Daisy-023

"We're not going to be your toys any more!"

- Daisy-023 to Catherine Halsey.

Chief Petty Officer Daisy-023 was a SPARTAN-II supersoldier of the UNSC Naval Special Warfare Command. During Operation: SILENT STORM in early 2526, she served as part of Gold Team, led by Joshua-029.

Conscription
Born on the planet Sargasso, Daisy was identified and marked by Dr. Catherine Halsey for her physical and intellectual talents and was abducted and conscripted into the SPARTAN-II Program, in 2517 at the age of six. She was then taken to the planet Reach, and trained by the AI Déjà and Chief Petty Officer Franklin Mendez, along with the rest of the Spartan children. For the next eight years, she and her fellow Spartans endured harsh physical and mental training programs, team exercises and more. In March 2525, she and the other candidates underwent a series of augmentations to improve their abilities. Daisy was among the ones who survived and were not crippled or killed by the procedure.

The war begins
After the Human-Covenant War began with the alien empire's attack on Harvest in 2525, Daisy-023 and the other Spartan-IIs were brought to the Reach FLEETCOM Military Complex, where Rear Admiral Michael Stanforth briefed them on the Covenant threat. In response, the training of the Spartan-IIs was accelerated, and in November 2525 they were sent to Chi Ceti IV to receive their new MJOLNIR Powered Assault Armor from the Damascus Materials Testing Facility. While en route to Chi Ceti IV aboard the, they were attacked by the Unrelenting, a Covenant warship. 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 resumed its attack on the frigate. To defend the Commonwealth, John-117 had Daisy and the other Spartan-IIs use thruster packs in an attempt to board the alien vessel, and destroy it with Anvil-II AS missiles. However, only John, Kelly-087, and Samuel-034 made it aboard. Daisy and the others missed the Unrelenting, but were recovered after the vessel was destroyed.

Homecoming
"You did what you had to do. So did I."

- Daisy comforting Ralph.

A few weeks after the augmentations, Daisy and four other Spartans rebelled against their trainers, holding them at gunpoint in front of Dr. Halsey herself, in order to escape. Halsey granted them freedom, and they fled Reach as stowaways, hoping to return home to their parents. When Daisy arrived home at her home planet of Sargasso, the UNSC were already actively searching for her. She evaded patrols and found her home. There, she found a person nearly identical to herself, wheelchair-bound in her home's garden.

Daisy was then approached by a Hornet VTOL with Dr. Halsey onboard. Halsey explained via COM that all the Spartans had been replaced by flash clones when they were abducted, so as not to arouse suspicion of the missing children. Halsey urged Daisy to return to her and the rest of the Spartans. Daisy, shocked, drew her pistol and approached her clone. Her clone, confused and bewildered, stared at Daisy as she held her gun to her clone's face. After much hesitation, Daisy lowered her weapon, and began to leave. Her clone however, called after her, and offered her a small teddy bear on a chain, not knowing why she wanted to give it to Daisy, only thinking that she should do so. Daisy returned to UNSC custody and was transported back to Reach. However, her clone died soon after on Sargasso, as flash clones did not live very long. Indeed, it was extremely unusual that this one had lived as long as it had.

Radiant Arrow
"If we get out of this, I'm gonna find the dumbass who gave us away and rip his—"

- Daisy-023 furious at the apparent rookie mistake made by a sensor operator.

In early 2526, Daisy served as Gold Team's infiltration expert. On March 5 of that year, she and eleven other Spartans were organized into an assault squad assigned to board and capture a Covenant warship called Radiant Arrow that was orbiting the planet Netherop. The squad was deployed from the prowler for an EVA boarding action in order to accomplish this task. While aboard the vessel, a sensor operator aboard one of the prowlers seemingly accidentally broadcast a communication to the Spartans, revealing their presence to the Covenant crew. This was actually part of a plot orchestrated by the secret insurrectionist Hector Nyeto to get the Spartans killed. Upon realizing that the "accidental" transmission had blown their cover, Daisy threatened to find and harm the operator responsible if they even made it off of the enemy vessel. With their presence known, the Spartans began to face much more resistance from the vessel's crew. John-117 managed to reach the bridge after a brief fight in a gravity lift, but the shipmaster activated the Radiant Arrow ' s self-destruct sequence, forcing all of the Spartans to immediately abandon ship. Daisy escaped the blast alongside her teammates.

