Joshua-029

"If anything goes wrong, we end up in the middle of ten thousand pissed off bad guys."

- Joshua-029

Joshua-029 was a SPARTAN-II supersoldier and an electronics expert. Throughout the Human-Covenant War, we led numerous teams of fellow Spartans, including Gold Team. He had a close working relationship with Kelly-087, Frederic-104, and John-117.

Early life
"You have been called upon to serve. You will be trained . . . and you will become the best we can make of you. You will be the protectors of Earth and all her colonies."

- Dr. Catherine Halsey to the abducted child conscripts.

Joshua was a genetically, intellectually, and physically gifted child chosen for the SPARTAN-II project. He was abducted by the Office of Naval Intelligence and replaced with a flash clone when he was around six years old. He and seventy-four other children were taken to Reach in the Epsilon Eridani system. There, he was trained by the "dumb" AI, Déjà and Chief Petty Officer Franklin Mendez, with the two serving as the Spartans' teacher and drill instructor, respectively. In 2519, he was taken alongside his fellow trainees to a Military Wilderness Training Preserve for a mission that required each trainee to be left alone in the woods with a only a single piece of a map. It was up to them to find one another so that they could piece the map together and locate the designated extraction point. The mission was ultimately a success. At another point during training, Joshua and the others traveled to Emerald Cove for an underwater mission. There, they abandoned Mendez and lived on their own on an island for a few days. By July 14, 2523, Joshua and his fellow Spartan-IIs had begun facing the formidable and ruthless UNSC Marine Corps' Tango Company in simulated war games. On March 9, 2525, Joshua and the rest of the Spartan-II candidates underwent their augmentation procedures at Medical Facility Endurance orbiting Reach. After successfully enduring the procedures, Joshua later attended a military funeral aboard the carrier, the, in the Lambda Serpentis system for the Spartans who died during the process. Afterwards, they all returned to Reach for their final training phase in the Highland Mountains.

The Covenant War begins
After the Covenant attack on Harvest and the beginning of the Human-Covenant War, Joshua and the rest of the Spartan-IIs were brought to the Reach FLEETCOM Military Complex, where Rear Admiral Michael Stanforth and the AI, Beowulf, briefed them on the emerging Covenant threat. In response, the training of Joshua and the rest of the Spartan-IIs was accelerated, and the Spartans were sent to Chi Ceti IV in the Chi Ceti system to receive their new MJOLNIR Powered Assault Armor from the Damascus Materials Testing Facility in order to aid in combat against the alien threat. While en route to Chi Ceti IV aboard the, the , they were attacked by the Covenant warship, Unrelenting. The Commonwealth was able to ward off the Unrelenting and the Spartans were deployed to Chi Ceti IV with Halsey, where they each received a set of armor. While the Spartans were returning to the Commonwealth, the Unrelenting returned and engaged the frigate. To provide aid to the Commonwealth, John had Joshua and the other Spartan-IIs use thruster packs to embark towards the Unrelenting so that they could destroy the warship with Anvil-II AS missiles, though only John, Kelly, and Sam made it aboard.

Radiant Arrow
By early 2526, Joshua served as the leader of Gold Team, which was then composed of Naomi-010, Daisy-023, and Grace-093 as well. On March 5 of that year, Joshua, his team, and eight other Spartans were organized into an assault squad led by John-117 with orders to board and capture a Covenant frigate, Radiant Arrow, orbiting the planet Netherop. To accomplish this, they were deployed from the prowler for an EVA boarding action. Using a flight of Type-27 Banshees for cover, the Spartans stealthily approached the alien vessel. They boarded the frigate via its underslung hangar and eliminated the Covenant forces stationed there without the rest of crew realizing they had been boarded. As Blue and Green Teams pushed further into the alien vessel, John instructed Joshua and his team to collect weapons and corpses to be piled into the Banshees, which would then be pushed out into space for ONI to recover and study. Once that task was completed, Gold Team acted as support for Blue and Green, watching their backs. As the two forward teams continued on, a sensor operator aboard one of the prowlers "accidentally" broadcast a transmission on the Spartans' SQUADCOM, revealing their presence to the frigate's crew. Unbeknownst to them, the crewman's apparent mistake was part of an insurrectionist plot designed by Lieutenant Commander Hector Nyeto, who intended to get the Spartans killed. With their presence known, Blue and Green Teams split up, with John leading his team to the bridge. John was unable to prevent the frigate's shipmaster from activating a self-destruct sequence, forcing him to order all of his teammates to abandon ship immediately. All of the Spartans—including Joshua—made it to safety before the Radiant Arrow detonated.

