"These commands were invented, refined, and then discarded and forgotten long before even the first functional dumb AI went online," Dr. Halsey told him. "I learned them when I was fifteen, working on my second doctoral thesis."

"An antiquated input methodology for an obsolete human."

"Antiquated? Obsolete? Really?" She smiled and said, "Let's test your hypothesis, Araqiel. I supervised the creation of the template for every third-generation smart AI on this planet. I know everything there is to know about you, including your bor- derline disregard for human life." She paused and tapped her chin. "Maybe that's why you and Ackerson always got along so well."

"Colonel Ackerson is a great man. He's—"

"To answer your original question," she said, ignoring him, "this is the nexus of your being." She tapped the display. "Your code directory, the center through which all impulses in your mind flow. And this"—she quickly typed in another command— "is the code that activates your personal fail-safe. It generates a pulse beam of high-frequency UV light in your Riemann cycling-thought matrix, clearing your high thought functions. It will effectively erase you."

"No!" Araqiel said and reared back. Flames roared about his crystalline skull. "Don't—"

Dr. Halsey punched the ENTER key.

Araqiel vanished.

Dr. Halsey sighed and closed the display. "A waste of memory crystal."

She wondered if the AI had been bluffing. Maybe not; ONI Section Three gave its AIs broad discretionary powers for deal- ing with security breaches. Still... she was happy not to have found out how far Araqiel would have gone.

"Kalmiya, please retrieve the data file and show me the con- tents of Colonel Ackerson's directory."

"Working, Doctor. There's some minor encryption to unravel.

It should only take a moment." She paused and then asked, "Doctor Halsey, the UV fail-safe in Araqiel's Riemann matrix...

are they planted in every smart AI? In me?"

"They are not implanted in every AI," Dr. Halsey said, carefully controlling her voice.

Kalmiya would undoubtedly stress-analyze her vocal pat- terns, so she told her the truth. It was always a game of chess with smart AIs—move and countermove. It was a constant chal- lenge to earn and keep their respect. That's why she preferred their company to humans—they were so deliciously complex.

Yes, she told her the truth... just not the whole truth.

"Here they are, Doctor."

Holographic file and folder icons filled the space over her desk.

"Filter by proper names," Dr. Halsey said. "Let's not waste our time with Ackerson's petty blackmails. Also remove any files dated before the SPARTAN-IIs went online, and any not ac- cessed more than a dozen times. I want to see what black ops topped his list."

The folders and files winked away, and only two folders re- mained floating over Dr. Halsey's desk: s-ni and KING UNDER THE MOUNTAIN. She tapped on the first one and it opened, revealing hundreds of separate files. Dr. Halsey examined them—there were medical files on each of her Spartans: complete records from their preindoctrinated origins; their childhood vaccinations; their parents; their extensive injuries and treatments during their train- ing; even the experimental procedures used to enhance their strength, agility, and mental resiliency.

"What the hell was he up to?" she muttered. She felt her pulse quicken as she scoured his records. There were DNA profiles on each Spartan, and there were extensive files on the old flash clone techniques that ONI had used to replace the originals. Ackerson seemed especially interested in this aspect of the program. He had followed the medical records of the replacements as they grew up, succumbed to congenital diseases, and inevitably died.

He even had the bodies retrieved and autopsies performed.

Dr. Halsey's stomach soured. It was her fault, in part, that these replacement children had died so young. They had never per- fected flash cloning for an entire human. They had done it any- way thirty years ago because the Earth government was on the verge of falling apart... collapsing into a hundred civil wars.

They had desperately needed the SPARTAN program.

And of course, they had done it simply because they could.

No matter the legitimacy of her reasons, she knew she had killed these children as sure as if she had shot them dead.

There was one last file in the S-III folder.

As Dr. Halsey tapped it open, Kalmiya said, "That is only a fragment. It had been erased, but I managed to reconstruct it from trace ionization in the memory crystal."

Dr. Halsey examined its contents. There was only CPOMZ fol- lowed by a 512-character alphanumeric string. "This longer por- tion is a star chart reference," she whispered.

