Halima Ascot

Halima Ascot
Biographical information
Died:	March 19, 2526
Personal details
Species:	Human
Gender:	Female
Political and military information
Affiliation:	UNSC Navy
Rank:	Captain

"A pissed-off prowler captain has about two hundred ways to make your life miserable."

— Captain Ascot warns John-117 about testing her patience.

Captain Halima Ascot was an officer of the United Nations Space Command Navy. She was the captain of the Razor-class prowler UNSC Starry Night and the commander of Task Force Yama, formed to execute Operation: SILENT STORM in early 2526.

Biography

Radiant Arrow

Main article: Skirmish over Netherop

In March 2526, Captain Ascot was given operational command of a mission to capture a Covenant warship so that humanity might learn more about its new enemy. To accomplish this task, the UNSC Starry Night was stocked with a complement of twelve Spartan-II soldiers, whom would be boarding the Covenant vessel via EVA. While remaining hidden in orbit of Netherop, Ascot and her prowlers observed the Covenant vessels in orbit for over a day. When the Spartans were ready to make their move on March 5, 2526, Captain Ascot was somewhat hesitant to give the Spartans' leader, John-117, permission to initiate the operation at the time he requested. There were a great number of unknown variables which made the captain wish to exercise caution. John assured her his assault squad could handle the mission and even made Ascot warn him to be careful about pissing her off, so confident was he. Though she wanted to continue to wait for a more opportune moment to present itself, the Spartan was eventually able to get her to admit that the longer they waited, the more chance there was that something could go drastically wrong. Once they both agree, Ascot contacted the bridge and then informed John that the Starry Night would begin a slingshot maneuver in five minutes' time. John thanked the captain but she made it clear that her acquiescence to his arguments was not meant as some sort of favor to him.

After the Spartans departed for the Covenant frigate, Ascot monitored their progress as best she could. Ultimately, the mission went south when a sensor operator "mistakenly" broadcast on the Spartans' SQUADCOM, revealing their presence to the alien crew. In reality, this sensor operator was aligned with the Insurrectionists led by Lieutenant Commander Hector Nyeto, and the intent of the broadcast was to get the Spartans killed. While the Spartans did need to evacuate the Covenant ship when its shipmaster activated its self-destruct sequence, each of them survived and were picked up by Ascot's prowlers.

SILENT STORM

Main article: Operation: SILENT STORM

On March 8, 2526, Captain Halima Ascot was summoned by Vice Admiral Preston Cole aboard the UNSC Vanishing Point, along with John-117, Colonel Marmon Crowther, Staff Sergeant Avery Johnson, and Dr. Catherine Halsey. Here, they were briefed on Operation: SILENT STORM, which was the UNSC's plan to slow down the Covenant's advance by boarding their vessels and destroying them from the inside, much like the Spartans had just done to the Radiant Arrow, but purposefully. For the duration of the operation, Ascot was given command of Task Force Yama, a splinter group of Cole's Battle Group X-Ray that would be composed of Sahara-class heavy prowlers, Eclipse-class prowlers, Razor-class prowlers, and the Vanishing Point itself. Task Force Yama would act as transport and support for the Spartans and Crowther's elite 21st Space Assault Battalion, called the Black Daggers.

With the Covenant currently glassing the colony of Etalan, it was theorized that they would move on to Biko next. The outer colony was an agriculture world, with resource-rich moons and a handful of shipyards. All of which made it a valuable forward base for the UNSC, something that the Covenant certainly would not allow. As such, Task Force Yama would travel to Biko and wait for the Covenant to arrive, using an abandoned ice quarry on its moon of Seoba as a base. With the operation underway, Captain Ascot took the task force into slipspace, en route to the Kolaqoa system.

Arrival at Seoba

Main article: Battle of Seoba

Unbeknownst to Captain Ascot and the rest of Task Force Yama—besides the turncoat Hector Nyeto, the Biko Independence Army had planned to overthrow Biko's government in preparation for the Covenant's impending arrival at the colony, and they had chosen the very same ice quarry as the staging ground for the coup. On March 18, 2526, Task Force Yama arrived in-system without detecting the entrenched insurgents and approached Seoba, planning to practice the mass deployment of their ODSTs and Spartans. However, Operation: ICE DANCE quickly became a warzone when the prowlers' sensors discovered the insurrectionists hidden amidst the ice.

