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And there was one thing she had missed in her previous analy?sis of the Covenant communiques, a second signal on the carrier wave: They used the same symbols she had used to find the Halo construct—the symbols that the Master Chief had discovered on the alien artifact on Cote d'Azur.
She hadn't seen the simple dots, bars, squares, and triangles before because the Covenant, naturally, had embellished the clean symbols with their highly decorated calligraphied scripts, and further with their overwrought religious allusions.
Cortana, with her new subsystem and her new translation lexi?con, could, as Dr. Halsey might say, "cut through the crap."
198 HALO: FIRST STRIKE
These subcommuniques were orders. They originated from new ships entering the Epsilon Eridani system and were, in turn, accepted and acknowledged by those outbound.
It was an automated mail system that could carry messages from the center of the Covenant Empire to the outer reaches of the galaxy. The Covenant were either too arrogant, or too igno?rant, to properly encrypt these orders.
Still, Cortana realized that the UNSC had not, until just now, discovered their deceptively simple system... so who was more ignorant?
There were deployment orders for hundreds of ships: carriers, destroyers, tenders—a massive fleet. They were to meet at select locations, join up, refuel, gather resources, and then orient for the next Slipspace jump.
Cortana knew how to translate these simple symbols into stel?lar coordinates.
There—a jump to the Lambda Serpentis system to gather tri?tium gas for their reactors. And there—another jump to the Hawking system to meet with three dozen carriers and effect a transfer of Seraph fighters. And there—
Cortana halted all her processes. She directed her full intellect to check and recheck her translation matrix a hundred times.
There was no error.
The terminating coordinates for the Covenant's impending operation was Sol.
The Covenant were headed to Earth.
SECTION 4
GAMBIT
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
TIME:DATE RECORD ANOMALY\Estimated 0640 hours, September 23,2552 (Military Calendar)\Epsilon Eridani system, tunnel complex below surface of Reach.
John tensed as he watched the thousands of Covenant crowd?ing on the galleries surround him and his team. He didn't dare move; his team was on the wrong end of too much firepower. They couldn't win this fight.
On the third gallery off the floor of the great room, at the four o'clock position, a Hunter pair roared with anger. They raised their fuel rod cannons and then leveled their weapons—and fired.
Kelly moved before anyone; she was a blur of motion and stepped in front of Dr. Halsey. John and Fred moved to either side of Kelly, while Anton grabbed the Admiral and threw the older man behind them.
The blinding white-hot plasma charges struck the Spartans' shields and splashed over their chests.
John's shield drained completely. The overpressure forced him to take a step backward, and the skin on his forearms blistered.