CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
0915 Hours, August 25, 2552 (Military Calendar) /
Epsilon Eridani System, Reach UNSC Military Complex, planet Reach, Omega Wing—Section
Three secure facility
“Good morning, Dr. Halsey,” Déjà said. “You’re fourteen point three minutes late this morning.”
“Blame security, Déjà,” Dr. Halsey replied, gesturing absently at the AI’s holographic projection
floating above her desk. “ONI’s precautions here are becoming increasingly ridiculous.”
Dr. Halsey threw her coat over the back of an antique armchair before settling behind her desk. She
sighed, and for the thousandth time, wished she had a window.
The private office was located deep underground, inside the “Omega Wing” of the super-secure ONI
facility, codenamed simply CASTLE.
Castle was a massive complex, two thousand meters below the granite protection of the Highland
Mountains—bombproof, well defended, and impenetrable.
The security had its drawbacks, she was forced to admit. Every morning she descended into the secret
labyrinth, passed through a dozen security checkpoints, and submitted to a barrage of retina, voice,
fingerprint, and brainwave ID scans.
ONI had buried her here years ago when her funding had been shunted to higher profile projects. All
other personnel had been transferred to other operations, and her access to classified materials had been
severely restricted. Even shadowy ONI was squeamish about her experiments.
That’s all changed—thanks to the Covenant, she thought. The SPARTAN project—unpopular with the
Admiralty, and the scientific community—had proven most effective. Her Spartans had proven
themselves time after time in countless ground engagements.
When the Spartans started racking up successes, the Admiralty’s reticence vanished. Her meager budget
had mushroomed overnight. They had offered her a corner office in the prestigious Olympic Tower at
FLEETCOM HQ.
She had, of course, declined. Now the brass and VIPs that wanted to see her had to spend half the day
just getting through the security barriers to her lair. She relished the irony—her banishment had become
a bureaucratic weapon.
But none of that really mattered. It was just a means to an end for Dr. Halsey . . . a means to getting
Project MJOLNIR back on track.
She reached for her coffee cup and knocked a stack of papers off her desk. They fell, scattered onto the
floor, and she didn’t bother to retrieve them. She examined the mud-brown dregs in the bottom of the
mug; it was several days old.
The office of the most important scientist in the military was not the antiseptic clean-room environment
most people expected. Classified files and papers littered the floor. The holographic projector overhead
painted the ceiling with a field of stars. Rich maple paneling covered the walls and hanging there were
framed photographs of her SPARTAN IIs, receiving awards, and the plethora of articles about them that
appeared when the Admiralty had made the project public three years ago.
They had been called the UNSC’s “super soldiers.” The military brass had assured her that the boost to
morale was worth the compromised security.
At first she had protested. But ironically, the publicity had proved convenient. With all the attention on
the Spartans’ heroics, no one had thought to question their true purpose—or their origin. If the truth ever
came to light—abducted children, replaced by fast-grown clones; the risky, experimental surgeries and
biochemical augmentations—public opinion would turn against the SPARTAN project overnight.
The recent events at Sigma Octanus had given the Spartans and MJOLNIR the final push it needed to
enter its final operational phase.
She slipped on her glasses and called up the files from yesterday’s debriefing; the ONI computer system
once again confirmed her retinal scan and voiceprint.
IDENTITY CONFIRMED. UNAUTHORIZED ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE UNIT DETECTED.
ACCESS DENIED.
Damn. ONI grew more paranoid by the day.
“Déjà,” she said with a frustrated sigh. “The spooks are nervous. I need to power you down, or ONI
won’t give me access to the files.”
“Of course, Doctor,” Déjà replied calmly.
Halsey keyed the power-down sequence on her desktop terminal, sending Déjà into standby mode. This,
she thought, is Ackerson’s work, the bastard. She had fought tooth and nail to keep Déjà free from the
programming shackles ONI demanded . . . and this was their petty revenge.
She scowled impatiently until the computer system finally spit out the data she’d requested. The tiny
projectors in the frames of her glasses beamed the data directly to her retina.
Her eyes darted back and forth rapidly, as if she had entered REM sleep, as she scanned the
documentation from the debriefing. Finally she removed her glasses and tossed them carelessly on the
desk, a sardonic smirk on her face.
The overarching conclusion of the finest military experts on the debriefing committee: ONI didn’t have
a clue as to what the Covenant were doing on Sigma Octanus IV.
