Lucy-B091

Lucy-B091
Biographical information
Born:	January 28, 2533
Personal details
Species:	Human
Gender:	Female
Height:	160 centimeters (5 ft 3 in) (age 12)
Weight:	70 kilograms (150 lb) (age 12)
Hair color:	Black
Eye color:	Dark brown
Political and military information
Affiliation:	UNSC Navy (formerly) Naval Special Weapons SPARTAN-III program Spartan Operations
Rank:	Petty officer, second class
Service number:	S-B091

Petty Officer, Second Class Lucy-B091 is a Spartan-III supersoldier of Beta Company. One of the two survivors of the disastrous Operation: TORPEDO, she suffered from posttraumatic vocal disarticulation for years as a result of witnessing her unit's destruction. She and her fellow Beta Company survivor Tom-B292 subsequently served as Lieutenant Commander Kurt Ambrose's aides and trainers for SPARTAN-III Gamma Company and fought in the Battle of Onyx in late 2552. After a stint of service in the field as members of Blue Team, Lucy and Tom took up instructor duties in the new Spartan Operations branch, before moving on to serve as security for the Onyx United Research Project in 2554.

Biography

Childhood and training

"Nuts to this."

— An impatient Lucy preparing to charge a set of gun turrets head-on rather than wait to come up with a plan during a training exercise

Lucy was born on January 28, 2533. In her childhood, Lucy's family had a pet cat. She would also later recall a faint memory of a horse. She was orphaned when the Covenant glassed her homeworld and murdered her family. Some time afterward, Lucy was offered to join the SPARTAN-III program to get revenge on the Covenant aliens. Distraught, she accepted the offer and was initiated into Beta Company at age six.

She was trained by Lieutenant Commander Kurt Ambrose and Senior Chief Petty Officer Franklin Mendez at Camp Currahee on Onyx for six years. Lucy—along with Adam-B004, Min-B174, and Tom-B292—became Team Foxtrot, one of the organized Spartan-III combat teams in Beta Company. On August 24, 2541, Lucy and the rest of Team Foxtrot participated in one of a series of exercises meant to filter out extra candidates the program lacked funds to train. Lucy and Tom appropriated automated M202 XP machine guns and with the help of the rest of their team, completed the objective. However, they continued to ambush several waves of their instructors before being forced to stand down by Chief Mendez and Lieutenant Commander Ambrose. Kurt commended them for their actions and they were accepted for further training and eventually Spartan augmentation.

Operation: TORPEDO

"How are you sure we're alive?"

— Lucy's last words to Tom, until 2553

On July 3, 2545, Lucy and the rest of Beta Company were sent on Operation: TORPEDO to destroy a Covenant refinery on Pegasi Delta, a natural satellite of 51 Pegasi B in the 51 Pegasi system. Before the mission, Lieutenant Commander Ambrose had intended for Lucy and SPARTAN-B170 to be deployed in advance for long-term reconnaissance, though this attempt ultimately failed and she was sent in along with the main assault force. The majority of the company was killed before reaching the refinery, but Team Foxtrot managed to get to the refinery's reactor core. They destroyed the reactor, and only Lucy and Tom managed to survive by jumping into the ocean nearby, sparing them from the immense heat. After a failed search for survivors, they escaped the moon aboard a Black Cat-class subprowler.

Although the mission ended up as a 'success', only Lucy and Tom survived the battle. Adam and Min never made it, killed by the Covenant and a reactor, respectively. Lucy, traumatized by the incident, was diagnosed with posttraumatic vocal disarticulation, rendering her unable to speak. Because of this, she was to be classified as "unfit for duty," and reassigned to the Office of Naval Intelligence's psych branch for "psychological evaluation". Kurt Ambrose rescued her from this fate, along with Tom, convincing Vice Admiral Margaret Parangosky that he needed Spartan-IIIs to train the next company of Spartans. Over the next several years, Lucy and Tom became Kurt's adjutants and were instrumental in the training of the third generation of Spartan-IIIs, Gamma Company. They stayed at Camp Currahee and helped in the training until 2552. By early 2551, Lucy and Tom held the rank of Petty Officer Second Class. In February 2551, they accompanied Kurt aboard UNSC Hopeful to oversee Gamma Company's augmentations. By then they had recently spent significant time in microgravity which was noticeable from their gaits. Kurt noted that she and Tom had spent so much time in their Semi-Powered Infiltration armor armor he had difficulty recognizing them without the suits on.

