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The Vice Admiral steepled her withered hands. "Say it is part of a vaccine program. We take a microscopic sample as we inject the children. Inform no one."
The Rear Admiral looked dubious, but offered no further comment.
"Go on. Lieutenant," she said.
"We have identified 375 candidates," Kurt said. "Slightly less than we started with for Alpha Company, but we have learned from our mistakes. We will be able to graduate a much higher percentage this time."
He nodded toward Mendez to give the Chief the credit he richly deserved. Mendez sat completely still and Kurt saw he wore his poker face.
Every instinct Kurt had screamed that something was wrong here.
"But," the Rear Admiral said, "that's nowhere near the one thousand projection for the second wave."
A brief scowl played over Ackerson's lip. "No, sir."
The Vice Admiral set her hands flat on the table and leaned closer to Kurt. "What if we loosen the new genetic selection criteria?"
Kurt took note of the "we" in her question. There was a subtle shift in the power structure at the table. With a single word, the Vice Admiral had made Kurt a part of their group.
"Our new bioaugmentation protocols target a very specific genetic set. Any deviation from that set would geometrically increase the failure rate," Kurt said. The thought of dozens of Spartans being tortured and ultimately crippled as they lay helpless in a medical bay filled him with revulsion. He managed to contain the feeling.
The Vice Admiral raised one threadbare brow. "You've done your homework. Lieutenant."
"However, as our augmentation technology improves," Ackerson said, "one day we will be able to expand the selection parameters, maybe to include the entire general population."
"But not today, Colonel," the Rear Admiral said, and sighed. "So we're back to about three hundred SPARTAN-IIIs. That will have to do then."
Kurt wanted to correct him—three hundred new Spartans plus those in Alpha Company.
"Let's move on to the review of Alpha and Operation PROMETHEUS," the Vice Admiral said, and her face darkened.
Colonel Ackerson cleared his throat. "Operation PROMETHEUS occurred on the Covenant manufacturing site designated as K7-49."
A holographic asteroid materialized drifting over the table, a rock with molten cracks that made a spiderweb pattern over its surface.
"K7-49 was discovered when the prowler Razor's Edge managed to attach a telemetry probe on an enemy frigate during the Battle of New Harmony," Ackerson said. "They then followed the craft through Slipspace, the first and only time this technology has actually worked, I might add, and they discovered this rock seventeen light-years past the UNSC outer boundary."
The image magnified, revealing midaltitude images of factories
on the surface that belched smoke and cinder, and showed that the volcanic fissures were canals of flowing molten metal. A gossamer lattice surrounded the asteroid, tiny lights winked on the filaments, and black specks drifted near.