Halo: First Strike
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| Author | Eric Nylund |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Halo |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction |
| Publisher | Del Rey |
| Released | December 2, 2003 |
| Media type | Print (Paperback) |
| Pages | 352 |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-345-46781-7 |
| Preceded by | The Flood |
| Followed by | Ghosts of Onyx |
Halo: First Strike is a 2003 novel written by Eric Nylund. It is based on the video game series Halo and it depicts the events taking place between the end of Halo: Combat Evolved and its sequel Halo 2. It also acts as a follow-up to the ending events of Halo: The Fall of Reach with its first chapters, and acts as a sequel to Halo: The Flood, with prequel events to both books tied in between.
Halo: First Strike opens with the arrival of the Covenant armada at the human stronghold planet of Reach. The book follows both the unsuccessful attempt to defend Reach by the SPARTAN-II's who were detached on the planet's surface and the adventures of the rag-tag survivors of the battle at Alpha Halo. The book also reveals that humanity's worst fear is going to come true: the Covenant is on its way to Earth.
[edit] Summary
During the fight for Reach the last line of defense for the humans is represented by the "Super MAC" (Magnetic Accelerator Cannon) platforms in orbit around the planet. Faced with the knowledge that these massive weapons are the only thing stemming the tide of alien warships, the SPARTAN-II Master Chief (John-117) sends a team of SPARTAN-II's to the surface of Reach, in order to protect the MACs' planetside fusion generators... at all costs. This defensive action becomes nothing more than an ultimately futile gesture, however, as Covenant starships bombard the surface of the planet with plasma, "glassing" most of the world and forcing the remaining battered SPARTAN-II's to flee underground and find Dr. Catherine Elizabeth Halsey, the UNSC scientist who had headed up the SPARTAN-II development project, with whom they stumble upon an incredible discovery: a mysterious artifact of the long-vanished alien Forerunners that seems to be imbued with the power to bend time and space. The humans retrieve the object and hide from the Covenant forces who are looking for this very artifact while they wait for a SPARTAN-II retrieval force.
Picking up from where the first video game left off, the Master Chief and the Pillar of Autumn's former A.I. Cortana are stranded in space. Laden with valuable intelligence information about the Covenant and a handful of human survivors rescued from the destruction of the Halo Alpha construct (among them Sergeant Avery Johnson, the only man from the Pillar of Autumn who survived infection by the Flood), they plan to return to Earth and do so by infiltrating a Covenant flagship, the Ascendant Justice.
Once they secure the alien vessel, the humans resolve to return to Earth with accounts of what happened on Halo and for the first time, a Covenant warship that can be handed over to the UNSC's scientists and engineers. The technological benefits for the human race would be enormous and might help win the war. Ascendant Justice's first jump through slipspace is back to Reach, in line with The Cole Protocol. Because the Protocol dictates that a captured Covenant vessel must be searched and stripped of all tracking devices before heading on to Earth, the crew decides to leave the Ascendant Justice in orbit around Reach and return to Earth using a human warship. The Master Chief however has one more reason for visiting Reach: as the SPARTAN-II's' commanding officer, John-117 is anguished by the orders he gave his team that he felt were tantamount to an outright death sentence. The Master Chief wants to scout Reach seeking closure, or even better, survivors.
Upon arrival in Reach's star system, the Master Chief's team picks up a signal fabricated by the SPARTAN-II's in their training days (the hide-and-seek tune "Oly-Oly-Oxen-Free"); a remnant of SPARTAN-II's had survived the Battle of Reach, along with a handful of UNSC military survivors as well as Vice Admiral Danforth Whitcomb, the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for the UNSC Defense Forces Navy, who has armed a powerful Nova thermonuclear mine, a weapon that will either turn Reach and its Covenant invasion force into dust, or destroy whatever Forerunner artifact the Covenant takes off it. While investigating on Reach, the Master Chief also discovers Dr. Catherine Elizabeth Halsey and the rest of the surviving SPARTAN-II's with the Forerunner artifact, which appears to have bent time so that the Master Chief and Cortana could rescue Dr. Halsey and the others. While this is going on planetside, Cortana finds out that the Covenant have discovered the location of Earth and are about to deploy a massive assault fleet against the human homeworld. The attack will be led by the Covenant's High Prophet of Regret without the knowledge or agreement of his fellow Covenant leaders, the High Prophet of Truth and the High Prophet of Mercy. However, because the High Prophet of Regret is acting without the full agreement of his fellow leaders, he is able to only gather a small battle group comprised of thirteen Covenant cruisers and two Covenant assault carriers. Against the UNSC forces defending the Earth, this force is not likely to be successful.
The humans must then fend off multiple attacks from the Covenant, who are determined to retrieve the Forerunner relic in the SPARTAN-II's possession. Seeking a safe place to conduct repairs on the Ascendant Justice, the UNSC forces rendezvous with the human rebels of the Eridanus asteroid field. These rebels had once stood against the UNSC before the Covenant invasion as they had desired independence from what they saw as the oppression of Earth. While docked at the rebel base, Dr. Halsey sedates SPARTAN Kelly-087 and abducts her, bringing her to the planet Onyx as depicted in the book, "Ghosts of Onyx".
With the knowledge that the Covenant are en route to Earth, the Master Chief and his fellow SPARTAN-II's, determined to buy some time for Earth, decide to go to the enemy fleet's rendezvous point and disrupt its initial operations in a decisive "first strike". The SPARTAN-II's successfully infiltrate the Covenant command and control center space station, the Unyielding Hierophant, and with the help of a copy of Cortana, they are able to set the station to self-destruct. In spite of this effort, the Covenant forces are not crippled, but Vice Admiral Whitcomb manages to trick all of them into following the Ascendant Justice toward the doomed space station, pretending the Forerunner artifact from Reach is aboard his ship. A few minutes later the Unyielding Hierophant is destroyed, obliterating the whole Covenant fleet, taking the Admiral and the Ascendant Justice with it. Onboard a damaged UNSC frigate, John-117 and the surviving SPARTAN-II's, along with Seargent Avery Johnson and Cortana, head back to Earth to warn the UNSC of the Covenant's approaching invasion.
The book ends with a scene in High Charity, the former Forerunner space station that serves as the Covenant's headquarters, where the High Prophet of Truth and the Brutes' Chieftain, Tartarus, discuss the loss of the Halo Alpha Installation 04 and the fate of the "incompetent one", a Covenant Elite who was the Covenant fleet commander who failed to ensure the security of the Ascendant Justice. This Elite had also been the Supreme Commander of the Fleet of Particular Justice, the Covenant fleet that had won the Battle of Reach and followed the Pillar of Autumn to the first Halo installation. This was due to the fact that a minor Prophet on one of the first Covenant starships to engage the Pillar of Autumn refused to allow the human ship to be destroyed with plasma torpedoes due to the danger it could represent to the "sacred ring" of the Forerunners. Instead, the Prophet had ordered the human cruiser to be captured by Covenant boarding parties, which had initiated the string of events seen in the first Halo game. This decision allowed the humans to fend off the attack long enough to land on the Halo Alpha ring-world and establish a foothold. Subsequently, the Flood parasite was released, the Covenant lost control of the situation, and the Master Chief was able to detonate the Pillar of Autumn's fusion reactors and destroy Halo Alpha. Yet, this incompetent Elite also turns out to be none other than the future Covenant Arbiter, a special agent chosen by the High Prophets to defend the Covenant in times of great crisis. The first moments of Halo 2 pick up from the novel here and depict this Elite's subsequent trial before the High Prophets at High Charity.
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Halo: Combat Evolved • Halo 2 • Halo 3 |
