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Three impossible shots, three kills. Even for Linda, this was superb shooting—the finest shots John had ever seen. He looked around the station, over the buildings, spires, catwalks, transit tubes—it was impossible to spot her.
John waved Fred and Will toward two of the downed Ban?shees and sprinted toward the one still spinning riderless in the street, its canards scraping and sparking along the stones.
He climbed aboard, pushed the throttle forward, and pointed to the far wall. He held his hand flat and lowered it, indicating that Fred and Will should skim low to the ground.
John veered off in a wide arc. Maybe he could divert the atten?tion away from them.
He rose slightly higher and buzzed the tops of gilt domes and statues of Elite heroes with raised swords. Grunts and Jackals scattered as he approached, and John fired at them. He shifted to the side as he splashed though water falling from one side of the station to the other.
Four Banshee fliers fell in behind him. John weaved back and forth. A pair of plasma bolts sizzled over his head.
He risked a look over his shoulder and saw two of the Ban?shees drop away. A moment later they crashed into the surface.
Linda still had his back covered.
He dropped to the ground and skimmed along a street, skid?ded, and turned into an alley. Banshee shadows passed overhead. He pushed the throttle to full and made a direct run toward the back wall.
Will and Fred had grounded their fliers and crouched next to the meter-thick window separating this inner section from the
320 HALO: FIRST STRIKE
repair bays. John settled his Banshee next to theirs, turned his backpack around, reached in, and tossed Fred his last Lotus anti?tank mine.
"Get that on the window and set for a remote trigger." He then risked an open COM channel to the copy of Cortana in the station's system. "Cortana, can you open the air locks in the re?pair bay?"
A flurry of voices filled the COM, all speaking at the same time, shouting to be heard over one another ... all Cortana's voices. One finally broke through. "Chief, I've spun off a copy dedicated exclusively to communicating with you. Go ahead."
"How many copies are there of you?"
"Unknown. Hundreds. The Covenant AI overwhelmed me. Had to. This is difficult. Many errors in my systems. Filtering overall subchannels of information.
"To answer your initial question: yes. I can override safety lockouts and open the air locks. My systems are fragmenting. I cannot exist in a coherent state much longer."
John looked out across the kilometers of curving cityscape. Wraith tanks rolled into the streets; legions of Grunts, Jackals, and Elites raced from building to building and shot at targets that weren't there. Banshees and Ghosts buzzed through the air like clouds of flies.
John's mission countdown timer read 7:45.
"Linda's back there," he told Fred and Will. Fred started to say something, but John cut him off. "If I'm not back in three min?utes, blow that window and exit."