HALO 5 - HUNT the TRUTH [SEASON 2 EPISODE 04]

*updated drawing (still no color) New http://imgur.com/gallery/5uWsKWr Old http://imgur.com/gallery/IzDudiZ It's a bit late but this is my rendition of the event on Biko. I titled it the truth.

So episode 12 is a two-parter? Like one in the morning and one in the evening?

[url=http://huntthetruth.tumblr.com/post/121300936273/benjamin-giraud-entry-0384][u][b]BENJAMIN_GIRAUD_ENTRY_0384[/b][/u][/url] [b]From Manikata to Site #1774:[/b] [b]The Silicate Industry and the Profits of Tragedy on the Outskirts[/b] When an alien race launches a catastrophic global attack on a human planet, melting everything on the surface into a chemical soup, most of us would look at that and see a horrifying tragedy. But BXR Mining Corporation saw a business opportunity. As they annihilated world after world in the Outer Colonies with blistering plasma bombardments, the Covenant was doing the silicate industry a solid—literally liquidating every resource curated by society. Cities that belonged to millions had now been reduced to concentrated surface deposits that belonged to no one. In fact, as part of the rebuilding effort, governments actually offered subsidies to anyone who would remove these building blocks of civilization, already repackaged in convenient silicate glass form. BXR and the rest of the cartel got paid to claim mother lodes of raw materials, and then they sold them at bargain rates. Ever since, silicates had been quietly booming. Politicians claimed that these open-pit operations made up a crucial first step in the rebuilding process; but virtually none of the resources mined were used to rebuild anything in the Outer Colonies. Market prices sent everything inward, for industries in the Inner Colonies to make every product imaginable. The prices were so low that no one seemed to mind that a disturbing percentage of those products contained the partial remains of millions of melted people. BXR just called those silicates “organically enriched”— not coincidentally richer in valuable zeolites - and I guess when you have ungodly amounts of money, you can call the commercial sale of genocide victims whatever you want and an expensive PR campaign to infer that the dead had all simply evaporated. A partial, but cynical contortion of the messier truth. I arrived on BXR1774 looking to dig up the truth of the Master Chief; but I unearthed something else along the way: the wholly foreign cultures that accrete in isolated mining settlements. Bliss wasn’t a planet anymore; it was an industrial excavation site—not legally BXR’s property, but they effectively controlled everything here. And within the confines of the operations perimeter, it’s an oddly bustling world: a complex of bars and casinos and commissaries, street vendors with kiosks on every corner selling shockingly expensive goods. You wouldn’t imagine a tiny, gold-plated COM-Pad worth upwards of 6,000 credits to be a hot commodity in a mining settlement; but it was. Everywhere I looked, I saw roughnecks walking around in filthy coveralls, swiping away on their high-end devices. It seemed as though the miners lived a hard, weird life. Mostly loners, living in barracks, doing back-breaking work 100 hours a week and making a lot of money. People, as it turns out, are much more durable in silicate dust storms than mechanized mining equipment, at least until the constant exposure catches up with them. Apparently, this is how they spent their money—living in this noisy, grimy, depressing place where above the sounds of street commerce and machines and wind, the only sound seemed to come from the countless cawing crows that survived off of the settlement’s trash. Further out, it was all quarries, spanning into the distance, gouged a quarter-mile deep into the crust, massive drills and earth-movers growling way down at the bottom. From the road above, the workers looked like ants. Beyond the periphery though, I saw the real glassed planet: a wavy, bumpy, chaotic sea of brittle, black glass, cresting in the strangest shapes, crunching and cracking underfoot, jaggedly rough, then suddenly smooth. The landscape resembled a bizarro, surrealist’s nightmare, completely abstract until a familiar shape would materialize from the chaos—skeletons of buildings, pieces of vehicles, the most unexpected pieces of civilization. I guess everything melts a little differently. I didn’t realize how striking BXR’s appropriation of land was until it dawned on me that no one working here ever referenced what this place used to be. Everyone who remembered that life was either dead or long gone. Still, out here, some sections had been cleared away—unlike the extreme gouging of the mining operations though, this work had been done with care. I’d heard about that—people going back to their home, clearing away the glass. Even if they couldn’t stay or didn’t want to, they’d spent all that time, trying to reclaim the small plot of land that had been taken from them. From the meaningless weirdness, reminders of what had been seemed to emerge and recede everywhere: crude memorials to victims carved into the glass, curious remnants of lives, lived and lost, reaching from the sludge, frozen in time. The occasional shrine popped up, usually shredded by the storms, but in some places, the sentiments had survived. I repeatedly had to remind myself that half-a-million people used to live in this city. It was their home. It was called Manikata — but to BXR employees, this was simply Site #1774. Whether you could put the history out of your mind or not though, it was impossible not to see the destruction—it was everywhere. I began to wonder what would happen if the Covenant’s attack on New Mombasa six years ago had claimed all of Earth. Or Mars even. What if the Covenant had decimated one of the worlds where UEG Senators and the media moguls had their vacation homes? I’d imagine BXR and the rest of the industry would tread over that wreckage with a little more reverence. We’ll never know though, because no one would ever have let that happen. That reality had to be infuriating for the people who had carved out a life in this remote region of space. While the patriots of Earth often dismissed the grievances of the Outer Colonists as the whining of entitled children, it occurred to me these people had actually shown remarkable restraint. They’d had more than enough reason to stage a bloody revolt years ago. Perhaps if the Inner Colonists could walk these glass troughs, they wouldn’t be so outraged by the idea of a fight for independence in the Outskirts. Civil conflict would be horrible, but in a way, it would just be the bill finally coming due. If they could see what I had seen, they would know that so many out here had gone through so much pain. This was the consequence of powerful forces—ONI, BXR, the media—operating in the shadows. Whether for money or power, too many of them had exploited hard-working people, courageous people who stood tall and held themselves accountable—trying to do the right thing, trying to make their corner of space a little bit better. But greed is a pig’s mouth with a black hole for a stomach; and if you let it, it will devour everything that makes us good. As my freighter cleared the orbital space around Bliss, leaving the Outskirts behind for the comforts of the Inner Colonies, I wondered how many innocent people’s remains were spread throughout the cubic mile of silicates in the cargo holds below. How many people who had tried to make their corner of space a little bit better? How many parts per million of “organically enriched” silicates was low enough, that after tallying all those profits, BXR and all the rest of us, could justify that human cost? I guess I used to be a pragmatist—a human version of the A.I. that steered ONI’s policy—believing that there was always a cost-benefit calculation. But I don’t think I believe that anymore. Because those bits of silica that still hung over that broken planet, trapped in the atmosphere of a world that had been erased, hurt like hell when they hit you in the face. And the insulation that a contractor had squashed into the floor of my apartment, purchased at a bargain rate—a discount made possible by the loss of so many lives in the Outer Colonies—was filled with those same little bits of glass. Now that I’d seen where they came from, the fact that some of those silicates were organically enriched was still scratching at my skin. The price of our freedom and safety had been steep. ONI had buried that truth under the floorboards, but now they’d torn a few of them up to make a point. But I wasn’t scared anymore. How many people had our government kept in the dark? How many had been rendered powerless or ground up for profit? How many sacrificed people were too many? As far as I was concerned, the answer was one.

