Ascendant Justice emerged from the non-Euclidian, non-Einsteinian realms that humans had erroneously called "Slip-space." There was neither "space" nor anything to "slip" across in the alternate dimensions.
The ship displaced a cloud of ice crystals that had for millen.nia been melted andrefrozen into delicate weblike geometries. Ascendant Justice's running lights diffusedthrough these parti.cles and made a glimmering3 halo of hard-edged reflections. Itreminded Cortana of the snowglobe that Dr. Halsey had kept on her desk: the Matterhorn and a little Swiss climber scaling its three-centimeter height—all swirling4 in the center ofa micro.scopic blizzard5.
The frozen Oort cloud around her was significantly larger, but it was still a charmingeffect and a welcome sight from the abyss ofSlipspace.
Cortana had fled the Epsilon Eridani system, but only to its edge—a short jump of a few billion kilometers from Reach and the Master Chief.
The odds6 that the Covenant would find her were long— astronomical7, in fact, even if they had ships on patrol. The Oort cloud's volume was too large to search in a hundred years.Still, she powered down virtually every system on the ship except the fiision generators— and her own power systems, of course.
The ship drifted in the icy dark.
192HALO: FIRST STRIKEShe redlined the reactors8, however, to recharge the Slipspace capacitors and regeneratethe plasma9 she had expended10 in her brief fight with the Covenant cruisers.
If she was part of a larger fleet, her desperate tactics might be valuable—flashing all her plasma away and the near-gravity Slipspace jump—but as one ship against a dozen, her effective combat lifetime using those tactics could be measured in microseconds.
And now the Covenant knew that Ascendant Justice was not one of theirs. She hoped theMaster Chief would elude12 them— find his Spartans13 and somehow meet her at therendezvous coordinates15—all without getting blown up by enemy ground forces and theCovenant fleet.
She paused and reset16 her emotion subroutines—the AI equiva.lent of a deep sigh.Cortana had to remain focused and think of something useful to do while she waited.
The problem was that she'd been thinking at peak capacity for the last five days. And now she was thinking with a large por.tion of her mind occupied by the data absorbed from the Halo construct.
She again toyed with the idea of dumping that data into Ascen.dant Justice's onboardmemory. Now that the other AI had been erased17, it should be safe. Yet one piece oftechnological data had already been leaked to the enemy ... and that could have ex.treme repercussions18 in the war effort. If the Halo data got into Covenant hands—the war wouldbe over.
She decided19 she would make do with her available memory-processing bandwidth.
Cortana listened and looked to the center of the Epsilon Eridani system with Ascendant Justice's passive sensors20. Faint Covenant communiques whispered past her—eight hours old, because that's how long it took the signal to travel from Reach to here.
Interesting. The present insystem chatter21 was undoubtedly22 fo.cused on the intruders.Eight hours ago, however, it had been business as usual... whatever business that was.
She eavesdropped23 on the data streams, translating, and tried to make sense of it all.
Among the more coherent samples of their excited religiousERIC NYLUND193babble were: uncovering the fragment of divinity, and illuminat.ing shard24 of the gods toexist the perfect moment that vanishes in the blink of an eye but lasts forever, andcollecting the stars left by the giants.
A literal translation was not a problem. It was the meaning be.hind25 the words thateluded her. Without the proper cultural refer.ences, this was all gibberish.
It had to mean something to someone, however. Perhaps she could use part of thedissected Covenant AI to help. It had spo.ken27 to her, so it was partially28 fluent with humanidioms. She might be able to reverse-engineer its translation software.
Cortana isolated30 the AI code and began the retrieval-and-unpacking31 process. This wouldtake time; she'd compressed the code, and the reconstitution process would require agood deal of her reduced processing power.
While she waited, she examined the Covenant reactors. They used a pinched magneticfield to heat the tritium plasma. It was sur risingly primitive32. Without better hardware,though, there was little she could do to imppprove their effectiveness.
