第129页

　　The  power  uplinks  connected.  Gigawatts  flowed  from  the  Gettysburg's  reactor  into  Ascendant  Justice's  energy  grid.
　　"Perfect,"  she  purred.
　　It  was  0712  hours.  She  had  less  than  three  minutes  to  prepare  for  the  next  phase  of  her  plan.
　　Cortana  checked  and  rechecked  the  calculations  for  what  had  to  be  the  shortest  Slipspace  jump  ever:  from  the  floating  junk?yard  to  the  rendezvous  coordinates,  a  mere  three  thousand  kilo?meters.  She  scanned  that  region  of  space—and  discovered  it  was  no  longer  a  blind  spot  in  the  Covenant  defenses.  There  were  three  times  as  many  ships  insystem  as  when  she'd  left.
　　Cortana  spotted  the  Chief's  hijacked  dropship  ascending  from  the  lower  atmosphere  of  Reach,  with  a  pack  of  Seraph  fighters  surrounding  the  craft.
　　She  intercepted  a  series  of  repeated  orders  from  the  Cove?nant's  fleet  commander:  Do  not  fire  or  you  will  be  targeted  and  destroyed.  The  Infidels  have  captured  the  holy  light.
　　This  was  both  good  and  bad.  Good  because  the  Master  Chief  and  his  team  with  this  "holy  light"  avoided  being  blasted  into  vapor.  Bad  because  every  Covenant  ship  in  the  system  was  clos?ing  in  on  their  dropship—ultimately  they'd  box  it  in,  grapple  with  the  tiny  craft,  and  take  it  with  overwhelming  force.
　　This  also  made  Cortana's  jump  target  increasingly  crowded.
　　210 HALO:  FIRST  STRIKE
　　She  made  certain  her  plasma  turrets  were  fully  charged;  she  rechecked  her  shaping  magnetic  coils;  she  ran  a  systems  check  on  Ascendant  Justice's  thrusters  in  case  something  happened  with  her  exit  jump  and  she  had  to  maneuver.
　　The  time  was  0714.10  Military  Standard.
　　Cortana  then  did  the  one  thing  she  was  not  good  at:  wait.  Fifty  seconds  for  a  mind  that  could  perform  a  trillion  calculations  per  second  was  an  eternity.
　　At  T  minus  thirty  seconds  Cortana  dumped  power  into  the  Slipspace  capacitors.
　　Pinpricks  of  light  dotted  the  black  space  around  her.
　　At  T  minus  twenty  she  updated  her  calculations,  taking  into  account  the  slight  gravitational  variances  that  so  many  Covenant  warships  created  in  local  space.
　　The  vacuum  around  her  pulled  apart,  and  she  picked  a  path  through  the  "here"  of  normal  space  into  the  "not-here"  of  Slipspace.
　　At  T  minus  ten  she  wrote  a  quick  program  to  target  the  distant  ships  near  her  exit  coordinates—and  keep  them  targeted  when  she  reappeared.
　　Ascendant  Justice  moved  slightly  forward  into  the  rip  in  space;  light  enveloped  the  craft.
　　She  vanished  from  the  field  of  floating  debris  and—
　　—reappeared  in  an  eyeblink.  The  full  face  of  Reach  filling  her  lateral  starboard  displays.  The  port  displays  were  crowded  with  inbound  Covenant  ships.
　　The  odd  piggybacked  Covenant—human  craft  appearing  in  the  middle  of  their  trap  must  have  confused  the  enemy  ...  no  one  fired.
　　The  dropship  was  three  kilometers  off  Cortana's  starboard  beam,  its  trajectory  more  or  less  aligned  with  Ascendant  Jus?tice's  launch  bay.
　　She  opened  the  UNSC  E-band  and  said,  "Chief,  your  ride  is  here."
　　"Acknowledged,"  the  Master  Chief  replied.  There  was  no  qua?ver  in  his  rock-solid  voice.  He  had  been  headed  into  certain  death  a  moment  ago,  but  he  sounded  like  this  was  what  he  expected  to  occur.  Like  this  was  normal  operational  procedure.