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Sergeant Johnson set his rifle on Kelly's chest and said, "Come on, Corporal, shake a leg and gimme a hand. The lady in her armor weighs more than your last date."
Locklear and the Sergeant hefted Kelly and, grunting under the load, moved her off the bridge. Dr. Halsey followed, cast one last withering look at the Admiral, and sealed the hatch be?hind her.
Admiral Whitcomb sighed. He felt for the Spartan... felt too much—which was the problem. He couldn't concentrate with her so close. He'd want constant status reports on her condition. Hell, he would have gone over, knelt next to her, and held her hand if that would've helped. He loved the men and women un?der his command as if they were his own sons and daughters. It was the old axiom of command: To be a good leader, you had to love the service. To be a great commander, you had to be willing to destroy that which you loved.
Static crackled, and the Master Chief reported in: "We're in position, Admiral. ETA for repairs is two minutes."
"Roger, Chief," Admiral Whitcomb replied. "When you're done give the word and get secure. We'll be accelerating immediately."
"Yes, sir."
Thunder rumbled through the deck.
"Plasma impacts, sir," Cortana explained. "Their energy pro?file has diffused, but they were still powerful enough to knock the lateral sensors and cameras offline."
Admiral Whitcomb smoothed his thick fingers over his mus?tache. "We've got only a few minutes before this space tears us apart." He squinted at the wall displays, trying to count the num?ber of enemy craft. "That's if those Covenant ships don't do the job first."
He turned to Cortana. "How many enemy ships are there? Which are real and which are illusion?"
"Impossible to accurately determine, sir. I counted fourteen
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targets before they started firing and filling the space between us with ionizing plasma. Now? ..." Mathematical symbols raced along her length, flashing blue and indigo. "Cross-indexing similar mirrored images and extrapolating, I estimate there are currently between three and five operational ships, sir."
Admiral Whitcomb gritted his teeth and concentrated. He had to get this ship moving—take out one or two enemy craft. Maybe the tangled plasma-filled space would cook the rest of them.
That was their best chance. Their only chance. He'd have to trust the Master Chief to get that drive conduit fixed.
"Very well, Cortana," he said. "Heat the Gettysburg's reactor to maximum power and prepare to flood the main-engine plasma conduit. Charge all available weapons turret capacitors."
"Yes, sir. Standby."
He glanced at a screen that showed the Gettysburg sitting atop them inverted. "Is the launch bay on the Gettysburg intact? Can it hold an atmosphere?"
Cortana blinked. "Yes, sir. It has a slow leak of thirty-two kilo pascals per—"
"Pressurize the bay."
"Acknowledged, Admiral. However," Cortana replied, "that will leave our air reserves dangerously low."
The Admiral stared at the ships surrounding them—a plasma bolt struck a distant cruiser head-on, and its nose buckled. Gouts of flame flared along its lateral plasma lines. The ship looked like a fish spit with a red-hot poker.