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Pressure sensors detected hull breaches on seventeen outer decks. Cortana ignored them. She shut down all peripheral sys?tems and concentrated on the task at hand. It was their only way out of this mess: They'd get out by going through.
She concentrated on interpolating the fluctuating space. She generated mathematical algorithms to anticipate and smooth the gravitational distortions.
Energy surged from the reactors into the Slipspace generator matrices. A path parted directly before them—a pinhole that be?came a gyrating wormhole, fluxing and spinning.
Threshold's atmosphere throbbed and jumped through the hole—sucked into the vacuum of the alternate dimension.
Cortana dedicated all her runtime to monitoring the space around the ship, and risked making microscopic course correc?tions to maneuver them into the fluctuating path. Sparks danced along the length of the hull as the nose of the flagship departed normal space.
She eased the rest of the ship through, surrounded by whirling storms and jagged spears of lightning.
She pinged her sensors: The hull temperature dropped rapidly and she registered a series of explosive decompressions on the breached decks.
Cortana emerged from her cocoon of concentration and im?mediately sensed the electronic presence of the other near her, monitoring her Slipspace calculations. It was practically on top ofher.
"Heresy!" it hissed and then withdrew... and vanished.
Cortana pulsed a systems check along every circuit in the ship, hoping to track the Covenant AI. No luck.
"Sneaky little bastard," she broadcast throughout the system. "Come back here."
ERIC NYLUND 87
Had it seen what she had done? Had it understood what she'd just accomplished? And if so, why declare it a "heresy"?
True, manipulating eighty-eight stochastic variables in eleven-dimensional space-time was not child's play... but it was possi?ble that the other AI would be able to follow her calculations.
Perhaps not. The Covenant were imitative, not innovative; at least, that's what all the ONI intelligence gathered on the col?lection of alien races had reported. She had thought this was exaggeration, propaganda to bolster human morale.
Now she wasn't so certain. Because if the Covenant had truly understood the extent of their own magnificent technology, they could have not only jumped into Slipspaceyrow a planet's atmosphere—but jumped into a planet's atmosphere, too.
They could have simply bypassed Reach's orbital defenses.
The Covenant AI had called this heresy? Ludicrous.
Maybe the humans could eventually outthink the Covenant, given enough access to the enemy's technologies. Cortana real?ized the humans actually had a chance to win this war. All they needed was time.
"Cortana? Status please," the Master Chief said.
"Stand by," Cortana reported.
The Chief felt decompressive explosions reverberate through the deck, thunder that suddenly silenced itself as the atmosphere vented.
He waited for an explosion to tear through the engine room, or for plasma to envelop him. He scanned the engine room for any signs of Grunts or Elites, and then exhaled, and stared into the face of death for the countless time.