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She turned to Kurt. "What was the other thing? You said there were two facts I didn't know."
"Yes, ma'am," Kurt said, straightening. "Although it cannot be of use now, Zone 67 had a Slipspace COM probe launcher."
"Are you certain?" Dr. Halsey said. "There are only two SS COM launchers I know of. One on Reach." She paused, remembering the planet and the people that no longer existed. "And one on Earth. They are tremendously costly to build and operate."
"I am sure. Doctor. Years ago, the previous Zone 67 AI sent me a message via a Slipspace probe. I handled it myself." Kurt shifted on his feet.
There was more Kurt wasn't telling her, and not because of any breach of security clearances. Dr. Halsey would follow up later when they were alone.
Interesting. A Spartan with secrets.
"It is imperative then that we enter Zone 67," she said, "and get to that SS COM launcher"
"Assuming, ma'am," Chief Mendez said, "these Forerunner Sentinels didn't blow the place up already."
"Indeed," she whispered, and her gaze settled on the destroyed computer station near Chief Mendez. "There might be another way. Can we move that junk?"
Kurt nodded and his young Spartans moved the scrap metal aside.
Dr. Halsey inspected the partially melted computer components. Nothing salvageable.
Embedded in the wall, quite intact, however, was an optical COM port.
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← ^ → CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE
1300 HOURS, NOVEMBER 3, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \ ZETA DORADUS SYSTEM, PLANET ONYX \ RESTRICTED REGION KNOWN AS ZONE 67
Dr. Halsey tapped in line code at 140 words per minute on her laptop. It sounded like machine-gun fire.
Jerrod struggled to keep up with her, his light flaring as he found and neutralized counterintrusion cells in the ONI network.
This wasn't going to work. Not a direct hack. She was on the wrong side of a dozen firewalls, and there was a Section Three AI sitting on the other side, watching her, playing a game of chess with twice as many pieces as she had, getting three moves to her one.
Under normal circumstances, Dr. Halsey would have viewed this as a challenge, but not today.
Three of the younger Spartans and Chief Mendez stood over and around her holding silver thermal blankets, forming a primitive Faraday cage. Kurt seemed to think the drones could detect unshielded electronic signals, even from her laptop.
The young Spartans didn't bother her; they showed only the
utmost respect. Indeed the main distraction was her own curiosity. She wanted to interview these new Spartans, learn where they came from and what they had been through.
She did her best to ignore them, though; she had to make contact with this AI. This Endless Summer had to be lured out from behind its defenses somehow.
She typed life is the path and added a simple handshake protocol and a routing code that would send this without bypassing any security whatsoever directly to the AI root directory.