never played the game, he immediately bought an Xbox console and a copy of Halo. When he learned that the game was selling rapidly at his local retailer, he agreed to pen the book. Dietz, a former United States Navy Hospital Corpsman, incorporated elements of what he fondly called "The Green Machine" into his work; despite being in the 26th century, the marines of The Flood are very similar to their modern counterparts. To assist Dietz in writing, Bungie provided what Dietz referred to as "a tremendous" amount of background information on the Halo universe. Once Dietz had finished his draft, Bungie checked it over to make sure it complied with the plot established in the games and novels, as Bungie considers all Halo novels canon. Synopsis Setting Halo: The Flood is set in the year 2552. Humanity has colonized hundreds of worlds across the galaxy, using faster-than-light drives and cryonic sleep to travel between worlds. Without warning, a collective of alien races known as the Covenant began attacking the outlying colonies, brutally exterminating all life by vitrifying the surface of the planets. Humanity, outnumbered and outclassed by the alien's superior technology, wages a losing war against the enemy. After the human bastion of Reach falls to the Covenant, the human ship Pillar of Autumn jumps into Slipspace to lead the Covenant away from Earth. Plot The novel, like the video game it is based on, begins as the Pillar of Autumn exits slipspace, discovering an unexpected massive ringworld hidden by a moon in orbit around a gas giant. In the system are a host of Covenant, who notice the lone ship. A Covenant leader forbids the fleet to fire on the Autumn, for fear of damaging the ring. Instead, they board and capture the ship. Meanwhile, technicians on the Autumn prepare for battle and awaken a single soldier from cryo sleep—a Spartan known as the Master Chief. The Covenant board the Autumn; deprived of defensive options, the Autumn's captain, Jacob Keyes, tells the crew to abandon ship. The Master Chief is entrusted with the artificial intelligence Cortana; given the wealth of tactical information the A.I. contains, Keyes cannot allow Cortana to fall into enemy hands. The Master Chief leaves for the surface of Halo in a lifeboat; other soldiers, including a squad of shock troops led by Antonio Silva and his second-in-command, Melissa McKay, land by special drop pods,