Cortana only partially3 listened to the debate between the Master Chief and the others.The discussion was moot4. She had projected the outcome as 100 percent certain that Johnwould convince them all to go, or—failing that—that he would con6.vince the Lieutenant7 to let him go alone to the surface to investi.gate the signal ... a signal that in her opinion was so easily copied and so blatantly8 unencrypted it defied explanation how the Chief hadconjectured that his team of Spartans9 had sent it.
Instead of partaking in the slow and inefficient10 conversation, she analyzed11 the Covenant pattern of movement in the Epsilon Eridani system and discerned three important things.
First, the Covenant warships12 had extremely regular elliptical orbits about Reach. There were a total of thirteen heavy cruisers and three carriers moving three hundredkilometers above the surface of the planet. Two exceptions to this patrol pattern were a pair of light cruisers hovering13 over Menachite Mountain— trapped at the bottom of thegravity well and therefore not an im.mediate14 threat to her ship.
Second, there was a blind spot in their patrol patterns that would make a perfectrendezvous location to extract the Chief and the others from their soon-to-be-executedsurface mission. She plotted ingress and egress courses, and started the precise calculations she would need if she was to initiate16 a Slipspace jump so close to Reach.
Arid17 third, and most interesting to Cortana, 217 smaller Cove168HALO: FIRST STRIKEnant craft pushed debris18 into a concentrated region of space in a high stationary19 orbitover Reach's northern pole. Within that re.gion drifted the wrecked20 hulls21 of bothCovenant and UNSC ships destroyed in the battle for Reach. Floating there were some ofthe UNSC's finest ships: the Basra, the Hannibal, and the pride of the fleet, thesupercarrier Trafalgar. No human signals ema.nated from the ships; nor did Cortana sense any active electro.magnetic fields.
She watched as the smaller Covenant ships cut into the dead hulks and jetted away withchunks of Titanium-A armor. They moved like a trail of ants to a location in space over the lower latitudes22, a point over Menachite Mountain, where the Covenant used the metalto construct a platform. The thing was already a square plate a kilometer to a side.Clearly, the Covenant had more in mind for Reach than destruction.
"Cortana," the Master Chief said. "We'll need to rendezvous15 at a—""Coordinates already optimized," she replied and projected the Covenant blind spot on the bridge displays. "Enemy patrols miss this nine-thousand-cubic-kilometer region.
Further opti.mization reveals that all ships will be farthest from this point at oh-sevenfifteenhours. I suggest we meet there at that time."Cortana felt a pulse of satisfaction at their perplexed23 looks over her seemingly instantanalysis. She enjoyed dazzling the crew with her intellect.
"Very good," the Lieutenant replied, still examining her cal.culations on the display.
"Optimal24 course plotted and uploaded into the Covenant drop-ship to the signal source," she told them. Then, on a private COM channel to the Chief, she added, "Good luck, Chief.Be careful.""I always am," he replied.
Cortana didn't bother to reply to that ridiculous statement. The Master Chief took somany chances and had defied death so many times, she had given up calculating his oddsof survival.
The Chief and his team left the bridge. Cortana swept her sen.sors through the flagship,making sure the path to the launch bay was clear. There were still Covenant on board. Shecouldn't pinERIC NYLUND 169them down, but there were transient contacts, vent25 shaft26 panels had been opened andclosed, and several Engineers had gone missing.
She tracked their Covenant dropship as it cleared the launch bay, entered the upperatmosphere, and drifted toward the sur.face. Polaski was a fine pilot... but she was onlyhuman and prone27 to illogical bravado28 and emotional outbursts that overrode29 the mostlogical course of action. Cortana wished that she were going down there—both to protecther human charges and be.cause there were many questions she'd like to get answered.Why were the Covenant so interested in Menachite Mountain? Was anything left of ONI'sCASTLE base? Cortana terminated those thoughts. There was too much to do up here.