They had learned only four solid facts from the entire operation. First, the Covenant had gone to
considerable trouble to obtain a single mineral specimen. Second, the pattern of inclusions in that
igneous rock sample matched the signal that had been sent—and intercepted by theIroquois . Third, the
low entropy of the pattern indicated that it was not random. And fourth, and most important, UNSC
translation software couldn’t match this pattern to any known Covenant dialect.
Her personal conclusions? Either the alien artifact was from a precursor to the present Covenant
society . . . or it was from another, as yet undiscovered, alien culture.
When she had dropped that little bombshell of a speculation in the debriefing room yesterday, the ONI
specialists had gone scrambling for cover. Especially that arrogant ass, Colonel Ackerson, she thought
with a cruel smile.
The brass was not happy with either possibility. If it was old Covenant technology, it indicated they still
knew virtually nothing about the Covenant culture. Twenty years of intensive study and trillions of
dollars of research and they barely even understood the alien’s caste system.
And if it was the latter possibility, an artifact of another alien race . . . that could be even more
problematic. Colonel Ackerson and some of the brass had immediately considered the logistics of
fighting two alien enemies at once. Utterly ridiculous. They couldn’t even fight one. The UNSC could
never hope to survive a war on two fronts.
She pinched the bridge of her nose. Despite the grim conclusions, there was a silver lining in all this.
After the meeting, a new mandate had become the official secret policy of Fleet Command’s Special
Operations Command—the parent organization for Naval Special Warfare, the Spartans’ service branch.
ONI had new marching orders: to step up funding of Intel and reconnaissance missions by an order of
magnitude. Small stealth ships were to be deployed to search remote systems and find where the
Covenant were based.
And Dr. Halsey had finally received the green light to unleash MJOLNIR.
She had mixed feelings about it. The truth be told, she always had.
It would be the culmination of her life’s greatest work. She knew the risks—like spinning a roulette
wheel, it was long odds, but the payoff was potentially huge.
It meant victory against the Covenant . . . or the death of all her Spartans.
The holographic crystals overhead warmed and Cortana appeared, sitting cross-legged on Dr. Halsey’s
desk—actually she sat hovering a centimeter off the table’s edge.
Cortana was slender. The hue of her skin varied from navy blue to lavender, depending on her mood and
the ambient lighting. Her “hair” was cropped short. Her face had a hard angular beauty. Lines of code
flickered up and down her luminous body. And if Dr. Halsey viewed her from the right angle, she could
catch a glimpse of the skeletal structure inside her ghostly form.
“Good morning, Dr. Halsey,” Cortana said. “I’ve read the committee’s report—”
“—which was classified as Top Secret, Eyes Only.”
“Hmm . . . ” Cortana mused. “I must have overlooked that.” She hopped off the desk and circled around
Dr. Halsey once.
Cortana had been programmed with ONI’s best insurgency software, as well as the determination to use
those code-cracking skills. While this had been necessary for her mission, when she grew bored, she
caused chaos with ONI’s own security measures . . . and she often grew bored.
“I assume you have examined the classified data brought back from Sigma Octanus Four?” Halsey asked.
“I might have seen that somewhere,” Cortana said matter-of-factly.
“Your analysis and conclusions?”
“There is much more evidence to consider than the data in the committee’s files.” She looked off into
space as if reading something.
“Oh?”
“Forty years ago a geological survey team on Sigma Octanus Four found several igneous rocks with
similar—though not identical—anomalous compositions. UNSC geologists believe that these samples
were introduced onto the planet via meteorite impacts—they typically are found in long-eroded impact
craters on the planet surface. Isotopic dating of the site place those impact craters at present minus sixty
thousand years—” Cortana paused as a hint of a smile played across her holographic features. “—though
that figure may be inaccurate due to human error, of course.”
“Of course,” Dr. Halsey replied dryly.
“I have also, um . . . coordinated with UNSC’s astrophysics department and discovered some interesting
bits archived in their long-range observational databases. There is a black hole located approximately
forty thousand light-years from the Sigma Octanus System. An extremely powerful pulse-laser
transmission back-scattered the matter in the accretion disk—essentially trapped this signal as this
matter accelerated toward the speed of light. From our perspective, according to special relativity, this
essentially froze the residue of this information on the event horizon.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Dr. Halsey said.
