Then again does anybody actually care about Halo's plot?
I do.
Anyway,
Before Halo In a research project, Civilian Catherine Hasley and Private Jacob Keyes set out to research around 90, 6 year old children, who they later steal and replace them with flash clones. (Which, thanks to crappy cloning at the time, would die in a matter of months.) One of which, is John 117 (Master Chief.) who spends his younger years taking down rebel pirates before the Covenant our discovered.
Soon after, the UNSC (United Nations Space Command) loose contact with a planet called Harvest and in days, send three ships out to report their findings. Out of the three ships, only one comes back (Very damaged mind you.) alive saying they were decimated by a single unknown alien warship. This group made contact with the aliens, but instead of a weird alien language, they seem speak in English, only mentioning one phrase before attacking; "Your destruction is the will of the gods... and we are their instrument."
A few planets glassed later, the Master Chief and his group are being transported to a secret UNSC base where they get there armor. (I think MJOLNIR Mark IV.) Well in the base, a Covenant Frigate flys over the planet and attacks the battle group sitting overhead. An interesting note here, it is the first time a MAC (Megnet Accelerated Cannon.) is ever used on a Covenant Ship. The Chief, Sam and Kelly (The three spartans he had grown up with.) board the Covenant Frigate and plant a nuke, Sam's airtight suit getting hit in the progress. (Making it impossible to leave the ship without dying.) Sam dies as the ship explodes.
Somewhere inbetween here, Kurt, another spartan has his death faked by the ONI, so they can recruit him to train more spartans in the future. Other then two of his three hundred spartans, they all die trying to take down a Covenant shipyard that is too close to Earth.
A few years after, Commander Jacob Keyes gets promoted to Captain, after the battle of Sigma Octanious 4 (Sp?) in which he displays a brilliant tactical maneuver called the Keyes' Loop. (On the Iriquis (Sp?)) He is then given a ship of his own, The Pillar of Autumn. This ship was meant to be used by the spartans, on a mission that involved getting into Covenant space and capturing a prophet but was called back to defend Reach as a over 100 Covenant Warships attacked it. The human's kept back the first wave of ships but they were soon overwhelmed, seeing this; Captain Keyes randomly jumped to unknown coordinates.
(End of Fall of Reach, first Halo novel.)
Halo Keyes and what is left of his crew find a ringworld near the gas giant Threshold and having no other option (As Covenant are presuing them.), they land on the world. Keyes is captured by the Covenant thanks to an officer betraying them (Only to get killed herself.) but is soon rescued by the Chief when he boards the Covenant Cruiser they kept him on. (The Truth and Reconciliation.) According to information from Keyes, the Covenant thought Halo was a weapon and the only way to use it is to find the control room. In the meanwhile, Major Silva and a group of marines take a base from the covenant that they can live in for the next week. Captain Keyes orders Silva to raid the remains of the Pillar of Autumn, to get any supplies they can find as Keyes believes they will be there for quite a while. Well Silva does that, Keyes and a group of Marines (Including Sergeant Johnson.) go deep into a swamp to find a shipment of weapons that the Covenant supposedly brang there. (Whether this is true is still debated.)
After making it to the control room, the Chief is informed by Cortana that Keyes is making a big mistake so is sent into the swamp after him only to find a video recording showing all of them dying from the flood. He then meets the flood himself and is forced to run for his life out into the open where Echo 419 is sent to pick them up. (Echo 419 is the Chiefs personal dropship.) He is told to get to the heighest place, which is the tower in the middle of the swamp but is met by 343 Guilty Spark as he climbs it. 343 Guilty Spark tells him the need a reclaimer to get the index which will activate Halo and destroy the flood.
When they arrive at the control room to use the index, Cortana tells Guilty Spark to !@#$% off as Halo does not kill flood, it kills what flood eat. (Humans, Covenant, you're all eddibal.) So, Cortana forms a plan so that 343 can never activate Halo, by blowing it up. She figures she'll need Captain Keyes' nureal implants which can activate the Pillar of Autumns self destruct mechanism and blow all of Halo to hell.
She also needs to get all of the marines off the ring, so she tells them to board the Truth and Reconcilliation and lift off meeting the Chief in space when Halo blows. Major Silva takes control of the ship that is still flood infested and well lifting off, one of the Marines severs the connection between the engines and the bridge, causing the ship to go end over end into the ground exploding on impact. (The marine did it because she did not want the flood to leave the ring.)
