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78
HALO: FIRST STRIKE
of the ship, assuming that there had only been one point of sabo-
tage. It was a mistake she would never have made if she'd been
operating at full capacity.
She checked every system of the flagship. She then locked
them out with her own security measures.
Cortana turned off her feelings of anger and guilt and concen-
trated on keeping the ship in one piece, and the Master Chief
alive. No... she reconsidered and kept her emotions active. The
"intuition" provided by this aspect of her intelligence template
was too valuable to deactivate in a battle.
She maneuvered the flagship toward the gas giant, Threshold.
The incoming plasma might be disrupted by the planet's mag-
netic field—if she dared get close enough.
Cortana diverted power from the foreshield to the aft por-
tions, distorting the protective bubble around the flagship. She
turned all seven plasma turrets aft and fired a pair of plasma tor-
pedoes at the incoming salvo.
The plasma turrets warmed and belched superheated flame—
but it dispersed into a dull red cloud only a few meters from the
point of fire, thinned, and then dissolved.
She saw a subsystem linked to the weapons control: an ac-
companying magnetic field multiplier. That was how the Cove-
nant shaped and guided their charges of plasma. It acted as a
sophisticated focusing lens. Something wasn't right, however—
something had already been in this directory and had erased the
software.
Cortana swore that when she caught this guerrilla Covenant
AI, she'd erase it line by line.
Without understanding how the guiding magnetic fields
worked, the plasma turrets were no more useful than a fireworks
display.
The enemy Covenant plasma charges, however, were tight
and burned like miniature suns; they overtook the flagship and
splashed over its reinforced aft shields. They boiled against the
silver energy until the shields dulled and winked out.
The plasma etched a portion of the aft hull away like hot water
dissolving salt. Cortana sensed the dull thumps of atmospheric
decompressions.