Answer: he couldn’t do a thing against it.
The Master Chief ran. He had to find cover. He sprinted to the next section of the course: the Pillars ofLoki.
It was a forest of ten-meter-tall poles spaced at random intervals. Typically, the poles had booby traps
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strung on, under, and between them—stun grades, sharpened sticks . . . anything the instructors coulddream up. The idea was to teach recruits to move slowly and keep their eyes open.
The Master Chief had no time to search for the traps.
He climbed up the first pole and balanced on top. He leaped to the next pole, teetered, regained hisbalance—then jumped to the next. His reflexes had to be perfect; he was landing a half ton of man andarmor on a wooden pole ten centimeters in diameter.
“Motion tracking is picking up an incoming target at extreme range,” Cortana warned. “Velocity profilematches the SkyHawk, Chief.”
He turned—almost lost his balance and had to shift back and forth to keep from falling. There was a doton the horizon, and the faint rumble of thunder.
In the blink of an eye, the dot had wings and the Master Chief’s thermal sensors picked up a plume ofjetwash. In seconds, the SkyHawk closed—then opened fire with its 50mm cannons.
He jumped.
The wooden poles splintered into pulp. They were mowed down like so many blades of grass.
The Master Chief rolled, ducked, and flattened himself on the earth. He caught a smattering of roundsand his shield bar drooped to half. Those rounds would have penetrated his old suit instantly.
Cortana said, “I calculate we have eleven seconds before the SkyHawk can execute a maximum gee turnand make another pass.”
The Master Chief got up and ran through the shattered remains of the poles. Napalm and sonic grenadespopped around him, but he moved so fast he left the worst of the damage in his wake.
“They won’t use their cannons next time,” he said. “They didn’t take us out—they’ll try the missiles.”
“Perhaps,” Cortana suggested, “we should leave the course. Find better cover.”
“No,” he said. “We’re going to win . . . by their rules.”
The last leg of the course was a sprint across an open field. In the distance, the Master Chief saw the bellon a tripod.
He glanced over his shoulder.
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The SkyHawk was back and starting its run straight toward him.
Even with his augmented speed, even with the MJOLNIR armor—he’d never make it to the bell in time.He’d never make it alive.
He turned to face the incoming jet.
“I’ll need your help, Cortana,” he said.
“Anything,” she whispered. The Master Chief heard nervousness in the AI’s voice.
“Calculate the inbound velocity of a Scorpion missile. Factor in my reaction time and the jet’s inboundspeed and distance at launch, and tell me the instant I need to move to sidestep and deflect it with myleft arm.”
Cortana paused a heartbeat. “Calculation done. You did say ‘deflect’?”
“Scorpion missiles have motion-tracking sensors and proximity detonators. I can’t outrun it. And itwon’t miss. That leaves us very few options.”
The SkyHawk dove.
“Get ready,” Cortana said. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“Me, too.”
Smoke appeared from the jet’s left wingtip and fire and exhaust erupted as a missile streaked toward him.
The Master Chief saw the missile’s track back and forth, zeroing in on his coordinates. A shrill tone inhis helmet warbled—the missile had a guidance lock on him. He chinned a control and the sound diedout. The missile was fast. Faster than he was ten times over.
“Now!” Cortana said.
They moved together. He shifted his muscles and the MJOLNIR—augmented by his link to Cortana—moved faster than he’d ever moved before. His leg tensed and pushed him aside; his left arm came upand crossed his chest.
The head of the missile was the only thing he saw. The air grew still and thickened.
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He continued to move his hand, palm open in a slapping motion—as fast as he could will his flesh toaccelerate.
The tip of the Scorpion missile passed a centimeter from his head.
He reached out—fingertips brushed the metal casing—
—and slapped it aside.
The SkyHawk jet screamed over his head.
The Scorpion missile detonated.
Pressure slammed though his body. The Master Chief flew six meters, spinning end over end, andlanded flat on his back.
He blinked, and saw nothing but blackness. Was he dead? Had he lost?
The shield status bar in his heads-up display pulsed weakly. It was completely drained—then it blinkedred and slowly started to refill. Blood was spattered across the inside of his helmet and he tasted copper.
He stood, his muscles screaming in protest.
