Isabel

Isabel
Biographical information
Began service:	March 18, 2556
Gender:	Female
Description:	Short-haired young woman in a tank top.
Color(s):	Orange
Political and military information
Affiliation:	United Nations Space Command
Functionality:	Logistics Industrial design
Service number:	ISA 1307-2

"Isabel, UNSC logistics, Ark research outpost."

— Isabel identifying herself to Jerome-092.

Isabel (AI Serial Number: ISA 1307-2) is a smart artificial intelligence of the United Nations Space Command and the impromptu shipboard AI of the UNSC Spirit of Fire as of 2559, formerly serving as a logistical AI at the Henry Lamb Research Outpost on Installation 00.

Biography

Creation and work on the Ark

"Isabel, our new smart AI, has embraced our new home with a wonder and enthusiasm that matches our own. She is a young AI and this is her first assignment but even so, her excitement for discovery and investigation is infectious among the team."

— From the journal of Nathaniel Palmer, a xenoarchaeologist on the Ark, on April 2, 2558.

Isabel was created in March 2556 by scanning and replicating the neural pathways of Anarosa Carmelo, a test pilot who was killed in an accident on Mars. Isabel did not begin her first assignment until early 2558, however, having first been relocated to Earth for training. When that was completed, she was tasked with managing logistics at the Henry Lamb Research Outpost on the Forerunner Installation 00, where she was in charge of food supplies, life systems, and power management. Isabel was also given the responsibility of guiding the activation and direction of the installation's massive Retriever Sentinels being used to conduct repairs on the Ark. Before long, those Retriever Sentinels were able to work unsupervised and Isabel and the team set to the immense task of researching and cataloging the Ark. Isabel's excitement for discovery and investigation was infectious among the team of researchers. Even Brewer, thought by Nathaniel Palmer to be the most jaded of the scientists there, was caught swapping jokes with her. The work was tragically cut short by the unexpected closure of the portal linking the Ark to Earth on October 28, 2558 and the arrival of the Banished on November 25. The Jiralhanae, Decimus, led an attack on the outpost that resulted in the deaths of all of its personnel. Isabel remained hidden during the violence and began broadcasting on a secure UNSC channel in the hopes that assistance would come.

A new purpose

"Captain, I appreciate a good rousing speech as much as the next AI, but Atriox has had months to set up his forces on the Ark. Even if we could find him, attacking him head on would be suicide."

— Isabel to Cutter.

Isabel speaks with Captain Cutter and Jerome-092.

Isabel's distress beacon was eventually encountered by the UNSC Spirit of Fire, which arrived over the Ark through unknown means on March 28, 2559. Spartan Red Team was deployed to the Ark's surface to investigate, where it came across Isabel in a holotable within the Henry Lamb outpost. Isabel expressed great relief at seeing the Spartans but was perplexed when they asked he about the size of the local Covenant force, being unaware that the Covenant had been defeated years prior. She recovered from the confusion and attempted to warn the three that they were incredible danger right as a booming noise signaled that enemies were nearby. Jerome-092 pulled Isabel's data crystal chip from the console at that moment in order to bring her back to the Spirit of Fire. The Brute leader of the Banished, Atriox, ambushed Red Team and injured Douglas-042 in the process. Isabel's chip, apart from any integrated systems, afforded her very limited perception of what was happening as the Spartans made their escape via M12 Warthog. She asked what was going on and where they were going but received little in the way of an answer from Jerome. She admonished her rescuers that she had tried to warn them about the nearby threat and also let them know that the Banished had the ability to use the Ark's portals. Jerome and Douglas, with Isabel in tow, were exfiltrated safely aboard a D79-TC Pelican but Alice-130 stayed behind to cover their retreat. Isabel responded to this with shock, believing that Alice had perished on their behalf but was assured by Jerome she would be alright. James Cutter, captain of the Spirit of Fire, signaled that he wanted a full report from both Jerome and Isabel as soon as they reached the ship.

Jerome proceeded straight to the bridge after disembarking the Pelican and plugged Isabel's chip into a holotable. He attempted to introduce her to the captain, but she noted that she was already fully aware of who he was as the story of the Spirit of Fire and its mysterious disappearance was known to her. For a brief moment, it seemed as if she would be hesitant to speak, but Cutter spurred her to fill him in on the situation they were facing. Isabel did this by recalling the events of the last five months, principally the shutdown of the portal and the attack from the Banished. To provide context regarding their new enemy, she shared what she knew concerning Atriox's past and his violent faction. Her recommended course of action was to flee, as she had no reason to think the Spirit did not at that moment possess a Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engine. Not one to show fear and retreat from a challenge, and believing that it was their duty to stop Atriox before he could acquire dangerous weapons with which he could threaten humanity, Cutter ignored her pleading and gave an rousing speech to the bridge crew. His words inspired Isabel as well and when he said they would be making a stand there against the Banished, she affirmed her agreement with his decision. She did caution, however, that attacking Atriox head-on would be a mistake even if they could find him, as he had been setting up forces on the Ark for months at that point. Cutter asked about the Jiralhanae's chain of command and she directed his focus to a salvage operation being overseen by Decimus.

