Lord Admiral Hood wanted to sleep. For the past few decades he had wanted to do nothing but sleep. When the Insurrection had started, when the Covenant had invaded, when Halo had been discovered, and with the Flood had been unearthed, all of it had filled him with exhaustion and weariness. Exhaustion and weariness he felt he never had enough time to recover from. When the Covenant had fallen into civil war and the Flood had been defeated, Hood thought that maybe, finally, he would be able to rest. To retire to a quiet colony in the middle of nowhere and live out the rest of his years in peace. He was not so fortunate.
The truth of the SPARTAN II project had been leaked. Hood wasn't sure how it had happened, but every last dirty little detail about it was out for everyone to see. Everything from the fact that only 75 from the original 150 proposed candidates had been "recruited", to the fact that only 33 of the SPARTAN IIs made it through the project unscathed, to the details of the failed attempt to cause a second generation of SPARTAN IIs.
Those with strong anti-UEG sentiment had jumped on that last one in particular. One of the kidnappings for the second generation of SPARTAN IIs had been foiled, the father of the girl that had been targeted killing the kidnapper. The father, James James, had become a propaganda star overnight. The fact that he was now dead and unable to disagree with his portrayal didn't hurt.
Hood had seen countless propaganda posters over the last few days. The "THEY LOOK AT YOUR CHILDREN AND SEE WEAPONS" one had stuck in his head, depicting a shady man in a trenchcoat stalking a group of playing school children, the UNSC eagle symbol on his back. Another strong one had been the "THEY WANT CHILDREN TO BE THEIR OPPRESSORS," poster that had depicted a crying child being forced to press a gun against the head of a helpless old man, the same man in the trench coat forcing the boy's hand. But the one that had taken the surviving, rebuilt and newly colonized Outer Colonies by storm were the ones starring James James. A handsome man with a smoking gun in one hand and a sleeping baby in the other. The UNSC man in a trenchcoat dead at his feet. "HE DIDN'T LET THEM TAKE HIS CHILD, DON'T LET THEM TAKE YOURS." James James being dead and unable to comment had done nothing to discourage this particular poster. If anything, it inflamed it.
Hood sighed. Outrage like this was everywhere in the Outer Colonies, and had even started to bleed into the Inner Colonies. The outrage couldn't be classified as simply being Insurrectionist, but if you looked where they anger was hottest and loudest, you tended to find those sympathetic to the rebels. Many of his support staff had briefed him on a new wave of recruitment that had been launched in an attempt to start a second wave of rebellion. The one piece of good news was that it was nowhere as bad as the years before the Human-Covenant War, there were still signs that there were still quite a few colonists who interested in the idea of rebelling.
He supposed it was only to be expected. The Human-Covenant War had proven the need for the UEG and the UNSC, that there was a massive threat out there that required military strength to face, strength that only the UNSC could provide. Quite a few strongholds of Insurrectionists had gone quiet upon realizing this, either helping the UNSC or silently going back to civilian life. Some had tried to embrace the Covenant and had been killed. The Insurrection would never again be the giant that had threatened to tear the UEG apart. But it could still rise again to cause a few more hundreds of thousands of deaths, if not more.
The source of the tension between the Inner and Outer Colonies had never truly vanished. Just been ignored for awhile. The revelation of the truth behind the SPARTAN II Program had been enough to bring it back into the center of attention. And so, Hood had to respond to it. He wasn't willing to let history repeat itself. So a public announcement had been made that he would be forming a committee to look into the development of the SPARTAN II Program.
That had quelled down some of the outrage, but what had been removed had been replaced with an iron clad focus. The people wanted results, and they weren't very patient. The problem was that patience was very much needed when diving into the bowels of ONI. That organization was a tangled mess of lies, traps, and backstabbing, and that was for those who worked within it. Of all the four sections of ONI, each were at each other's throat. He wasn't even sure how that worked when, for all intents and purposes, Section 2 was merely a propaganda center, but had been assured that they could be just as brutal as the other sections.
As a result, he had spent two weeks putting together an investigation team he knew he could trust. Agents within ONI, retired from ONI, or from one of the UNSC's many, now defunct, alternate intelligence agencies. He was keeping this one close to the chest, so close even he could barely see his own cards. Communications between him and his investigators were on a only if absolutely necessary basis. One would think that, as the chairman of the UNSC Security Council, he would be immune to any political ploys and maneuvers on ONI's behalf. If half the rumors he had heard about Admiral Parangosky were true, he was taking no chances. Even now, he wasn't certain that he was being careful enough. He was a commander, not a spy, and he was relying on his chosen investigators to steer him clear.
