"That's it. We've lost. Reach is going to fall."
—Kelly-087
The Battle of Reach was the largest engagement in the Human-Covenant War. It was fought between the UNSC Defense Force and the Covenant in August of 2552.
Despite suffering a severe defeat at the Battle of Sigma Octanus IV, the Covenant managed to place a tracking device on the UNSC Iroquois and use it to find Human colony worlds. When the Iroquois returned to Reach the Human presence, and its extent, was disclosed and later revealed to the Covenant fleet. Ironically, the location of Reach was already known to the Covenant; a previously recovered Forerunner artifact indicated Reach held another artifact.
Opening Skirmishes"Gamma Station, this is Fermion RSO. Unconfirmed reports of an in system Slipspace rupture."
—Fermion Remote Sensing Outpost
"Impossible. Check your source."
—Reach Station Gamma
The approaching Covenant fleet was first detected in slipspace by Remote Scanning Outpost Fermion. The station's commander, Chief Petty Officer McRobb, sent an emergency message to FLEETCOM and ordered self-destruct to prevent the station's data from falling into enemy hands. A few minutes later 314 Covenant ships exited slipspace at the outskirts of the Epsilon Eridani System. Admiral Roland Freemont issued file/bravo-tango-beta-five, ordering all ships in Reach system as well as those in the Jericho and Tantalus systems, to rendezvous at Reach in preparation for the coming assault. The Covenant moved in on the orbital defenses before the UNSC fleet fully consolidated. 52 late arriving UNSC ships, including the UNSC Pillar of Autumn, ran a gauntlet of screening Covenant warships as they attempted to link up with the main fleet. At the beginning of the battle, only about a hundred UNSC ships were readily available to defend Reach.
Space Battle"Winter Contingency has been declared, all units are mobilized and ready."
—UNSC Officer
The main Covenant force moved in on the orbital defenses. The initial salvo of plasma torpedoes was mostly absorbed by three sacrificial refit and repair stations, allowing the defenders to return fire. The Orbital Defense Platforms and a nuclear minefield combined to take down a full third of the Covenant fleet, about a hundred ships, were destroyed in the first human salvo. However, the next Covenant salvo significantly damaged the UNSC fleet and moved in for the kill. They destroyed numerous Super MAC platforms in suicide attacks, further crippling the UNSC orbital perimeter, before retreating out of range. A previously unknown warship type, the Covenant Supercruiser, carrying a new weapon, the energy projector, revealed itself destroying the UNSC Minotaur before withdrawing temporarily. The attacking fleet regrouped after deploying hundreds of dropships to the surface.
As the surviving dropships disgorged thousands of troops, the Covenant fleet began another attack. Some ships made pinpoint slipspace jumps putting them within the UNSC formation. This left them vulnerable for a short time but allowed them to strike the ODPs directly. The Supercruiser returned and destroyed the UNSC Herodotus and UNSC Musashi from beyond ODP range. The UNSC Pillar of Autumn engaged and destroyed the Supercruiser.
Ground BattleThere are thousands of them. Grunts, Jackals and their warrior Elites. They have tanks and fliers. Christ, they've breached the perimeter. Fall back! Fall back! If anyone can hear this: the Covenant is ground-side. Massing near the armory!"
—UNSC Marine
Thousands of Covenant landed on Reach in an attempt to destroy the Orbital Defense Generators, and were intercepted by Marine forces who were able to defend against the first few waves of Covenant forces while sustaining heavy casualties. The remaining SPARTAN-IIs who were not assigned to Reach Station Gamma were sent to Orbital Defense Generator Facility A-331 to assist in the defense of the station. Unfortunately, their Pelican, Bravo 001, escorted was shot down, resulting in the deaths of four Spartans (including Malcolm-059), and some others were wounded as well. Near their crash site, the surviving Spartans discovered the shell-shocked remnants of Charlie Company.
