Halo_ Ghosts of Onyx - Eric S. Nylund [64]
"Done," Endless Summer announced, "but verification impossible. Slipstream matrix has collapsed."
Dr. Halsey sighed, hoping the amended message had gotten through, and hoping she had done the right thing.
So much depended on her lies.
She glanced at the additional message she had typed.
"HOOD, YOU'LL HAVE YOUR HANDS FULL. REVISE REQUEST: SEND ELITE STRIKE TEAM TO RECOVER TECHNOLOGICAL ASSETS FROM ONYX. SEND SPARTANS."
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
1440 HOURS, NOVEMBER 3, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDARS \ SLIPSTREAM SPACEUNKNOWN VECTOR\ ABOARD UNSC PROWLER DUSK
Commander Richard Lash hovered over Lieutenant Yang's shoulder, watching the screen for a blip—waiting for a single titanium ion to be sniffed by the sensor array on the Dusk's nose.
Lieutenant Yang shifted in his chair. "Sir, it's been fifteen minutes. I'm going to purge the collectors and recalibrate."
"Wait," Lash said.
"Yes, sir." Yang smoothed over his eyebrow, a nervous habit.
Five minutes ticked off on the clock as Yang and Commander Lash waited.
"Accurate timekeeping" was an oxymoron in Slipstream space. Still, Lash held on to some illusion that he was in control and not flying blind, chasing a trail so faint it might qualify as nonexistent after a Covenant capital ship and the UNSC destroyer In Amber Clad.
A single spark lit the screen.
"Got one," Lieutenant Yang cried. "Mass spectrometer pegs it as titanium-50. Consistent with UNSC battle plate. One of ours, sir."
"Very good." Commander Lash clapped his hand on Yang's shoulder. "Keep watching." He pushed off and drifted back to the captain's chair.
Lash felt uneasy sitting here; it really belonged to Captain [glesias, but he was in rehab back on Earth. Radiation treatment for six months. This war would probably be over by then.
He sat and clicked the harness on. For better or worse he was in charge now.
Probably for the worse, because this mission was a cross between a wild-goose chase and pure suicide.
His prowler, Dusk, had been close enough to act when In Amber Clad had entered the Covenant capital ship Slipspace rift as it left New Mombassa. They were one of four UNSC ships with charged Slipspace capacitors, and nimble enough to make the transition before the overpressure wave generated by an in-atmosphere transition crushed them.
Miranda Keyes was the ballsiest officer in the fleet to go after that Covenant ship on her own. Was she nuts? Or trying to live up to the legendary reputation of her father?
Lash would never know what that felt like. His dad had been a welder on the Cradle … at least before the Cradle had been destroyed at Sigma Octanus earlier this year. Dad had always wanted to be a hero. He'd gotten his wish.
The Dusk—with the two frigates Redoubtable and Paris, and the corvette Coral Sea— had approximated the entrance vector of the Covenant ship, hoping to find out where they were headed, that or assist In Amber Clad in blowing her to hell.
They had been caught in the wake of the Covenant craft and accelerated to many times the maximum velocity of any UNSC ship in Slipspace. A lucky break. They'd have never caught it otherwise.
Technically "acceleration" and "velocity" were the wrong terms. They didn't map to the eleven nondimensions of Slipspace, but Commander Lash had never gotten the knack of thinking so abstractly. He left that to his NAV Officer.
What this wake effect meant in concrete terms was Covenant ships traveled geometrically faster from point to point than their ships. One more strategic advantage the aliens possessed.
Commander Lash surveyed his bridge crew. His first. Lieutenant Commander Julian Waters, sat next to him, scanning engine output semantics, his forehead furrowed with worry lines. At NAV sat Lieutenant Bethany Durruno running diagnostics, nodding off. She had ice in her veins, and sadly that calm-under-disaster fortitude was wasted in Slipspace. At