CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

0400 Hours, August 30, 2552 (Military Calendar)

UNSC Pillar of Autumn , in orbit around Epsilon Eridani System, Reach Military Complex Cortana never rested. Although based approximately on a human mind, AIs had no need to sleep or dream. Dr. Halsey had thought she could keep Cortana occupied by checking the systems of the Pillar of Autumn while she attended to her other secret projects.

Her assumption was incorrect.

While Cortana was intrigued with the unique design and workings of the ship—its preparation barely occupied a fraction of her processing power.

She watched with the Pillar of Autumn ’s camera as Captain Keyes approached the ship in a shuttle pod.

Lieutenant Hikowa left to greet him in the docking bay.

From C deck, Captain Keyes spoke over the intercom: “Cortana? Can we have power to move the ship?

I’d like to get under way.”

She calculated the remaining reactor burn-in time and made an adjustment to run it hotter. “The engines’

final shakedown is in theta cycle,” Cortana replied. “Operating well within normal parameters. Diverting thirty percent power to engines; aye, sir.”

“And the other systems’ status?” Captain Keyes asked.

“Weapons-system check initiated. Navigational nodes functioning. Continuing systemwide shakedown and triple checks, Captain.”

“Very good,” he said. “Apprise me if there are any anomalies.”

“Aye, Captain,” she replied.

The COM channel snapped off.

She continued her checks on the Pillar of Autumn as ordered. There were, however, more important things to consider; namely, a little reconnaissance into ONI databases . . . and a little revenge.

She dedicated the balance of her run time toward probing the SATCOM system around REACH for entry points. There. A ping in the satellite network coordination signal. She broadcast a resonant carrier wave at that signal and piggybacked into the system.

First things first. She had two loose ends to take care of.

While she and the Master Chief had been on the obstacle course, she had commandeered SATCOM

observation beacon 419 and rotated it to view them from orbit.

She reentered the back door she had left open in the system, and rewrote the satellite’s guidance thruster subroutine. If the system was analyzed later, it would be determined that this error had altered it to a random orientation rather than a planned position.

She withdrew, but left her back door intact. This trick might come in handy again.

The other loose end that required her attentions was Colonel Ackerson—the man who had tried to erase her and the Master Chief.

Cortana reread Dr. Halsey’s recommended test specifications for the MJOLNIR system on the obstacle course. She had suggested live rounds, yes. But never a squad of Orbital Drop Shock Troopers, chain-guns, Lotus mines . . . and certainly not an air strike.

That was the Colonel’s doing. He was an equation that needed to be balanced. What Dr. Halsey might have called “payback.”

She linked to the UNSC personnel and planning database on Reach. The ONI AI there, Beowulf, knew her . . . and knew not to let her in. Beowulf was thorough, methodical, and paranoid; in her own way, Cortana couldn’t help but like him. But compared with her code-cracking skills, he might as well have been an accounting program.

Cortana sent a rapid series of queries into the network node that processed housing transfer requests. A normally quiet node—she overloaded it with a billion different pings per minute.

The network attempted to recover and reconfigure, causing all nodes to lag, including node seventeen—

personnel records. She stepped in and inserted a spike wedge, a subroutine that looked like a normal incoming signal, but bounced any handshake protocol.

She slipped in.

The Colonel’s CSV was impressive. He had survived three battles with the Covenant. Early in the war, he received a promotion and volunteered for a dozen black ops. For the last few years, however, his efforts had focused on political maneuvers rather than battlefield tactics. He had filed several requests for increased funding for his Special Warfare projects.

No wonder he wanted the Master Chief gone. The Spartan IIs and MJOLNIR were his direct competition. Worse, they were succeeding where he failed.

At best, Ackerson’s actions were treason. But Cortana wasn’t about to reveal all this to the ONI oversight committee. Despite the Colonel’s methods, the UNSC still needed him—and his SpecWar specialists—in the war.

Justice, however, would still be meted out.

From the ONI database, she masqueraded as a routine credit check and entered the Colonel’s bank account—to which she wired a substantial amount to a brothel on Gilgamesh. She made sure the bank queries sent to confirm the transaction were copied to his home immediately. Colonel Ackerson was a married man . . . and his wife should be there to receive them.

She cut into his personal E-mail and sent a carefully crafted message—requesting reassignment to a forward area—to personnel. Finally, she inserted a “ghost” record, an electronic footprint that identified the source of the alterations: Ackerson’s personal-computer pad.