Battle of Onyx

"You two didn't survive Pegasi Delta to die here. There's too much left for you to do."

— Kurt Ambrose convincing Lucy and Tom to leave him

When the Battle of Onyx broke out in late October 2552 with Onyx Sentinels attacking the humans on the planet, Lucy and Tom were based in Camp Currahee. After destroying one of the Sentinels in the camp, they met with Lieutenant Commander Ambrose and SCPO Mendez. Lucy accompanied Kurt to retrieve ordnance from his personal armory where he briefly contemplated on donning his old MJOLNIR armor, revealing to Lucy—to her great surprise—that the lieutenant commander was a SPARTAN-II. They subsequently moved to El Morro Point and, after several days of guerrilla warfare against the Sentinels, met with Dr. Catherine Halsey and Blue Team. Lucy and Tom subsequently coordinated with Linda-058 to destroy a Sentinel overlooking the area, before the group pushed deeper into the restricted Zone 67 and made their way into an excavated Forerunner city. Pursued by Covenant forces, they were redirected to destroy a Sentinel manufacturing facility by Zone 67's ONI AI Endless Summer. The Spartans successfully destroyed the factory in an operation coordinated by Dr. Halsey via the use of local translocation nodes, with Lucy and Tom moving ahead of the others to destroy one of the facility's core components.

After retrieving Team Katana, who had been placed in slipspace field pods, the group pushed on to Onyx's core room antechamber where they prepared to make a last stand against the incoming Covenant army to prevent them from accessing the slipspace portal into the shield world. After all of the other survivors had retreated into the portal, Lucy and Tom were the last to remain at Kurt's side. At first, she and Tom were adamant not to leave their mentor behind, but Kurt knocked Tom unconscious and managed to convince a reluctant Lucy into entering the slipspace rift. Before leaving, Lucy made a respectful gesture with two fingers to Kurt's faceplate but only managed a half-choked cry when attempting to verbally express her farewell. She and Tom were the last to go through, before Kurt detonated two FENRIS nuclear warheads, denying the Covenant access to the shield world.

Shield world

Several hours after their entry into the shield world, Lucy was part of the recon team consisting of Fred-104, Linda-058, Mark-G313, and Ash-G099. Along the way to the Forerunner structure her team was able to find food of some kind. The teams regrouped at a pair of Forerunner structures and after Dr. Halsey found the entrance to one of the structures, Lucy was the first inside. She found herself in a room with a strange, light-absorbent quality. The unexpected lack of sensory stimuli caused Lucy to have a sudden flashback of Operation: TORPEDO and she started to panic, only to be calmed down by Tom. Shortly later, she spotted something moving down a corridor and chased after it. Anxious to find what she was chasing after, she continued on looking and got separated from the rest of the team by falling into another room which appeared to be a hangar of some kind.