"Penny for your thoughts Admiral?" Hood blinked and rubbed his eyes, pulling himself out of his thoughts. He was sitting in an interrogation room, on the far end of a metal table. On the other side of it was, arguably, the woman who was the root source of all his recent grief. Dr. Catherine Halsey.
"Just thinking about where exactly I'm supposed to start to untangle this web of tales, lies, and half truths," he said bluntly. He wasn't sure how he felt about Halsey. He was fairly certain that made him unique, nearly everyone else seemed to have made up their mind about her. Either defending her actions or measuring her neck for a noose. He just couldn't make up his mind, and he doubted he ever truly would. "I did show you the official statement Parangosky made on the SPARTAN II Project?"
"One of the few things they let me do in here is watch the news," Halsey said wryly. "And yes, I heard her testimony. The one where she acted overwhelmed and outraged, saying that I had crossed all sorts of lines she never gave me authorization for. That she would never approve such terrible acts." Halsey laughed and shook her head.
"She's ONI. The serpent's head. Lying is in her blood. Credit where credit's due. I almost believed her for a second. I'm surprised she didn't have a hankie on standby for a fake cry. The poor little flash clones that died. I can't help but wonder where this marvelous sympathy and soft spot for children was when Ackerson was putting together glorified suicide units. I'd call them SPARTANs, but they never earned the name."
She looked up, a strained smile on her face. "Though, ironically, some of them could have. Imagine what we could have done with those children if ONI had taken their time with them and hadn't just been grabbing every last one they could find. But no, easier to throw them all at a single target and call it a victory when they all die." She shook her head in disbelief. "Nearly 300 SPARTANs for a refinery. Ten IIs could have done the job. Five if they they had too. Only one would die, and that's in the very worse case scenario where everything goes wrong. Yes, I abducted those children, yes I put them through hell. I will never deny that and I probably shouldn't be forgiven for it. But I trained those children to survive. Ackerson trained them to die in a useful way. Parangosky signed off on both our projects. And she acts like mine was the one that crossed more moral lines."
Halsey snorted. "I've looked over the initial proposals for the III project." She was talking to herself now. "Ackerson said, make them better with new technology, make more of them, and make them cheaper. Well, he certainly got more for them at a lower price, but he seemed to struggle with the 'better' part, which rather defeats the purpose of SPARTANs. That SPI armor? It was a joke. I had created a far better suit of armor years beforehand. The main benefit to SPI, aside from it's semi-decent camouflage, was that it was cheaper." She rolled her eyes. "The fate of humanity hung in the balance, and apparently we had to worry about how much money we were spending."
"The SPARTAN IIs cost as much as a navy battle group, true," she continued. "They also did far more than any single battle group ever did. Operation FIRST STRIKE. 500 Covenant vessels. An armada that could have easily overwhelmed Earth. Five SPARTAN IIs with minimal support and only a single ship were able to destroy nearly all of them. Only one of them died. Compare and contrast that with the disaster on Pegasi Delta, and you tell me which one was a more worthwhile investment. But why talk about the IIs as a whole, when we only have to look at John and everything he's done? The Covenant ships he destroyed at Installation 04, the Assault Carrier he destroyed over Earth, killing one of the Prophets that lead the Covenant."
"I'm sorry, is there a point to this?" Hood said. He had listened, half out of genuine curiosity and half because he didn't have the strength to interrupt Halsey. It was fairly evident that Halsey had been looking forward to having someone to vent her frustrations onto, possibly for years. But he did have a rebellion to stop, and there was only so much time he could afford to spare.
"It's funny, sad, and a little been pathetic when Lucifer calls Beelzebub a monster," Halsey said. "Like I said, she signed off on both the SPARTAN II and III Projects. And if you're having a meeting with me at three in the morning, you know what kind of woman she is. She isn't the type to let details on "her" projects escape her grasp. And she isn't the type of woman who has an issue with crossing moral boundaries." She gave a wry smirk again. "You think you're in trouble now? Just imagine if details about the IIIs get out. Suicide units made up of children that she was ok with being utterly disposable."
