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The Master Chief forgot about the debriefing and Captain Keyes’ puzzling question about not winning.
If Dr. Halsey had a mission for him and his team, it would be a good one. She had given him everything:duty, honor, purpose, and a destiny to protect humanity.
John hoped she would give him one more thing: a way to win the war.
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SECTION IV
MJOLNIR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
0915 Hours, August 25, 2552 (Military Calendar) /Epsilon Eridani System, Reach UNSC Military Complex, planet Reach, Omega Wing—SectionThree secure facility
“Good morning, Dr. Halsey,” Déjà said. “You’re fourteen point three minutes late this morning.”
“Blame security, Déjà,” Dr. Halsey replied, gesturing absently at the AI’s holographic projectionfloating above her desk. “ONI’s precautions here are becoming increasingly ridiculous.”
Dr. Halsey threw her coat over the back of an antique armchair before settling behind her desk. Shesighed, and for the thousandth time, wished she had a window.
The private office was located deep underground, inside the “Omega Wing” of the super-secure ONIfacility, codenamed simply CASTLE.
Castle was a massive complex, two thousand meters below the granite protection of the HighlandMountains—bombproof, well defended, and impenetrable.
The security had its drawbacks, she was forced to admit. Every morning she descended into the secretlabyrinth, passed through a dozen security checkpoints, and submitted to a barrage of retina, voice,fingerprint, and brainwave ID scans.
ONI had buried her here years ago when her funding had been shunted to higher profile projects. Allother personnel had been transferred to other operations, and her access to classified materials had beenseverely restricted. Even shadowy ONI was squeamish about her experiments.
That’s all changed—thanks to the Covenant, she thought. The SPARTAN project—unpopular with theAdmiralty, and the scientific community—had proven most effective. Her Spartans had proventhemselves time after time in countless ground engagements.
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When the Spartans started racking up successes, the Admiralty’s reticence vanished. Her meager budgethad mushroomed overnight. They had offered her a corner office in the prestigious Olympic Tower atFLEETCOM HQ.
She had, of course, declined. Now the brass and VIPs that wanted to see her had to spend half the dayjust getting through the security barriers to her lair. She relished the irony—her banishment had becomea bureaucratic weapon.
But none of that really mattered. It was just a means to an end for Dr. Halsey . . . a means to gettingProject MJOLNIR back on track.
She reached for her coffee cup and knocked a stack of papers off her desk. They fell, scattered onto thefloor, and she didn’t bother to retrieve them. She examined the mud-brown dregs in the bottom of themug; it was several days old.
The office of the most important scientist in the military was not the antiseptic clean-room environmentmost people expected. Classified files and papers littered the floor. The holographic projector overheadpainted the ceiling with a field of stars. Rich maple paneling covered the walls and hanging there wereframed photographs of her SPARTAN IIs, receiving awards, and the plethora of articles about them thatappeared when the Admiralty had made the project public three years ago.