Halo: Ghosts of Onyx is the fourth novel in the Halo series. The book is written by Eric Nylund and published by Tor Books. It was officially released on October.
Table of contents
- Halo: Ghosts of Onyx
- Halo: Ghosts of Onyx (Literature) - TV Tropes
- Customers who viewed this item also viewed
During the attack one of the drones attempts to communicate with Ash, referring to him as a possible Reclaimer. It's believed that the remaining members of Gamma Company may not have been on Onyx at the time. Halsey identifies the drones as Sentinels from the Artificial intelligence , Cortana 's logs of the events of Halo: Halsey proceeds to call for reinforcements, piggybacking her transmission on, ironically, another transmission made by Cortana at the end of Halo 2.
On the message she calls out for caution about the danger coming from the Dreadnought that includes SPARTAN, as well as the omniscient threat of the Flood, which was trying to escape from Delta Halo at the time.
Halo: Ghosts of Onyx
Section five presents Earth, two weeks after the New Mombasa slipspace event, where the planet is under siege by Covenant forces. Fred , Will , and Linda are pulled out of the line of fire by Fleet Admiral Hood , who responds to Halsey's call for reinforcements by dispatching the Spartans to Onyx. After hijacking a Covenant destroyer called Bloodied Spirit and killing all Covenant on board by suffocation, the Spartans head for Onyx, only to be caught in the middle of a battle between Brute and Elite ships on the way. The Spartans barely escape and arrive at Onyx only to be attacked by the Sentinels.
They escape using a Covenant Dropship and link up with the survivors, and then make their way toward the restricted area of Onyx after shaking Sentinel pursuit. Within this section, the story takes place on Delta Halo , where the Covenant are in the midst of a civil war. The Elites intercept Halsey's message, learn of the existence of Onyx and its Forerunner artifacts then regroup at a Covenant world called Joyous Exultation. There, the Sangheili leader Xytan 'Jar Wattinree rallies the Elites together and discuss the apparent treachery of the Brutes and Prophets, and how to go about handling the situation.
Ship Master Voro 'Mantakree speaks to his fellow ship masters and suggests that they go to Onyx, as well as be vigilant of the Flood threat. He is promoted to the rank of Fleet Master and is given command of a fleet of eighteen destroyers , two cruisers, and one carrier. They then prepare to go to Onyx to retrieve the Forerunner technology.
The Huragok unknowingly arm it after Kwassass messes with the arming device for sometime. Shortly after the fleet departs for Onyx, the NOVA detonates, scorching Joyous Exultation with over km per hour winds, severely devastating its surface, shattering its nearby moon, Malhiem, into billions of fragments, and disintegrating the Covenant armada. The Covenant fleet and UNSC reinforcement fleet arrive at Onyx, where they encounter one another and the Sentinel defenders, which attack anything approaching the system.
In the ensuing battle, the entire UNSC fleet is destroyed save for one prowler-class vessel , which stays hidden and observes events unfolding. The humans on Onyx discover an ancient Forerunner city, Dr. Halsey determines that the entire planet is actually a "Shield World" referred to by the Forerunners as The Sharpened Shield. The Sharpened Shield was constructed by the Forerunners to protect themselves from the firing of the Halo Array, which are designed to eradicate all sentient life should the Flood escape.
Fighting off determined Covenant pursuers, they press on into the heart of the planet to find its secrets, but not before the ONI AI communicates to Dr. Halsey the importance of shutting down a Forerunner factory located at the "tip" of the plant that manufactures a new Sentinel every six seconds, or per hour. After disabling the factory, the group proceeds to the location of Team Katana. They find eight pods that are able to sustain life by opening a very small slipspace wormhole inside of the pod. Five of theses pods contained members of Katana.
It is unknown who or what the other three contain. They then press in to the planet's core, where they discover a Slipspace rift that transports those who pass through it, into a miniaturized Dyson Sphere that is separated from normal space-time by advanced Forerunner Slipspace technology. Entrance to the Slipspace bubble is in countdown, after being activated by the destruction on Halo installation Once the countdown is completed the entrance to the Dyson Sphere will be closed, with no means to reopen it.
Will and Holly-G fall fighting off the Covenant forces, Will engaging several Hunters in hand-to-hand combat, before meeting his demise, earning him even the Sangheili's respect. Halsey, Mendez, Tom, Lucy, and the other Spartans escape. After promoting Fred to Lieutenant, Junior Grade, giving him charge of the remaining personnel. Kurt remains behind in order to stop the Covenant from following the humans into the Dyson Sphere. He ends his life responding to the Elite Fleet Master, "Die? From outside Onyx , the surviving UNSC prowler Dusk watches on as the planet's surface rips apart, to reveal that the entire world is constructed of literally trillions of Sentinels, all connected together to provide an impenetrable defense around the Dyson Sphere at the heart of the planet.