By the way,when does Hunt the Truth take place?

Wide spread data corruption was said to be going on out in deep space, as a part of those anomalies; it would appear that it, whatever it was, just hit Ben's datapad. I smell Flood.

This week's episode was super intense! At the end Ben feels like he's a real bad ass now. I wonder since Ferro gave him that datapad if she already has the files he downloaded? Next week along with E3 can't get here soon enough!

We're sure next week is the finale?

I posted this in another thread, but it fits here as well. Tbh I feel like the extragalactic threat in Gero's story in Hunt The Truth is the Flood probably comandeered what was left of the SoF and used it to get somewhere, or crashed somewhere and are now a threat. It would make sense that they could've survived because there has been another Gravemind or two, and it hypothetically would've been in control of them until he was destroyed again. Idk, just a theory but since its so "under the wraps" and not widespread to the general public, it must be a pretty big problem if its in Deep Space and the SoF made a random jump. Slipspace jumps can get mistaken for anomalies, and furthermore, the Gravemind would have retained knowledge on the Logic Plague/AI corruption. Just a theory, but still. EDIT: haven't listened to Episode 11 yet but thats for later tonight when I'm bored af.

ok wild theory but it nagging issue that Giraud being played and the last quip from fero at the end I think she's part of the Insurrection sect that has been wanting to find a way to inspire people to take up arms and what better way to do that by exposing one of the most hated/secretive parts of the collective government being hung out to dry. Then ONI's reaction literally playing straight into the insurrection hands by shutting down communications between colonies cause hysteria within the colonies and the footage with the masterchief I wonder if it completely credible as does it show who fired their gun first I more inclined to the fact that the guards were all part of Insurrection and what better way to sow deeds of mistrust then showing footage of Mc gunning down humans in uniform.

New blog post on Sapien Sunrise.

