 The 2001 and 2007 novels Halo : The Fall of Reach and Halo : Contact Harvest describe humanity 's first contact with the Covenant in the year 2525 . In The Fall of Reach , a lone Covenant ship bombards the Harvest colony with plasma , turning the planet 's crust into molten glass . The lone ship , broadcasts the Covenant edict , " Your destruction is the will of the gods , and we are their instrument " , and destroys several United Nations Space Command ( UNSC ) ships sent to attack it . Contact Harvest describes a lengthy ground engagement between human militia and Covenant before the total assault on Harvest . The Covenant claim that humans are an offense to their gods , but in reality , three Covenant Prophets have learned from a relic left by their gods , the Forerunners , that humans , who may possibly be genetically related to the Forerunners , have been chosen by the Forerunners as their <unk> . Realizing such a revelation would splinter the Covenant , the newly crowned Hierarchs decide to obliterate the humans instead and declare that a new Age of the Covenant has begun . 
