Talitha Macer

Private First Class Talitha Macer is a member of the Sedran Colonial Guard.

Early life and career
Talitha Macer was born on the struggling Outer Colony of Sedra in 2537. When she was nine years old, Macer's father, who served in the Sedran Colonial Guard, was killed during a sting operation to infiltrate a weapon smuggling ring. After her father's death, Macer was raised in a rough neighborhood and while in secondary school she began to associate with street gangs. After a number of encounters with the local law enforcement, mostly for petty crimes, she was detained in a youth detention facility for a year. As a result of her time in the correctional facility Macer began to rethink her life and with a new sense of purpose, enlisted in the Colonial Guard to honor her late father. She enrolled in the youth wing of the Sedran Colonial Guard at the age of thirteen and quickly proved her abilities as both a combatant and a pilot. She was involved in a number of operations to against local criminals, in particular smugglers and narcotics dealers, as well as several orbital defense operations against pirates over a period of two years. By the age of age nineteen, she had risen to the rank of private first class and reported directly to Colonel Aiken.

Alpha Shard
On February 7, 2556, Sedra City was attacked by terrorists with a new type of biological weapon. Macer and the Colonial Guard were forced to work with an Office of Naval Intelligence unit, led by Jameson Locke, to stop the terrorists. It was discovered that the bioweapon was created from an element native to Alpha Shard, a partially intact segment of Installation 04, which had attempted an emergency slipspace jump during its destruction years prior. Macer was picked to be part of a team that would travel to the shard, capture the smugglers who mined the element, and destroy the deposits with a HAVOK tactical nuclear weapon. During the trip to Alpha Shard on a Sedran D81-LRT Condor dropship, Macer conversed with Lieutenant Commander Locke, who revealed to her that Colonel Aiken was once a SPARTAN-II.

Macer initially copiloted the joint team's Condor during their operations on Alpha Shard, which led to some of the ONI agents calling her a "glorified bus driver". While the ground team were returning to the Condor after capturing the two smugglers who were obtaining the exotic element, a Lekgolo swarm attacked the Condor. The craft was quickly plunged out of control and Macer was thrown out before the Condor was sent crashing into a distant canyon. Although several Sedrans were killed in the attack, Macer managed to escape along with the other survivors.

It became apparent that with the Condor out of commission, the smugglers' two-seated would be their only means of escape, meaning that only two individuals would make it off Alpha Shard. Regardless of this, Aiken maintained that the decision of who would get left behind would be made after the mission was complete. The group then removed their armor to avoid detection by the Lekgolo swarms and moved out toward the Condor's crash site. After they had break to refill on fresh oxygen, the Lekgolo attacked again and Locke's foot became pinned under a rock. Against Colonel Aiken's and Locke's urging to the contrary, Macer rushed to help Locke. She managed to free Locke after sacrificing one of the oxygen packs to distract the Lekgolo and the two successfully reunited with the rest.

The group made it to the Condor's crash site after negotiating a cliff, but the ONI team's Michael Horrigan and Gregory Ramos betrayed the others, intending to return to the smugglers' tug and use one of the smugglers, Arris Le, to activate the autopilot's biometric scanner. Still intending to finish the mission, Macer, Aiken and Locke made it to the Condor and discovered the craft was still operational enough to make it to the smugglers' tug. However, this required cannibalizing the fuel cell of the HAVOK nuclear warhead, which meant that one of the three would have to remain behind to detonate the nuke. It was determined that Aiken would be the one to stay behind; while it appeared that this was decided by luck, using red and white beads from Aiken's daughter's necklace, Aiken cheated as he had intended to sacrifice himself all along.

Piloted by Macer, the barely flight-capable Condor took her and Locke to the smugglers' freighter. Macer was lightly injured in the crash but with help by Locke, the two made it to the tug and successfully escaped just as Aiken detonated the HAVOK, leaving Macer and Locke as the sole survivors of the mission.

Personality and traits
Macer is a competent and determined soldier with a strong sense of loyalty. She is particularly intelligent and resourceful, possessing an innate talent as a pilot as well as an interest in aeronautics and physics, which she studied at a very young age. During her service to the Colonial Guard, she became a sort of protégé to the Guard's commander, Colonel Randall Aiken. While loyal to Aiken and her homeworld, she is not as resentful to the United Nations Space Command as most of the Sedran Colonial Guard. She is also noted for her curiosity and her ambition to advance in her military career, viewing the cooperation with Locke's team as an opportunity to prove herself. Although distrustful of Locke at first, she eventually came to trust him over the course of the group's struggle to survive on the Alpha Halo fragment.

Trivia

 * Macer is the female lead in Halo: Nightfall in which she is portrayed by English actress Christina Chong.
 * Her blood type is AB+.

List of appearances

 * Halo: Nightfall