She gave a sigh. It was like a mask falling away. Even in her rapidly advancing age, Halsey almost always had a sense of posture to her, a sense of strength and purpose. Now, she simply looked like a very tired old woman. A look Hood recognized all too well from his personal mirror. "I'm not going to apologize for what I did," Halsey said. "Every night I wish I didn't have to do it, but I did. You read the Carver Findings, I assume. It was either let humanity fall apart or find a solution. Total anarchy, or a radical solution. The SPARTANs stopped that, and they stopped the Covenant."
"The Covenant didn't show itself for nearly a decade after the SPARTAN II project was started," Hood said. This was something that had been seared into his mind ever since he had been granted access to the truth behind the SPARTAN Project. He hated himself a little bit for wishing it, but part of him wished that the SPARTAN IIs had been created to fight the Covenant. It wouldn't exactly make everything that had been done ok, but it would have made it all easier to deal with. And it would have been harder for the general public to get mad about. Hood did more than hate himself a little for considering that aspect above all others.
"As I recall, Parangosky mentioned that six times in her little speech," Halsey said. "And yes, it's true. But the fact that the children weren't recruited to fight the aliens stop the UNSC from using them for just that. Don't you find it funny, Admiral, that everyone who is trying to pin all the blame on me waited until the war was over? Rather convenient, don't you think? You can't exactly burn the witch when the witch's curses are saving your life."
"Does that make it right?" Hood asked. He wasn't certain if Halsey was trying to throw him off guard or make him feel guilty. Maybe this was more her revealing her inner frustrations. Either way, he didn't flinch.
Halsey smiled. A very tired and defeated smile. "Of course it doesn't," she said. "None who worked with the children ever pretending that it was right. We just got good at holding off the guilt. Some of us did better than others. Mendez held out a good long while before it all hit him. Stanforth not so much, not when he talks about how we were all heading straight for hell." Her smiled faltered. "Leave Mendez out of this. He didn't chose to start the project, his job was just to make sure all the children stayed alive. Let him retire in peace."
"I doubt that will be an issue," he said. "Stanford showed the same regret about the project?"
"Until the day he died," Halsey said. "Most likely why he resigned as head of Section 3 to fight the Covenant head on. He probably thought it was more pleasant. Who knows? Maybe if I had had the talent for it I'd have followed. Because, to answer your earlier question, it isn't right. It was never right." She gave a bitter laugh. "And the sad thing is? If I had the choice, I'd do it all over again."
"Regardless of the fact that you may go down in history as a modern violator of human rights?" Hood asked.
"When I look at the billions of lives the SPARTANs saved, it boils down to rather simple math. The lives of 75 children and the consciences and reputations of the men and women working on it, versus the billions of people that would have died. It's a rather simple decision. Not an easy one. But a simple one."
"One could argue that it's not actually that simple," Hood said. "We have a moral code for a reason. We have laws for a reason. Once people start crossing it, breaking it in the name of the greater good, those morals and laws become damaged. Less respected. Easier to break again. You don't even need to look far for this instance. 75 children for the IIs. Then a few hundred for the IIIs. Maybe even a thousand. The slippery slope argument can be a logical fallacy, but not when we're halfway down the slope. I can only shudder what the IV project would have looked like."
Halsey held her hands up. A pair of stainless steel handcuffs bound them together. "That's why I'm in here, isn't it? Because I can't do everything I did and walk away. In truth, I shouldn't. Nearly everyone seems to agree on that. Though that raises the question. If I shouldn't get off scot free, should anyone above me?"
"No," Hood said bluntly. That was one thing he felt confident in saying. He didn't hate Halsey, but he had a hard time visualizing her walking away from this without a punishment. Even she seemed to have simply accepted that she would be spending the rest of her life in incarceration. He doubted anyone would challenge it. But that really did beg the question of whether or not it would be enough. "What do you think the odds are of another leak happening? Like this one?"
"Hard to say," Halsey said. "The details on this leak are still sketchy. ONI guards its secrets jealously, so whoever did this must have been an expert. Either that or exceptionally lucky. And after this, ONI will be tripling its security measures to ensure nothing like this would ever happen again. So, at a rough guess, I'd say highly unlikely. Though not impossible." She tilted her head. "You're trying to do the math on whether or not it's worth going after Parangosky, aren't you? Whether or not the public will be satisfied with just me being thrown under the bus?"
"You yourself said you did everything you did to keep human society from collapsing," Hood replied, his response measured and cool. "I'm simply trying to figure out what I have to do in order to do the same."
