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66
HALO: FIRST STRIKE
But to operate as if nothing were different would be even more
foolish.
She sent a blocking countersignal along the connection where
this "other" was trying to contact her.
The portion of her consciousness examining the ship's struc-
ture discovered that the bridge had another access point. Stupid.
She should have seen it immediately, but this other entrance had
been filed under the schematics as an emergency system. It was a
tiny corridor that connected to a set of escape pods. That route
shared a vent with an engineering passage.
"Chief, there's another way to the bridge."
"Affirmative. Wait one." There was a burst of gunfire on the
COM, then silence. "Go ahead, Cortana."
"Uploading the route now," she said. "I do not believe you can
fit through this new passage in your armor. I suggest you split
your team and proceed along both routes to maximize your
chances of egress onto the bridge."
"Understood," the Chief said. "Polaski and Haverson with me.
Johnson and Locklear, you take the escape pod route."
She continued to track both teams and the relative positions of
the Covenant parties. She replicated additional ghost signals to
confuse the enemy.
Cortana picked up increasing communications bandwidth be-
tween the flagship and the cruisers. Reports of the invaders—a
call for help—a warning to be relayed to the home world. There
were references to the "holy one," and those messages had what
she considered amusing attempts at encryption to keep them se-
cret. Curious, she had to investigate what the Covenant thought
important enough to hide.
As she decrypted those messages and others cross-referenced
and filed in their COM archives, she detected an energy spike on
the flagship's lateral sensors. One cruiser off to starboard moved
farther away; it turned, its engines glowed, the black around it
rippled electric blue. The Covenant ship sped forward, tore the
night, and vanished into Slipspace.
Cortana noted their departure vector for future reference. . . a
possible clue at the location of their home world.
It was puzzling that the Covenant would call for help. Their
warriors were intensely proud; they almost never ran from a