Halo: The Thursday War

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Halo: The Thursday War
Attribution information
Author(s):	Karen Traviss
Publication information
Publisher:	Tor Books
Publication date:	October 2, 2012
Media type:	Print (Paperback, hardcover), Audiobook

Halo: The Thursday War is the second novel in the Kilo-Five Trilogy by Karen Traviss, and a direct follow-up to Halo: Glasslands. It was released on October 2, 2012.

Summary

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The book begins with a brief recounting of the events so far by Admiral Parangosky. On Sanghelios, Phillips is caught in a bombing which is revealed to be the work of the Jiralhanae. Avu Med 'Telcam decides to gather the keeps and attack so they prepare to attack Vadam while staving off the Brutes. Phillips get permission to go to the temple. The fragment of BB he had is damaged but he manages to recover part of it, although it has deleted a lot of dangerous data it might have contained. It took a shrapnel piece that saved his life. So he goes and explores while taking records of the temple.

Meanwhile, Margaret goes to the Infinity. Commander Lasky is there and so is Lord Hood. Osman calls in extraction for the mission on Venezia and they break out to Naomi-010 and Osman about Naomi's father. They go back to Sanghelios while Margaret tries to get Lord Hood to get permission from the Arbiter to extract Phillips. Eventually they get it, Osman gets Naomi, Vaz and Mal on the Tart-Cart with Lian piloting it. They land near the temple and have to do a bit of skirmishing to enter. A mob of angry Sangheili gathers around as they shut the gate down.

Meanwhile, on Trevelyan, Magnusson tries to learn as much as she can from Jul and to test out a new crop and food for the Sangheili to starve out on. Eventually he gets permission to walk around freely except in restricted zones but he has to wear an explosive harness like the ones used by the Huragok of the Covenant. Prone to Drift is tasked to accompany him. Prone reveals some interesting things about Trevelyan and the Forerunners as well as the titles of certain Forerunners such as Librarian, Logician, Didact, Master Builder, and Esthetist. Slowly, Jul tries to learn as much as he can and escape from Trevelyan.

The Infinity arrives on Sanghelios and hangs in space for a while. They have new drive upgrades which allow them to precisely state where they will land and when. They also get communications upgrades which allow them to communicate while in slipspace. A number of other upgrades are being worked on by the Huragok. Evan Phillips stumbles upon the restricted area set up by the Servants of the Abiding Truth and he manages to activate a teleporter which is activated like an Arum. He gets teleported a few kilometers off of Ontom onto a farm. Kilo-Five rescue team searches for him but don't find him. They try to follow his scent but find it cuts off at some point. They find a way out and the Sangheili are coming at them. They begin attacking Kilo-Five. Kilo-Five quickly gets in the Pelican and they fly away.

A few hours before, Raia went looking for Jul and then went to the ships in Bekan Keep to intercept Avu. Raia joins Avu so he can search for Jul as they believe the Arbiter's forces took him. So they go assault Vadam. Vadam is under assault but only a few keeps have joined in the fighting, the others wait and see. The Arbiter is losing.

Evan finds himself in a farm where there are Unngoy. The Unggoy help him and bring him to keep so he can contact Avu but not before he notices debris, which kills an Unggoy, there are females in the building and a Sangheili from another place is using the situation while the adult males are away to claim the farm for his own. Evan manages to call for help and Raia as well as Forze go out to retrieve Phillip. The Infinity and Port Stanely have deployed drones at this point so they have the communications tabbed in. Kilo-Five reroutes to Evan's position. After some fighting, in which Evan likely kills a Sangheili, they retrieve him. But the Pelican gets damaged. So they try to repair it and Raia and Forze give them some spare pieces. They go back to the Infinity and Raia and Forze go back to Avu. Tart-Cart doesn't hold up the repairs very well but they contain it and the Huragok on the infinity repair and upgrade Tart-Cart.

So then Hood offers the Arbiter help and Andrew Del Rio fires a MAC shot at the Abiding Truth's ship that's presenting imminent danger to the Arbiter. It also attacks more Servant's forces. The Tart-Cart gets repaired and Parangosky visits Osman and brings Adj and Leaks Repaired with her to get on the Port Stanley and begin upgrading the ship's drives and communications. Tart-Cart has new upgrades and is repaired. They go pick up Avu as they need him and force him to get on the Tart-Cart. Naomi does it. The Tart-Cart then uses its mounted slipspace drive to travel to New Llanelli. So the Servant's forces Retreat to New Llanelli. The fact that there were ODSTs and a Spartan in the temple gave support to Avu from the other keeps. So BB destroys three of the Arbiter's ships to help Avu's forces from escaping by making it seem it was a Kig-Yar's ship who did it; a female shipmaster with stolen UNSC nukes. But one ship goes down, Raia and Forze are killed in the crash.