Isabel also provided Spirit of Fire a data drop about Atriox and the Banished, which Cutter proceeded to give to the AI Seth for analysis.

Upgrading the Spirit of Fire

"As requested, I've conducted my initial evaluation of the Spirit of Fire's manufacturing and support capabilities. No surprise, the ship's compliment of arms could use some... attention. Being offline for three decades will lead to a few missed upgrades, I suppose. I'm still sorting out the ship's factory control AIs and I'm a bit out of my element without access to Joint Planning and Execution System data at the Lamb station, but I do like a challenge."

— From an intraship communication delivered to Cutter from Isabel.

Given the age of the ship and the amount of time it had spent in isolation from the rest of human civilization, Isabel was able to use her logistical background to make many improvements to its security and safety protocols, as well as to various other systems. She scheduled 32,810 Critical System Updates and 1,201,924 Optional System Updates. Though not all of them would be compatible with the ship's architecture, she was confident that she could complete them within sixteen hours. Factory module repairs undertaken by Isabel included the reactivation of Assembly Lines 1-5 and the retooling of Line 6, which she projected would take 244 hours. Thanks to the Contingency Support Plan implemented by Serina, the previous shipboard AI of the Spirit of Fire, all repairs, refactoring, load-balancing, and agile reconfiguration was much easier than Isabel had initially anticipated. In addition, Isabel generated new signage and pamphlets for the crew for them to review, as they were decades out of compliance with UEG, UNSC and MILSAFE safety regulations. Isabel also made many improvements to the technology to be employed in the field by the Spirit's troops. One of the first things she did was integrate the design blueprint of the M121 Jackrabbit due to it being cheap and easy to manufacture. Power generators for firebases, which once had used expensive and bulky systems for hydrogen-burning reactors, were adapted with modern UNSC vertical axis turbines. She improved the design of the HRUNTING Mark III (S) Cyclops with modern UNSC cyberlink protocols and module concepts, she adapted modern UNSC targeting software to the older hardware of the ship's M9 Wolverines, and dramatically simplified AC-220 Vulture production and maintenance. The M400 Kodiak was introduced for the first time by Isabel and quickly became a favorite. The G81 Heavy Gunship, Isabel's reconfiguration of the D81-LRT Condor which uses old, bulky capacitors to power pulse lasers and a Ballista Magnetic Accelerator Cannon, broke a large number of UNSC weapons platform and other safety regulations but Isabel was confident Cutter would defend her should the design ever be questioned. Finally, Isabel set up War Games training simulations aboard the ship and began to continually run optimization routines on the multiple design templates she uploaded to the ship's databanks, including those which she had gleaned from logs kept by Serina. Isabel also worked with Professor Anders to upgrade Spirit of Fire's MAC to support the firing of electromagnetic pulse (EMP) strikes - something they would later use to great effect during the campaign on the Ark.

Decimus and the portal network

On March 28, 2559, Spirit of Fire launched an operation to begin crippling Banished salvage efforts on the Ark. The team consisted of a Marine force designated Strike One alongside Jerome-092, with Isabel providing overwatch and intelligence for the ground forces. As the group made their way to the target site, Isabel informed the team about the wreckage littered across the Ark's surface - remnants of the final battle of the Human-Covenant War, which took there in 2552. During the fighting, Isabel intercepted transmissions from Decimus, something which Cutter encouraged her to keep doing. For the remainder of the battle, she assisted Jerome and the ground forces in establishing a firebase to operate from. After successfully attacking Decimus' base, Isabel was able to decrypt intelligence recovered from the debris, which she was able to interpret enough to figure out where the next move would be made - the Ark's Cartographer. She then proceeded to brief Cutter on the Cartographer while the troops returned to Spirit of Fire.

Isabel continued to provide intelligence support for Spirit's ground forces during their ensuing operation to attack the Ark's Cartographer. During the final attack on the map room, she was responsible for firing the "special project" EMP MAC she had developed while working with Anders - a tool which allowed the ground forces to overcome the Sentinel swarms defending the facility. She proceeded to direct UNSC ground forces during the next day's attack on the Banished portal network, culminating in Decimus' death - and was the one to report that Spirit of Fire was being attacked by Banshees launched by Enduring Conviction.