In the room, she discovered what she had noticed earlier: a Huragok, which she accidentally killed. Three other Huragok were present, and started to mourn the loss of one of their own. In order to get them to help her, she showed them her helmet. One of the Huragok—Prone to Drift—attempted to communicate with Lucy by tampering with the helmet's systems but, after several failed attempts at contact, Prone to Drift and the other Huragok led Lucy to a nearby maintenance room. Here, Lucy and Prone to Drift managed to communicate with each other using a data terminal; she learned that the alien's name and that the Huragok had access to communications with the outside of the sphere and thus might be able to help the human survivors escape. They also revealed that the passage of time inside the slipspace bubble the sphere occupied was different from that in normal space, and that the utility area Lucy had fallen into was located within another slipspace pocket where time elapsed considerably faster than in the rest of the sphere. The Huragok then led Lucy to the other human survivors, who were relieved to see her as she had been gone for days in their time. Dr. Halsey immediately began questioning Prone to Drift and became increasingly agitated as the Huragok failed to provide her answers or allow them to establish contact with the outside in accordance with their instructions. When Halsey began threatening Prone to Drift, Lucy had a sudden emotional outburst and attacked Halsey, repeatedly screaming "No!", overcoming her posttraumatic vocal disarticulation. However, her ability to speak normally was not immediately restored although she managed to speak several individual words afterward.

Soon after, the humans managed to convince the Huragok to open communications to the ONI ships outside the slipspace bubble. Lucy and the other survivors were then taken aboard prowler UNSC Port Stanley by the ONI team Kilo-Five, and were transported to Sydney, Australia on Earth for a debriefing in HIGHCOM Facility Bravo-6. Despite being offered the chance to integrate into the SPARTAN-IV program, Lucy, Tom, and the Team Saber survivors continued to serve with Blue Team in the coming months.

Conflict on Gao

Main article: Operation: JOVIAN WHISTLE

In May of 2553, the Office of Naval Intelligence learned of a Forerunner structure host to an ancilla located within the Montero Cave System on the human Outer Colony of Gao in the Cordoba system. Lucy and the rest of Blue Team—Fred, Kelly, Linda, Tom, Ash, Olivia, and Mark—were attached to ONI's 717th Xeno-Materials Exploitation Battalion, a research battalion charged with recovering the AI. Meanwhile, a string of murders had been occurring in the cave systems; the UNSC forces on Gao agreed to help the Ministry of Protection with the murders while they covertly located the AI, both parties unaware that the murders were caused by the ancilla. After another victim had been discovered in the caves, Lucy, Tom, Kelly, and Linda were tasked with escorting the GMoP team and the bagged victim back to the village of Wendosa, while the rest of Blue Team continued to search for the ancilla.

Upon arriving at Wendosa on July 4, 2553, the Spartans attempted to deliver the victim to a Pelican dropship for extraction. However, the four Spartans were spotted by members of the Keepers of the One Freedom, a radical Covenant sect that had traveled to Gao in search for the ancilla. The cult's Jiralhanae leader, Castor, believed that the bagged victim aboard the Pelican was actually the ancilla and ordered his forces to attack Wendosa to retrieve the AI. As the Keepers of the One Freedom attacked the village, Lucy and the other Spartans helped Charlie Company defend the rest of the research battalion. While the company took a defensive position in Hotel Wendosa, Lucy and the Spartans formed a skirmish ring around the hotel, attempting to disrupt enemy formations and prevent a Jiralhanae charge.

Fred, the rest of Blue Team, and Special Inspector Veta Lopis arrived at the village with the captured ancilla to aid the company. Meanwhile, while Kelly and Linda fired explosives at the Keepers from the Wendosa rooftops, Lucy and Tom—armed with heavy machine guns—were helping force the cult's forces back into retreat. When the Jiralhanae attempted to charge at the village, all Spartans of Blue Team worked together to thin their numbers. During the attack, Fred was ordered to return the captured ancilla to Commander Murtag Nelson at the Montero Vitality Clinic. However, while leaving Wendosa in a Falcon, the aircraft was shot down by Keeper fire. The rest of Blue Team regrouped and, with Lopis, traveled to the Falcon's crash site to locate Fred and the AI. The team was assaulted by the Keepers, but they were eventually able to defeat the charging Jiralhanae with the help of the battalion's Alpha Company. Having recovered Fred and the ancilla, the team returned to the Montero Vitality Clinic. However, recently elected President of Gao Arlo Casille declared war on the UNSC forces on the planet and Gao battle-jumpers and Wyverns were ordered to engage the battalion's remaining forces.