Within this sphere, which features terrain similar to that of Earth, Dr Halsey reveals that five pods they recovered after destroying the sentinel factory are pods that suspends the user inside a Slipspace field, the user is extruded into an alternate set of spatial coordinates excluded from time and nothing can harm them, because technically they are not there. Concluding the story, Fred takes command of the remaining survivors who find themselves alone in the vast habitat. Halsey and the others to find the Forerunner artifacts and search for method of escape. Critical reception to Ghosts of Onyx was mostly positive.
Halo: Ghosts of Onyx (Literature) - TV Tropes
IGN stated that it did some "pretty nifty things" and that it was "an interesting and very sneaky way to conclude a story without spoiling Halo 3 's story. There's a few involving our heroes trying to avoid being lasered by Onyx Sentinels.
Onyx Sentinels are capable of combining into a number of configurations, including ones powerful enough to one-shot Covenant capital ships. Kurt, all the way to the very end. He is a Spartan-II, after all. Crazy Enough to Work: When Admiral Patterson's fleet has their backs to a gravity well, with a Covenant fleet three times their size getting ready to fire upon them, their response is to charge into the Covenant fleet; Patterson loses half his ships, but the charge puts the Covenant into just enough disarray for the rest to escape to a safer position. However, the Prowler commander observing the battle notes that Patterson actually made the most sensible call; his ships wouldn't have been able to dodge plasma at that range, so it was better to close the distance before the Covenant could safely fire another volley.
Ash's plan to destroy the Sentinel factory, which involves being chased by a ton of Sentinels until they can be tricked to fire upon vital components. Ash himself lampshades this: This was the stupidest plan he'd ever thought up. Too late now, though, to back out. How Kurt views his hard training of the IIIs; he just wants them to be able to survive even the toughest situations. I'd rather break them, than let them go out into the field without ever experiencing an intractable tactical situation.
Curiosity Killed the Cast: When the damaged NOVA bomb arrives at Joyous Exaltation, the Huragok there can't stop themselves from fixing it, activating the bomb in the process. The Spartans disable the Sentinel factory by dodging Sentinel fire so that they hit vital factory components instead. Towards the end of their battle, Patterson's fleet wipes out all but two of Voro's remaining ships by feigning a withdrawal and luring the Covies into a nuclear minefield.
Too bad Covenant reinforcements arrive right as Patterson's men are about to finish off the survivors. Kelly demonstrates that dodging bullets is for sissies, by dodging a laser blast. She then flips off the Sentinel that fired it. Really, ''all' the Spartans on Onyx have to constantly dodge lasers. Does "Ghosts of Onyx" refer to the Sentinels that were nicknamed as such? Dying Moment of Awesome: Kurt, who nukes an entire Covenant army. Will should get a mention too.
He killed a Hunter with his bare hands. Onyx turns out to house a Forerunner Shield World, which was designed to be a safe haven from the Halos and Flood. Onyx isn't really a planet in the traditional sense, but it does disintegrate into billions of Sentinels. The NOVA Bomb not only destroys an entire Elite fleet, but it vaporizes much of a nearby planet and completely shatters its moon.
Voro negotiates a temporary truce between the Elite and Brute fleets fighting around High Charity in order to stop the Flood from escaping. The two sides quickly go back to fighting each other even before the Flood have been completely dealt with. Played somewhat for laughs; after several Scenery Porn paragraphs describing Onyx's Forerunner city, with its "forest of sculpted geometries", "roads that curved up and twisted into Mobius surfaces", and three-km diameter pillars , Halsey's reaction boils down to: Kurt, who ultimately just wants as much of his Spartan-IIIs to survive as possible.
At the end of the book, Kurt promotes Fred to Lieutenant. Deliberately invoked by Kurt's training regimen, which is designed to turn a bunch of angry kids who hate each others' guts into True Companions through shared perils. It works pretty well. Kelly initially has strong doubts about Team Saber's capabilities, especially after they botch an ambush by attacking too early.
However, they earn her respect during the next skirmish, after Ash takes the initiative to take out the Sentinels pursuing Kelly. Zone 67 on Onyx, because of the Forerunner excavations being done there. Kelly does this to an Onyx Sentinel, of all things, as part of a distraction.