Power. She needed more if she was going to head back insystem to rendezvous14 with theMaster Chief. The Covenant weren't go.ing to sit by and wait for them to hook up, bid afond adieu, and then escape.
Logically, there was only one way to do this: She was going to have to fight and kill themall.
She could conserve33 her ship's power and fire the plasma wea ons as they were designed.That, however, would only de.lay the inevitable34. A dozen shippps against one—evenCaptain Keyes wouldn't have survived such a lopsided tactical situation.
She deliberated how to solve this problem, spun35 off a multi.tasking routine that listedher resources, and filtered them in a creativity-probability matrix, hoping to find aninspired match.
The unpacking of the alien AI's routines finished. The code appeared to her as a vast crosssection of geological strata36: gray granite37 variables and blood red sandstone visualprocessors and oily dark function films. But there were dozens of code layers she didn'teven recognize.
The translation algorithms, however, were in the top layers of this structure, glisteninglike a vein38 of gold-laced quartz39. She194HALO: FIRST STRIKEtapped into the software; it had infinite loops and dead-end code lines—things that hadto be errors.
Yet there were also slender crystalline translation vectors that she would never havethought of on her own. She copied those and slaved them to her dynamic lexicon40.
The distant Covenant transmissions poured though her mind, now somewhat morecoherent: Inner temple layers penetrated41; Infidels present, and Cleansing42 operationongoing; Victory is as.sured, and The Great One's purity will burn the infidels; The holyShe picked up on the urgent undertone to these transmissions, as if the notorious light cannot be tainted43.
Covenant confidence were not entirely44 genuine.
Since these messages made reference to an infestation45 to be cleansed46, and since these transmissions occurred many hours before the Ascendant Justice had entered the Epsilon Eridani system, the Master Chief had been correct in his conclusions: There were human survivors47 on Reach. Likely Spartans.
His correct analysis of the situation based on the six-note sig.nal irritated Cortana. Itannoyed her more that she had not con11.cluded this as well. It made her realize how dangerously close to the edge of her intellectual capacity she operated.
One of her alert routines triggered. An access hatch on the route from the bridge to thereactor room—one that she had specifically directed Sergeant48 Johnson not to weld shut—just opened.
"The trap is loaded," she whispered.
Cortana scanned the region with the ship's internal sensors. There was nothing ... unless that "nothing" was actually a group of camouflaged49 Elites—perhaps the "Guardian50 of theLu.minous Key" mentioned in the Covenant's greeting communique.
She tripped the emergency hull51 breach52 shut on four bulkhead doors—two on each side ofthis opened hatch.
"Trap is sprung," she remarked.
Cortana vented53 the atmosphere in this sealed section.
She hoped that they had left the vent54 system open behind them—dooming any others leftbehind to a similar asphyxiation55.
Her sensors picked up a plasma grenade detonation56 on the in.ner port set of doors shehad sealed and locked. The discharge scrambled57 those circuits and disabled the locks. Shenoted thatERIC NYLUND195the doors were being slowly opened... but not enough to reach the second set of sealeddoors ahead.
The opening of those doors halted.
"Gotcha," she whispered.
She'd keep that section of Ascendant Justice sealed until Sergeant Johnson could confirm the kills. She wouldn't let her guard down, either. There had to be additional alien saboteurs aboard her ship. And if she found them, she'd deal with them in the same efficient fashion.
This minor58 distraction59 resolved, Cortana returned her atten.tion to the Covenant AI'scode. Small portions of the alien soft.ware29 looked like her. The odds of such a parallelevolution in computer science seemed improbable. It was almost as if it were her code ...only copied many times, each time with subtle er.rors introduced by the replication process.
Could the Covenant have captured a human-made AI, copied it, and then used the resultin their ships? If so—why had there been the need to replicate60 the code so many times?And with so many errors?