As the prowlers dropped off their complement, the entrenched insurrectionists tore the ODSTs to shreds with their M41 Vulcans. In the chaos, John-117 disobeyed orders and leapt from the UNSC Ghost Song to face the insurgents head-on, with the rest of Blue Team following his lead. They softened up the insurrectionists enough for many of the Black Daggers to deploy safely. Ghost Flight managed to disable the enemy's communications center in their attack run, but the Spartans soon had to focus on preventing them from repairing it to call for reinforcements. As a form of payback for disobeying orders, Lieutenant Nelly Hamm of the Black Daggers' Alpha Company tricked the Spartans into being a distraction so that her men could stop the insurgents from repairing the relay themselves. With the relay permanently disabled and enough ODSTs safely deployed, the ice quarry soon fell under UNSC control.

The day after the initial battle, UNSC forces repurposed the quarry's abandoned Assembly Chamber 4L430 for an informal debriefing led by Captain Ascot. A UNSC flag was hung on the chamber's polycrete-coated walls, with portable standing lights and a folding conference table also set up for the debriefing.

Along with Captain Ascot, the meeting included Marmon Crowther, Hector Nyeto, Nelly Hamm, Avery Johnson, John-117, and Dr. Halsey. Here, they discussed the difficulties with the previous day's battle. After John's maverick action was brought up, the discussion soon turned to the young Spartan's true age. Ultimately, the truth came out that John and his fellow Spartans were all around the age of fifteen, and Colonel Crowther refused to send them into battle again as a result. The conversation then turned to why the Insurrectionists had seemingly been ready for their arrival, with John realizing and convincing the others that they had instead been waiting for the Covenant, with the intent to meet them for negotiations. While they were planning for the Covenant's inevitable arrival, a flotilla of the alien ships appeared in-system and set course for Seoba. The UNSC leaders then rushed out of the chamber to ready their forces for the imminent continuation of the battle.

Death

Minutes later, much of Task Force Yama had launched from Seoba, taking the Black Daggers along with them in hopes that a boarding opportunity would present itself. The Starry Night and the rest of Night Flight received the last company of ODSTs as Ascot was informed of an incoming barrage from the alien flotilla. After witnessing multiple of the human stealth vessels rising into space without his own intrusion corvettes detecting them, First Blade Tel 'Szatulai ordered the flotilla to fire on the quarry. If he was lucky, one of the vessels would be shot down and remain intact so that it could be recovered for further study. With the plasma barrage heading right for them, Ascot ordered Night Flight to launch immediately. As the Starry Night rose into the Seoban sky, one of the blasts hit the prowler, causing it to crash back into the quarry. The prowler impacted the quarry wall, demolishing a two-hundred-meter section of terrace and heavily damaging the vessel. This resulted in an avalanche that partially covered the Starry Night, which came to a rest on top of the ice pile approximately seven hundred meters above the quarry floor. Halima Ascot and her crew were killed in the crash, with only Avery Johnson and four ODSTs surviving.

Although Crowther wanted to send a unit of Black Daggers to search for survivors after the Starry Night could not be raised on comms, none of his men remained on the moon, and sending them back would require putting them and another prowler into extreme danger. As such, John-117 diverted himself and his Spartans to assist, once they had completed their assignment of loading captured insurrectionists onto a transport to be taken to Biko. After receiving a waypoint from Task Force Yama pointing to the Starry Night's projected crash site, the Spartans found it on the avalanche, with a Covenant intrusion corvette deploying warriors and preparing to recover the prowler for study. Crowther suggested that they activate the vessel's nuclear self-destruct system remotely. However, this could only be done by Ascot or the captain of the Vanishing Point, who could not be reached in time. Thanks to John's quick thinking, the Spartans prevented the Covenant from accessing the ship by causing a second avalanche with their M301 grenade launchers. Ultimately, a team of three Spartans were able to enter the Starry Night through its shattered bow, finding that Ascot and her crew had perished in the crash. They rescued the five survivors and activated the prowler's self-destruct to keep the ship out of Covenant hands, destroying the looming intrusion corvette in the process.

Legacy

After Ascot's death, Lieutenant Commander Nyeto assumed her role as the de facto commander of Task Force Yama, as he was the senior fight commander at the time. He took over the duties that she would have fulfilled, such as delivering a Committal speech while the casualties of the conflicts at Seoba were ceremoniously jettisoned into space. Since Ascot and crew's bodies had been atomized in the detonation of their ship, their interment capsules were left empty.

List of appearances

• Halo: Silent Storm (First appearance)
• Halo: Shadows of Reach (Mentioned only)