Halsey shrugged. "A fair point. And a valid question. If I'm made the figurehead of everything wrong with the SPARTAN Project, and the public learns about the IIIs, they'll know I was only middle level in the machine that was training children to be warriors. The riots, defiance, and Insurrection sympathizers you're seeing now would flare up again, even stronger."
"My thought exactly," Hood said. He had barely gotten to ask any of the questions he had had, but his conversation with Halsey had proven to be even more helpful than he could have imagining. He at least had had his worst fears confirmed. There was a chance that he would need to end up getting Parangosky's bad side in order to bring down the true mastermind of the SPARTAN Project and making sure something like this never happened again.
God help him.
"Well, I think you've answered all my questions," he said. "Are there any that you want answered?"
"How at the Sangheili reacting to this?" Halsey asked almost at once.
"They don't understand what the issue is," Hood said. "I was talking to the Arbiter just yesterday. Trying to explain to him why it was considered a moral outrage by so many. He just started at me blankly. He told me that, in their culture, raising children to be warriors from a young age was the norm. That raising children away from their families in "common rooms" is also far from unheard of." He sighed. "They're acting like we've all gone mad."
"Just when you start to like them," Halsey said, "you remember how truly alien they are. Our values don't mean much to them, and vice versa. God, here's hoping they don't try their own version of the SPARTAN Project, they'd be the real demons." She gave a humorless laugh. "Of course, they always did respect the SPARTANs. They thought that the SPARTANs were proof that humanity had fight in them. They probably view the Outer Colonies lashing out as being disrespectful."
"I doubt that would do much to get the colonists to calm down," Hood said, his tone just as humor filled as Halsey's laugh. "Though it might help in some other regards. One or two human worlds actually have mutterings of breaking away from the UEG and becoming allies with the Arbiter and his people." That had been another propaganda poster, though one that had noticeable gained less traction than the anti-UEG and UNSC ones. A rather romanticized depiction of a Sangheili playing with a group of children. He couldn't help but notice that said Sangheili was much shorter than most of his kind, in addition to having much less intimidating mandibles, and lacking any weapons or armor. If such a Sangheili existed, he'd most likely be a servant who had suffered from stunted growth, hardly someone the Sangheili looked on with with pride.
"That's old news," Halsey said. "Back in the war, some of the Insurrectionists wanted to break away and live under the Covenant while they were still glassing our worlds. Most of them were smart enough not to, but there's always those that let their hatred get the better of them and override their common sense."
"Name a point in human history when that hasn't happened," Hood said glumly.
"Hence it being old news," Halsey said. She paused for a second. "Have you found John yet?"
"I really think he's gone this time," Hood said. "A ship torn in half by a Slipspace rupture and sent who knows where? I really do think he's dead. The Arbiter was with him and he thinks the same. Neither of us want it to be true, but we're not seeing a lot of alternatives." Halsey laughed. It was the first genuine laugh Hood had heard since he had walked in and started talking to her.
"John. Dead. Funny," she said. "With all due respect Admiral, you don't know him the way I do. Death may come for John one day, but in the form of a Slipspace rupture? No. John's too clever, too experienced and too damn lucky for anything like that to kill him. He and Cortana are still out there."
"At this point in her lifespan, Cortana would be experiencing rampancy," Hood said.
Hasley's eyes narrowed in exasperation. "Not to pat myself on the back too much, but I think an A.I. made out of my own intelligence would be smart enough to temporarily turn herself offline if they're stranded in deep space. The only thing she would need to do is maintain a SOS beacon and monitor John's vital signs, and she could write a program to handle both of those in seconds. Literally seconds. She'd be getting rusty if it took her more than five."
Hood paused, feeling more curious than inquisitive. "How did you feel about Cortana?"
Halsey paused, a contemplative look on her face. "That may be tougher to answer than you think. I'm still human Admiral, and all of our DNA still thinks we're living in caves and hunting and gathering for our next meal. The way we feel about attachments is hard coded in there, a very basic type of coding from a simple time. It doesn't really work well when it comes to Smart A.I.s. Though that's mainly in terms for when they're, for lack of a better term, blood relatives. She and John are joined at the hip, but that's more an inseparable friends type of relationship."
She ran her hands through her hair as best she could with her hands cuffed. "But as someone who's related to her, my relationship to her feels very odd. I suppose the most apt comparison would be a mother/daughter one." For a split second Halsey looked very depressed, but the expression was gone in an instance. "But that never felt right to me. Cortana always felt too much my equal in order to be a daughter. So I suppose she's sort of like a younger sister? Even then that comparison doesn't really work. Though whatever she is in relationship to me, I like her and respect her." She gave a small, genuine smile. "She and John make a good team. They compliment each other perfectly."
