The 2001 and 2007 novels ' and ' describe humanity's first contact with the Covenant in the year 2525. In "The Fall of Reach", a lone Covenant ship bombards the Harvest colony with plasma, turning the planet's crust into molten glass. The lone ship, broadcasts the Covenant edict, "Your destruction is the will of the gods, and we are their instrument", and destroys several United Nations Space Command (UNSC) ships sent to attack it. "Contact Harvest" describes a lengthy ground engagement between human militia and Covenant before the total assault on Harvest. The Covenant claim that humans are an offense to their gods, but in reality, three Covenant Prophets have learned from a relic left by their gods, the Forerunners, that humans, who may possibly be genetically related to the Forerunners, have been chosen by the Forerunners as their Reclaimers. Realizing such a revelation would splinter the Covenant, the newly crowned Hierarchs decide to obliterate the humans instead and declare that a new Age of the Covenant has begun.