Dr. Halsey straightened her gray wool sliirt, smoothed her tattered lab coat, and then donned lead gloves and apron to protect her from the beta and alpha particles being emitted from the acceleration matrix. Around her lay the disassembled panels and radiation shields of the ship's Shaw-Fujikawa translight engines.
She delicately guided the spork she had confiscated from the Beatrice's galley through the tangle of electronics. She slipped the utensil's edge into the slot of the tiny screw on the supercooled superconducting magnet. She rechecked the calculations in her head. Two millimeters, three turns, should do it.
Dr. Halsey twisted and loosened the screw. The rainbow glow gushing from the matrix intensified, and she blinked tears from her eyes. Sparks danced off the metal plates and arced between titanium supports.
She glanced through the propped-open door to the bridge. The engineering display showed a 32 percent jump in coil power. Good enough.
She replaced the Shaw-Fujikawa core access panels and slumped to the floor.
Sixty years ago when Shaw-Fujikawa drives had first been installed in spacecraft like this one, technicians had had to perform manual adjustments all the time. The magnetics that aligned the acceleration coils drifted out of phase when they transitioned into Slipstream space, where the laws of physics only occasionally worked as expected. No computer controls were used; electronics always malfunctioned close to the core.
Of course, many of those technicians had died or had mysteriously vanished.
Dr. Halsey had considered dropping out of Slipspace and powering down the Chiroptera- class vessel to make the adjustment. It would have been safer, but that first activation of the Shaw-Fujikawa engine had almost resulted in a coil overload. She didn't know if the little ship had another jump left in her.
She toweled the perspiration off her face and then checked her film badge. She'd live, at least, for the next few moments.
She pushed off the bulkhead and free-floated onto the bridge.
The Beatrice's command center had been designed, or rather redesigned, by its former owner, rebel Governor Jacob Jiles, for comfort rather than efficiency. Every surface save the displays was curved and padded with cream-colored calfskin. The captain's chair had massage and temperature controls—even a ridiculous feature: a cup holder.
Dr. Halsey checked on Kelly. She had strapped Kelly into the first mate's chair to keep her from drifting away. A line ran into an input port on the interior elbow joint of her MJOLNIR armor, pumping dermacortic steroids to help her regenerate the burns that covered 72 percent of her body… and enough nar-colytive sedatives to keep her unconscious until she was needed.
"I'm sorry, you would have never come on your own," she said. "Spartans are attracted to suicide missions like moths to flames. But this is much more important than any military solution."
Dr. Halsey pushed away and drifted to the Beatrice's computer control. Her laptop was attached to the multiinterface port, and the infiltration protocols had almost finished wiping the ship's primitive security lockouts.
She plugged a sandwich of memory crystal and processor boosters into her laptop.
These components she had appropriated from what was left of the Gettysburg's gutted AI core.
She then withdrew a pea-shaped chip from her lab coat. This was not from the Gettysburg. She gingerly set the chip into her laptop's auxiliary reader port. A tiny spark lit and lifted off her computer's two-by-two-centimeter holographic projector.
"Good afternoon, Jerrod."
"Good afternoon, Dr. Halsey," the spark replied in a formal British voice. "Although technically according to my internal chronometer it is morning."
"There have been a few temporal anomalies since we last spoke," she said.
"Indeed? I look forward to the explanation, ma'am."
"So do I," she murmured.
After an alien artifact and combat in warped Slipstream space had distorted space-time.
Dr. Halsey wasn't so sure precisely what time line she belonged in. Quantum paradoxes that once seem a quaint mental exercise were now a part of her reality.
"How may I be of service?" Jerrod asked.
Dr. Halsey smiled at the simple AI. Although she often thought of Jerrod as a toy, it was a fully functional micro-AI. The experiment had been initially to see how long a budding smart AI would last in a constrained processor-memory matrix. The theoreticians at Sydney's Synthetic Intellect Institute calculated its life span to be a matter of days. Jerrod, however, had fooled the experts at the "Double S.I." It had rapidly grown but then stabilized within its pea-sized cell of memory-processor crystal.
