Halo_ First Strike - Eric S. Nylund [64]
Five days. It hadn't seemed that long. They worked, they rested, they slept, and they waited. Dr. Halsey had taught them word games like twenty questions and simple cipher, at which they all became extremely proficient—so much so that she quickly stopped playing. Dr. Halsey was not a graceful loser.
The time had melted away. Maybe it was the darkness, the lack of any temporal reference like the sun, moon, and stars, but the hours had lost their meaning.
He paused to stretch his Achilles tendon, recently stitched and fused by Dr. Halsey. Aside from some stiffness, it was almost back to normal. He had almost torn the tendon off, running on the injury.
Dr. Halsey had patched them all up; she had even flash cloned Kelly a new partial lung, which she successfully grafted. In her tiny field medical kit, the doctor had a handheld MRI, a sterile field generator, even a shoe-box-sized clone tank for organ duplication.
She had also installed the new MJOLNIR parts in their existing armor. These upgrades were in field-testing and not certified, she had explained, but she gauged their need sufficient to justify the risk of using the new equipment.
Kelly received an improvement to her neural induction circuits, giving her twitch response time a speed boost. Vinh had a new linear accelerator added to her shield system, effectively doubling its strength. Isaac had a new image-enhancing computer installed. Will received a better tracking system on his heads-up display, which improved his accuracy at distances up to a thousand meters.
Fred flexed his bare right hand. Dr. Halsey was installing his upgrade now—new sensors that would boost the sensitivity of his motion tracker. Without the single gauntlet, Fred felt vulnerable. The Master Chief would have told him not to rely on his armor or weapons—rely instead on his head. It would protect him better.
He wondered how Blue Team—John, Linda, and James—had fared. And what of the rest of his own team? Had anyone at the generator complex survived?
He didn't want to think about them—but he couldn't help it. Maybe it was the darkness and the constant weight of the earth around him.
What if they died here? Not died fighting, but just died here. In a way, that wouldn't be so bad. Fred had faced death a dozen times, brushed so close to it he had stared it in the face until it blinked and turned away.
This was different, though. He didn't want to die, not without knowing if the other Spartans were still out there fighting. Not if they still needed him.
He sighed and absentmindedly brushed his fingertips across the odd symbols. They were as smooth as glass, and their edges were sharp. These crystals could be a natural phenomenon. He had seen similar inclusions in the museum on—
Fred felt a hot pain in the tip of his finger. He drew his bare hand away and a tiny track of blood smeared the rock.
The glittering symbols on the wall took on a greasy cast, and the reflection from his helmet lights thickened and almost seemed to be absorbed by the minerals.
He flicked off his helmet lights. The symbols in the rock emitted a faint illumination of their own: a soft reddish glow like heated metal. The light intensified and spread across the spiral on the wall, starting from where his blood had fallen; those symbols warmed to a pleasant orange, then yellow-gold.
A new symbol in the center of the spiral appeared that hadn't been there a second ago . . . or perhaps it had been, but had lain just beneath the surface. It heated and became increasingly visible, a single triangle that glowed white.
Fred was inexorably drawn to this central figure. He reached for it; there was no heat. He slowly stretched and touched the symbol with his exposed fingertip.
Warm white light raced along the spiral of symbols, then traced a path down the hallway and into the distance. The entire cavern seemed sudden alive with radiance and shadow. Even with the step-down