He started from an at least somewhat reasonable place of being wary of the Arbiter allying with humans more than anything. He wasn't one of the guys clinging to Forerunner worship or Covenant loyalist ideas (though to be fair can we honestly blame people for not all taking life-altering shocks as well as Thel 'Vadam?), his concerns were pretty rational. Humans could be incredibly clever and dangerous when cornered, and after 30 years of genocidal war? They had every reason to hate the Sangheili. This was not natural top 10 anime bromances material here.
As a result of those concerns, Jul tripped into allying with the Servants of the Abiding Truth because when he was lowkey side-eyeing the other Sangheili like "does anyone else think this sounds bananas?" the one who said "Yes, and we want to kill the Arbiter about it and are getting our shit together" was Avu Med 'Telcam, their leader. Unlike Jul, these guys were intensely religious Forerunner worshippers. This was not Jul's style, but you take allies where you can.
Even then, Jul did not completely trust 'Telcam and was suspicious about where the zealot was getting weapons from. Jul was right to be suspicious about it, too, because 'Telcam was being drip fed weapons by (dun dun dunnn) ONI. ONI was cheerfully using supporting the Servants of the Abiding Truth to make sure the political situation on Sanghelios didn't stabilize too easily for their liking. ONI fed Sangheili infighting to keep Sanghelios fractured and weak.
Unfortunately for Jul, while he was spying on 'Telcam to figure this out, Kilo Five (Serin Osman's personal team) noticed and captured him. (Without 'Telcam knowing.)
Jul, who was already wary of humans and expected them to be vicious and untrustworthy, had his proof that they were pulling some shady shit. Then, as a captive, he was beaten around multiple times with a cattle prod before Kilo Five handed him off to the research station founded at Onyx. In addition to being questioned and outfitted with a bomb harness, ONI was trying to genetically engineer a strain of the Sangheili's staple grain crop that would sicken them. They had plans to unleash it on Sanghelios so it would wipe out the native species and starve the planet. Yes, really. They tested this on Jul and it made him incredibly, violently ill. (Pretty sure he never got to the bottom of that one himself, but it does absolutely nothing to prove him wrong.)
Additionally, when Jul went missing and was never heard from again, his wife (Raia, who had humored him with his anti-Arbiter project but had never taken it seriously) went looking for him. Unfortunately, in the course of doing that it meant she got involved with the Servants of the Abiding Truth. When the Servants finally attacked the Swords of Sanghelios, Raia was on board one of the Servants' ships. When humanity aided the Arbiter in the ensuing space battle, that ship was shot down by humans and Raia was killed. Jul later found out about her death and that absolutely did not help.
Finally, Jul managed to escape. In addition to arguing from the need for exercise to keep himself healthy enough to continue being a useful prisoner, he convinced the ONI researchers that he was actually a very religious man (though he wasn't) and he wanted to spend time contemplating the Forerunner sites on Onyx. Believing there was no way he could escape (and, once again, having outfitted him with a literal bomb vest) they put a Huragok in charge of babysitting him and let him outside on a limited basis. Inside one of the Forerunner structures, he found a portal that led off Onyx to a Sangheili colony world where the locals still hadn't even heard the war was over. He told them about the Arbiter and they were all "yeah that's fucked we don't like that either," then it turned out that planet had directions to Requiem on it. You know, a place that the Forerunner ruins warned contained a sleeping legend that had known only war, and hated the humans...
Well. After being captured, brutalized, poisoned, and discovering that humans had killed his wife, I feel like the choices Jul made when presented with this opportunity were not surprising.
Speaking of Parangosky, I was accusing myself of being bad and wrong at reading books earlier and happened upon “But if Parangosky is even deeper in ONI than Halsey, shouldn’t you sympathize with her because ONI is a toxic system that destroys everyone?”
Yes and no.
Yes, in an absolute kind of way. It devoured her. Whatever person Parangosky was, ONI consumed and made in its image. But no, because Parangosky has never turned a corner on ONI. As a person who gained very complete knowledge of the organization and what it knew and could do, she never swerved.
Glasslands tells us how Halsey (according to this author, anyway) only feels a self serving illusion of regret that means nothing and is just something she convinces herself she feels in order to feel less bad. But the truth is that of the two characters, Parangosky is the one who thinks all about how she’ll gladly take her place in hell when this is all over… but she keeps at it.
She never looks for a way to stop. She never makes amends.
Her accusations toward Halsey are better fitting for her.
It would be kind of brilliant, in a literary way, if I believed the author had at all intended it.
I need to tell you guys what happens in The Thursday War instead of just bitching endlessly about what happens in The Thursday War. An actual effort. I suffer for this blog.
Like Glasslands it’s probably going to just be easier if I lay out the plot threads.
