Heyyyy, dumb question again, but after Cole Protocol is enacted and the nav data is dumped, how exactly is a UNSC ship expected to get home, assuming it survives whatever battle its about to go through? There's got to be some way to get back to human-controlled space, right?
One of the most dangerous temptations of an old lorehead is to just shoot from the hip, but frankly I think I never had this one perfectly correct for myself. I also know it's been a couple years for me vs a lot of the books now, so I went back to brass tacks and pulled text to make sure what I'm saying here is as right as I can get it.
"Zita did you wake up at 4AM on a Sunday and spend 2 hours lore diving?"
Yes I fucking did, what else is there to do when you wake up at 4AM? Get in the car.
Chapter 23 of The Fall of Reach has Keyes planning to return to Reach after the battle at Sigma Octanus IV, and I think it's very important:
It is evident here that even though they are following the Cole Protocol exactly and were just in contact with Covenant forces, the Iroquois is still able to return to Reach without much drama as long as it makes the requisite randomized jump. (....Which doesn't help because the Iroquois ended up with a Covenant tracker stuck to it, but heyyyyyy.) We also know they did the data purge, because Keyes gave the order in Chapter 17.
How can a ship get somewhere without navigation data? Well, you can ask a ship AI for one. Haverson does this in chapter 9 of First Strike and the only thing that stops Cortana from complying is (drumroll please) another part of the Cole Protocol:
So, shipbound smart AIs are not reliant on the onboard slipspace navigation database of the ship itself.
Usefully, jumping back to chapter 17 of Fall, that also establishes that the Iroquois doesn't have a ship AI either. This confirms that ships can absolutely get around slipspace without one. It's just slower and a little more risky because you don't have the turbo computer to check your math.
Chapter 12 even says so outright.
And 17 has Keyes nailbiting over his math in battle. It's not a slipspace jump, but it's fun so I'm making you see it.
AIs are scarce and expensive. Not every chucklefuck with a runabout is going to have one. People have to be able to do this stuff.
Ergo, without navigation data or even an AI handling the process, a ship's crew can still calculate and navigate to known locations, and presumably UNSC personnel would know how to get to important locations like Reach or Earth using slower human-calculated navigation strategies. This pretty much resolves the question, but I am tangenting now and I'm dragging you all down with me.
The purpose of the purge is also interesting to clarify, because Halo fans often go "but why do you delete the data so early?" and "couldn't the Covenant just torture a navigator?"
First of all, torture doesn't actually work in reality so jot that down. (The research on it is grisly and very much beyond what I have any authority to talk about on my stupid Halo blog.) But as for why they purge data immediately, we actually know! We are told this! I think The Fall of Reach really frequently doesn't get enough credit for trying to think through what it had to lay down. Halo's early lore was set up by people who loved science fiction and cared about it! They asked this question too!
So, The Fall of Reach chapter 26. Take it away, Catherine:
You purge so the Covenant can't hack Earth out of you before they even bother to board your ship.
So.
What is going on in The Cole Protocol (the novel)?
The sources we've been talking about are from the tail end of the war after these procedures have been in place for almost 30 years, and every UNSC ship is going to be prepared to comply. This book is decades earlier. The Cole Protocol (the protocol) is brand new. People have spent their whole ship-navigating lives depending on computer systems to do all the work up to this point. It's like how most folks don't memorize phone numbers anymore because your phone does that for you. If you spent your whole life knowing you could lose your contacts list on any random tuesday, you might bother to make sure you know how to call your most important people without it, but if someone really blew up your contacts list and every phone database you have access to tomorrow would you still be able to call your boss and tell them you're out with the flu?
The UNSC is rolling into town telling people they need to give up a fast, cheap, efficient tool that makes it possible for less-skilled (and therefore cheaper) personnel without specialized knowledge to do a job easily and independently, and to instead rely on the UNSC for "safe" convoy travel on its schedule in its preferred way.
Reading the Halo novels has had a very unplanned effect on me in that now I really care about what happened to Captain Keyes. Don't get me wrong, what happened to him is horrific no matter how you spin it, even by Flood standards, but... getting snapshots of him throughout his life, getting to know him, seeing him develop as a person and grow into the leader we see in Combat Evolved. Knowing what he meant to Catherine Halsey, to his daughter Miranda, to his crew on the Iroquois. It makes you care about him, and then he suffers one of if not the worst fates in all of fiction, and there's nothing you can do to stop it because this is how it's always ended for him. Every piece of media that's brought back Jacob Keyes has only served to twist the knife a little deeper because he mattered so much to so many people and that list includes me.
ODSTs are seriously just cannon fodder in the fandom. They're supposed to be the best of the best, the status everyone wants to be, but they die left and right. The discrepancy between their 'elite status' and their high mortality rate is something. I feel like I have to do another deep dive into the ODSTs.
A member of Gray Team, Adriana-111 acts as both the team's muscle and their designated marksman. She notably served alongside her teammates Jai-006 and Michael-120 during the battles at the Rubble and Metisette in 2535.
She also served in Operation: SUNSPEAR, which had the team destroy the Sangheili world of Glyke. Following the Carrow Conflict in 2558, the team formed a strike force with the Swords of Sanghelios, now operating out of the prowler UNSC Perilous Contest.
Petty Officer Adriana-111 is a SPARTAN-II supersoldier and a member of the Gray Team.
