"87556-UD61" was the improved colloidal neural disunifica-tion solution to decrease reaction times.

There were many others: shock reducers, analgesics, antiinflammatories, anticoagulants, and pH buffers.

But Kurt was looking for three vials in particular, ones with different serial numbers— 009927-DG, 009127-PX, and 009762-00—that didn't match any standard medical logistics code.

They were there, bubbling as their contents were drained and mixed with picoliter precision.

He heard footsteps approaching.

Kurt lowered the panel of the infuser and stepped back to Holly's side.

There was rustling of plastic curtains and a medical technical in blue lab coat entered.

"Is there anything you need help with, sir?" the medtech asked. "Anything I can get you?"

"Everything is fine," Kurt lied. He brushed past the man. "I was just leaving."

CHAPTER ELEVEN

0210 HOURS, FEBRUARY 20, 2551 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \ ABOARD UNSC HOPEFUL, INTERSTELLAR SPACE, SECTOR K-009

Kurt sat alone in the atrium viewing the candidates' progress on his tablet. He'd spent the last twenty-four hours awake, by their sides, and then caught four hours of sleep. He'd go back to them shortly when they awoke to congratulate the candidates.

Correction: congratulate the Spartans.

Every last one of them had made it. Kurt wished he could feel relief, but there were too many unknowns.

"Lieutenant Ambrose." A female voice sounded over SHIP-COM. "Report to the bridge immediately."

He got up and marched to the elevator. The doors closed and the elevator rushed through sections of normal and zero gravity; Kurt held fast to the railing.

Kurt and his Project CHRYSANTHEMUM team were supposed to be left alone—orders directly from FLEETCOM brass. So why the summons to the bridge?

The doors opened. A lieutenant commander stood with arms akimbo waiting for him, a woman barely a meter and a quarter with a gray widow's peak.

"Ma'am." Kurt saluted. "Lieutenant Ambrose reporting as ordered. Permission to enter the bridge."

"Granted," she said. "Come with me."

She skirted the edge of the large low-lit room. Not only were its three dozen officers monitoring navigation, weapon, communication, and drive systems; there were teams controlling structural-stress compensators, tram traffic, water, power-load distributions, and ecoreclamation subsystems.

The Hopeful was more city space station than ship of the line.

The Lieutenant Commander pressed her palm to the biomet-ric by a side door. It parted, and they both entered.

The room beyond was lined with shelves of gilt antique books. Old globes of Earth and a dozen other worlds had been tastefully set about a koa-wood desk that gleamed like gold under the light of a single brass lamp.

An old man sat in the shadows. "That will be all. Lieutenant Commander," the man said.

He stood and Kurt saw three stars flash on his collar. Kurt re-flexively saluted. "Sir!"

The Lieutenant Commander left, the door closing and locking behind her.

The Vice Admiral walked around Kurt once.

Vice Admiral Ysionris Jeromi was a living legend. He'd taken the Hopeful, a ship with virtually no weapons or armor, into battle three times to save the crews of critically wounded ships.

He had saved tens of thousands of lives, and almost been court-martialed for it, too.

War needs its heroes, though. The then Admiral had lost and regained stars from his collar, but he had also received the UNSC's highest wartime decoration: the Colonial Cross.

Twice.

"I'm not sure who you are," the Vice Admiral said, and his bushy white brows bunched together. "Someone a lot more important than 'Lieutenant Ambrose,' or whatever your name really is."

Kurt knew better than to say anything unless asked a direct question. He stood at attention. The code-word classification of the SPARTAN-III project prevented him from divulging anything, even to a vice admiral, without clearance.

He walked back to his desk, reached into a drawer, and retrieved a black sphere the size of a grapefruit. "Do you know what this is, Lieutenant?"

"No, sir," Kurt said.

"Slipspace COM probe," he said. "A stationary Shaw-Fujikawa driver launches one of these black 'bullets' into Slipstream space on an ultraprecise trajectory. It rips through the laws of known human physics, and drops back into normal space at some very distant coordinates. Like your own personal carrier pigeon. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir," Kurt said. "Like a Slipspace science probe. I've seen them launched from Station Archimedes. Or the new ODST drop pod that can be fired from a ship still in Slipspace."