“Run!” Cortana said. “Before they come back for a look.”
The Master Chief got up and ran. As he passed the spot where he had stood to face down the missile, hesaw a two-meter-deep crater.
He could feel his Achilles tendon tear, but he didn’t slow. He crossed the half-kilometer stretch inseventeen seconds flat and skidded to halt.
The Master Chief grabbed the bell’s cord and rang it three times. The pure tone was the most glorioussound he had ever heard.
Over the COM channel Dr. Halsey’s voice broke: “Test concluded. Call off your men, Colonel Ackerson!We’ve won. Well done, Master Chief. Magnificent! Stay there; I’m sending out a recovery team.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied, panting.
The Master Chief scanned the sky for the SkyHawk—nothing. It had gone. He knelt and let blood dripfrom his nose and mouth. He looked down at the bell—and laughed.
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He knew that stainless-steel dented shape. It was the same one he had rung that first day of boot. Theday Chief Mendez had taught him about teamwork.
“Thank you, Cortana,” he finally said. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”
“You’re welcome, Master Chief,” she replied. Then, her voice full of mischief, she added: “And no, youcouldn’t have done it without me.”
Today he had learned about a new kind of teamwork with Cortana. Dr. Halsey had given him a greatgift. She had given him a weapon with which to destroy the Covenant.
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CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
0400 Hours, August 30, 2552 (Military Calendar) /UNSCPillar of Autumn , in orbit around Epsilon Eridani System, Reach Military Complex
Cortana never rested. Although based approximately on a human mind, AIs had no need to sleep ordream. Dr. Halsey had thought she could keep Cortana occupied by checking the systems of thePillar ofAutumn while she attended to her other secret projects.
Her assumption was incorrect.
While Cortana was intrigued with the unique design and workings of the ship—its preparation barelyoccupied a fraction of her processing power.
She watched with thePillar of Autumn ’s camera as Captain Keyes approached the ship in a shuttle pod.Lieutenant Hikowa left to greet him in the docking bay.
From C deck, Captain Keyes spoke over the intercom: “Cortana? Can we have power to move the ship?I’d like to get under way.”
She calculated the remaining reactor burn-in time and made an adjustment to run it hotter. “The engines’final shakedown is in theta cycle,” Cortana replied. “Operating well within normal parameters. Divertingthirty percent power to engines; aye, sir.”
“And the other systems’ status?” Captain Keyes asked.
“Weapons-system check initiated. Navigational nodes functioning. Continuing systemwide shakedownand triple checks, Captain.”
“Very good,” he said. “Apprise me if there are any anomalies.”
“Aye, Captain,” she replied.
The COM channel snapped off.
She continued her checks on thePillar of Autumn as ordered. There were, however, more importantthings to consider; namely, a little reconnaissance into ONI databases . . . and a little revenge.
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She dedicated the balance of her run time toward probing the SATCOM system around REACH forentry points. There. A ping in the satellite network coordination signal. She broadcast a resonant carrierwave at that signal and piggybacked into the system.
First things first. She had two loose ends to take care of.
While she and the Master Chief had been on the obstacle course, she had commandeered SATCOMobservation beacon 419 and rotated it to view them from orbit.
She reentered the back door she had left open in the system, and rewrote the satellite’s guidance thrustersubroutine. If the system was analyzed later, it would be determined that this error had altered it to arandom orientation rather than a planned position.
She withdrew, but left her back door intact. This trick might come in handy again.
The other loose end that required her attentions was Colonel Ackerson—the man who had tried to eraseher and the Master Chief.
Cortana reread Dr. Halsey’s recommended test specifications for the MJOLNIR system on the obstaclecourse. She had suggested live rounds, yes. But never a squad of Orbital Drop Shock Troopers, chain-guns, Lotus mines . . . and certainly not an air strike.
That was the Colonel’s doing. He was an equation that needed to be balanced. What Dr. Halsey mighthave called “payback.”
She linked to the UNSC personnel and planning database on Reach. The ONI AI there, Beowulf, knewher . . . and knew not to let her in. Beowulf was thorough, methodical, and paranoid; in her own way,Cortana couldn’t help but like him. But compared with her code-cracking skills, he might as well havebeen an accounting program.
