At exactly eight o'clock on the morning of August 31, 2552...
By today, if we counted from July 23, when the Fleet of Valiant Prudence arrived at Reach and began making preparations for the arrival of the Covenant's main fleet, then the war that had lasted nearly forty days, fought in the space near Epsilon Eridani and on that planet so important to both the UNSC and humanity—Reach—the heart-wrenching Battle of Reach had finally been officially declared over.
From 7:28 a.m. on July 24, when Noble Team was dispatched by Colonel Holland to investigate possible rebel activity at the disabled Visegrád Relay, discovered signs of the Covenant, and sent out the "Winter Contingency" alert, to around 5:05 p.m. on August 30, when the Pillar of Autumn successfully lifted off from Aszod and escaped Reach, humanity had paid an enormous and devastating price as the defenders and the defeated side!
According to an incomplete tally of data compiled by the dumb AI at Castle Base, which had yet to fall, by August 31 the UNSC Epsilon Eridani Fleet, which had originally had nearly four hundred million military personnel and had participated in and directed the Battle of Reach, had paid a terrible price: 134 warships sunk, several missing, and more than 700 million military personnel and civilians missing or dead...
(According to statistics, around 300 million of the dead or missing were military personnel. After accounting for the civilians who successfully escaped or survived afterward, the number of Reach's civilians massacred by the Covenant came to about 400 million! Meanwhile, humanity's survivors, scattered across the planet to escape the war or still hiding in various shelters, might already number fewer than 300 million.)
Before the battle began, the UNSC Epsilon Eridani Fleet had one supercarrier, one Epoch-class carrier, three cruisers, ninety-eight