Cyberpunk: Spartan Walker

The Wushang Justice reappeared in space, and its position was just right.

The jump had to be centimeter-level, and, as much as she hated to admit it, success depended largely on luck.

One question that often haunted her in the past was what would happen if a ship jumped into regular space so close to a planet or other large object—in this case, another ship?

The Supreme Justice flickered in the debris pile in the high-altitude orbit of Reach, and the Covenant forces gathered the broken spacecraft into this space junkyard. However, there was no extremely powerful explosion when the flagship struck the wreckage.

Maybe the fault space jump can prevent this kind of thing from happening. Just like water flowing through stones in a river, the jumping spacecraft can also automatically dodge. Maybe they borrowed the good luck of the Master Chief.

Hundreds of wreckage of ships, both human and Covenant, tumbled lifelessly around her. Their rolling trajectory showed that they had just been pushed away by the Justice. If she had more time, she would design a set of experiments using sweepers to test her hypotheses about displacement and luck.

But neither she nor the Master Chief had much time.

They were still minutes away from rendezvous - Cortana had to use every millisecond to do what she had to do if they were to leave the Epsilon system alive.

Cortana scoured the abandoned ships for a suitable replacement. There are not many Covenant ships that are even remotely complete. If the UNSC were determined to take out an alien ship during the Battle of Reach, they would undoubtedly be forced to destroy it. There were few suitable substitutes left to carry out her and Colonel Keyes' plans.

She turned her attention to the numerous wreckage of UNSC ships. The Covenant fleet does not have to completely destroy the human ship to eliminate it as a tactical threat in the battle - firing a single plasma beam can penetrate multiple decks, kill most personnel, and completely render the ship incapable of combat.

She had no idea how many fallen warriors of humanity were floating beside her in this space, how many men and women had died generously in battle.

Her sensors picked up the outline of a UNSC light craft. There were several corvettes with their hulls sliced ​​open, and nuclear reactors were leaking radioactive coolant. Although they were better suited to achieve her goals, they were too damaged. She didn't find a single ship with a functioning fusion reactor.

She marked the locations of aircraft carriers and heavy cruisers and excluded them from the search range. The reason is simple, they are too large. She was willing to sacrifice agility and speed but she couldn't afford to spend an hour powering up her engines to get off orbit.

On the left were destroyers and frigates, fourteen of which she found and marked among the wreckage. There is actually not much difference between destroyers and frigates in essence, except that the destroyer has one and a half meters thick A-type titanium alloy armor, while the lighter frigate has only 60 centimeters of armor.

There are two available replacements: the destroyer USS Tharsis and the frigate USS Gettysburg, both of which have their fusion reactors intact.

The Gettysburg was destroyed by an energy beam, and its internal devices were damaged from bow to stern—the bridge and life support systems were destroyed—but its power room, even in The magnetic accelerator cannon on the chassis still functions normally. Even better: the hard points on the upper hull remain intact - meaning its hull can accommodate additional weapons and other equipment.

She sent images of the Gettysburg and related information to the display screen in front of Captain Keyes, Captain, I think it is the best choice.

Colonel Keyes nodded, Well done, Cortana, thank you. He looked at the communications officer, Lieutenant Dominic, please notify the technicians on the ship and prepare to complete the docking work.

Yes, sir, Lieutenant Dominic replied.

Cortana put some power into the Justice's engines, and it slowly flew toward the Gettysburg.

Meanwhile, she paused to listen to Covenant communications across the system. The content of the conversation increased eight times from before, with many references to the heresies on the planet and the holy light that was now in danger.

good! That means the Master Chief is doing what he does best: causing extreme chaos among his enemies. More importantly, the Justice has never been found floating among hundreds of shipwrecks.

When she was still a kilometer away from the Gettysburg, she shut down the ship's engines. With the slight momentum generated by the thrusters, she edged in and flipped the Justice until its top was parallel with the top of the Gettysburg.

She clicked on the Gettysburg's telemetry system and received a weak handshake in response. Cortana entered the override code—it was immediately accepted—and entered the Gettysburg's navigation computer.

There is no other computer information on the ship. The captain of the Gettysburg has destroyed all the navigation system and artificial intelligence in accordance with the Cole Agreement. Cortana occupies these empty systems.

Only a husk remained of the Gettysburg, with all propellers disabled. It can no longer fly under its own power, but its heart is still beating - the fusion reactor on the ship can still reach 67% of the total power after operation. so perfect.

The Immortal Justice landed gently on top of the Gettysburg—possibly the first non-malicious close encounter between a human and Covenant vessel in the history of the universe.

All modern UNSC ships are designed with hard points on their backs and bellies to prevent them from being able to fly under their own power if they suffer severe damage. In theory, another UNSC ship could dock with its hardpoint, latch onto it, and tow it away.

The Covenant's flagship has a similar series of hard points on top, where it can be docked if the ship is too large to fly into its berthing bay.

However, these two types of hardpoints are not compatible.

Cortana fixed this. She activated the seven unmanned maintenance boats on the Gettysburg and gave orders to the Covenant engineers and naval technicians on the Immortal Justice to ensure that the two ships could dock smoothly and adjust them. power transmission lines.

The efficiency of the Covenant engineers was amazingly high. She dared to say that even fifteen human technicians were far inferior to one Covenant engineer. Sometimes she couldn't help but wonder: Since the Engineers had such powerful technical capabilities - something no other race had ever displayed - why didn't they stand on their own and instead take orders from the Covenant?