Halo_ First Strike - Eric S. Nylund [66]
The holographic environment cycled to an arid moonscape: deep craters and sterile light; it became a volcanic world with lava flowing alongside them. The air wavered with heat. In each transformation the golden symbols remained on the walls, leading them through the illusions.
The corridor emptied onto a landing that overlooked the largest room Fred had ever seen. Kelly stepped onto the landing, looked, and waved them forward.
They stood on one of a dozen tiered levels that encircled the room; there was no railing. Fred leaned over the edge. It was at least one hundred meters to the floor below. The room was approximately circular and three kilometers in diameter. The floor was blue and seemed to shift as a billion tiny tiles flexed and rearranged themselves into frustratingly familiar patterns. The ceiling was a dome with a holographic golden sun, blue sky, and cottony clouds that morphed into spheres, puffy pyramids, bars, and cubes. And in the center of the floor was a pedestal flickering with a faint light.
Isaac held up his hand. "Listen," he whispered over the COM.
They all froze, and Fred strained to hear. There was nothing. Fred turned up his aural amplification to maximum gain. He heard the creak of their armored joints and five faint heartbeats but, other than that, silence.
"They've stopped," Fred said, and pointed overhead. "The digging." "I don't like it," Dr. Halsey said. "The Covenant aren't known for giving up on anything they start. We'd better continue."
Kelly removed the clip from her magnum, cleared the chamber, and then slid a self-installing piton down the length of the barrel. She shot it into the stone wall, and the metal shard implanted ten centimeters and blossomed with sharp talons, securing the shaft to the wall.
Vinh handed her a coil of black rope. She clipped one end to the piton, then tossed the rest over the edge. Isaac and Will stood on the lip and swept the vast open region with their weapons. Kelly jumped and rappelled to the bottom. A moment later she gave the all-clear signal.
Will and Isaac followed her to the floor. Fred tied the rope around Dr. Halsey's waist and lowered her gingerly down after them. He and Vinh took up the rear.
The floor of the great room wasn't the same tile as in the corridor above. It was still blue tile, but these were squares and circles and bars and triangles. If the symbols were a language, Fred stood upon a million words; he wished he'd been issued a dictionary.
Dr. Halsey paused to examine the tiles as well. "If only we had the time," she muttered, and then walked toward the light gleaming in the center of the chamber.
The Spartans formed up around the doctor again, but Fred's instincts warned him that this wasn't a good idea. He couldn't get his bearings straight. The room was big, large enough that it felt as if they were outside. It threw him off. He had an odd sense of vertigo, almost as if the floor was tilting and he was now walking on the roof.
Dr. Halsey increased her pace, but the distance to the center of the room didn't seem any closer; in fact, they seemed more distant from the center than when they had started out from the edge of the room.
Fred turned down the gain on his display until everything was a faint black-and-white blur. He focused on his motion tracker and saw that the Spartans and Dr. Halsey were now separated across two dozen meters.
"Everyone stop," he said. "Regroup. We're getting scattered."
They halted and edged back into formation.
"There must be another way," Dr. Halsey said. She reached into her lab coat pocket and removed a ball bearing. "The floor slopes toward the center," she observed. She set the bearing on the floor and gave it a gentle push. The bearing rolled, then curved, and spiraled back to a stop.
"This is getting too weird," Fred muttered. "Kelly, you have the best aim. Close your eyes, pick a direction, and we'll follow."
"... Affirmative," she whispered.
The Spartans set their hands on each other's shoulders and marched, not toward the center of the room but to a spot