第130页

　　The  dropship  veered  toward  the  open  bay,  and  Cortana
　　ERIC  NYLUND 211
　　dropped  shields  for  a  split  second—just  long  enough  for  the  tiny  craft  to  enter—then  reestablished  the  protective  field.
　　Cortana  routed  power  from  the  Gettysburg  into  Ascendant  Justice's  Slipspace  capacitors,  and  they  began  soaking  up  the  charge.
　　Three  dozen  Covenant  cruisers  surrounded  her,  their  plasma  turrets  glowing  a  hellish  red  as  they  prepared  to  fire.
　　Apparently  the  order  not  to  fire  did  not  extend  to  Ascendant  Justice.
　　Cortana  needed  five  seconds  to  attain  a  full  charge,  five  sec?onds  before  she  could  make  good  her  escape...  but  five  seconds  might  be  long  enough  for  her  to  become  the  center  of  a  small  Covenant-made  sun.
　　She  took  the  initiative  and  fired  at  the  closest  four  cruisers.
　　Laser-fine  plasma  lanced  from  her  turrets,  burned  though  the  Covenant  shields,  and  split  open  their  hulls.  When  the  super?heated  gas  came  in  contact  with  the  atmosphere  inside  the  ships,  plastic,  flesh,  and  metal  caught  fire  and  roiled  throughout  their  interiors.
　　Two  of  the  targeted  cruisers  immediately  detonated  as  the  plasma  beams  found  the  reactors.  Billowing  clouds  of  vaporized  metal  mushroomed  across  the  night  and  obscured  her  from  the  advancing  ships.
　　Pinpricks  of  light  appeared  around  Ascendant  Justice.
　　ERROR.
　　Cortana  rechecked  the  figures  and  quickly  found  the  source  of  the  problem:  The  fail-safe  subroutine  that  tracked  local  gravita?tional  conditions  returned  an  anomaly.
　　The  gravity  from  Reach  no  longer  warped  space  ...  which  was  impossible.
　　No  time  for  speculation.  She  had  to  leave  or  fight.
　　She  moved  Ascendant  Justice  into  the  twisting  spatial  field—
　　—and  vanished.
　　Instead  of  the  nonvisible  nondimensions  of  Slipspace,  how?ever,  a  blue-tinged  field  appeared  on  Cortana's  monitors.  It  wasn't  space—not  the  crowded  space  near  Reach,  or  the  star-filled  space  of  the  Epsilon  Eridani  system.  But  it  was  a  space,  where  there  should  have  been  no  space  at  all.
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　　HALO:  FIRST  STRIKE
　　She  probed  the  region  with  her  sensors,  but  her  range  was  lim?ited  to  a  thousand  kilometers  as  if  she  were  in  an  obscuring  fog.
　　There—a  contact.  And  another.  And  then  a  dozen  more.
　　Fourteen  Covenant  cruisers  resolved  from  the  blue  mist.
　　"Cortana,"  the  Master  Chief  said.  "What's  our  status?"
　　"Same  as  ever,"  Cortana  replied.  "We're  in  trouble."
　　The  Covenant  warships  fired.
　　"Damn,"  Cortana  muttered.
　　She  initiated  her  last  option:  She  fired  back,  hoping  to  take  some  of  them  to  hell  with  her.
　　CHAPTER  TWENTY-THREE
　　TIME:DATE  RECORD  [[ERROR]]ANOMALY\Date  unknown\  Aboard  captured  Covenant  flagship  Ascendant  Justice,  in  Slipspace.  Now.
　　"Cortana?"  the  Master  Chief  asked.  "What's  our  status?"
　　The  Chief  and  the  rest  of  his  team  scrambled  out  of  the  Cove?nant  dropship.  Fred  carried  a  semiconscious  Kelly  out  and  laid  her  on  the  deck  of  the  launch  bay.
　　"Same  as  ever,"  Cortana  replied.  "We're  in  trouble."
　　Video  feed  from  the  ship's  external  cameras  appeared  on  the  Master  Chief's  heads-up  display.  Covenant  cruisers  surrounded  them,  their  plasma  turrets  aglow;  they  reminded  the  Chief  of  pictures  he  had  seen  of  fish  that  lived  at  the  bottom  of  Earth's  oceans—swarms  of  phosphorescing  lights  and  razor-sharp  teeth.