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HALO: FIRST STRIKE
undercarriage were apparently functional. Even better: The ship's
topside hardpoints were intact.
Cortana let a flicker of power pulse through Ascendant Jus-
tice's engines, and she slowly drifted toward the Gettysburg.
She paused to listen to the Covenant traffic insystem. There
was eight times the chatter there had been before, with many ref-
erences to the "Infidels" on the planet and the "holy light" that
was now in jeopardy. Good. That meant the Master Chief was
doing what he did best: causing mayhem among the enemy. And
more importantly, the presence of Ascendant Justice floating
among the hundreds of dead ships had not been detected.
When she was within a kilometer of the Gettysburg, she cut
her engines. With delicate puffs from the thrusters she edged
closer and rolled Ascendant Justice until its top side was parallel
with the top side of the Gettysburg.
She pinged the Gettysburg's telemetry system and received a
faint handshake reply. Cortana gave the override code—quickly
accepted—and entered the Gettysburg's NAV computer.
There was no other computer intelligence on board. The cap-
tain of the Gettysburg had flatlined the NAV system and the AI
as per the Cole Protocol. Cortana extended her presence through
the empty systems. The Gettysburg was a wreck; all thrusters
offline. It wouldn't be moving on its own power ever again, but
its heart still beat. The ship's fusion reactor operated at 67 per-
cent capacity. Perfect.
Ascendant Justice gently touched down on the Gettysburg—
probably the first time in the history of the universe that human
and Covenant ships had made contact with nonlethal intentions.
All modern UNSC ships had been designed with hardpoints
on their dorsal and ventral sides in the event that they were too
crippled to move under their own power. In theory, another
UNSC ship could dock, lock systems, and carry the wounded
ship away.
The Covenant flagship had a similar series of hardpoints on its
top side where ships too large to fit in its launch bay could dock.
The two systems, however, were incompatible.
Cortana fixed that. She activated the seven service drones
on the Gettysburg, and instructed the Covenant Engineers