Halo: The Fall of Reach

Halo: The Fall of Reach is a prequel to Halo: Combat Evolved, written by Eric Nylund and published during October 2001.

The novel was reportedly finished in seven weeks, eventually becoming a Publisher's Weekly bestseller with nearly two hundred thousand copies sold.

Summary
The book describes how the Spartans were created and suited up with advanced MJOLNIR armor. Later on in the book the Office of Naval Intelligence receives a transmission sent by a new threat, the Covenant, a race of alien invaders who have been watching and studying our civilization for who knows how long. Armed with state-of-the-art weaponry Master Chief and his Spartans seek to destroy the Covenant and to keep Reach under the control of the human race. The book details the following engagements: The Battle of Harvest, The Battle of Sigma Octanus IV, The Battle of Chi Ceti, The Battle of Reach, and Operation: TREBUCHET.

DATE: August 17, 2517-August 30, 2552

Story Synopsis
The prologue begins on Jericho VII on Feb. 12 2535 and basically reveals the Spartans as a whole. Their mission to stop Covenant on Jericho VII is rescinded because the Covenant are preparing to glass the planet.

The story itself begins with Dr. Catherine Halsey and then Lieutenant JG Jacob Keyes on board the Han, a UNSC diplomatic shuttle. Their mission is to identify a potential candidate for Halsey's Spartan II program. The plot then goes on to show in detail the brutal indoctrination and training regime that John and the other Spartans are put through. On February 3, 2525, first contact is made with an alliance of alien races that refers to itself as The Covenant. On that day, a single Covenant Warship exterminated the surface population of the Outer Colony Harvest. Three UNSC battleships are sent to investigate this incident, initiated first engagement protocols and attempted contact, engaged the Covenant ship in battle, and are subsequently routed. Only one, the Heracles, manages to return to Reach badly damaged. By December of the same year, the UNSC has mobilized a massive fleet under the command of Vice Admiral Preston Cole, with orders to reclaim the Harvest Colony and stop the Covenant advance.

Cole's fleet manages a victory at Harvest, but at a high cost - two thirds of his ships are destroyed. Despite significant tactical brilliance on the part of Human commanders, Covenant technology guarantees a four to one kill/loss ratio in most battles. One by one, the Outer Colonies fall below the onslaught, and by 2535, virtually all have been destroyed.

To protect the location of Earth, the UNSC establish the Cole Protocol. When human forces are forced into retreat, they must not execute a Slipspace jump in the direction of Earth, even if this forces them to jump without the necessary navigational calculations (a "blind jump"). If such a jump is not possible, and if capture is imminent, the captain must order a self-destruct. The on board ship AI construct, normally imperative to navigation and tactical decisions, must either be destroyed or removed.

By 2552, many of Humanity's Inner Colonies have been destroyed by the Covenant. In a move of desperation, the Office of Naval Intelligence Section-3 SPARTAN division orders a secret plan to capture a Covenant ship using their SPARTAN forces and find their home world and capture a Prophet, one of their religious leaders. A group of SPARTANs, led by the Master Chief, are chosen for this mission, and board a specially outfitted ship known as the Pillar of Autumn (under the command of Captain Jacob Keyes). This plan, however, is interrupted by the necessity of destroying the Navigational Database of a ship still docked at a station orbiting Reach just before its fall. During this battle, Reach is overrun and glassed, and the human fleet is obliterated. Worse still, the Master Chief thinks that all of the SPARTANs but himself are killed on the surface of the planet. The last known remaining SPARTAN, the Master Chief, escapes with the Pillar of Autumn. In accordance with the Cole Protocol, the Autumn makes a purportedly blind Slipspace jump, and emerges in the vicinity of an unexplored and remarkable world.

Trivia
An excerpt of this book, along with Halo: The Flood and Halo: First Strike, was included in a directory on Halo PC. It was able to be found on the disc under the "Goodies" section.

Interestingly, the first section of this book is titled "Reveille" and involves characters emerging from cryo-sleep. The first section from Halo: Combat Evolved is also appropriately titled "Reveille" and also involves someone waking from cryo-sleep.

The power of the shields on the Covenant ships is a-bit inconsistent in this book. In one instance, a ship hit with nuclear warhead is still functional, actually appearing to shrug to explosion off. However, during a battle where Keyes using a pair against two Covenant ships (which were larger then the one from the previous instance), the EMP from the warheads knocks out the shields on the ships. There's no explained reason why that didn't happen with first ship.