"Yes, Doctor, but it's not a destination to any location in UNSC-controlled space."

What the hell had Ackerson been up to? "No good at all," she murmured and ran her finger over the first word in the file: CPOMZ.

"I'll have to deal with this later," she said. She downloaded the files to a nearby data pad. "Let's see what else the good Colonel was up to." She opened the folder marked KING UNDER THE MOUNTAIN.

There were only three files.

The first was the original construction blueprints of this base; it appeared on her desk. Dr. Halsey noted that this holographic representation of the base was much larger than she had been led to believe. While her security clearance was the highest possible for a civilian, she apparently had seen only a third of the facility she had worked in for the last decade.

Dr. Halsey tapped open the second file. It was the transcripts of the debriefing at Camp Hathcock, August 12,2552. That was the inquiry of John's destruction of the city on Cote d'Azur and the alien artifact the Covenant had tried to procure there. Curious.

A third file was an analysis of the symbols John had captured from the alien artifact. According to Ackerson's notes it, too, was a partial star map. Dr. Halsey returned to the stellar chart reference in the Spartans' files.

No good. This location had nothing to do with that reference.

The stellar reference in the alien artifact was ... she did the math in her head— "I'll be God damned," she muttered.

She pulled up star charts and NAV records for confirmation, and checked her math one last time.

No question: It was the Epsilon Eridani system.

Here.

This was more than a curiosity, now. Ackerson had been sit- ting on a tremendous secret—a very dangerous secret. "Just his style to play with fire and get us all burned."

Additional files detailed the procurement of digging equip- ment, and a new set of blueprints and geological surveys. The new maps looked like a network of veins and arteries.

"What am I looking at, Kalmiya?"

"According to the coordinates of these secondary maps, Doc- tor, this facility was built over an old titanium mine ... and be- fore that this site was surveyed as an extinct volcano. These are designated as a series of lava tubes."

"I wonder if they used the natural passages to help build the mines, and later this facility?" Dr. Halsey removed her glasses and cleaned them as she thought this through. "No ... if it was as simple as that, why would Ackerson be interested? And why then classify this data as level X-ray? How does this connect to the alien artifact on Cote d'Azur?"

"I can't say," Kalmiya replied, "but perhaps there's a back door you can use to escape."

"Yes, yes." Dr. Halsey downloaded all of Ackerson's secret files to her data pad. "I'll consider that later. Right now we should concentrate—"

"Detecting increased seismic activity, Doctor."

Dr. Halsey froze. She felt it more than saw it—a series of faint, rhythmic thumps, like thunder in the distance.

Dust rained from the ceiling tiles and scattered the light for the holographic system into a dazzling starburst.

"They're coming," Dr. Halsey whispered. She opened a COM channel to the Spartans. "Get back to the lab ASAP. I might have away out!"

She stumbled as a powerful blast rocked the chamber. There was a shriek of stressed metal, and the main support beam over- head shifted, fell, and crashed onto her desk.

The lights went dead.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

0901 hours, August 30,2552 (Military Calendar)\Epsilon Eridani system, ONI underground facility, planet Reach.

The secure storage doors whispered open, and overhead fluo- rescent lights strobed on. Fred saw motion—but it was only his own reflection in the burnished-mirror finish of the chamber's stainless-steel walls. Will stepped inside and looked up, then glanced back down the corridor.

The room was a three-by-five-meter vault with steel walls, floor, and ceiling. Their footfalls were muffled as they entered, so the floor had to be at least a quarter meter thick. Along the right and left walls stood secure floor-to-ceiling lockers, and two metal crates sat along the far wall. Every surface was spotless, and every seam had been precision-milled to prevent explosives or acids from penetrating.

"One moment, please," Kalmiya told them. "I'm attempting to access the locks now. Please stand by."

Will stood at the doorway and watched their backs. It didn't make Fred feel any more at ease. The abandoned ONI base was somehow more intimidating than facing the Covenant invasion force overhead. He had walked down these corridors a dozen times during his training on Reach. This base had always been full of people; now, empty, it drove the point home that the Cove- nant were winning. First the Outer Colonies had been crushed; now Reach. How long before humanity was forced to retreat all the way back to Earth? And after that... what? There would be no other choice but victory or extinction.

