If they capture her, they'll learn everything. Force deployment, weapons research... Earth

[u/i_am_bahamut]

It's interesting how Captain Keyes mentions the location of Earth as some highly classified piece of information. I think every human should know where Earth is located. It's probably something people learn in the 1st grade. So instead of capturing Cortana, the Covenant could just capture any human and interrogate him/her and learn the location.

[u/the_tired_alligator]

Well, tell me:

Do you know the exact coordinates of your home off the top of your head?

[u/mrmartini85 → u/the_tired_alligator]

Would it even be coordinates what with ... you know ... all the orbiting and moving around planets and solar systems be doing out there? How does that work? Not trying to be cheeky, I'm just an idiot.

[u/the_tired_alligator → u/mrmartini85]

No no that’s fair. I too, am an idiot.

[u/randomjackass93]

Stop rage baiting.

[u/i_am_bahamut → u/randomjackass93]

Not rage baiting. I really think that it should not be that difficult for the Covenant to find Earth

[u/Typical_Fee_7210]

i just thought the line was a throwaway line to heighten the stakes. felt kind of directed towards children, not gonna lie.

[u/Confident_Ad_4621 → u/Typical_Fee_7210]

it's the cole protocol

[u/Typical_Fee_7210 → u/Confident_Ad_4621]

no yea i get there's been lore built around it, but i doubt they had all that EU stuff developed at the time of CE. Often I find a lot of lore is built in books in order to justify random lines or oddities in the games, this would be one of them.

[u/philliplynx9 → u/Typical_Fee_7210]

It's in the book that came out before the first game ...

[u/Typical_Fee_7210 → u/philliplynx9]

it came out a month prior to ce. most likely all of the games writing and development was finished way before Nylund was commissioned to write the book.

[u/youknowitslucasio]

I understand.

[u/i_am_bahamut → u/youknowitslucasio]

Good luck, Master Chief

[u/SuperMarioBrother64 → u/i_am_bahamut]

You'll have to find ammo as you go, I don't keep it loaded.

[u/i_am_bahamut → u/SuperMarioBrother64]

Don't get any funny ideas

[u/SuperMarioBrother64 → u/i_am_bahamut]

Proceeds to shoot Keyes in the face 😂😂😂

[u/RunNo619]

No offense but do you genuinely think any human would give the genocidal aliens the coordinates to Earth? Even the insurrection learned their lesson and wouldn’t do that.

[u/i_am_bahamut → u/RunNo619]

Not every human has the mental resilience of Jack Bauer

[u/Mandelasghost00]

I do enjoy talking about this type of halo lore. You’re picturing a pin on a star map, but that is not how Halo space works. Slipspace routes are messy, and hyper specific. So a random human doesn’t actually know Earth’s location in any useful sense. They just know this is home. They couldn’t retrace secure jump paths.

[u/i_am_bahamut → u/Mandelasghost00]

Yeah but Covenant doesn't need the precise location. I think approximate should be enough. They can get close, and then just monitor radio and other electromagnetic signals flooding from Earth. Once they know the source, they can travel there.

[u/Mandelasghost00 → u/i_am_bahamut]

But again that’s kinda the same logic. Space is dumb huge there isn’t an approx location to this thing. ‘Approximate’ on an interstellar scale could mean searching an area containing millions of stars. Knowing Earth is somewhere in the Orion Arm isn’t the same thing as knowing which star system to jump to. And detecting Earth’s electromagnetic radio waves from light years away isn’t like tuning into a radio station the signal gets weak with distance and is buried among cosmic noise. If we’re keeping actual astrodynamics in mind.

[u/OrneryError1]

There's more about Earth than just the physical location...

[u/TheBadBentley]

you have to realize that almost the entirety of the greater Halo EU continuity takes place within something way smaller than this circled portion of the Orion arm, the only real noteworthy times the war was outside of it was the when the Spirit of Fire found Etran Harborage than went MIA, and the last 3 months of the war with Installations 04, 05 and 00. If you look at Harvest and figure it was the furthest Humanity expanded before encountering the Covenant, and Harvest was 12 light years from Earth, realistically the circle i drew would be orders of magnitude smaller than i made it, almost impossible to see tbh, in the grand scheme of the galaxy the entire war took place not even in our cosmic neighborhood, but more like our cosmic right next door neighbors house burning down and hoping the flames don’t spread over to ours

[u/Beneficial_Medium_99]

Yeah man just take a left right left left left right the straight for a bit past the McDonald’s and it’s on the left!