Halo_ First Strike - Eric S. Nylund [143]
"Let's move," John said. "Cortana, which way?"
"Proceed into the temple thirty meters. Turn right. There will be a sealed doorway, an access hatch for Engineers. I will open it and lock it behind you. Hurry. I'm encountering increased resistance from the station's AIs. While I have their security COM channels blocked, word of intruders is speeding via private COMs."
There was a curious echo to her voice. Maybe it was feedback from the Covenant triangulating on their signals. Or maybe there was some other effect at work. What had she warned him about? Unforeseen complications using a copy of a copy of Cortana?
"Roger that," he said and waved Fred and Will forward. He took one last look at Grace, then marched quickly and silently ahead.
There were no more motion contacts in the temple. The Chief, however, saw Grunts and Jackals, Elites and Hunters in murals painted on the walls. In the shadows and stained-glass filtered light, those pictures seemed to move. They genuflected to something farther ahead. The Chief wished he had more time to take a full video record.
Blue Team moved thirty meters and turned to face a section of the wall. It parted. The passage could have fit two Engineers side by side, but John had to crouch and turn sideways to pass. Will and Fred followed; Cortana sealed the door behind them.
They continued until the narrow passage turned ninety degrees and dropped straight down. Will attached a rope and they rappelled down a hundred meters, landing on a platform.
John overlooked a cavern hewn from rough stone that arched up ninety meters and vanished into the shadows in the distance. Five hundred twelve fusion reactors that looked like flatted spiral seashells filled the space, stacked in rows and columns eight deep. Each was the size of a Pelican dropship and thrummed with power, casting off waves of wavering heat.
The open areas between the reactors were a tangle of plasma conduits and alive with swarms of thousands of buoyant Engineers as they tended the machinery. Faint wispy borealis comprised of escaped plasma swirled, whipped into a luminous froth by the intense magnetic vortices within the chamber.
It was a tremendous feat of engineering. It was as if the station's builders had hewn this from a seed asteroid and built the rest of the installation around it.
Will pointed across the room to three Jackals who walked along a catwalk. Blue Team held position and didn't move. "There," Cortana announced. "Across the platform is a terminal on the reactor subsystem."
John held up a hand to Will and Fred, waited for the Jackal guards to pass, and then sprinted across the platform. He removed Cortana's chip and inserted it into the terminal.
After three seconds, she reported: "I'm in. Very few Covenant counterintrusion measures in this system. I can accomplish the overload.
"I've found an exit route for Blue Team and uploaded it into your NAV systems," she continued. "It should be stealthy enough for you to return to the repair bay undetected. Once there, give me the order and I can begin. It will take ten minutes for the overload to build. There's no stopping once I start this, Chief, so be sure."
"This station and the Covenant fleet might jump to Earth in the next ten minutes," John said. He looked to Fred and Will, and they nodded as if they could read his mind.
"Proceed with the overload now, Cortana."
The light from the reactors shifted; blue plasma tinged white and spread like a poison through the interconnecting conduits. "Overload commencing," the copy of Cortana announced. "I suggest Blue Team move at top speed to the exit."
A NAV triangle indicated a ladder that ran to the catwalk overhead. John held up two fingers at Will and Fred and then nodded to the patrolling Jackals. Fred and Will knelt, braced, and waited for him to go ahead.
John climbed the ladder. As he neared the top, three shots rang out behind him. The sound was nearly drowned out by the