Ngoc Benti

Ngoc Benti was a UNSC Navy corpsman serving aboard the prowler in 2552.

Early life
Benti was born on Earth in a cushy suburban household. This kept her fairly isolated from the war until her enlistment into the UNSC Navy as a Hospital Corpswoman in 2547, though she had close contact with the Marines over time.

The Mona Lisa
On October 25, 2552, Benti was assigned to Sergeant Lopez's Marine detachment when they boarded the prison ship Mona Lisa, unbeknownst to the fact it had been a converted into a laboratory the Office of Naval Intelligence used to experiment on the Flood parasite.

As the Marines boarded the drifting Mona Lisa, they were attacked by a group of unarmed and unarmored Sangheili, which they dispatched with ease. The Marines soon received new orders to enact the Cole Protocol, and split up into two parties. Sergeant Lopez assigned Benti to lead the group sent to purge the ship's secondary NAV database in the engine room, with her team consisting of Clarence, Gersten, Orlav and Tsardikos.

On their way to the engineering, they were engaged by the Flood in the ship's recycling plant, losing Tsardikos, Orlav and Gersten. After escaping the Flood into a maintenance room, they encountered a neurotic prisoner called Patrick Rimmer, accompanied by his companion, a Sangheili he had dubbed "Henry". As they made their way toward the engine room, Rimmer explained them what the Flood were and what had happened on the ship.

In the engine room, they witnessed how their pilot Burgundy was dragged into the proto-Gravemind the Flood were forming around the slipspace drive. Upon hearing Lopez's conversation with the Red Horse crew over the ship's PA system, Benti destroyed the proto-Gravemind with a pair of fragmentation grenades. They then proceeded to regroup with the survivors of Lopez's party near the ship's last remaining escape pods.

On the way to the escape pods, Benti was wounded by a Flood combat form she recognized as Sydney, and soon began showing symptoms of infection. However, she was picked up by Henry, who had already saved her life twice. Once at the airlock, Clarence shot Rimmer, revealing himself to be an ONI operative whose mission was to ensure that no one but the Marines left the ship. During the ensuing standoff, Benti sacrificed her life to save Lopez and "Henry" by pushing herself against Clarence, pinning him down, as they were overtaken by the oncoming Flood horde. As the Flood infection killed her, she tried to hold onto the image of Sergeant Lopez waving goodbye.

Trivia

 * Judging by her name, she may be of partially-Vietnamese descent.
 * Though established to be a Naval corpsman, she is addressed as a "private" several times in The Mona Lisa. This was likely an error on the author's part, but it may have been intentional to exemplify that Benti was as much of a member of the Squad as the others were.
 * Benti smoked cigarettes, and developed cravings during times of stress.

List of appearances

 * Halo: Evolutions - Essential Tales of the Halo Universe
 * The Mona Lisa