Jilan al-Cygni

Jilan al-Cygni
Biographical information
Homeworld:	Unknown; presumed New Jerusalem, Cygnus system
Personal details
Species:	Human
Gender:	Female
Hair color:	Black
Eye color:	Green
Political and military information
Affiliation:	UNSC Navy Office of Naval Intelligence
Rank:	Lieutenant Commander (c.2525) Commander (c.2535) Admiral

"Kissing is for politicians, and I'm certainly not that."

— Jilan al-Cygni

Admiral Jilan al-Cygni is an operative for Section Three of the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), working under the anonymous codename COALMINER. She was one of the United Nations Space Command personnel involved in the initial first contact between humanity and the Covenant at Harvest in early 2525, before going on to have a long-running career in naval intelligence throughout the Human-Covenant War and post-war years.

Biography

Early life and career

Nothing is known about Jilan al-Cygni's career prior to her actions on Harvest, although it was once observed by the AI Sif that, judging from al-Cygni's subtle accent, she was likely raised on the planet New Jerusalem in the Cygnus system. She eventually joined the UNSC Navy, working in ONI's Section Three as an intelligence officer throughout the Insurrection; by 2524, she had risen to the rank of Lieutenant Commander.

In late 2524, Jilan was dispatched to Harvest, in the Epsilon Indi system, in response to reports of Insurrectionist hijackings of the light freighter Horn of Plenty, operated by the UNSC Department of Commercial Shipping (DCS). Jilan's goal was to investigate the threat and ensure that it did not happen again; at the time, ONI were skittish about the recent terrorist bombing of the cruiser liner National Holiday over Reach, and so were extremely paranoid about potential new insurrectionist spaceborne threats. To accomplish this, she secretly arranged for the detachment of two ex-ORION-turned-Marines; Staff Sergeants Avery Johnson and Nolan Byrne, to Harvest under the cover of providing Colonial Militia Training to the nascent Harvest Colonial Militia. She arrived at the planet on December 21, 2524, aboard a digsuised sloop, UNSC Walk of Shame, though publicly presented herself to Harvest's people as a middle-manager from the DCS sent to investigate the hijackings. Upon arrival, she conducted an audit of Harvest's twin smart AIs; Sif and Mack. After the audits, Jilan ordered that additional security measures be imposed on ships exiting slipspace en route to Harvest. Shortly after the meeting she was also informed by Sif that a second freighter had been hit - this time one with a human crew, This End Up.

For the next two weeks, Johnson and Byrne, alongside their commanding officer (CO) Captain Ponder, began to train the 72 recruits of the Harvest militia, with all three highly-experienced veterans of Operation: TREBUCHET privately wondering why they had been brought to Harvest. This was answered when Jilan formally met Johnson at the Harvest Solstice Celebration on January 16, 2525, where she revealed her true nature as an ONI operative and announced that she had both arranged for his deployment on Harvest, and that she was taking over as his and Byrne's CO. Jilan assembled an operation that same night with the two Marines designed to entrap the believed-rebels on a decoy freighter, Bulk Discount. By 0900 the following morning, the two Marines were deployed inside the freighter's cargo bay, with the freighter broadcasting a fake SOS signal; the goal was to bait rebels into boarding the ship, but the two Marines instead encountered several aliens; four Kig-Yar of the missionary ship Minor Transgression. After this startling new discovery was reported to Jilan, she ordered the Marines to try and capture one alive if possible, but to make sure they did not escape to call for reinforcements. The resulting skirmish saw Minor Transgression destroyed by Walk of Shame's Archer missile, and the two Marines heavily injured. With her disguise as a DCS logistician now broken, she had a terse relationship with Harvest's Governor, Nils Thune, over the planet's defence and the potential deployment of UNSC military forces to the world. Getting Harvest's parliament to agree to even the assembly of a small militia had been a tenuous process; a UNSC battle group would be a difficult sell. Jilan also requested that Mack transfer his operations to Harvest's Planetary Security Intelligence (PSI), Loki. She was initially hesitant to allow Mack to even let Sif know of the swap, as knowledge of the PSI was restricted even to the planetary governor, but she ultimately reneged and agreed.

After this initial first encounter, Jilan prepared a briefing video for the Harvest militia recruits to be shown to them by their sergeants; with no broader UNSC presence available in the immediate-future, the recruits would be the face of Harvest's security in any further engagements with the Covenant. Her video consisted of helmet recorder footage taken from Johnson's helmet during the previous mission, ending with footage of Minor Transgression's destruction, designed to inspire the recruits and emphasise that the aliens could be killed. She also worked with Governor Thune to prepare a plan for meeting the aliens diplomatically; the two agreed that Thune should do most of the talking, and agreed that the aliens' prior pillaging of fruit shipments meant that they should prepare a similar cargo as a peace offering. However, when the delegation arrived and was revealed to be a pack of Jiralhanae led by Chieftain Maccabeus, this forced a change in plan. Jilan was present for the meeting, and worked with Mack to prepare an altered variation of the "welcome to Harvest" introductory video shown to travellers to present to the Brutes, presenting the world as a peaceful one and giving no hint of a larger human colonial sphere. The footage was tailored to a number of issues Jilan presented to the AI, trying to gauge how the aliens reacted to footage of things like automated robots and farming practices - anything that could be used by ONI to gain intel.