This theory didn't track, however. Smart AIs like her had an operational life span ofapproximately seven years. After that the processing memory became too interconnectedand developed fatal endless feedback loops. In essence, smart AIs became too smart and suffered an exponential attenuation61 of function; they literally62 thought themselves todeath.
So if the Covenant were using human-created AIs, all the copies would be dead withinseven years—there was no reason to recopy the copies. It wouldn't extend their life span,because all the memory-processor interconnections had to be copied as well.
Cortana paused to consider how much of her life span had been compromised byabsorbing and analyzing63 the data from Halo. Her experiences within the Forerunner64 computer system had certainly pushed her intellect far past its designed limits. Had sheburned away half her "life" doing so? More? She stored that thought for later consideration. If she didn't find a way to get the Master Chief and get back to Earth, her operational life span would be even shorter.
She was, however, curious about one thing: She ran a trace on196HALO: FIRST STRIKEthe origin of the copied pathways of the alien AI, and found its replication routine. Thiscopying code was extremely convo.luted; in fact, it took up more than two thirds of theCovenant AI's processor-memory space. It was dark with functions that ran deep to thecore. It spread dendritic fingers through the sys.tem, like a cancer that had metastasizedthroughout the AI's en.tire body.
She did not understand any of it.
But she didn't have to understand the code to use it.
Was it worth the risk of using? Perhaps. If she could mitigate65 the risk, she'd copy aportion of herself onto an isolated system in Ascendant Justice. She could always erasethis subsystem if anything went wrong.
The potential rewards of this operation were great. She might be able to restore herself tofull operational capacity—even car.rying the Halo data.
Cortana double-and triple-checked the system she would overwrite: the Covenantsoftware that managed the life support on the lower decks. Since the lower decks werenow evacuated66 and cold, life support was moot67. She carefully severed68 the con.nectionsfrom that subsystem to the rest of the ship.
She also rechecked her thinking. This copyi software was likely responsible for theCovenant AI's fractured thinking. Her thinkingngng, however, was being squeezed to nothing.There had to be a balance between these two deleterious states.
Cortana initialized the Covenant file-duplication software. It moved, and the entire thingpulsed and reached for her; she im.mediately69 shut down all contact with her translationsuite.
The dark functions touched her code, wrapped around them, pushed against the barriersshe had erected70.
It happened too fast, but she didn't stop the process. It was far too interesting to stop.
She distantly felt that portion of her mind blur71 and replicate, assembled line by line intoits new location within Ascendant Justice. It felt strange. Not that it was strange she couldthink in more than one place about more than one thing at the same time—she was usedto multiprocessing.
This was different strange—as if she had a glimpse into some.thing wonderful... andinfinite.
ERIC NYLUND197The replication ceased, and the copying code was once again in.ert and safely stored withthe dissected26 Covenant AI's directory.
Cortana ran her entire system; nothing else had been altered.
She checked the new copied system. It was intact, and, apart from a few slight errors inthe software—which she immediately mended—it appeared functional72.
She initiated73 the new system and slaved it with her original system, runni them inparallel—one tapping the ONI's English-Covenant lexicon, the other tappingngng the alien AI'sCovenant-English lexicon.
If the alien copying software could duplicate her translation routine, could it duplicatemore of her?
No. She squelched74 that thought. The risk of copying any more "hers" was too great. Therewere too many unknowns. And this was, after all, the enemy's code. There could be boobytraps, waiting to be tripped within the complex algorithms.
Besides, copying herself would do nothing to prevent her mental degradation75. Thoseinterconnection errors were already present ... and they always would be, despite thenumber of copies generated.
She remembered the strange fractured speech patterns of the Covenant AI and wonderedhow many times it had been copied.
Her thoughts were interrupted as the Covenant transmissions became clear. It wassuddenly as if she had a new set of eyes and ears to hear them: Excavation76 proceeding;new sublayer discovered at six-hundred-meter depth, and Patrol unable to find theInfidels; returning to base, and Minor artifacts discovered; rejoice!
