In Response To: Re: Earth and Taking/Breaking Prisoners (Peptuck)
: Cole Protocol. No one knows the exact coordinates of Earth, or the exact
: distance between Earth and the other worlds. The UNSC knows that such info
: cannot fall into Covenant hands and thus either denies it to its people or
: gives them false information in case they are cpatured.
Then how does everyone and his mom know that Reach is 10-11 LY from Earth?
"(PA system): I'm sorry to interrupt everyone's dinner, but I have an announcement. I just got word, that the fleet base at Reach... the Covenant... Reach is gone.
Rani: Oh my God...
Nick: Oh God...
Rani: Reach is only 11 light years from earth.
Nick: 10.5, yeah. There's nothing left between them and us."
-TheBruce.ca Axon Compilations, ILoveBees Week 5 Subject 4
UNSC Astrophysics Journals collectively contain Astrogational data on every star within 100 LY, including directions to and from Earth. --Fall of Reach, Eric Nylund [Paraphrased]
"Hiro: That's like the seventh time today you've refused to answer your chatter. I'd say it was your mother...
Kamal: My mother is 42 light years away.
Hiro: ...except you'd never dare not answer your mother. Bill collectors, perhaps, or immigration?"
and
"Hiro: Someone who needs her dates arranged [by Kamal's mother] from 42 light years away, I'm sure she's got a great personality."
--TheBruce.ca Axon Compilations, ILoveBees Week 2 Subject 3 and Week 1 Subject 3, respectively. 42? I thought I heard 17 to Coral, but on retrospect it is 42.
It seems very secret, since anybody studying Astrophysics and a destitute Medical Student know how far it is respectively. No offense, of course. Just saying it doesn't seem very secure knowledge.
: Besides, the Covenant doesn't take prisoners. They just kill all humans they
: encounter. I don't think they care where the human homeworld is anyway,
: but knowing its location would make their jobs easier.
*Cough Keyes High Charity Cough* And for those killed for sport besides Keyes, who says they can't question the prisoners before they kill them?
What better way to ensure the anihilliation of every human than to take out what must be their most populated area (by definition)? It comes down to this- either the Elites are so
- religiously insane they refuse to use any situation to their advantage if it means leaving a human being alive for a second longer
(Making their taking Keyes prisoner... and High Charity's marines... and random Marines that seem to be scattered about Halo (dead, but they couldn't have been when they got there) a complete suprise. Also, it makes the Arbiter/Half-Jaw's betrayal almost impossible to understand.)
(Plus, Zuka 'Zamamee stopped killing long enough to ask "Where is the Human in the Special Armor?" to people he was already in the process of killing, and he was chosen specifically for his anti-human fanatic behavior, according to The Flood [William Dietz]. So Elites can talk to humans if it serves a purpose. It only )
or
- stupid they can't torture information out of a civilian when they're eight-foot monsters with plasma weapons and superhuman strength. Or said humans are so tough they can resist the Elites long enough to get killed.
or
- The Elites are so enslaved to the Prophets there is not a single independant thinker who thought to question a human being on its homeworld and the Prophets are so fanatic or dumb they never ordered it.
Either way is rather hard to rationalize, with the first being unlikely, the second unpalatable, and the final one impossible.
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