Charlie Company had been assigned by Vice Admiral Danforth Whitcomb to find the prototype NOVA Bombs. They were forced to help defend the Orbital Defense Facilities on their way to their objective. Unfortunately, as the Covenant neared the Orbital Defense Generators, someone at HIGHCOM panicked and ordered Longswords to bomb everything within 500 meters, resulting in the destruction of the Covenant, but also catastrophic friendly fire: Charlie Company was reduced to four men, and its leaders: Lieutenants Jake Chapman and Buckman were killed.
The Spartans, after being briefed on the situation by Charlie Company, responded to a distress call from Whitcomb, who requested immediate evacuation. Frederic-104, commander of the Spartans, split the remains of Red Team into four groups: Team Alpha (Frederic-104, Kelly-087, and Joshua-029), which was tasked with eliminating an encampment of 10,000 Covenant and their hovering cruiser (without doing anything that could damage the Orbital Defense Generators), Team Beta, tasked with defense of the Orbital Defense Generators, Team Gamma (Li-008, Anton-044, and Grace-093), ordered to retrieve Whitcomb, and Team Delta (the Charlie Company marines and six wounded Spartans which included William-043, Isaac-039, and Vinh-030), ordered to secure the Spartans' fallback point at CASTLE Base.
Team Alpha hijacked three Banshees and approached the Covenant encampment (they were ignored by the Grunt Zawaz, who assumed they were Elites on a secret mission) and used Fury Tactical Nuclear Weapons within the shields of the Covenant ship, destroying the encampment and negating the EMP effect that would have disabled the Orbital Defense Generators. Joshua was killed in the process by mass light weapons salvos from the 10,000 Covenant ground forces encamped around the Cruiser. The remaining Spartans of Team Alpha then fell back to CASTLE Base, blasting their way through the remaining Covenant in the area with two commandeered Wraiths. Team Gamma accomplished its mission and fell back to Camp Independence with Whitcomb, where they survived the partial glassing of the planet. Team Delta fell back to CASTLE Base, but in the process lost the remaining Charlie Company marines and every Spartan save for Vinh, Isaac, and William. When the remnants of Team Alpha and Team Delta arrived at CASTLE Base, they found Catherine Halsey there.
Unfortunately, Team Beta was unable to stop the Covenant, who attacked in swarms of thousands. The Orbital Defense Generators were compromised, and the Covenant (after eliminating the powerless, immobile ODPs in geo-synchronous orbit around the planet) began the glassing of Reach.
AftermathThe UNSC lost the second largest military-industrial complex beyond the Sol System and sustained crippling military losses at Reach, losing over a hundred ships, including irreplaceable Cruisers and Supercarriers such as the UNSC Basra, UNSC Trafalgar, and the UNSC Musashi, not to mention the large numbers of civilian and military personnel killed by the invading Covenant forces. With the Epsilon Eridani System in Covenant hands, there were no further major stop points before Sol. Some estimates put total defeat as a matter of weeks. The Office of Naval Intelligence believed that the location of Sol was compromised and began relocating heavy industry facilities and command centers out of the system.
At the same time, despite such a devastating defeat the UNSC still fared better than in previous battles. Even against the numerically and technologically superior Fleet of Particular Justice, outnumbered 2:1, they still managed to inflict disproportionate losses to the Covenant, due largely to the twenty Orbital Defense Platforms orbiting Reach. The AI Cortana commandeered the fleeing UNSC Pillar of Autumn to the previously undiscovered fourth Forerunner Halo. While the Battle of Installation 04 was tangential to the main front, the containment of the initial Flood outbreak, and the experience gained, was just as critical to the survival of the UNSC. In addition, a Forerunner artifact, a crystal, was discovered and recovered by UNSC forces, drawing a number out of the system in pursuit to Eridanus Secundus, leading to the glassing of the colony, and the destruction of the artifact and the recovery of a small number of pieces by the Covenant.
