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A legion of Grunts hunkered behind docked Seraph fighters and fuel pods. Some darted in and out of cover and fired ghostly green blobs of plasma at the Longsword.
"I got 'em," Polaski said and flipped a switch.
The Longsword's landing gear deployed and raised the craft a meter off the floor. "Guns clear," Polaski announced. " 'Bye, boys."
She brought up a targeting reticle and swept it around the bay. A hail of 120mm rounds tore through the Grunts' cover. Fuel pods and unshielded fighters detonated and sent metal frag?ments and alien soldiers hurtling to the deck. The air exploded into roiling flame, which billowed toward the ceiling and then subsided. Pools of burning fuel and the charred bodies of Grunts and Covenant Engineers littered the launch bay.
"Fire suppression system activating," Cortana said.
Jets of gray mist blew down from above. The fires intensified for a moment, then guttered and went out.
"Is there atmosphere in the bay?" the Chief asked.
"Scanning," Cortana replied. "Traces of ash, some contami?nation from the melted ship hulls, and a lot of smoke, but the air in the bay is breathable, Chief."
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"Good." He turned to the others. "We're going in. I'll lead. Locklear, you're up with me. Sergeant, you've got the rear."
"You'll need to take me, too," Cortana said. "I've pulled a schematic of this ship to navigate, but the engineering controls have been manually locked down. I'll need direct access to this ship's command data systems."
The Chief hesitated. His armor allowed an AI like Cortana to tag along stored in a special crystal layer. On Halo, Cortana had been an invaluable tactical asset.
Still, she also used part of his armor's neural interface for pro?cessing purposes, literally harnessing parts of the Chief's brain. And after coming out of Halo's computer system, she'd been act?ing... twitchy.
He put his discomfort aside. If Cortana turned into a liability, he'd pull the plug.
"Stand by," he said. He punched a key on the computer termi?nal and dumped Cortana to a data chip. A moment later the ter?minal pulsed green.
He removed the chip and slotted it in the back of his helmet. There was a moment of vertigo, and then the familiar mercury-and-ice sensation flooded his skull as Cortana interfaced.
"Still plenty of room in here, I see," she said.
He ignored her customary quip and nodded at Johnson and Locklear. "Let's go."
Sergeant Johnson hit the door release, and the side hatch slid open. Locklear shouldered his rifle and poured fire through the opening. A pair of Grunts who had crouched near the Longsword to protect themselves from the fire flew backward onto the deck. Phosphorescent blood pooled beneath their prone forms.
The Chief dived through the open hatch and rolled to his feet; his motion tracker picked up three targets to his side. He whirled about and saw a trio of Covenant Engineers. He removed his fin?ger from the weapon's trigger. Engineers were no threat.
The odd, meter-high creatures hovered above the deck, using bladders of some lighter-than-air gas produced by their bodies. Their tentacles and feelers probed a tangle of fuel lines, quickly repairing the pipes and pumps.