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"These cootten long before even the first functional dumb AI went online," Dr Halsey told hi on y for an obsolete human"
"Antiquated? Obsolete? Really?" She smiled and said, "Let's test your hypothesis, Araqiel I supervised the creation of the teeneration s 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 inal question," she said, ignoring hi" 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 beaht ht 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 , 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 i 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 se 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-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: coins; their childhood vaccinations; their parents; their extensive injuries and treat; even the experiility, 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 seeram He had followed the rew up, succuenital 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 replace They had never per- fected flash cloning for an entire huo because the Earth govern into a hundred civil wars
They had desperately needed the SPARTAN program
And of course, they had done it siitimacy 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, Kaled 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 alphanuer 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 er 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 er 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 Caust 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 sy 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 wasshe 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 wason a treerous secret "Just his style to play with fire and get us all burned"
Additional files detailed the procureeological surveys The new maps looked like a network of veins and arteries
"What a to the coordinates of these secondary maps, Doc- tor, this facility was built over an old titanium mineand 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 lasses and cleaned theh "Noif it was as simple as that, ould 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 noe should concentrate--"