Keely Iyuska

Keely Iyuska
Biographical information
Born:	c. 2530
Personal details
Species:	Human
Gender:	Female
Hair color:	Red
Eye color:	Green
Political and military information
Affiliation:	Office of Naval Intelligence (civilian consultant) University of Edinburgh
Title:	Junior professor

Keely Iyuska is a human xenoarchaeologist and a junior professor at the University of Edinburgh on Earth. She is the author of Guide to Protogenic Civilizations.

Biography

Early life and academic career

Keely Iyuska was born circa 2530. By 2550, Iyuska was attending Sydney University on Earth where she met the fourteen-year-old prodigy Olympia Vale, who also attended the university. The two quickly became friends, perhaps partially due to Vale's self-admitted desperation to be accepted by her older classmates. It was during their time together at the university when Iyuska gave Vale the nickname of "Pia," a name which Vale liked at the time, though the appeal of it would wear off. Vale would first tell Iyuska that she did not like the nickname at their commencement ceremony. Iyuska graduated from Sydney Univeristy with a degree in xenoarchaeology. After graduation, the two friends would next see each other shortly after the end of the Human-Covenant War and Vale's walkabout on the Sangheili world of Khael'mothka. Iyuska was so excited to ask her questions about Sangheili culture that Vale began to feel that she was nothing but a research opportunity to her old friend.

By the late spring of 2555, Iyuska held a job at the University of Calippus, working on the side for the Office of Naval Intelligence as a civilian xenoarchaeology consultant and as a guest lecturer at the Luna OCS Academy. While still working at the University of Calippus, Iyuska applied for a tenured postion. Ultimately the application was denied, something which did not surprise Iyuska given her young age. Following Vale's return from a joint UNSC-Swords of Sanghelios operation to Installation 00 earlier that year, she was given permission to brief Iyuska on the technology and architecture she observed while on the mission. This meeting was strictly professional and left little time to grow their friendship. Vale was also not permitted to reveal that she had been recruited into the SPARTAN-IV program, instead simply telling Iyuska that she was being sent on a "special assignment." Iyuska later stated that she was worried sick about Vale following their meeting.

As part of ONI's Project BOOKWORM, Keely Iyuska travelled to Heian to lead some excavations of its ruins. Following this, Iyuska became involved with the University of Oxford and got caught up in a scandal involving an affair. This scandal got so overblown that ONI had to designate it as "need to know" in order to avoid embarrassing Iyuska, an important ONI consultant. Due to her talent and security clearance, ONI helped Iyuska land a post at the University of Edinburgh, despite her troublesome record. Iyuska was happy that she still had a place to work, though she believed that the department chair, Cadence Lux, was a "jealous cow" and only accepted her hiring because she wanted ONI funding. Cadence gave Iyuska a full load of introductory archaeology courses to teach, with none of them in the field of xenoarchaeology. However, as part of her post, Iyuska also had to filter through UNSC after-action reports in search of evidence of protogenic civilizations, effectively wanting her to canvass the entire Orion Arm. For this task, she was given funds for an artificial intelligence and research assistant, who helped Iyuska generate a list of three hundred and fifty-two candidates on two hundred and eleven celestial bodies.

Around April 2560, Iyuska's Guide to Protogenic Civilizations was attached as recommended reading to a report filed by Codename: PANGAEA to Codename: YUGA, concerning ONI's efforts to salvage a derelict ancient human cruiser.

Hunting ghosts

As she dug deeper into her assignment, Iyuska began to see evidence of a civlization older than the Forerunners, be it a device that required an unattainable amount of energy, a impossible to build structure, or a settlement that appeared to exist separate from space and time. Yet, each time that she though she found evidence, the observations just vanished from her mind, or were explained away by the next report she examined, or her assistant would track down a record that established the technology firmly as Forerunner in origin. Iyuska sent a grant request to Cadence for funding to survey the sites from her research, but the department chair suggested that she would have more luck getting the funding if the surveys were framed as a search for the missing San'Shyuum. Since she wouldn't get any support from Cadence, Iyuska sent the grant request directly to Admiral Serin Osman, the Commander-in-Chief of the Office of Naval Intelligence. In response, she was sent the UNSC's Military Survey of Unihabited Planets and a translated copy of the Covenant World Registry.

Researching Netherop

By cross-referencing these documents with her research, Iyuska found evidence of this mystery civilization on Netherop, a planet that was the site of a small battle in 2526. On top of this, details from the Covenant World Registry led Iyuska to believe that the Forerunners called the world "Planet of Ghost Makers," implying that they had suffered heavy losses in a battle there. This was enough to convince Admiral Osman to authorize a survey of Netherop. However, the rise of the Created prevented the funding from arriving.

Sometime later, Iyuska was approached by Eto 'Saljhoo, a Sangheili antiquities collector, who—unbeknownst to Iyuska—was aligned with the Banished and had already discovered record of a weapon on Netherop that interested Atriox. 'Saljhoo provided Iyuska with the funding for the mission, with the stipulation that he would have first pick of the artifacts recovered from Netherop, an agreement that the two sealed with the Sangheili custom of sucking the marrow from the roasted femur of a colo. However, Iyuska soon began to suspect that there was something that 'Saljhoo was not telling her, and further research on the planet produced a record that indicated a Guardian Custode had long ago been sent to subdue Netherop, and that the planet's civilization had managed to defeat the construct.

Recruiting consultants

In late 2559, when Keely Iyuska was supposed to rendezvous with her benefactor, she instead travelled to the state of Vadam, Sanghelios to meet with Olympia Vale and see if ONI would still support a mission to Netherop, given her concerns about Eto 'Saljhoo. When she failed to make the rendezvous, Eto 'Saljhoo hired the Sangheili Oath Warden Crei 'Ayomuu to hunt Iyuska down and hold her to her promise. Using a flight of Eyes, 'Ayomuu tracked Iyuska to a tenement island in Vadam Valley where she attempted to hide among the kreche warrens. When a band of angry Sangheili males fired on the Eyes, Created armigers arrived at the tenement island to investigate, also discovering Iyuska's presence. Already aware of her research, the armigers razed the tenement island to the ground. Iyuska escaped unharmed and sent a message via trysting pod to Vale's residence, the Villa of Long Views. In the message, she informed Vale to look for her at the villa's sally port. Once brought inside out of the dark Sangheili night, Iyuska was shocked by Vale's appearance, not realizing that she was a Spartan-IV. The two caught up on their lost time and Iyuska informed Vale of her situation, asking her if she could talk to her ONI contacts to get them to mobilize a mission to Netherop, stating that they can't let Eto 'Saljhoo get his hands on the Guardian-killing weapon first.

With this settled, Iyuska stated that they needed to go to the Outer Colony of Gao to hire a consultant who knew Netherop better than either of them. Vale m