CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
0400 Hours, August 30, 2552 (Military Calendar)
UNSC Pillar of Autumn , in orbit around Epsilon Eridani System, Reach Military Complex Captain Keyes tapped the thrusters of the shuttle pod Coda . The tiny craft rolled and the Pillar of Autumn came into view.
Normally, Captains did not ferry themselves around the space docks of Reach, but Keyes had insisted.
All unauthorized personnel were restricted to a narrow flight path around the Pillar of Autumn , and he wanted to take a careful look around the outside of this ship before he took command.
From this distance, the Pillar of Autumn could have been mistaken for an elongated frigate. As the shuttle pod moved closer, however, details appeared that betrayed the ship’s age. The Pillar of Autumn ’s hull had several larger dents and scratches. Her engine baffles were blackened. The portside emergency thrusters were missing.
What had he gotten himself into by signing up for Dr. Halsey’s mission?
He moved within a hundred meters and circled to the starboard. The shuttle bay on this side was sealed off. Red-and-yellow hazard warnings had been painted on metal plates that had been hastily welded over her entrance.
He closed to ten meters and saw the plate was not a solid sheet of metal—he could see armored ports, heavily reinforced . . . almost solid titanium A. Honeycombed throughout this section were the round covers of Archer missile pods. Captain Keyes counted: thirty pods across, ten down. Each pod held dozens of missiles. The Pillar of Autumn had a secret arsenal to rival any real cruiser in the fleet.
Captain Keyes drifted toward the stern and noticed concealed and recessed 50mm autocannons for defense against single ships.
Underneath were bumps—part of the linear accelerator system for the ship’s lone MAC gun. It looked too small to be truly effective. But he would reserve judgment. Perhaps, like the rest of the Pillar of Autumn , the weapon was more than it appeared to be.
He certainly hoped so.
Captain Keyes returned to the port side and drifted gently into the shuttle bay. He took note of three Longsword single ships and three Pelican dropships in the bay. One of the Pelicans had double the normal armor plating and what looked like grappling attachments. A serrated titanium ram decorated the dropship’s prow.
He touched down on an automated landing platform and locked the controls down. A moment later the shuttle descended belowdecks and was cycled through the airlock. Captain Keyes gathered his duffel bag and stepped onto the flight deck.
Lieutenant Hikowa was there to meet him. She saluted. “Welcome aboard, Captain Keyes.”
He saluted. “What do you think of her, Lieutenant?”
Lieutenant Hikowa’s dark eyes widened. “You’re not going to believe this ship, sir.” Her normally serious face broke with a smile. “They’ve turned it into something . . . special.”
“I saw what they did to my starboard shuttle bay,” Captain Keyes remarked sourly.
“That’s just the start,” she said. “I can give you a full tour.”
“Please,” Captain Keyes said. He paused at an intercom. “Just one thing first, Lieutenant.” He keyed the intercom. “Ensign Lovell, plot a course to the system’s edge and move the Pillar of Autumn on an accelerating vector. We will jump to Slipstream space as soon as we get there.”
“Sir,” Lovell replied. “Our engines are still in shakedown mode.”
“Cortana?” Captain Keyes asked. “Can we have power to move the ship? I’d like to get under way.”
“The engines’ final shakedown is in theta cycle,” Cortana replied. “Operating well within normal parameters. Diverting thirty percent power to engines; aye, sir.”
“And the other systems’ status?” Captain Keyes asked.
“Weapons-system check initiated. Navigational nodes functioning. Continuing systemwide shakedown and triple checks, Captain.”
“Very good,” he said. “Apprise me if there are any anomalies.”
“Aye, Captain,” she replied.
“We finally have an AI,” he remarked to Hikowa.
“We’ve got more than that, sir,” Hikowa replied. “Cortana is running the shakedown and supervising Dr.
Halsey’s modifications to the ship. We have a backup AI to handle point defense.”
“Really?” Keyes was surprised; getting a single AI was tough enough these days. Getting two was unprecedented.
“Yes, sir. I’ll see to the initialization of our AI as soon as Cortana is through running her diagnostics.”
Captain Keyes had meet Cortana briefly in Dr. Halsey’s office. Although every AI he had met was brilliant, Cortana seemed exceptionally qualified. Captain Keyes had posed several navigation problems and she had figured out all the solutions . . . and had come up with a few options he had not considered.
She was somewhat high-spirited, but that was not necessarily a bad thing.
Lieutenant Hikowa led him into the elevator and punched the button for D deck.
“At first,” Hikowa said, “I was concerned with all the ordnance on board. One penetrating shot and we could explode like a string of firecrackers. But this ship doesn’t have much empty space—it’s full of braces, honeycombed titanium-A, and hydraulic reinforcements that can be activated in an emergency.
She can take a tremendous beating, sir.”
“Let’s hope we don’t have to test that,” Captain Keyes said. He checked that this pipe was in his pocket.
“Yes, sir.”
Their elevator passed through the rotating section of the ship and Captain Keyes felt his weight ease and a flutter of vertigo. He grabbed hold of the rails.
The doors opened and they entered the cavernous engine room. The ceiling was four stories high, making this the largest compartment in the ship. Catwalks and platforms ringed the hexagonal chamber.
“Here’s the new reactor, sir,” Hikowa said.
The device perched within a lattice of nonferric ceramic and leaded crystal. The main reactor ring was nestled in the center of what appeared to be two smaller reactor rings. Technicians floated nearby taking readings and monitoring the output displays on the walls.
“I’m not familiar with this design, Lieutenant.”
“The latest reactor technology. The Pillar of Autumn is the first ship to get it. The two smaller fusion reactors come online to supercharge the main reactor. Their overlapping magnetic fields can temporally boost power by three hundred percent.”
Captain Keyes whistled appreciatively as he scrutinized the room. “I don’t see any coolant pipes.”
“There are none, sir. This reactor uses a laser-induced optical slurry of ions chilled to near-absolute zero to neutralize the waste heat. The more we crank up the power, the more juice we have to cool the system. It is very efficient.”
The smaller reactors flickered to life and Captain Keyes felt the ambient heat in the room jump, then suddenly cool again. He removed his pipe and tapped it in the palm of his hand. He would have to rethink his old tactics. This new engine could give him new options in battle.
“There’s more, sir.”
Lieutenant Hikowa led him back into the lift. “We have forty fifty-millimeter cannons for point defense, with overlapping fields of fire covering all inbound vectors.”
“What is our least defended approach vector?”