The Fall of Reach

EPILOGUE

0647 Hours, August 30, 2552 (Military Calendar)

UNSC Pillar of Autumn, Epsilon Eridani System’s edge

Cortana fired the Pillar of Autumn’s autocannons—targeting a dozen Seraph fighters harassing them as they were accelerated out of the system. Seven Covenant frigates were now locked into the pursuit. She dodged a volley of pulse laser fire, using the ventral emergency thrusters.

She pushed the damaged secondary reactor to critical levels. They had to build up more speed before activating the Shaw-Fujikawa Translight generators or the jump to Slipstream space would fail.

She rechecked her calculations. Under the Cole Protocol, they would be jumping away from Earth... but it would not be a totally random heading.

The Master Chief had been right when he said that he recognized the shorthand navigation symbols on the NAV display.

Cortana accessed the Spartans’ mission logs. She sifted through the data, and filed it into a secondary long-term storage buffer. When she reviewed the database of his mission reports, Cortana learned that Spartan 117 had seen something similar on the Covenant vessel he had boarded in 2525. And again—the symbols almost looked like those on the rock he had extracted from Covenant forces on Sigma Octanus IV. ONI reports on the symbols found in the anomalous rock had defied cryptoanalysis.

Keyes’ order to plot a navigation route sparked a connection between this data; she accessed the alien symbols, and rather than compare them with alphabets or hieroglyphics, compared them to star formations.

There were some startling similarities—along with a number of differences. Cortana reanalyzed the symbols and accounted for thousands of years of stellar drift.

A tenth of a second later she had a close match on her charts—86.2 percent.

Interesting. Perhaps the markings in the rock recovered on Sigma Octanus IV were navigation symbols, albeit highly unusual and stylized ones—mathematical symbols as artistic and elegant as Chinese calligraphy.

What was there that the Covenant wanted so badly that they had launched a full offensive against Sigma Octanus IV? Whatever it was... Cortana was interested, too.

She compared the new NAV coordinates with her directives and was pleased with what she saw; the new course complied with the Cole Protocol. Good.

The Covenant frigates fired their plasma again. Seven bolts of fire streaked toward the Pillar of Autumn.

She dumped the coordinates to the NAV controls and stored the logic path that led to her deduction in her high-security buffer.

“Approaching saturation velocity,” she told Captain Keyes. “Powering Shaw-Fujikawa Translight generators. New course available.”

The Covenant frigates aligned with their outbound vector. They were going to try to follow the Pillar of Autumn through Slipspace. Damn.

The Shaw-Fujikawa Translight generators tore a hole in normal space. Light boiled around the Pillar of Autumn and she vanished.

Cortana had plenty of time to think on the journey. Most of the crew were frozen in cryo for the trip. Some of the engineers had elected to try to repair the main reactor. A futile gesture... but she lent them a few cycles to try to rebuild the convection inductor.

Had Dr. Halsey been on Reach when it fell to the Covenant? Cortana felt a pang of regret for her creator. Maybe she had gotten away. The probability was low... but the doctor was a survivor.

Cortana ran a self-diagnostic. Her Alpha-level commands were intact. She had not jeopardized her primary mission by following this vector. There were, unfortunately, sure to be Covenant ships when they arrived... wherever they arrived.

The Covenant had followed them into Slipstream space. And they had always been faster and more accurate than UNSC navigators in the elusive dimension.

Captain Keyes and the Master Chief would get their chance to disable and capture one of those vessels. Their “luck” had so far defied all probability and statistical variations. She hoped their defiance of the odds continued.

“Captain Keyes? Wake up, sir,” Cortana said. “We will enter normal space in three hours.”

Captain Keyes sat up in the cryo tube. He licked his lips and gagged. “I hate that stuff.”

“The inhalant surfactant is highly nutritious, sir. Please regurgitate and swallow the protein complex.”

Captain Keyes swung his legs out of the tube. He coughed and spat the mucus onto the deck. “You wouldn’t say that, Cortana, if you ever tasted this stuff. Ship status?”

“Reactor two has been fully repaired,” she replied. “Reactors one and three are inoperable. That gives us twenty percent power. Archer missile pods I and J rows serviceable. Autocannon ammunition at ten percent. Our two remaining Shiva warheads are intact.” She paused and double-checked the MAC gun. “Magnetic Accelerator Gun’s capacitors depolarized. We cannot fire the system, sir.”