At the end of Glasslands we had a couple things going on:
Kilo Five was investigating the spread of blackmarket weapons on the hive of scum and villiany known as Venezia. (Also, Mal and Vaz had just found out that Naomi-010’s father is an anti-Earth terrorist. In this one, they tell her about it and she incubates emotions about that for the whole book because that’s the plotline for the next book.)
Jul ‘Mdama, Sangheili POW, was being held at the research facility ONI was establishing in the Forerunner shield world at Onyx-AKA-Trevelyan.
Professor Phillips had been invited to visit Sanghelios with the Arbiter’s blessing so he could study language/Forerunner ruins. But then ‘Telcam, the guy Kilo Five had been running weapons for, found him and also a bomb went off and cut Phillips off from contact with Kilo Five’s ship (Port Stanley)thus necessitating going to get him back.
All of that stands. But now we also have Admiral Parangosky and Admiral Hood inspecting the UNSC Infinity, which has been constructed in secret over the last several years. The title of the novel comes from Royal Navy (you know, of course, because Traviss is English) slang for training exercises that are traditionally held on a thursday, and the “Thursday War” in this case is the first time the Infinity goes out and does anything. (The anything in this case is getting involved in the civil war breaking out on Sanghelios.) Halsey is barely in this book but she’s confined to engineering working on the Infinity, she cries herself to sleep sometimes. Huragok are busily outfitting the Infinity with magical slipspace jumping/communications technology to make the Halo universe a little more boring for me personally.
We also have Jul ‘Mdama’s wife Raia kicking her way into the rebellion against the Arbiter because her husband is missing, nobody knows what happened to him, and she’s justifiably very angry.
So. Let’s get on with it.
The explosion that fucks up Phillips’s sight-seeing (and secret intelligence gathering) was set off by some Jiralhanae and incites chaos, which convinces ‘Telcam that he’s going to have to get this revolution started early. He believes Phillips is on his side and that it will be safer for Phillips if they squirrel him away in a temple rather than have him return to the (about to be overthrown, obviously) Arbiter. Phillips uses the opportunity to explore the temple and have BB record as much as he can of the Forerunner symbols.
Unfortunately for the BB fragment Phillips has, the explosion damaged the radio and this triggered the fragment’s failsafe against tampering. He auto-deleted everything classified and greatly reduced his functions, so he doesn’t remember who Phillips is or what they’re doing here but trusts him and tries to help him. (It’s extremely unpleasant for BB to re-integrate his busted up fragment later.) They find a particularly spooky Forerunner panel that they figure out shows the status of the seven Halos, and even more terrifying is Phillips thinks you can arm them from here.
Most importantly, though, Phillips manages to unlock a Forerunner portal that zaps him somewhere else on Sanghelios: a little agricultural province some ways away.
MEANWHILE, Kilo Five. Parangosky leans on Hood to lean on the Arbiter to let them come look for their man. Osman gets into it on the space phone with ‘Telcam about where Phillips is. They wade into the nonsense after the Brute attack and find that Phillips isn’t at the temple. Poking around the temple, of course, pisses off enough Sangheili that it’s a real problem and they have to leave empty handed.
Phillips got dumped into a farm field and some Grunts take him home to the keep they work for, where the lady of the house, Elar, lets Phillips in. While he’s there, a neighboring keep decides to use the excuse of the civil war to try to seize this keep/its territory because the men all went off to fight. The women give Phillips a plasma pistol and he helps them fend off some dudes, meanwhile Elar gets ahold of ‘Telcam to have someone come pick Phillips up. Kilo Five figured out where he is and is also coming to pick him up, though, so when they arrive they wade into the ugly fracas with the other keep, manage to convince Elar to let Phillips leave, and then they run smack into ‘Telcam’s own retrieval party: Jul’s friend Forze and Raia (who is running around with Forze at this point because if she can’t find her man, well, she’s in the rebellion now she guesses.)
It’s awkward, but they manage to get Forze and Raia to understand that they’re the allies ‘Telcam would’ve handed Phillips back to anyway.
Also, after they leave Elar’s embattled keep, Vaz is a dick to Phillips for caring about what happens to Elar and the women and children. (They die, btw.)
At this point, the rebellion on Sanghelios is in full swing and the Arbiter’s people are slugging it out with ‘Telcam’s. Hood (it’s actually Hood and Parangosky but you know who the public face of this thing is) rolls up to Sanghelios in the bouncing baby UNSC Infinity to assist, and by assist we mean also show off to all the Sangheili that humanity now has their hands on the biggest damn set of guns in space.
