Halo_ First Strike - Eric S. Nylund [69]
The Master Chief stood and nodded to the aft hatch, where he had stripped the air scrubbers and COM from the Pelican.
The Sergeant picked up the gear, and then he and the Chief crawled out of the Pelican. The Chief hesitated and looked back atthecryotube.
"Don't you worry about her," Johnson said. "Hell, I been hit worse and she's three times the soldier I am. She'll pull through."
The Chief sealed the hatch without comment. He had heard the same hollow promises a hundred times before with critically wounded men. Why was it that soldiers would face their own deaths without blinking an eye... but when faced with the death of a squadmate, they turned away and lied to themselves?
They silently marched across the hangar. It had been cleared of debris and bodies, and Warrant Officer Polaski had, for the last six hours, been practicing inside the space with the intact Covenant dropship. She spun the odd U-shaped craft around on its center axis, shimmied to port, rose, and then floated down for a landing.
Johnson squinted his dark eyes at her performance and nodded approvingly. "She says that she's figured out the weapon controls, too. No way to test them in here, of course."
"Understood," the Master Chief replied. "And the rest of the team's progress?" "I've got the doors from here to the bridge and to the engine room welded shut," Sergeant Johnson told him. "If those tran
sient sensor contacts that Cortana keeps picking up are anything, they'll have to cut through to get to us.
"Locklear's grabbing some sack time. He needed it." The Sergeant shrugged. "He'll be fine, though; ODSTs are tough as nails. Lieutenant Haverson slept some then got up, had a long conversation with Cortana, and started reading through some of the Covenant database. Everyone seems to be fine, considering what we've been through."
"Understood," the Chief said. "Cortana? Ship status?"
"ETA to Reach in twenty minutes," she said.
The Chief checked his mission clock. "You said thirteen hours' total travel time. By my count, we have approximately two hours to go."
"I had determined it would be thirteen hours based on the specifications of the Covenant Slipspace drive, but there's ..." Her voice trailed off and faded.
"Cortana?"
"Sorry. There's a curious time-dilation effect at these Slip-space velocities. Although, technically, velocity, acceleration, and for that matter even time have no meaning in the folds of Slipspace. I thought I told you all this," she said. Irritation crept into her voice.
The Chief looked to the Sergeant, who shook his head and shrugged.
Cortana sounded more than distracted—and she didn't just "forget" things. It was a bad sign. They depended on her to fly this ship, and if she started falling apart they were in real trouble.
The Master Chief opened a COM channel. "Change of plans, team. Reach ETA is nineteen minutes. I'll explain later—just grab your gear and meet on the bridge ASAP."
There was a pause, then Lieutenant Haverson replied, "Roger, Master Chief. Locklear and I are already up here."
The hatch of the Covenant dropship opened, and Polaski jogged out. The three of them proceeded at a brisk pace to the bridge.
The Master Chief opened a private COM channel to Cortana. "Anything else I should know?" The channel was silent for a full ten seconds. "I have the Covenant magnetic plasma-shaping system figured out," she
replied. "We'll have a limited offensive capacity when we get to Reach, if we need it. I think."
"And the rest of this ship is still functional?"
"Yes," she replied. "I'm sorry, Chief ... these calculations are... tricky." The COM went dead. Cortana's behavior worried the Chief, but he resigned himself to trust her. What other option was there?
He, the Sergeant, and Polaski halted outside the bridge; the thick blast doors were sealed. "Lieutenant?" he said. "We're outside." The doors pulled apart. Locklear and the Lieutenant stood
with their assault rifles aimed down the hall. They relaxed