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One gray arm remained exposed under the rubble, still flexing.
John moved up. The entrance was sealed. They were safe for a few seconds.
He knelt next to Grace. Her biosigns had flatlined. He tried to roll her upright—but there was no need. The detonations he had heard while wrestling the first Brute had been three of their high-velocity grenades... which had blown Grace's midsection apart.
Fred and Will emerged from their cover. John looked at mem and shook his head.
John opened the tiny access panel on Grace's armor power pack and entered the fail-safe code. They still had a mission to finish, which meant they couldn't carry her out; it would slow them down too much. They wouldn't be leaving her for the Covenant either, though. Her armor's tiny fusion reactor would overload and burn everything within a ten-meter radius— Grace's funeral pyre.
"Let's move," John said. "Cortana, which way?"
"Proceed into the temple thirty meters. Turn right. There will be a sealed doorway, an access hatch for Engineers. I will open it and lock it behind you. Hurry. I'm encountering increased resistance from the station's AIs. While I have their security COM channels blocked, word of intruders is speeding via private COMs."
There was a curious echo to her voice. Maybe it was feedback from the Covenant triangulating on their signals. Or maybe there was some other effect at work. What had she warned him about? Unforeseen complications using a copy of a copy of Cortana?
"Roger that," he said and waved Fred and Will forward. He took one last look at Grace, then marched quickly and silently ahead.
There were no more motion contacts in the temple. The Chief, however, saw Grunts and Jackals, Elites and Hunters in murals painted on the walls. In the shadows and stained-glass filtered light, those pictures seemed to move. They genuflected to some?thing farther ahead. The Chief wished he had more time to take a full video record.
Blue Team moved thirty meters and turned to face a section of the wall. It parted. The passage could have fit two Engineers side
316 HALO: FIRST STRIKE
by side, but John had to crouch and turn sideways to pass. Will and Fred followed; Cortana sealed the door behind them.
They continued until the narrow passage turned ninety de?grees and dropped straight down. Will attached a rope and they rappelled down a hundred meters, landing on a platform.
John overlooked a cavern hewn from rough stone that arched up ninety meters and vanished into the shadows in the distance. Five hundred twelve fusion reactors that looked like flatted spi?ral seashells filled the space, stacked in rows and columns eight deep. Each was the size of a Pelican dropship and thrummed with power, casting off waves of wavering heat.
The open areas between the reactors were a tangle of plasma conduits and alive with swarms of thousands of buoyant Engi?neers as they tended the machinery. Faint wispy borealis com?prised of escaped plasma swirled, whipped into a luminous froth by the intense magnetic vortices within the chamber.