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I'm sure all of you remember how there was magically five spartans who appeared in the pelican during First Strike?
Fall of Reach stated there was "two dozen Spartans other spartans" Three were too far away to be recalled. Thus, 21 Spartans should've been part of Red Teams operation, considering Chief took Linda and James with him on his op in space.
However, in the original issue of First Strike, it states there are 27 Spartans in Red Team. It was later stated these numbers were now fact, and that the addition of five spartans would be used later as a hook for another story. Well, if we look at these numbers, The teams on Reach would be split up as shown:
Red Team: 27 Spartans
KIA on Impact: 4
So now we're down to 23 Spartans.
Alpha Team: 3 Spartans
Gamma Team: 3 Spartans
Delta Team: 6 Spartans
It was stated that "The rest of the Spartans were put into Beta team"
This means there was 11 Spartans part of Beta Company. These numbers were generally accepted.
In Halo: Reach, were here about Beta Teams involvement on Reach through the radio conversations on radios scattered around multiplayer and firefight maps. One of the logs states:
Buckman: "Holy <static>! You're ain't gonna believe this! Beta Red just punched right up into the guts of that Covie column! Ever see a Spartan go hand to hand with a Wraith? Unbelievable!"
Chapman: "What are [b]eleven Spartans[b] gonna do against thirty thousand Covenant? They're dead men."
While Beta was tasked with defending the generators in the novels, it appears as if their duty was changed in the game. The numbers are consistent with First Strikes original numbers.
The issues come in with the Reissue of First Strike. Having just finished reading the entire reissue(and being pleased with the ACTUAL changes made to the story[it's no longer said to be the first time fighting brutes, for example]) I noticed that the number of Spartans in Red Team was cut back to 22 Spartans. (Which were the numbers Fall of Reach gave us I think)
This change mucks up the Spartan numbers once again, as now, the distribution of teams on Reach would be:
KIA: 4
Alpha: 3
Gamma: 3
Delta: 6
Beta: 6
Thus creating issues with Halo: Reach. However, if we're going to assume Reach is canon(which I personally don't.) Then the most likely option is that the Pelican drop from space never happened, so those 4 Spartans who were KIA were never killed. Or, the teams were changed. Either way, the number of spartans in Beta team now HAS to be 11 based on the game, and that means that Red Teams operations on Reach are different than they were in First Strike.
But wait? The Pelican drop DID happen. There's an interview that occurs between Fred and an ONI operative as soon as Fred gets back to Earth after First Strike ends. The short story is a new addition to the novel, but seems to ignore the events in Halo: Reach entirely.(Despite being released 3 months after the game was out.)
Does 343 consider Halo Reach to not be canon as well? I'm not sure. But I wanted to draw some light to this issue and get some input from some of you.
Thoughts?