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The Master Chief had been right when he said that he recognized the shorthand navigation symbols onthe NAV display.
Cortana accessed the Spartans’ mission logs. She sifted through the data, and filed it into a secondarylong-term storage buffer. When she reviewed the database of his mission reports, Cortana learned thatSpartan 117had seen something similar on the Covenant vessel he had boarded in 2525. And again—thesymbols almost looked like those on the rock he had extracted from Covenant forces on Sigma OctanusIV. ONI reports on the symbols found in the anomalous rock had defied cryptoanalysis.
Keyes’ order to plot a navigation route sparked a connection between this data; she accessed the aliensymbols, and rather than compare them with alphabets or hieroglyphics, compared them to starformations.
There were some startling similarities—along with a number of differences. Cortana reanalyzed thesymbols and accounted for thousands of years of stellar drift.
A tenth of a second later she had a close match on her charts—86.2 percent.
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Interesting. Perhaps the markings in the rock recovered on Sigma Octanus IV were navigation symbols,albeit highly unusual and stylized ones—mathematical symbols as artistic and elegant as Chinesecalligraphy.
What was there that the Covenant wanted so badly that they had launched a full offensive against SigmaOctanus IV? Whatever it was . . . Cortana was interested, too.
She compared the new NAV coordinates with her directives and was pleased with what she saw; thenew course complied with the Cole Protocol. Good.
The Covenant frigates fired their plasma again. Seven bolts of fire streaked toward thePillar of Autumn .
She dumped the coordinates to the NAV controls and stored the logic path that led to her deduction inher high-security buffer.
“Approaching saturation velocity,” she told Captain Keyes. “Powering Shaw-Fujikawa Translightgenerators. New course available.”
The Covenant frigates aligned with their outbound vector. They were going to try to follow thePillar ofAutumn through Slipspace. Damn.
The Shaw-Fujikawa Translight generators tore a hole in normal space. Light boiled around thePillar ofAutumn and she vanished.
Cortana had plenty of time to think on the journey. Most of the crew were frozen in cryo for the trip.Some of the engineers had elected to try to repair the main reactor. A futile gesture . . . but she lent thema few cycles to try to rebuild the convection inductor.
Had Dr. Halsey been on Reach when it fell to the Covenant? Cortana felt a pang of regret for her creator.Maybe she had gotten away. The probability was low . . . but the doctor was a survivor.
Cortana ran a self-diagnostic. Her Alpha-level commands were intact. She had not jeopardized herprimary mission by following this vector. There were, unfortunately, sure to be Covenant ships whenthey arrived . . . wherever they arrived.
The Covenant had followed them into Slipstream space. And they had always been faster and moreaccurate than UNSC navigators in the elusive dimension.