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326
HALO: FIRST STRIKE
"Communiques and queries to and from every ship in the fleet
wondering what the hell is going on. And the station's COM
channels are all full of those copied Cortanas ... and she's just
repeating different system error codes."
"What's this?" John asked, leaning over Fred's shoulder. He
pointed to one COM band with only a single spike.
Fred looked at the Covenant calligraphy for a long moment,
and then inhaled sharply. "If the translation software is working
right," he whispered, "that's the E-band... it's one of ours."
Fred snapped on the external speakers. Six tones beeped,
stopped, and then repeated.
"Oly Oly Oxen Free," John breathed. "Send the countersign,
Fred."
"Aye, Chief. Sending now."
Who could have sent that signal? There was no other living
Spartan in this system. Unless it was Dr. Halsey and Kelly. Had
they somehow tracked them?
"It's about time you showed up." The drawling voice of Admi-
ral Whitcomb was loud and clear over the COM. "Switch to en-
cryption scheme 'Rainbow.' "
John nodded to Fred, who ran a shunt from the Covenant
COM into the data port in the back of his helmet. "Decryption
online," Fred reported.
"Admiral," John said. "With all due respect, sir, why are you
here?"
"Lieutenant Haverson suggested we drop out of Slipspace on
the edge of this system—hide in the Oort cloud and gather a little
intel." The Admiral sighed. "Well, I took one look and figured that
even if you took out that station... hell, son, there'd still be a
couple of hundred Covenant ships within spittin' distance of
Earth. Me getting there and warning them about it wouldn't
make a lick of difference. So I'm going to do something about it
here and now. You've done your part, Chief. Leave the rest to
me."
There was a pause, then the Admiral asked in a low, serious
tone, "You did get it done, didn't you, son? You got that station
rigged to blow?"
"Yes, sir." John linked his mission timer to the COM. "Four
minutes thirty-two seconds and counting."