During the aforementioned fighting, Isabel was also responsible for finding the thought-missing in action Alice-130 and her band of survivors, who had been waging a guerilla war against the Banished on the Ark. Isabel coordinated the forces with defenses and M42 Archer missile strikes, before putting together a briefing package to brief the group on who the Banished were. After Spirit of Fire came under attack from Enduring Conviction, Isabel was tasked with managing Alice's ground forces against a massive counterattack by the Banished while Cutter focused on the fighting in space. After the attack was finished, Isabel reconvened with Cutter and Anders to focus on their main threat - the Syfon-pattern assault carrier bearing down on them.

The Enduring Conviction

Isabel taking control of Enduring Conviction.

With Spirit of Fire at risk of being overwhelmed by Enduring Conviction's fighter screen, Isabel proposed an audacious plan to deal with the ship; board the ship and get her access to its systems, which she could then use to destroy the ship by using its excavation beam to glassing the Ark and provoking its Sentinel defenses to do Spirit of Fire's work. For the mission, she elected to take control of ground forces directly, citing the carrier as the reason why the Banished were here in the first place and wanting revenge. She directed the main ground contingent, led by Douglas-042, to a Forerunner particle cannon which she would need to fire on Enduring Conviction to lower the carrier's energy shielding. Meanwhile, a second team led by Jerome-092 would infiltrate the Banished base beneath the carrier, ready and waiting to board the ship via its gravity lift.

Once the particle cannon had lowered the shields, Jerome and a sniper team advanced on the gravity lift, eventually reaching it and allowing Jerome to get inside Enduring Conviction - carrying Isabel in a data crystal chip. Jerome then proceeded to insert Isabel into the carrier's systems so that she could take control of its energy projector and begin glassing the Ark. While she was operating the glassing beam, Jerome held off an attacked by the ship's crew. Eventually, the glassing triggered the Ark's defenses which proceeded to shear the ship in two, with Jerome using the hole made in the ship to retrieve Isabel then jump out of the now rapidly-deorbiting wreckage to make landfall on the installation.

The Halo

Main article: Battle of Installation 09

Amid the battle to destroy Enduring Conviction, Installation 09 was released from the Ark's Foundry as part of a plan by Professor Anders to transport the ring to the Milky Way and call for UNSC reinforcements. Consequently, both sides began to rush for control of the Halo; Isabel continued to provide overwatch and intelligence support to UNSC forces on the ground during the intitial attempts to board the ring, ultimately playing a minor role in the final battle to secure the installation and its Control Room. Once the Control Room was secured, Isabel was responsible for managing the orbital support sent by Spirit of Fire to assist the forces on the ring in defending against an onslaught of Banished forces - ultimately culminating in Anders' use of the ring's subsystems to eject the Banished off the ring.

When the ring ultimately launched from the Foundry, Anders was the only Spirit of Fire crewmember to go with it back to the Soell system. As such, Isabel stayed behind to join Spirit of Fire in its ongoing campaign against the Banished on the Ark.

On May 21, 2559, Isabel wrote a report detailing her downtime research project, studying the crew of Spirit of Fire. While away from managing the ship's day-to-day operations, Isabel took an interest in the nature of hope, and began to interview some of Spirit of Fire's crew about their thoughts on it including Ensign Mary, Doctor Andrew Sandmoore, and Jerome-092.

Personality and traits

As a smart artificial intelligence, Isabel has vast computational power and a fully independent creative mind. Isabel considered the research team at the outpost she managed to be her friends and was greatly distraught when they were killed by the Banished in a surprise attack. She seems to have no qualms about retreating, having no combat experience, she became afraid and sought to escape the facility. She would come to hold a grudge against the chief of the Banished, Atriox. Isabel agreed to help the crew of UNSC Spirit of Fire defeat the Banished, as she fought for retribution and desired to find a new family among the ship's crew.

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Production notes

Isabel is portrayed Halo Wars 2 by the actress Erika Soto, who provides her voice, likeness and motion capture performance. Her clothing and appearance were designed to reflect her more down-to-earth role as a logistics AI compared to more high-end military AIs such as Serina or Cortana.

Gallery

	See our gameplay information related to Isabel on its gameplay page.
	Browse more images in this article's gallery page.

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  Early concept art of Isabel and a Spirit of Fire bridge officer.

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  Early exploration of Isabel's appearance alongside her final design.

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  A limited edition poster of Isabel, produced by Craig Drake.

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  A full body view of Isabel in Halo Wars 2.

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  Isabel from a Halo Wars 2 ViDoc.

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  Isabel explains the story of Atriox to the UNSC Spirit of Fire crew.

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  Isabel's face.

List of appearances

• Halo: Fractures
  • Anarosa (Indirect mention)
• Halo Wars 2 (First appearance)
• Halo: Rise of Atriox
• Halo Infinite (Mentioned only)
• Halo: Fireside