"Agreed," Hood said, a sense of nostalgia washing over him. Nostalgia for an era where humanity's survival was in question. What a time to be alive. "Is there anything else?" he asked, getting to his feet. He had a good feeling that the conversation was over.
"Only if I'm going to get life or the death penalty," Halsey said. "It's life isn't it? Even if it was up to Parangosky it would be life." She tapped the inside of the skull. "This old thing has produced too many fruits for her to risk throwing it away."
"Probably," Hood said. "There will be a few hardliners in the upper echelons of the UNSC, UEG, and ONI that will push for death, but they'll most likely be shouted down. For the reasons you gave. It'll be life, but you may end up trading years for service if we should ever face another crisis. You never know, the Flood may still be out there."
"There's a happy thought," Halsey said dryly. "And you? Where do you fall?"
"I fall in the category of enough human beings have died already, there's no need to add to the pile," he said.
There was a moment of silence. "Thank you," she said honestly.
"Don't thank me, I haven't done anything to earn it," Hood said glumly, turning to face the door. "I think I've gotten everything I need from you Doctor, but I may be back for more questions. You never know. Now please excuse me, I need to go make enemies with the most dangerous woman in all of humanity to see how guilty she is."
"Dig two graves," Halsey said dryly. "One for you and one for me." Hood laughed grimly as he left the room.
A pair of ONI agents were waiting outside the interrogation room, two of the ones he trusted. "Any updates while I was in there?"
"A couple," one said, reaching into her pocket and pulling out a data slate. "Miners are officially striking on the planet Bliss, there are a couple of riots on Sedra, and a few pipe bombs were thrown at one of the terraforming ships that scheduled to head out to Reach. It delayed the launch by three days. The perpetrator is in custody. Alice Ludd, twenty-two, mostly clean record before this, though a couple of accounts of petty vandalism. We're looking into this to see if she has Insurrectionist leanings or if she's just a pissed off kid. If it's the former, we're gonna try and cut a deal where she only gets a year or two in exchange for any contacts she has. If it's the former, she's looking at a decade, probably longer. She nearly killed two people, one lost his leg."
"Make sure the UNSC covers the cost for a flash clone replacement," Hood said. "Let me know what demands the miners are having and let's see if we can appease them to some degree, and keep me updated on the riots. But also look around to see if you can find anyone who worked with Admiral Parangosky personally, even in a very minor role."
The ONI agent stopped, gaping open mouthed at Hood. After a few seconds, she found her voice. "You've really gone and stuck your dick in the hornet's nest, haven't you sir?"
"Couldn't have put it better myself," Hood said. "Just let me know what you can find after six hours. Even something as minor as her secretary would do. Odds are we'll have to start at the bottom and work our way up."
"Aye sir," the woman said, but then paused. "Sir, I'm married. My wife knows I do dirty shit, she accepted it a long time ago, aliens invading does a lot to realign your moral compass, but I'm kind of the bread winner. We've got two kids and she's a librarian, she can't afford to take care of them by herself and if Parangosky wants me dead, I'm fucking dead, and-" Hood held up a hand, asking for silence.
"I've already looked into the situation. Your family will be taken care of if anything happens to you." He glanced at the other ONI agent. "For everyone who is helping me." He thought he saw the other man slacken a little bit, hopefully in relief. "Everything has already been set up."
"Thank you sir," the woman said, nodding her head. "I'll get that report to you in three hours."
"Thank you," Hood said, walking away from the cell, both agents falling in line behind him. Admiral Parangosky was his enemy . At least with the Prophet of Truth he had been able to call in MAC strikes on people he knew would want him dead. Regardless of whether or not they would work. But taking her down seemed like a good way to keep humanity from tearing itself apart. And even if he succeeded, humanity might just tear itself apart anyway. God he was tired.
XXXXX
Author's Note: I really don't like Halo post-Halo Reach. The combat felt kinda floaty, the multiplayer was less interesting, microtransactions replaced classic armor unlocks and messed up certain parts of the gameplay (you can buy the right to spawn a Scorpion? Piss off. I don't care if it's only in one gameplay mode, that can piss off) and the story just feels like it's trying to make things bigger without it making sense, but the story fails in more ways than that. See, my experience with the earlier Halo games were that, while the UNSC did morally questionable things, they were still the good guys standing against massive threats that would consume all of humanity.
