Catherine Halsey

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"Spartans never die... if only that were true..."

— Catherine Halsey

Catherine Elizabeth Halsey, M.D., Ph.D., was a brilliant scientist and employee of ONI, best known for her work with the Spartan-II and Spartan III super soldier and MJOLNIR armor programs. Despite being a civilian, she held considerable authority within ONI and commanded considerable respect from many military figures. Publicly, she was well regarded, in particular due to the high esteem she felt for her Spartans and guilt she endured from condemning them to the life of a super soldier.

Biography

Early Life

Not much is known about Dr. Halsey's early life, but what little is known gives a glimpse of what would be a promising career. In her own words, she was "...smarter than her parents, always reading, talking, learning, and eager to share her knowledge with anyone who would listen." By the age of 15, Dr. Halsey was already writing her second Doctoral Thesis paper. It is also known that at some time in her early life, she supervised the creation of the template for third-generation Smart AIs. She was Admiral Ysionris Jeromi's star pupil.

ONI Projects

Dr. Halsey made huge contributions to many ONI Section III projects including the creation and deployment of AI constructs. She also created and initiated the Spartan-II project as well as the development of the MJOLNIR Armor Systems. These all proved to be important developments for the UNSC, and to the continued survival of mankind.

The SPARTAN-II Project

"This boy will be more useful to the UNSC than a fleet of destroyers, a thousand Junior Grade Lieutenants -- or even me. In the end, the child may be the only thing that makes any difference" - Catherine Halsey speaking to Lt. Jr. Grade Keyes, referring to John-117, in Elysium City.

Dr. Halsey was the creator of the Spartan-II project, and she built a set of rigorous genetic requirements that any potential candidate of the program had to meet. From these requirements, she identified 150 candidates, but ONI would only give her funding to train 75 of them. Along with Lieutenant, Junior Grade Jacob Keyes, she met and interviewed each of the candidates and determined who the 75 would be. She then had the children secretly brought to the planet Reach for training. The 'kidnapped' children were replaced with flash clones, who died soon after.

With the assistance of Chief Petty Officer Mendez and the AI Deja, she proceeded to train the Spartans. She supervised their augmentation procedures, combat training, and education, and studied the effects of the Spartan lifestyle on the children. She kept in close contact with them all throughout their lifetimes from her base under Reach. Annoyingly, she was always able to tell them apart from each other, even under half a ton of MJOLNIR battle armor. Dr. Halsey always used their first names, never their ranks or Spartan tags. This showed she had a huge amount of respect for, and from, the Spartans; she was also able to order them around and the Spartans referred to her as "Ma'am", which is another example of how they respect her. She also knew many of the Spartans' closely held secrets, having taught many to them as children, such as the Oly Oly Oxen Free security tune..

In 2552, when the Covenant attacked the Reach Military Installation, Dr. Halsey was working in ONI's CASTLE Base. She volunteered to remain behind to ensure that all UNSC technology was secured from possible capture. With expectations that the Covenant would glass the planet and knowledge that even if they didn't, she would be facing an entire army of Covenant ground forces, it was clearly an offer of sacrifice.

However, this changed when Spartans Fred-104, Kelly-087, Vinh-030, Isaac-039, and Will-043 appeared at the entrance to CASTLE Base. With the firepower to potentially fight their way out, the possibility of surviving CASTLE Base's destruction became available. She gave emergency aid to the Spartans for their injuries, but a data anomaly detected by her accompanying AI, Kalmiya, attracted Dr. Halsey's attention.

The data had been accessed by Araqiel, an AI that worked for Colonel Ackerson, one of Dr. Halsey's main competitors within ONI. After tracing the data access, Dr. Halsey stumbled across the AI, left behind by its master. Araqiel then proceeded to threaten her(he went as far as telling her he would fill the room with poison, and that she would be reported. She started typing in "archaic line commands" to access his code directory and personal fail-safe. She then shut him down. After shutting it down, she proceeded to read through Ackerson's files and discovered a number of things including the location of Onyx, evidence of the Spartan-III program and a map of the mining tunnels CASTLE base had been built upon. The latter particularly interested the Doctor as the file had been classified at X-Ray level, making the file abnormally important for ancient maps. From this, she deduced that there was something of importance under the mountain.

Assuming that at the very least these maps provided a back door, she chose to move the Spartans out of the base and into the mine shafts. She then triggered CASTLE Base's self-destruct mechanism and activated the fail safe on Kalmiya. With the Spartans in tow, they moved into the mine shafts.

Over the course of the next five days, the Spartans and Dr Halsey searched the mines, looking for either an exit or what Dr. Halsey would dub "the most important discovery of the millennium." On the fifth day, Fred discovered an entrance into a large Forerunner structure, and within, the Forerunner Crystal. However, the acquiring of the crystal sent a spike of neutrino radiation, attracting the attention of the Covenant. Their location was now threatened by Covenant forces.

