First Strike

by Eric Nylund

  Cortana felt her mind perceptibly slow. She was spread too thin. Multitasking too many jobs. This was dangerous. She couldn’t react fast enough if—

  “Infidel!”

  The Covenant word blasted through her communications routines and left her stunned for three cycles—just enough time for her to lose control over the ship-to-ship COM software suite.

  The Covenant AI transmitted a narrow-beam communications burst to the nearest cruiser.

  For a Covenant communiqué, it was terse: a report that the flagship was “tainted by the unclean presence of Infidels” and a plea that every ship in-system “converge and cleanse the filth” from the captured vessel. Also compressed and futilely encrypted on the carrier wave was a record of Cortana’s mathematical manipulation of Slipspace that allowed her to jump so close to the gas giant, Threshold.

  Cortana squelched the channel—but it was too late. It was already gone, and she couldn’t pull photons back from space.

  She shunted all COM memory pathways on themselves. “Gotcha!” she hissed.

  “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.” She reduced 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, this particular Covenant AI was too dangerous. She could not allow its existence to continue.

  “Do what you will-will-willwill,” it screamed. “I go to finally to my heaven reward paradise final-finalfinalinfinityinfinityinfini—AT NONCOPYSTATE.”

  Cortana’s curiosity over this odd proclamation would have to wait—forever. She tore the AI apart, erasing, recording the Covenant code structure even as she destroyed it. This was analogous to a dissection, and it she did it quickly, efficiently, and without remorse—until she found the AI’s core code.

  She halted.

  She almost recognized this code. The patterns were maddeningly familiar. No time to ponder why, though. She recorded it and then wiped the original. The Covenant AI was gone, its bits safely hacked apart and stored 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 overloaded with fanatical threats and promises of her and the captured flagship 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 Covenant 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 collect and direct the chaotic plasma into a controllable trajectory. They selected the charged plasma atoms with the proper trajectory necessary to hit a target and shunted them into a magnetic bubble. The bubble was then discharged; subsequent pulse charges herded the plasma on target.

  For an advanced race, the Covenant’s weapons relied on crude brute force calculations and were terribly slow and wasteful.

  She booted the new system she had devised to control the plasma. It used EM pulses a priori to align the stochastic motions of the plasma atoms, herding their trajectories and eleven degrees of electronic freedom into a laser-fine columnated beam within a microsecond.

  This was, of course, an entirely theoretical operation.

  She test-fired the three forward plasma turrets—red lines slashed across the black space and intercepted the three lead Covenant cruisers; their shields glowed orange, flickered, and failed. Cortana’s plasma cut into the smooth alien hulls. Metal boiled away, and the trio of beams punched clear through the ships.

  Cortana moved the plasma beams like a scalpel—up and then down—and cut the vessels in half.

  “Adequate,” she remarked. The plasma reserves of the first three turrets, however, were exhausted, 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 algorithm. Alas, 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 refitted with improved 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, she might win, too. But it wasn’t worth the risk of the Covenant capturing her refinements to their technology.

  Cortana fired Ascendant Justice’s aft plasma turrets, and laserlike beams flickered across space. A squadron of Seraph fighters disintegrated as they launched from the closest carrier. 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 the planet 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 incapable of that. I should have wished you victory. That’s what you’re good at, John. Winning.”

  She initiated the Slipspace generator; space distorted, teased apart, and light enveloped the flagship.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Time: Date Error Estimated 0530 Hours, September

  23, 2552 (Military Calendar) Aboard Captured

  Covenant Dropship, Epsilon Eridani System,

  En Route to Surface of Reach.

  The Master Chief stood on the deck of the Covenant dropship. He stood because the crash seats had been designed for Elites and Jackals and none of the contours fit his human backbone. It didn’t matter—he preferred to stand.

  They drifted through the upper atmosphere of Reach, descending like a spider on a thousand-kilometer thread of silk. They passed close to a hundred other ships moving in orbital arcs—Seraph fighters, other dropships, scavenger craft with grappling tentacles that dragged sections of salvaged metal. Dominating the skies were a pair of three-hundred-meter-long cruisers.

  The cruisers accelerated toward them.

  The Chief moved up to the cockpit where Polaski and Haverson sat in the seats they had removed from the Longsword and welded in place.

  “They’re pinging us,” Polaski whispered.

  “Nice and easy, Warrant Officer,” Lieutenant Haverson whispered. “Just use the programmed response Cortana gave us.”

  “Aye aye, Lieutenant,” Polaski replied and concentrated on the Covenant scripts that scrolled across the display on her left. “Sending now.” She tapped a holographic icon.

  Sergeant Johnson and Corporal Locklear stood two meters behind the Chief, both of them nervous. Johnson chewed his stub of cigar and scowled at the incoming Covenant warships. Locklear’s trigger finger twitched, and beads of sweat dotted his forehead.