Customers who viewed this item also viewed
Onyx's enormous Sentinel factory includes a pyramid five times the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza and made of glowing golden spheres. Said spheres are what become the "core" of Onyx Sentinels. Briefly; the big space battle between Admiral Patterson's UNSC battle group and Fleet Master 'Mantakree's Sangheili fleet is told not from the perspective of either commander or any of the main participants, but from a Prowler crew whose main job is to stay back and provide intel though they do get briefly involved by dropping off some nuclear mines.
The loss of almost all of Beta Company on Pegasi Delta causes Lucy to have one, resulting in her not speaking ever again. Or, at least, not for many years. Ash has one when Holly is killed. He shakes it off pretty fast though, as they still have a battle to fight. Holly, after she dives in front of two Hunters' cannons to save Kelly. Half the Man He Used to Be: At one point during the final battle, Kelly cuts several Elites in half with an energy sword.
Hoist by His Own Petard: Ash comes up with the idea to use the Sentinels to destroy the generators for the Sentinel production facility. Admiral Patterson is down to one carrier and three destroyers, facing just two damaged Covenant destroyers. And then a Covenant fleet of 32 ships comes out of slipspace between the Covie destroyers and the four UNSC ships, and promptly annihilates the human vessels.
At first, it looks like Team Katana's members are simply being held in the Forerunner version of cryopods, but it turns out the pods are actually encasing them in time-displaced Slipspace bubbles. Cortana's message revealing the existence of more Halos and the continued presence of the Flood, and the crew of the Dusk stumbling upon the opening salvos of the Covenant's civil war.
They're a shock to the novel's characters, but readers will have likely already played Halo 2 before opening the book. Unlike regular Sentinels, the ones on Onyx turn out to have impressive learning capabilities. It Has Been an Honor: Ash says this to Kurt before undergoing the Bio-Augmentation process. I just wanted to let you know what an honor it's been to train under you, Chief Mendez, and Petty Officers Tom and Lucy. If I don't make it today, I wanted you to know that I wouldn't have done anything differently, sir.
The honor has been mine. The two shake hands. It's the Only Way to Be Sure: After Voro gives orders to destroy two Flood-infected Covenant destroyers, he then gives further orders to destroy two additional Covenant ships that happened to be too close to their infected counterparts. Said ships voluntarily deactivate their shields, their crew fully understanding why they have to die. Instead, the washouts become drill instructors for the next company of IIIs, and their bitterness tends to make them particularly brutal towards the trainees. A relatively heroic variation; while Voro becomes Shipmaster of the Incorruptible by killing its previous shipmaster Tano 'Inanraree, he did it solely because Tano was a Governor of Contrition who was about to force his men to let the Flood aboard their ship.
Heck, even Tano's personal bodyguards admit that Voro did the right thing. Unlike their predecessors, the Spartan-III super soldiers were made to be expendable, with most of them dying on suicide missions by their early teens. Lured into a Trap: The Innie nukes Blue Team is sent to recover in the first chapter turn out to be part of a trap meant to capture them.
The events of Blue Team's mission to investigate an abandoned space station turns out to have been all staged by ONI for the purpose of kidnapping Kurt to have him train the Spartan-IIIs, while at the same time tricking the rest of the UNSC into presuming him dead. The fact that Will was even able to take a few steps before keeling over and dying after taking an unshielded blast to the midsection point-blank from a Hunter's cannon is testament to his toughness.
Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Before Kurt dies, he sees all of his deceased friends giving him the all clear to detonate the nuclear warheads on Onyx. It does not specify whether or not he was actually seeing their ghosts or if he was hallucinating but either way this moment can double as a Tear Jerker.
The Forerunner city in Zone 67 covers the entirety of a km diameter crater.
- A Quick Start Guide to Mobile Marketing: Create a Dynamic Campaign and Improve Your Competitive Adva.
- The Priority of Democracy: Political Consequences of Pragmatism.
- .
- ;
- Frequently bought together.
And that's just the part that's been excavated! Around High Charity, you have Flood vs. Around Onyx, you have Sentinels vs. The last chapter opens with the surviving Spartans, Halsey, and Mendez holding a brief funeral for the Spartans killed on Onyx. Various Elites just stand back and watch as Will fights the Hunters. Justified though, as it's said that the sight of someone fighting two Hunters in hand-to-hand combat has left them too stunned to move. Furthermore, their sense of honor would probably prevent them from intervening anyway.
The Spartans fortunately don't feel this way, and promptly shoot the Elites.