: 2. Following Halo 4, Blue Team reunites on Earth and begins going on missions
: again.

: 3. She was manipulating Jul 'Mmdama to find the Absolute Record and to
: reunite with humanity, knowing that she could eventually get ONI to save
: her if she had enough of a bargaining chip(I think... at least)

: 4. I assume Chief/Infinity gave the Spartan Squads a debriefing and explained
: what they were prior to their missions. Vale's backstory about speaking
: Sangheli is in one of the books.

1.) I guess a more detailed question might be, why are Prometheans appearing off of Requiem when the point of them was that they belonged exclusively to the Didact? Which, I guess, I can forgive since Mantle's Approach presumably landed with Cortana on Genesis, and she might have sent them from there.

2.) Even if I hadn't read Escalation, I could have bought it, I think. Might have been nice to hear Chief asking about their post-First Strike antics, comment on his own. They were trapped on a massive Shield World, while he's been to three ringworlds, an extragalactic whatever-the-Ark-is, and Requiem. That's a hell of a one-up.

3.)Yeah, I never bought that Halsey had actually turned on humanity, or the UNSC. It might give her some personal satisfaction to bloody Palmer and ONI's nose a bit, but she was always using the Covenant - I mean, look how much damage the UNSC has been able to inflict on Mdama's forces just through her agenda. Sowing the seeds of a civil war with Sali Nyon, a whole lot of ships destroyed by the Absolute Record slipspace portal, etc.

4.) It's not just in the book, Vale mentions it in the very first level. She was a bright kid, and learned it as the daughter of UEG diplomats during a long slipspace trip. Even then, the UNSC has had translation software to translate Elites and Grunts at least for years now, presumably somebody had to learn it to create the translation lexicon.