Several tasks divided her attention. She kept the Slipspace generators31 hot in case sheneeded to jump out of the system in a hurry. She continued refining the calculations thatshaped the plasma32 emitters' magnetic fields, in case she needed to fight. She isolated33 thename of their captured ship—Ascendant Justice— from one of the 122 simultaneouscommuniques from every Covenant ship insystem. She correlated the numerous religiousallusions that laced the communications and continued to build a language-translationsubroutine. She diverted additional pro5.cessing ower to the task of tracking the millionsof floating ob.jects around her, searching for lifepppods, cryotubes, anything that mighthold a human survivor34.
The Covenant dropship left sensor35 range and disappeared some.where in what was oncethe Highland36 Forest on the surface—which activated37 a new task.
Cortana began constructing a high-resolution map of the surface—especially the regionwhere the Chief's mysterious signal originated, as well as Menachite Mountain.
A quick diagnostic revealed that these tasks were taking much longer than normal. Shehad to free up some of her overtaxed memory. Cortana began to recom ress the data shehad retrieved38 from the Halo construct, and she briefly39 considered dumppping all the datainto storage on the Covenant system. She rejected that potential course of action. She hadto protect that data at all costs.
Cortana felt her mind perceptibly slow. She was spread too170HALO: FIRST STRIKEthin. Multitasking too many jobs. This was dangerous. She couldn't react fast enough if—"Infidel!"The Covenant word blasted through her communications rou.tines and left her stunnedfor three cycles—just enough time for her to lose control over the ship-to-ship COMsoftware suite40.
The Covenant AI transmitted a narrow-beam communica.tions burst to the nearestcruiser.
For a Covenant communique, it was terse41: a report that the flagship was "tainted42 by theunclean presence of Infidels" and a plea that every ship insystem "converge43 and cleansethe filth44" from the captured vessel45. Also compressed and futilely46 en.crypted on thecarrier wave was a record of Cortana's mathe.matical manipulation of Slipspace thatallowed her to jump so close to the gas giant, Threshold.
Cortana squelched47 the channel—but it was too late. It was al.ready gone, and shecouldn't pull photons back from space.
She shunted all COM memory pathways on themselves. "Gotcha!" she hissed48.
"Infidel-Infidel-Infidel-Infidel-Infidel-Infidel-Infidel-Infidel-Infidel-Infidel-Infidel-Infidel-Infidel-Infidel-Infidel-Infidel—""That's quite enough of that," she said. "You and I need to come to an understanding." Shereduced the memory pathways, peeling the Covenant AI apart code layer by code layer."This is my system now."While an operational Covenant AI would have been a prize for ONI Section Three—thisparticular Covenant AI was too dangerous. She could not allow its existence to continue.
"Do what you will-wil-willwii" "ll,it screamed, /go to finally to . my heaven rewardpamdisefinal-finalfinalinfinityinfinityinfini-ATNONCOPYSTATE." gCortana's curiosity over this odd proclamation would have to wait—forever. She tore theAI apart, erasing49, recording50 the Covenant code structure even as she destroyed it. Thiswas analo-S gous to a dissection51, and it she did it quickly, efficiently52, and withoutremorse—until she found the AI's core code.
She halted. =She almost recognized this code. The patterns were madden.ingly familiar. No time toponder why, though. She recorded itERIC NYLUND 171and then wiped the original. The Covenant AI was gone, its bits safely hacked53 apart andstored for future research. Provided, of course, Cortana had a future.
She tracked thirteen Covenant warships. They came about and bore down on her position. Her COM channels overloaded54 with fanatical threats and promises of her andthe captured flag.ship burning.
There was no useful data there, so she filtered them out.
The Covenant warships' weapons warmed to a dull red.
Cortana remained calm. After considerable study of the Cove1.nant plasma weapons system, she now understood why they glowed before discharge. The stored plasma was always hot and ready to fire, but the Covenant used an inefficient method to col.lect anddirect the chaotic55 plasma into a controllable trajectory56. They selected the charged plasma atoms with the proper trajec.tory necessary to hit a target and shunted them into a magnetic bubble. The bubble was then discharged; subsequent pulse charges herded57 theplasma on target.
