Fireteam Halberd update (06/2016 versions)

From: Codename: PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY
To: Codename: COALMINER
Subject: FIRETEAM HALBERD (attachment to: AFTER-ACTION REPORT, OPERATION: ARTEMIS)
Encryption Code: RED
Public Key: N/A
Sent: 04/02/2558

The following is a status report/description/assessment of Fireteam HALBERD, a team of four (formerly five) SPARTAN-III operators, all of them Gamma Company graduates. The unit has an eventful deployment history from over the last six years, most of it code-word classified. Their current posting (02/2558) is in Expeditionary Force Theta, a Naval Special Warfare detachment attached to Battlegroup Endymion, specifically the flagship (UNSC Endymion, CA-771).

(I'm not going to pretend this covers everything but it should serve as a primer for who and what we're dealing with. You'll probably find a lot of information you already know but I'll be thorough just to be sure. -PD)


CONTEXT

Just over two years back, Medical finally managed to formalize and distribute the VORPAL-II post-augmentation upgrade, which means that the Gammas' "Smoother Problem" should be sorted out, as well as it can be anyway. You can't reverse what's been done to their brain chemistry but you can implant them with drug pumps which (if nothing else) at least makes sure they don't run out of antipsychotics. As for why the upgrade took its sweet time to come to fruition, the trick wasn't the implants themselves (which the civilian market is saturated with) but the process of synthesizing the unique mixture of classified (and wildly illegal) drugs. And with the Gammas coming of age where they no longer raise as many red flags, there really is no credible excuse for keeping them under the radar anymore.

While ONI hasn't been very eager to part with the Gammas, for obvious reasons, B091 and B292 (READ: Hood) have been very persistent in their efforts to get them out of the shadows, and I can only guess [REDACTED] realizes even she cannot fight battles on every front. However, one shoudn't be so naive as to think ONI is letting them go out of sheer goodwill -- [REDACTED] knows honest-to-God SPARTANs' value as bargaining chips since they're a limited commodity and Musa has a monopoly on the new model. ONI has at least had enough sense not to break up most of the original teams (the IIs and IIIs are always at their best in their original units).

And no, the "UNSCN" in the header image isn't a typo, however quaint it may seem these days where Spartans are concerned. The brass at HIGHCOM see the value of not putting all your eggs in one basket, which is why the Navy and Army still maintain their own Spartan contingents. And incidentally, most of those Spartans are Gammas. Not just because they're the last of the old-fashioned Spartans (at least officially, that is), but because Musa and the PR people find them a tiny bit inconvenient in regards to the whole "New Generation of Heroes" shtick they're going for. I can only guess that's why Musa hasn't been all too eager to adopt the Gammas even after the Smoother Problem was taken care of. Even if he was, HIGHCOM isn't completely under his thumb no matter how much it may seem like that these days. The brass tolerate him because you can't argue with his results (his sympathy card is less effective than he thinks anyway), but nothing lasts forever. In any case, the current arrangement pleases most parties involved. The Navy is happy to have Spartans in their own chain of command for more reasons than one, and staying in their home branch provides the Spartans some measure of familiarity.


PERSONNEL

The standing roster of HALBERD is as follows: Laura-G179 (team leader), Abraham-G195 (sniper-scout), Sigurd-G302 (heavy weapons operator), and Maya-G067 (grenadier and CQB specialist). S-G085, who originally served as HALBERD's scout was KIA on 11/11/2552 (refer to files on Operation: ORION SCEPTER) and has not, as of yet, had a permanent replacement. The option of bringing the team to its original strength crops up from time to time, but HALBERD's superiors have seen fit not to shake up the tried-and-true dynamic. As it stands, S-G179 and G195 perform G085's former duties whenever needed.


EQUIPMENT

One may note their armor configuration may seem somewhat traditional. For the last several years HALBERD has fielded variations of the AQUILA set, which while still very much next-generation on the inside, traces its lineage directly to the venerable core pattern favored by the Materials Group (originally used in secondary models of Mk. IV and later the mainline Mk. V). The configuration fell out of favor after Reach fell and Charlie Hotel was removed from the equation, and it's since been superseded in the spotlight by more... fashionable designs. Even so, a Materials Group team of surviving engineers from Reach and X Ceti has stubbornly tried to champion the merits of their configuration (under the project name AQUILA) for several years now, albeit with little success outside of the Navy.

Since redundancy is the name of the game now in MJOLNIR design (I believe the buzzword is "spiral-pattern development"), the AQUILA pattern is presently one of several Mark V-derived conversions for the GEN2 architecture, though it may be the most versatile. According to engineers and operators who have fielded the suit, its chief benefits compared to its competitors are its ruggedness and ease of component upgrades even without a constant support ecosystem. The Mark V-derived physical template also means backwards compatibility with first-generation components, something the Spartans in NAVSPECWAR are utilizing to its fullest effect.

HALBERD in particular has developed a healthy cooperative relationship with the AQUILA team since they were chosen to field-test the suits. Since they became the primary testers for the AQUILA platform, HALBERD has been groomed into a conventional assault role, where many other Gammas have been fielded as stealth and reconnaissance-oriented operators. Consequently, they are the heavy hitters of the UNSC Endymion's Spartan complement and prefer to deploy with as much firepower as they can carry (the loadouts pictured are relatively light for them).

Note: AQUILA has the distinction of being one of the few post-war sets to have the Charlie Hotel seal of approval, for whatever that's worth these days. I can't imagine the trouble they had to go through to run the plans through her. She's obviously cranky that they still haven't managed to incorporate upgrades she had planned over a decade ago, but the complaints and nitpicks were far fewer than with most of the schematics they've managed to run through her (particularly the private sector ones they let their "design committees" loose on -- they tell me she almost had a heart attack in at least one case). On the contrary, CH has always had a soft spot for Materials Group's tried-and-true template, though what she praised most is the more universal, less distributed design philosophy. She always did push for a unified MJOLNIR system over the specialist-variant schema that ended up winning that race after [REDACTED] put her out of the game.


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It's been a while since I last showed these little guys over the interwebs (LINKY) and I wanted to keep people up to date on where I've taken their designs. In particular I wanted to portray the differences between their physiques and silhouettes more effectively. This is also the first time I've showed the team's emblem which I only finalized some time back.

I wanted to make their designs more distinct while keeping the old colors to some extent; coming up with their designs has been a constant balance between individuality an trying to avoid making them too excessively colorful for the direction I've wanted to go for. I also wanted to keep the paint jobs relatively simple and not introduce too much complexity to the markings. The driving idea with the designs is also that their armors are designed relative to one another, not individually in a vacuum, which is meant to highlight how tight-knit they are as a non-mixed generation team.

My overall goal with the armor is to make something of a combo of the classic Halo CE Mark V and Isaac Hannaford's pre-Reach concepts. Since I have a bad habit of always iterating my designs, even these ones are most likely not final. There's probably a ton of little things I'll keep coming up with and adding to their designs. (2017 update - yup, they're definitely not final.)


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