It was unsettling . . . he could hear Cortana’s voice through his helmet speakers, but it also felt like shewas speaking inside his head. “Hello, Cortana.”
“Hmm . . . I’m detecting a high degree of cerebral cortex activity. You’re not the muscle-boundautomatons the press makes you out to be.”
“Automaton?” the Master Chief whispered. “Interesting choice of words for an artificial intelligence.”
Dr. Halsey watched the Master Chief with great interest. “You must forgive Cortana, Master Chief. Sheis somewhat high-spirited. You may have to allow for behavioral quirks.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
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“I think we should begin the test straightaway. There’s no better way for the two of you to getacquainted than in simulated combat.”
“No one said anything about combat,” Cortana said.
“The ONI brass have arranged a test for you and the new MJOLNIR system,” Dr. Halsey said. “Thereare some that believe you two are not up to our proposed mission.”
“Ma’am!” The Master Chief snapped to attention. “I’m up for it, ma’am!”
“I know you are, Master Chief. Others . . . require proof.” She looked around at the shadows cast by theMarines outside the fabric walls of the command dome. “You hardly need a reminder to be prepared foranything . . . but stay on your guard, just the same.”
Dr. Halsey’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I think some of the ONI brass would prefer to see you fail thistest, Master Chief. And they may have arranged to make sure you do—regardless of your performance.”
“I won’t fail, Doctor.”
Her forehead wrinkled with worry lines, but then they quickly disappeared. “I know you won’t.”
She stepped back, and dropped her conspiratorial whisper. “Master Chief, you are ordered to count toten after I leave. After that, make your way to the obstacle course. At the far end is a bell. Your goal willbe to ring it.” She paused, then added, “You are authorized to neutralize any threats in order to achievethis objective.”
“Affirmative,” the Master Chief said. Enough uncertainty—now he had an objective, and rules ofengagement.
“Be careful, Master Chief,” Dr. Halsey said quietly. She gestured at the pair of technicians to follow her,then turned and walked out of the tent.
The Master Chief didn’t understand why Dr. Halsey thought he was in real danger—he didn’t have tounderstand the reason. All he needed to know was that danger was present.
He knew how to handle danger.
“Uploading combat protocols now,” Cortana said. “Initiating electronic detection algorithms. Boostingneural interface performance to eighty-five percent. I’m ready when you are, Master Chief.”
The Master Chief heard metallic clacks around the tent.
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“Analyzing sound pattern,” Cortana said. “Database match.Identified as—”
“As someone cycling the bolt of an MA5B assault rifle. I know. Standard-issue weapons for OrbitalDrop Shock Troopers.”
“Since you’re ‘in the know,’ Master Chief,” Cortana quipped. “I assume you have a plan.”
John snapped his helmet visor back down and sealed the armor’s environment system. “Yes.”
“Presumably your plan doesn’t involve getting shot . . . ?”
“No.”
“So, what’s the plan?” Cortana sounded worried.
“I’m going to finish counting to ten.”
John heard Cortana sigh in frustration. John shook his head in puzzlement. He’d never encountered a so-called smart AI before. Cortana sounded . . . like a human.
Worse, she sounded like acivilian . This was going to take a lot of getting used to.
Shadows moved along the wall of the tent—motion from outside.
Eight.
There was a snag in this mission and he hadn’t even reached the obstacle course. He would have toengage his fellow soldiers. He pushed aside any questions about why. He had his orders and he wouldfollow them. He had dealt with ODSTs before.
Nine.
Three soldiers entered the tent, moving in slow motion—black-armored figures, helmets snug over theirfaces, crouched low, and their rifles leveled. Two took flanking positions. The one in the middle openedfire.
Ten.
The Master Chief blurred into motion. He dove from the activation platform and—before the soldierscould adjust their aim—landed in their midst. He rolled to his feet right next to the soldier who firedfirst, and grabbed the man’s rifle.
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John brutally yanked the weapon away from the soldier. There was a loud cracking sound as the man’sshoulder dislocated. The wounded trooper stumbled forward, off balance. John spun the rifle andslammed the butt of the weapon into the soldier’s side. The man exhaled explosively as his ribs cracked.He grunted, and fell unceremoniously to the floor, unconscious.
