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36
HALO: FIRST STRIKE
"That's highly un—" Cortana froze for a split second. The static
around her vanished, and she stared off into space. "Interesting."
"What?"
Cortana looked distracted, then seemed to snap out of it.
"New data. That signal echo's getting stronger."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning," she replied, "it's not an echo."
The scanner panel hummed back to life as Cortana activated
the Longsword's long-range detection gear. "Uh-oh," she said, a
moment later.
The Chief peered at the scan panel as Cortana identified the
contact. The distinctive, bulbous silhouette of a Covenant cruiser
edged into view as it moved around the moon's far side.
"Power down," he snapped. "Kill everything except passive
scanners and minimal power to keep you online."
The Longsword darkened; Cortana's hologram flickered and
faded as she killed power flow to the holosystem.
The cruiser moved into the debris field, prowling like a
hungry shark. Another cruiser appeared, then another, and then
three more.
"Status?" he whispered, his hands hovering over the weapons
controls. "Have they spotted us?"
"They're using the same scanning frequencies as our system,"
Cortana said in his helmet speaker. "How strange. No mention of
this phenomenon in any of the UNSC or ONI files on the Cove-
nant. Why do you suppose they'd use the same frequencies?"
"Never mind that," the Chief said. "They're here and looking
for something. Like I said before, if there are survivors out there,
they'd be powered down."
"I can listen to their echoes," Cortana said, her voice flat and
oddly procedural. Operating at lower power levels seemed to
limit her more colorful behavior. "Process active: analyzing
Covenant signals. Piggybacking their scans. Diverting more
runtime to the task. I'm building a multiplex filtering algorithm.
Customizing the current shape-signature recognition software."
Another ship rounded the horizon of Basis. It was larger than
any Covenant ship the Master Chief had seen. It had the sleek
three-bulbed shape of one of their destroyers, but it must have
been three kilometers long. Seven plasma turrets were mounted