6 Halo stories better than what the Paramount show gave us

2. Halo: The Fall of Reach

A live-action adaptation of the Fall of Reach novel could have included elements from the book and the video game Halo: Reach. Much of the lore surrounding the Spartan program and the background of the original Halo trilogy is explored in this story and it would have made a lot of sense to adapt in live-action. (A bare-bones animated version already exists.)

The story begins with Dr. Catherine Halsey journeying to a human colony called Eridanus II to observe a boy named John, who is a potential candidate for Halsey’s Spartan II super-soldier program. Halsey is accompanied by Lt. Jacob Keyes, who was chosen by the doctor partially for his ability to keep a secret and probably also because she’s attracted to him. When they make it to the planet, they find a 6-year-old John, who is the first of several of children the pair will observe.

Eventually, 75 children are identified and kidnapped by the Office of Naval Intelligence and replaced with fragile flash clones destined to die. These children are taken to the planet Reach, the primary military center of the UNSC, and told about their special physical and mental qualities. The children are being forcibly conscripted into the UNSC army and Reach will be their new home. Over the next few years, the children are brutally trained by Chief Petty Officer Mendez, while an AI named Deja teaches them military strategy and history.

During a mission where each child is dropped into the wilderness on Reach and given a piece of the map to get home, John goes against the mission parameters to make sure that each one of his teammates are found and made it back safe. He also leads the children when they infiltrate a UNSC facility, take out a few men with rocks and steal a shuttle to fly home. After justifying his actions by saying he did not want to leave anyone behind, John is promoted to squad leader of the Spartans.

Years later, when the Spartans are 14 years old, they undergo highly experimental biological enhancements that triples their strength, drastically decreases their reaction time, makes their bones nearly indestructible and allows them to almost see in the dark. But more than half of the children do not survive the augmentation process while several others are left with gruesome injuries. After the joint funeral for his fallen comrades, John blows off steam in a gym where he gets in a fight with a group of ODSTs and accidentally kills two of them because he doesn’t know his own newly enhanced strength yet.

Later, John and blue team (Kelly, Linda, Samuel and Frederic) are tasked with infiltrating a rebel base and capturing a guy named Colonel Watts. They complete the mission with ease. Around the same time, the human planet Harvest comes into first contact with a single warship from the Covenant, which exterminates the entire population of 3 million people. Facing an existential threat, the Spartans graduate early.

The Spartans are given highly advanced suits of MJOLNIR power armor, which multiplies their already enhanced skills by a factor of five. Inside their armor, many of the Spartans stand over seven feet tall and are virtually unkillable. However, the technological prowess of the Covenant is challenging even for them.

Even when the UNSC amasses a huge fleet under the command of a legendary admiral named Preston Cole, the Covenant are able to defeat the humans with minimal losses. The outer colonies of humanity all fall by the year 2536, leading Cole to establish a protocol for protecting the location of Earth. All UNSC ships must purge their databases and destroy any shipboard artificial intelligence if capture is imminent. Making a slip space jump towards Earth or any other massive population centers is prohibited. “Blind jumps” are favored.

After several impressive military feats against the Covenant, Keyes is promoted to Captain, but he inadvertently reveals the location of Reach to the Covenant after a homing beacon is attached to his ship the Iroquois. In 2552, with many of the inner colonies now destroyed, ONI formulates Operation Red Flag, which involves a group of Spartans commandeering a Covenant ship, flying it to their capital of High Charity, and capturing one of the high prophets to use as a bargaining chip to negotiate a truce. Prior to this mission, Dr. Halsey gives John a powerful AI she made from her own cloned brain named Cortana. Every available Spartan II then boards the Pillar of Autumn, Captain Keyes’ new ship.

Just when the mission is about to commence, Reach is invaded by the largest Covenant fleet seen to date, made up of 315 ships and led by an elite name Thel Vadumee (the Arbiter). Although the initial wave is thrown back by Reach’s own 100-ship fleet and 20 orbital defense platforms, the Covenant return and begin landing hordes of troops on the surface. John, Linda and James go to deal with an errant ship that hasn’t completed the Cole protocol yet. This results in James’ death and Linda getting fatally wounded. The other Spartan IIs are presumed dead. The MAC guns go silent before the rest of the Covenant fleet moves in and begins glassing the planet.

The Pillar of Autumn is seemingly the only ship that makes it off the planet intact. Cortana uses a blind jump to escape the catastrophe. However, the jump isn’t completely random as a comment by John leads Cortana to reinterpret an artifact recovered by blue team. Unknown to the humans, this artifact was of Forerunner creation and it lead to Installation 04, one of the Halo rings. The book ends with Captain Keyes looking through the view ports of the Pillar of Autumn and asking Cortana to identify the ring. This is the first scene of Halo: Combat Evolved.