As the rest of the unit began retreating from the planet, the Spartans and Lopis traveled to the Well of Echoes to detonate a HAVOK tactical nuclear weapon inside to destroy the Forerunner installation within the Montero Caves, denying the anti-UNSC president access to the installation. Once they retrieved the ancilla and the nuke, Blue Team and Lopis regrouped in the Montero Jungle. Lucy and Tom both drove the two Warthogs, with the rest of the team aboard, to the Well of Echoes. Upon arriving at the Well of Echoes, the team boarded a nearby ONI Owl with Rear Admiral Serin Osman aboard. Mark dropped the nuke into the Well of Echoes and the Owl left the planet as the HAVOK detonated and destroyed the Forerunner installation. As the Owl traveled to the UNSC task force in Gao's orbit, Osman revealed that the Gamma Company Spartan-IIIs in Blue Team were to be officially designated KIA and reassigned to a classified infiltration team. Despite her initial reluctance to the plan, Lucy and the rest of Blue Team gave their "permission".

Training the Spartan-IVs

Tom: "This is insane. It can't possibly work."

Lucy: "Not even going to try?"

— Tom and Lucy on their impromptu plan to save Jun.

Lucy and Tom left Blue Team to serve as instructors in the recently-established Spartan Operations branch in August 2553. They were subsequently assigned under Commander Musa-096 and tasked with training Spartan-IV recruits on the program's top-secret training station.

On March 29, 2554, Lucy and Tom were in their office reviewing the performance of the new Spartan-IV class when an explosion rocked the station, causing the section they were in to lose gravity. As the pair attempted to assess the situation, Lucy noticed Jun-A266 and the rogue Spartan-IV recruit Rudolf Schein fighting outside in space, having been blasted out during Schein's attempt to sabotage the station. Jun was able to break from Schein's grip and kick off from the rogue Spartan's chest, sending Schein deeper into space—and Jun back towards the station. At once, Lucy prompted Tom to an airlock where he, attached to a tether, launched himself into space without a vacuum suit to rescue Jun. Lucy held onto the tether to control Tom's path and he finally managed to grab hold of Jun. She was able to pull both of them inside the airlock safely, though all three Spartans had to be treated in the infirmary for several days due to their exposure to raw vacuum.

Return to Onyx

After Lucy and Tom had recovered from the incident, Musa visited them in their office with Jun and offered them a job working as security at the Onyx United Research Project on Trevelyan. While both were initially reluctant due to the Sangheili presence there, they eventually accepted.

Upon arrival at Trevelyan, they were greeted by Franklin Mendez, who they learned was assigned as head of security for the research settlements. Shortly afterward, they were joined by Kasha 'Hilot, a female Sangheili who was working as Mendez's second-in-command of security. While Lucy was hostile toward the Sangheili, Tom's reaction was more restrained. Attempting to defuse the tension, Mendez took Lucy to find transportation while Tom conversed with Kasha. Lucy and Mendez returned to find Kasha under assault by a UNSC soldier bitter about the war, with Tom having defended the Sangheili. Mendez promptly ordered the soldier and a group of his cohorts to leave the shield world. Kasha thanked them for teaching the soldiers a lesson, and was comforted knowing that not all humans there wanted to kill the Sangheili.

Personality and traits

Kelly-087: "She strikes me as the unkillable sort."

CPO Mendez: "Yeah. She's a survivor."

— Exchange between Kelly-087 and CPO Mendez regarding Lucy

Lucy is tenacious and resourceful, and Lieutenant Commander Kurt Ambrose implicitly trusted her and Tom-B292 as his aides both in the training of Gamma Company and in live combat. During her training, Lucy and Tom were both remarkably lively and fierce; CPO Mendez remarked that their toughness scared even him. Lucy can be rather persistent and seems to favor spontaneous, direct solutions to problems.