Cortana sent a rapid series of queries into the network node that processed housing transfer requests. Anormally quiet node—she overloaded it with a billion different pings per minute.
The network attempted to recover and reconfigure, causing all nodes to lag, including node seventeen—personnel records. She stepped in and inserted a spike wedge, a subroutine that looked like a normalincoming signal, but bounced any handshake protocol.
She slipped in.
The Colonel’s CSV was impressive. He had survived three battles with the Covenant. Early in the war,he received a promotion and volunteered for a dozen black ops. For the last few years, however, hisefforts had focused on political maneuvers rather than battlefield tactics. He had filed several requests
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for increased funding for his Special Warfare projects.
No wonder he wanted the Master Chief gone. The Spartan IIs and MJOLNIR were his directcompetition. Worse, they were succeeding where he failed.
At best, Ackerson’s actions were treason. But Cortana wasn’t about to reveal all this to the ONIoversight committee. Despite the Colonel’s methods, the UNSC still needed him—and his SpecWarspecialists—in the war.
Justice, however, would still be meted out.
From the ONI database, she masqueraded as a routine credit check and entered the Colonel’s bankaccount—to which she wired a substantial amount to a brothel on Gilgamesh. She made sure the bankqueries sent to confirm the transaction were copied to his home immediately. Colonel Ackerson was amarried man . . . and his wife should be there to receive them.
She cut into his personal E-mail and sent a carefully crafted message—requesting reassignment to aforward area—to personnel. Finally, she inserted a “ghost” record, an electronic footprint that identifiedthe source of the alterations: Ackerson’s personal-computer pad.
By the time Ackerson was done untangling all of that, he’d be reassigned to field duty . . . and get backto fighting the Covenant where he belonged.
With all loose ends neatly tied up, Cortana rechecked thePillar of Autumn ’s reactor; the shakedown wasproceeding nicely. She tweaked the magnetic-field strength, and part of her watched the output from theengines for fluctuations. She inspected all weapons systems three times, and then went back to her ownpersonal research.
She considered how well the Master Chief had performed this morning on the obstacle course. He wasmore than Cortana could have hoped for. The Master Chief was much more than Dr. Halsey or the pressreleases had indicated.
He was intelligent . . . not fearless, but as close to it as any human she had encountered. His reactiontime under stress was one-sixth the standard human norm. More than that, however, Cortana had sensedthat he had a certain—she searched her lexicon for the proper word—nobility. He placed his mission andhis duty and honor above his personal safety.
She reexamined his Career Service Vitae. He had fought in 207 ground engagements against theCovenant, and been awarded every major service medal except the Prisoner of War Medallion.
There were holes in his CSV, though. The standard black-out sections courtesy of ONI, of course . . . butmost curious, all data before he entered active duty had been expunged.
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Cortana wasn’t about to let a mere erasure stop her. She traced where the order to erase that data hadoriginated. Section Three. Dr. Halsey’s group. Curious.
She followed the order pathway—crashed into layers of counter code. The code started a trace on hersignal.
She blocked it—and it restarted a trace of the origin of her block.
This was a very well-crafted piece of counterintrusion software, far superior to the normal ONIslugcode. If nothing else, Cortana liked a challenge. She withdrew from the database and looked for anunguarded way into ONI Section Three files.
Cortana listened to the hum of coded traffic along the surface of ONI’s secure network. There was anunusual amount of packets today: queries and encrypted messages from ONI operatives. She peered intothem and unraveled their secrets as they passed her. There were orders for ship movements andoperatives outbound from Reach. This must be the new directive to send scouts into the peripherysystems and find the Covenant. She saw several ships docked in Reach’s space docks—ONI stealth jobsmade to look like private yachts. They had cute, innocuous names: theApplebee ,Circumference , andtheLark .
She spotted something she could use: Dr. Halsey had just entered her laboratory. She was at checkpointthree. The doctor waited as her voice and retina patterns were being scanned.
Cortana intercepted and killed the signal. The verification system reset.
“Please rescan retina, Dr. Halsey,” the system requested, “and repeat today’s code phrase in a normalvoice.”
Before Dr. Halsey could do this, Cortana sent her own files of Dr. Halsey’s retina and voice scans. Shehad long ago copied them and occasionally they came in handy.