Following a Covenant attack, Halsey and her team retreated into a hallway and sealed off the entrance, losing Vinh and Isaac in the process. However, they quickly discovered that the hallway was a dead end. It is presumed that Halsey and the surviving Spartans remained stranded at this location for some time.

Days later, a group of Spartans, including John-117, rescued Dr Halsey and the remaining Spartans and evacuated them from Reach to the captured Ascendant Justice.

Dr. Halsey later saw the importance of destroying this artifact after it caused a Slipspace anomaly that nearly resulted in the destruction of the Ascendant Justice. After escaping Reach, the group fled to the asteroid belt that the Spartan's first mission had been in. While there, she stole the rebel governor's spacecraft and, along with Kelly-087, whom she had sedated, escaped into Slipspace. She entrusted the Forerunner Crystal to Corporal Locklear, telling him to keep it safe, hidden, and to do whatever it took to keep it from falling into enemy hands. He later destroyed it, not totally against her orders. He did not know that the explosion would kill him. The Covenant later recovered a few fragments.

Battle of Onyx

In Ghosts of Onyx, Dr. Halsey and Kelly eventually arrive at Onyx, while reuniting with SCPO Mendez and eventually her remaining SPARTAN-II's and the SPARTAN-III's. She helps decipher the mystery of the planet. At first, she tried to maintain secrecy about her intentions out of habit, until Kurt-051 confronted her about it. She admitted that she was not actually looking for weapons, but rather the secret Forerunner Shield World which she believed to be equivalent to a bomb shelter. Her relative expertise with Forerunner technology was vital to the survival of the UNSC forces on Onyx. At the end of the Battle of Onyx, she, along with Mendez, Blue Team, and the Spartan-III survivors, found herself inside the Shield World, which she believed was actually a Micro Dyson Sphere. Her fate is not yet known at this present time, though she is believed to still be trapped within the Shield World, along with the remaining Spartan-II's, Spartan-III's, and SCPO Mendez.

Halsey's Guilt

Dr. Halsey carried extraordinary guilt because of the SPARTAN-II project, and she felt that she had exploited the children and destroyed their lives. Though she continued to support them and gain monumental prestige for her efforts, she also felt responsible for each one who died. She never could quite justify their exploitation as a "necessary sacrifice." She also had considerable respect for the Spartans, and addressed them by their first names. Her feelings of guilt were made evident by the fact that she often refers mentally to "sacrificing the few to save the many." Though this rarely works to soothe her conscience. By the time she is rescued from Reach by the Ascendant Justice, she simply wanted to save as many lives as she can, believing as she does that the war is not one that the UNSC can possibly win. While she knew that her own Spartans, the SPARTAN-IIs couldn't be persuaded to turn from the war, she believed the SPARTAN-IIIs may not yet have been fully determined to win the war, and set out to try and weaken their resolve to fight. In addition, she decided to hand over data concerning Avery Johnson and how his Boren's Syndrome made him immune to the Flood to John-117 since if she handed the data over to ONI, Johnson would likely be dissected in order to find a cure to the Flood infection. At first, John had no problem in sacrificing Johnson to save millions of people. At the end of Halo: First Strike, however, John reconsidered and eventually destroyed the data due to the sacrifice of Admiral Whitcomb and Haverson.

Appearances

• Halo: The Fall of Reach
• Halo: The Flood (mentioned)
• Halo: First Strike
• Halo: Ghosts of Onyx
• Halo: Contact Harvest

Trivia

• Catherine Halsey is either of atheistic beliefs or of an agnostic religion, as she does not believe in a god.
• Catherine Halsey is also the name of Peter Keating's fiancée in Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead.
• She may have a similar face as Cortana as the AI was created from a flash cloned copy of Dr. Halsey's brain.
• A number of her quotes from Halo: The Fall of Reach are repeated by Cortana in Halo 3. (Ex: "You will be the protectors of Earth and all her colonies...")
• In Halo: First Strike, it is stated that Dr. Halsey is not keen on losing, as seen when she kept losing at a game of 20 Questions with her training Spartans.
• When Cortana looks at the picture of SPARTAN-117 and she says that he's attractive in a "primitive animal way", Dr. Halsey blushed.
• She is known to have an addiction to coffee.
• Dr. Halsey was the founder of the SPARTAN II project. She showed a liking to John-117 more than any of the other SPARTANS.
• She had a knack of embarrassing and annoying the Spartans the way she was able to tell them apart despite their MJOLNIR armor.
• Even though Dr. Halsey "created" Master Chief, she is never mentioned in any of the current Halo games.