Now that the Covenant is gone and the Flood is dealt with, it's kind of hard to swallow some of the uglier things they do. Frankly, I would have prefered the series to de-escalate after the Human-Covenant War. Show the galaxy calming down, people picking up the splinters, seeing the broken pieces of the Covenant become their own factions, forming alliances, rivalries and drawing borders. Dealing with the anti-UNSC and UEG Insurrectionists that died down but never really went away. Have warlords try to carve out their own minor empires in the vacuum that fall of the Covenant left. We got some of that with Atriox and the Banished in Halo Wars 2, and something's wrong when the spin-off feels more like a natural continuation of Halo than the main games. But what are we getting instead?
Instead we're getting the UNSC becoming bigger dicks than the aliens, or, at the very least, ONI is. So the Arbiter is the leader of the biggest Covenant splinter faction, and he's made it very clear that he wants peaceful coexistence with humanity. What does ONI do? Arm violent radicals that want to kill humanity AND activate Halo. Oh, and then they tried to poison Sangheili crops. And then ONI decided to go full Big Brother and has a prison filled with people that they gave the Un-person treatment. And they may have very well have caused the rise of the Storm Covenant, leading to the events of Halo 4 and the deaths of over a million UEG civilians.
Meanwhile, Halsey, one of the few people that felt badly about the SPARTAN II project, is being compared to JOSEPH FUCKING MENGELE in the EU novels. And people are, SOMEHOW, acting like the SPARTAN III project was less horrendous than the IIs. Why? Because the IIIs volunteered? Traumatized, six year old war orphans cannot give consent! I think the worst part about the Halsey hatchet job is that it tries to make the rest of ONI look good. In the same book they were trying to stab the Arbiter in the back. And the head of ONI apparently is outraged because she didn't know that Halsey had replaced the kidnapped SPARTAN candidates with flash clones. First of all, you didn't know? Bullshit. Time and time again, we have been shown ONI has massive intelligence networks, they can't figure out that the people they kidnapped had been replaced? Second, this is a moral outrage? All the shit you pulled, including taking hundreds of traumatized war orphans off on suicide missions, and THIS is crossing a line for you? Fuck off. Thirdly, there are other people who were directly involved with the SPARTAN II program (AND the SPARTAN III program, which Halsey had NOTHING to do with) try to act like they have the moral high ground on her. As if they were incapable of making their own decisions. I think it's telling that the EU books were meant to make us hate Halsey, yet readers ending up feeling sorry for her instead. Particularly that the author of those EU books had such a hate boner for Halsey that Halsey was depicted as doing things that directly contradicted already established lore. Personally, to me it feels more like ONI trying to find a scapegoat now that they don't need the SPARTAN IIs anymore.
This is without bringing some other bone headed decisions that I just don't get. Killing the Rookie? Really? I get he was the main character of a spin off game but he was still a Halo main character. Why couldn't he be the SPARTAN IV main character in 5? Buck was in 5, him becoming a IV was one of the few things about post-Reach Halo that I actually liked. Not a lot of people like the rest of fireteam Osiris, and for good reason.
Yeah, post Reach is just a disappointment. This is without bringing it up that Halo seems to struggle to get away from going "oh look! Even MORE uber powerful Forerunner weapons," the Prometheans aren't as interesting as they could be, the new villains kinda suck (Seriously!? Evil Cortana? Really?) 90% of the SPARTAN IVs are eye rolling, and it's just kinda soulless now. Of the post Reach games, I didn't like 4 once the honeymoon phase was over, refuse to touch 5, and Wars 2 is the only one that has any interest to me, and I don't see them following up on it.
Needless to say, I appreciated being given the chance to write a story that would enable me to take a shot at some of the more asinine movements the Halo storyline has taken. (Also this story may have caused me to go on a Halo nostalgia binge. I was very pleasantly surprised to discover that the Reach servers are still active. Not thriving, but I was able to find Social Slayer and Big Team matches, so I'm pretty happy. 4 was kind of a letdown in the multiplayer department and I refuse to touch 5, so this makes me happy)
I would like to thank my patrons, I would like to thank my Patrons, SuperFeatherYoshi, xXNanamiXx, Ryan Van Schaack, RaptorusMaximus, and Davis Swinney for their amazing support.