longsword’s landing gear deployed and raised the craft a meter off the floor. “Guns clear,” Polaski announced. “’Bye, boys.”

  She brought up a targeting reticle and swept it around the bay. A hail of 120mm rounds tore through the Grunts’ cover. Fuel pods and unshielded fighters detonated and sent metal fragments and alien soldiers hurtling to the deck. The air exploded into roiling flame, which billowed toward the ceiling and then subsided. Pools of burning fuel and the charred bodies of Grunts and Covenant Engineers littered the launch bay.

  “Fire suppression system activating,” Cortana said.

  Jets of gray mist blew down from above. The fires intensified for a moment, then guttered and went out.

  “Is there atmosphere in the bay?” the Chief asked.

  “Scanning,” Cortana replied. “Traces of ash, some contamination from the melted ship hulls, and a lot of smoke, but the air in the bay is breathable, Chief.”

  “Good.” He turned to the others. “We’re going in. I’ll lead. Locklear, you’re up with me. Sergeant, you’ve got the rear.”

  “You’ll need to take me, too,” Cortana said. “I’ve pulled a schematic of this ship to navigate, but the engineering controls have been manually locked down. I’ll need direct access to this ship’s command data systems.”

  The Chief hesitated. His armor allowed an AI like Cortana to tag along stored in a special crystal layer. On Halo, Cortana had been an invaluable tactical asset.

  Still, she also used part of his armor’s neural interface for processing purposes, literally harnessing parts of the Chief’s brain. And after coming out of Halo’s computer system, she’d been acting…twitchy.

  He put his discomfort aside. If Cortana turned into a liability, he’d pull the plug.

  “Stand by,” he said. He punched a key on the computer terminal and dumped Cortana to a data chip. A moment later the terminal pulsed green.

  He removed the chip and slotted it in the back of his helmet. There was a moment of vertigo, and then the familiar mercury-and-ice sensation flooded his skull as Cortana interfaced.

  “Still plenty of room in here, I see,” she said.

  He ignored her customary quip and nodded at Johnson and Locklear. “Let’s go.”

  Sergeant Johnson hit the door release, and the side hatch slid open. Locklear shouldered his rifle and poured fire through the opening. A pair of Grunts who had crouched near the Longsword to protect themselves from the fire flew backward onto the deck. Phosphorescent blood pooled beneath their prone forms.

  The Chief dived through the open hatch and rolled to his feet; his motion tracker picked up three targets to his side. He whirled about and saw a trio of Covenant Engineers. He removed his finger from the weapon’s trigger. Engineers were no threat.

  The odd, meter-high creatures hovered above the deck, using bladders of some lighter-than-air gas produced by their bodies. Their tentacles and feelers probed a tangle of fuel lines, quickly repairing the pipes and pumps.

  “Funny that there’s no welcoming committee yet,” Cortana whispered. “I looked over this ship’s personnel roster: three thousand Covenant, mostly Engineers. There’s a light company of Grunts, and only a hundred Elites.”

  “Only a hundred?” the Chief muttered.

  He waved his team forward toward a heavy door at the back of the launch bay. The air was full of smoke and fire-suppressing mist, which reduced visibility to a dozen meters.

  The rattle of assault rifle fire echoed through the bay. The Chief spun to his right and brought his own rifle to bear.

  Locklear stood over the twitching corpses of the Engineers. He fired another burst into the fallen aliens.

  “Don’t waste your ammunition, Corporal,” the Sergeant said. “They may be ugly, but they’re harmless.”

  “They’re harmless now, Sarge,” Locklear replied. He wiped a spatter of alien blood from his cheek and smirked.

  The Chief tended to agree with Locklear’s threat analysis of the Covenant: When in doubt, kill. Still, he found the young Marine’s actions unnecessary…and a little sloppy.

  The architecture of the Covenant fighter bay was similar to the interior of the other Covenant ship the Chief had recently been inside, the Truth and Reconciliation. Low indirect lights illuminated the dark purple walls. The alien metal appeared to be stenciled with odd, faintly luminescent geometric patterns that overlapped each other. The ceiling was vaulted and unnecessarily high, maybe ten meters. In contrast to a human ship, it was a waste of space.

  The Chief spotted a large door at the back of the bay.


  The door was a distorted hexagonal shape and large enough that the entire team could enter at the same time—not that he’d ever be foolish enough to take up such a formation in hostile territory. The door had four sections that, when keyed to open, would silently slide away from the center.

