Had she burned away half her "life" doing so? More? She stored that thought for later consideration. If she didn't find a way to get the Master Chief and get back to Earth, her operational life span would be even shorter.
She was, however, curious about one thing: She ran a trace on the origin of the copied pathways of the alien AI, and found its replication routine. This copying code was extremely convo- luted; in fact, it took up more than two thirds of the Covenant AI's processor-memory space. It was dark with functions that ran deep to the core. It spread dendritic fingers through the sys- tem, like a cancer that had metastasized throughout the AI's en- tire body.
She did not understand any of it.
But she didn't have to understand the code to use it.
Was it worth the risk of using? Perhaps. If she could mitigate the risk, she'd copy a portion of herself onto an isolated system in Ascendant Justice. She could always erase this subsystem if anything went wrong.
The potential rewards of this operation were great. She might be able to restore herself to full operational capacity—even car- rying the Halo data.
Cortana double- and triple-checked the system she would overwrite: the Covenant software that managed the life support on the lower decks. Since the lower decks were now evacuated and cold, life support was moot. She carefully severed the con- nections from that subsystem to the rest of the ship.
She also rechecked her thinking. This copying software was likely responsible for the Covenant AI's fractured thinking. Her thinking, however, was being squeezed to nothing. There had to be a balance between these two deleterious states.
Cortana initialized the Covenant file-duplication software. It moved, and the entire thing pulsed and reached for her; she im- mediately shut down all contact with her translation suite.
The dark functions touched her code, wrapped around them, pushed against the barriers she had erected.
It happened too fast, but she didn't stop the process. It was far too interesting to stop.
She distantly felt that portion of her mind blur and replicate, assembled line by line into its new location within Ascendant Justice. It felt strange. Not that it was strange she could think in more than one place about more than one thing at the same time—she was used to multiprocessing.
This was different strange—as if she had a glimpse into something wonderful... and infinite.
The replication ceased, and the copying code was once again in- ert and safely stored with the dissected Covenant AI's directory.
Cortana ran her entire system; nothing else had been altered.
She checked the new copied system. It was intact, and, apart from a few slight errors in the software—which she immediately mended—it appeared functional.
She initiated the new system and slaved it with her original system, running them in parallel—one tapping the ONI's English-Covenant lexicon, the other tapping the alien AI's Covenant-English lexicon.
If the alien copying software could duplicate her translation routine, could it duplicate more of her?
No. She squelched that thought. The risk of copying any more "hers" was too great. There were too many unknowns. And this was, after all, the enemy's code. There could be booby traps, waiting to be tripped within the complex algorithms.
Besides, copying herself would do nothing to prevent her mental degradation. Those interconnection errors were already present ... and they always would be, despite the number of copies generated.
She remembered the strange fractured speech patterns of the Covenant AI and wondered how many times it had been copied.
Her thoughts were interrupted as the Covenant transmissions became clear. It was suddenly as if she had a new set of eyes and ears to hear them: Excavation proceeding; new sublayer discovered at six-hundred-meter depth, and Patrol unable to find the Infidels; returning to base, and Minor artifacts discovered; rejoice!
And there was one thing she had missed in her previous analysis of the Covenant communiques, a second signal on the carrier wave: They used the same symbols she had used to find the Halo construct—the symbols that the Master Chief had discovered on the alien artifact on Cote d'Azur.
She hadn't seen the simple dots, bars, squares, and triangles before because the Covenant, naturally, had embellished the clean symbols with their highly decorated calligraphied scripts, and further with their overwrought religious allusions.
Cortana, with her new subsystem and her new translation lexi- con, could, as Dr. Halsey might say, "cut through the crap."
These subcommuniques were orders. They originated from new ships entering the Epsilon Eridani system and were, in turn, accepted and acknowledged by those outbound.
It was an automated mail system that could carry messages from the center of the Covenant Empire to the outer reaches of the galaxy. The Covenant were either too arrogant, or too igno- rant, to properly encrypt these orders.
Still, Cortana realized that the UNSC had not, until just now, discovered their deceptively simple system... so who was more ignorant?
There were deployment orders for hundreds of ships: carriers, destroyers, tenders—a massive fleet. They were to meet at select locations, join up, refuel, gather resources, and then orient for the next Slipspace jump.
Cortana knew how to translate these simple symbols into stel- lar coordinates.
There—a jump to the Lambda Serpentis system to gather tri- tium gas for their reactors. And there—another jump to the Hawking system to meet with three dozen carriers and effect a transfer of Seraph fighters. And there— Cortana halted all her processes. She directed her full intellect to check and recheck her translation matrix a hundred times.
There was no error.
The terminating coordinates for the Covenant's impending operation was Sol.
The Covenant were headed to Earth.
SECTION 4
GAMBIT
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
TIME:DATE RECORD ANOMALY\Estimated 0640 hours, September 23,2552 (Military Calendar)\Epsilon Eridani system, tunnel complex below surface of Reach.
John tensed as he watched the thousands of Covenant crowd- ing on the galleries surround him and his team. He didn't dare move; his team was on the wrong end of too much firepower.
They couldn't win this fight.
On the third gallery off the floor of the great room, at the four o'clock position, a Hunter pair roared with anger. They raised their fuel rod cannons and then leveled their weapons—and fired.
Kelly moved before anyone; she was a blur of motion and stepped in front of Dr. Halsey. John and Fred moved to either side of Kelly, while Anton grabbed the Admiral and threw the older man behind them.
The blinding white-hot plasma charges struck the Spartans' shields and splashed over their chests.
John's shield drained completely. The overpressure forced him to take a step backward, and the skin on his forearms blistered.
Then the heat was gone, and he blinked away the black dots that swarmed in his vision. Kelly lay at his feet. Her armor smol- dered and hydrostatic gel boiled from the emergency release vent along her left side.
A thousand more shots rang out from the gallery, and John in- stinctively crouched to cover his fallen comrade. He braced for the inevitable burning energy impact.