6 Halo stories better than what the Paramount show gave us

6. Halo 3

During the events of Halo 2, the prophet of Truth sent more Covenant ships to Earth to conduct massive ground assaults and continue digging for the Ark portal at New Mombasa. Being vastly outnumbered and outgunned, Earth’s population was reduced to 200 million people by the time Truth arrived on the Forerunner Dreadnaught. Miranda, Johnson and the Arbiter had since returned to help defend Earth. Possibly to main contributing factor in humanity’s survival was the outbreak of the Covenant civil war, with much of the elites allying with the humans afterward.

John leaps from the ship when it’s over Africa. The nearby UNSC outpost the Crows Nest sends a crew led by Johnson to go get him. After a brief scare where it looks like John isn’t going to wake up, he grabs Johnson’s arm and tells him he’s not getting left behind. In a last ditch effort to save Earth, the Humans have John disable Truth’s anti-air defenses so Lord Hood can send his ships in and blow up the dreadnaught. By the time the ships fire on Truth, doing little to no damage to the dreadnaught, his forces have completely dug up the structure. Truth activates the portal to the Ark and takes his fleet through it.

Before the humans can even figure out what happened, a Covenant ship full of Flood slips in and crashes in Africa. The humans fight to contain the outbreak, aided by Rtas Vadum’s fleet. After destroying the Flood-infested ship and recovering a data capsule sent by Cortana, Vadum glasses much of Africa to stop the Flood infestation from spreading further. The allies meet aboard Vadum’s flagship while Guilty Spark repairs the data disk. A message from Cortana plays where she warns about the Flood-infested High Charity making its way to Earth. However, she also says that there is a solution to stop the Flood.

Lord Hood is very skeptical of leaving Earth and trusting Cortana, who may be corrupted by the gravemind. But Miranda, Arbiter, Vadum and John all decide to go through the portal to find out for sure because there is not a better option. Arbiter also points out that if Cortana is wrong, then the Flood have already won, so they might as well go see if her solution will work. Lord Hood stays behind to try and root out the rest of the Covenant and prepare for a Flood attack while Vadum’s fleet with the In Amber Clad go through the portal.

On the other side they find Truth’s fleet, which outnumbers Vadum’s three to one, hovering over the Ark. While the elites take care of the fleet, John leads a strike force to the surface to locate the installation’s map room. There, Spark is able to see that the Ark is outside of the milky way galaxy, and that Truth has activated a barrier around the Ark’s activation room and sealed himself inside. The humans and elites formulate a plan to bring the barrier down. During the mission, John and Arbiter’s teams are successful but Johnson is captured by Truth’s forces. When John brings down the third barrier, High Charity shockingly comes out of slipspace and crashes into the Ark, bringing the Flood to the party.

John and the Arbiter rush to the control room and make a temporary alliance with the gravemind, since no one wants the rings to be lit. Miranda tries to stop Truth first by crashing a Pelican through a control room window, but there are too many brutes in the room. She thinks about killing Johnson and herself so Truth won’t have a human to activate the lighting sequence, but she hesitates and Truth kills her while the brutes restrain a devastated Sergeant Johnson.

The Flood, John and Arbiter fight their way to the control center, where they find Johnson cradling Miranda’s body and Truth cowering in the corner after being infected. The Arbiter executes him, and John stops the rings from lighting. The gravemind betrays them almost immediately and now they have to fight the Flood to get out of the control room. On their way out, John and Arbiter find out that another Halo ring is being constructed at the Ark, a replacement for the one that John blew up in the first Halo game. They plan to light it and destroy the Flood since the gravemind is now on the Ark. They need to extract Cortana from High Charity first, since she still has the activation index from the first Halo ring.

The rescue mission is successful, and John is able to locate Cortana inside High Charity. Everyone makes their way to the new Halo ring. Inside, the group is about to fire the ring and finally destroy the Flood until Spark says they have to wait a few days so the Ark isn’t destroyed. Johnson tells him they don’t have that kind of time, so Spark fatally zaps Johnson with his laser. John then has to fight and defeat Spark with a spartan laser. Johnson dies in his arms after telling John to never let Cortana go. Cortana comforts John before lighting the ring, and the pair hastily escape with the Arbiter.

They race to the UNSC Forward Unto Dawn and crash a warthog into the hangar bay. Arbiter goes to the bridge while John stays in the hangar. When the ship goes through an unstable slipspace portal, it gets severed in half; the Arbiter gets sent to Earth while John and Cortana float in unknown space. Arbiter attends John’s funeral before departing for his home planet of Shanghelios. John goes into cryo sleep on the Dawn and tells Cortana to wake him when she needs him.

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