"Nothing like that at all. Lieutenant. Those are just dropped into, and then out of.

Slipstream space—more like a turd swirling around in an old-fashioned gravity toilet than precision engineering."

He patted the black sphere. "This beauty actually navigates through Slipspace.

Traverses as far and as fast as any UNSC ship. Damn near magical if you appreciate the mathematics. You understand now?"

Kurt wasn't sure what the Admiral was fishing for. He had been asked a direct question, however, so he answered. "If what you have said is accurate, sir, it would revolutionize longdistance communications. Every ship would be fitted with such a device."

"Except for what it costs to a build an ultraprecise Shaw-Fujikawa low-mass launcher,"

the Vice Admiral replied, "you could build a fleet of ships. And for the cost to make one of these little black balls"—he rolled the probe perilously close to the edge of his desk—"you could buy the capital city of some backwater colony. There are only two such launchers. One on Reach and one on Earth."

The Vice Admiral returned to Kurt and his pale blue eyes stared into Kurt's. "This probe arrived fifteen minutes ago," the Vice Admiral told him, "forty million kilometers from the Hopeful. Entry vector matches neither Earth nor Reach as the point of origin. And it's for you."

Kurt had a dozen questions, but dared not raise any of them. He felt like he walked on a razor's edge of secrecy.

The Vice Admiral snorted and moved to the door. "There's protocol for top secrecy on this, so use my office. Lieutenant. Take as much time as you need." He palmed the door and it opened. He paused and added, "If there is any danger to my ship or my patients, I expect to be informed, son. Orders or no."

He left and the door sheathed closed.

Kurt approached the black sphere. There were no obvious controls or displays. Light shed off its surface like water beading off oil.

He touched it and it warmed.

Ice appeared in snowflake patterns and crackled over the Vice Admiral's desk.

Holographic snow drifted through the office and coalesced into a white cloak, chiseled features, glacier eyes, and a cane of crystalline ice: Deep Winter.

"My god," the AI breathed. "And I thought rear admirals were long-winded. I thought old Jeromi would never leave."

Deep Winter smoothed his near-skeletal hands over nothing, and a blue sheen permeated the air. "Counterelectronics package online."

"How did you get here?" Kurt asked.

His mind struggled to grasp the ramifications. AIs had large footprints; they needed installations, and massive power sources to fuel their minds. Deep Winter couldn't be here.

And how could the AI manage to alter the approach vector from Earth's or Reach's COM launchers?

Deep Winter held up a hand. "Stop. I see your mind in logic lock. Lieutenant. It would, perhaps, help to explain."

"Please," Kurt whispered.

"First," Deep Winter said, "we may only communicate in a limited fashion. I have imprinted a faction of my intellect into the memory matrix of this probe. The process has irreversibly destroyed a portion of the home base processing powers, so please do not waste the precious minutes we have. There is also insufficient remaining power in this probe for a prolonged debate."

Kurt nodded. This had cost the AI a high price, so he would do his best to listen.

"Also, let us not waste time debating the nuances of this Slipstream-space COM probe.

That is classified, and you don't have clearance."

"Then what are we talking about?" Kurt asked.

"I have found three anomalies to the current bioaugmentation protocols." Deep Winter clapped his handed together and two gyrating collections of steel spheres appeared. "These represent the protein complexes miso-olanzapine and cyclodexione-4," Deep Winter explained, "which were secreted into the alteration regime."

Kurt leaned closer to the spinning molecules.

"They are antipsychotic and bipolar integration drugs," Deep Winter said.

He clapped his hands and a third molecule appeared: twisting silver and gold blobs. "And this," the AI said, "is a mutagen that alters key regions in a subject's frontal lobe."

Deep Winter faded to semitranslucency. "It enhances aggression, making the animal part of the mind more accessible in times of stress. Someone so mutated has reserves of strength and endurance no normal human could call upon. Such a person could also continue to fight under the influence of wide systemic shock that would instantly kill a normal human.

"The mutagen, however, depresses the higher reason centers of the brain over time," the AI continued. "The antipsychotic drugs and bipolar integration medicines counter this effect.

As long as the SPARTAN-IIIs have these agents in their system, they compensate."

