The great battle on Reach had been over for several days. During that time, everything around Reach and Epsilon Eridani had been unusually quiet, without a ripple.
No new enemy ships had appeared in space. Perhaps the Covenant had been frightened by the sudden appearance of the enormous, unidentified fleet. Perhaps they hadn't received any news at all. Or perhaps they were simply too uncertain to make a move.
In any case, the Sovereign-class Reaper fleets in orbit around Reach remained where they had been for the past few days, motionless like enormous black space insects floating in orbit and moving in sync with the planet.
The UNSC's response was much the same as the Covenant's!
In fact, neither the Reaper fleet in space nor the geth on Reach's surface had even considered disrupting communications on the planet. Although that would have been very easy for the geth, who excelled at overloading systems and jamming radar.
For reasons no one could quite explain, however, despite the Reapers and geth leaving the UNSC's communications untouched, not a single UNSC ship had dared to enter the Epsilon Eridani system over the past few days...
Perhaps humanity had yet to recover from its defeat by the Covenant and was busy with other matters, unable to spare any attention for Reach, which had fallen and seemed beyond hope. Or perhaps they knew what had happened there, but, like the Covenant, had been frightened by the Reaper fleet of more than a thousand ships. Until they had a clear understanding of the situation, they might not dare to act rashly.
Whatever the UNSC and the Covenant might have been thinking, there was no doubt that peace had come to Reach!
By now, most of the Covenant invaders who had landed on Reach, invaded it, and