The Chief blows the Autumn up and escapes in a Longsword fighter.
Kurt, with the activation of the flood, finds a group of Sentinels which are stalking him and his Spartans through the woods. They eventually find that the sentinels are digging out an old Forerunner city which Kurt enters.
(End of The Flood, second Halo novel.)
First Strike The Chief finds a pelican dropship that has four marines, one of which is Sergeant Johnson. They devise a plan to take control of a Covenant Flagship (This is the first time the arbiter is seen, commanding this Flagship.) which works and they are soon on there way home. On the way, they decided to check out the remains of Reach that is apperently not fully glassed. A Covenant Excivation group is digging up the mountain at the top of the planet for unknown reasons at the time. The Chief suspects that his group of spartans were hiding in there, so they take a Covenant dropship in and find five spartans, Admiral Whitcomb, Dr. Halsey and a beurocrat I can't remember. The spartans had been protecting Whitcomb with a NOVA bomb (Which is basicly five nuclear warheads strapped together.) so that if the Covenant find it, it will blow there homeplanet to hell. Or, on the flipside it would blow this planet to hell and their whole excavation force.
Dr. Halsey is found deep in a lab with a stone she is protecting. The stone is what the Covenant are after and after escaping the planet with it, a few Covenant ships try to get it back from them. They destroy the ships easily. Through the Covenant radio, Cortana figures out that a group of over 500 Covenant Ships are planning to attack Earth and the Chief and his Spartans, being suicidal, go in and destroy the main ship. (Who's explosion would descimate the whole 500+ battlegroup.) After that, the Spartans make it back to Earth.
(End of First Strike, third Halo novel.)
Halo 2 Since in the previous novel, the Covenant have located Earth, Earth is being defended from the Covenant. The humans are basicly loosing although the Covenant are actually not even trying to destroy it, they are looking for the Ark. (As mentioned in the Halo Graphic Novel.) Durning this, the Arbiter is marked as a traitor although this is ceremonial, the Prophets know that he is not a real traitor and send him to take out the real one, who is hiding on a Forerunner facility inside Threshold. Durning the battle of earth, Commander Keyes (Keyes' daughter.) follows the Prophet of Regrets' ship through slipspace and ends up on another Halo, much like the first.
The Chief crosses the terrain and kills Regret, despite many Covenant objections. A Covenant fleet drops down from orbit and blasts the building Regret is killed in, hoping to kill the Chief in the process. Instead, he falls into the deep and is taken by Gravemind. Meanwhile, the Arbiter is sent to gather the index so they can activate the second Halo and get in to the Great Journey. (The Covenant believe that activating Halo is a good thing.) Instead, the Brutes betray the Elites (As the prophets find the Elites unfit to lead anymore.) and the Arbiter is pushed down a tunnel into Graveminds lair.
Gravemind explains to the Chief and Arbiter that activating Halo is a horrible thing, not only for the flood (The race he is apart of.) but for the whole universe. He goes on to explain that activating Halo will not nesscarily kill all flood as his race had survived the first activation. He transports the Chief and Arbitor to different places, the Chief to the Covenant holy war and the Arbitor to the Great Journey activation spot. The Chief fails to kill the Prophet of Truth as he runs to the Dreadnaught (The ship in the middle of High Charity.) but later gets on the ship himself after treking through a flood infested city. (Leaving Cortana behind to blow up High Charity just incase the flood try to run.) The Arbitor in turn, stops Tarturus from activating Halo. Cortana is last seen talking to gravemind.
Meanwhile, Kurt gets in to the Forerunner city and sends his spartans ahead of him into a place called the Shield, which is an inpenetrable force field. (The shield is this bubble, the sword is Halo.)
(Halo 2 ends here.)
This is a basic plot summary, as I only touched on a few things (!@#$% long for a small plot summary, eh?) and if you want to know more, read the Halo novels:
Fall of Reach
The Flood
First Strike
Ghosts of Onyx
Contact Harvest
Or, visit Halopedia:
http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page (Note: Some information may be untrue as I do not remember everyone about Halo. I only remember points that are interesting.)
