The Human-Covenant War, a desperate struggle for humankind's very survival, has reached its boiling point on the mysterious ring world called Halo. But the fierce Covenant warriors, the mightiest alien military force ever known, are not the only peril. As the fortress world of Reach and its brave defenders were bombarded to rubble, a single cruiser fled the carnage with the battle's only human survivors - Captain Keyes, his small crew of Marines, and the last SPARTAN super-soldier, the Master Chief. With the cruiser's artificial intelligence, Cortana, concealed in his battle armor, the Master Chief crash lands on Halo in the midst of a massive Covenant occupation. Curiously, the alien soldiers appear to be searching for something hidden on the ring. Built by a long-dead race, Halo harbours many deadly secrets, but one overshadows them all. Now the Master Chief must lead the scattered troops in a brutal race to unravel Halo's darkest mystery - and unleash its greatest source of power ...
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
William C. Dietz has written over 20 science fiction novels and has had jobs including: Navy and Marine Corps medic, college instructor, news writer and television producer. He is now Director of PR and Marketing for an international telephone company. He and his wife live near Seattle.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
CHAPTERONE0127 HOURS (SHIP’S TIME), SEPTEMBER 19, 2552 (MILITARY CALENDAR) / UNSC CRUISER PILLAR OF AUTUMN, LOCATION UNKNOWN.
The Pillar of Autumn shuddered as her Titanium-A armor took a direct hit.
Just another item in the Covenant’s bottomless arsenal, Captain Jacob Keyes thought. Not a plasma torpedo, or we’d already be free-floating molecules.
The warship had taken a beating from Covenant forces off Reach and it was a miracle that the hull remained intact and even more remarkable that they’d been able to make a jump into Slipspace at all.
“Status!” Keyes barked. “What just hit us?”
“Covenant fighter, sir. Seraph-class,” the tactical officer, Lieutenant Hikowa, replied. Her porcelain features darkened. “Tricky bastard must have powered down and slipped past our sentry ships.”
A humorless grin tugged at Keyes’ mouth. Hikowa was a first-rate tactical officer, utterly ruthless in a fight. She seemed to take the Covenant fighter pilot’s actions as a personal insult. “Teach him a lesson, Lieutenant,” he said.
She nodded and tapped a series of orders into her panel—new orders for the Autumn’s fighter squadron.
A moment later, there was radio chatter as one of the Autumn’s C709 Longsword fighters went after the Seraph, followed by a cheer as the tiny alien ship transformed into a momentary sun, complete with its own system of co-orbiting debris.
Keyes wiped a trickle of sweat from his forehead. He checked his display—they’d reverted back into real space twenty minutes ago. Twenty minutes, and the Covenant picket patrols had already found them and started shooting.
He turned to the bridge’s main viewport, a large transparent bubble slung beneath the Autumn’s bow superstructure. A massive purple gas giant—Threshold—dominated the spectacular view. One of the Longsword fighters glided past as it continued its patrol.
When Keyes had been given command of the Pillar of Autumn, he’d been skeptical of the large, domed viewport. “The Covenant are tough enough,” he had argued to Vice Admiral Stanforth. “Why give them an easy shot into my bridge?”
He’d lost the argument—captains don’t win debates with admirals, and in any case there simply hadn’t been time to armor the viewport. He had to admit, though, the view was almost worth the risk. Almost.
He absently toyed with the pipe he habitually carried, lost in thought. It ran completely counter to his nature to slink around in the shadow of a gas giant. He respected the Covenant as a dangerous, deadly enemy, and hated them for their savage butchery of human colonists and fellow soldiers alike. He had never feared them, however. Soldiers didn’t hide from the enemy—they met the enemy head-on.
He moved back to the command station and activated his navigation suite. He plotted a course deeper in-system, and fed the data to Ensign Lovell, the navigator.
“Captain,” Hikowa piped up. “Sensors paint a squadron of enemy fighters inbound. Looks like boarding craft are right behind them.”
“It was just a matter of time, Lieutenant.” He sighed. “We can’t hide here forever.”
The Autumn seemed to glide out of the shadow cast by the gas giant, and into bright sunlight.
Keyes’ eyes widened with surprise as the ship cleared the gas giant. He had expected to see a Covenant cruiser, Seraph fighters, or some other military threat.
He hadn’t expected to see the massive object floating in a Lagrange point between Threshold and its moon, Basis.
The construct was enormous—a ring-shaped object that shimmered and glowed with reflected starlight, like a jewel lit from within.
The outer surface was metallic and seemed to be engraved with deep geometric patterns. “Cortana,” Captain Keyes said. “What is that?”
