The Halo series is explosive military science fiction at its best. These first three titles—The Fall of Reach, The Flood, and First Strike—chronicle the bloody Human-Covenant War on Halo. The Fall of Reach finds the Covenant, a powerful alien enemy determined to wipe out humankind, working to lead humans into a devastating intergalactic war on the distant planet Reach—a planet that is crucial to each side's victory. But Reach holds a closely guarded secret: It is the training ground for the very first "super soldiers," code-named SPARTANs. And as the ferocious Covenant attack begins, a handful of SPARTANs stand ready to wage ultimate war. They will kill, they will be destroyed, but they will never surrender. And at least one of them—the SPARTAN known as Master Chief—will live to fight another day on a mysterious and ancient, artificial world called Halo. The Human-Covenant War reaches its boiling point on the mysterious ring world called Halo in The Flood. Captain Keyes, his crew of a few hundred marines, and the Master Chief flee the carnage in a cruiser and crash-land on Halo. Built by a long-dead race, Halo harbors many deadly secrets, but one overshadows them all. Now the Master Chief leads the scattered troops in a brutal race to unravel Halo's darkest mystery—and unleash its greatest source of power. In First Strike, it falls to the Spartan known as the Master Chief to rescue survivors and evade the Covenant ships patrolling the remains of Halo in debris-strewn space. Ahead lies a dangerous voyage home through a gauntlet of Covenant forces. For the sake of all, the Master Chief and his war-torn squad must not only survive but take the fight to the enemy with a decisive first strike.