SILENT STORM
On March 8, 2526, the UNSC initiated Operation: SILENT STORM, a mission that would have the Spartans and the ODSTs of the 21st Space Assault Battalion attempt to board Covenant warships with the intent of detonating them from the inside. During the slipspace journey to their first destination, Daisy and the other Spartans participated in training exercises with these ODSTs in the 's mission preparation hold. The Spartans made short work of the veteran marines in each exercise until Staff Sergeant Avery Johnson taught them some unorthodox strategies that proved to be much more effective against the supersoldiers. After four days of this, Colonel Marmon Crowther had the Black Daggers and the Spartans gather so he could explain the plan that he came up with. His plan would have split up the Spartans, with each of the twelve carrying a nuke for a single platoon. This way they could destroy many targets at once, but it severely diminished the effectiveness of the Spartans. John-117 expressed his disagreement with Crowther, who brought up his suspicions that they were "just kids" and therefore less reliable than his experienced marines. Daisy broke formation and angled herself at Crowther in a challenging manner. In response, he marched up to her and requested that she tell him her age. John told her to stand down, but she stood her ground and proclaimed that their age did not matter; it was their training that made them superior. Crowther replied saying that combat experience matters more.

Seoba
Upon the task force's arrival at Biko's moon of Seoba on March 18, 2526, Colonel Crowther planned to practice the mass deployment of the Spartans and ODSTs into the ice quarry where they planned to wait for the Covenant, in an exercise dubbed Operation: ICE DANCE. However, entrenched insurrectionist forces were detected in the quarry, preparing 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 from the rebels. 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 Daisy and Gold Team—were engaged elsewhere. Ultimately, the insurgents were soon defeated and the quarry fell under UNSC control.

The next day, Captain Halima Ascot, commander of Task Force Yama and captain of the Starry Night, 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 some of Nyeto's sly comments, the truth about their young ages was revealed to the few personnel present at the meeting. Learning this disturbing fact, Colonel Crowther refused to send the Spartans into battle again, instead ordering them to guard the insurrectionists captured during the fighting and prepare them to be sent to Biko to be processed. While this meeting was being held, a Covenant flotilla was detected as it arrived in-system and began heading for Seoba. As the rest of Task Force Yama mobilized to meet the alien vessels, Daisy 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 ordered the officer to step forward, but another rebel presented herself instead, clearly trying to stall for Garvin. To show that he meant business, John grabbed the woman by her tunic lapels and threatened her with summary execution for interfering with a guard while on the field of combat, as per the UNSC Military Code of Conduct. John's plan worked and General Garvin presented himself. 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 Starry Night had been shot down on takeoff, crash-landing back into the quarry. 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 Kurt-051 and Joshua-029, Gold Team's leader. 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.

Daisy and the others proceeded to the grotto's access vestibule and entered its airlock, sealing the inner hatch. With that, they stepped out into the dense sublimation fog enshrouding the quarry floor. Visibility was so poor that each of the Spartans could barely even see the ends of their rifles, but the flashes of plasma bolts could be seen dancing through the clouds above. John accessed the command channel and requested a waypoint leading to the downed prowler. Crowther quickly responded by asking what he thought he was doing. John stated that they were checking on the status of the Starry Night as they were the only unit that could do so at the moment, carefully choosing his words so that Crowther could deflect blame onto the Spartan if need be. This would make it more likely for Crowther to not stand in the way of their self-assigned mission. While John waited for a response, he signaled Joshua and Kurt to spread out their teams in a hundred-meter-wide search line. Daisy and the rest of Gold Team spaced out on the right of the more tightly-gathered Blue Team, as Green Team spaced out on the left. In doing this, the Spartans would be more likely to find any debris from the Starry Night that might have otherwise been missed in the fog. John also ordered them to advance at a trotting speed, leading them away from the dockyards where Blue Team had engaged insurgents the day before. When Crowther still had not responded, John added over the command channel that they would simply take a look at the crash site and report what they found.

With that reassurance, Crowther replied and acknowledged John's plan, but ordered him to not take action unless immediately warranted. He also informed the Spartans of Biko's naval response to the alien bombardment of Seoba and that Nyeto believed that the small Covenant flotilla would either be in full retreat or destroyed within the hour by the approaching overwhelming force. An inexact waypoint was placed on each of the Spartans' HUDs and John had them adjust course to match the new trajectory. With the fog still as dense as ever, John ordered them all to advance at a full run while keeping their eyes on their feet, since that was all they could see anyway. As they ran, the transport departed from the grotto and flew over the Spartans, churning up the fog and allowing a brief moment of visibility. Through the haze, they could see five Covenant vessels fire towards the ship as it crested the horizon.