Ultimately, this attempted negotiation quickly soured and resulted in a brief firefight, with the human delegation forced to escape. In the week following, she coordinated a pending mass evacuation of the planet's citizens, though came up against an increasingly-irate Governor Thune. On February 22, this culminated in an argument between the two over the proper course of action to take, eventually resulting in Jilan officially stripping Thune of his title and authority, citing UNSC colonial charter's section two, paragraph eight; when Thune refused to comply, she shot him with three tactical training rounds, temporarily paralysing him and allowing her to assume control as the ranking UNSC officer on the planet with Thune to be sent to the Reach FLEETCOM Military Complex. She then presented the Marines with her plan to evacuate Harvest, involving the use of several decoy elevator cars rigged with explosives and two cars filled with militiamen to retake the space station Tiara from Covenant occupation, allowing the planet's civilian populace to be evacuated.

Ultimately, Al-Cygni successfully escaped the glassing of Harvest with Johnson, Byrne, and the surviving militiamen and civilians. During the escape, she and Avery Johnson had sexual intercourse.

Later career

After surviving the initial contact with the Covenant at Harvest, Al-Cygni continued her career in naval intelligence, going on to develop hundreds of tactical strategies designed to counter the Covenant - nearly all of which were introduced by ONI for UNSC Special Forces use, including advanced techniques for naval boarding actions against Covenant starships. During this time she worked under the classified pseudonym "COALMINER", frequently exchanging messages with fellow Section III agent Octavio Morales (or, Codename SURGEON) in relation to their shared intelligence efforts. In 2532, she penned a message to Morales concerning the SPARTAN-III program, noting the early stages of preparing Alpha Company were progressing satisfactorily and expressed confidence in Kurt-051's training regimen. Shortly after the end of the Battle of Jericho VII in 2535, now-Commander al-Cygni provided the SPARTAN-IIs with extensive training on Covenant systems infiltration. This was done at CASTLE Base on Reach.

Al-Cygni continued to work alongside Morales under their respective codenames as part of the leadership for Operation: HYPODERMIC; an intelligence effort connected to the Cole Protocol (HYPODERMIC FXT-J) that involved the use and upgrade of several prowler stealth ships disguised as civilian vessels for the purpose of deploying into the systems surrounding Epsilon Eridani to scout out Covenant fleets. On August 29, 2552, Al-Cygni sent a transmission to Morales noting that HYPODERMIC was proceeding as expected aboard Gamma Station orbiting Reach, though also noted that potential interference by the station's AI Doppler had nearly caused the operation to be exposed. As such, the prowler UNSC Circumference was disconnected from Gamma Station's network - according to Al-Cygni, as far as the station's computers were concerned, it was as though Circumference never existed. This disconnect ultimately proved problematic the following day when a massive Covenant fleet arrived at Reach to execute the final fall of the planet. In the ensuing space battle, three SPARTAN-IIs; John-117, Linda-058, and James-005, were deployed to Gamma Station to manually execute the Cole Protocol and destroy Circumference's navigation database. The operation was successful, though saw Linda-058 heavily injured and James-005 ejected into space, where he was declared missing in action (MIA).

Post-war

Around or after December 15, 2554, Al-Cygni recieved a series of reports from Morales named the "Eleventh Hour reports", discussing the state of the post-war galaxy including the status of the ex-Covenant races, the newly-established Spartan Operations division, early post-war expeditions to the Ark, the Halo Array, and the discovery of the Composer. She continued to have a vested interest in the newly-emerging SPARTAN-IVs, and would later go on to make frequent visits to the Avery J. Johnson Academy of Military Science on Nysa to observe Spartans in-training.

By 2560, Jilan had risen to the rank of Admiral. On January 1, 2560, she spoke with FIXER about how close Project BOOKWORM had come to succeeding while observing Boundary and the remains of the Lithos from the Akkadian. Al-Cygni admitted that she was looking for any progress and what made this site different from the ones found on Kamchatka, Juvedai, Amasa and Genesis. FIXER suggested that al-Cygni look into the reports that FIXER had sent over as ONI had been seeing a strong uptick in activity gleaned from the Domain terminals they had tabs on. However, FIXER couldn't explain what the activity was exactly, cracking a joke about how they'd have a much better retirement plan if they could. ONI wasn't sure if the fluctuations were related to the events at Zeta Halo or not, but it was worth noting nonetheless. The two discussed what to do with the girl if there were any other entry points to the Domain that their enemies could use before al-Cygni received an interesting message from Ayit 'Sevi (a spy within the Order of Restoration operating under the codename SNAKE IN THE GRASS) suggesting that they weren't done with Dovo Nesto yet and that his new fascination might well be worth their time to look into.

Al-Cygni sent a message to Admiral Morales at the ONI facility buried beneath East Africa that they had just recieved a message from 'Sevi that might necessitate a slight adjustment in their current focus. Al-Cygni sent the details and prepared the Akkadian for departure when they were aligned on a confirmed rendezvous point with 'Sevi. She also asked to be kept updated on the situation on Zeta Halo, having a feeling that they were going to want to be keenly aware of every card they have in the deck before this was all said and done.

Trivia

It may be possible that Johnson and Jilan al-Cygni were married, as Johnson will occasionally make remarks about his supposed "mother-in-law" during Halo 2. Whether it was just Johnson's typical sense of humor, or actually meaningful in any way is unknown.

List of appearances

• Halo: The Fall of Reach (First mentioned) (Identified as Codename: COALMINER)
• Halo: Ghosts of Onyx (Mentioned only)
• Halo: Contact Harvest (First appearance) (First identified by name)
• Halo: Fall of Reach
  • Invasion
• Halo: Empty Throne