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She tracked thirteen Covenant warships. They came about and bore down on her position. Her COM channels overloaded with fanatical threats and promises of her and the captured flag?ship burning.
There was no useful data there, so she filtered them out.
The Covenant warships' weapons warmed to a dull red.
Cortana remained calm. After considerable study of the Cove?nant plasma weapons system, she now understood why they glowed before discharge. The stored plasma was always hot and ready to fire, but the Covenant used an inefficient method to col?lect and direct the chaotic plasma into a controllable trajectory. They selected the charged plasma atoms with the proper trajec?tory necessary to hit a target and shunted them into a magnetic bubble. The bubble was then discharged; subsequent pulse charges herded the plasma on target.
For an advanced race, the Covenant's weapons relied on crude brute force calculations and were terribly slow and wasteful.
She booted the new system she had devised to control the plasma. It used EM pulses a priori to align the stochastic mo?tions of the plasma atoms, herding their trajectories and eleven degrees of electronic freedom into a laser-fine columnatedbeam within a microsecond.
This was, of course, an entirely theoretical operation.
She test-fired the three forward plasma turrets—red lines slashed across the black space and intercepted the three lead Covenant cruisers; their shields glowed orange, flickered, and failed. Cortana's plasma cut into the smooth alien hulls. Metal boiled away, and the trio of beams punched clear through the ships.
Cortana moved the plasma beams like a scalpel—up and then down—and cut the vessels in half.
"Adequate," she remarked. The plasma reserves of the first three turrets, however, were exhausted, and it would be several minutes before they'd recycle.
If only there were a better electromagnetic system on this flagship, she could have devised a more effective guidance algo-
172 HALO: FIRST STRIKE
rithm. Alas, the Covenant's grasp of Maxwell's equations was ironically inferior to human technology.
Cortana realized it was fortuitous she had shut down the enemy AI before it leaked her new plasma guidance system. The thought of every ship in the Covenant fleet refitted with im?proved weaponry was too terrible to calculate.
She also realized that staying to fight was not the wisest course. She considered taking on the rest of the Covenant forces; with her improvements to the weapons systems, she might win, too. But it wasn't worth the risk of the Covenant capturing her refinements to their technology.
Cortana fired Ascendant Justice's aft plasma turrets, and laser-like beams flickered across space. A squadron of Seraph fighters disintegrated as they launched from the closest carrier. Explosions bubbled and mushroomed inside the carrier's launch bay.
She didn't stay to watch the fireworks.
Cortana dived at flank speed straight toward the center of Reach. The surface of the planet raced toward her. She wondered where the Chief was now, and if he was safe.