And there was one thing she had missed in her previous analy.sis of the Covenantcommuniques, a second signal on the carrier wave: They used the same symbols she hadused to find the Halo construct—the symbols that the Master Chief had discovered on thealien artifact on Cote d'Azur.
She hadn't seen the simple dots, bars, squares, and triangles before because the Covenant,naturally, had embellished77 the clean symbols with their highly decorated calligraphiedscripts, and further with their overwrought religious allusions78.
Cortana, with her new subsystem and her new translation lexi.con, could, as Dr. Halseymight say, "cut through the crap."198HALO: FIRST STRIKEThese subcommuniques were orders. They originated from new ships entering theEpsilon Eridani system and were, in turn, accepted and acknowledged by those outbound.
It was an automated79 mail system that could carry messages from the center of theCovenant Empire to the outer reaches of the galaxy80. The Covenant were either tooarrogant, or too igno.rant81, to properly encrypt these orders.
Still, Cortana realized that the UNSC had not, until just now, discovered their deceptivelysimple system... so who was more ignorant?
There were deplo ment orders for hundreds of ships: carriers, destroyers, tenders—amassive fleet. Theyyy were to meet at select locations, join up, refuel, gather resources, andthen orient for the next Slipspace jump.
Cortana knew how to translate these simple symbols into stel.lar coordinates.
There—a jump to the Lambda Serpentis system to gather tri.tium gas for their reactors.And there—another jump to the Hawking82 system to meet with three dozen carriers andeffect a transfer of Seraph83 fighters. And there—Cortana halted all her processes. She directed her full intellect to check and recheck hertranslation matrix a hundred times.
There was no error.
The terminating coordinates for the Covenant's impending84 operation was Sol.
The Covenant were headed to Earth.
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1
covenant
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| n.盟约，契约；v.订盟约 | |
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periphery
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| n.(圆体的)外面；周围 | |
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glimmering
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| n.微光，隐约的一瞥adj.薄弱地发光的v.发闪光，发微光( glimmer的现在分词 ) | |
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swirling
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| v.旋转，打旋( swirl的现在分词 ) | |
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blizzard
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| n.暴风雪 | |
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odds
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| n.让步，机率，可能性，比率；胜败优劣之别 | |
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astronomical
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| adj.天文学的，（数字）极大的 | |
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reactors
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| 起反应的人( reactor的名词复数 )； 反应装置； 原子炉； 核反应堆 | |
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plasma
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| n.血浆，细胞质，乳清 | |
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expended
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| v.花费( expend的过去式和过去分词 )；使用（钱等）做某事；用光；耗尽 | |
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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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12
elude
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| v.躲避，困惑 | |
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13
spartans
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| n.斯巴达（spartan的复数形式） | |
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14
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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15
coordinates
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| n.相配之衣物；坐标( coordinate的名词复数 )；（颜色协调的）配套服装；[复数]女套服；同等重要的人（或物）v.使协调，使调和( coordinate的第三人称单数 )；协调；协同；成为同等 | |
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reset
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| v.重新安排，复位；n.重新放置；重放之物 | |
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erased
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| v.擦掉( erase的过去式和过去分词 )；抹去；清除 | |
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repercussions
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| n.后果，反响( repercussion的名词复数 )；余波 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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20
sensors
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| n.传感器，灵敏元件( sensor的名词复数 ) | |
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chatter
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| vi.／n.喋喋不休；短促尖叫；(牙齿)打战 | |
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undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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eavesdropped
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| 偷听（别人的谈话）( eavesdrop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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shard
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| n.（陶瓷器、瓦等的）破片，碎片 | |
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25
hind
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| adj.后面的，后部的 | |
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dissected
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| adj.切开的，分割的，（叶子）多裂的v.解剖（动物等）( dissect的过去式和过去分词 )；仔细分析或研究 | |
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ken
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| n.视野，知识领域 | |
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partially
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| adv.部分地，从某些方面讲 | |
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ware
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| n.(常用复数)商品，货物 | |
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isolated
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| adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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unpacking
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| n.取出货物，拆包[箱]v.从（包裹等）中取出（所装的东西），打开行李取出( unpack的现在分词 )；拆包；解除…的负担；吐露（心事等） | |
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32
primitive
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| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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conserve
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| vt.保存，保护，节约，节省，守恒，不灭 | |
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inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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spun
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| v.纺，杜撰，急转身 | |