As the Spartans neared the provided waypoint, the fog had lowered to shoulder-height, allowing them to discover that the Starry Night was indeed seemingly intact, but sat atop a large avalanche about seven hundred meters up the quarry wall. Frederic-104 spotted a Covenant intrusion corvette sliding over the rim of the quarry and descending over the prowler. Kelly-087 theorized that they may be trying to recover the Starry Night themselves. Realizing the danger, John declared to his teammates that the mission was no longer a rescue mission. Their primary objective was now to deny the Covenant from recovering the prowler and the data stored within. Opening the command channel again, he relayed this information to Crowther, who echoed John's concerns and insisted that they could not let the Covenant take possession of the Starry Night. The vessel's navigation computer and other onboard data devices could reveal the locations of UNSC outposts, entire force deployments, or worse. Crowther asked Nyeto if there was any way that the prowler's nuclear self-destruct system could be remotely activated, to which the lieutenant commander responded in the affirmative. However, there were only three positions that had access to that ability. The first two were the flight commander and wing commander, both of which were roles held by Captain Ascot, who was either dead or unable to be reached aboard the Starry Night. The final person with the ability to remotely detonate the prowler was the captain of the Vanishing Point, which was holding station two planetary orbits out from Seoba. At that distance, it would take nearly an hour for the request to be sent to the cruiser and for the return signal to arrive. By then, the Covenant might already have retrieved sensitive data from the wrecked prowler. Crowther began to reluctantly order the Spartans to prevent the Starry Night ' s capture, but John cut him off, assuring him that they would not fail. The Spartan requested that Task Force Yama assist them by keeping the assaulting corvettes off their backs. Nyeto began to say that their prowlers were not designed for ship-to-ship combat when Crowther interrupted him, promising that they would find a way. Crowther started to tell John to standby for instructions on how to manually activate the prowler's self-destruct, but he reassured the colonel that his Spartans already knew how to activate a nuke.

Just then, a Covenant Ghost appeared out of the fog, firing at John, who deftly killed its Jiralhanae driver with his MA5B's underbarrel grenade launcher. Shortly after that was handled, more Ghosts entered the quarry, so John ordered Green and Gold Teams to deal with them as Blue Team went with him to the prowler. At this point, the looming intrusion corvette had begun deploying EVA-equipped Sangheili, Jiralhanae, and Kig-Yar warriors via gravity lift, with the first already looking for a way inside the ship. Another corvette crested the edge of the quarry, firing its main cannon on the Spartans. A plasma bolt narrowly missed John, and crashed into the fog-filled quarry floor. Grace-093 was caught in the blast radius and cried out over SQUADCOM, prompting Joshua to order Daisy to tend to her injured teammate. Before he had even finished giving the order, Daisy was already at Grace's side. With the situation quickly deteriorating and Nyeto's support still setting up, John realized that immediate action was necessary. He ordered Blue Team to simultaneously fire on the avalanche just below the Starry Night with their grenade launchers to cause the vessel to fall to quarry floor and prevent the Covenant from gaining entrance. Despite Fred and Kelly's warnings that such an action could bring the whole slope down on top of them, each member of the team acknowledged and followed his order. As they has feared, the volley of grenades worked a bit too well, bringing the avalanche down on top of all twelve Spartans, but successfully delaying the Covenant in their boarding attempt.

Six of the Spartans were buried under the ice flow, with Daisy's teammate, Naomi-010, becoming completely incapacitated. John-117 was also buried, but not totally immobilized. While he worked on freeing himself, John gave Fred command of the mission to board and destroy the Starry Night. Fred and two other Spartans boarded the prowler as the available members of Gold and Green Teams coordinated attacks on the seemingly endless stream of enemy ground vehicles, supported by at least three Covenant corvettes. John freed himself from the ice flow and began helping repel would-be boarders while Fred's team prepared the vessel's Fury tactical nuclear weapon. Meanwhile, Nyeto's support finally arrived the form of strafing runs that destroyed two of the intrusion corvettes assaulting Gold and Green Teams. Just as the nuke was finished arming, the looming Covenant corvette finally made its move and began slowly levitating the Starry Night up and into its hold using a gravity lift. John ordered Fred's team to activate the nuke and flee from the prowler with the surviving crew, which they did via escape pod. He also warned the others that the nuke would detonate in thirty seconds, urging them to escape the blast radius immediately. Each of the Spartans made it to safety, including Daisy. Colonel Crowther extracted them after the resulting electromagnetic pulse had dissipated. The blast also destroyed the intrusion corvette, and some of the Spartans assisted in the recovery of a starholo from its wreckage. They and the starholo were transported back to the Vanishing Point.

