Halo: Ghosts of Onyx

Halo: Ghosts of Onyx is the fourth novel in the Halo series. The book is written by Eric Nylund and published by Tor Books. It was officially released on October 31st, 2006, and was released as an Audio Book on February 6th, 2007. The unabridged version includes 9 disks, and is narrated by Jonathan Davis.

In addition, the announcement of the title also included a confirmation that Ghosts of Onyx was not the last planned Halo book. At least two more novels would follow, as part of a contract with Tor. The other two being Halo: Contact Harvest, and Halo: The Cole Protocol.

Brief Summary
The Spartan-II program has gone public. Tales of super-soldiers fending off thousands of Covenant attacks has become the stuff of legend. But just how many Spartans are left? While the Master Chief defends a besieged Earth, and the myriad factions of the Covenant continue their crusade to eliminate humanity, an ultra-secret cell of the Office of Naval Intelligence known as "Section Three" devises a plan to buy the UNSC vital time. They're going to need hundreds of willing soldiers, though...and one more Spartan to get the job done.

Planet Onyx is virtually abandoned and the perfect place to set this new plan in motion. When the Master Chief destroys Halo, however, something is triggered deep within Onyx. Action begins to boil and the Ancient Forerunner technology stirs. Armadas of UNSC and Covenant race to claim the Forerunner secrets in order to change the course of the Human-Covenant war.

But this reawakened and ancient force may have plans of its own...

Prologue: Beta Company's Victory at Pegasi Delta
The prologue begins with the 300 SPARTAN-IIIs of Beta Company being deployed to the Covenant Planet, Pegasi Delta in 2545. Out of the 300; 291 hit the ground and proceed towards their target, a Covenant refinery. The Spartans manage to destroy the facility, but due to unexpected heavy Covenant resistance, in the form of seven large Covenant cruisers, misidentified as part of the factory by the orbiting STARS Satellite, only two; SPARTANS Tom-B292 and Lucy-B091, survive. Tom and Lucy are revealed to be only twelve years old, and Lucy is severely traumatized and rendered mute, being diagnosed with post traumatic vocal disarticulation after the deaths of the other Spartans and several of her companions from Team Foxtrot, Adam-B004 and Min-B174.

Section 1: Ambrose
The narrative then moves back to 2531 to a raid by SPARTAN-II Blue Team against insurrectionists on Planet Victoria to recover stolen FENRIS nuclear warheads. Though the team is captured by General Howard Graves and the rebels, the timely intervention of Kurt-051 allows the team to complete their mission without any other serious problems, but Graves is killed by corrugated steel, preventing the team from learning valuable secrets the General held about the rebels' command and intelligence structure. Five months later, Colonel James Ackerson of Section Three of the Office of Naval Intelligence, meets with the top brass of ONI, Rear Admiral Rich, Captain Gibson and Vice Admiral Parangosky. During the meeting, Ackerson moves forward a proposal for a new SPARTAN program which retains most of the effectiveness, of the Series II program without the high costs of the previous project. This becomes the SPARTAN-III program, a more streamlined, "disposable", as well as more numerable, company of SPARTANS that must be trained for high-risk operations. Ackerson is given the UNSC controlled world Onyx with the purpose of training the SPARTANS-III, and is promised one of the SPARTAN-II to train them. The next month, Kurt, Kelly and Fred are sent to Station Delphi to investigate a rupture Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engine. When Kurt tries to approach the engine, his T-Pack malfunctions and sends him spinning away into deep space. Kurt awakes a month later and meet Colonel Ackerson. Kurt is told of the SPARTAN-III project and is given orders to progress and succeed with the seemingly impossible task of creating hundreds, if not thousands of new, "Disposable Heroes". Ackerson later promotes him to Lieutenant, Junior Grade and assigns him the name: Lt. Kurt Ambrose.

Section 2: SPARTAN-III
Like the SPARTAN-II, candidates are selected at a young age, and undergo radical biological augmentations as they reach (What would be considered) the normal age of puberty. They are also equipped with special SPI Armor (SPARTAN-II Semi Powered Infiltration Armor). However the difference with the Series-III lies in selecting orphaned volunteers from ages 4 to 6, who are gathered from worlds destroyed by the Covenant, do not have the perfect psychological and genetic markers and are four times larger than the SPARTANS-II class. They are trained by the SPARTAN-IIs' original trainer, Senior Chief Petty Officer Mendez ,who even in his later years, is still considered the recruit's best and only hope of becoming true SPARTAN's. Had he been a Spartan himself, he would have been one of the best. Ackerson and the ONI brass agree that only a Spartan can train Spartan's, Ackerson selects Kurt-051 as he is viewed as the best SPARTAN-II for instructional duties. Their first drill was to drop from the Pelicans. The trainees were instructed by Navy men, first a girl jumped, other kids didn't. Shane had stood in shock, but a kid pushed him off the pelican. When they both landed, Shane fought against Robert, the kid who had pushed him.

