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Episode 10: Gag Order

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Episode 11: Down To The Bone

Episode 10: Gag Order
Cover artwork for Episode 10: Gag Order.
Series overview

Series:

Hunt the Truth

Season:

Season 1

Episode specifications

Episode:

10

Air date:

May 31, 2015[1]

Run time:

19:14

 

Episode 10: Gag Order was the tenth full episode in the first season of the Hunt the Truth audio drama.[2] The episode was originally released on Soundcloud on May 31, 2015.[1]

Official summary[edit]

“ Freshman Senator Andrew Del Rio wastes no time turning Biko into an anti-Chief campaign, but news from the Outer Colonies tells a very different story. With the truth about the Spartan program hanging in the balance, how far will ONI go to bury it?[3] ”

Plot summary[edit]

Benjamin Giraud, with no choice but to stay put in fear of capture by the Office of Naval Intelligence, secludes himself inside his undisclosed hideout. Ben listens to a speech made by senator Andrew Del Rio, who condemns the Master Chief, and calls him the "Fallen Spartan". The tripwire Ben set up outside the apartment was suddenly set off, catching Ben off guard. However Ben quickly realizes it is Ray Kurzig. Ray assures Ben he took every necessary precaution to get there and that he has news about the incident at Biko. Ray shows Ben a message from the Sangheili delegation at Biko saying that both they and the Master Chief had nothing to do with the massacre and questioning the Unified Earth Government for doing nothing while the population of Biko calls for unjust blood. Ray tells Ben that the footage showing Biko as peaceful is a loop of old footage, and that he managed to track down a fact-gatherer named Ravi, who captured video evidence of protests, riots and martial law happening on the planet. Ray tells Ben that Richard Sekibo's men want to clear the Sangheili but have been silenced by the UEG, and that the real perpetrators of the massacre are a group of rebel extremists called Sapien Sunrise. In return for this, Ray asked Ben if he could call Petra and see what they were saying on Earth. Ben called her, but before he could say anything, Petra Janecek interrupts him and tells him she has a lead he might be interested in, Ben agrees to it and Petra sends him the details: an anomaly on the glassed planet, Bliss, with a 72 hour time window. Ben heads back to his home to gather the remaining money he has, but when he arrives, he finds his entire apartment gutted.

Audio transcript[edit]

  • Benjamin Giraud (voiceover): Listen... and wait. That's what you do when you hide in the dark. And once you've fired everything you got at the monster, hiding in the dark is all you can do.
  • Giraud: One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand...
  • Giraud (voiceover): Ever since we'd hacked into the senate hearing, I've been listening and waiting, hoping our testimony would find the right ears, afraid ONI would find us first just sitting here in the shadows. I didn't know where ONI ended and the world began. And it was the not knowing that kept me up. Because even if we had landed a fatal blow, all we could do was watch and wait for gory chunks to surface. So far, the surface was calm. The only thing I knew for sure was Mshak had never shown up. Every day since had been sickeningly silent and every night my doubts grew darker, haunted by scenarios, had always ended in quiet black bags. What had I done? FERO and Petrosky could handle themselves, but if ONI had come for Mshak... it was my fault and now, they would be coming for me. I’ve been holed up here for days. Darkness brought nightmares so I stopped sleeping in it. Nighttime was work time and I kept my display as dim as possible. Only my contact knew I was here and I wanted it to stay that way. This place was all concrete and dark corners. I'd memorized the sounds the building made: the breeze shushing down the stairwells, the click of the cooling system’s hibernation mode, the scurrying of rats in the walls. Anything else and I would instantly black out my display, crawl beneath the window and wait, on high alert, until the sounds and shadows normalized again. Then, I'd count to a hundred, and crawl back. I hadn’t deviated from the protocol once… until tonight. With the storm pounding on the roof, screaming through the high vents, I was effectively deaf; anyone could have snuck up on me. All of the concrete was echoing and all those dark corners seem to be coming alive, coming down the hall and I-- I tried to remind myself: if anyone came, they’d hit the tripwire. I’d have five seconds to hide. But every bump was a footstep, every howl was a voice, and everything in me told me someone was inside the building. I wasn’t gonna wait for the tripwire. I slid over to the loose panel on the floor; beneath it there was a narrow space. I squeezed into the gap, and closed myself in. No matter how hard it stormed, no matter who came for me, no one would find me here. Waiting in the dark... that was the hard part. But spending the night under the floor... was the best sleep I’d gotten in weeks. I’m Benjamin Giraud and this is Hunt the Truth.
  • Newscaster (recording): Speaking from the steps of the Congressional Plaza today, freshman Senator Andrew Del Rio issued a formal statement addressing last month’s embassy massacre on Biko.
  • Giraud (voiceover): It’s not a promising sign for democracy when a catastrophe touches a majority of the voters and seemingly, every politician in the UEG was trying to leverage the public outrage into talking points. Everything from military spending to tax relief. Not Senator Andrew Del Rio though, his sights were centered on one narrow target.
  • Andrew Del Rio (recording): So… the Master Chief stormed an assembly of peace activists and began to gun people down. Now, I’m sorry, but the SPARTAN-IIs are fundamentally flawed and dangerously outdated. They are an embarrassment and danger with their rusting tech and degraded neurology, but (chuckles) we just keep bleeding taxpayers dry. Well, now we’re seeing the real cost. That program isn’t built on faded glory, but faded principles! Volatile remnants of powerful weapons governed by increasingly corroded minds. There is a reason you’ll never see video of a SPARTAN-IV attacking civilians or murdering heroes. I can vouch personally for the character of each and every SPARTAN-IV as warriors, and as people. After the tragic events on Biko, I don’t think there is a person alive who could say the same for the SPARTAN-IIs. Mark my words: if we fail to decommission the SPARTAN-IIs, there will be more Bikos and there will be more massacres. Nobody wants to say it, but damn it somebody has to! For those nineteen families whose loved ones are never coming home, because of this.. “False Spartan,” this... broken bastardization of a soldier who would abandon his post, dishonor his uniform, and slaughter the very people he's sworn to protect. In the name of decency, it’s time to tear down that statue and put down the Master Chief.
  • Giraud (voiceover): I had to hand it to Andrew Del Rio, the man had focus. However much I hated Del Rio and the whole propaganda machine, the leaks, the video, the report... they didn’t lie. The Chief shot Ambassador Sekibo’s bodyguard at point blank range, grabbed the Ambassador, then escaped with the alien delegation in a hail of gunfire, and dropped off Sekibo’s body the next day. Those were the facts, and no matter how corrupt these politicians were, I couldn’t argue with the evidence. Chief needed to come in and face due process so we could know the truth. I still believed in the Chief. I believed that his legend would be restored and I knew there had to be more to this story. I don’t know if I become overconfident by daylight or distracted by Del Rio… but I didn’t even hear the intruder until they tripped the alarm.