  “That will take us to the main corridor,” Cortana said. “And from there, to the bridge.”

  The Chief waved Locklear to the right side of the door, Sergeant Johnson to the left.

  “Lieutenant Haverson,” he called out, “you’re our rear guard. Polaski, hit the door controls. Hand signals from now on.”

  Haverson tossed an ironic salute to the Chief but tightened his grip on his weapon and scanned the bay.

  Polaski moved forward and crouched by the panel in the middle of the door. She turned her cap around and leaned closer, then looked back to the Chief and gave him a thumbs-up.

  He raised his rifle and nodded, giving her the go-ahead to breach the door.

  She reached for the controls. Before she touched them, though, the door slid apart.

  Standing on the opposite side were five Elites: Two stood shielded by either edge of the door; a third stood centered in the corridor, plasma rifle leveled at the Chief; behind it, the fourth Elite covered the rear of their formation; and one last Elite crouched in front of the door control panel—nose to nose with Polaski.

  The Chief fired two bursts directly over Polaski’s head. His first shots struck the Elite in the middle of the corridor. His second burst hit the Elite standing rear guard. The alien warriors hadn’t activated their shields, and 7.62mm rounds punctured their armor. The pair of Elites dropped to the deck.

  Their comrades on either side of the door howled and attacked. The whine of plasma rifle fire echoed through the bay as blue-white energy bolts crashed into the Chief’s own shields.

  His shield dropped away, and the insistent drone of a warning indicator pulsed in his helmet. His vision clouded from the flare of energy weapon discharges, and he struggled to draw a bead on the Elite in front of Polaski. It was no good—he had no clear shot.

  The Elite drew a plasma pistol. Polaski drew her own sidearm.

  She was faster—or luckier. Her pistol cleared its holster; she snapped it up and fired. The pistol boomed as a shot took the Elite right in the center of its elongated helmet.

  The Elite’s own shot went wide and seared into the deck behind Polaski.

  Polaski emptied her clip into the alien’s face. A pair of rounds rocked the alien back. Its shields faded, and the remaining rounds tore through armor and bone.

  It fell on its back, twitched twice, and died.

  Johnson and Locklear unleashed a hellish crossfire into the corridor and made short work of the remaining Elites as Polaski hugged the deckplates.

  “Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about,” Johnson crowed. “An honest-to-God turkey shoot.”

  Ten meters down the passage a dozen more Elites rounded a corner.

  “Uh-oh,” Locklear muttered.

  “Sergeant,” the Chief barked. “Door control!” John moved to Polaski’s position in two quick strides, grabbed her by her collar, and dragged her out of the line of fire. Plasma bolts singed the air where she’d been.

  He dropped her, primed a grenade, and tossed it toward the rushing Elites.

  The Sergeant fired his assault rife at the door controls; they exploded in a shower of sparks, and the doors slammed shut.

  A dull thump echoed behind the thick metal, then an eerie silence descended on the bay. Polaski struggled to her feet and fed a fresh clip into her pistol. Her hands shook.

  “Cortana,” the Chief said. “We need an alternate route to the bridge.”

  A blue arrow flashed on his heads-up display. The Chief turned and spotted a hatch to his right. He pointed to the hatch and signaled his team to move, then ran to the hatch and touched the control panel.

  The small door slid open to reveal a narrow corridor beyond, snaking into the darkness.

  He didn’t like it. The corridor was too dark and too narrow—a perfect place for an ambush. He briefly considered heading back to the primary bay door, but abandoned that idea. Smoke and sparks poured from the door seams as the Covenant forces on the other side tried to burn their way through.

  The Chief clicked on his low-light vision filters, and the darkness washed away into a grainy flood of fluorescent green. No contacts.

  He paused to let his shields recharge, then dropped into a low crouch. He brought his rifle to bear and crept into the corridor.

  The interior of the passage narrowed, and its smooth purple surface darkened. The Chief had to turn sideways to pass through.

  “This looks like a service corridor for their Engineers,” Cortana said. “Their Elite warriors will have a tough time following us.”

  The Chief grunted an acknowledgment as he eased his way through. There was a scraping sound and a flash of sparks as his energy shield brushed the wall. It was too tight a fit. He powered down the shields, which left him just enough room to squeeze through.

  Locklear followed behind him, then Polaski, the Sergeant, and finally Haverson.

  The Chief pointed at Haverson, then at the door. The Lieutenant frowned, then nodded. Haverson closed the hatch and ripped out the circuitry for the control mechanism.

