Filter
Top Products
126
HALO: FIRST STRIKE
desk. She turned down the blinds that separated her office from
the medical bay, but only halfway, so she could keep an eye on
Kelly.
"Let's have it, Kalmiya."
Kelly's medical history scrolled across a display.
"Here," Kalmiya said, and highlighted a surreptitious data re-
quest at the end of the file. "It's dated three months ago. That's
Araqiel's routing code."
Dr. Halsey picked up the snowglobe off her desk, shook it
once, and set it down, watching the swirls of particles.
"Araqiel? That's Ackerson's watchdog, isn't it?"
"Affirmative, Doctor."
"Can you trace the request?"
"Done and terminated contact at node FF-8897-Z. Access re-
stricted to X-ray level clearance."
"Restricted?" Dr. Halsey gave a short, soft laugh. "Does that
mean anything now? There's no one here to stop us, is there,
Kalmiya?"
"Entering those files without proper clearance is a treasonable
offense, Doctor."
"They can come and arrest me, then. Do as I have instructed,
Kalmiya," Dr. Halsey said. "Override your ethics center subrou-
tine four-alpha. Nullification code: 'Whateverittakes.' "
Dr. Halsey found a half-full cup of coffee on the floor and gin-
gerly picked it up. She sniffed its contents and, satisfied it wasn't
rancid, swirled it once then downed its cold contents.
"Yes, Doctor. Working. Done."
Kalmiya was Cortana's older "sister." Dr. Halsey had designed
and tested the software intrusion routines on her. Once the
process had been debugged and streamlined, she'd incorporated
the routines into Cortana. The brass in ONI Section Three had
been quite explicit in their instructions to destroy any prototype
routines—an order that Dr. Halsey had promptly disobeyed.
"There is an unusually voluminous amount of
counterintru-sion software, Doctor."
"Show me," Dr. Halsey said.
The holographic display flickered and solidified into colored
crystal blocks representing the code barriers. Dr. Halsey traced a