For an advanced race, the Covenant's weapons relied on crude brute58 force calculations and were terribly slow and wasteful59.
She booted the new system she had devised to control the plasma. It used EM pulses a priori to align60 the stochastic mo.tions of the plasma atoms, herding61 their trajectories62 andeleven degrees of electronic freedom into a laser-fine columnatedbeam within a microsecond.
This was, of course, an entirely63 theoretical operation.
She test-fired the three forward plasma turrets64—red lines slashed65 across the black spaceand intercepted66 the three lead Covenant cruisers; their shields glowed orange, flickered67,and failed. Cortana's plasma cut into the smooth alien hulls. Metal boiled away, and thetrio of beams punched clear through the ships.
Cortana moved the plasma beams like a scalpel—up and then down—and cut the vesselsin half.
"Adequate," she remarked. The plasma reserves of the first three turrets, however, were exhausted68, and it would be several minutes before they'd recycle.
If only there were a better electromagnetic system on this flagship, she could have devised a more effective guidance algo172HALO: FIRST STRIKErithm. Alas69, the Covenant's grasp of Maxwell's equations was ironically inferior to human technology.
Cortana realized it was fortuitous she had shut down the enemy AI before it leaked her new plasma guidance system. The thought of every ship in the Covenant fleet refittedwith im.proved weaponry was too terrible to calculate.
She also realized that staying to fight was not the wisest course. She considered taking on the rest of the Covenant forces; with her improvements to the weapons systems, shemight win, too. But it wasn't worth the risk of the Covenant capturing her refinements70 totheir technology.
Cortana fired Ascendant Justice's aft plasma turrets, and laser-like beams flickered across space. A squadron of Seraph71 fighters disintegrated72 as they launched from the closestcarrier. Explosions bubbled and mushroomed inside the carrier's launch bay.
She didn't stay to watch the fireworks.
Cortana dived at flank speed straight toward the center of Reach. The surface of theplanet raced toward her. She wondered where the Chief was now, and if he was safe.
"I should have never told you to be careful," she whispered. "You're incapable73 of that. Ishould have wished you victory. That's what you're good at, John. Winning."She initiated74 the Slipspace generator30; space distorted, teased apart, and light envelopedthe flagship.
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1
cove
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| n.小海湾，小峡谷 | |
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covenant
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| n.盟约，契约；v.订盟约 | |
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partially
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| adv.部分地，从某些方面讲 | |
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moot
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| v.提出；adj.未决议的；n.大会；辩论会 | |
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pro
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| n.赞成，赞成的意见，赞成者 | |
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con
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| n.反对的观点，反对者，反对票，肺病；vt.精读，学习，默记；adv.反对地，从反面；adj.欺诈的 | |
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lieutenant
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| n.陆军中尉，海军上尉；代理官员，副职官员 | |
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blatantly
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| ad.公开地 | |
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spartans
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| n.斯巴达（spartan的复数形式） | |
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inefficient
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| adj.效率低的，无效的 | |
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analyzed
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| v.分析( analyze的过去式和过去分词 )；分解；解释；对…进行心理分析 | |
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12
warships
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| 军舰，战舰( warship的名词复数 )； 舰只 | |
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13
hovering
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| 鸟( hover的现在分词 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫 | |
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14
mediate
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| vi.调解，斡旋；vt.经调解解决；经斡旋促成 | |
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15
rendezvous
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| n.约会，约会地点，汇合点；vi.汇合，集合；vt.使汇合，使在汇合地点相遇 | |
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16
initiate
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| vt.开始，创始，发动；启蒙，使入门；引入 | |
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17
arid
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| adj.干旱的；(土地)贫瘠的 | |
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18
debris
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| n.瓦砾堆，废墟，碎片 | |
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19
stationary
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| adj.固定的，静止不动的 | |
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wrecked
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| adj.失事的，遇难的 | |
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hulls
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| 船体( hull的名词复数 )； 船身； 外壳； 豆荚 | |
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latitudes
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| 纬度 | |
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perplexed
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| adj.不知所措的 | |
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optimal
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| adj.最适宜的；最理想的；最令人满意的 | |
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vent
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| n.通风口，排放口；开衩；vt.表达，发泄 | |
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shaft
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| n.(工具的)柄，杆状物 | |
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prone
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| adj.(to)易于…的，很可能…的；俯卧的 | |
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bravado
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| n.虚张声势，故作勇敢，逞能 | |
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overrode