While the Infinity shoots down several of ‘Telcam’s ships, Parangosky is sending secret messages to Osman on the Port Stanley so that she and BB (who is in like six places at once at this point because lol smart AI) can run interference, shoot down some of the Arbiter’s ships on the sly, and ensure that Sangheili naval power is crippled overall and the sides remain evenly matched. (Because, you know, a prowler can easily shoot down a Sangheili warship, it’s not like we just had a whole war where it was a big deal that human ships were massively outclassed by Covenant ones. Sure.) BB fucks around with sensors to make Port Stanley look like a Kig-Yar ship and, when they try to warn one of ‘Telcam’s ships to prevent it being destroyed (they fail btw, this is how Raia and Forze die) BB makes his voice sound like a Kig-Yar shipmistress.
Also, Kilo-Five’s ground team manages to exfiltrate ‘Telcam before the Infinity blows his shit up. ‘Telcam’s not particularly happy about it and is salty that Phillips figured out so much more about the Forerunner ruins than he ever did, but they set him loose to go continue his fight and agree to keep giving him guns. (These events may have been in a different order based on wiki, but also I don’t think that’s terribly important.)
The situation on Sanghelios semi-stabilizes and the UNSC has made their point about their fancy new ship, job well done, pack it in everybody. Kilo Five visits Onyx/Trevelyan and Phillips talks to Jul ‘Mdama about the Forerunner ruins and how he was reading inscriptions of… some kind of prohibition about not doing something re: a great and strict teacher? The Didact??? He also promises Jul that he’ll try to find out how Raia is doing. (He does later, and has some emotions about her being dead, but by that point he can’t tell Jul.)
After that, Kilo Five has nothing for it to get back to the Venezia job. We get a bit with Vaz and Naomi pretending to be deserters and linking up with ONI’s operative (Spencer) on Venezia while Naomi has Emotions about how her dad is here. (But also: there’s a spooky Kig-Yar around who they know stole a Sangheili warship…..)
Anyway. Jul. Jul’s plotline doesn’t really intersect with anything else. While all the rest of this has been going on, Jul has been in top secret ONI POW town being questioned. Magnusson, the scientist in charge of Trevelyan, finds out about Sangheili staple crops and livestock from him and (under the guise of offering him better food) tests genetically modified grain on him that makes him incredibly sick. This is all according to plan, because ONI intends to seed Sanghelios with the GM grain that will wipe out the native strain within a couple years if they do, allowing them to starve the entire goddamn planet. Which is, of course, incredibly horrifying. (But you know, Catherine Halsey is still probably a worse person than that if you ask the author.)
Because Magnusson wants Jul in okay shape (you know, for further information gathering and testing reasons) Jul is permitted to exercise by walking around inside the shield world while wearing an explosive harness and chaperoned by a Huragok. (It’s Prone to Drift. Hi Prone to Drift!) Knowing he is under constant surveillance, Jul (who is more and more an atheist these days) plays up a religious angle while asking Prone to show him a “temple” (which is how devout Sangheili think of any place with Forerunner language.) Prone leads Jul to a building with a lot of maintenance portals the Huragok can use to get around, and Jul figures out that his captors can’t listen in on him here and this can play to his advantage if he’s very careful about how long he falls off the radar for. (Humans also get lost for a half hour at a time due to maintenance portals all the time, it’s fine.)
As Jul investigates the control facility bit by bit and manages to drag information about it out of Prone, he learns it’s a bank of portals that should lead to other Forerunner shield worlds. They mostly don’t work anymore. He also learns about the Didact (enough to get extra irked when Phillips also knows about him) and how the Huragok are like we don’t know where Requiem is but please god nobody go there, nobody wake him up, it’s super not allowed.
He likes the sound of this Didact, though. A man who knew only war, and hated the humans? His kind of dude.
Hmm.
Hmm.
Anyway, after talking to Phillips, Jul decides he’s going to have to make his escape immediately. Do or die. Time to risk it all. He goes out to the control center again with a handful of rocks and shells and uses the threat of setting off his bomb vest (by trying to remove it) to stop Prone from interfering, because if Jul blows it up it will damage the Forerunner structure (which Huragok can’t abide.) Jul throws rocks through portals until one of the portals appears to work and coerces Prone to get his harness off him without detonating it as he slips through the portal.
(Parangosky is highly unamused to discover this happened 15 hours later. She shows up to have Magnusson imprisoned in the Midnight Facility for incompetence. I really have no patience for Traviss showing off how ruthless and cool she thinks Parangosky is by this point, tbh. All that really matters is nobody knows where he went and the portal’s not working again so they can’t go after him.)
Jul appears at a Forerunner structure on a Sangheili colony, shocking and amazing the locals that someone just stepped out of the holy gateway that has never done anything before. He finds out that this podunk end of Sangheili space hasn’t even heard that the war is over, so he gives them his specific spin on the situation re: the Arbiter and humanity and especially how the latter just imprisoned him. (He’s valid, tbh.) They’re much more religious than he is so he has to flub a little, but he just stepped out of a holy gate so Jul is their new golden boy anyway.
