Team Halberd

History
After their training on Onyx, Fireteam Halberd was deployed on several operations of strategic importance alongside the rest of Gamma Company over the course of the fall of 2552. After the end of the war, they were kept under the radar by ONI for several years due to Gamma Company's so-called "Smoother problem" as well as the potential scandals that may arise from the Spartans' young age. A few years later, the Smoother problem was for the most part ameliorated through new medical implants administered as part of a post-augmentation "service pack", allowing the Gamma Spartans to function for months without an external supply of their neurology-stabilizing medication. This led to many former Gamma Company units being gradually redistributed to non-ONI units. Halberd was reassigned to NAVSPECWAR Group ONE, thus becoming one of the few remaining Spartan teams to successfully remain within the conventional branches' chains of command - despite the wishes of the Spartan branch's leadership who would prefer to consolidate all Spartan assets under their organization. Halberd Team is attached to the UNSC Battle Group Endymion as of October 2558.

LAURA-G179 - HALBERD ONE

 * Rank: Petty Officer, First Class
 * Date of birth: 04/01/2539
 * Birthplace: Point January, Bolder
 * Specialty: Team leader
 * Height: 195 cm
 * Weight: 102 kg
 * Background: Disciplined, professional; strives to do things 110%. Excellent tactical level command of battlespaces. Sometimes over-perfectionist and has had issues with micromanaging in the past.
 * Comments: Laura has a slender, conventionally athletic build with little extra, built mostly for endurance and agility over raw strength- which suits her attitude of putting practicality above all else.
 * Description: Team Halberd's leader, S-G179 is businesslike, driven, and strong-willed. Her most noteworthy talents are her quick problem-solving skills, tactical acumen and technical expertise, her interest in the latter predating her Spartan career. Over the years, she has built up a profound awareness of her role as a Spartan, and what began as a blind thirst for vengeance has developed into an acute sense of duty and pride about her service. Although she has never had problems holding her own physically or mentally, the greatest challenge for her in the beginning was to understand her teammates' weaknesses - and to effectively cultivate their strengths. She wears a Recon helmet with an added Command Network Module as well as an internal modification suite geared toward her unofficial secondary role as the team's tech specialist.

ABRAHAM-G195 - HALBERD TWO

 * Rank: Petty Officer, First Class
 * Date of birth: 20/10/2538
 * Birthplace: Antioch, Miridem
 * Specialty: Sharpshooter
 * Height: 203 cm
 * Weight: 111 kg
 * Background: Easygoing, blunt, and too stubborn for his own good. A people person by Spartan standards. Has some leadership potential but is comfortable as a foil for S-G179.
 * Comments: Working out is one of Abraham's favorite pastimes, and his a physique is a middle ground between endurance and strength -- a balance that is fairly common by Spartan standards.
 * Description: Abraham is the team's best shot on medium to long distances; as such he acts as the team's sniper and/or designated marksman. Personality-wise, he is straightforward, level-headed and outgoing, and is never afraid to speak his mind. He acts as Laura's second-in-command in more ways than one; out of the living members of Halberd, Abe and Laura have the strongest bond - something that may surprise the casual observer, as they seemed to be at each other's throats most of the time during their training years. He wears a Commando helmet with an external optics and sensor-enhancing package, a reliable yet not over-specialized choice for his MOS.

MAYA-G067 - HALBERD THREE

 * Rank: Petty Officer, Second Class
 * Date of birth: 17/03/2540
 * Birthplace: Gauda, Parvati
 * Specialty: Assault / Grenadier
 * Height: 186 cm
 * Weight: 104 kg
 * Background: Moody. Averse to change. Doesn't get along well with new faces; trust issues. Very reliant on team dynamic; difficult to deploy outside HALBERD.
 * Comments: She has a naturally broad, well-muscled build thanks to her heavyworlder heritage, which made adjusting to physical exercise on Onyx easier for her from early on and serves her well in her role as the team tank, particularly after being only further enhanced by the CHRYSANTHEMUM augmentations.
 * Description: Specializing in close assault and demolitions, S-G067 is at home fighting in close quarters - perhaps more so than most would consider healthy. Off the field she is withdrawn but temperamental, and as a trait unusual among Spartans she has a conspicuous artistic side. She is wary and reserved around new people, slow to adapt to new situations, and has a history of trust and commitment issues stemming from her early childhood which caused difficulties with her integration into the communal environment of the Spartan program. She uses a CQB helmet befitting her combat style, and her most common weapons loadout includes a UNSC military (non-standard issue) machete, a shotgun, and an XM510 grenade launcher.

SIGURD-G302 - HALBERD FOUR

 * Rank: Petty Officer, Second Class
 * Date of birth: 14/01/2537 (NOTE: experienced significant periods of cryosleep prior to Spartan career)
 * Birthplace: Abu Simbel, Actium
 * Specialty: Heavy weapons
 * Height: 201 cm
 * Weight: 107 kg
 * Background: Clever, even insightful, but has some quirks he could do without. Near-consistently energetic and upbeat. Finds fun in the strangest of places.
 * Comments: Sigurd is more wiry than buff, which does not always fit outsiders' image of a heavy weapons operator. He has adjusted well to his artificial leg, a military-grade seventh-generation prosthetic. Driven by piezoelectric polymer musculature derived from Project MJOLNIR, such prosthetics have become popular in the post-war years especially among augmented personnel thanks to their subtle profile yet impressive performance; whereas previously, artificial limbs issued to Spartans have tended to be more crude in construction to properly replicate augmented strength, 7th-generation technology allows civilian-grade design and comfort with the power and responsiveness required of a Spartan.
 * Description: S-G302's skill set is relatively well-rounded and he has no particular area he excels in, though he most commonly acts as Halberd's support and heavy weapons specialist. He prefers high-capacity, full-automatic weapons such as the M247 or M739 SAWs, and has a special affinity for the M6 G/GNR whenever he can get his hands on one. He is contemplative - some would say philosophical - and eccentric, and has a very peculiar sense of humor. He is introverted and extremely detail-oriented, in some cases to the point of obsessiveness, and has a tendency of getting exceedingly attached to his gear. One example of this is his overwhelming preference for the GUNGNIR helmet, whose smart-link and targeting suite he has a special fondness for.

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.