SPARTAN-II / ORIONII

• Beginnings
  In the years following the deactivation of the ORION Project in 2506, the effectiveness of small special forces units at combating the insurrectionists had diminished as the Insurrectionist movement became too large for the UNSC to manage. As insurrectionists became more effective and the military’s responses consequently become more forceful, the need for large scale military campaigns became more and more obvious. In 2517 the Office of Naval Intelligence began to re-examine the Carver Findings, which had warned of instability in the Outer Colonies years earlier. The report concluded that the instability would continue to escalate, and unless drastic military measures were taken, would result in a massive war between the Inner and Outer Colonies. ONI’s own projections at that time and up to 2525 reached the same conclusions as Dr. Carver’s report. The SPARTAN-II project was conceived by Dr. Catherine Halsey of ONI Section III’s Special Projects Division as the successor to the ORION Project and the best possible solution to end the widespread insurgency that raged throughout UNSC space. The project was created with several goals in mind. The first was to create a group of elite soldiers meant to subdue insurrections in their infancy, without substantial military casualties. The second goal was to minimize civilian casualties and avert civil war. The third goal was to substantially reduce the cost of conventional means of pacification.

Halsey’s proposal for the project detailed radical changes in many different fields. The first and most controversial was the subjects themselves, who were selected by a gene-candidate pool, and fit into a certain age restriction protocol (six years old). They also possessed superior physical and mental attributes when compared to other children their age. This narrowed the candidates down to children who would be raised and taught in the art of warfare and military values from a young age, which cannot be taught to older enlisted personnel. Using such controversial means of creating a soldier meant that the project would have to be carried out under the highest levels of secrecy.

Though conventional body armor had served to protect soldiers for centuries, the SPARTAN-II project’s second radical change involved integrating the subject with a new powered exoskeleton device, designed to help keep its user safe and provide a powerful means of combating enemy forces. The drawback of this new armor is its requirement for augmenting the subject, effectively turning the SPARTANs into human guinea pigs.

Dr. Halsey and Déjà looking over all 75 SPARTAN candidates.

Despite the tremendous risk and the unethical means of creating new soldiers, the SPARTAN-II project got the green light by the top brass within the Office of Naval Intelligence, who concluded that the lives that could be saved far outweighed the risks involved. The project was initially granted funding for 300 candidates, though funding was later reduced to half this number. By 2517, 150 suitable candidates had been identified through DNA gathered from the CAA’s Outer Colony vaccination program, but funding was further reduced to support again, only half that number. Seventy-five children, five and six years old and of both sexes, were kidnapped. In order to preserve the program’s secrecy, the children were replaced by flash clones which would die soon thereafter due to numerous medical complications associated with flash-cloning a human being.

• Training
  he SPARTAN-II candidates, after being abducted and sedated, were taken to the colony world Reach, and began their training under Chief Petty Officer Mendez. To marginalize the civilian lives they had once led, their names became a combination of their given names and numbered service tag, with family names being discarded. The SPARTANs endured a great deal of hardship during their first years of training: they were placed into situations and drills that pushed their abilities to their very limit and beyond. Their hard training was complemented with high-level education, which included mathematics, science, physics, reading, writing, and military tactics. Although his training methodology was tough, even brutal in some regards, Chief Petty Officer Mendez always instilled discipline, honor, and respect into the SPARTANs. He taught the SPARTANs how to kill, but at the same time he taught them the difference between right and wrong. Mendez trained the SPARTAN’s until 2525 when, at the age of fourteen, they would go through the toughest part of their training: the biological augmentation procedures, which would kill 30 of the 75 conscripted children and cripple 12 others who would “wash out” of the SPARTAN-II program. Additionally, while the procedures were taking place the subjects were unconscious, a state where they should have felt no pain, the Spartans felt enormous pain throughout the process, with each augmentation having its own type of pain. Subsequently, some of those which did not successfully pass the augmentation process went on to join the Office of Naval Intelligence, while others were given an honorable or medical discharge; aside from the 33 which survived the procedures with no physiological deformities. The bodies of those candidates who died were placed in cryo-suspension, in the hope that they could some day be resuscitated. At least some of the candidates who were crippled were eventually rehabilitated. Several elements of the candidates’ training were kept secret from Halsey that only Professor Agnes and Professor Mike (who worked on the project with her) knew about.