The first SPARTAN-III company, Alpha Company, proves highly successful, but is wiped out when deployed to a major Covenant shipyard just outside of Human controlled space in a mission codenamed Operation PROMETHEUS. Devastated by the images of the battle and the loss of his soldiers, some of which were Shane, Robert and Jane, Kurt improves the training regime for Beta Company, but most are killed in action, leaving just Tom and Lucy. So in an effort to reduce casualties, Kurt then institutes an illegal bioaugmentation procedure on Gamma Company, which will harden their minds and bodies against pain and shock to better their chances against the Covenant onslaught. Tom and Lucy became Kurt's right and left hand, after almost taken away for private missions, and helped Kurt train Gamma Company.

Section 3: Intruders
The narrative switches to October 31, 2552, the top three teams of the SPARTAN-III Gamma Company, Teams Saber, Katana, and Gladius, conduct a training exercise near a restricted area on the planet deemed Zone 67, only to find themselves and other UNSC personnel under attack by an unidentified class of alien drones. Very quickly, the few humans on the planet are either wiped out or struggling to survive against this new, unexpected threat.

Section 4: Dr. Catherine Halsey
Doctor Catherine Halsey and Kelly-087 arrive in the Zeta Doradus System, as they get closer to Onyx they are attacked by the Drones and crash land. Once on the planet, they meet up with the human survivors of the attacks, including S-III Team Saber, Kurt, and Chief Mendez. Halsey identifies the drones as Sentinels from the Artificial Intelligence, Cortana's logs of the events of Halo: Combat Evolved. Halsey proceeds to call for reinforcements, piggybacking her transmission on, ironically, another transmission made by Cortana at the end of Halo 2. On the message she calls out for caution about the danger coming from the Dreadnought that includes SPARTAN-117, as well as the omniscient threat of the Flood, which was trying to escape from Delta Halo at the time.

Section 5: Blue Team
The narrative switches to Earth, two weeks after the New Mombasa slipspace event, where the planet is under siege by Covenant forces. Fred-104, Will-043, and Linda-058 are pulled out of the line of fire by Fleet Admiral Hood, who responds to Halsey's call for reinforcements by dispatching the Spartans to Onyx. After hijacking a Covenant destroyer called Bloodied Spirit and killing all Covenant on board by suffocation, the Spartans head for Onyx, only to be caught in the middle of a battle between Brute and Elite ships on the way. The Spartans barely escape and arrive at Onyx only to be attacked by the Sentinels. They escape using a Covenant Dropship and link up with the survivors, and then make their way toward the restricted area of Onyx after shaking Sentinel pursuit.

Section 6: The Ghosts of Onyx
The narrative switches to Delta Halo, where the Covenant are in the midst of a civil war. The Elites intercept Halsey's message and learn of the existence of Onyx and its Forerunner artifacts and regroup at a Covenant world called Joyous Exultation. There, the Sangheili leader Xytan 'Jar Wattinree rallies the Elites together and discuss the apparent treachery of the Brutes and Prophets, and how to go about handling the situation. Ship Master Voro 'Mantakree speaks to his fellow ship masters and suggests that they go to Onyx, as well as be vigilant of the Flood threat. He is promoted to the rank of Fleet Master and is given command of a fleet of eighteen destroyers, two cruisers, and one carrier. They then prepare to go to Onyx, and retrieve the Forerunner technology. Meanwhile on the Covenant Super-carrier called Sublime Transcendence, a Grunt named Kwassass stumbles upon the Huragok who are busy examining what is revealed to be Admiral Whitcomb's NOVA bomb. The Huragok unknowingly arm it after Kwassass messes with the arming device for sometime. Shortly after the fleet departs for Onyx, the NOVA detonates, scorching the Covenant world with over 300 km per hour winds, shattering its nearby moon, Malhiem, into a billion fragments, and disintegrating the Covenant armada, as well as severely devastating the surface of Joyous Exultation.

