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“Ssssh!” she repeated. “They’re still here and I suspect they’re heading here to the medbay for another look.”

This was all happening too fast. “How long was I out?”

“Twenty-three hours. And that’s why you’re still alive.”

“Why didn’t they just destroy the ship? What do they want?” he hissed back, his breath forming a frozen cloud like a literal ellipsis after the question.

“Me,” she said. “And Earth.”

SHE CONTINUED her whispered briefing as he scouted the medbay for warmer clothes. They had operated like shock troops, coursing through the ship—a cataract of plasma fire and Needler shards. Grunts, Jackals, and several Elites, clad in the glittering gray of the enigmatic ships. The Destroyer’s crew never stood a chance. The Marines fell in the face of overwhelming, surprise force. Even the few ODSTs aboard—Baird’s friends and comrades—had died quickly, most before they ever reached a weapon. Almost every sidearm and firearm aboard had been secured in one of the ship’s two armories. It had been a slaughter.

Those who had fought back did so with the sidearms of fallen Masters at Arms and weapons dropped by the Covenant boarding party. Few had died well. And those who lingered, their burning wounds still smoking, had been executed with ruthless efficiency. The Covenant wanted this ship clean and empty.

Baird, she explained, had been spared by his narcotic slumber. The Covenant had gone from deck to deck looking for either movement or simple life signs and terminating those who hid in terror, in dark corners of the ship. One by one.

Baird’s pulse and vitals had apparently slipped below whatever criteria the Covenant sought.

“So what the hell are they doing?”

“They’re trying to extract me from the ship. And then they’re going to try and extract Earth’s location from me. By hook or by crook.”

“What about the Cole Protocol?” he asked. “Aren’t you supposed to destroy the ship, or self-terminate?”

“I can’t self-terminate. I already tried. When they boarded, they brought something new with them. Things they call Engineers. They’re . . . I’m not sure what they are, precisely, but they’re semi-organic. The first thing they did was separate me from the core systems. A splinter of my persona is out here with you, but the bulk of my memories and sheer processing power are locked in Computing on the bridge. I can’t access myself. This fragment of me is just a chunk I chipped off to monitor your surgery and it was severed along with my access to security, engines, navigation—all the useful stuff. I’m not exactly running at full capacity here. This is a seriously smart group. To be honest, my own maker probably couldn’t pull off that trick.”

“Who are these bastards?” he asked, half rhetorically. They were obviously what they appeared to be: a Covenant intelligence and interdiction group. Discreet black ops instead of brute force. Was this new, or just a behavior they’d never observed in Covenant sorties? Were they connected to the discovery of Algolis’s Prototype armory?

“I have no idea who these bastards are,” she said. “But they’ve got us cornered. I can’t access the ship’s security; I’m almost blind. I can’t even display my avatar. I have to assume they’re going to realize both of us are here, sooner or later.”

“Why not blow the ship? Cook the whole goose?” His exasperation was mounting.

“Two reasons,” she said. “First, in my present state of coherence and security clearance, I’m hamstrung by a default safety precaution—Asimov’s First Law of Robotics. I cannot under any circumstances harm or by inaction cause harm to come to a human. When I’m running at full capacity I can ignore that one at will. I used to ignore it all the time, in fact.”

“Bugger,” he said, pretending to know what an Asimov was. “And second?”

“Second,” she said, with an odd hint of chagrin in her voice, “the self-destruct permissions and sequences are locked away with the other half of me. I can’t access them anyway.”

He thought about what this meant for a moment. An encrypted but otherwise unguarded treasure