Halo: The Flood

Halo: The Flood is the novelization of Halo: Combat Evolved written by William C. Dietz following the events of the book Halo: The Fall of Reach. This novel attained the Publisher's Weekly bestsellers list during May 2003.

Sections I to III
Halo: The Flood takes place between September 19, 2552 and September 23, 2552 in the Halo Universe. Like the video game it is based on, it begins as the UNSC cruiser Pillar of Autumn is exiting slipspace (randomized vector due to the Cole Protocol) after retreating from the fallen military base at Reach. Cortana's exit vector led the ship to a system found when she had decrypted Forerunner glyphs found by the Master Chief on Sigma Octanus IV. When the Pillar of Autumn drops out of slipspace, she encounters a massive Ring-world in orbit around Threshold, a gas giant. This world is called Installation 04.

In the system are a host of Covenant Ships, who notice the lone ship. A Prophet forbids the fleet to fire on the Pillar of Autumn, for fear of damaging the ring. Instead, the Covenant are willing to sacrifice more lives in order to board and capture the ship rather than blasting the ship to pieces. As a result of this, the Pillar of Autumn and her crew are able to destroy four covenant ships, but not without being somewhat further crippled from the Covenant onslaught. Meanwhile, technicians on the Autumn are preparing for battle and thawing out a single soldier from cryogenic sleep, presumably the last SPARTAN-II known as the Master Chief.

The Covenant proceed to take out the Autumn's defenses and board the ship. Deprived of defensive options, the Autumn's captain, Jacob Keyes, initiates the Cole Protocol and tells the crew to abandon the ship. The Master Chief is entrusted with the A.I. Cortana; given the wealth of tactical information the A.I. contains,(force deployment, weapons research,and the location of Earth) Keyes cannot allow Cortana to fall into Covenant hands. [6] The Chief fights through the Covenant invaders, reaches the last remaining lifeboat, and heads to the surface of the ringworld known as Halo. At the same time, a special contingent of Orbital Drop Shock Troopers, or ODSTs, leave the Autumn by "Human Entry Vehicles", which rocket the ODSTs to the surface. On the ground, the ODST Commander, Major Antonio Silva and his second-in-command, Melissa McKay, prepare to establish a ground base from where the human forces will launch their guerrilla resistance against the Covenant. Silva is aided by a Class C Military A.I. named Wellsley, an A.I. who thought he was The Duke of Wellington to prepare to take a tall butte from the Covenant.

Meanwhile, a Covenant Grunt named Yayap leads his squad into the Pillar of Autumn. Extremely cautious and cowardly by nature, Yayap and his team decide to rescue a Covenant Special Operations Elite wounded by the Master Chief, rather than fight the humans. The five small aliens drag the black-armored Elite back to their craft and escape the deteriorating Autumn as it plunges towards the Ringworld's atmosphere.

An Ossoona by the name of Isna 'Nosolee manages to board a lifeboat after tracking Keyes down to take him hostage. However, the Captain sees him and shoots him with the corporal's M6D pistol. Isna's corpse later allows the Covenant to realize that they should capture Keyes. Keyes and his crew are forced to evade Covenant forces as they crash onto the Halo. Finally, they are betrayed by Ensign Ellen Dowski. Consequently, everyone, including the Ensign, is executed, save the Captain, whom is held for capture and interrogation aboard the Truth and Reconciliation.

The Master Chief lands on Halo and helps rescue Marines from their lifeboats. The ODSTs secure Alpha Base after a clash with Covenant forces. Yayap is rewarded for his rescue of the Elite, Zuka 'Zamamee, with a terribly dangerous assignment as the Elite's assistant.

The Master Chief and a squad of Marines board the Truth and Reconciliation, rescuing the captain. Keyes has learned that the Ringworld they are on has vast significance to the Covenant- they believe that "Halo", as they call the ring, is a weapon of unimaginable power. Escaping from the Covenant cruiser, Keyes gives the Master Chief the mission of finding the Control Room of Halo before the Covenant does. Meanwhile, Zuka ’Zamamee and Yayap are given permission to hunt for the Master Chief, but fails in several poorly planned assassination attempts.

