Halo_ Ghosts of Onyx - Eric S. Nylund [97]
"Roger," Kurt said. "Olivia, link up with Will. Scout it out. We'll follow."
He oriented on Will's IFF tag and set a single-beam relay antenna on the edge of the platform so he could keep in contact topside.
Kurt led his team to the stairs that helixed around the giant pedestal supporting the landing pad. Kelly and Ash were right behind him, Tom came next, then Dr. Halsey, and Lucy on rear guard.
Each stair step was spaced a quarter meter, but they fanned out from the pedestal ten meters. Kurt kept to the inner surface of the spiral, avoiding the darkness that lay beyond.
Dr. Halsey paused to examine the stone surface.
Lucy halted, too, and the faint illumination of the TAG lights on her SPI armor reflected in the banded rock. She reached out and touched her image. There was translucence to the material that, for a moment, bounced reflections within the reflections— and an infinite number of Lucys appeared mirrored.
She withdrew her hand, and they hastily continued.
After three revolutions around the support, Will's IFF tag appeared on Kurt's heads-up display.
A single-beam COM channel opened. "Chamber ahead, sir," Will reported. "With
Forerunner symbols, I think."
Fred's voice broke over the COM: "We're in place. No incom-ing."
"Eyes sharp," Kurt told Fred. Then to Will he said, "Show me."
Will led them until stairs passed through a floor and stopped at an arched entrance. Olivia crouched there, rifle out, covering the room beyond. The chamber was only four meters across. After the agoraphobia-inducing space of the city, this room looked suffocatingly small.
"Watch," Will said, and took a step inside.
Holographic Forerunner glyphs—dots, dashes, lines, and polygons—sprang from the stone floor and twisted around him.
"With your permission, Lieutenant Commander?" Dr. Halsey asked. "It's not dangerous, I assure you. I have seen similar control surfaces in the Halo mission logs."
Kurt didn't like a civilian leading, but Dr. Halsey was the expert here… as much of an
expert as he had at any rate.
"Very well. Doctor," he said. "But carefully."
Dr. Halsey made her way forward. "Stand perfectly still," she told him, and entered the
room.
She tapped a tiny crystalline blue square; it blinked in response.
"Still dammed difficult to read," she muttered. "There is a simple two-dimensional
translation, but I now see there are higher-dimensional interpretations." She reached for her laptop.
"There's no time for details," Kurt told her.
She frowned and put away her laptop. "All meaning is in the details. Lieutenant Commander." She compressed her lips, concentrating on the symbols, and then she straightened. "This way."
She started to stride across the room, and the floor lit a brilliant blue before her, running directly into a blank wall.
Kurt set a hand on her arm, gently checking her motion. He then waved for Lucy and Tom to join him and the three Spartans slowly walked ahead.
Dr. Halsey pointed to a small slightly brighter blue dot on the wall.
Tom and Lucy took up firing positions on either side of him. Kurt reached for the dot, ready for trouble.
The wall slid apart and in the darkness beyond, a bridge of light flickered on, arcing into the distance.
Kurt told Olivia, "Stay here and relay signals topside."
She nodded.
Kurt paused at the wall, testing his weight on the semitrans-parent bridge. It held. He didn't like it, though. If the power cut out, this thing could vanish.
He moved twelve paces, with Tom and Lucy right behind him… although the distance covered by their steps didn't seem to match the much greater distance he perceived he was traveling along the curve of the bridge. He looked down: fathomless shadows. He kept his eyes straight ahead.
When they got to the end of the bridge, a door of dazzling light appeared, and the shadows slid apart.
Kurt, Tom, and Lucy passed through, not registering so much as a blip of enemy contact on their motion sensors. He found himself in a half-sphere chamber twenty meters across. In the center was a console over which