Cyberpunk: Spartan Walker

Good, Case replied, still checking her calculations on the monitor.

The best route to the source of the signal has been designed and uploaded to the computer of the Covenant transport ship, she told them. She then opened a private communications channel and said to the Master Chief: Good luck, Master Chief. Be careful.

I've always been careful, he replied, without a hint of wavering in his tone.

Cortana didn't bother to respond to his nonsense. The Chief's luck was unbelievable. He had survived from desperate situations so many times that she was no longer interested in calculating his chances of survival.

The Master Chief and his team left the bridge and headed to the berthing bay.

She followed them as they flew the Covenant Phantom troop carrier out of its docking bay, into Reach's upper atmosphere, and then straight toward the surface of Reach.

For the sake of concealment, they only dispatched a Phantom troop transport and a Banshee fighter. The latter was piloted by Tommy, because he said he was going to the Warhammer base alone and brought a chip containing Ellie's core matrix. I don't understand what he wants to do.

She thought about it for a long time after that quarrel, well, it only lasted two seconds. She had to admit that although many tasks could not be put on the table, someone had to do them. She realized she was being harsh on Tommy, but she still felt unhappy with his attitude.

The Phantom troop carrier is piloted by Polaski. The Master Chief plans to lead a team of hell paratroopers to another signal source to carry out rescue operations. The female soldier who has a close relationship with Tommy is also among them - yes, she has already Just discovered this.

She had no intention of peeking into Tommy's private life, but Rebecca had no intention of covering it up at all and always followed him carelessly.

Not only that, Cortana admits that Polaski is an excellent pilot, but she is just a person who likes to act illogically and completely loses her mind when her emotions are impulsive.

Cortana wished she could go down there too - both out of duty to protect the gang and because she had many questions she wanted answers to. Why are the Covenant forces so interested in Mount Menachit? What's left in the MI base? Cortana pulled back her thoughts. There's enough going on here.

Several tasks distracted her attention. She kept the jump generator on in case she needed to jump out of the system in a hurry. She also continued to optimize the parameters required for the magnetic field of the plasma launcher in preparation for a war.

She identified their exact locations from the one hundred and twenty-two communiqués transmitted simultaneously by every Covenant ship in the system, and made connections between the Covenant religious allusions that peppered the communiques, continuing to build a language Translation subroutine.

She spreads the rest of her processing power between tracking the millions of floating objects around her, looking for survival pods, cryopods, anything else that might harbor human survivors. Their Covenant troop transport flew out of detection range and disappeared into a part of the ground that was once a highland forest - what was now a charred sky and earth, the glint of glass blinding.

Cortana began to create a high-resolution map of the surface—especially the source of the mysterious signal to which the Master Chief was heading and Mount Menachit.

She made a quick calculation and estimated that these tasks would take longer than usual, so she had to free up some space in her overloaded memory chip. Cortana began to compress the data she had obtained from the Halo again, briefly considering dumping it all into the Covenant's systems, but she quickly dismissed this idea. She must protect this data, no matter the cost.

Cortana felt her mind visibly dull. She is doing too much work at the same time, which is very dangerous, and she does not have enough reaction speed.

heresy!

The words of the Covenant thundered through her communication line, and she was stunned. The program stopped running for three computing cycles-this period of time was just enough for her to lose control of the inter-ship communication software package. .

The Covenant's AI took the opportunity to send a narrow-beam communications pulse to the nearest cruiser.

The message was brief for a Covenant communiqué: a report that the flagship had been defiled by unclean heretics and a call for every ship in the system to unite to clean up the filth. After being compressed and meaninglessly encrypted, and then transmitted through the carrier wave, there was also a record of Cortana's mathematical calculations on the jump fault space. With this calculation, she could jump to the gas giant - the critical star. distance.

Cortana cut the channel—but it was too late. The signal had been sent, and she couldn't get the pulse back from space. She blocks all communication and memory pathways. You can't escape with wings! she yelled through gritted teeth.

Heresy-heresy-heresy-heresy-heresy-heresy-heresy-heresy-heresy-heresy-heresy-heresy-heresy-heresy-heresy-

That's enough, she said. You have to understand, she gradually narrowed the memory channels, dismembering the Covenant's artificial intelligence one coding layer at a time. This system belongs to me now.

Although a functioning Covenant artificial intelligence is extremely valuable to the three military clearing departments, this artificial intelligence of the Covenant army is too dangerous and hinders their return home. She cannot allow it to continue to exist.

You can do whatever you want, it screamed. I'm finally going to give my paradise the final, final, complete perfection - in a non-replicated state.

The odd remark piqued Cortana's curiosity, but she had to put it aside—forever. She dismantled the AI, erasing its programming but recording the Covenant's coding structure in the process. It was similar to dissection, and she did it quickly, accurately, and ruthlessly—until she saw the core code of this artificial intelligence. She stopped.

She almost recognized the code, the coding pattern was extremely familiar, but she had no time to think about the reason. She made a note of it and then cleared it. The Covenant's artificial intelligence was completely destroyed, and parts of its program were safely disposed of and stored separately for future research. That is, of course, if Cortana has a future.

All this happened within tens of microseconds. It was only then that the communications officer on the bridge, Lieutenant Dominic, shouted in shock: Oh my God! Captain! A message was sent to the surrounding Covenants for no reason. Battleship, we are exposed!