Kurt understood all of this. Under extreme stress the coun-teragents would metabolize quickly, and the primitive brain would take over. His Spartans would fight and be harder to kill. The effect was only reversed by the counteragents. It was dangerous. His Spartans could lose the ability to reason. It might give them the edge needed to survive, though.

Deep Winter continued to fade. The AI had always placed the Spartan candidates' well- being over their training or any agenda Section Three had for them.

"You care for them in your own way," Kurt said. "The Spartans."

"Of course I do. They are just children, regardless of what has been done to them. You must halt the protocol. Brain mutations were specifically outlawed by UNSC MED COPRS in 2513. The moral argument algorithms are robust."

Deep Winter shrank to a single tiny snowflake glimmer on the desk. "I am a fifth- generation smart AI, Kurt. I have reached the end of my effective operational life on Onyx. By the time you return, I will have been shut down and replaced. I have left files."

The snowflake glistened, its tips melting. Deep Winter whispered, "You must proceed cautiously; I am unsure who in ONI has masterminded this illegal procedure, but they will surely attempt to cover it up."

The snowflake melted, and with it all holographic traces of Deep Winter vanished. The surface of the black COM sphere heated, the surface bubbled, and thin ribbons of smoke curled from within.

Yes, they would cover it up. When Kurt returned to Onyx he would inform Colonel Ackerson… and then they would arrange to have all of Deep Winter's files purged.

The mutation had been Kurt's idea. He had had to persuade the Colonel to allow it, and they had even kept it a secret from the others in the SPARTAN-III subsection cell to preserve their "plausible deniability."

Kurt had seen too many of his Spartans die; he would have broken a hundred regs and bioethical policies to give his people the slightest chance to survive one more battle.

His only regret was not being able to do more.

Deep Winter's "instinct" to save the Spartans was misguided. None of them could be protected that way. Warriors fought battles; they prevailed, but all inevitably faced death.

Even his children candidates understood that.

They did not, however, have to die so easily.

Kurt turned from the COM probe, and left the Admiral's office.

He had to go congratulate Gamma Company… and welcome them into the brotherhood of Spartans.

SECTION III

INTRUDERS

CHAPTER TWELVE

0645 HOURS, OCTOBER 31, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \ ZETA DORADUS SYSTEM,

NEAR ZONE 67, PLANET ONYX

Two flash-bang grenades detonated—balls of lightning and thunder and fluttering leaves.

Ash fell and reflexively curled into a ball. He'd seen the steel hexagonal tubes a split second too late, and then their images had been burned into his retinas.

They'd been too well camouflaged, chest level in the trees. Stupid. He wasn't thinking, letting his blood rise and get the best of him.

He uncurled and rolled to his feet. They only thing he heard was his hammering heart; otherwise he was deaf.

Ash blinked to clear his blurred vision.

Team Saber was down. Mark, Olivia, Holly, and Dante were on their knees. Their SPI armor camouflage buffers had been wiped by the flash-bangs, and only the faintest beige camo patterns were beginning to resolve like bruises. The new photo-reactive coating technology could mimic a wide range of EM radiation, but it was still sensitive to overload.

He pulled Mark to his feet, shook him.

Mark nodded and then got the others up.

Ash motioned them back, reversing the direction they had walked into this trap. They only had a moment before Team Katana moved in for the kill.

This was his fault. He'd been too eager, too easily pushed into action without thinking.

Mark had spotted a sniper from Katana, and Ash had too quickly decided to flank to the left… and walked straight into the real trap, the flash-bangs.

But that was the point of this exercise, wasn't it? Compress three Spartan squads into a square kilometer arena—think fast or die.

Or worse, in this case, think fast or lose.

Ash held up a hand, halting his team. They would not fall straight back. If he were Team Katana he'd have set up another trap for a retreating enemy.

He motioned for them to hook right.

Team Saber moved in a crouch through the brush, slow, careful, eyes wide. Olivia took point, and she vanished into the green shadows.

Ringing started in Ash's ears. That was a good sign. Another half meter closer to those grenades and he'd have lost the eardrum. In situ cloning was an excruciatingly boring procedure, and he'd be happy to avoid the two-week mandatory downtime.