Holly Tanaka

Holly Tanaka
Biographical information
Homeworld:	Minab
Born:	July 9, 2530
Personal details
Species:	Human
Gender:	Female
Height:	200.7 centimetres (6 ft 7.0 in) (with armor)
Weight:	108.4 kilograms (239 lb) (without armor)
Hair color:	Black
Eye color:	Brown
Political and military information
Affiliation:	UNSC Army (formerly) UNSC Army Corps of Engineers Spartan Operations SPARTAN-IV program
Rank:	Sergeant (formerly) Spartan
Service number:	93312-28001-HT

"On a recent mission to the Outer Colonies, I encountered one Sergeant Holly Tanaka, currently of the 412th Engineer Command… During my brief time with her, Sergeant Tanaka exhibited a mix of intelligence, grit, assertiveness, and selflessness that in my many years I've rarely encountered."

— Captain French to Jun-A266 on Holly Tanaka

Spartan Holly Tanaka (service number 93312-28001-HT) is a human soldier of the United Nations Space Command who served in the years following the Human-Covenant War. She was one of the three survivors of the 2550 glassing of her homeworld Minab known to have endured the three year struggle on its barren surface. Shortly after their rescue Tanaka would enlist in the UNSC Army, becoming a non-commissioned officer in the UNSC Army Corps of Engineers, and later volunteered for augmentation and training as a Spartan-IV supersoldier. As of August 2558 she had completed 23 military operations, including 14 full campaigns, in her combined Army and Spartan career.

Biography

Early life and family

Holly at a young age.

Holly Tanaka was born on July 9, 2530 on the human Outer Colony of Minab. She was raised with her brothers in the colony's capital city of Kynur where their mother and father managed the construction company Tanaka Exploration.

Glassing of Minab

"Rough times create rough men, Holly."

— Holly's father about seasoned people from Outer Colonies

Holly returns to the compound after a successful hunt.

As the Human-Covenant War entered its final stages with the Covenant fully entrenched in the Inner Colonies, Minab stood defenseless against the ensuing genocidal onslaught. Holly's mother was at home with her brothers, washing dishes and reminiscing on a picture of her family, as Covenant destroyers rained down superheated plasma to glass their city. Holly and her father were spared from the indiscriminate Covenant attack that claimed their loved ones by being on the other side of Minab where their family business maintained a mining operation. For a year after the bombing, Holly, her father, and nine other colonists on the mining crew thrived without harassment by Covenant occupation forces and were able to gather resources in the snow-capped landscape caused by nuclear winter. Holly became adept at hunting and setting traps for the local game, including a light brown-skinned species reminiscent of a Gúta from Reach, and was relied upon by her father as his best engineer, able to construct and maintain fusion reactors for the mine. The two of them often debated if and when they should activate a distress beacon for rescue by the United Nations Space Command yet always concluding that anyone could pick up on it, such as the Kig-Yar scavengers roaming the surface of Minab.

Holly defending the mine from Ibie'shan attackers with her shotgun.

Some time before Holly went out on a hunt, one of the crew members, a disturbed, aggressively violent man, had attacked and maimed another survivor blinding him in his left eye. The assailant was later subdued and tied down by the other crew who would continually argue about what they would do with this threat to their well-being. Some advocated for his immediate execution while others called for him to be kept and cared for under more hospitable conditions. In the morning after one of these disputes, unknown to his captors, the assailant became unrestrained and escaped into the night to the surrounding wilderness. After discovering that he was gone, the other survivors argued yet again, brandishing a variety of long guns to intimidate each other. Holly fired her shotgun into the air to take control of the volatile situation. Her father volunteered himself to sweep the mine for the assailant and ordered that no further action would be taken if he was not found in an effort to end the hostility that was plaguing the group of survivors. Holly questioned her father hours later about two of the people who continued to incite strife between the survivors, learning that the two of them were very private individuals that kept to themselves with attitudes typical of those living on the fringes of the Outer Colonies. Just then a call came through the radio to Holly's father from the mine's sentry that she had spotted the assailant amongst a group of at least thirteen Ibie'shan and two Ruuhtian Kig-Yar equipped with small arms with two Zurdo-pattern Wraith tanks and a Ru'swum-pattern Phantom dropship supporting them.

The survivors began to mount a defense against the Covenant, blocking off the large gate with a haul truck, when Kig-Yar blew through their impromptu barriers and assaulted the cavern in every direction. Holly stood on a large walkway with her father as a number of the Covenant attackers began climbing onto the structure to attack them. Holly's father ordered her daughter to retreat up to the upper levels of the facility to escape the attackers and she obeyed without question. As the ravenous aliens pressed their attack, Holly held them off for a short while with her shotgun, killing at least one of them, and destroyed a ladder to prevent them from following. High atop a ledge she witnessed her father being captured by two Kig-Yar on one of the mine's other haul truck. Distracted by this sight, the two men she had inquired about just moments before snuck up and kidnapped her in the midst of the Covenant assault.

The next three days Holly and her kidnappers spent hiding in a cave in the highlands. There they revealed to her that they were colonial insurgents and that her father was the one who freed the assailant. In order to survive, they decided to acquire some gear they stocked not far from the cave; to do so, they had to pass through the Kig-Yar lurking around the compound. The used guerrilla tactics to deal with the Jackals, then stole their weapons and used Anskum-pattern plasma grenade to create a diversion. It brought the attention of the rest of the Jackals and gave them the opportunity to slip by unnoticed and retrieve their gear. Once back in the cave they decided to head south to locate any other camps of survivors. However, Holly protested violently, desiring to go find any survivors in the compound. In response, one of the insurgents disarmed Holly, claiming there were no survivors. They suggested her to join them, otherwise they would resolve to kill her in order to protect themselves from her futile attempts of "chasing ghosts". With no options left Holly agreed. The next few months they spent wandering on the surface of glassed Minab.