The first novel from the Kilo-Five Trilogy by #1 New York Times bestselling author Karen Traviss—area of the expanded universe predicated on the award-winning gaming series Halo!

2553. The theocratic armed forces alliance known as the Covenant offers collapsed after a long, brutal war with humanity that saw billions slaughtered on the planet and its colonies. For the first time in thirty years, however, peace finally appears possible. But though the fighting provides stopped, the battle is far from over: it’s simply about HALO: Glasslands eliminated underground. The US Space Order’s feared and secretive Workplace of Naval Cleverness recruits Kilo-Five—a clandestine group of Orbital Drop Shock Troopers, a Spartan super-soldier, and a diabolical AI—to accelerate the insurrection inside the Covenant’s warrior species, the Sangheili, even while their notable defector-turned-leader Thel ‘Vadam—the Arbiter—struggles to push away civil battle among his divided people.

Over the galaxy, a woman thought to have died in the Covenant attack on earth Reach is actually very much alive. Chief scientist Dr. Catherine Halsey broke every law in the reserve to create the Spartan system, and today she’s broken some more rules to save them. Marooned with Older Chief Petty Officer Franklin Mendez and a Spartan team within a Forerunner slipspace bubble concealed in the destroyed globe Onyx, Halsey discovers that this place has been guarding an ancient secret—a treasure trove of Forerunner technology that may transformation everything for the UNSC and mankind. As Kilo-Five joins the search for Halsey, mankind’s violent previous begins to catch up with all of them as the disgruntled colony Venezia continues to be biding its time for you to strike at Globe…and its most dangerous terrorist has an previous, painful link with both Halsey and Kilo-Five that will test everyone’s loyalty to the limit.