SILENT STORM
A few days later, Joshua, Gold Team, and the rest of the Spartans that had participated in the pervious mission were given a new assignment. Operation: SILENT STORM would have them and the ODSTs of the 21st Space Assault Battalion boarding and destroying Covenant vessels and stations in an attempt to slow their destructive advance through the Outer Colonies. For the duration of the operation, the Spartans would be assigned to Task Force Yama, a small fleet of prowlers that would serve as both transport and support. As a Covenant fleet was currently glassing the colony of Etalan, the nearby world of Biko was chosen as the theater for the task force to launch its first attack. Specifically, an abandoned ice quarry on its third moon of Seoba was selected to house the prowlers until the time was right.

During the ten-day voyage through slipspace, Joshua and the other Spartans trained with the ODSTs in the 's mission preparation hold. The Spartans made short work of the marines in every exercise until Staff Sergeant Avery Johnson taught them some unorthodox strategies that proved much more effective against the supersoldiers. After four days of training, Colonel Marmon Crowther had them all gather in the drop hangar to be briefed on the specifics of the operation. Despite their exemplary performance against his ODSTs, Crowther was skeptical about deploying the Spartans to the front lines due to their inexperience on the battlefield as well as their apparent young age, much to their frustration.

Seoba
Upon Task Force Yama's arrival in the Kolaqoa system on March 18, 2526, Colonel Crowther planned to practice the mass deployment of the Spartans and his ODSTs into the Seoban quarry, in an exercise dubbed Operation: ICE DANCE. However, insurrectionist forces were detected in the very same quarry, prepared to stage a coup against Biko's chancellor. Crowther decided that ICE DANCE would proceed as planned, but now with the objective of taking the quarry. An intense battle ensued, with the Spartans leading the way. Blue Team focused on destroying a convoy of Civets moving to repair the rebels' damaged communications relay as the other Spartans—including Joshua's Gold Team—were engaged elsewhere. Ultimately, the insurgents were defeated and the quarry fell under UNSC control.

The next day, Captain Halima Ascot, commander of Task Force Yama, held a meeting to discuss the events of the previous day's battle. John was reprimanded for his maverick actions at the start of the battle, and his Spartans' experience was called into question once more. Due to Lieutenant Commander Nyeto's loose lips, the truth about their young ages was revealed to the small group of key personnel present at the meeting. Because of this, Colonel Crowther refused to send the Spartans into battle again, instead ordering them to guard the insurrectionist prisoners captured during the fighting and prepare them to be sent to Biko to be processed. While this meeting was being held, a Covenant flotilla arrived in-system and began heading for Seoba.

As the rest of Task Force Yama mobilized to meet the alien vessels, Joshua and the other Spartans were sent to Subsurface Maintenance Grotto 6M430 where they would direct the captured insurgents onto a transport. While the line of roughly 300 prisoners marched onto the vessel, John noticed that a group of them were hiding the presence of an officer, General Harper Garvin of the United Rebel Front. He had the line halt, which Joshua questioned, saying that they needed to get the prisoners headed toward Biko before the Covenant got to Seoba. John pulled Garvin out of the line so that ONI could interrogate him later. He began trying to pry information out of John, but this effort was interrupted when a situation with Captain Ascot's flagship was relayed over the task force's command channel. The had been shot down on takeoff, crash-landing back into the quarry some distance away. Crowther was unable to send a unit of his Black Daggers to search for survivors without putting more prowlers at risk. Since they were the only unit available to assist, John decided that he and his Spartans would go for the Starry Night once the transport was loaded. After sending Garvin back to his people and ordering the transport pilot to launch, John had his Spartans move out, much to the concern of Joshua and Kurt-051. Not only would they be disobeying a direct order from Crowther, operating without the support of the task force in such a situation would be very risky.

FALLEN WALLS
From February 9 to February 12 in 2535, Joshua led Red Team during the fight against the Covenant on Jericho VII alongside Blue Team and Green Team. Red Team's goal was to slip behind enemy lines and plant a HAVOK tactical nuclear weapon that could be detonated the next time a Covenant ship landed and dropped its energy shields to deploy troops. To this end, Blue Team was to draw out the Covenant rear guard so that Red Team would be afforded the opportunity to accomplish its objective amidst the confusion. Red Team reported their success in planting the nuke after doing so to Blue Team and all Spartans were then extracted from the planet. Despite the efforts on the ground, Jericho VII was lost to the Covenant and was glassed.

