Laura-G179

Petty Officer First Class Laura-G179 is a SPARTAN-III from Gamma Company, who acts as the team leader and electronic warfare specialist for Fireteam HALBERD.

Biography
Laura Vellamo Oras was the only child of a family of farmers in the small community of Point January in a rural region of the colony-moon of Bolder. She maintains fond memories of her childhood. Intelligent and curious from an early age, she had something of a knack for technology, and delighted in learning about the inner workings of various farm machinery -- a hobby her father was happy to foster, giving her various technical kits to tinker with.

All that changed with the Covenant invasion in 2544. By the time Laura's family made it to the nearest spaceport for evacuation, a desperate battle was already underway. Through great effort, Laura's father managed to force her aboard an overcrowded evacuation transport with him and Laura's mother remaining behind. The ship was the last one to make it out of that particular spaceport. After a series of Cole Protocol-compliant jumps, the ship ended up in the Epsilon Eridani system along with the remains of the UNSC battlegroup that had defended Bolder. Laura was about to be placed into an orphanage on Tribute but was rerouted on the way by ONI, having been identified as a potential candidate for the SPARTAN-III program. With little on her mind at the time other than making the Covenant pay, she accepted ONI's offer without much thought.

In Camp Currahee on Onyx, she was grouped together with four other children in a fireteam designated GAMMA-17, to be more properly known as HALBERD. There were difficulties at first: Laura was in some ways more mature than many of her peers as well as physically capable, but also obstinate and arrogant. If everyone simply did as she said, she thought, things would work out splendidly. To no one's surprise, they didn't. To her credit, it wasn't that her ideas were always bad; for she truly was wise beyond her years in some matters. But what she failed to grasp was that she was dealing with children of highly varied backgrounds and levels of development, and she couldn't exactly expect them to operate like clockwork, something that frustrated her to no end.

It was perhaps no surprise, then, that she would come into conflict with someone who was just as stubborn as she was in fellow trainee known as Abraham-G195. Roughly Laura's physical equal at the time, Abraham wasn't ready to immediately acquiesce to her carefully though-out demands -- and vice versa. She could not stand Abraham's sense of superiority and his continual questioning of her decisions, and it was only through great bickering and occasionally fighting that one would eventually budge. On the surface, it may have seemed the pair could not stand each other, but their back-and-forth helped maintain a delicate balance of power that pushed the team toward success: while Laura was tactically and spatially gifted, Abraham was better at understanding people and what they needed to improve. As they matured, both come to would understand and appreciate this unspoken dynamic, eventually finding in one another a kind of deeper companionship unique even among members of HALBERD.

Through some hard lessons, Laura became aware of not only her own limitations but also gained an understanding that her team would likely never be the best in Gamma Company, but they could potentially become the best they could possibly be. Her leadership and the team's cooperation was in itself something that would not have been possible without years of teamwork on the part of every member supporting one another. Had it not been for her performance being highly reliant on HALBERD's team dynamic and vice versa, she may have been among those considered for reassignment into a separate special unit prior to GAMMA's deployment due to her level of proficiency.

She underwent the Generation-III CHRYSANTHEMUM bioenhancement procedures along with the rest of Gamma Company in 2551 and deployed with the company several weeks after the fall of Reach in 2552. Major operations she and her team took part in included Operation: BONFIRE, a strike against a Covenant ship manufacturing plant; Operation: ORION SCEPTER, a defensive deployment on Ammon, Proxima Centauri, and Operation: RAMPART, an offensive against a Covenant fuel depot and forward operations base. Although many lives were lost, these operations were not as costly as the "suicide missions" that claimed the lives of most of Alpha and Beta Companies due to both better operations planning and, in part, the Gammas' more potent augmentations and refined training protocols. Among the casualties was HALBERD's Connor-G085, who died during ORION SCEPTER on November 11. In her usual fashion, Laura blamed herself for Connor's death; she did technically motion him to take point (which he nearly always did anyway, as HALBERD's scout), but neither could have known about the keen-eyed Jackal sniper who sealed Connor's fate. Bottling up her frustration drove her to near breakdown in the coming months and was a testing experience for the entire team.

