Halo_ First Strike - Eric S. Nylund [16]
the Longsword's long-range detection gear. "Uh-oh," she said, a moment later.
The Chief peered at the scan panel as Cortana identified the contact. The distinctive, bulbous silhouette of a Covenant cruiser edged into view as it moved around the moon's far side.
"Power down," he snapped. "Kill everything except passive scanners and minimal power to keep you online." The Longsword darkened; Cortana's hologram flickered and faded as she killed power flow to the holosystem.
The cruiser moved into the debris field, prowling like a hungry shark. Another cruiser appeared, then another, and then three more.
"Status?" he whispered, his hands hovering over the weapons controls. "Have they spotted us?"
"They're using the same scanning frequencies as our system," Cortana said in his helmet speaker. "How strange. No mention of this phenomenon in any of the UNSC or ONI files on the Covenant. Why do you suppose they'd use the same frequencies?"
"Never mind that," the Chief said. "They're here and looking for something. Like I said before, if there are survivors out there, they'd be powered down."
"I can listen to their echoes," Cortana said, her voice flat and oddly procedural. Operating at lower power levels seemed to limit her more colorful behavior. "Process active: analyzing Covenant signals. Piggybacking their scans. Diverting more runtime to the task. I'm building a multiplex filtering algorithm. Customizing the current shape-signature recognition software."
Another ship rounded the horizon of Basis. It was larger than any Covenant ship the Master Chief had seen. It had the sleek three-bulbed shape of one of their destroyers, but it must have been three kilometers long. Seven plasma turrets were mounted on universal joints—enough firepower to gut any ship in the UNSC fleet.
"Picking up encrypted transmissions from new contact," Cortana whispered. "Descrambling... lots of chatter... orders being given to the cruisers. It appears to be directing the Covenant fleet operations in the system."
"A flagship," the Chief murmured. "Interesting."
"Scan still in progress, Chief. Stand by."
John got out of the sysops seat. He had no intention of just "standing by" with seven Covenant warships in the system.
He drifted to the aft compartment of the Longsword fighter. He'd assess what equipment was on board. He might get lucky and find a few of those Shiva nuclear-tipped missiles.
As he had seen when he first boarded the ship, the cryotube had been removed. He wasn't sure why, but maybe, like everything else on the Pillar of Autumn, the ship had been stripped down and upgraded for their original high-risk mission.
Where the cryo unit was supposed to be there was a new control panel. The Chief examined it and discovered it was a Moray space-mine laying system. He didn't power it on. The Moray system could dispense up to three dozen free-floating mines. The mines had tiny chemical-fuel drives that allowed them to keep a fixed position or move to track specific targets. These would come in handy.
He moved to the weapons locker and forced it open—it was empty. The Chief checked his own assault rifle: fully functional, but only thirteen rounds remained in the magazine.
"Got something," Cortana said.
He returned to the sysops seat. "Show me."
On the smallest viewscreen, a silhouette appeared: a small, bullet-shaped cone with maneuvering thrusters on one end.
"It could be a cryotube," Cortana said. "Thruster and power packs can be affixed on their aft sections for emergencies... if a ship has to be abandoned, for example."
"And most of the crew on the Pillar of Autumn never had a chance to be revived from cryo," the Chief said. "They could have been jettisoned before the ship went down. Move us toward them. Docking thrusters only."
"Course plotted," Cortana said. "Thrusters engaged."
There was a slight acceleration.
"ETA twenty minutes, Chief. But given the Covenant cruisers' current search pattern, I estimate they