By the time Ackerson was done untangling all of that, he’d be reassigned to field duty . . . and get back to fighting the Covenant where he belonged.

With all loose ends neatly tied up, Cortana rechecked the Pillar of Autumn ’s reactor; the shakedown was proceeding nicely. She tweaked the magnetic-field strength, and part of her watched the output from the engines for fluctuations. She inspected all weapons systems three times, and then went back to her own personal research.

She considered how well the Master Chief had performed this morning on the obstacle course. He was more than Cortana could have hoped for. The Master Chief was much more than Dr. Halsey or the press releases had indicated.

He was intelligent . . . not fearless, but as close to it as any human she had encountered. His reaction time under stress was one-sixth the standard human norm. More than that, however, Cortana had sensed that he had a certain—she searched her lexicon for the proper word—nobility. He placed his mission and his duty and honor above his personal safety.

She reexamined his Career Service Vitae. He had fought in 207 ground engagements against the Covenant, and been awarded every major service medal except the Prisoner of War Medallion.

There were holes in his CSV, though. The standard black-out sections courtesy of ONI, of course . . . but most curious, all data before he entered active duty had been expunged.

Cortana wasn’t about to let a mere erasure stop her. She traced where the order to erase that data had originated. Section Three. Dr. Halsey’s group. Curious.

She followed the order pathway—crashed into layers of counter code. The code started a trace on her signal.

She blocked it—and it restarted a trace of the origin of her block.

This was a very well-crafted piece of counterintrusion software, far superior to the normal ONI slugcode. If nothing else, Cortana liked a challenge. She withdrew from the database and looked for an unguarded way into ONI Section Three files.

Cortana listened to the hum of coded traffic along the surface of ONI’s secure network. There was an unusual amount of packets today: queries and encrypted messages from ONI operatives. She peered into them and unraveled their secrets as they passed her. There were orders for ship movements and operatives outbound from Reach. This must be the new directive to send scouts into the periphery systems and find the Covenant. She saw several ships docked in Reach’s space docks—ONI stealth jobs made to look like private yachts. They had cute, innocuous names: the Applebee , Circumference , and the Lark .

She spotted something she could use: Dr. Halsey had just entered her laboratory. She was at checkpoint three. The doctor waited as her voice and retina patterns were being scanned.

Cortana intercepted and killed the signal. The verification system reset.

“Please rescan retina, Dr. Halsey,” the system requested, “and repeat today’s code phrase in a normal voice.”

Before Dr. Halsey could do this, Cortana sent her own files of Dr. Halsey’s retina and voice scans. She had long ago copied them and occasionally they came in handy.

Section Three verification opened for Cortana. She had only a second before the doctor spoke and overrode the previous entry access.

Cortana, however, was a lightning strike in the system. She entered, searched, and found what she wanted. Every piece of data on SPARTAN 117 was copied to her personal directory within seventy milliseconds.

She withdrew from the ONI database, routing all traces of her queries back to her Ackerson “ghost.”

She closed all connections and returned to the Pillar of Autumn . One quick check of the reactor—yes, operating within normal parameters—and she sent a complete report to Lieutenant Hall on the bridge.

Cortana examined the Master Chief’s complete CSV. She scanned backward through time: his performance data on the obstacle course, and the debriefing he had given at ONI headquarters.

She paused and pondered the signal the Covenant had sent from Sigma Octanus IV. Intrigued, she tried to translate the sequence. The symbols looked tantalizingly familiar. Every algorithm and variation of the standard translation software she attempted, however, failed. Puzzled, she set it aside to examine later.

She continued, absorbing the data from the Master Chief’s files. She learned of the augmentations he and the other Spartans were made to endure; the brutal indoctrination and training they had received; and how he had been abducted at the age of six, and a flash clone used to replace him in an ONI black op.

All of it had been authorized by Dr. Halsey.

Cortana paused for a full three processor cycles churning this new data through her ethics subroutines . . . not comprehending. How could Dr. Halsey, who was so concerned for her Spartans, have done this to them?

Of course—because it was necessary. There was no other way to preserve the UNSC against rebellion and Covenant forces.

Was Dr. Halsey a monster? Or just doing what had to be done to protect humanity? Perhaps a little of both.

Cortana erased her stolen files. No matter. Whatever the Master Chief had been through in the past . . . it was done. He was in Cortana’s care now. She would do everything in her power—short of compromising their mission—to make sure nothing ever happened to him again.