"What happened?"
Cortana sighed. "Are you referring to what happened since I left you on Reach? Or the outcome of the Slipspace battle? Or do you mean what happened since that battle?"
"The battle, first," he said and struggled to get up. "I presume we won."
Standing was too painful, though, and the strength seemed to have been drained from his muscles. He eased himself back to his original horizontal position.
Cortana's pale blue light dimmed and her gaze dropped to the deck. "Blue Team successfully repaired the main-engine conduit."
"I remember," the Master Chief murmured. "The repair part of it, at least. There was an explosion..."
"A plasma bolt," Cortana corrected. She sighed. "I'm sorry, Chief, but only you and SPARTANS-093, -043, and -104 survived that blast."
Grace, Will, and Fred were alive, but Li, Anton, and Warrant Officer Polaski had been killed in action. He remembered Po-laski's scream, then Anton's outline as the flash of white-hot fire swept over the hull.
"Acknowledged," he said as graciously as he could muster, but he heard bitterness give an edge to his voice.
It struck him as odd that Polaski's death affected him as well.
He'd seen thousands of UNSC soldiers die. She hadn't hesitated to transport Blue Team on a mission that was insanely danger- ous. She had survived the battle of Reach, the crash landing on Halo, the Flood, and everything else—then she had bravely vol- unteered for this mission, too, and perhaps saved all their lives.
She might have made a good Spartan. There were worse eulogies.
The Master Chief sighed, called up his team roster on his heads-up display, and marked Anton and Li as Missing in Action.
He paused to view all the others on that list; his first and best friend, Sam, was there ... and he hadn't even realized a dozen more had been listed as MIA.
He saved the changes to the roster and closed the file.
"What about Kelly and Linda?" he asked Cortana.
Cortana looked up and flipped the hair from her luminous eyes. She paced a small circle on the holographic pad and then said, "SPARTAN-087, Kelly, is recovering from second-degree burns on seventy-two percent of her body. Doctor Halsey has ac- celerated tissue regrowth with dermacortic steroids. She should be fully healed in a matter of days... although her mobility will be severely hampered until then."
"And Linda?"
"Accessing status." Cortana paused for a full second. "Doctor Halsey has SPARTAN-058 currently in medical facility alpha, three decks above us. She still has her in a cryogenic state and is presently performing exploratory surgery. She has given me several orders to prepare the flash clone banks for replacement organs pending transplant."
"So she's alive?" the Master Chief asked.
"Technically," Cortana replied, "no." For a moment there was a look of genuine concern on her face—but it quickly vanished.
"The doctor and Admiral Whitcomb have debated the risk of at- tempting to revive SPARTAN-058 before we reach a major medical facility. Doctor Halsey, I'm sure, will brief you when she has all the facts, Chief."
John frowned at this lack of detail. He didn't appreciate Cor-tana's increasingly difficult attitude, one that had slowly shifted ever since she interfaced with the Forerunner computer system on Halo. He made a mental note to ask Dr. Halsey about Linda later... and he'd ask her about Cortana, too.
"All other hands on board are accounted for?" the Master Chief asked, "Yes, Chief. They are all engaged in repairs to the conjoined ships. We took tremendous damage in the expanded Slipspace from plasma bombardments and mass impacts. Both ships' super- structures, however, remain intact. The Gettysburg's reactor is online and operating at sixty-seven percent capacity. Ascendant Justice's reactor is offline undergoing repairs. Five of our seven plasma turrets require refit. And worst, Ascendant Justice's engines are crippled. We have less than three percent operational thrust."
"Can the ship still jump to Slipspace? Are we stranded out here?"
"A jump is possible," Cortana said. She shook her head the way an older sister might when her baby brother asked a naive question. "It wouldn't do us any good, though. The alien artifact in Doctor Halsey's possession emits high levels of radiation in Slipspace. This unknown radiation even penetrates your suit's shields. I estimate lethal exposure in just under seventy-two hours. Also, that radiation would serve as a beacon for any Cove- nant ships prowling Slipspace, searching for us."
"So we're stuck between systems."
"Negative," Cortana replied, and her voice took on a new chill. "Admiral Whitcomb is quite adamant that we risk another Slipspace transition—regardless of the cost in human life. Other- wise, it would be weeks before we would be able to contact UNSC High Command."
HighCom? Two facts suddenly clicked into place: the Admi- ral's need to contact the rest of the Admiralty—no matter the price—and Dr. Halsey's attempts to revive Linda.
"What's compelling the Admiral's tactics, Cortana?"
Cortana's holographic outline softened. "I told you this be- fore, Chief, but apparently it did not stick in your semiconscious state." She then came into sharp focus and crossed her arms over her chest. "The Covenant have discovered the location of Earth."
The Master Chief stood, suddenly wide awake and alert. He set aside his pain and fatigue.
"Explain," he demanded.
Cortana outlined her discovery of the encoded subchannel within normal Covenant communiques. She explained how the Covenant's military orders were disseminated with startling effi- ciently, and she then showed him symbols that represented the coordinates for Sol... and Earth.
He stood mute and listened. The UNSC had worked so hard, for so long, to preserve this secret. It was only a matter of time; he had always known that the Covenant had to find Earth sooner or later. He had, however, always thought it would be later ...
and never now.
The Master Chief stared at the tiny triangles, squares, dots, and bars that made up the spatial coordinates. "We've seen these before, on Cote d'Azur."
"Yes. And according to Doctor Halsey, her team on Reach found similar markings in the underground vaults."
"What's the connection?"
"Unknown."
The Master Chief put these facts aside for the moment; the greater meaning of the symbols and translation he'd leave up to Cortana and ONI. The only insight that mattered to him was that the Covenant were going to attack Earth.
"Was there a timetable or any other data encoded on the sub- channel?" he asked.
"Affirmative. There's a coordinated series of orders to Cove- nant warships scattered across the galaxy to rendezvous with a mobile command-and-control base they call the 'Unyielding Hierophant.' When they have sufficient force, they will collec-tively make the jump to Earth."
The Master Chief moved toward the medical bay's doors.
They automatically parted. "Where is Admiral Whitcomb?"