After several mop-up operations against mainly Jiralhanae-led Covenant remnants in the Inner Colonies, HALBERD and a number of other surviving Gamma Company teams were temporarily stationed on Carousel Hyperborea, a UNSC Navy facility orbiting Europa. For the next few months, they did little more than sit and wait for the UNSC to figure out what to do with them. In the end, ONI saw fit to sweep them under the rug, assigning them to covert roles due to potential red flags raised by both their young age and their illegal "berserker" augmentations. Though Laura and the rest of HALBERD did undergo a degree of training for espionage roles and have even undertaken a handful of "plainclothes" missions, it was quickly seen that they were best suited for more conventional assault operations. They were fielded accordingly in the coming years, undertaking a variety of black ops and other classified deployments along with occasional non-combat duties, including armor testing. On several occasions, HALBERD (along with a handful of other teams from Gamma) provided combat support for more espionage-oriented ONI Ferret units.

Since 2556, through no small amount of inter-service politics and favors by influential people, Naval Special Warfare has managed to wrest a number of Gammas from ONI's chain of command for placement into mainline Navy units. This was partly expedited by the introduction of medicinal dispenser implants intended to alleviate the Gammas' so-called "Smoother Problem" as part of the VORPAL-II post-augmentation medical checkup package. Although not a cure for their condition by any means, the implants do allow Gammas to function independently for months on end without the otherwise restricting need for daily medication doses. Laura and her team were among those few successfully shifted to a NAVSPECWAR command, specifically Naval Special Warfare Expeditionary Force THETA, a component of Battlegroup Endymion, at the time of the battlegroup's formation in late 2556. In practice, HALBERD's mission profiles changed little from what they were already used to in ONI, though they were now more out in the open and interacting more frequently with regular UNSC personnel. As part of Endymion's Special Forces complement, Halberd Team is often among the first to be deployed at the site of a crisis alongside the group's other NAVSPECWAR elements, mainly the 71st ODST Battalion and the Headhunter pair designated DAGGER, likewise composed of Gamma Company members.

Personality
Focused and meticulous, Laura-G179 maintains a serious and professional outlook, but only those close to her know she is not altogether as stoic as her demeanor lets on. Initially very closed-off and self-reliant, over the last few years she has opened up more as her self-confidence has grown. She may seem unflappable but has her limits -- which she has fortunately learned to know over time.

She has an inexorable drive to better herself and the ability to move toward a goal relentlessly until she's there, but making sure others don't fall behind in the process has taken her some work. She was not exactly what one may call a natural leader and needed some growing into the role. The odds weren't exactly stacked up for her either, as HALBERD started out as very mismatched. She never had problems holding her own mentally or physically, but helping play up everyone's strengths was a challenge for her. Still, however determined she may seem, she truly was under enormous pressure to make her team live up to expectations and did question her own leadership capability every time they stumbled, carrying personal responsibility for the entire team's failures. Despite her strictly professional conduct on the field, off-duty she is her teammates' friend first and foremost and they are very casual in their interactions. When dealing with outsiders, she usually remains largely stoic and is still awkward at casual conversation with non-Spartans. She can take criticism personally quite easily, even if she doesn't show it, and can be given to anxiety if things don't go to plan.

Laura maintains an optimistic attitude and truly believes she can do good with her service. She has a need to mentally articulate her worldview to herself, but does not deal well in moral ambiguities or complexities. For her there are good guys and bad guys, and the good guys are the ones giving the orders -- and that's the end of it; she has a similar stance on operations against human insurgents and various other non-alien hostiles, having accepted that a threat's a threat no matter what form it takes. In general, she does not give much thought to politics or the dynamics of the greater UNSC -- her razor-sharp focus is on her team and matters of a tactical scale and scope.

Although she has come to understand moral dubiety of the SPARTAN-III project, she does not hold grudges and rather only appreciates the opportunity to live up to her fullest potential -- while aware that the majority of her kind never had the chance, of which the death of S-G085 and many others she knew from fellow teams was a refreshing reminder. That said, Laura had reservations about the "berserker" augmentations administered to Gamma Company, and while she technically had the opportunity to back down, she considered the trade-off worth it at the time. Still, she has a fear of losing control, and has always made double sure she and her team was on their "smoothers" at any given time -- something made easier of late by upgraded medicinal dispenser implants issued to most active Gamma Company personnel. Even so, she has attempted to find ways to condition herself to maintain mastery of her mental faculties as long as possible even in the event of smoother deprivation and potentially injury. However, she has little patience for the condescension or pity, well-meaning or otherwise, that Gammas or Spartan-IIIs in general are sometimes subject to, and only wishes to be treated like any other special operator.

