Halo: The Flood

Halo: The Flood is a 2003 novel based on the 2001 Xbox video game Halo: Combat Evolved; it is the second Halo novel written, following Eric Nylund's 2001 prequel to Halo: Combat Evolved, The Fall of Reach. It is largely an adaptation of the game's story by William C. Dietz. The novel depicts the struggle of the human crew of the ship Pillar of Autumn, who crashland on an ancient ring known as "Halo". The humans must fight against the Covenant, a collection of alien races bent on human extermination, as well as another terrifying force hidden on the ring, as they struggle to uncover Halo's secrets.

Although the book roughly follows the same events of the Xbox game, it also describes events and experiences seen through the eyes of people other than the Master Chief and the A.I. Cortana, the protagonists of the game. Since most of the video game's action is seen expressly through the Master Chief's eyes, the book fills in several holes in the plot, including what happened to the Marines on Halo. The book cracked the Top Ten Bestsellers List for Paperbacks upon its release.

Plot
DATE: September 19, 2552 -September 23, 2552

Sections I to III

The Halo The Flood novel, like the video game it is based on, begins as the UNSC cruiser Pillar of Autumn exits slipspace after retreating from the fallen human base at Reach. Cortana's exit vector had lead the ship to a system found when she had decrypted Forerunner glyphs found by the Master Chief on Sigma Octanus IV. When the Autumn drops out of slipspace, it encounters a massive ringworld in orbit around a gas giant.

In the system are a host of Covenant, who notice the lone ship. A Prophet forbids the fleet to fire on the Autumn, for fear of damaging the ring. Instead, the Covenant are willing to sacrifice more lives in order to board and capture the ship. As a result of this, the Pillar of Autumn and her crew are able to destroy four covenant ships without taking damage. Meanwhile, technicians on the Autumn are preparing for battle and thawing out a single soldier from cryo sleep- a 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 Autumns captain, Jacob Keyes, initiates the Cole Protocol and tells the crew to abandon ship. The Master Chief is entrusted with the A.I. Cortana; given the wealth of tactical information the A.I. contains, 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. 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 minor A.I. named Wellsley as they prepare to take a tall bluff 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.

The Master Chief lands on Halo and helps rescue Marines from their lifeboats. The ODSTs secure Alpha Base after a clash with Covenant forces. Captain Keyes is captured by the Covenant, and taken aboard the Covenant cruiser Truth and Reconciliation. 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 assassination attempts.

Meanwhile, Keyes, along with a squad of Marines, is dropped into a swamp in an effort to discover a weapons cache. Pushing deeper into a mysterious structure, the squad finds only dead Covenant. 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 numbers of the creatures overwhelm all the soldiers, tapping into their nervous systems and taking over their bodies. One soldier, Private Wallace Jenkins, is left still semi-conscious and painfully aware of his predicament, unable to control his movement or actions.

Sections IV and V

The Master Chief and Cortana discover the location of the Control Room, and with the help of a group of Marines, insert Cortana into Halo's computer network. However Cortana realizes that the ring isn't a weapon as they understood at all- but 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 a 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.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. 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. 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 parasite. The Chief retrieves the implants and leaves the Truth' 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 way more important then Silva's promotion, cuts the cable, sending the Truth and Reconciliation crashing into Halo, killing all aboard.

At the 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. 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."

Reception and criticism
Reception to the book was somewhat mixed. Some found William C. Dietz's style of writing subpar when compared to Eric Nylund. Dietz's interpretation of the Master Chief, very different from Nylund's, was alternatively praised and hated. Others criticized how the novel did not depart enough from the game's storyline; one reviewer noted that "the game was designed with gameplay in mind, but the excitement of killing hundreds of aliens starts to become tiresome in the book" due to repetitious fight scenes. This sentiment was echoed by another reviewer, who said the book "turned a game of drudgery into a book of equal drudgery." However the story's embracing of different and new characters, as well as telling the story of the Marines at Alpha Base, was well-received.

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.

Some fans generally have a powerful dislike for this particular novel stating that the Dietz's characterization of the Master Chief was too drastically changed from Eric Nylund's written portrayal of the character. 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 (it has been compared to describing modern soldiers using conventions of the musketeers). 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. Another example is the fact that Bumblebee lifeboats in the games cannot generate a sufficient escape velocity to leave Halo (Although if you remember in The Maw, Cortana originally sets the countdown to the Pillar of Autumns reactors and then tasks the Chief with making it to a Lifeboat), which is disregarded in the novel. Also, it states that Grunts charge their plasma pistols, while only Jackals are supposed to. The book contains almost all of the dialog from the game, word for word, effectively making it a book version of the game.

However, Halo: The Flood is 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 in order to stop The Flood from spreading to Earth.

Trivia

 * If you look closely at the left side of the cover, you can see a part of a flood combat form's 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 165, Dietz writes, "The 102mm shaped charge exploded against the very center of the Hunter's chest armor...and severed his spine." This is odd seeing as hunters are made of Lekgolo worms and do not have spines. Page 106 also has a reference to a spine.
 * On page 103 a marine says "here's something to remember me by" and he shoots both Jackals in the head. But one plummited off a cliff.