“This ‘frozen signal’ contains information that matches the sample from Sigma Octanus Four.” Cortana
sighed and her shoulders slumped. “Unfortunately, all my attempts at translating the code have failed . . .
so far.”
“Your conclusions, Cortana?” Dr. Halsey reminded her.
“Insufficient data for complete analysis, Doctor.”
“Hypothesize.”
Cortana bit her lower lip. “There are two possibilities. The data originates from the Covenant or another
alien race.” She frowned. “If it’s another alien species, the Covenant probably wants these artifacts to
scavenge their technology. Either conclusion opens several new opportunities for the NavSpecWep—”
“I am aware of that,” Dr. Halsey said, raising her hand. If she allowed the AI to continue, Cortana would
talk all day. “One of those opportunities is Project MJOLNIR.”
Cortana spun around and her eyes widened. “They approved the final phase?”
“Is it possible, Cortana,” Dr. Halsey replied, amused, “that I know something you don’t?”
Cortana wrinkled her brow in frustration, then smoothed her features to their normal placid state. “I
suppose that is a remote possibility. If you’d like, I can calculate those odds.”
“No, thank you, Cortana,” Halsey replied.
Cortana reminded Dr. Halsey of herself when she had been an adolescent: smarter than her parents,
always reading, talking, learning, and eager to share her knowledge with anyone who would listen.
Of course, there was a very good reason why Cortana reminded Dr. Halsey of herself.
Cortana was a “smart” AI, an advanced artificial construct. Actually, the termssmart anddumb as applied
to AIs, were misleading; all AIs were extraordinarily intelligent. But Cortana was special.
So-called dumb AIs were engineered to function only were misleading; within set limits of their
dynamic memory-processing matrix. They were brilliant within their fields of expertise, but were
lacking in “creativity.” Déjà, for example, was a “dumb” AI—incredibly useful, but limited.
Smart AIs like Cortana, however, had no limits on their dynamic memory-processor matrix. Knowledge
and creativity could grow unchecked.
She would pay a price for her genius, however. Such growth eventually led to self-interference. Cortana
would one day literally start thinking too much at the expense of her normal functions. It was as if a
human were to think with so much of his brain that he stopped sending impulses to his heart and lungs.
Like all the other smart AIs that Dr. Halsey had worked with over the years, Cortana would effectively
“die” after an operational life of seven years.
But Cortana’s mind was unique among all the other AIs Dr. Halsey had encountered. An AI’s matrix
was created by sending electrical bursts through the neural pathways of a human brain. Those pathways
were then replicated in a superconducting nano-assemblage. The technique destroyed the original human
tissue, so they could only be obtained from a suitable candidate that had already died. Cortana, however,
had to have the best mind available. The success of her mission and the lives of the Spartans would
depend on it.

At Dr. Halsey’s insistence, ONI had arranged to have her own brain carefully cloned and her memories
flash-transferred to the receptacle organs. Only one of the twenty cloned brains survived the process.
Cortana had literally sprung from Dr. Halsey’s mind, like Athena from the head of Zeus.
So, in a way, Cortanawas Dr. Halsey.
Cortana straightened, her face eager. “When does the MJOLNIR armor become fully operational. When
do I go?”
“Soon. There are a few final modifications that need to be made in the systems.”
Cortana leaped to her “feet,” turned her back to Dr. Halsey, and examined the photographs on the wall.
She brushed her fingertips over the glass surfaces. “Which one will be mine?”
“Which one do you want?”
She immediately gravitated to the picture in the center of Dr. Halsey’s collection. It showed a handsome
man standing at attention as Admiral Stanforth pinned the UNSC Legion of Honor upon his chest—a
chest that already overflowed with citations.
Cortana framed her fingers around the man’s face. “He’s so serious,” she murmured. “Thoughtful eyes,
though. Attractive in a primitive animal sort of way, don’t you think, Doctor?”
Dr. Halsey blushed. Apparently, shedid think so. Cortana’s thoughts mirrored many of her own, only
unchecked by normal military and social protocol.
“Perhaps it would be best if you picked another—”
Cortana turned to face Dr. Halsey and cocked an eyebrow, mock stern. “Youasked me which one I
wanted. . . .”
“It was a question, Cortana. I did not give you carte blanche to select your ‘carrier.’ There are
compatibility issues to consider.”
Cortana blinked. “His neural patterns are in sync with my mine within two percent. With the new
interface we’ll be installing, that should fall well within tolerable limits. In fact—” Her gaze drifted and
the symbols along her body brightened and flashed. “—I have just developed a custom interface buffer
that will match us within zero point zero eight one percent. You won’t find a better match among the
others.