OCEAN BREAKER
"We’ll get it done."

- Joshua expresses confidence in Red Team's ability to evacuate civilians from Sigma Octanus IV.



On July 17, 2552, Joshua and eleven other Spartan-IIs arrived at the human colony of Sigma Octanus IV in the Sigma Octanus system with Vice Admiral Stanforth's Battle Group Leviathan to aid UNSC forces in the ongoing battle on and over the planet. Deployed to the remains of Alpha Headquarters to assist the local marine forces as part of Operation: OCEAN BREAKER, Joshua one again led Red Team as "Red-One" (or "Red Leader"). He oversaw the setup of motion detectors, radar, and other automated defenses around Alpha Headquarters. He was then instructed by John-117 to take Red Team through the tree line along the coast. It was 1830 hours at this time, and John emphasized that by 1930 hours everyone should be in position. The plan was to conduct renaissance of the city of Côte d'Azur to ensure no civilians remained so that a HAVOK nuclear device could be used to kill every last member of the Covenant occupying the city. Red Team moved out and surveyed the tunnels near the city's wharfs. Whe Blue Team checked in with Joshua, he reported the discovery of twenty civilians that had hid out in a cargo ship. Some of them were wounded. He also let the Master Chief know they had witnessed a Covenant race he personally had never known about before: a Huragok. The Chief told him to coordinate with Green Team and to give them strategic control over evacuating the civilians back to their fallback position 50 kilometers south of Alpha Headquarters. Joshua did as he was ordered and they were successful. All the Spartans eventually left the planet in and came aboard Stanforth's, the , in the planet's orbit. As the battle drew to an end, Battle Group Leviathan returned to Reach in the Epsilon Eridani system for repairs with the Spartan-IIs aboard.

The Fall of Reach
"We can handle a hundred to one. Maybe even five hundred to one with a little planning and support."

- Joshua-029 to Fred-104.

On August 27, 2552 Joshua and twenty-four other Spartan-IIs were gathered at FLEETCOM HQ on Reach, where they were briefed on Operation: RED FLAG, an ONI operation with the objective of capturing a Covenant Hierarch. On August 30, Joshua boarded the with the others in preparation for RED FLAG. However, the mission was aborted when an order went out to all ships to defend Reach from the a massive Covenant assault that was underway at the planet. John assigned Joshua to Red Team, made up of twenty-two of the Spartans which were sent to land on the ground and protect the power generators for Reach's orbital defense platforms. Joshua was given the responsibility of piloting Red Team's Pelican—Bravo 001. As it descended to the surface of the planet, the dropship was attacked by Seraphs. Joshua attempted to activate its autopilot but all of computer systems had been destroyed in the assault. As they dove uncontrollably towards the ground, Joshua managed to slow the craft enough so that the Spartans could jump just before Bravo 001 exploded. Once he landed, Joshua found a Sniper Rifle and was the first Spartan to arrive at ODG Facility A-331 and spot the survivors of the UNSC Marine Corps unit, Charlie Company. He radioed Fred and the Spartans were able to regroup at the facility. Fred then ordered Joshua to recon the area. Doing so, he discovered a Covenant landing zone and patched his imaging through to Fred via COM. While Red Team was building up defenses at the facility, it received a distress call from Vice Admiral Danforth Whitcomb, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations. Fred then divided Red Team into four smaller teams. Joshua was placed on Team Alpha, comprised of himself, Fred and Kelly. They were to destroy a nearby Covenant landing zone in the Longhorn Valley while Team Gamma rescued Vice Admiral Whitcomb and his staff. Operating Type-26 Banshees, Joshua and the two others successfully destroyed the landing zone by delivering Fury tactical nukes into the gravity lift of a Covenant cruiser overhead. However, Joshua's Banshee took fire from Plasma Cannons and began to trail smoke and lose altitude. As a result, Joshua was killed in the ensuing nuclear explosion.

List of appearances

 * Halo: The Fall of Reach
 * Halo: First Strike
 * Halo: Fall of Reach
 * Covenant
 * Invasion
 * Scanned
 * Halo: Silent Storm