On March 20, the six Spartans that had not been confined to the infirmary attended a funeral service for the two-hundred-and-three men and women who lost their lives at Seoba. Held in the command hangar of the Vanishing Point as it sat in a high parabolic orbit around Biko, the ceremony included an honor company of a hundred-and-one enlisted personnel in their dress blues, including the six Spartans and Avery Johnson. After the service, Lieutenant Commander Nyeto—now the de facto commander of Task Force Yama after Ascot's death—approached John-117, who asked if he'd reconsider sidelining them. Nyeto promised that the Spartans would be seeing all the action they could handle for the rest of the operation. However, Crowther again contested this on the basis of them being too young, forcing the lieutenant commander to back down by threatening him with a report to a UNSC board of inquiry. The Black Daggers would board the incoming fleet alone. As everyone left the hangar, Crowther revealed to Johnson that he did not trust Nyeto. He believed that the Spartans were combat-ready, and he was instead sending them on a mission to disrupt Covenant supply lines at Etalan.

Zhoist
After the success of Operation: SILENT STORM, Daisy voiced her desire to avenge Colonel Marmon Crowther by going AWOL and hunting down Nyeto for his betrayal. At this, she was reprimanded by Sergeant Avery Johnson and now-Master Chief John-117 for acting as if the success of the operation meant the end of the war. John reassured her that they would one day find Hector, stating that the Spartans needed to continue fighting together in order to honor Crowther and his legacy. In response, Daisy affirmed her support for the Master Chief.

Later career and death
At some point during the Human-Covenant War, Daisy participated in a battle on a war-torn planet, where she rescued several Marines pinned down by Covenant fire. She then assisted in escorting them to an evacuation point, where she met up with Ralph-103, a former SPARTAN-II who had previously escaped with her in 2525 and was now serving as a Marine after his dismissal from the program. As their evacuation Pelican landed, however, Daisy was shot when covering Hauser and impaled by Needler rounds. Ralph, who was now aboard the Pelican, attempted to assist her, but she instead yelled for him and the remaining Marines to retreat. Attempting to provide covering fire for their escape, Daisy drew her pistol and fired on Covenant forces. Her efforts, however, were in vain as Ralph and the other Marines were soon killed when their Pelican was destroyed by Fuel Rod Gun fire. Devastated, Daisy, wounded and unable to move, died where she lay. Her body was later found by John-117, who laid Daisy's teddy bear chain in her hands and closed her eyes in a solemn gesture of respect.

Personality and traits
"John-117"

- Daisy-023

Described by John-117 as the most intractable, or uncontrollable, of the SPARTAN-IIs, Daisy was known to be very stubborn. She rarely hesitated to speak her mind, especially in defense of herself or her fellow Spartans. On one occasion when the lives of her and her team had been put in jeopardy by what seemed like an innocent mistake, she threatened bodily harm on the crewman responsible. Despite her rough attitude with most people, including other UNSC personnel, Daisy was much more sociable with and respectful towards her fellow Spartans. For instance, ever since her SPARTAN-II training days, she shared a close relationship with Ralph-103, whom she cared deeply for. Additionally, in the aftermath of Operation: SILENT STORM, Daisy readily voiced her support for John-117 and his principle on honoring Colonel Crowther's sacrifice despite her own personal feelings on the matter.

Upon meeting her flash clone on Sargasso, Daisy initially drew a pistol on her, but she soon empathized with the clone and decided to spare her, letting her live out the rest of her short life—a life that should have belonged to the real Daisy. In response, the clone gave Daisy a small teddy bear on a chain, an item that she cherished and carried with her until her death.

Trivia

 * Daisy was voiced by Carli Mosier.
 * She wore red Mark IV MJOLNIR Powered Assault Armor, with a helmet aesthetically similar to the Mark VI CQB variant.

List of appearances

 * Halo Legends
 * Homecoming
 * Halo: Reach
 * Dr. Halsey's personal journal
 * Halo: Silent Storm