Halo_ First Strike - Eric S. Nylund [138]
Grace and Fred disembarked and scrambled silently up into the darkness, joining them.
John pointed two fingers at his eyes and then made a flat fan motion across the space of the bay. The Spartans moved to carefully scan the area.
From his shadowy overview John saw that this place was a repair-and-refit facility, with slots for hundreds of singleships. The room curved out of view three hundred meters in either direction. It must run the circumference of the station's hub.
Apart from the thousands of busy Engineers, John spotted only two Grunts wearing white methane-breather masks. It was not a color designation he had seen before. They pushed carts containing barrels of sloshing fluids. They would be easy to avoid.
One side of the bay had a series of sealed doors that he presumed led to air locks. The opposite wall of the bay had a meter-thick window through which poured an intense blue light.
Every thirty meters along that transparent wall was a recessed alcove. Overflowing from the nearest alcove were purple polyhedral cargo barrels, old charred plasma coils, and plates of the silver-blue Covenant alloy. But what piqued John's interest was what was next to this pile of junk: a holographic terminal.
John clicked his COM to get Blue Team's attention, pointed to the junk pile, held up two fingers, and then pointed again at the alcove.
Everyone nodded, understanding his order.
Fred and Linda silently dropped to the deck, ran across the bay, and melted into the shadows behind a cut section of hull. Grace followed.
John looked up and down and side to side across the bay, making sure no Grunts were visible. He and Will crossed and took cover behind a plasma coil the size of a Warthog light reconnaissance vehicle.
He used both hands to point at Fred and Linda, turned his hands so they pointed to himself, and then nodded to the data terminal.
Linda lay flat and slithered to the edge of the alcove shadows on his right; Fred took the left. They would cover him while he moved to the terminal.
John reached to the back of his neck and pulled Cortana's chip from his skull. He crawled on his stomach, hugging the wall until he got to the terminal. He slid Cortana's chip into the input slot and then eased back into the shadows.
"I'm in," Cortana reported over the COM. "I have secured our own channel and encrypted the signal so we're free to use the interteam COM."
"Good work," John told her. "Is there a central reactor in this station? How well defended is it?" "Stand by. I have to move carefully. There are Covenant security AIs in this system." John hoped that this copy of Cortana's infiltration routines was as good as the real Cortana.
"I have schematics for the station," she told him. "The good news is, each lobe has a central reactor complex with five hundred twelve-terawatt units similar in design to the pinch fusion reactors on their ships. Apparently this energy is used to power a shield generator that can repel the collision of a small moon. I can overload one reactor, causing the melting of its field coils, which will saturate the surrounding—"
"Will it explode?" John asked impatiently.
"Yes—an explosion of sufficient force to vaporize both sections." "That's the good news? What's the bad?" "The reactor's control system is isolated. I cannot reach it from this terminal. You will have to physically deliver me there."
"Where is 'there'?"
"The nearest reactor-control access point is seven kilometers farther into the station's top lobe."
John considered this. If they were careful and lucky, it might be possible.
"Is there a way to leave you in the central system until we need you?" he asked. "It would be handy to have you monitor the Covenant security systems."
The duplicate Cortana was silent a full three seconds. "There is a way," she finally replied. "When I was copied from the original Cortana, the duplicating software was copied as well—it becomes an inseparable part of all subsequent copies. I can use this to copy myself into this system."
"Perfect."