Halo

The 26th century. Humanity has expanded beyond Earth to hundreds of interstellar colonies, but the Unified Earth Government is struggling to control this vast empire. Dr. Catherine Halsey offers a solution and it starts with seventy-five children—trained to become super-soldiers to deliver humanity from seething colonial insurrections that threaten to erupt into full-blown interplanetary civil war. But an even greater peril lurks among the stars: the Covenant. A theocratic alliance of alien species hellbent on cleansing humanity from the galaxy.

This is the electrifying origin story of Spartan John-117—the Master Chief—and his legendary heroism in leading the fight against humanity’s annihilation.

The Flood: Having barely escaped the final battle for Reach aboard the UNSC Pillar of Autumn, the crew of this lone ship—including the Master Chief and his AI companion Cortana—arrive at a place of untold mystery and peril: Halo. A massive artificial ringworld built one hundred thousand years ago by a long-lost civilization known as the Forerunners. Forced to flee to the ring’s surface by a Covenant fleet that followed them from Reach, the Autumn’s crew find themselves in a desperate battle for survival while the Master Chief and Cortana uncover the Halo construct’s terrible purpose—even as a far more terrifying enemy than the Covenant is released and all sentient life in the galaxy is threatened.

This is the official novelization of Halo: Combat Evolved, the game that launched the Xbox console and began Halo's generational legacy.

First Strike: The Master Chief and Cortana regroup with a handful of survivors from the harrowing battle on Halo, including Sergeant Major Avery Johnson. Together, they take the fight to a gathering of Covenant warships as the United Nations Space Command’s worst nightmare has finally come true: Earth’s location is compromised, and the Covenant is massing a fleet to utterly destroy it. Meanwhile, trapped on the glassed surface of Reach, the remaining Spartans—led by Fred-104 and Kelly-087—continue the fight for their home.

Beneath this ruined world, Dr. Catherine Halsey has discovered an ancient secret... one that could alter the course of the war. This tale bridges the events that take place in the game Halo: Combat Evolved (as novelized in The Flood) and its blockbuster follow-up, Halo 2.