Zeta Halo project

The Zeta Halo project was a project started in 2555 by the Office of Naval Intelligence to research Installation 07. ONI's Xeno-Materials Exploitation Group was involved in the project. The project's purpose was to research the installation's structures and environment systems. The project is managed by Doctor Bob Casper.

Background
While exploring the enormous Forerunner shield world Onyx in late 2553 or early 2554, respected scientist and expert on Forerunner history and culture, Doctor Luther Mann, discovered records hidden deep within the shield world's vast information pathways. He labored to translate them for a year before they finally revealed the existence and location of Installation 07 just as 2555 was dawning. Doctor Mann's discovery catapulted his academic career, placing him front and center with many scientific publications and organizations. In addition to invitations to lecture at numerous universities, he was summoned to the headquarters of the United Nations Space Command on Earth to provide a detailed report of the methods he had used to locate the Halo. The Office of Naval Intelligence was primarily concerned with quarantining and securing all known Halo installations in order to alleviate the risk they posed to the galaxy.

Project
ONI set about conducting research on the vast interior world that composed the inner workings of Zeta Halo shortly after its location was revealed. No expense was spared for the project, as there was lots of territory to cover and the risk of something being overlooked was great. In addition to the researchers delivered to the ring, hundreds of automated probes began to be used to scan every canyon, riverbed, and facility. As had been the protocol for other Halo installations, a primary goal of the project was the isolation and containment of the activation index. As such, finding the library was of great importance. Ideally, all important facilities would be quickly located and secured. Ultimately the Halo's control room could provide all the necessary information and some of the critical functions the humans sought. Despite much searching, the ring's library, control room and monitor were still yet to be located by mid-March. On Alpha, Delta, and Gamma Halos the control room had been the largest uniform structure near the phase pulse generators, which also remained undiscovered. As for the lack of a monitor, Lamb wondered if perhaps there simply may not be one or if it might be hiding for some reason. Mann figured that if it were hiding, one obvious reason for it to do so would be the recent history humanity and the Covenant shared with the Halo rings. A monitor remaining hidden didn't sound consistent with the historic understanding they had of the ancillas, but both men had to admit consistency was by no means mandatory and that it was possible this ring had been made differently for reasons they didn't understand. This early into the ring's exploration it was already apparent that clear and subtle differences distinguished it from the others in the Array, after all. Some clear differences on a meta level dealt with the physical infrastructure and material composition of the ring itself, but other far subtler ones involved things like the architectural aesthetics of various building structures and machinery or even the machine language of its distributed systems. Zeta Halo, as a whole, was unlike any other such installation anyone was familiar with. Mann and Lamb theorized that it may have been constructed before all the others, incorporating lessons learned from previous Halo architecture, or that it could have come first and served as a sort of prototype. It was not until much later that year that a data drop recovered from deep space revealed the real reasons for Installation 07's marked differences.

By October 2558 Zeta Halo's caretaker protocols were still impossible to predict or control and both its monitor and library remained elusive. These oddities left many questions yet unanswered as to the function and role of the ring within the larger array. By then, the contingent occupying Zeta Site had taken on a military character in addition to a scientific one.

Personnel
The Zeta Halo Project is headed by Doctor Bob Casper, its manager. Naturally, Doctor Luther Mann's participation was not only welcomed, but insisted upon by top individuals within ONI. By March of 2555 he had joined an expedition on the ring that also included Henry Lamb of ONI's Xeno-Materials Exploitation Group. There was no human more conversant with or qualified to study and if possible, fix, Forerunner technology at the time than Lamb. By this point at least three-hundred individuals were exploring different areas of the ring, each looking for something else. All had received security clearances at the highest levels. Specialists in planetary engineering studied biomes which had been seeded there from other worlds long ago. Others explored flora; others fauna. Some, such as Doctor Mann, had a particular interest in Forerunner language, an understanding of which was indispensable for the effort to unlock Zeta Halo's secrets. The ring was divided into sectors which could be assigned to specific explorers, teams, or archaeological parties.

List of appearances

 * Halo: Hunters in the Dark
 * Halo Mythos
 * Halo: Official Spartan Field Manual