Fellow Canonites, welcome back to another review of Halo Cannon into the final tribute to a great writer of Halo fiction. Halo Escalation 6 marks the final work of Chris Schlerf within the Halo universe. This man's contributions have, especially in the post-Bungie era, set a high bar for subsequent Halo stories, the raw emotion of the chief's journey in Halo 4. The creation of rich, interesting characters across multiple media. It perhaps is biggest achievement in my humble opinion, saving Sarah Palmer. For me and others who took issue with Palmer's character in Spartan Ops and Halo initiation, her development in Halo Escalation was a welcome change. No longer the cocky hypocrite, Palmer felt more like a real person, suddenly having to deal with the consequences of her command decisions and learning some damn humility. We can only hope that future writers learn from this example. Thank you, Mr. Schlerf, for your contributions to Halo. You will be sorely missed and we wish you the best of luck in all of your future endeavors. Alright, let's move on. You're here for a review of issue 6, not necessarily me singing Schlerf's praises. So let's get right into things. Our issue starts with seeing the sorry state of the infinity. Having taken three shots from a Covenant glassing beam, the sheep is in horrible condition, arguably on the verge of destruction. On board, hood has been severely injured and I mean severely injured, Commander Bradley is dead and infinity herself is dead in the water. Thank you. This scene is beautifully drawn for once and really draws you into the dire situation that hood and the infinity are facing. I don't want to put hoods full monologue in here so I encourage you to pick it up if you really want to get into what I'm talking about. I want to quickly readdress the issue of the infinity shield of the glassing beam. I talked about a briefly last issue when the first shot was fired but I still saw a number of comments concerning this. So remember this is a glassing beam, a Covenant ventral beam which we've only seen used against a ship once in the history of the Halo franchise. At the end of the level tip of the spear, the long night of solace uses her ventral beam to take out the odyssey grafted and a heavy frigate. Now based on what we can see, the ventral beam is nowhere near or close to its full potential. So really issue 5 and technically issue 6 are the first time we see such a weapon used against a UNSC ship. Now yes, infinity has shields and yes they are based on Fort Runner tech. However they are still energy shields and they are more vulnerable to plasma weaponry than standard projectile weapons. Given this, it is conceivable that a single shot from a glassing beam could break through the energy shielding pretty easily. Anyway, with infinity all but beat, Palmer majestic take off in their booster frames to neutralize the glassing beam would really call my attention about this panel as the fact that the booster frames seem to have spartan numbers on them. Or one of them does. When the booster frames were first introduced in Halo Legends, they had the numbers of the Spartan pilots on them, chafed with 0117, Cali was 0, 087, etc. Palmer is seen with the number 0, 0, 6, 9. Whether this is meaningful or not is yet to be seen of course. On board the Covenant space station we find out that the glassing beam is overheated, to keep infinity from retaliating while the glassing beam recharges, clean orders Gajat and his crew to distract them for a fee of course. Instead, Gajat decides he'd rather finish infinity himself since such an accomplishment would bring untold notoriety and coin. Ok, I think you all know what time it is. Art, come to the lady's house. I know I know, not really catchy but not really the point. In this case I think we can blame the editor for this little screw up. Here is as to what I'm referring to, an ill-cropped scene from a disgruntled Clayton. Double chin, beard abruptly stopping, yep some editor missed a major cropping error. Anyway. With Gajat and Clayton distracted, the Spartans find their opportunity to sneak on board. Acting like real Spartans, they swiftly take over the bridge of the space station, Madsen knocks out Clayton and the Spartans blow up Gajat's ship. And what a beautiful explosion it is. We jump forward 72 hours as infinity is undergoing repairs, the Covenant space station is taking control by the UNSC and lasking Ray finally make their way back to their ship. Ray is sent down to Estek for a debriefing while Palmer apologizes for a behavior prior to lask his departure. The two then head out to enjoy glass of scotch together. I was gonna make an increment joke about scotch