(loud rustling)

  • Giraud: Oh God!
  • Giraud: Ray?! Is that you?!
  • Kurzig: Uh, yeah. Got caught in your booby trap.
  • Giraud: What are you doing here? You weren’t supposed to come until tomorrow! You scared the hell out of me, man!
  • Kurzig: Okay, can you hold that thought? I’m all wrapped up in dental floss and... camping gear? And this looks like something my daughter would make.
  • Giraud (voiceover): My trip wire wasn’t dental floss, it was fishing line tied to my mess kit balanced on a ledge. Very effective actually.
  • Kurzig: You look terrible.
  • Giraud: Oh thanks, Ray.
  • Giraud (voiceover): My life in exile wasn’t glamorous. Cot. Toilet. Sink. My clothes doubled as bedding. Outside of research, my daily regimen featured canned goods, sink washing, stretching, and security checks. I felt like I was back on the front lines.
  • Kurzig: Place looks… also terrible.
  • Giraud: Super helpful, Ray. Thank you, uh-- wait. Wait, wait, wait, what route did take to get here? Did you avoid the... you know the, um–
  • Kurzig: Relax, I took maximum precautions, Ben. As far as any unethical government surveillance is concerned, I’m still eating Thai food near my house.
  • Giraud (voiceover): I quickly learned Ray had nothing on Mshak, nothing on congress.
  • Giraud: Okay, but then what? N-news from the fashion world, what have you got?
  • Ray: That... or the truth about Biko.
  • Giraud (voiceover): Apparently after a Mshak slush combing tutorial, Ray had been listening. And a few days ago, he’d hit on an exotic frequency going somewhere it shouldn’t. The Sangheili, the alien race from the Biko peace talks, had sent an official transmission to UEG servers on Earth... the day after the leaks. And on their end, the government had buried it deep.

(message begins to play)

  • Kurzig: That’s the Sangheili clan leader saying they had nothing to do with the massacre and the Demon wasn’t responsible either.
  • Giraud (voiceover): The Sangheili refer to the Chief as the Demon, probably because Chief had killed thousands of their soldiers over the years so they weren’t doing him a solid. Besides, the Sangheili were all about the truth. If they shot up your embassy and sent you a message about it, it would be boasting about kill count, not an appeal for justice.
  • Sangheili clan leader (recording): Why do you sit silent while your people demand unjust blood?
  • Kurzig: He’s making it sound like Biko is lusting for vengeance.
  • Giraud: Huh? No-- no, I’ve been looking at Biko for days. Look, it’s totally peaceful there.
  • Kurzig: Exactly. I did some checking though: that feed is an old loop. The Outer Colonies are mostly cut off from us but someone’s cut Biko off from everybody. Nobody outside Biko knows what’s happening there and it’s ugly.
  • Giraud (voiceover): Ray had managed to track down Ravi, a scavenger who had made his living going terrible places, then selling intel to the highest bidder. He’d been sitting on Biko, fact-gathering since Sekibo’s funeral and for this job, Ray was getting his money’s worth.

(recordings of gunshots and yelling)

  • Kurzig: Protests. Riots. Martial law. But since the funerals, not a single prominent figure on Biko had said a word about any of it.
  • Giraud (voiceover): At least not in public; off the record, Ravi’s embassy contacts were livid. Sekibo’s people wanted to make a statement, clear the Sangheili, but they couldn’t. The magistrate, Laurel Adams, had silenced the leadership and the media. Nobody was talking.
  • Giraud: How does she have the authority to do that?
  • Kurzig: She doesn’t! Adams is a puppet. The gag order came from Earth.
  • Giraud: The UEG? Why would they squash the massacre? To protect the Chief?
  • Kurzig: Nope. To cover their own asses.
  • Giraud (voiceover): After uncovering a serious security threat one week before the talks, Ambassador Sekibo had petitioned the UEG for support, badly needed support. But the Senators blew him off with an automatic rejection. Sekibo’s office had no choice. Regional stability was hanging in the balance, so they went ahead with the talks. And it broke, very bad.
  • Kurzig: Gag order landed, media silence. And off the record, the only answer Ravi could get when he asked who did it was "not the Sangheili". But once FERO’S leaks hit and Chief was the bad guy, Biko’s streets popped off and Sekibo’s people took action. They broke rank, quietly launching an independent investigation into the massacre. The only suspects were a bunch of extremists called Sapien Sunrise.
  • Giraud (voiceover): The Sapien Sunrise believed species