Nolan Byrne
From Halopedia, the Halo wiki
| Nolan Byrne | |
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November 17, 2552[2] (officially)[3][Note 1] |
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Male |
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At least 115 kilograms (250 lb)[Note 2] |
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Black[4] |
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Ice-blue[4] |
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Sergeant Major Nolan Byrne (service number 48780-19114-NB[2]) was a senior non-commissioned officer in the United Nations Space Command Marine Corps. Originally a member of the ORION supersoldier program,[5] he went on to fight throughout the Insurrection as a member of UNSC Naval Special Warfare Command (NAVSPECWARCOM), taking part in Operation: TREBUCHET - which led to his injury by an insurrectionist bomb. Ultimately, alongside Avery Johnson, he was one of two UNSC Marines to be assigned to Harvest in 2524 to assist in training its militia, which resulted in him being one of two humans involved in the very first conflict between humanity and the alien Covenant. Byrne ultimately went on to assist in leading the initial defence and evacuation of Harvest, and went on to serve throughout the Human-Covenant War. He was listed as killed in action on November 17, 2552, only weeks before the war's end.[2][Note 1]
Biography[edit]
Early life and career[edit]
- "Nail the bitch, or I will!"
- — Nolan Byrne urging Avery Johnson to shoot the Insurrectionist at the Jim Dandy diner[1]
Byrne was born in Ireland,[1] on Earth at some point during the twenty-fifth century. After joining up in the UNSC military, he eventually found his way into the ORION Project and went through its augmentation procedures.[5] According to Byrne, in this period, "they taught you to be a killer".[4] After the project's shuttering in 2506 he, as with the other ORION recruits, was filtered back into the regular military, going on to work in Marine Special Forces under NAVSPECWARCOM. He often worked alongside Johnson during this time and, by 2524, had achieved the rank of Staff Sergeant.[1]
Staff Sergeants Byrne and Johnson were both involved in Operation: TREBUCHET, a UNSC counterinsurgency campaign during the Insurrection. On June 16, 2524, both were deployed as part of a NAVSPECWAR raid on a suspected Insurrectionist bomb-manufacturing facility located on Tribute. During the mission, Byrne led Bravo Squad while Johnson led Alpha, each a fireteam consisting of four Marines air-deployed via AV-14 Hornet. According to Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) intel, the Insurrectionists inside the shop were armed which, combined with a history of booby-trapping their facilities, led to the Marines taking no chances. Byrne led Bravo Squad to the back of the shop while Alpha breached from the front, only to find a group of mostly-unarmed rebels save for a few snubnosed pistols that were largely ineffective against the Marines' heavy body armour. In a firefight lasting less than ten seconds, the Marines killed all of the Insurrectionists in the shop and moved on to finding any explosive devices left in the facility, using their ARGUS drone as support. Byrne tried to interrogate one of the four rebel prisoners by torturing him, breaking both of his legs to try and get him to speak and threatening to break his arms next. After the rebel revealed that the explosive compound they were searching for had been laced into the tyres of a sixteen-wheeler freight hauler, the ONI operative supervising the mission ordered the Marines to execute the remaining prisoners save for the one who had talked. Byrne shot each prisoner twice in the chest at point-blank range with an M7 SMG, before confirming their deaths with a headshot.[1]
The two Marine teams then re-boarded their aircraft and headed to the location of the suspected Insurrectionist truck, a Jim Dandy diner. The UNSC forces involved were hesitant to simply destroy the target vehicle with a Lancet micro-missile due to the risk of civilian casualties, leading to Byrne's team deploying on the ground while Johnson remained in the air, using an M99 Stanchion sniper rifle to assassinate the vehicle's driver as he exited the diner. However, after confirming that explosives remained inside the diner, Byrne and his team rushed in to find a purse that had been left by another Insurrectionist. Burdened by his heavy armour, Byrne was unable to fire upon the rebel before she could take an infant boy as a hostage and pulled out a detonator for the bomb. Byrne demanded that Johnson take the shot and kill the rebel, but in a moment of pause, the boy's father attempted to grapple with the rebel, resulting in the detonator's activation and the purse-bomb exploding.[1] The resulting blast killed 38 civilians and all of Byrne's team save for Byrne himself,[4] who was extremely heavily injured and taken to a UNSC hospital ship for recovery.[6] He spent at least a month in hospital.[4]
First contact at Harvest[edit]
- Main article: First Battle of Harvest
After recovering from his injuries, Byrne was reassigned, along with Johnson, to train the Colonial Militia on Harvest.[4] While ostensibly a relatively simple operation that kept him far from the front lines, in reality, both Staff Sergeants had been specifically deployed to Harvest (without their knowledge) at the behest of ONI Section Three. Their new commanding officer (CO), Lieutenant Commander Jilan al-Cygni, had been investigating what was believed to be a series of Insurrectionist raids on automated freighters traversing the colonial frontier, and wanted the two experienced sergeants to deal with the problem.[7] The two arrived on Harvest on December 21, 2524, and upon meeting again for the first time since the failed operation on Tribute, Byrne immediately attacked Johnson. The two engaged in a fistfight in the barracks, with Byrne eventually overpowering Johnson in a fit of rage and trying to kill him as r