[quote][url=http://huntthetruth.tumblr.com/]HUNT the TRUTH[/url] [quote]Benjamin Giraud Journalist. War photographer. For decades, I’ve served the galaxy as an investigative reporter and war photographer. Working primarily in public radio, I’ve covered human interest stories on Earth and in the Inner and Outer Colonies. I’ve also contracted for UNSC, covering governmental and military affairs. I was at New Mombasa when the Master Chief first appeared to combat the Covenant attack.[/quote] [url=http://40.media.tumblr.com/502457532d4a05731c129c9da999fefa/tumblr_nlvx20WRmm1uokpa1o1_1280.jpg]The Assignment[/url] [url=https://youtu.be/tHQiYPiNVEE]All Hail[/url] [url=https://youtu.be/9rd8FWUCCZk]The Cost[/url] [url=http://41.media.tumblr.com/705ce877ec7e6976e6516d4ed6690d88/tumblr_nm34hedVyz1uokpa1o1_1280.png]The Death Record[/url] [url=http://40.media.tumblr.com/9e45ae6d98b082666c030c92b33f9e30/tumblr_nm7815HzJY1uokpa1o1_1280.jpg]Master Propaganda[/url] [url=http://41.media.tumblr.com/dbccf6e0cb8a5a410484856e25c5bd62/tumblr_nmd1f7hjy41uokpa1o1_1280.jpg]Katrina's Diary 1[/url] [url=http://40.media.tumblr.com/633c863f1ed5293dcdebb9dbe142d698/tumblr_nmd1f7hjy41uokpa1o2_1280.jpg]Katrina's Diary 2[/url] [url=http://40.media.tumblr.com/12f34e5d7295eddaa733709902ce14e4/tumblr_nmin57q0v31uokpa1o1_1280.jpg]Glassed Planets[/url] [url=http://41.media.tumblr.com/762d8792334d139654b3128f00b7d305/tumblr_nmq0aw8qqF1uokpa1o1_1280.png]Greetings from Castellaneta[/url] [url=http://41.media.tumblr.com/5466df29a241622fd6fe4c91424d7fc4/tumblr_nn2npeSoYi1uokpa1o1_1280.jpg]Word on the Street[/url] [url=http://41.media.tumblr.com/c8b95eda7eaa1413ada043f5693d9502/tumblr_nnfmcruGyT1uokpa1o1_1280.jpg]CANCEL/CONFIRM[/url] [url=http://40.media.tumblr.com/490936afa182d5bd165c35a4d5a79db5/tumblr_nnn2xgEUz51uokpa1o1_1280.png]Notice of Violation[/url] [url=http://41.media.tumblr.com/db322851dac4d67086c5c27f33457c09/tumblr_nnsl3u5KS81uokpa1o1_1280.jpg]Major Breakthrough[/url] [url=http://36.media.tumblr.com/38d964c9adb2e27c0bf7070a05fd9aeb/tumblr_no5js8GEsk1uokpa1o1_1280.jpg]False Advertising[/url] [url=http://40.media.tumblr.com/a3d2455489046f01e5511590d6b826e4/tumblr_nocv99oWxY1uokpa1o1_1280.jpg]Contact[/url] [url=http://41.media.tumblr.com/9eb44007384010fe3c9b392a828b4480/tumblr_noii1dp1411uokpa1o1_1280.jpg]Peace Talks[/url] [url=http://41.media.tumblr.com/63e9d41e9ae216c7c98dfad196733c6a/tumblr_nornz5FjOw1uokpa1o1_1280.jpg]Fallen Heroes[/url] [url=http://41.media.tumblr.com/9598b9c8555434416f593decb6551125/tumblr_novgbifl2q1uokpa1o1_1280.jpg]Panic in the Streets[/url] [url=http://40.media.tumblr.com/fc13cd6ee1dd349b259695238b2d82b5/tumblr_np2mz2FhOE1uokpa1o1_r1_1280.png]The Twins[/url] [url=http://36.media.tumblr.com/773d2470c9d432dcdaa444de66865237/tumblr_np8fdvS6fu1uokpa1o1_1280.jpg]Xenophobia[/url] [url=https://soundcloud.com/huntthetruth/episode-00-primer][u][b]EPISODE 00 - PRIMER[/b][/u][/url] [url=https://soundcloud.com/huntthetruth/episode-01-a-hairline-fracture][u][b]EPISODE 01 - A HAIRLINE FRACTURE[/b][/u][/url] [url=https://soundcloud.com/huntthetruth/episode-02-bad-records][u][b]EPISODE 02 - BAD RECORDS[/b][/u][/url] [url=https://soundcloud.com/huntthetruth/episode-03-critical-condition][u][b]EPISODE 03 - CRITICAL CONDITION[/b][/u][/url] [url=https://soundcloud.com/huntthetruth/episode-04-crossing-the-black][u][b]EPISODE 04 - CROSSING THE BLACK[/b][/u][/url] [url=https://soundcloud.com/huntthetruth/episode-05-out-of-time][u][b]EPISODE 05 - OUT OF TIME[/b][/u][/url] [url=https://soundcloud.com/huntthetruth/episode-06-boxing-story][u][b]EPISODE 06 - BOXING STORY[/b][/u][/url] [url=https://soundcloud.com/huntthetruth/episode-07-whos-listening][u][b]EPISODE 07 - WHO'S LISTENING[/b][/u][/url] [url=https://soundcloud.com/huntthetruth/episode-08-drip-drip-drip][u][b]EPISODE 08 - DRIP, DRIP, DRIP[/b][/u][/url] [url=https://soundcloud.com/huntthetruth/episode-09-phantoms][u][b]EPISODE 09 - PHANTOMS[/b][/u][/url] [url=https://soundcloud.com/huntthetruth/episode-10-gag-order][u][b]EPISODE 10 - GAG ORDER[/b][/u][/url] [u][b]EPISODE 11 [June 7][/b][/u] [u][b]EPISODE 12 [June 14][/b][/u][/quote] Yay!!

WHY IS DEL RIO BACK!??