Jerrod would never be a tenth as brilliant as a real "smart" AI like Cortana, nor even as smart as a traditional "dumb" AI of unlimited proportions. But he had a spark of creativity and spunk, and despite the stuffy butler persona he had adopted, she liked him.
Jerrod had one other feature uniquely suited for Dr. Halsey's purposes: portability. Other AIs required an institute, a starship, or at the very least a full set of MJOLNIR armor to function.
"Diagnostics on the Beatrice's systems, please," Dr. Halsey said. "Then correlate the data slice downloaded from Cortana's memory core and prepare for analysis. Execute a database search on stellar coordinates input into the NAV system; expand search parameters within five light-years of origin."
"Stand by, ma'am. Just have to dust off the old circuits. Working…"
"And a little Debussy, please," she said. "Les Sons et les par-fums tournent dans l'air du soir."
Jerrod's mote of light shrank to a pinpoint of brilliance as he pushed his processing abilities.
After five seconds, moody piano notes tickled through the bridge's speakers.
"Done," Jerrod replied, sounding almost out of breath.
"Display Cortana's time-sliced correlated log."
Dr. Halsey had appropriated Cortana's truncated mission log when she had been on the Gettysburg. She had accessed and erased a portion of the AI's memory involving Sergeant Johnson. At the time, it also seemed logical to download a thumbnail sketch of everything she and John had been through.
Cortana's voice narrated a slideshow of images. Dr. Halsey saw John and the crew of the Pillar of Autumn fight the Covenant on the alien ring artifact, and then witnessed the horrific Flood as it infested human and alien bodies. She closed her eyes as the assimilated Captain Keyes was destroyed.
"Rest easy, old friend," she whispered.
"Limit references to Forerunner entries alone," she told Jerrod.
Dr. Halsey listened to Cortana and the Forerunner artificial intelligence, Guilty Spark, spar… until they revealed the true purpose of the Halo construct: the extermination of all life in the galaxy "No wonder the Covenant are so interested in these artifacts," she said.
"Ma'am?"
"Nothing, Jerrod."
She now also understood Colonel Ackerson's interest.
Dr. Halsey had taken the liberty of rifling Colonel Ackerson's top-secret files on Reach before the Covenant destroyed the facility. In a file labeled "King Under the Mountain" there were pieced-together data from the hieroglyphics stone found on Cote d'Azure in the Sigma Octanus System, and discovered coordinates that had pointed to the alien ruins on Reach under Castle Base.
Was this an arms race for Forerunner technology?
The last bread crumb in this long trail was an encrypted folder in Ackerson's secret files, the one labeled "S-III."
In it were extensive medical records on her SPARTAN-IIs. As if Ackerson were studying them. There was one other reference: "CPOMZ" and the 512-long alphanumerical string that represented old celestial coordinates.
She typed in the string.
"Display all data on stellar objects at these coordinates."
"This coordinate system is antiquated, Doctor," Jerrod said. "Not used since extrasolar manned space exploration." He paused. "It falls outside UNSC-controlled space."
"Most space is, Jerrod. Show me."
A glowing ball of white gold appeared on-screen, with spectroscopic analysis, and a list of planets scrolled by. There was nothing habitable: ice balls and gas giants.
"The Zeta Doradus system," Jerrod remarked. "There is a peculiar lack of data."
Indicating something hidden? Dr. Halsey had gambled everything on something being here.
Ackerson's "S-III." This was an obvious reference to SPARTAN-III. What else could it be with all the Spartan biomedical data he had accumulated in that folder? The confirming clue was the "CPOMZ" reference attached to the celestial coordinates—Chief Petty Officer Franklin Mendez, the man who had trained her SPARTAN-IIs.
Since Ackerson could not destroy her Spartan program, he had funded and recruited trainers for his own? It chilled her to think what shortcuts he might be taking… and what he might be doing with his own private army of Spartans.
She looked back at Kelly's unconscious form. Dr. Halsey couldn't save her Spartans, they were already indoctrinated and on the front lines… but she might be able to do something about these new, as yet theoretical, SPARTAN-IIIs.
Dr. Halsey settled in the padded captain's chair. "Screens off, Jerrod."
The displays faded.