Section 7: Reclaimers
The Covenant fleet and UNSC reinforcement fleet arrive at Onyx, where they encounter one another and the Sentinel defenders, which attack anything approaching the system. In the ensuing battle, the entire UNSC fleet is destroyed save for one prowler-class vessel, which stays hidden and observes events unfolding. The humans on Onyx discover an ancient Forerunner city, Dr. Halsey determines that the entire planet is actually a "Shield World" referred to by the Forerunners as The Sharpened Shield. The Sharpened Shield was constructed by the Forerunners to protect themselves from the firing of the Halo Array, which are designed to eradicate all sentient life should the Flood escape.

Fighting off determined Covenant pursuers, they press on into the heart of the planet to find its secrets, but not before the ONI AI communicates to Dr. Halsey the importance of shutting down a Forerunner "factory located at the "tip" of the plant that manufactures a new Sentinel every six seconds, or 600 per hour. After disabling the factory, the group proceeds to the location of Team Katana. They find eight cryopods, five of which contain members of Katana. It is unknown who or what the other three contain. Possibly Forerunner, possibly ONI personnel that were active in Zone 67. They then press on to the planet's core, where they discover a Slipspace rift that shunts those that pass through it to a miniaturized Dyson Sphere that is separated from normal space-time by advanced Forerunner Slipspace technology. Will-043 and Holly-G003 fall fighting off the Covenant forces, Will-043 engaging several Hunters in hand to hand combat, before meeting his demise, earning him even the Sangheilli's respect. Halsey, Mendez, Tom, Lucy, and the other Spartans escape. Kurt remains behind in order to stop the Covenant from following the humans into the Dyson Sphere. He waits for the core doors to fully close and then he lists Kurt Ambrose as MIA under SPARTAN-051 along with the other Spartans, adhering to the tradition of never listing a fallen Spartan as KIA. He ends his life responding to the Elite Fleet Master, "Die? Didn't you know?... Spartans never die," he detonates the two FENRIS nuclear warheads that the team had taken with them.

From outside Onyx, the surviving UNSC prowler Dusk watches on as the planet's surface rips apart, to reveal that the entire world is constructed of literally trillions of Sentinels, all connected together to provide an impenetrable defense around the Dyson Sphere at the heart of the planet. Within this sphere, which features terrain similar to that of Earth. Dr Halsey reveals that five pods they recovered after destroying the sentinel factory are pods that suspends the user inside a Slipspace field, the user is extruded into an alternate set of spatial co-ordinates excluded from time and nothing can harm them, because technically they are not there. 5 of the remaining Spartans, known as Team Katana, are each trapped in a Slipspace Field Pod. Concluding the story, Fred-104 takes command of the remaining survivors who find themselves alone in the vast habitat. Fred orders Dr. Halsey and the others to find the Forerunner artifacts and search for method of escape. Kelly then welcomes the new Spartan III's to the Blue Team, ensuring that they were "going to make a great team."

Reception
Critical reception to Ghosts of Onyx was mostly positive. IGN stated that it did some "pretty nifty things" and that it was "an interesting and very sneaky way to conclude a story without spoiling Halo 3 ' s story". Arbiter's Judgment stated that it was "a grand continuation of Nylund's previous work, and if you enjoyed it then you will enjoy Ghosts of Onyx, plain and simple".

However, Subnova had reviews that were less then positive, stating that "it introduces a new character...well, 300 new characters, while incorporating no old ones, and it dizzies the reader with new facts and information". It also noted how the Master Chief and Cortana were "ignored", and only appeared in one section, rather than in the past books.

Trivia

 * The name Ghosts of Onyx was supposedly derived from the song Ghosts of Reach on the Halo 2 Soundtrack.
 * Before the confirmation of the book itself, the book's placeholder and showcase online name was "Ghosts of Coral". This raised much speculation about the I Love Bees involvement in the Halo series.
 * The cover of the book displays the three primary armor types worn by the Spartan-IIs and Spartan-IIIs.
 * During the stage that it was still called Ghosts of Coral, two chapters were cut from the novel for 'pacing reasons' though Nylund has expressed a desire to release these.
 * There are two different backcover variants; one with a SPARTAN in a SPI armor and another with a SPARTAN-II in a MJOLNIR Mark VI armor.
 * On his blog, Eric Nylund has confirmed that there will be a reprint some time in the future, fixing many errors in the book. The time for this is not yet known.