- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
-Reach was a Military science and Research planet as well as a docking point for UNSC ships. For more on Reach, read "The Fall of Reach", which explains what happened with the Spartan II program as well as the covenant assualt on Reach.
-PoA: The ship that was being used as a launching point for a Spartan Mission. Their mission: to infiltrate a covenant vessel and capture a Prophet (covenant religious leader), and use him as a hostage in order to have a cease fire or truce to the war. During the covenant attack on Reach, the PoA took a blind jump to unchartered space(which is still under theory if was undiscovered at all, but thats another story) and landed near the Halo installation.
-Halo1- Basically, the game tells it all. If your confused at the game at all, buy "The Flood", which revisits the game and clears things up. (I'm trying to keep spoliers to a mininium, tell me if you dont care)
After Halo- Read "First Strike", which takes place right after Halo.
SPOLIER ALERT
In First Strike, we find out that MC isnt the only survivor. Sgt. Johnson, an ODST, an officer in the UNSC and a pelican pilot all survive (again trying to keep spoliers...). MC and the survivors find the Cryo-Tube of Linda, a spartan that was to thought have died on Reach. The new crew (excluding Linda, who doesnt wake up till later in the book) Assault a Covenant Flagship which dwarfs all the others, and capture it. A Engineer (a covenant creature devoted to fixing things and nothing else) fixes MCs Sheilds, then Haverson (the officer) kills it to make sure the covenant dont somehow learn the secrets of the sheild technolgy. MC convinces Haverson to go back to Reach, and salvage the area (this maybe wrong, since i havent read it in a while, lil help everyone?). They return to Reach, to find a distress singal. The MC and gang head down to the surface, and discover that some Spartans, as well as an Admiral survived the covenant glassing, and seem to be trying to mine something. They head over to the area and find the leading Dr. on the Spartan project as well as more spartans. They leave with an artifact they have found which warps time and slipspace (basically lightspeed for Halo) and are chased covenenat. They also salvage a human ship. On the way back, Dr. Hasley find out how Sgt. Johnson survived the flood. The Flood passed over him since he had a diseise known as the Boryns (sp? i know its wrong) syndrone so he couldnt get infected. Instead he has special regeneration powers now. So somw -blam!- happens, the remaining Spartans (including Linda) launch an attack at a staging center that is used for assualt earth, and then have the covenant fleet is annihalted when the the thing blows up, thanks to a sacrife by the Admiral. I'm doing the really fast version. You should read it yourself.