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"Adjusting course," Cortana said calmly. "ETA two minutes."
"How are we going to stop?" he asked.
She sighed. "Do I have to think of everything?" The aft hatch resealed, and John heard the faint hiss as the internal compart?ments pressurized.
One of the sleek Covenant cruisers slowed and turned toward them.
"Picking up increased scanning signal activity and strength," Cortana reported.
The Chief's hand hovered over the weapons system console. It would take several seconds for the weapons to power up. The 110mm rotary cannons could fire immediately, but the missiles would have to wait for their target-lock software to initialize. By then the cruiser, which outgunned them a hundred to one, would turn the Longsword into molten slag.
"Attempting to jam their scanners," Cortana said. "That may buy us some time."
The Covenant cruiser turned away, slowed, and turned back to face the comparatively tiny Longsword. It took no further ac?tion ... as if it were waiting for them to get closer.
So far so good. The Chief clenched and unclenched his gauntleted hand. We 're not dead yet.
He glanced at the scan display. The contact resolved into a clearer image: definitely a UNSC cryopod. It tumbled, and he
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saw that what he thought was a single pod was in fact three of them, affixed side by side.
Three possible survivors out of the Pillar of Autumn's total complement of hundreds. He wished there were more. He wished Captain Keyes were here. In the Chief's opinion Keyes had been the most brilliant spatial tactician he had ever encountered ... but even the Captain would have thought twice about approach?ing seven Covenant warships in a single Longsword.
He risked feeding more ship's power to Cortana's systems. If they were going to make it through this, he needed her as effec?tive as possible.
"New contact," Cortana said, interrupting his thoughts. "I think it is, anyway. Whatever it is, it's stuck onto a chunk of rock, half a kilometer in diameter. Damn, it just rotated out of my view."
On the display Cortana replayed a partial silhouette of an oddly angled shape on the surface of the rock. She highlighted its contours, rotated the polygon, and overlaid this onto a sche?matic of a Pelican dropship.
"Match with a tolerance of fifty-eight percent," she said. "They might have parked there to avoid detection, as you suggested."
The Chief thought he detected a hint of irritation in her voice, as if she resented him for thinking of something she had not.
"Or," Cortana continued, "more likely, the craft merely crashed there."
"I don't think so." He pointed at the display. "The position of that wing indicates it's nose-out—ready for takeoff. If it had crash-landed, it would be faced the other way."
Another Covenant cruiser moved toward this new ship.
"Coming about, Chief," Cortana told him. "Brace yourself, and then get ready to retrieve the pods."
The Chief unsnapped his harness and drifted aft. He grabbed a tether and clipped one end to his suit, the other to the bulkhead of the Longsword.