but I'm a lot of scotch so here's some dry gin. Oh Clayton, it burns! Oh god. Oh that really burns. In another part of the ship Hood, now in a wheelchair, visits Clayton before the former captain is sent off to Midnight Facility. So a couple things here did scotch before we finished the summary. To start we have Hood in a wheelchair. Just briefly I can't help but wonder if this is going to be a permanent thing if we might see him this way in future games. Just some quick thoughts that came to mind. Second and obviously more important is the mention of Midnight Facility. This Odie facility was first mentioned in the Thursday War and was where Admiral Peransky sent Dr. Irana Magnuson after the good doctor allowed Jule and Dama to escape Odriar F. Travolion. We still really don't know anything about this facility other than Magnuson nearly shit or self when Peransky sentenced her there. Clayton seems to think he won't be killed if this is the facility and Hood really doesn't seem to be the kind of man that would sentence people to covert deaths. If you're wondering what I'm talking about many thought that Magnuson was sent to Midnight Facility to be killed. This may actually still be the case but as the UNSC proper knows of Midnight's existence I don't really see it as that kind of facility. Perhaps we could think of it as a futuristic, wantonimal bay. I do hope we find out exactly what it is. This segment of the comic comes to a close with Daniel Clayton informing Hood that the new colonial alliance has agents on every colony and quote on the poison shores of Earth herself. Before they part he vows that he and Hood would meet when the UNSC finally crumbled or as he says when the Empire finally falls. And just to annoy me the aren't this final section is a trojus. Look at this, this guy looks like he's having a stroke. The comic comes to a close with us finally seeing the spirit of fire. Seemingly just drifting through space the ship approaches an unknown world in a binary star system. Inside an alarm is warning to evacuate the ship. Eventually half the ship's cryopods are open and empty and in the final panels we see a flood infection form scurry across the cryobay a promise of things to come. Hot damn what an issue. Slurfs certainly went out with a bang in more ways than one. You could say he took a page from the Sergeant Johnson playbook. In this issue even though its description was misleading by which I mean an outright lie, it's still a great read. Paul was character has certainly undergone a transition in Slurfs hands and we can only hope that 343 takes notice of the positive community feedback. Sadly it seems that we're done for Petr for now despite what the damn description says, but I think we can expect to see or again in the near future since the chief is returning an old. And boy, even though the spirit of fire wasn't recovered it is still around and I love the idea that it might be carrying the flood. Many of us lore fans have been predicting the return of the flood for the reclaimed Rishaga and it looks like we might finally have some solid proof. Only time will tell. And with this one cannot help but wonder if a Halo Wars 2 might actually be in the works. We have 30 years worth of time between the end of Halo Wars and the spirit of fires of appearance in Halo Escalation 6. So really lots of potential for a game. Well that about wraps up this issue. Once again a great issue and I am so glad to see Chris Schler leaving on such a high note. The next issue, releasing on June 25th, will start the new Phoenix story arc and really start investigating the fallout from Halo Force Campaign. On a number related note I want to remind everyone about the upcoming Q&A. I'll be taking questions right up through next Friday so get them in if you haven't already. The final video will go live the morning of June 8th, a day before Microsoft's E3 media briefing. And if all goes according to plan I'll be providing coverage and commentary regarding the briefing not long after it airs. We know Halo news will be there and I can't wait to see what will be revealed. Finally, Halo Cannon recently hit 1000 subscribers and I cannot thank you all enough. It has been a great journey so far, pond most certainly intended and I can't wait to see how far I can take this channel with your support. Thanks for watching everyone. This has been Halo Cannon and I'll see you all again before E3. Thanks for watching. If you liked this video please give it a thumbs up, subscribe to the channel and maybe share it around on whatever social media you choose. Also please be sure to follow me on Facebook and Twitter. All your support is extremely welcome. Thank you all.