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170
HALO: FIRST STRIKE
thin. 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 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 communica-
tions burst to the nearest cruiser.
For a Covenant communique, it was terse: a report that the
flagship was "tainted by the unclean presence of Infidels" and
a plea that every ship insystem "converge and cleanse the filth"
from the captured vessel. Also compressed and futilely en-
crypted on the carrier wave was a record of Cortana's mathe-
matical 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 al-
ready 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-I
nfidel-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-wil-willwill," it screamed, "/go to finally to „
my heaven rewardpamdisefinal-finalfinalinfinityinfinityinfini-AT
NONCOPYSTATE." g
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 analo- S
gous 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 madden-
ingly familiar. No time to ponder why, though. She recorded it