Meanwhile, Keyes, along with a squad of Marines, are dropped into a swamp in an effort to discover a weapons cache. Pushing deeper into a mysterious structure, the squad finds nothing like they have seen before. Dead Covenant freakishly ripped open and scattered about. In a locked room, the squad discovers the cause of the fatalities - the Flood. These bulbous aliens attempt to latch themselves onto the Marines. Despite being fragile, the sheer number of the creatures overwhelm all the soldiers, tapping into their nervous systems and taking over their bodies. One soldier, Private Wallace A. Jenkins, is left still semi-conscious and painfully aware of his predicament, he has a limited ability to control his movement or actions, because the infection form was weakened from the hibernation

Sections IV to V
The Master Chief and Cortana discover the location of the Control Room. The Chief then inserts Cortana into Halo's computer network. However, Cortana realizes that the ring isn't a weapon as they understood at all-however, before the Chief can press her with questions, Cortana tells the Master Chief to find the Captain, unaware that they are too late. The Master Chief is dropped alone into the swamp where Keyes disappeared. Heading into the same structure, the Master Chief follows the subterranean passages down to the same room where Keyes and his men were attacked. He finds out their fate through a recording and fights to the surface. There, he meets up with marines and heads to a tower. Suddenly, the Chief is teleported away from the swamp by Halo's resident A.I., 343 Guilty Spark. The Master Chief is informed that the creatures he has encountered are called the Flood, a virulent parasite that infects its enemies to produce more of itself. Guilty Spark wishes to activate Halo's defenses to wipe out the Flood, but needs the Master Chief's help in recovering The "Index" to the installation, which allows the activation of the ring. Fighting more and more Flood, the Chief recovers the Index and is teleported back to Halo's control room.

Meanwhile, the UNSC forces of Alpha Base are forced to defend themselves not just from Covenant, but from the new arrival of the Flood. One of the Flood that ambushes the Marines is the form of Jenkins, who wrests control of his body back from the Flood infection in an effort to throw himself into the line of fire. McKay instead captures Jenkins in order to study the new enemies.

Back in the Control Room, Guilty Spark gives the Master Chief the Index to activate Halo, but is stopped by the furious Cortana. Cortana explains that Halo is a weapon, but it doesn't kill the Flood - it kills their food, meaning humans, Covenant, and any other sentient life in the galaxy. Realizing that they have to stop Guilty Spark from activating Halo, Cortana and the Master Chief decide to destroy Halo by detonating the crash-landed Pillar of Autumn's fusion reactors. In order to do this, they need Captain Keyes' neural implants to activate the countdown. Cortana discovers the Captain is still alive, held prisoner once again aboard the Truth and Reconciliation, now in the hands of the Flood who are trying to escape Halo with the ship. The Chief fights Covenant and Flood to the Captain, but finds out he is too late, the Captain, after successfully resisting an interrogation by the Flood, has been assimilated into the deadly parasite. The Chief retrieves the implants and leaves the Truth and Reconciliation, for the Autumn.

Section VI
While the Chief and Cortana head to the Autumn, Alpha Base is evacuated. Silva decides to retake the Truth and Reconciliation and pilot the ship away in order to avoid being on Halo when the Autumn blows. The ship is taken successfully, but McKay realizes that Silva is blinded by the thought of promotion and glory to the danger of the Flood; if even one Flood specimen escaped containment on Earth, the entire planet could fall. Jenkins draws McKay's attention to a vital energy line on the ship, and realizing that the destruction of the Flood is far more important then Silva's promotion, cuts the cable, sending the Truth and Reconciliation crashing into Halo, killing all aboard.

At the destroyed Autumn, the Master Chief is forced to destabilize the fusion reactors manually as 343 Guilty Spark and his robotic Sentinels try to stop them. Once the countdown until detonation has begun, Cortana radios for dropship evacuation, but the transport is shot down by Covenant aircraft. A disgruntled Zuka 'Zamamee attempts to ambush the Chief, but is killed by a hail of grenades. Seeking other options, Cortana directs the Chief to a Longsword Interceptor still docked in the Pillar of Autumn hangar. Gunning the engines, the Chief and Cortana escape the ring just as the Autumn explodes, ending the threat of the Flood. Cortana scans for survivors and realizes that they are seemingly the only two who have survived. Cortana tells the Master Chief that the fight is finished, to which the Chief replies, "No, I think we're just getting started."

Criticism
There have been many criticisms of the book, many times ultimately due to the fact that William Dietz did not incorporate ideas into his story that were developed by Eric Nylund in Halo: The Fall of Reach and continued in Halo: First Strike.

In "The Flood", William C. Dietz portrays grunts as smart and witty, where in the novels by Eric Nylund, the Grunts are considered cannon fodder, and not very intelligent. The Chief, previously portrayed as a carefully guarded person, smiles freely and generally acts less like the Spartans did in the first book. In addition, many of the futuristic elements of Halo were conflicted, with the mentioning of MREs, Dog Tags, and the Marine Corps motto, Semper Fi. Dietz's portrayal of the UNSC Marines is more akin to the current United States Marine Corps, with little regard for any social evolution that would have taken place over approximately 500 years. While some point out that in the earlier book Eric Nylund showed again and again that the Master Chief's abduction and replacement with a flash clone had been top secret, while in the book it shows that not only do Major Silva and Lieutenant McKay know of that "secret", but that Captain Keyes divulges this information freely, the exact opposite of what he does in Halo: The Fall of Reach; Dietz explains that the UNSC made public the SPARTAN program (or most of it) in order to boost troop morale.