John spun to face the left-flank gunner, assault rifle leveled at the man’s head instantly. He had the manin his sights, but he still had time—the soldier was not quite in position. To John’s enhanced senses,amped up by Cortana and the neural interface, the rifleman seemed to be moving in slow motion. Tooslow.
The Master Chief lashed out with the rifle butt again. The trooper’s head snapped back from the sudden,powerful blow. He flipped head over tail and slammed into the ground. John sized the man’s conditionup with a practiced eye: shock, concussion, fractured vertebrae.
Gunner number two was out of the fight.
The remaining gunner completed his turn and opened fire. A three-round burst ricocheted off theMJOLNIR armor’s energy shield. The shield’s recharge bar flickered a hairbreadth.
Before the soldier could react, the Master Chief sidestepped and slammed his own rifle down—hard.The trooper screamed as his leg gave out. A jagged spoke of bone burst through the wounded man’sfatigues. The Master chief finished him with a rifle butt to his helmeted head.
John checked the condition of the rifle, and—satisfied that it was in working order—began to pull ammoclips from the fallen soldiers’ belt pouches. The lead soldier also carried a razor-edged combat knife;John grabbed it.
“You could have killed them,” Cortana said. “Why didn’t you?”
“My orders gave me permission to ‘neutralize’ threats,” he replied. “They aren’t threats anymore.”
“Semantics,” Cortana replied. She sounded amused. “I can’t argue with the results, though—” She brokeoff, suddenly. “New targets. Seven contacts on the motion tracker,” Cortana reported. “We’resurrounded.”
Seven more soldiers. The Master Chief could open fire now and kill them all. Under any othercircumstances, he would have removed such threats. But their MA5Bs were no immediate danger tohim . . . and the UNSC could use every soldier to fight the Covenant.
He strode to the center pole of the tent, and with a yank, he pulled it free. As the roof fluttered down, he
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slashed a slit in the tent fabric and shoved through.
He faced three Marines; they fired—the Master Chief deftly jumped to one side. He sprang toward themand lashed out with the steel pole, swiped out their legs. He heard bones crack—followed by screams ofpain.
The Master Chief turned as the tent finished collapsing. The remaining four men could see him now.One reached for a grenade on his belt. The other three tracked him with their assault rifles.
The Master Chief threw the pole like a javelin at the man with the grenade. It impacted in his sternumand he fell with awhoopf.
The grenade, minus the pin, however, dropped to the ground.
The Master Chief moved and kicked the grenade. It arced over the parking lot and detonated in a cloudof smoke and shrapnel.
The three remaining Marines opened fire—spraying bullets in a full-auto fusillade. Bullets pinged offthe Master Chief’s shield.
The shield status indicator blinked and dropped with each bullet impact—the sustained weapons fire wasdraining the shield precipitously. John tucked and rolled, narrowly avoiding an incoming burst ofautomatic-weapons fire, then sprang at the nearest Marine.
John launched an openhanded strike at the man’s chest. The Marine’s ribs caved in and he droppedwithout a sound, blood flowing from his mouth. John spun, brought his rifle up, and fired twice.
The second soldier screamed and dropped his rifle as the bullets tore through each knee. John kicked thediscarded rifle, bending the barrel and rendering the weapon useless.
The last man stood frozen in place.
The Master Chief didn’t give the man time to recover; he grabbed his rifle, ripped off his bandolier ofgrenades, then punched his helmet. The Marine dropped.
“Mission time plus twenty-two seconds,” Cortana remarked. “Although, technically, you started to moveforty milliseconds before you were ordered to.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
The Master Chief slung the assault rifle and bandolier of grenades over his shoulder and ran for the
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shadows of the barracks. He slipped under the raised buildings and belly-crawled toward the obstaclecourse. No need to make himself a target for snipers . . . although it would be an interesting test to seewhat caliber of bullet these shields could deflect.
No. That kind of thinking was dangerous. The shield was useful, but under combined fire it droppedvery quickly. He was tough . . . not invincible.
He emerged at the beginning to the obstacle course. The first part was a run over ten acres of jaggedgravel. Sometimes raw recruits had to take off their boots before they crossed. Other than the pain—itwas the easiest part of the course.
The Master Chief started toward the gravel yard.
“Wait,” Cortana said. “I’m picking up far infrared signals on your thermal sensors. An encryptedsequence . . . decoding . . . yes, there. It’s an activation signal for a Lotus mine. They’ve mined the field,Master Chief.”
