Halo: Contact Harvest Read Online Free PDF Page A

highest per capita agricultural productivity rate of any colony. Harvest’s foodstuffs now fed the populations of no less than six other worlds—a fact that was even more impressive given the planet’s size. With an equatorial diameter of slightly more than four thousand kilometers, Harvest was about a third the size of Earth.
Though she was loath to admit it, the colony’s produce and her part in its distribution was a source of great pride.
Now, however, all Sif felt was disappointment. The results of her survey were in, and it turned out Horn of Plenty ’s accident had been her fault. The freighter’s propulsion pod was months overdue for service. It was something the Madrigal shipping-operations AI should have flagged before transiting the pod to Harvest. But Sif had missed it too, and now the breakdown was her responsibility.
Sif decided to double-check all the pods. By bringing even more clusters online, she still managed to meet her stated deadline. At exactly 0742, Harvest’s shipping operations began their slow crawl back to full speed. For a moment, Sif relaxed—focused on the steady pull of the containers as they ascended her strands.
Deep inside her core she recalled a similar sensation. The woman whose mind was a model for Sif’s core logic had enjoyed the rhythmic tug of a hairbrush—the sensual invigoration of a twice-daily grooming. Memories such as this were an expected by-product of a smart AI’s construction; when you scanned a human’s brain, strong chemical impressions persisted. Sif appreciated the kinesthetic pleasure of the containers’ pull. But her algorithms were quick to stifle her enjoyment.
Sif initialized a correspondence sub-routine, selected the template for an official DCS loss report, and composed a detailed mea culpa for her supervisors. She added a copy of Horn of Plenty ’s abortive distress signal, noting a corrupted sector of data at the end of the file. Sif ran a quick checksum and decided the bad sector was just garbled bytes of damaged circuits. Then she flashed the report to the NAV computer of a freighter Wholesale Price, which was just about to slip for Reach.
As quickly as possible, Sif “forgot” about Horn of Plenty —compressed the maintenance survey results and loss report and tucked them deep inside one of her storage arrays. No sense stewing, her algorithms reminded her, when it would be months before DCS sent word of any disciplinary action.
Besides, Sif knew that unless she wanted to spend all morning fielding more of Mack’s flirtatious offers of assistance, she needed to concentrate on her cargo.

When Wholesale Price drew within two-thousand kilometers of its Safe Slipspace Entry Point (SSEP)—coordinates at which its Shaw-Fujikawa drive could initiate a rupture without dragging anything but the freighter into the Slipstream—its NAV computer confirmed that Sif’s report was safely cached to flash memory and sent the AI its departure confirmation.
But as the NAV computer ran through its final checklists, hastening to shut down all but its most essential systems, it received a priority COM.

<\\> HARVEST.AO.AI.MACK >> DCS.LIC#WP-000614236
<\ Hey, Partner! Hold up!
> ACKNOWLEDGED.
<\ Mind if I drop something in the ’ol mail-bag?
> NEGATIVE.

While maser bursts worked fine over relatively short distances, the best way to communicate between colony worlds was to send messages via shipboard memory. Traveling at trans-light speed, freighters such as Wholesale Price were the twenty-sixth-century equivalent of the pony express.
In fact, the freighter’s NAV computer already carried a variety of correspondence—from love letters to legal documents—all guaranteed safe and secure delivery by the DCS. So there was nothing unusual about Mack’s request.

<\ Appreciate it. DCS has been on me for weeks about the Q4 projections. Soy might come in a little light. But wheat is going to be—
> * WARNING! PRIVACY BREACH! [DCS.REG#A-16523.14.82] *
<\ Just adding