Felicia Sanderson

Colonel Felicia Sanderson was an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper during the Human-Covenant War. She was a member of the Colonial Military Administration before it was disbanded, and fought for almost the entirety of the Human-Covenant War.

Early life
Felicia Sanderson was born on the UNSC colony of Harvest. Like many other settlers, Felicia's family came from other Outer Colonies, and as such they didn't hold a lot of love for the the UNSC or the Earth-controlled Colonial Administration Authority.

Sometime during or before January 2524 Felicia stole an MLX and went joyriding. As punishment, her father made her enlist in the Colonial Military, telling her it was time to grow up. Felicia would later tell her comrades that she was forced to join after an incident with a girl she met in a bar, who turned out to be the governor's daughter (an event which actually took place, but was not the reason for her enlistment). After getting out of boot camp, Felicia met Gage Yevgenny and Eric Santiago at the Utgard Space Port. The three quickly became friends. They participated in Operation: TREBUCHET on Eridanus II, doing small jobs, such as investigating possible rebel activity and riot control in Elysium City. After two months, they had made friends with Allison Stark, a Pelican pilot for the CMA, who often flew them to parties on weekends. One particular weekend, after flying a Hornet to a night club, an Insurrectionist bomb went off inside, killing Allison, sending Eric into a coma, and heavily injuring Gage and Felicia, who were pulled out of the rubble by ODSTs.

While recovering in hospital, Gage, inspired by the ones that saved them, decided to join the ODSTs. Felicia, who had nothing else to lose, decided to join along with him. However, after several weeks of hard training, they were informed of the Covenant threat and Harvest's destruction. Felicia fell into horrified shock and screamed at Gage for his disrespect toward the planet.

Human-Covenant War
Felicia was transferred from Gage's squad, and for the next twenty-seven years, fought hard in the war against the Covenant, and was promoted to the rank of Colonel.

During the Battle of Skopje in 2547, while holed up in the museum, Felicia was reunited with Gage for the first time in over two decades. Gage and another ODST had just been rescued from approaching Covenant forces by a Spartan, a member of a top-secret project that the Office of Naval Intelligence had recently unveiled. This Felicia had Gage transferred to the ship she was on, the, and while retreating the planet after another defeat, she showed him that Eric had come out of his coma after five years and had become a UNSC Navy pilot. The three were delighted to be together again, and already were having talks of retirement.

Disobeying orders and death
In September 2552, five years after reuniting with her friends, Felicia was involved in an operation during the Battle of New Jerusalem to infiltrate the city of Mount Haven, which was under siege by the Covenant, who were looking for alien artifacts. Simultaneously, several former CMA members were performing a clandestine operation to extract a massive supply of gold from a bank. However, after infiltrating the bank, the ODST team discovered a class of school children and their teacher hiding in the underground vault, foolishly hoping to survive the planet's inevitable glassing. After loading two Pelicans full of gold, the ODSTs knew there was no room for the children. To deceive the civilians, the ODSTs claimed that the gold would be used in the UNSC's war effort. Gage, who had seen too many people killed by the Covenant, was in strong favor of postponing the mission to save them. The other ODSTs, who claimed the children were as good as dead, disagreed, causing an argument. Felicia stepped in, wanting to call in more Pelicans, but the other ODSTs had already raised their weapons at one another. In an instant, Gage was shot in the abdomen, three other squad members were dead, and Felicia was shot in the neck and was fatally wounded. Gage rushed to her side, but she died in his arms.

Felicia's death deeply affected Gage, leading him to embark on a suicide mission in which he lured the other rogue ODST's and hundreds of Covenant into the mountains surrounding the city with the gold and the artifacts. He then killed them all, including himself, by detonating a Shiva nuclear warhead.

Trivia

 * Sanderson was the first of two openly homosexual characters in the Halo series, the second being Allison Stark.
 * As Sanderson was a colonel, she held the highest rank of any known ODST.
 * The story of Sanderson's enlistment is similar to that of Kojo Agu, another ODST. After being caught in an affair with the wife of the governor of the Castra arcology, the governor "pulled strings" within the UNSC, forcing Agu into military service. However, Sanderson' affair with Governor Nils Thune's daughter was not actually her reason for enlistment.

List of appearances

 * Halo: Evolutions - Essential Tales of the Halo Universe
 * Dirt