He manages to get ahold of his home keep on the space phone and finds out from his uncle that Raia and Forze are dead, which devastates him. While having a moment about that he goes out to the portal site to be alone, and ends up talking to a kid about the Forerunner writing. While on Trevelyan, he was scratching the Forerunner symbols he found into his belt so he could keep track of them.
The child shows him some that match.
Some that talk about the Didact.
Jul gets super excited because he is pretty sure the inscription includes the location of Requiem, he could go there. Maybe he could release the Didact and get his revenge on humanity. He rallies the Sangheili he has befriended and they agree that they’re going to help him find Requiem.
SO ZITA, WHAT DO WE THINK OF ALL THIS?
I don’t have grand new revelations about this one, we can get this done in one post: Traviss continues to tell a story that is mostly pretty entertaining (despite lore details I’d fight about) while the primary flaw is her really troubling framing of events that betrays horrible things she thinks are okay about war.
We’re supposed to be gutwrenched over what was done to Naomi’s family and how obviously Naomi’s father became a space terrorist over the loss of his 6 year old daughter. We get lengthy passages of Vaz putting himself in the man’s shoes and being terribly consumed with how important it is to get truth/justice for him, a man who he has never even met. But also, we are supposed to ride along with Parangosky and Vaz (because these are once again the two viewpoints where this all pours out the most) while Parangosky makes contingency plans to starve an entire fucking world full of people, Vaz thinks about how killing civilian women and children (who are in peril right in front of him!) is fine and the Sangheili aren’t people to him and it’s fine because of his trauma, and it’s all just really, really awful to feel like you’re reading a book that wants you to sympathize with this and think it’s justified.
In the realm of half-formed thoughts about writing: The Thursday War doesn’t reach the extremes of sheer intolerability as anything that has to do with Halsey in Glasslands. But also, I think Kilo Five’s characters are a lot weaker in this one. Mal and Vaz have started to blur together, with perspective focusing on Vaz more. Osman’s off the front lines so we get scenes of her on Port Stanley having emotions about becoming the head of ONI in the future, but her remoteness means we don’t get as much of her. Naomi’s just kinda there waiting for her plot to come up next book. We learn more about Phillips but the book wants really badly to gloss over Phillips’s ethical objections in order to keep getting on with the cool war crimes.
The best plotline is Jul’s because Jul is extremely justified in everything he’s doing, because everything ONI has done has been so legitimately disgusting he cannot be blamed. Jul is the only valid bitch in this house, and the fact Jul is apparently only mentioned and never seen in the third book tells me a lot about how much I’m probably going to be annoyed to death by that one.
BDG, why did you have to tell people this is the best part of Halo?????
(If you have found this far after the fact, feel free to peruse my thursday war tag for more play by play complaining about specific things.)
Heya it's me again, I just started on last light (meaning I am on half off the book by now) love it so far, but Kilo Five keeps going through my mind, are there any books or lore files about what happens to them after Moral Dictata?
Hello! As always thanks for the update, but I’m sorry to say I don’t have a very clear answer for you this time around…
As far as I am aware we haven’t gotten a concrete update on the status and activities of the Kilo-Five team post-‘Mortal Dictata’. We do know that around 2555 Serin Osman was promoted and is currently the Director of ONI, and that Naomi-010 is still with the UNSC but “the details of her current deployment remain classified”. The others are still unknown. And considering the state of the Halo Universe going into 2558, there’s obviously a wide variety of things that could have happened to them. Including (but not limited to): continuing to run covert operations against both Covenant and human rebel factions, the ODSTs being brought into the Spartan-IV Program, or simply being disbanded with the various members going on to retire or continue to serve in the military under different agencies.
Though it is certainly possible for some or all of them to appear in future stories. We’ll just have to wait and see. :\
Because the world needs more Kilo-Five Fanfic. Inspire by: x
Osman wakes with a yawn, stretching out her arms and legs, the newest Rear Admiral of ONI glanced at the beeping data pad lying beside her. A message was left, and with half-asleep fingers she clenched the small device,
Yeah I know what you’re thinking right now. ‘BB! What are you doing? It’s late and I’m trying to sleep!’ Stupid meatbags and their stupid sleep cycles.
But anyway- I lost a bet. For the first time since my creation I actually lost a bet to these buffoons you call soldiers, so let’s get this over with shall we?
I love you Osman.
I think you’re an fantastic commander. An incredible one, even. You’re smart and strong and a quick thinker and I’m sorry this sounds amazingly cheesy and human like but I have researched every definition of the word ‘bet’ and almost all of them imply I must complete the agreed upon task if I lose.
So, I love you Osman. You’re the greatest. Thanks.
Now please throw Vaz and Mal out of the airlock.
// SIGNED //
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ENTITLED: BLACK BOX
