Cyberpunk: Spartan Walker

Chapter 173 Battle of Critical Star ([-])
Truth and Harmony jumped out from the lightward side of the critical star almost as soon as it entered the slip space. Anyone can see the dark green opening in the slip space from space.

The battleship then entered the orbit of the planet and began to gain speed using its gravity well.The atmosphere rubbed against the energy shield of the spacecraft, and silvery-white light and orange-red sparks complemented each other.

After completing the acceleration with the help of the planet's gravity, in order to buy time for their boarding operation, the Truth and Harmony took advantage of its speed advantage and the energy shield around the cruiser to begin circling the Covenant warship.

At this time, she seemed to feel that there was something patrolling in the system, and that thing seemed to be using a tiny probe to explore Ellie's hiding place.After probing for a while, it retracted.

The remaining cruiser was hovering a hundred kilometers to starboard of the flagship.Strange-looking "U"-shaped undead troop carriers were launched from the berthing bay on its side, swarming towards the flagship.Herein lies the trouble.

After reporting the situation on the Truth and Harmony to Tommy, she felt as if something else was wandering through the system.A Covenant AI?There have never been reports of Covenant AI before.The possibility piqued her interest.

"And the system of this battleship," she finally replied, "is different from what I thought."

She scanned every schematic diagram stored in the spacecraft system, then quickly escaped from the surveillance of the spacecraft's three thousand surveillance systems, picked the shortest path from the current position to the bridge, and stored it in the stolen third-level system In cache.She had some of her blocks performing multiple tasks at once, then continued analyzing the ship's structure and subsystems.

"Go forward 30 meters along this road and turn left."

Some time passed in Ellie's world, and Tommy asked worriedly: "Is there any danger?"

She was delighted by his concern, but her pride prevented her from expressing it plainly.

"No, there is no danger. It's just that everything is so different from what I thought." She replied.

Inside the flagship, she found twelve teams of elite hunting warriors sweeping through the corridors.She disrupted the ship's tracking system, creating holographic phantoms of Tommy, the Master Chief, and their team, and sent them traveling along a tunnel leading to the bow of the ship, where the UNSC's command and control center was usually located.Maybe this way she could play tricks on those elite warriors and make them chase them for a long time without finding anything.

She uploaded the enemy's coordinates to Tommy's and Master Chief's heads-up displays.

At this time, a provocative signal is fed back through the data stream.

Ellie locked onto the feedback source, listened carefully, recognized the signal as a non-random pattern, and cut off contact with it.Whatever else was in the system, she didn't have time to play hide and seek with it.

She eventually had to admit that she was powerless against a possible enemy AI.The damaged logical core severely affected her actions.

After it was repaired once by Covenant engineers, she never mentioned the seriousness of the matter to Tommy again.Ellie was so confident in her own intelligence that she secretly didn't want to admit that she had been slowed down by these injuries; but it would have been foolish to continue to function as usual as if nothing had changed.She sends a jam signal to disrupt the "other agent's" attempts to contact her.

As part of her consciousness examined the ship's construction, she discovered that there was another path to the bridge.madness.She should have noticed it right away, but the channel was classified as an emergency system on the chart.It is a small corridor with a set of escape pods at the end. This line shares an exit with a control tunnel.

"Tommy, there's another way to the bridge," she told him over the comm channel.

"Roger. Just a moment." There was a burst of strafing and the explosion of frag grenades on the communication channel, and then silence. "Keep going, Ellie."

"The route is being uploaded." She said, "However, this passage is very narrow. You may not be able to pass through it wearing that heavy armor. It is recommended that you divide your troops into two groups and advance together. This will greatly increase the chance of reaching the bridge."

"Good idea." Tommy said, "Polaski and Rebecca, you follow the original path with me; Sergeant Johnson, you take the others to the path Ellie gave."

She continued to maintain contact with all UNSC personnel on the flagship and tracked the relative locations of several Covenant groups.She copied some more phantom signals to confuse the enemy.

Ellie was receiving increasingly larger bandwidths of communications between the aircraft carrier and the cruiser.Report an intruder - call for reinforcements - a warning sent back to home planet.They mention "holy ones" several times.She was amused that the information was being encrypted to prevent interception.She was full of suspicion and felt the need to investigate what it was that the Covenant troops considered so important that they wanted to hide it.

As she deciphered these and other information that could be referenced back and forth, she sorted them into the communication channel's information storage.At this time, she observed a spike of energy flashing on the sensor on the side of the flagship.

She turned the camera and saw the cruiser on the starboard side flying into the distance. It turned its bow, its engine sparkling, and the surrounding darkness glowed with an iron-blue light.The Covenant ship accelerated forward, tearing through the darkness, and finally disappeared into slip space.

Ellie records their departure vectors for future reference. This may provide clues to the location of their home base.

The red flash produced by the exchange of fire between the Truth and Harmony and three other cruisers illuminated the flagship's port side camera. Captain Keyes used his speed advantage to enter the Halo wreckage area first, and the Covenant cruisers followed closely behind the ship. As they entered, the plasma beams they fired shot out one after another and hit the wreckage, causing fire to scatter in all directions.The Truth and Harmony dodged left and right among the metal ruins, blasting out a plasma beam from time to time, hitting the Covenant battleship.

It seemed that the Truth and Harmony was not yet at a disadvantage, so Ellie forced herself to focus on the information she had just received.

It was puzzling that the Covenant forces would request reinforcements.Their soldiers are extremely proud and almost never back down from a fight.They don't ask for reinforcements. Not for themselves.Well, although this spaceship is equipped like a battleship, the personnel on board do not look like they are here to fight.It only brought a few hundred combatants, but a large group of engineers.

(End of this chapter)