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strata
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| n.地层（复数）；社会阶层 | |
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granite
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| adj.花岗岩，花岗石 | |
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vein
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| n.血管，静脉；叶脉，纹理；情绪；vt.使成脉络 | |
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quartz
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| n.石英 | |
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lexicon
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| n.字典，专门词汇 | |
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penetrated
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| adj. 击穿的，鞭辟入里的 动词penetrate的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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42
cleansing
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| n. 净化(垃圾) adj. 清洁用的 动词cleanse的现在分词 | |
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43
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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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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infestation
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| n.侵扰，蔓延 | |
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cleansed
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| 弄干净，清洗( cleanse的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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survivors
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| 幸存者，残存者，生还者( survivor的名词复数 ) | |
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sergeant
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| n.警官，中士 | |
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camouflaged
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| v.隐蔽( camouflage的过去式和过去分词 )；掩盖；伪装，掩饰 | |
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50
guardian
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| n.监护人；守卫者，保护者 | |
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51
hull
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| n.船身；(果、实等的)外壳；vt.去(谷物等)壳 | |
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52
breach
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| n.违反，不履行；破裂；vt.冲破，攻破 | |
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vented
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| 表达，发泄（感情，尤指愤怒）( vent的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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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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55
asphyxiation
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| n. 窒息 | |
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56
detonation
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| n.爆炸；巨响 | |
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57
scrambled
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| v.快速爬行( scramble的过去式和过去分词 )；攀登；争夺；（军事飞机）紧急起飞 | |
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minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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distraction
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| n.精神涣散，精神不集中，消遣，娱乐 | |
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replicate
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| v.折叠，复制，模写；n.同样的样品；adj.转折的 | |
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61
attenuation
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| n.变薄；弄细；稀薄化；减少 | |
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62
literally
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| adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实 | |
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63
analyzing
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| v.分析；分析( analyze的现在分词 )；分解；解释；对…进行心理分析n.分析 | |
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64
forerunner
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| n.前身，先驱（者），预兆，祖先 | |
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65
mitigate
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| vt.（使）减轻，（使）缓和 | |
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evacuated
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| 撤退者的 | |
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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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68
severed
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| v.切断，断绝( sever的过去式和过去分词 )；断，裂 | |
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69
mediately
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| 在中间，间接 | |
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70
ERECTED
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| adj. 直立的，竖立的，笔直的 vt. 使 ... 直立，建立 | |
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71
blur
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| n.模糊不清的事物；vt.使模糊，使看不清楚 | |
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72
functional
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| adj.为实用而设计的，具备功能的，起作用的 | |
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73
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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74
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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75
degradation
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| n.降级；低落；退化；陵削；降解；衰变 | |
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76
excavation
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| n.挖掘，发掘；被挖掘之地 | |
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77
embellished
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| v.美化( embellish的过去式和过去分词 )；装饰；修饰；润色 | |
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78
allusions
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| 暗指，间接提到( allusion的名词复数 ) | |
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79
automated
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| a.自动化的 | |
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80
galaxy
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| n.星系；银河系；一群(杰出或著名的人物) | |
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81
rant
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| v.咆哮；怒吼；n.大话；粗野的话 | |
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82
hawking
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| 利用鹰行猎 | |
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83
seraph
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| n.六翼天使 | |
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84
impending
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| a.imminent, about to come or happen | |
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