Research Center Oscar

Research Center Oscar overlooks the Forerunner slipspace portal in East Africa.

Research Center Oscar is one of a number of research and administrative facilities (alongside Research Center Alpha) run by the United Nations Space Command located under the savannah of the East African Protectorate on Earth, overlooking the Excession; a massive slipspace portal built by the Forerunners under Africa. The facility was built some time following the unearthing of the portal by the Covenant in 2552, and as of 2559 is considered one of the most secure military sites on Earth. The base is staffed by ONI Security forces, clad in black armour.

The site is subterranean in nature, with an administrative wing containing numerous nondescript concrete walls lit by overhead fixtures and interrupted by heavily secured doors. The centre of the complex contains a pavilion with onyx floors, high ceilings, and planters filled with a variety of flora from a dozen worlds - designed to trick the mind into thinking the base isn't located hundreds of metres underground. The pavilion also has a five-metre-tall window overlooking the Excession formed from reinforced glass, and a waterfall that pours into a reservoir in the room's centre. The pavilion is connected to a secure meeting room lined with a Faraday cage, similar to the "Odin's Eye" of a Point Blank-class stealth cruiser, used for private meetings, of which no communications are able to enter or leave.

The base's admin wing is home to an office used by Admiral Octavio Morales of ONI Section Three. The facility was used by the admiral as his base of operations throughout the Created uprising after the destruction of the HIGHCOM Facility Bravo-6, the UNSC and ONI's headquarters, in Sydney at the start of the conflict. It is also used by Captain Annabelle Richards, the head of UNSC Special Forces and head of security for the Excession as a whole.

List of appearances

• Halo: Empty Throne (First appearance)