Read Online Halo: First Strike by Eric S. Nylund - Free Book Online

climbing the long path from
    Athena Station to the city.
     
    Showalter was just under six feet tall, and had green eyes
    above broad Slavic cheekbones, a wide mouth and pointed chin.  Her
    fine brown hair was cut short in a style Gonzales later discovered
    was common to many long-term Halo residents, for convenience in
    micro-gravity environments.  Gonzales knew that as director of a
    major SenTrax operation, she had to be wily and tough.
     
    Horn    was a tight-lipped, sallow-skinned man in his
    fifties, skinny and anxious, with iron-gray hair pulled tight
    against his skull in a kind of bun.  The man spoke some variety of
    New YorkeseGonzales didn't know which, but he could feel the
    harsh nasal tones beneath his skin.
     
    The warning gong sounded, then the elevator's vault-like
    doors slid closed with a great hiss, locking in more than a
    hundred people for the trip from axis to rim.  Above their heads
    the wall screen read SOLAR FLARE CONDITION GREEN.  The elevator
    dropped into one of the city's spokes like a shell into the barrel
    of a gun, down a tube a quarter of a mile long and into a well of
    increasing gravity.
     
    Against one wall, a group of sams were clustered around a
    charge-point, black leads extended to the aluminum post.  They
    stood silent and motionlesstalking among themselves? Gonzales
    wondered.
     
    Horn saw where Gonzales was looking and said, "We'd like to
    assign each of you a sam for your stay in Halo."
     
    "Really?" Gonzales said.
     
    Diana said, "No thank you."  Quickly.
     
    Right, Gonzales thought.  No point in putting ourselves under
    surveillance.  He said, "I'll pass, too."
     
    Horn paused, looking a bit miffed, as if he wanted to argue. 
    He said, "Very well.  Then be sure you always wear the
    communication and i.d. module you were given when you came off the
    shuttle."  He held up his own wrist to show the small bracelet, a
    closed loop of plain silver that bulged just slightly with the
    electronics inside.  "If you have a problem, just yell and help
    will be on the way.  Or if you have a question, just state it. 
    Someone will answerAleph or one of its communications demons."
     
    Gonzales asked, "Yeah, they told us that.  Are we monitored
    at all times?"
     
    Showalter said, "Yes.  In fact, there's a real-time hologram
    in Operations that shows everyone's movements, not just visitors
    but residents as well."
     
    "Seems an invasion of privacy," Gonzales said.
     
    Horn said, "We don't look at it that way.  If you can't
    accept such simple necessities, Halo will be most uncomfortable
    for you."  He smiled.  "Not that you're likely to be here for
    long."
     
    Gonzales said, "I can't imagine people putting up with total
    surveillance for long, frankly."
     
    Horn said, "It seems to us a small price to pay for an
    unpolluted world shared to the benefit of all."
     
    Showalter looked from Horn to Gonzales.  She said, "We are a
    far island in a hostile place.  We cannot afford some of your
    illusions:  the independence of the self, unconstrained free will
     those sorts of things."
     
    A shutter retracted from a window ten meters square as the
    elevator entered the living ring's inner space.  Far below lay
    sun-lit valleys thick-planted with trees and shrubs and flowers,
    broken by one barren space where grayish slurries squirted out of
    huge pipe ends to flow across scarred metal.
     
    "Our city," Showalter said.
    #
     
    Eight people were gathered around a u-shaped table of beige
    silica foam.  Showalter sat at the center of the u, with Horn to
    her immediate right, Gonzales and Diana beyond him.  To her left
    were a youngish woman, then two men in late middle age, one white,
    one black.
     
    At the open end of the u, the table fronted a screen that
    covered its entire wall, floor to ceiling.  The screen had been
    lit when Gonzales and Diana arrived, showing another room where an
    indeterminate number of people sat on couches, chairs, or slouched
    on