“In fact,” she added coyly, “I can guarantee it.”
“I see,” Dr. Halsey said. She pushed away from her desk, stood, and paced.
Why was she hesitating? The matchwas superb. But was Cortana’s predilection for Spartan 117 a result
of him being Dr. Halsey’s favorite? And did it matter? Who better to protect him?
Dr. Halsey walked over to the picture. “He was awarded this Legion of Honor medallion because he
dove into a bunker of Covenant soldiers. He took out twenty by himself and saved a platoon of Marines
who were pinned down by a stationary energy weapon emplacement. I’ve read the report, but I’m still
not sure how he managed to do it.”
She turned to Cortana and stared into her odd translucent eyes. “You’ve read his CSV?”
“I’m reading it again right now.”
“Then you know he is neither the smartest nor the fastest nor the strongest of the Spartans. But he is the
bravest—and quite possibly the luckiest. And in my opinion, he is the best.”
“Yes,” Cortana whispered. “I concur with your analysis, Doctor.” She drifted closer.
“Could you sacrifice him if you had to? If it meant completing the mission?” Dr. Halsey asked quietly.
“Could you watch him die?”
Cortana halted and the processing symbols racing across her skin froze midcalculation.
“My priority Alpha order is to complete this mission,” she replied emotionlessly. “The Spartans’ safety
as well as mine is a Beta-level priority command.”
“Good.” Dr. Halsey returned to her desk and sat down. “Then you can have him.”
Cortana smiled and blazed with brilliant electricity.
“Now,” Dr. Halsey said, and tapped on her desk to regain Cortana’s attention. “Show me your pick of
our ship candidates for the mission.”
Cortana opened her hand. In her palm there was a tiny model of a Halcyon-class UNSC cruiser.
“ThePillar of Autumn,” Cortana said.
Dr. Halsey leaned back and crossed her arms. Modern USNC cruisers were rare in the fleet. Only a
handful of the impressive warships remained . . . and those were being pulled back to bolster the defense
of the Inner Colonies. This junk-heap, however, was not one of these ships.
“ThePillar of Autumn is forty-three years old,” Cortana said. “Halcyon-class ships were the smallest
vessel ever to receive the cruiser designation. It is approximately one-third the tonnage of the Marathonclass
cruiser currently in service.
“Halcyon-class ships were pulled from long-term storage—they were designated to be scrapped, in fact.
TheAutumn was refit in 2550, to serve in the current conflict near Zeta Doradus. Their Mark Two fusion
engines supply a tenth of the power of modern reactors. Their armor is light by current standards.
Weapon refits have upgraded their offensive capabilities with a single Magnetic Acceleration Cannon
and six Archer missile pods.
“The only noteworthy design feature of this ship is the frame.” Cortana reached down and pulled off the
skin of the holographic model as if it were a glove. “The structural system was designed by a Dr. Robert
McLees—cofounder of the Reyes-McLees Shipyards over Mars—in 2510. It was, at the time, deemed
unnecessarily overmassed and costly due to series of cross-bracings and interstitial honeycombs. The
design was subsequently dropped from all further production models. Halcyon-class ships, however,
have a reputation for being virtually indestructible. Reports indicate these ships being operational even
after sustaining breaches to all compartments and losing ninety percent of their armor.”
“Their duty record?” Dr. Halsey asked.
“Substandard,” Cortana replied. “They are slow and ineffective in offensive combat. They are somewhat
of a joke within the fleet.”
“Perfect,” Dr. Halsey said. “I concur with your final selection recommendation. We will start the refit
operations at once.”
“All we need now,” Cortana said, “is a Captain and crew.”
“Ah yes, the Captain.” Dr. Halsey slid on her glasses. “I have the perfect man for the job. He’s a tactical
genius. I’ll forward you his CSV, and you can see for yourself.” She transferred the file to Cortana.
Cortana smiled, but it quickly faded. “His maneuvers at Sigma Octanus Four were performed without an
onboard AI?”
“His ship left dock without an AI for technical reasons. I believe he has no compunctions about working
with computers. In fact, it was one of the first refit requests he put in for theIroquois .”
Cortana did not look convinced.
“Besides, he has the most important qualification for this job,” Dr. Halsey said. “The man can keep a
secret.”