Halo_ First Strike - Eric S. Nylund [57]
Dr. Halsey injected a local anesthetic and inserted a flexible laser-tipped catheter into Kelly, carefully monitoring her progress on the MRI. She pulsed the laser, fusing the lacerations in her liver. Dr. Halsey then inflated her lung. Kelly would lose half of that organ, regardless of her treatment. The tissue was already turning blue and mottling necrotic brown.
"Kalmiya, prep the flash clone facility and retrieve Kelly's DNA sequence from the archives. I'd like to get a new liver and right lung started for her.
"You're fine for now," Dr. Halsey lied. "I just want to get replacements made for you, in case we're down here for a long time."
"I understand," Kelly rasped.
Dr. Halsey wondered if she did—if Kelly understood that getting shot and burned and having your internal organs traumatized wasn't supposed to happen to you every day... unless you were a Spartan. She wished the war were over. She wished her Spartans had some measure of peace.
"Doctor?" Kalmiya whispered through the tiny private speaker bud in Dr. Halsey's glasses. "There is an anomaly in SPARTAN087's DNA files. You may want to review this in private."
Dr. Halsey sealed Kelly's injuries with biofoam, removed the catheter, and cauterized the incision. "Rest," she said.
"No, ma'am. I'm ready to—" Kelly tried to sit up.
"Down." Dr. Halsey set a hand on her shoulder. She had no illusions that she could have stopped Kelly with the gesture—but it reinforced her words and her will. "Doctor's orders."
Kelly sighed and lay back.
"I'll be in my office just over there"—she pointed to the next room—"if you need anything."
Dr. Halsey left Kelly and moved to her office. Two walls were covered with giant displays; old disposable coffee cups littered the floor; a holographic projector flooded with data, lines, rotating graphics, and unanswered correspondence overflowed her
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desk. She turned down the blinds that separated her office from the medical bay, but only halfway, so she could keep an eye on Kelly.
"Let's have it, Kalmiya."
Kelly's medical history scrolled across a display.
"Here," Kalmiya said, and highlighted a surreptitious data request at the end of the file. "It's dated three months ago. That's Araqiel's routing code." Dr. Halsey picked up the snowglobe off her desk, shook it once, and set it down, watching the swirls of particles.
"Araqiel? That's Ackerson's watchdog, isn't it?"
"Affirmative, Doctor."
"Can you trace the request?"
"Done and terminated contact at node FF-8897-Z. Access restricted to X-ray level clearance."
"Restricted?" Dr. Halsey gave a short, soft laugh. "Does that mean anything now? There's no one here to stop us, is there, Kalmiya?"
"Entering those files without proper clearance is a treasonable offense, Doctor."
"They can come and arrest me, then. Do as I have instructed, Kalmiya," Dr. Halsey said. "Override your ethics center subroutine four-alpha. Nullification code: 'Whateverittakes.' "
Dr. Halsey found a half-full cup of coffee on the floor and gingerly picked it up. She sniffed its contents and, satisfied it wasn't rancid, swirled it once then downed its cold contents.
"Yes, Doctor. Working. Done."
Kalmiya was Cortana's older "sister." Dr. Halsey had designed and tested the software intrusion routines on her. Once the process had been debugged and streamlined, she'd incorporated the routines into Cortana. The brass in ONI Section Three had been quite explicit in their instructions to destroy any prototype routines—an order that Dr. Halsey had promptly disobeyed.
"There is an unusually voluminous amount of counterintrusion software, Doctor."
"Show me," Dr. Halsey said.
The holographic display flickered and solidified into colored crystal blocks representing the code barriers. Dr. Halsey traced a seam with her forefinger along a shard of ruby to the ninety-degree angle made by a stair-step-cut emerald. "This data cluster here. Spike that and backfill with a neutralizing pulse."
"Yes, Doctor."
The holographic crystal shattered into a thousand glittering fragments and