A thirty-centimeter-high hologram faded into view above a small holopad near the captain’s station. Cortana—the ship’s powerful artificial intelligence—frowned as she activated the ship’s long-range detection gear. Long lines of digits scrolled across the sensor displays and rippled the length of Cortana’s “body” as well.
“The ring is ten thousand kilometers in diameter,” Cortana announced, “and twenty-two point three kilometers thick. Spectroscopic analysis is inconclusive, but patterns do not match any known Covenant materials, sir.”
Keyes nodded. The preliminary finding was interesting, very interesting, since Covenant ships had already been present when the Autumn dropped out of Slipspace and right into their laps. When he first saw the ring, Keyes had a sinking feeling that the construct was a large Covenant installation—one far beyond the scope of human engineering. The thought that the construct might also be beyond Covenant engineering held some small comfort.
It also made him nervous.
Under intense pressure from enemy warships in the Epsilon Eridani system—the location of the UNSC’s last major naval base, Reach—Cortana had been forced to launch the ship toward a random set of coordinates, a standard procedure to lead the Covenant forces away from Earth.
Now it appeared that the men and women aboard the Pillar of Autumn had not succeeded in leaving their original pursuers behind. The Covenant had followed them here. Wherever “here” was.
Cortana aimed a long-range camera array at the ring and a close-up snapped into focus. Keyes let out a long, slow whistle. The construct’s inner surface was a mosaic of greens, blues, and browns—trackless desert, jungles, glaciers, and oceans. Streaks of white clouds cast deep shadows on the terrain below. The ring rotated and brought a new feature into view: a tremendous hurricane forming over a large body of water.
Equations again scrolled across the AI’s semitransparent body as she continued to evaluate the incoming data. “Captain,” Cortana said, “the object is clearly artificial. There’s a gravity field that controls the ring’s spin and keeps the atmosphere inside. I can’t say with one hundred percent certainty, but it appears that the ring has an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere, and Earth-normal gravity.”
Keyes raised an eyebrow. “If it’s artificial, who the hell built it, and what in God’s name is it?”
Cortana processed the question for a full three seconds. “I don’t know, sir.”
Regulations be damned, Keyes thought. He took out his pipe, used an old-fashioned match to light it, and produced a puff of fragrant smoke. The ringworld shimmered on the status monitors. “Then we’d better find out.”
Sam Marcus rubbed his aching neck with hands that trembled with fatigue. The rush of adrenaline that had flooded him when he’d received Tech Chief Shephard’s instructions had worn off. Now he just felt tired, strung out, and more than a little afraid.
He shook his head to clear it and surveyed the small observation theater. Each cryostorage bay was equipped with such a station, a central monitoring facility for the hundreds of cryotubes the storage bays held. By shipboard standards, the Cryo Two Observation Theater was large, but the proliferation of life-sign monitors, diagnostic gauges, and computer terminals—tied directly into the individual cryotubes stored in the bay below—made the room seem cramped and uncomfortable.
A chime sounded and Sam’s eyes swept across the status monitors. There was only one active cryotube in this bay, and its monitor pinged for his attention. He double-checked the main instrument panel, then keyed the intercom. “He’s coming around, sir,” he said. He turned and looked out the observation bay’s window.
Tech Chief Thom Shephard waved up at Sam from the floor of Cryostorage Unit Two. “Good work, Sam,” he called back. “Almost time to pop the seal.”
The status monitors continued to feed information to the observation theater. The subject’s body temperature was approaching normal—at least, Sam assumed it was normal; he’d never awakened a Spartan before—and most of the chemicals had already been flushed out of his system.
“He’s in a REM cycle now, Chief,” Sam called out, “and his brainwave activity shows he’s dreaming—that means he’s pretty much thawed. Shouldn’t be long now.”
“Good,” Shephard replied. “Keep an eye on those neuro readings. We packed him in wearing his combat armor. There may be some feedback effects to watch out for.”
“Acknowledged.”
A red light winked to life on the security terminal, and a new series of codes flashed across the screen:
>WAKE-UP SERIES STANDBY. SECURITY LOCK [PRIORITY ALPHA] ENGAGED.
>X-CORTANA.1.0–CRYOSTOR.23.4.7
“What the hell?” Sam muttered. He keyed the bay intercom again. “Thom? There’s something weird here . . . some kind of security lockout from the bridge.”
“Acknowledged.” There was a static-spotted click as Shephard looped in the bridge channel. “Cryo Two to Bridge.”
“Go ahead, Cryo Two,” a female voice replied, laced with the telltale warble of synthesized speech.
“We’re ready to pop the seal on our . . . guest, Cortana,” Shephard explained. “We need—”
“—the security code,” the AI finished. “Transmitting. Bridge out.”
