"2 - The Flood" - читать интересную книгу автора (Halo ebooks txt)

since the Academy and had never heard the man sound so grim.
“Look,” Shephard said, “I need someone I can depend on. Like it or not,
that’s you, pal. You’ve cross-checked on cryo systems.”
Sam sighed. “Months ago . . . but yes.”
“I’m sending a feed to your terminal, Sam,” Shephard continued. “It’ll
answer some of your questions anyway. Dump it to a portable ’pad, grab
your gear and get down here.”
“Roger,” Sam said. He stood, shrugged into his uniform tunic, and stepped
over to his terminal. He activated the computer and waited for the upload
from Shephard.
As he waited, his eyes locked on a small two-dee photograph taped to the
edge of the screen. Sam brushed his fingers against the photo. The pretty
young woman frozen in the picture smiled back at him.
The terminal chimed as the feed from Shephard appeared in Sam’s message
queue. “Receiving the feed, Chief,” he called out to the intercom pickup.
He opened the file. A frown creased his tired features as a new message
scrolled across his screen.
>FILE ENCRYPTED/EYES ONLY/MARCUS, SAMUEL
N./SN:18827318209-M.
>DECRYPTION KEY: [PERSONALIZED: “ELLEN’S ANNIVERSARY”]
He glanced back at the picture of his wife. He hadn’t seen Ellen in almost
three years—since his last shore leave on Earth, in fact. He didn’t know
anyone on active duty who’d been able to see their loved ones for years. The
war simply didn’t allow for it.
Sam’s frown deepened. UNSC personnel generally avoided talking about the
people back home. The war had been going badly for so long that morale
was rock-bottom. Thinking about the home front only made things worse.
The fact that Thom had personalized the security encoding was unusual
enough; reminding Sam of his wife in the process was completely out of
character for Chief Shephard. Someone was being security-conscious to the
point of paranoia.
He punched in a series of numbers—the date of his wedding—and enabled
the decryption suite. In seconds, the screen filled with schematics and tech
readouts. His practiced eye scanned the file—and adrenaline suddenly
spiked through his fatigue like a bolt of lightning.
“Christ,” he said, his voice suddenly hoarse. “Thom, is this what . . . who
Ithink it is?”
“Damn right. Get down to Cryo Two on the double, Sam. We’ve got an
important package to thaw out—and we drop back into real space soon.”
“On my way,” he said. He killed the intercom connection, his exhaustion
forgotten.
Sam quickly dumped the tech file to his portable compad and deleted the
original from his computer. He strode toward the door to his cabin, then
stopped. He snatched Ellen’s picture from the workstation—almost as an
afterthought—and shoved it into his pocket.
He sprinted for the lift. If the Captain wanted the inhabitant of Cryo Two
revived, it meant that Keyes believed that the situation was about to go from
bad to worse . . . or it already had.
Unlike vessels designed by humans—in which the command area was
almost always located toward the ship’s bow—Covenant ships were