Nolan Byrne

Nolan Byrne
Biographical information
Homeworld:	Earth
Died:	November 17, 2552
Personal details
Species:	Human
Gender:	Male
Weight:	At least 115 kilograms (250 lb)
Hair color:	Black
Eye color:	Ice-blue
Political and military information
Affiliation:	United Nations Space Command UNSC Marine Corps UNSC Navy (formerly) ORION Project (formerly)
Rank:	Sergeant Major

Sergeant Major Nolan Byrne (service number 48780-19114-NB) was a senior non-commissioned officer in the United Nations Space Command Marine Corps. Originally a member of the ORION supersoldier program, 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 killed on November 17, 2552, only weeks before the war's end.

Biography

Early life and career

"Nail the bitch, or I will!"

— Nolan Byrne urging Avery Johnson to shoot the Insurrectionist at the Jim Dandy diner

Byrne was born in Ireland, 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. According to Byrne, in this period, "they taught you to be a killer". 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.

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 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 second, 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 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.

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. The resulting blast killed 38 civilians and all of Byrne's team save for Byrne himself, who was extremely heavily injured and taken to a UNSC hospital ship for recovery. He spent at least a month in hospital.

First contact at Harvest

Main article: First Battle of Harvest

After recovering from his injuries, Byrne was reassigned, along with Johnson, to train the Colonial Militia on Harvest. 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. 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 revenge for Johnson's failure to act on Tribute. The fight was only stopped by the intervention of Captain Ponder, who threatened to kill Byrne if he did not let Johnson go. After giving each Marine one last opportunity to say their piece before the issue was dropped permanently, Byrne punched Johnson in the face, and Johnson responded in kind.

For the next month, both sergeants trained the nascent militia as-ordered, with Byrne taking command of Second Platoon while Avery took charge of First. After the barracks fight, the two sergeants had a frosty relationship, meaning they continued to not talk to one another. On January 16, 2525, Byrne was given charge of both platoons as Captain Ponder and Sergeant Johnson were selected to attend the Harvest Solstice Celebration, with Ponder preferencing Johnson for the event over Byrne due to Byrne's personality being less of a fit for a formal event. At the event, Johnson met Lieutenant Commander Al-Cygni, who explained the Marines' true reason for being on Harvest, and ordered Johnson to wait downstairs while she collected Byrne for an upcoming mission.

Thanks to the recent believed-rebel attacks on frontier shipping, Johnson and Byrne were ordered to board a freighter, Bulk Discount, where they would hide in the cargo bay and neutralise any rebels who boarded the ship, in turn hopefully providing ONI intelligence on who the rebels were and where they were operating from. However, what the two instead found was that the attackers were not Insurrectionists, but instead aliens: four Kig-Yar from the missionary ship Minor Transgression. The resulting firefight, the first battle in what would become the Human-Covenant War, saw the two sergeants engage the Kig-Yar in combat. One tried to stab Byrne with an energy cutlass, though Byrne was able to turn the weapon back around on his attacker, resulting in the weapon's detonation. Johnson then proceeded into the alien ship to pursue the Kig-Yar who had retreated while Byrne remained aboard Bulk Discount. Ultimately, Minor Transgression's shipmistress Chur'R elected to self-destruct the vessel rather than let Johnson take it, though both Marines survived the encounter mostly unscathed, save for a flesh wound on Byrne's leg from the energy cutlass. Byrne pulled Johnson back onto Bulk Discount before the alien ship could be destroyed.