The Master Chief froze. He’d used Lotus mines before and knew the damage they could inflict. Theshaped charges ripped though the armor plate of a tank like it was no thicker than an orange peel.
This would slow him down considerably.
Not crossing the obstacle course was no option. He had his orders. He wouldn’t cheat and go around. Hehad to prove that he and Cortana were up for this test.
“Any ideas?” he asked.
“I thought you’d never ask,” Cortana replied. “Find the position of one mine, and I can estimate therough position of the others based on the standard randomization procedure used by UNSC engineers.”
“Understood.”
The Master Chief grabbed a grenade, pulled the pin, counted to three, and lobbed it into the middle ofthe field. It bounced and exploded—sending a shock wave through the ground—tripping two of theLotus mines. Twin plumes of gravel and dust shot into the air. The detonation shook his teeth.
He wondered if the armor’s shields could have survived that. He didn’t want to find out while he wasstill inside the thing. He boosted the field strength on the bottom of his boots to full.
Cortana overlaid a grid on his heads-up display. Lines flickered as she ran through the possiblepermutations.
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“Got a match!” she said. Two dozen red circles appeared on his display. “That’s ninety-three percentaccurate. The best I can do.”
“There are never any guarantees,” the Master Chief replied.
He stepped onto the gravel, taking short, deliberate steps. With the shields activated on the bottoms ofhis boots, it felt like he was skating on greased ice.
He kept his head down, picking his way between red dots on his display.
If Cortana was wrong, he probably wouldn’t even know it.
The Master Chief saw the gravel had ended. He looked up. He had made it.
“Thank you, Cortana. Well done.”
“You’re welcome . . .” Her voice trailed off. “Picking up scrambled radio frequencies on the D band.Encrypted orders from this facility to Fairchild Airfield. They’re using personal codewords, too—so Ican’t tell what they’re up to. Whatever it is, I don’t like it.”
“Keep your ears open.”
“I always do.”
He ran to the next section of the obstacle course: the razor field. Here, recruits had to crawl in the mudunder razor wire as their instructors fired live rounds over them. A lot of soldiers discovered whetherthey had the guts to deal with bullets zinging a centimeter over their heads.
Along either side of the course there was something new: three 30mm chain-guns mounted on tripods.
“Weapons emplacements are targeting us, Chief!” Cortana announced.
The Master Chief wasn’t about to wait and see if those chain-guns had a minimum-depth setting. He hadno intention of crawling across the field and letting the chain-guns’ rapid rate of fire chip away at hisshields.
The chain-guns clicked and started to turn.
He sprinted to the nearest tripod-mounted gun. He opened fire with his assault fire, shot the lines thatpowered the servos—then spun the chain-gun around to face the others.
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He crouched behind the blast shield and unloaded on the adjacent gun. Chain-guns were notoriouslyhard to aim; they were best known for their ability to fill the air with gunfire. Cortana adjusted histargeting reticle to sync up with the chain-gun. With her help, he hit the adjacent weapon emplacements.John guided a stream of fire into the guns’ ammo packs. Moments later, in a cloud of fire and smoke, theguns fell silent . . . then toppled.
The Master Chief ducked, primed a grenade, and hurled it at the closest of the remaining automatedweapons. The grenade sailed through the air—then detonated just above the autogun.
“Chain-gun destroyed,” Cortana reported.
Two more grenades and the automated guns were out of commission. He noted that his shields haddropped by a quarter. He watched the status bar refill. He hadn’t even known he had taken hits. That wassloppy.
“You seem to have the situation under control,” Cortana said, “I’m going to spend a few cycles andcheck something out.”
“Permission granted,” he said.
“I didn’t ask, Master Chief,” she replied.
The cool liquid presence in his mind withdrew. The Master Chief felt empty somehow.
He ran through the razor fields, snapping through steel wire as if it were rotten string.
Cortana’s coolness once again flooded his thoughts.
“I just accessed SATCOM,” she said. “I’m using one of their satellites so I can get a better look atwhat’s happening down here. There’s a SkyHawk jump jet from Fairchild Field inbound.”
He stopped. The automatic cannons were one thing—could the armor withstand against air power likethat? The SkyHawk had a quartet of 50mm cannons that made the chain-guns look like peashooters.They also had Scorpion missiles—designed to take out tanks.
