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ERIC NYLUND
171
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 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 Cove-
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 and direct the chaotic plasma into a controllable trajectory.
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
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 mo-
tions of the plasma atoms, herding their trajectories and eleven
degrees of electronic freedom into a laser-fine columnatedbeam
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 algo-