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| 越控( override的过去式 )； （以权力）否决； 优先于； 比…更重要 | |
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generator
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| n.发电机，发生器 | |
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generators
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| n.发电机，发生器( generator的名词复数 )；电力公司 | |
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plasma
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| n.血浆，细胞质，乳清 | |
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isolated
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| adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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survivor
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| n.生存者，残存者，幸存者 | |
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sensor
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| n.传感器，探测设备，感觉器（官） | |
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highland
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| n.(pl.)高地，山地 | |
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activated
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| adj. 激活的 动词activate的过去式和过去分词 | |
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retrieved
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| v.取回( retrieve的过去式和过去分词 )；恢复；寻回；检索（储存的信息） | |
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briefly
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| adv.简单地，简短地 | |
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suite
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| n.一套(家具)；套房；随从人员 | |
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terse
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| adj.(说话，文笔)精炼的，简明的 | |
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tainted
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| adj.腐坏的；污染的；沾污的；感染的v.使变质( taint的过去式和过去分词 )；使污染；败坏；被污染，腐坏，败坏 | |
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converge
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| vi.会合；聚集，集中；(思想、观点等)趋近 | |
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filth
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| n.肮脏，污物，污秽；淫猥 | |
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vessel
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| n.船舶；容器，器皿；管，导管，血管 | |
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futilely
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| futile（无用的）的变形； 干 | |
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squelched
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| v.发吧唧声，发扑哧声( squelch的过去式和过去分词 )；制止；压制；遏制 | |
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48
hissed
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| 发嘶嘶声( hiss的过去式和过去分词 )； 发嘘声表示反对 | |
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49
erasing
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| v.擦掉( erase的现在分词 )；抹去；清除 | |
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recording
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| n.录音，记录 | |
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51
dissection
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| n.分析；解剖 | |
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52
efficiently
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| adv.高效率地，有能力地 | |
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53
hacked
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| 生气 | |
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54
overloaded
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| a.超载的，超负荷的 | |
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55
chaotic
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| adj.混沌的，一片混乱的，一团糟的 | |
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56
trajectory
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| n.弹道，轨道 | |
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57
herded
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| 群集，纠结( herd的过去式和过去分词 )； 放牧； （使）向…移动 | |
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58
brute
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| n.野兽，兽性 | |
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wasteful
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| adj.（造成）浪费的，挥霍的 | |
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align
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| vt.使成一线，结盟，调节；vi.成一线，结盟 | |
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herding
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| 中畜群 | |
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trajectories
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| n.弹道( trajectory的名词复数 )；轨道；轨线；常角轨道 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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64
turrets
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| （六角）转台( turret的名词复数 )； （战舰和坦克等上的）转动炮塔； （摄影机等上的）镜头转台； （旧时攻城用的）塔车 | |
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65
slashed
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| v.挥砍( slash的过去式和过去分词 )；鞭打；割破；削减 | |
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66
intercepted
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| 拦截( intercept的过去式和过去分词 )； 截住； 截击； 拦阻 | |
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67
flickered
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| （通常指灯光）闪烁，摇曳( flicker的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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alas
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| int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等) | |
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70
refinements
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| n.（生活）风雅；精炼( refinement的名词复数 )；改良品；细微的改良；优雅或高贵的动作 | |
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seraph
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| n.六翼天使 | |
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72
disintegrated
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| v.（使）破裂[分裂，粉碎]，（使）崩溃( disintegrate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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73
incapable
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| adj.无能力的，不能做某事的 | |
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initiated
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| n. 创始人 adj. 新加入的 vt. 开始，创始，启蒙，介绍加入 | |
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