Halo Lighting System First Strike Games - Manual (Page 291)

ERIC NYLUND 287
"I just wanted to see who was left on board and alive." He looked
past the open doors to the Officers' Club. "Lieutenant Haverson
will join us shortly. He's investigating the site of Corporal
Lock-lear's... accident."
A holographic projector pad upon the bar flickered to life, and
Cortana's slender body appeared. Chunks of broken crystal on
the pad refracted the light and distorted her image so she ap-
peared half melted and cast prismed arcs of light onto the walls.
Sergeant Johnson stepped over to the bar and swept the pad
clean.
"Thank you, Sergeant," Cortana said, looking over her re-sorted
figure.
"My pleasure," he replied with a grin.
Cortana faced the Admiral. "Sir," she said, "you'll be happy to
hear that I'm detecting no signals, residual radiation, or any
transient contacts ... which is precisely what you would expect
from a normal Slipspace journey."
Admiral Whitcomb nodded, sighed, and eased into one of the
leather-backed chairs at the table's head. "Well, that's one small
blessing."
"And here's evidence that Doctor Halsey's crystal was indeed
destroyed," Lieutenant Haverson said as he entered the room. He
paused to seal the door behind him.
Haverson sat next to the Admiral and set a small plastic bag
flat on the table. "I found Locklear exactly where Cortana said
he would be: B-Deck, the medical storage room. Overloaded
electronics at the site are consistent with a high-energy radiation
burst. . . as are the burns on the Corporal's body."
He grimaced and added, "If it means anything, his death was
quick. And these"—he tapped the plastic bag on the table—"are
crystalline fragments that I found at the site. At first glance they
appear to be a match to the shard found on Reach." He shook his
head. "But what I found isn't sufficient mass to account for the
entire crystal. So unless it was atomized and left no trace, a fact
inconsistent with the presence of these larger pieces, then the
rest of that crystal has to be somewhere else."
Cortana tapped her foot, and one of her eyebrows arched. "If
the radiation burst detected before our jump correlates with the
destruction of Doctor Halsey's crystal," she said, "then there is