Into the Breach

They're just dreams...

The SPARTAN-II program was a classified Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) black project that sought to create the ultimate special operations soldier. The plan was to deploy these soldiers to deal with the growing insurrectionist movement among the human colony worlds. Directed by the brilliant Dr. Catherine Halsey, she employed controversial techniques to identify and "recruit" candidates–six-year-old children–that met the genetic requirements for the program.

In 2517, under secret UNSC protocol–Naval Code 45812–ONI "conscripted" the children identified by the recruiting process, kidnapping them from their families. To cover-up for the missing children and hide the program, ONI substituted flash clones in their place. To ensure no suspicions would ever arise, these clones had genetic flaws programmed into them, causing all the clones to die of an untreatable disease a short period afterwards. Taken to a secret ONI facility on the planet Reach in the Epsilon Eridani system, the "recruited" children underwent intensive physical and military training/indoctrination.

In 2525, when the children turned fourteen, they underwent the second phase of the program. The biological augmentation procedures enhanced their bodies to allow them to wear the MJOLNIR exoskeleton battle suits being developed for the SPARTAN program. Of the original seventy-five candidates, thirty candidates died with twelve candidates suffering crippling side effects from the augmentation procedures and reassigned to other duties within ONI and the UNSC. It was also this same year the UNSC made first contact with the Covenant — a multi-species military and religious polity spanning a vast area of the galaxy.

By 2535, the Human-Covenant war was into its 10th year with the outer human colony worlds destroyed or abandoned in the face of unending genocidal attacks by the Covenant. Time after time human forces stood their ground to hold back the onslaught. Despite desperate, ferocious and bloody fighting, Covenant technological superiority would overcome the human defenses resulting in another defeat and retreat. The result being that the Covenant would lay waste and "glass" human-occupied worlds by plasma bombardment.

Despite what seemed like an endless series of planetary sieges and evacuations, there had been a few scattered victories by human forces. Most of those came with the SPARTAN-II's deployed against the Covenant. The success and propaganda value of the SPARTANS quickly buried the original reason for the program's development for public consumption.

In 2536, the Covenant begun its invasion of the inner colony worlds. Those surviving SPARTAN-II's along with the next generation SPARTAN-III's continued to stand and defend against the unrelenting genocidal Covenant advance...

"And because of our success, when the Covenant invaded, we were ready."
— Catherine Halsey during interrogation – September 2553

Reach, Epsilon Eridani System
May 23, 2536 — 0935 Local Time

Doctor Sarah Reeves was at her desk caught up in her daily routine of work. Since being recruited by ONI five years ago, her work revolved around the SPARTAN program. Her job was to review and evaluate the mental and psychological health of all Spartans in the program focusing especially on the SPARTAN-II's. Her work days comprised reviewing records, listening to audio recordings along with watching videos of the Spartans to analyze their mental health. Sometimes she followed up in person with a face-to-face interview with individual Spartans. Unfortunately, from her perspective, those were very rare occasions due to the war, and the demands placed on the Spartans.

Even though Doctor Reeves had access to the Spartans and their records, there was still much about the SPARTAN-II program above her security classification level. When she first started this job, she'd raised a few protests about this lack of information. It was important to understand everything about their backgrounds and history along with knowing the training they had undergone so she could make an effective psychological analysis. Her world view took an abrupt turn as the world of covert and black operations introduced themselves to her. Her ONI superior–in a somewhat joking tone–said if she knew the whole story behind the SPARTAN-II program, they would have to kill her.