Performance
G179 has a strong initiative and her higher than average tactical and spatial scores were well observed from early on. Possessing strong problem-solving skills and grasp of battlespaces on a sub-operational level, she places a strong emphasis on precise and thorough intel. She favors stealth and discretion over brute force wherever possible, and prefers to engage targets at a range. Physically, she focuses on agility, speed and endurance over strength due to her combat style. Preferring caution to flashiness, Laura has a tendency to approach even the simplest of threats with care that may not even be strictly necessary due to the Spartans' capabilities. She always endeavors to know the full picture of something, whether a mission or some other undertaking. This mentality has sometimes led to micromanaging, attempting to control every moving part of an op to ensure they moved in accordance with her elaborate mental models, though this has been less of a problem of late. Her approach has historically been very by-the-book, but she has grown increasingly adaptive and dynamic over the years.

Highly disciplined on and off the field, Laura takes excellent care of herself and her equipment, and does her best to ensure her peers do as well. She has adapted to joint ops with non-Spartan special forces decently, and coordinates well with Marine and NAVSPECWAR team leaders. Although not as experienced as many unaugmented personnel in Expeditionary Force THETA, due to her background she is imbued with a wide range of expertise that does not go unappreciated. In turn, she respects fellow UNSC servicemen and -women, and looks up to more experienced team leaders regardless of whether they are Spartans or not. In regards to joint operations with the UNSC's alien allies, Laura remains repulsed by the aliens on an emotional level but rationally understands that the burgeoning alliance with the Arbiter's coalition is humanity's best hope for continued survival; in any case, she is too disciplined to say or do anything that may jeopardize said alliance over her personal feelings, and remains stoically professional in those relatively rare instances she has to interact with friendly ex-Covenant.

S-G179’s secondary duty is as HALBERD’s electronics specialist, for which she has undergone some additional training. She has quite a bit of mechanic in her and likes to tinker with equipment to work out stress. She enjoys learning about the technical specs of her equipment even more than is strictly required not just to be more efficient, but simply because she is interested in it.

Equipment
Like the rest of Team Halberd, Laura-G179 was issued a MJOLNIR GEN2/AQUILA set in the post-war era. A composite hardware platform ported from Mark V (and prototype Mark IV) systems battle-tested in the Covenant War, the AQUILA development team maintains that the set combines the best features of GEN1-era MJOLNIR while remaining competitive with mainline GEN2 systems. Veteran special forces favor the AQUILA set for its rugged sturdiness and ease of modularity, which is useful in the absence of the extensive support infrastructure of major Spartan facilities such as those of the UNSC Infinity.

S-G179's armor configuration is optimized for her role and preferences. Her helmet, designated GEN2/Recon (DEV), is a limited production prototype of the GEN2 helmet, with little differences in functionality to the final model other than GEN1 legacy aesthetics and according to some, superior modularity at the cost of some aspects of its performance. Laura prefers to have a complete picture of any given situation at all times, rather having excess data than too little of it. As such she is equipped with Advanced Battlescape Awareness Relay/External on her back as well as an Enhanced Optics Module/Recon attached to her helmet. The setup is synchronized with her neural interface to provide seamless intel on the fly. On her left forearm she wears a current-generation TACPAD with various pieces of tech software. Unlike the other members of HALBERD, Laura has chosen not to customize the AQUILA set's default knees or shoulder pauldrons.

As is usual among most Spartans, her webbing setup varies on a deployment basis, though the pictured loadout is fairly common, featuring a hefty number of magazine pouches for her Designated Marksman Rifle and pistol as well as various utility pouches including a medical pack on her left thigh. On her back she wears a standard Medium Assault Pack/Hardened.

Armed for ranged combat, Laura has come to favor the M395 DMR in recent years, though her original weapon of choice was the MA5K carbine. She occasionally still wields MA5 series rifles where tighter spaces are expected. Her current sidearm is the M6D PDWS, still standard issue to personnel in Battlegroup Endymion. She often carries an M07 Light Anti-Armor Weapon or M41 SSM rocket launcher for an added anti-armor capability, along with various grenades.