“More good news,” he grumbled. “Continue.”

“Hull breaches patched—but the majority of decks eleven, twelve, and thirteen are destroyed—that includes the Spartans’ weapons locker.”

“Are there any infantry weapons left?” Keyes asked. “We may need to repel boarders.”

“Yes, Captain. A substantial number of standard Marine infantry weapons survived the engagement. Would you like an inventory?”

“Later. What about the crew?”

“All crew accounted for. Spartan 117 is in cryo sleep with the Marine and security personnel. Waking bridge officers and all essential personnel.”

“And the Covenant?”

“We’ll know in a moment if they were able to track us, sir.”

“Very well. I’ll be on the bridge in ten minutes.” He eased out of the tube. “I’m getting too damn old to be frozen and shot through space at light speed,” he muttered.

Cortana checked the status of the waking crew. There was a minor flutter in Lieutenant Dominique’s heart, which she corrected. Otherwise, status normal.

The Captain and crew assembled on the bridge. They waited.

“Five minutes until normal space, sir,” Cortana announced.

She knew they could see the countdown timer, but Cortana noticed that the crew responded well to her calm voice in stressful situations. Their reaction times generally improved by as much as 15 percent—give or take. Sometimes, human imperfection made calculations maddeningly imprecise.

She ran another check on all intact systems. The Pillar of Autumn had taken a tremendous beating at Reach. It was a wonder it was still in one piece.

“Entering normal space in thirty seconds,” she informed Captain Keyes.

“Shut down all systems, Cortana. I want us to be dark when we hit normal space. If the Covenant did follow us—maybe we can hide.”

“Aye, sir. Running dark.”

The view screen filed with green light; smears of stars came into focus. A purple-hued gas giant filled a third of the screen.

Captain Keyes said, “Fire thrusters to position us in orbit around the planet, Ensign Lovell.”

“Aye, sir,” he replied.

The Pillar of Autumn glided around the gravity well of the moon.

Cortana detected a radar echo ahead, an object hidden in the shadow.

As the ship rounded the dark side of the gas giant, the object came into full view. It was a ring-shaped structure... gigantic.

“Cortana,” Captain Keyes whispered. “What is that?”

Cortana noted a sudden spike in pulse and respiration among the bridge crew... particularly the Captain.

The object spun serenely in the heavens. The outer surface was gray metal, reflecting the brilliant starlight. From this distance, the surface of the object seemed to be engraved with deep, ornate geometric patterns.

“Could this be some kind of naturally occurring phenomenon?” Dominique asked.

“Unknown,” Cortana replied.

She activated the ship’s long-range detection gear. Cortana’s holo image frowned. The Pillar of Autumn’s scanning systems were fine for combat... but for this kind of analysis it was like using stone tools. She diverted processing power away from ancillary systems and channeled it into the task.

Figures scrolled across the sensor displays.

“The ring is ten thousand kilometers in diameter,” Cortana announced, “and twenty-two point three kilometers thick. Spectroscopic analysis is inconclusive, but patterns do not match any known Covenant materials, sir.”

She paused and aimed the long-range camera array at the ring. A moment later a close-up of the object snapped into focus.

Keyes let out a low whistle.

The inner surface was a mosaic of greens, blues, and browns—trackless desert; jungles; glaciers and vast oceans. Streaks of white clouds cast deep shadows upon the terrain. The ring rotated and brought a new feature into view—a tremendous hurricane forming over an unimaginably wide body of water.

Equations scrolled furiously across Cortana as she studied the ring. She checked and rechecked her numbers—the rotational speed of the object and its estimated mass. They didn’t quite add up. She ran through a series of passive and active scans... and found something.

“Captain,” Cortana said, “the object is clearly artificial. There’s a gravity field that controls the ring’s spin and keeps the atmosphere inside. At this range—and with this gear—I can’t say with one hundred percent certainty, but it appears that the ring has an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere and Earth-normal gravity.”

“If it’s artificial, who the hell built it... and what in God’s name is it?”

Cortana processed that question for a full three seconds, then finally answered: “I don’t know, sir.”

Captain Keyes took out his pipe, lit it, and puffed once. He examined the curls of smoke thoughtfully. “Then we’d better find out.”