She squinted her eyes shut. She had betrayed everyone, John and Admiral Whitcomb, abandoned them, and stolen this ship to pursue… what? Wild geese? Why?
"Lights," she told Jerrod. "Wake me in six hours."
"Yes, ma'am." The lights dimmed and only the NAV station LEDs gleamed.
Dr. Halsey didn't want to think about "why," but the ugly truth wouldn't go away: the human race faced extinction.
She had thought it bad enough fighting the Covenant, but now they knew the location of Earth. Humanity's homeworld had withstood centuries of attempts at self-destruction, but soon the aliens would amass a fleet and make all their struggles moot.
To this, she factored in the horrific Forerunner weapon. Halo, which could annihilate all life throughout the galaxy.
And then there was the Flood, a nightmare parasite that may or may not have escaped the Halo construct, an organism that even the Forerunners had feared.
Her conclusion was irrefutable.
The UNSC, her Spartans, all the people she admired, would struggle against the inevitable. It was human instinct. But it was wrong. They could never win this war. They could only survive it. And then, only if they were very lucky.
So it was up to her to take the only logical action: run.
John and the other Spartans would never turn away from a fight, but she might be able to convince these other Spartans, trick them if necessary, into surviving.
They were humanity's last chance to endure the coming darkness.
Dr. Halsey awoke with a start.
"Time, Jerrod. And lights, please."
The lights on the bridge warmed to half intensity.
"It is five hours fifty-seven minutes since we last spoke. Doctor. I was about to wake you.
We are close to our destination."
Dr. Halsey grabbed her medical bag and rummaged though its contents. She found a syringe of narcolytic metabolase, an enzyme that would consume all analgesic agents in Kelly's bloodstream. She removed the line from her MJOLNIR armor port and injected the drug.
"Powering down Shaw-Fujikawa translight engines," Jerrod said. "Exit vector calculated."
Mathematics scrolled across the screens.
"Very good," Dr. Halsey said, scrutinizing his equations. "But the saddle point in the imaginary plane should convolute here." She touched the screen. "That way we recapture the particle accelerator energy in the plasma coils."
"Yes, Doctor, but there is a risk involved with coil overload."
"Which is well within the operational limits of this craft," she countered. "Please alter the exit vector."
"Of course. Doctor." There was a touch of annoyance in Jer-rod's voice.
A slight nausea passed through Dr. Halsey as the Beatrice transitioned from Slipstream space into the normal universe.
Stars snapped on the displays, and a golden disk the size of an ancient penny shimmered center screen.
"We are approximately two hundred million kilometers from system center of the stellar coordinates provided," Jerrod reported.
"Look for planets in the habitable zone," she said.
"Doctor, we have a full system survey on file."
"Look," Dr. Halsey ordered.
"Yes, ma'am."
Kelly stirred, shook her head clear—then lightning fast she ripped through her restraints, hooked one foot around the chair base, and held up both hands, poised cobras, ready to fight.
"At ease, Spartan," Dr. Halsey said. "You're with me. Safe."
"I was drugged." Kelly looked around the bridge; her hands dropped a bit, but not completely.
"Correct. The last stage of dermacortic steroid treatment is overly stimulating. It would have been unpleasant for you." This was, of course, true, but it was nothing a Spartan couldn't have handled.
"Where are we?"
"On Governor Jiles's ship. We have appropriated it for a new mission."
"John and Admiral Whitcomb?" Kelly dropped her hands.
"They know," Dr. Halsey said. Also technically not a lie. They undoubtedly did know that Dr. Halsey had kidnapped one of their Spartans and stolen this ship.
Kelly cocked her head. "Doctor, this is highly irregular. There is a strict chain of command, protocols to—"
"Which were followed," Dr. Halsey assured her. "New developments occurred while you were unconscious."
It was impossible to read Kelly's expression behind the polarized faceplate of her MJOLNIR armor. She looked, however, to Dr. Halsey, unconvinced.
"Anomalous planet found," Jerrod announced.
On-screen a world that looked like a sphere of turquoise appeared.
"Plot course and move toward it at one-half speed."
"Answering one-half full. Doctor."
"Ma'am," Kelly said and moved closer. "You will have to explain. I thought we were bound for Earth to warn them about the Covenant."