After recovering from their injuries in the fight against the aliens, Byrne and Johnson resumed their duties training the Harvest militia, on February 9 conducting a training exercise which pitted both sergeants against all 72 militia trainees in a live-fire exercise using tactical training rounds (TTRs). The recruits were tasked with defending Harvest's reactor complex from the two sergeants, with Byrne adopting the callsign "creeper" and Johnson "crawler". To win the exercise, either side had to eliminate half of the other, meaning the sergeants had to eliminate 36 recruits, while the militia only had to eliminate one sergeant. After waiting all day into the early evening for the recruits to get bored and tired, the sergeants launched their attack by deploying a sedan loaded with TTR claymores at the facility, which eliminated several recruits immediately. Byrne then began to snipe at the recruits in the complex using his XBR55 battle rifle, distracting and disorganising the recruits so that Johnson could attack from behind. Ultimately, Byrne was taken out by one of the militia's marksmen, Osmo, with the final score for the exercise being 34 militia "killed" by the sergeants.

On February 11, Byrne and Johnson both led the militia in the first formal meeting between humanity and the Covenant in the Harvest Botanical Gardens. While the delegation had expected and prepared for more Kig-Yar, they were taken off-guard when they were instead met with several hulking Jiralhanae led by Chieftain Maccabeus, from the vessel Rapid Conversion. Byrne remained with the main delegation, consisting of Governor Nils Thune, Rol Pedersen, Lieutenant Commander Al-Cygni, and Captain Ponder. However, the meeting went south and ultimately resulted in a firefight thanks to panic from one of the militiamen outside. Byrne survived the brief engagement, and over the next two weeks assisted in organising the evacuation of Harvest. On February 22 two fended off an attack on the refugees by Yanme'e before manning the militia's Warthog, Byrne using the M41 Vulcan turret to fire upon two approaching Dextro Xur-pattern Spirit dropships to little effect. The two were able to heavily injure Maccabeus, though ultimately had to fall back as Rapid Conversion began to glass Gladsheim.

To stave off a potential riot from the refugees, Byrne colourfully described how the Spirit dropship had been downed by a handful of JOTUN cropdusters improvised as anti-air missiles before being summoned inside the Harvest Parliament Building to deal with an incessant Governor Thune. The argument ultimately resulted in Lieutenant Commander Al-Cygni removing him from his post and taking command of the planet's government, with Byrne and Johnson disarming Thune's guards. In a final briefing from Captain Ponder on the parliamentary balcony, each sergeant was given a single cigar with orders to use it only once they were away from Harvest. Byrne then led a force of 20 volunteers back to the reactor complex to defend it (and the data centres for Harvest's Planetary Security Intelligence, Loki) from a potential Covenant attack; world's mass driver was used to fire upon and destroy Rapid Conversion as it breached Utgard's skyline, and the Marines assumed that the next logical target for the aliens would thus be the reactor complex. While Byrne led the reactor's defence, Johnson led the evacuation of civilian's up the planet's space elevator, Tiara.

Against Byrne's expectations, the Jiralhanae did not attack the reactor from the air, but instead from the ground using their new Chopper vehicles. While Byrne initially manned his Warthog's turret to fire upon them, he was forced to bail at the last second as one of the Choppers rammed the Warthog and destroyed it. The Jiralhanae quickly overpowered the militia defence outside the complex, forcing Byrne and his troops inside and down into the basement. The Jiralhanae that pursued Byrne was able to breach into the data centre, destroying Loki's server infrastructure and capturing Byrne, breaking his jaw in the process. Byrne was then dragged back outside, slashed with the blades of the Jiralhanae's Spiker, and threatened with execution if the militia did not surrender. However, the fight was interrupted by several JOTUN harvesters remote-piloted by the AI Mack, allowing the militia to rescure Byrne from his captor and evacuate him from the complex. Byrne's troops then retreated back to the space elevator, where they proceeded to evacuate from Harvest. Ultimately, they reunited with Johnson's forces, and were able to escape the Covenant's destruction of the planet.

Byrne continued to fight in the Human-Covenant War for the next 28 years, eventually achieving the rank of Sergeant Major. He was killed in action on November 17, 2552.

Personality and traits

"You're a piece of work, Johnson, but that guy? He'd probably kill me in my sleep."

— Corpsman Healy discussing Byrne with Sgt. Johnson.

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List of appearances

• Halo: Contact Harvest (First appearance)
• Halo: Silent Storm (Mentioned only)