How Did the Fall of Reach Happen?: The Tide Turns
Using cloaking technology, the Covenant quickly established surreptitious landing zones across Reach’s surface, as the UNSC scrambled to try and ascertain the size of their forces. The discovery of a major hidden landing zone in the Viery territory uncovered a Covenant supercarrier cloaked in orbit around the planet, and although the ship was ultimately destroyed by the Spartan members of Noble Team (more on them later), it only heralded the arrival of a second, larger Covenant fleet. Just three weeks after they were initially discovered on Reach, the Covenant’s official invasion was underway.
Although the UNSC scored early key wins in defending the planet, the arrival of the primary Covenant fleet—and with over half of the scrambled UNSC attempting to return to Reach to help defend it still on the way—saw the conflict rapidly turn in the invader’s favor. The Covenant targeted key military and civilian strongholds, staging massive ground assaults before pulling out to have vessels from the fleet begin targeted “glassing” strikes—orbital bombardments with the Covenant’s advanced plasma weaponry, killing anything in its path and then some, superheating the land until it was transformed into an uninhabitable, obsidian-esque wasteland.