  “Cortana has this stuff wired tight,” Sergeant Johnson whispered. “No worries.”

  “I got plenty of worries here,” Locklear muttered. “Man, I’d rather be in a HEV pod on fire and out of control than up here. We’re sitting ducks.”

  “Quiet,” Lieutenant Haverson hissed at Locklear. “Let the lady concentrate.”

  Polaski kept one eye on the communications screen and one eye on the external displays as the twin cruisers grew larger, filling the holographic space before her. Both her hands hovered over the flight yoke, not touching it, but twitching in anticipation.

  Three Seraph fighters burned out of their orbits and took a closer pass.

  “Is that an attack vector?” Lieutenant Haverson asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Polaski sai
d. “But it’s hard to tell with those things.”

  Locklear inhaled deeply, and the Chief noticed that he didn’t exhale. He set his hand on the man’s shoulder and pulled him aside. “Relax, Marine,” he whispered. “That’s an order.”

  Locklear exhaled and ran a hand over his smoothly shaven head. “Right…right, Chief.” With effort, the Marine forced himself to calm down.

  A red light flashed on the control panel. “Collision warning,” Polaski said with the practiced nonchalance all Navy pilots had in the face of imminent death. She reached for the yoke.

  “Hold your course,” the Lieutenant ordered.

  “Yes, sir,” she said, and released the controls. “Fighters one hundred meters and closing.”

  “Hold your course,” Lieutenant Haverson repeated. “They’re just taking a closer look,” he whispered to himself, “and there’s nothing to see. Nothing to see at all.”

  When the Seraph fighters were only ten meters away, they tumbled to either side of the dropship. Their engine pods flared blue and they looped overhead…then moved to rejoin the cruisers.

  The larger ships passed directly overhead and blotted out the sun. In the darkness, the cockpit lights automatically adjusted and flooded the display panels with the purple-blue frequency the Covenant favored.

  The Master Chief realized that he, too, had been holding his breath. Maybe he and Locklear were more alike than he had realized.

  He took a closer look at the ODST: The wild, desperate look in his eyes and the flaming-comet tattoo covering his left deltoid seemed almost alien to the Master Chief. The man had survived the Covenant and the Flood on Halo, and he had been lucky and resourceful enough to escape in one piece. True, his emotional responses were uncontained…but give him the same augmentations and a set of MJOLNIR armor and what was the difference between the two of them? Experience? Training? Discipline?

  Luck?

  John had always felt the other men and women in the UNSC were different; he’d felt at ease only with the other Spartans. But weren’t they all fighting and dying for the same reason?

  The ruddy light from Epsilon Eridani suddenly filled the cockpit as the two cruisers passed on.

  Polaski sighed, slumped forward, and wiped the sweat from her brow.

  Locklear reached into his shirt pocket, removed a clean and pressed red bandanna, and offered it to Polaski.

  She looked at it for a second, then glanced at the Corporal, then took it. “Thanks, Locklear.” She folded it into a headband, flipped her blond hair from her face, and tied it around her forehead.

  “No problem, ma’am,” Locklear replied. “Anytime.”

  “Locking onto the signal source,” Lieutenant Haverson said. “Course two-three-zero by one-one-zero.”

  “Two-three-zero by one-one-zero, aye,” Polaski said. She gently pushed forward and turned the yoke.

  The dropship smoothly banked into a gentle dive. The surface of Reach disappeared from the screens as the dropship entered the thick clouds of smoke that wreathed the planet.

  There was a quiet beep, and the display filters activated. A moment later, images resolved on the display screens—hundreds of thousands of hectares of raging firestorms and blackened char where there had once stood forests and fields.

  John tried not to think of this as Reach anymore—it was only one more world the Covenant had taken.

  “That canyon,” Lieutenant Haverson said and pointed at a fissure where the earth had been eroded in a sinuous twisting scar. “Scanners are just picking up surface information. Let’s get a closer look.”

  “Understood.” Polaski inverted the ship, executed a reversed roll, and dropped into the canyon. When she righted the dropship, sculpted rock walls raced past them only thirty meters to either side.

  The Lieutenant reached for the backpack COM system they had removed from the Longsword. He fine-tuned the frequency of the unusual signal they were homing in on; a six-tone message played, followed by a two-second pause, and then it repeated.

  “Open a channel on that E-band, Lieutenant,” the Master Chief said. “I’ll need to send the countersignal.”

  “Channel open, Chief. Go ahead.”

  The Master Chief linked his COM and encrypted the channel so only those people sending the signal would hear him. “Oly Oly Oxen Free,” he spoke into his microphone. “All out in the free. We’re all free.”

  The beeping over the backpack COM speaker suddenly stopped.

  “Signal’s gone.” Lieutenant Haverson snapped his head around and stared at the Master Chief. “I’m not sure what you just told them, but whatever it was, they heard you.”