Enough. Such musings didn't help him achieve his immediate objective. He'd leave the long-range strategies to Generals and Admirals. It was time to concentrate on what he did best.

The walls hummed as thick metal bolts inside the lockers re- tracted, the sound of heavy oiled steel sliding over steel. With a final thump, the sound ceased.

Kalmiya said, "Lockers open and safeties disabled, Spartans.

Help yourselves."

"Secure the outer door, please," Fred told her.

The door to the hallway eased shut and locked, and Will moved to Fred's side. Each Spartan opened one of the wall lock- ers, standing to the side in case there was some leftover booby trap within that Kalmiya had failed to disable.

Fred peered inside and saw a rack of handguns. They weren't the standard-issue HE pistols; these had oversized barrels— easily 30 percent larger and longer—and they had grips of self-molding plastasteel. He picked one up and hefted it—its balance was barrel-heavy, to be expected from an unloaded pistol. He found three boxes of clips at the bottom of the locker, opened one, and took out a clip. Whatever this new handgun shot, it was high caliber, slugs the size of his thumb. He slid the clip into the gun, and it secured with a satisfying click.

Now it was perfectly balanced, far better than the standard-issue sidearm.

He secured the weapon and turned to see what Will had found.

Will examined a plastic-wrapped rifle. He removed the rifle from the locker, ripped off its sheathing, and shouldered it. He nodded with satisfaction.

Unlike the MA5B, this rifle had a longer barrel and stock, with a cutdown muzzle shroud. A scope was mounted on an op- tics railing along the top of the rifle. Will hefted a clip and in- serted it into the receiver.

He shouldered the rifle again and peered through the scope.

"Auto zoom, nice."

Will and Fred then traded and inspected the new weapons.

Fred liked the feel of this new rifle, but wondered how much punch it had—enough, he hoped, to make the trade-off of having fewer rounds in the clip worth it.

They filled two sacks with the new pistols, rifles, and ammu- nition, then moved to the footlockers and lifted the lids.

Inside the first locker were satchel charges. Fred grabbed three and looped them over his neck. "I think we can find a use for these."

Will knelt next to the second footlocker. Within were plastic boxes marked MJOLNIR MARK V followed by a long list of serial numbers. "This must be what Doctor Halsey wanted," he said.

There was a flutter in the floor—which got Fred's full atten- tion, because a "flutter" in a solid steel floor meant trouble.

The COM channel opened, and Dr. Halsey's voice crackled with static: "Get back to the lab ASAP. I might have a way out.

Quickly!"

The vault room flexed, and thunder rumbled through the walls.

"Detonations," Will said. "They're coming."

"Secure those boxes," Fred ordered. He raced to the closed doors. "Open," he shouted to Kalmiya and waited as the door slowly eased apart. He scanned up and down the corridor and then ran back toward the lab.

When they got to the medical wing the lights were dead, and Fred saw Kelly's helmet lights cut through the velvet-rich, dust-filled darkness. She had Dr. Halsey draped over her shoulder. Blood ran from the doctor's nostrils.

"Her office collapsed," Kelly told them. "Support beam missed her by a centimeter."

Dr. Halsey looked up and whispered, "I'm fine. Really." She pushed away from Kelly, stood, and teetered in place.

Fred scooped her up and set her on the examination table.

"With all due respect, ma'am, you're not."

Another detonation rippled through the earth—this one stronger than the previous explosion. Fissures snaked through the con- crete walls.

Vinh and Isaac bounded into the room. "Enemy contacts at extreme range," Vinh reported.

"Down," Dr. Halsey said, and she held a palm-sized data pad for Fred to see. It had a map on its display . . . but not of this base. "We have to go lower."

Fred wondered if Dr. Halsey was delirious.

"Down the elevator shaft in Section Sigma," she explained.

"We'll seal it behind us. We can't let them follow."

"Kelly, take point," Fred ordered. He grabbed two of the new magnum pistols, loaded them, and then tossed them to Kelly, along with three extra clips. "I guess you get to test these."