The New York Times bestselling aftermath of Halo: Combat Evolved featuring the Master Chief–part of the expanded universe based on the award-winning video game series!

2552. The theocratic military alliance known as the Covenant is showing no mercy as it continues to assault every human world it encounters, but in the way lies humanity’s greatest champion, the super-soldier Spartan John-117–the Master Chief. Together with his AI companion Cortana and the last remaining Spartans, the galaxy-spanning fight rages on two fronts following the destruction of the human military stronghold Reach by Covenant forces and the mysterious artificial ringworld known as “Halo” at the hands of the Master Chief.

One faction–a squad of Spartans lead by Blue Team’s Fred-104 and Kelly-087–is trapped on the glassed surface of Reach, the only planet they’ve ever known as home. And beneath this ruined world, Dr. Catherine Halsey has discovered an ancient secret…one that could alter the course of the war. Meanwhile, the Master Chief and Cortana lead a second group toward a gathering of Covenant warships, as the United Nations Space Command’s worst nightmare has finally come true: the Covenant has discovered the location of Earth and is forming a massive fleet to utterly destroy it, as well as all who oppose the indomitable will of the Prophets…

The New York Times bestseller–part of the expanded universe based on the award-winning video game series Halo!

The twenty-sixth century. Once considered clandestine, the Spartan-II program has now gone public. Tales of armored super-soldiers fending off thousands of Covenant attacks have become the stuff of legend. While the Master Chief defends a besieged Earth, and the myriad factions of the Covenant continue their crusade to eliminate humanity, an ultra-secret cell of the Office of Naval Intelligence known as “Section Three” devises a plan to buy the UNSC vital time. It will need hundreds of willing soldiers, though–and one more Spartan–to get the job done.

The planet Onyx is virtually abandoned and the perfect place to set this new plan in motion. But when the Master Chief destroys Halo, something is triggered deep within Onyx: Ancient Forerunner technology stirs, and fleets of UNSC and Covenant vessels race to claim it and change the course of the Human-Covenant War. But this reawakened and ancient force may have plans of its own…

The New York Times bestselling origin story of the Master Chief–part of the expanded universe based on the award-winning video game series Halo!

The twenty-sixth century. Humanity has expanded beyond Earth’s system to hundreds of planets that colonists now call home. But the United Earth Government and the United Nations Space Command is struggling to control this vast empire. After exhausting all strategies to keep seething colonial insurrections from exploding into a full-blown interplanetary civil war, the UNSC has one last hope. At the Office of Naval Intelligence, Dr. Catherine Halsey has been hard at work on a top-secret program that could bring an end to the conflict…and it starts with seventy-five children, among them a six-year-old boy named John. And Halsey could never guess that this child will eventually become the final hope against an even greater peril engulfing the galaxy–the inexorable confrontation with a theocratic military alliance of alien races known as the Covenant.

This is the electrifying origin story of Spartan John-117–the Master Chief–and of his legendary, unstoppable heroism in leading the resistance against humanity’s possible extinction.