Fall of Reach - Cortana Hack 3

She followed the order pathway—crashed into layers of counter code. The code started a trace on her signal.

She blocked it—and it restarted a trace of the origin of her block.

This was a very well-crafted piece of counter-intrusion software, far superior to the normal ONI slugcode. If nothing else, Cortana liked a challenge. She withdrew from the database and looked for an unguarded way into ONI Section Three files.

Cortana listened to the hum of coded traffic along the surface of ONI’s secure network. There was an unusual amount of packets today: queries and encrypted messages from ONI operatives. She peered into them and unraveled their secrets as they passed her. There were orders for ship movements and operatives outbound from Reach. This must be the new directive to send scouts into the periphery systems and find the Covenant. She saw several ships docked in Reach’s space docks—ONI stealth jobs made to look like private yachts. They had cute, innocuous names: the Applebee ,Circumference , and the Lark.

She spotted something she could use: Dr. Halsey had just entered her laboratory. She was at checkpoint three. The doctor waited as her voice and retina patterns were being scanned. Cortana intercepted and killed the signal. The verification system reset.

“Please rescan retina, Dr. Halsey,” the system requested, “and repeat today’s code phrase in a normal voice.”

Before Dr. Halsey could do this, Cortana sent her own files of Dr. Halsey’s retina and voice scans. She had long ago copied them and occasionally they came in handy. Section Three verification opened for Cortana. She had only a second before the doctor spoke and overrode the previous entry access.

Cortana, however, was a lightning strike in the system. She entered, searched, and found what she wanted. Every piece of data on SPARTAN 117 was copied to her personal directory within seventy milliseconds.