  There had been dozens of Engineers in the launch bay—and there were enough on the ship to merit their own access tunnel. The Chief hadn’t seen anything like this on the Truth and Reconciliation.

  In fact, he hadn’t seen a single Engineer on that ship. What made this ship different? It was armed like a ship of war…yet had the support staff of a refit vessel.

  “Stop here,” Cortana said.

  The Chief halted and killed his external speakers so he could speak freely. “Problem?”

  “No. A lucky break, maybe. Look to your left and down twenty centimeters.”

  The Chief squinted and noticed that a portion of the wall extruded into a circular opening no larger than the tip of his thumb. “That’s a data port…or what passes for one with the Covenant Engineers. I’m picking up handshake signals in short-wave and infrared from it. Remove me and slot me in.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I can’t do much good in there with you. Once I’m directly in contact with the ship’s battlenet, however, I can infiltrate and take over their systems. You’ll still need to get to the bridge and manually give me access to their engineering systems. In the meantime, I may be able to control secondary systems and buy you some time.”

  “If you’re sure.”

  “When have I not been sure?” she snapped.

  The Chief could sense her impatience through the neural interface.

  He removed Cortana’s data chip from the socket in his helmet. The Chief felt her leave his mind, felt the heat rush back into his head, pulsing with the rhythm of his heart…and once again, he was alone in the armor.

  He slotted Cortana’s chip into the Covenant data port.

  Locklear’s face rippled with disgust, and he whispered, “You couldn’t pay me to stick any part of myself in that thing.”

  The Chief made a slashing gesture across his throat, and the Marine fell silent.

  “I’m in,” Cortana said.

  “How is it?” the Chief said.

  There was a half-second pause. “It’s…different,” Cortana replied. “Proceed thirty meters down this passage and turn left.”

  The Chief motioned the team forward.

  “It’s very different,” Cortana murmured.

  Cortana was built for software intrusion. She had been programmed with every dirty trick and code-breaking algorithm the Office of Naval Intelligence, Section Three had ever created, and a few more tricks she’d developed on her own. She was the ultimate thief and electronic spy. She slipped into the Covenant system.

  It was easy the first time she had entered their network as the Longsword had approached the flagship. She had set their weapons
systems into a diagnostic mode. The Covenant had determined the problem and quickly reset the system, but it had given Polaski the precious seconds her sluggish human reflexes had needed to get inside the launch bay.

  “How is it?” the Chief asked.

  Now the element of surprise was gone, and the system’s counterintrusion systems were running on high alert. Something else prowled the systems now. Delicate pings bounced off the edges of Cortana’s presence; they probed, and withdrew.

  It felt as if there were someone else running through their system. A Covenant AI? The possibility of one nearby intrigued her.

  “It’s…different,” she finally answered.

  She scanned the ship’s schematics, deck by deck, then flashed through the vessel’s three thousand surveillance systems. She picked out the quickest route to the bridge from their current position and stored it in a stolen tertiary system buffer. She multitasked a portion of herself and continued to analyze the ship’s structure and subsystems.

  “Proceed thirty meters down this passage and turn left.”

  Cortana hijacked the external ship cameras and detected the six Covenant cruisers. They had stalled their pursuit of the Longsword and now hovered a hundred kilometers off the flagship’s starboard side. The strange U-shaped Covenant dropships launched from the cruisers and swarmed toward the flagship. That was trouble.

  Within the flagship she spotted a dozen Elite hunter-killer teams sweeping the corridors. She scrambled the ship’s tracking systems, generated electronic ghosts of the Chief and his team along a path directed toward the nose of the ship, where UNSC command-and-control centers were typically located. Maybe she could fool the Elites into a wild goose chase.

  She uploaded the coordinates of those enemies into the Chief’s HUD.

  A tickle of feedback teased through the data stream.

  Cortana locked onto the source of that feedback, listened, discerned a nonrandom pattern to the signal, then cut off contact. She had no time to play hide-and-seek with whatever else was in this system.

  Cortana had to finally admit to herself that she didn’t have the power to contend with a possible enemy artificial construct. She had absorbed a tremendous volume of data from Halo’s systems: eons’ worth of records on Halo’s engineering and maintenance, the xenobiology of the Flood, and every scrap of information on the mysterious “Forerunners” the Covenant revered so much. The information would take her a week of nonstop processing to examine, collate, codify…let alone understand.