The Arbiter is thankful for the help. The Infinity hangs around. Port Stanley goes to New Llanelli to get Tart-Cart back, Avu gets deposited quickly before his troops arrive. They go to Trevelyan pay Jul a visit, Phillips does. So then Jul has learnt a lot, there are portals on Trevelyan but are malfunctioning. The Didact is locked on Requiem and hates humans. Evans has a small chat and checks out what they've discovered and how Avu has symbols he put on his belt. Didact, Requiem, Etc. Evans has to return and goes back to Port Stanley. They go to the Infinity and Margaret tells Phillips to see if they can get Halsey to integrate BB's damaged part to his full self. Halsey is in the Infinity and she often cries herself at night thinking of Miranda. BB "stalks" her a bit. Halsey can't help so BB gets on it himself. They try to learn what the information and symbols they gathered from the Sangheili Servants' Temple means. Phillips and BB get on it. Port Stanley receives a Mantis Mech and either Mal or Vaz steps in it. They prepare to go back to Venezia now that the "Thursday war" is over.

But then Jul goes to one of the portal stations where communication with Magnusson is cut off from Jul and Prone. And then he threatens that he'll remove the explosive harness if Prone doesn't take it off and help him with the portal. So Prone to Drift's primary purpose is to keep the Forerunner facility without damage so after trying out a couple of not-working portals, Jul finds a working portal and the harness is removed. Earlier, when Jul tried to do something with the portal, Prone to Drift threw Jul backwards a few meters. So then Jul escapes into the portal. The portals don't work well because they're not maintained well and all so Jul gets lucky.

After 14 to 19 hours, Doctor Magnusson contacts Parangosky who asks Hood if she can drop her off at Trevelyan. Maggie goes to Trevelyan and gets brief up on what has happened and how they could not find him and she was mat that Magnusson took so long to contact her. Magnusson gets arrested and her authority is stripped away. She is, removed from utility. Someone gets promoted. They try to search for Jul. But they got a benefit, they got the infected grains and beats the Sangheili eat. It grows in a bubble that accelerates time so they can grow the crops in days.

So then Kilo-Five goes to Trevelyan. Mike Spenser knows what's going on; Mal and Naomi have landed with Tart-Cart has new stealth upgrades. Their cover is UNSC deserters. They go back to Mike's house, then get updated. Naomi gets to see what her father looks like. Steffan has been out of the planet for a few days. Also worth nothing is that the Pious Inquisitor, the ship that Midship takes place on and was part of the battle of Earth, has been captured by Kig-Yar. So they go sell some UNSC weapons to get some money, all tagged of course, and the salesman says something about Naomi looking familiar. Then they stumble upon Staffan and the Skirmisher, Sav Fel who took the Pious Inquisitor, in a truck/van near them.

Jul has been teleported on Kelekos, on Hesduros, a Sangheili colony, where he encounters a group of Sangheili young. They saw the markings on his belt, and hadn't had a lot of contact with Sangheilios long enough to not know a lot about the war's end and all very well. They are all attentive and due to what he has done and what he told them and the Didact thing, those Sangheili are positive about Jul. Jul asks to contact his keep and so they allow him to and he finds out Raia and Forze died. Jul gets some time alone and he's not happy. A Sangheili young shows him the second "holy gate", and it has missing symbols, the symbols Jul has on his belt are the missing symbols. Coordinates and other things. So then he tells the young to get the other Sangheili. They talk about the Didact a bit and how the Didact is the holy warrior who will return and save them. They agree Jul to help find the Didact and Requiem as well as avenge the death of Raia.

Spoilers end here.

Trivia

• A Thursday War is a colloquial name given in the Royal Navy for weekly war-fighting and damage control exercises that are held during Flag Officer Sea Training (FOST), so named because they are usually held on a Thursday.
• The title of the novel is foreshadowed in Chapter 17 of Halo: Glasslands, where the A.I. Black-Box tells Captain Serin Osman that "We might even get you on a Thursday war."
• The cover art depicts the Template:UNSCship among a group of Marathon-class cruisers and frigates.
• The release date for the novel is exactly 343 days after the release date of Halo: Glasslands.
• An excerpt of the novel's prologue first chapter was released in September 3, 2012 on Amazon.com.
• Red vs Blue references were made again, similar to Glasslands, a running-gag of Sangheili mispronouncing the name "Phillips" as "Phyllis", which is the phonetic pronunciation of the AI F.I.L.L.S