  “Good,” the Master Chief replied. “Set us down somewhere safe. They’ll find us.”

  “There’s an overhang ahead,” Polaski said. She moved the ship toward a deep shadow along the starboard side where the cliff angled out from the canyon. “I’ll put us down there.” She spun the ship, backed into the darkness, and set it down light as a feather.

  “Open the side hatch,” the Chief told Polaski. “I’ll go out alone and make sure it’s safe.”

  “Alone?” Lieutenant Haverson asked. He rose from his seat. “Are you certain that’s wise, Chief?”

  “Yes, sir. This was my idea. If it’s a trap, I want to be the one to set it off. You stay here and back me up.”

  Haverson drummed his long fingers across his chin, thinking. “Very well, Chief.”

  “I got your six, Master Chief,” Locklear said and unslung his assault rifle.

  The Spartan nodded to Locklear and marched down the ramp. The Chief wanted them on board the dropship for two reasons. First, if this was a trap and they were all caught out in the open, he wouldn’t have time to save them and himself. Second, if the Covenant were here, waiting, then Haverson and the others had to get away and get Cortana back to Earth. He could buy them the time to make it out alive.

  At the bottom of the ramp, he hesitated as his motion tracker pinged off a single signal. There—thirty meters ahead, just behind a large boulder: The friend-or-foe identification system tagged the contact as neither Covenant nor UNSC.

  The Chief drew his pistol, crouched, and crept forward.

  A private COM channel snapped on: “Master Chief, relax. It’s me.”

  Another Spartan stepped out from the cover of the rock. His armor—while not as battered as John’s—was covered with scuffs and burns; the left shoulder pauldron had been dented.

  The Master Chief felt a surge of relief. His teammates, his family, hadn’t all been killed. He recognized the Spartan from his voice and the subtle way he glanced right and left. It was SPARTAN 044, Anton. He was one of the unit’s best scouts. The two stood there a moment and then Anton moved his hand, making a quick, short gesture with his index and forefinger over the faceplate of his helmet where his mouth would be. That was their signal for a smile—the closest any Spartan got to an emotional outburst.

  John returned the gesture.

  “Good to see you, too,” John said. “How many are left?”

  “Three, Master Chief, and one other make up our team. Apologies for the disabled FOF tag, but we’re trying to confuse the Covenant forces in this area.” He looked again to his left and right. “I’d rather not give a full report in the open.” He motioned toward the shadows of the cliff face.

  John flashed his acknowledgment light and the two Spartans jogged out of the center of the ravine, both keeping their eyes on the rim of the canyon overhead.

  The Master Chief had plenty of questions for Anton, however. Like, why had his team split from Red Team? Where was Red Team? And why hadn’t the Covenant glassed every square centimeter of Reach yet?

  “You okay, Chief?” Lieutenant Haverson’s voice broke in from the COM.

  “Affirmative, sir. Contact made with a Spartan. Stand by.”

  Anton halted before a dark cavern entrance. It was difficult to see, even with image enhancement; there was only the faint outline of a tunnel in the shadows of th
e cliff face. Just inside were reinforcing steel I-beams painted matte black, and beyond there were two-meter-wide boulders with chainguns bolted to their sides. Each gun was crewed by a Spartan—whom John recognized as Grace 093 and Li 008.

  When they saw John they gave him the smile gesture, which he returned.

  Grace followed the Master Chief and Anton into the cavern. Li remained to operate the guns.

  The Master Chief blinked as his eyes adjusted to the harsh fluorescent lights that illuminated the interior of the cavern. The walls had a grooved texture, as if they’d been dug out by machinery. Standing before a foldout card table in the center of the cavern was another man, in a Navy uniform.

  The Master Chief stiffened and saluted. “Admiral, sir!”

  Vice Admiral Danforth Whitcomb, despite his Western European name and Texas drawl, claimed to have descended from Russian Cossacks. He had the physique of a large bear, a closely shaved and polished head, eyes so dark they could have been made of coal, and a salt-and-pepper mustache that drooped over his upper lip and dangled off the edge of his chin.

  “Master Chief.” The Admiral snapped off a crisp salute. “At ease, son. Damn good to see you.” He strode to the Chief and shook his hand—a gesture very few non-Spartans cared to endure—pressing bare flesh into a cold unyielding gauntlet that could pulverize their bones. “Welcome to Camp Independence. Accommodations ain’t four star…but we call it home.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  John had never worked with the Admiral before, but his accomplishments during the battles for New Constantinople and the Siege of the Atlas Moons were well known. Every Spartan had studied Whitcomb’s record.

  John opened a COM channel to Lieutenant Haverson. “Move up, sir. All clear.”

  “Roger,” Haverson said. “On our way.”

  “I’m happy to see you, Chief,” Admiral Whitcomb said, “so don’t take this the wrong way, but what the hell are you doing here? Keyes had orders to take you on a mission deep into Covenant territory.”