Further criticism around the book is focused on inconsistencies with details presented in the game. For example, in the book, Master Chief faces Jackals on the Pillar of Autumn, while in the game, he only faces Elites and Grunts.

The book, however, does contain almost all of the dialog from the game, word for word, effectively making it a book version of the game. Halo: The Flood is also acknowledged for explaining what happened to the UNSC personnel and Marines on Halo. In the game, the fate of the humans is not mentioned. Up to the Index level, the player generally knows that the Marines regrouped somewhere, and have staged a resistance against the Covenant. In the book, it is descriptively explained how the Marines acquired a base, successfully got human vehicles from the Pillar of Autumn, and how they managed to fight the Covenant without the Master Chief.

Furthermore, the book also tells us how the entire battalion of surviving Marines dealt with the Flood and how they attempted to escape Halo. The book finally completes their ill fate when Lieutenant McKay intentionally destroys their escape ship, which is the Truth & Reconciliation in order to stop the Flood from spreading to Earth. Ironically, Major Silva's plan to capture the "Truth and Reconciliation" is a violation of the Cole Protocol which expressly forbids a captured Covenant vessel from being navigated toward planet Earth.

Trivia

 * If you look at the left side of the cover, you can see a part of a Flood Combat Form's Human face.
 * On the front cover of the book the light on the Chief's chest armor is on the right side. In the game however, it is on the left.
 * On page 14, a tremendous hurricane is described to be forming over an ocean in Halo. This is highly improbable as tropical cyclones consolidate due to the presence of the Coriolis force (objects on Halo would not experience this as the Halo's surface is always perpendicular to its plane of rotation). A possible argument would be that Forerunner technology had somehow managed to replicate the Coriolis effect.
 * On page 165, Dietz writes, "The 102mm shaped charge exploded against the very center of the Hunter's chest armor, blew through his torso, and severed his spine." This is odd, considering Hunters are made of Lekgolo worms and do not have spines. Page 106 also states " ...plasma blasts burned through multiple layers of armor and exited through his spine." It may refer to an artificial spine which Hunters use as a means of vertical support in Halo 3. However, the book was written before the nature of the Hunters was revealed.
 * In the book it is said many times that the Master Chief is the only SPARTAN left when there are actually still some alive, although this is unknown to the Master Chief and other UNSC personnel at the time.
 * This is the only time ever mentioned (besides in the beginning of Halo: First Strike) that the Chief was almost infected when a Combat Form attacked him with a wrench and an Infection Form jumped on him and attempted to infect him. He was saved only by Cortana's quick thinking.
 * The Pillar of Autumn's reactors have the same shielding as they do in Halo: Combat Evolved, although three exhaust manifolds are present rather than four.
 * The Master Chief's helmet is stretched too far vertically on the cover of some older editions.
 * Sergeant Parker, a male ODST, is referred to as "she" twice during the raid of the Truth and Reconciliation. For example, "She started to protest... she said." [Page 113]
 * Shortly before the Battle of Alpha Base, Wellsley was fighting a simulation of The Battle of Marathon. This is probably a reference to Bungie's earlier series.
 * When looking for the control room, a marine's voice blares over the Master Chief's helmet "This is Fire Team Zulu requesting immediate assistance from any USNC forces..." Instead of UNSC. It is said correctly in the game.
 * Sergeant Stacker is not present in this novel, having been replaced by Sergeant Waller and "a marine", though the characters have exactly the same dialogue.
 * Zuka 'Zamamee is believed to be able to be killed in the level "The Maw", but due to the book coming out after the game, a number of facts between the two do not match (such being that he was in an Shade and the elevator dropped more). Regardless Zuka 'Zamamee position in the book is the same Elite on the lift before you head to the Warthog, many believe that they kill him each time they play.
 * A Marathon symbol can be seen between the L and the O on the cover.
 * On the original cover the Master Chief holds an assault rifle; on the published cover he holds a shotgun.
 * The book claims that Jenkins still had control over his body when he was infected because the infection form was weakened by hibernation, but in Breaking Quarantine he attacked Sergeant Johnson and chased him with six other infected marines. This could be because he was knocked unconscious from the pain of the Infection Form entering his body.