She is very compassionate and was greatly upset by the deaths of every one of her comrades; Beta Company's demise traumatized her to the point she ceased speaking completely and caused her to develop severe survivor's guilt. During Operation: TORPEDO she initially refused to accept Min-B174's abrupt death though Tom was able to snap her out of her shock, allowing the two to escape the destruction of the Covenant refinery. Years later, however, Kurt was able to convince Lucy to leave him behind at the conclusion of the Battle of Onyx. She was very protective of the Gamma Company Spartans she had helped train: when Admiral Serin Osman announced that the Gamma Spartans in Blue Team would be rendered KIA after the mission on Gao, she was prepared to unsheathe her combat knife before Osman explained the nature of the younger Spartans' reassignment.

Because of her background as a war orphan Lucy harbors a resentment of the Sangheili, and expressed considerable discomfort about working with them at the Onyx United Research Project. She was initially antagonistic to Kasha 'Hilot, though she appeared to have calm somewhat upon Mendez's harsh dismissal of the soldiers who had harassed the Sangheili. Her hatred of the Covenant did not extend to the Huragok; she was greatly distraught after she accidentally killed one of the Engineers in the shield world and quickly befriended Prone to Drift. She also held reservations about fighting fellow humans.

Lucy would stay completely silent for seven years due to her posttraumatic vocal disarticulation, only producing faint and indistinct sounds on some occasions, such as upon being intensely surprised. The condition was entirely psychological; Lucy was physically capable of speaking but over time, it became more and more difficult for her to express her traumatic experiences. Even though there were times when she wanted to speak Lucy felt that "her head was full of things that nobody else would understand or want to hear" so she would stay silent. After years of silence, she found that she had thoroughly forgotten how to speak even when she desperately wanted to, such as when attempting to say goodbye to Kurt. Lucy had stopped subvocalizing or thinking in coherent language altogether and as a result she struggled to express herself through writing as well. She would scribble short notes—including basic coordinates—but had stopped writing more complex information such as full sentences.

Despite her condition, Lucy would still communicate by signing, Spartan signals, Morse code, and other forms of gesture-based communication. Additionally, she and Tom developed an extensive private sign language to communicate more effectively. The UNSC personnel on Onyx could still understand her due to their experience in working together, and she was easily capable of operating with the Spartan-IIs because of their already extensive use of nonverbal communication. While she regained the ability to speak during the events in the shield world, she would remain relatively untalkative, only speaking on significant occasions and in a slow and considered manner, preferring to use hand signals or other gestures whenever possible.

Having endured through multiple hardships together, Lucy-B091 and Tom-B292 share a close bond. As children, the two would sometimes scuffle over disagreements though they became close friends and an effective team; this became more pronounced after they were left as the sole survivors of Beta Company and became Kurt's assistants and senior instructors for Gamma Company. Tom was always able to understand Lucy in spite of her muteness and acted as her more communicative counterpart when it was necessary for the duo to interact with others verbally or over COM, for example.

Physical description

Lucy is one of the smallest Spartan-IIIs. At age 12, at the time of Operation: TORPEDO, she was only 160 centimeters (5 ft 3 in) tall and weighed 70 kilograms (150 lb) which was small for a Spartan-III of that age. Even as an adult she remained small, being only slightly taller than Veta Lopis, in stark contrast with Tom and her other fellow Spartans. She has neotenous facial features with a pale complexion, wide dark brown eyes, and black hair worn close-cropped. Her gait was noted as being short and careful.

List of appearances

• Halo: Ghosts of Onyx (First appearance)
• Halo: Glasslands
• Halo: The Thursday War (Mentioned only)
• Halo: Last Light
• Halo Mythos: A Guide to the Story of Halo (Mentioned only)
• Halo: Fractures
  • Lessons Learned