Almost ...
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More About the Author
William C. Dietz is the best-selling author of more than thirty science fiction novels some of which have been translated into German, Russian, and Japanese. He grew up in the Seattle area, spent time with the Navy and Marine Corps as a medic, graduated from the University of Washington, lived in Africa for half a year, and has traveled to six continents. Dietz has been employed as a surgical technician, college instructor, news writer, television producer and Director of Public Relations and Marketing for an international telephone company. He writes full-time and lives with his wife in Washington State. For more information about William C. Dietz and his work visit: williamcdietz.com
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
39 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good adaption, but not as good as The Fall of Reach...,
By errorfound482 "errorfound482" (Walla, walla Washington) - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Flood (Halo #2) (Mass Market Paperback)
The author does a good job bringing the game into the book -- complete with most of the dialogue and quotes you hear with the game and the book adds a great dimension to the events happening on Halo.However - just as the game - it's very action-oriented with a majority of the book being about how he tosses a grenade and sidesteps. Focusing on the action instead of the story or characterization gets a little boring. The first book really lets you get to know the characters AND lets you get in on the action. Also, the other difference from the first book is that in "The Fall of Reach", the Covenant are tough and mysterious, making them interesting. "The Flood", the Covenenant are pretty dumb and easy to kill, which... well, which makes them dumb (regular marines puts them down with a bullet). Master Chief is inexplicably a lot less strong here also. It's like "The Fall of Reach" was played on HEROIC or LEGENDARY level, while the setting for "The Flood" was EASY level. This is still a good read (unlike other series such as the STARCRAFT line), and you'll love it as long as you don't get your hopes up.
37 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Really Bad Book,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Flood (Halo #2) (Mass Market Paperback)
I was excited to read The Flood because I really enjoyed the Fall of Reach (the first Halo book) and was looking forward to a new installment in the Master Chief's adventures. The great thing about the Fall of Reach was the creative license taken by that author to create a new universe and to explain the origins of the Master Chief as well as the war with the Covenant. Unfortunately, The Flood is more of a walk-through of Halo, the video game, then a good story. In my opinion, the author abandoned artistic license in his attempt to reproduce a level by level description of the game. At many points while reading the book I found myself wondering if the author wrote the story based on notes he took while watching someone play the video game.The story-line in the book suffers from several major defects, including, but not limited to: (1) stilted adherence to the many missions and sub-missions found in the video game, including the necessity in many cases that each wave be separated by a door which the Chief must open, (2) the inclusion of automated non-player dialog found in the video game, (3) repetitious battle scenes between the Chief and the unending waves of enemies attacking the Master Chief (even the author starts describing these as "all too familiar"), (4) repetitious descriptions of weapon selection (switching from shotgun to rifle and back again) and reloading, (5) the Master Chief's unexplained inability to carry more than two weapons at time, even for short distances (even though the armor provides him with enough strength to flip over a jeep laying on its side), and (6) the ever present availability of reloads and replacement weapons. These aspects may make for great game play, but they make for a lousy book. A better story would have been one which follows the essential elements of the game's story line but which provided a more detailed account of the actions taken by the Master Chief, the Marines and the Covenant. When a movie is made into a video game, the video game must make certain sacrifices from the original story so as to improve game play. The opposite is also true: an action oriented video-game does not contain the level of character development necessary to support a written story line. In the case of The Flood, the author should have eliminated most of the game-play scenes (which provide minimal detail and maximum action) and created a more detail oriented story with better story and character development. I would recommend another of the author's books "Legion of the Damned" as a good example (think: The French Foreign Legion in space). Do we really need chapter after chapter of the Master Chief shooting up wave after wave of the Flood, then Covenant, then Protectors, then all three combined? Much of this could have been eliminated in favor of a few strong chapters of story development. The story is so stilted in remaining loyal to the game that an observant reader can almost detect where level changes and cut scenes would have occurred in the video game. I strongly recommend against this buying The Flood and I do not consider it to be a true sequel to the Fall of Reach. Play the game instead, you'll get the same exact story either way. Buyer beware.
16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Fine book, just not what i was expecting,
By Sir Poom A Lot (Coto de Caza,CA USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Flood (Halo #2) (Mass Market Paperback)
I've beaten Halo multiple times. No, i don't own the game. Yes, i've read the "Fall of Reach", yes, "The Flood" isn't perfect. I like this book, but it doesn't deserve a 5. The Master Chief seems...weak. The battles aren't written "right". IT skips thru verrrrrrrrrry important levels in diologue like "he ran through many corridors filled with covenant and flood. He took them out. After the 20th corridor..."It bugs me. I like it. i don't love it. On to the good:
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