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HALO: FIRST STRIKE
impacted on the flagship's shields. "Man," he whispered. "I wish
our boats had weapons like those."
"We might soon have exactly that, Marine," Lieutenant
Haver-son said. He winced and stood, then moved to a screen that
showed the storms in the upper atmosphere of Threshold. "Play
this one, Corporal."
Locklear tapped one of the controls.
A line of sparkling blue lights appeared on screen, and the
nose of the flagship edged into view. The blue line ripped a hole
in space, and the ship jumped forward. The clouds of Threshold
vanished; there was only blackness on the screen.
Haverson slicked back the strands of his red hair that had
fallen into his face. "Cortana," he asked, "has anyone, human
or Covenant, ever performed a Slipspace jump from within an
atmosphere?"
"No, Lieutenant. Normally such strong gravitational fields
would distort and collapse the Shaw-Fujikawa event horizon.
With the Covenant's Slipspace matrices, however, I had greatly
increased resolution. I was able to compensate."
"Amazing," he whispered.
"Goddamned lucky," Polaski muttered. She tugged on the rim
of her cap.
"It worked," the Master Chief told them. "For now, that's all
that matters." He faced his team, trying to ignore the motions of
the Covenant Engineer attached to his back. "We have to plan
our next move."
"I'm sorry to disagree, Chief," Lieutenant Haverson said.
"The mere fact that Cortana's maneuver worked is the only thing
that matters now."
The Chief squared himself to the Lieutenant and said nothing.
Haverson held up his hands. "I acknowledge that you have
tactical command, Chief. I know your authority has the backing
of the brass and ONI Section Three. You'll get no argument from
me on that point, but I put it to you that your original mission has
just been superseded by the discovery of the technology on this
ship. We should scrub your mission and head straight back to
Earth."
"What's this other mission?" Locklear asked, his voice
suspicious.