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ERIC NYLUND
59
"Good." He turned to the others. "We're going in. I'll lead.
Locklear, you're up with me. Sergeant, you've got the rear."
"You'll need to take me, too," Cortana said. "I've pulled a
schematic of this ship to navigate, but the engineering controls
have been manually locked down. I'll need direct access to this
ship's command data systems."
The Chief hesitated. His armor allowed an AI like Cortana to
tag along stored in a special crystal layer. On Halo, Cortana had
been an invaluable tactical asset.
Still, she also used part of his armor's neural interface for pro-
cessing purposes, literally harnessing parts of the Chief's brain.
And after coming out of Halo's computer system, she'd been act-
ing... twitchy.
He put his discomfort aside. If Cortana turned into a liability,
he'd pull the plug.
"Stand by," he said. He punched a key on the computer termi-
nal and dumped Cortana to a data chip. A moment later the ter-
minal pulsed green.
He removed the chip and slotted it in the back of his helmet.
There was a moment of vertigo, and then the familiar
mercury-and-ice sensation flooded his skull as Cortana
interfaced.
"Still plenty of room in here, I see," she said.
He ignored her customary quip and nodded at Johnson and
Locklear. "Let's go."
Sergeant Johnson hit the door release, and the side hatch slid
open. Locklear shouldered his rifle and poured fire through the
opening. A pair of Grunts who had crouched near the Longsword
to protect themselves from the fire flew backward onto the deck.
Phosphorescent blood pooled beneath their prone forms.
The Chief dived through the open hatch and rolled to his feet;
his motion tracker picked up three targets to his side. He whirled
about and saw a trio of Covenant Engineers. He removed his fin-
ger from the weapon's trigger. Engineers were no threat.
The odd, meter-high creatures hovered above the deck, using
bladders of some lighter-than-air gas produced by their bodies.
Their tentacles and feelers probed a tangle of fuel lines, quickly
repairing the pipes and pumps.
"Funny that there's no welcoming committee yet," Cortana
whispered. "I looked over this ship's personnel roster: three