第74页

　　Two  minutes  ticked  off  Fred's  mission  clock.  Too  much  time  sitting  here,  doing  nothing,  while  the  Covenant  over  their  heads  were  undoubtedly  figuring  out  a  way  to  dig  them  out  and  tear  them  to  pieces.
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　　"It  was  a  good  idea,"  he  told  Kelly.  "We'll  recon  the  shaft.  Maybe  it's  not  completely  collapsed.  Will  you—"
　　A  mechanism  thunked  and  then  hummed  within  the  titanic  door.  There  was  a  hiss  as  the  seams  parted,  and  the  meter-thick  door  swung  inward  on  perfectly  balanced,  silent  hinges.
　　Bright  light  flooded  the  passage.  A  silhouetted  figure  stood  on  the  threshold.  As  Fred's  display  compensated  and  enhanced  the  image,  he  saw  it  was  human,  slight  of  figure,  female.  She  wore  a  gray  pleated  skirt  and  a  white  lab  coat  with  a  data  pad  stuffed  into  the  breast  pocket.  He  caught  the  glimmer  of  her  eyeglasses,  black-rimmed  with  faint  bifocal  lines.  Her  gray  hair  was  coiled  into  a  tight  bun.
　　But  it  was  her  face  that  caught  and  held  his  focus—he  recog?nized  the  tight  smooth  skin  that  wrinkled  only  in  the  comers  of  her  mouth  and  her  gray-blue  eyes.  She  was  the  intellect  behind  the  SPARTAN-II  program,  and  the  one  who'd  invented  their  MJOLNIR  armor.
　　She  was  Dr.  Catherine  Halsey.
　　CHAPTER  THIRTEEN
　　0810  hours,  August  30,2552  (Military  Calendar)\Epsilon  Eridani  system,  ONI  underground  facility,  planet  Reach.
　　Dr.  Halsey  studied  the  five  Spartans  in  the  hallway  and  pushed  her  antique  glasses  farther  up  the  ridge  of  her  nose.  Despite  everything  their  presence  here  meant—Reach  invaded,  their  mis?sion  to  find  the  Covenant  leadership  compromised,  everything  she  had  worked  for  now  in  jeopardy—she  was  still  pleased  to  see  them.  She  steeled  herself,  though;  an  emotional  outburst  wouldn't  be  understood,  or  appreciated,  by  her  Spartans.
　　"Come  in,"  she  said  briskly.  "And  hurry.  From  the  sounds  of  things  upstairs  we  haven't  much  time."
　　The  Spartans  stood  there  a  moment—undoubtedly  communi?cating  with  one  another  through  a  mixture  of  externally  silent  COM  channels  and  minute  body  language.  She  noticed  the  tick  of  a  finger,  the  slight  nod  of  a  head.  They  then  moved  together,  picked  up  their  equipment,  and  walked  through  the  threshold  of  the  vault.
　　Dr.  Halsey  greeted  them  as  they  passed  her.  "It's  good  to  see  you,  Fred."
　　"Ma'am,"  Fred  replied.  "Good  to  see  you,  too."
　　She  noted  that  Kelly's  movements  were  off,  a  little  sluggish.  She  was  hurt,  as  were  the  rest  of  them,  now  that  she  saw  them  up  close.  "Kelly."
　　"Doctor  Halsey."  She  reached  out  and  gave  her  hand  a  slight  squeeze  of  greeting.
　　"Isaac."
　　"Doctor."
　　"Vinh."
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　　She  nodded.
　　"William."
　　Will  grunted.  He  had  never  liked  his  formal  name.
　　She  knew  this  annoyed  them  all—how  she  was  always  able  to  tell  who  they  were  despite  the  MJOLNIR  armor.  She  had  grown  up  with  them,  knew  their  every  gesture  and  their  indi?vidual  walks.  She  could  have  never  called  them  by  their  num?ber  designations:  SPARTAN-104,  -087,  -039,  -029,  and  -043,  respectively.
　　Dr.  Halsey  tapped  a  control  pad.  The  vault  door  eased  silently  shut,  its  seams  vanished,  and,  with  a  sharp,  metallic  click,  it  locked.