Halo: First Strike is a book written by Eric Nylund, that describes the events at Reach, and then the aftermath of Halo 1. It is essentially the prequel to Halo 2.
Plot Summary
Brief Summary
Halo: First Strike clarifies a few plot questions that might have been raised by Halo fans, including exactly what happened to the SPARTANs on Reach and also how Johnson survived the attack of the Flood. It is written by Eric Nylund, who also wrote Halo: The Fall of Reach, and is part of the official Halo canon. This has led to certain inconsistencies in Halo 2, however. They include Sir Hood's comment on the fleet attacking Earth, that the Covenant fleet that attacked Reach was "50 times this size", seemingly ignoring the impact of the First Strike mission, and what exactly happened to the other surviving Spartans upon their return to Earth.
Detailed Summary
Spoiler Warning: Following contents may contain ending details
Section 0: Reach
The novel starts out before the Battle for Reach, at the part in Halo: The Fall of Reach where Captain Keyes informed the Master Chief of the matter of the undeleted NAV database. Frederic-104 is made the leader of Red Team and ordered to take the other SPARTAN-IIs down to Reach to protect the generators powering the orbital MAC guns.
Red Team takes a Pelican down to the surface, but are forced to freefall to the ground after the pilot gets hit. The impact kills a few of the Spartans. The survivors group up with the few remnants of Marine Charlie Company.
Vice Admiral Whitcomb contacts the Spartans and orders an extraction. Fred takes Kelly-087 and Joshua-029 on a mission to destroy a large Covenant camp in a valley near to the bunker Charlie Company once occupied. Taking three Banshees, they delivered a Fury tactical nuke into a Covenant starship. Joshua was killed by enemy fire, but Fred and Kelly survived.
Despite their efforts, however, the Covenant managed to take the reactors on Reach. The Covenant starships then initiated glassing of Reach. However, Fred refused to sit around and die to the plasma firepower.
Section 1: Threshold
The novel then moves to the debris field of Installation 04, right after the events of Halo: Combat Evolved. Aboard the Longsword used to escape the destruction, Cortana and the Chief converse, with the Chief insisting that Cortana repeat her scans of the debris.
A battlegroup of 7 Covenant starships enters the system, as does a Covenant flagship. Cortana finds three cryopods that were jettisioned from the Pillar of Autumn prior to its crash on Alpha Halo. While she moves the Longsword towards the cyropods, she finds a Pelican landed on a nearby asteroid. As the Chief retrieves the cryopods and returns to the Longsword, the Pelican takes off and attacks the lead Covenant starship, diverting attention away from the Longsword.
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