Kalmiya

Kalmiya was a "smart" artificial intelligence construct created by Dr. Catherine Halsey. She served as a host for prototype routines to test the software intrusion routines and software that would later be integrated into the specialized AI, Cortana. In a sense, Kalmiya was Cortana's older "sister."

UNSC protocol demands that prototypes such as Kalmiya must be destroyed promptly after their material goes into general use. Dr. Halsey promptly disobeyed this order. She kept Kalmiya around, likely because her previous AIs, Déjà and Cortana, had been reassigned (to an unknown position and as John-117's attaché, respectively.)

Kalmiya resided in Halsey's office in ONI's CASTLE Base. She was left there with Dr. Halsey during the Fall of Reach and proved very useful in helping Halsey and her Spartans escape the facility.

She was somewhat disturbed, though, when Dr. Halsey used a hidden fail-safe to destroy Colonel Ackerson's personal AI, Araquiel: she asked if her own code included such a fail-safe. Dr. Halsey carefully told her (Kalmiya would possibly stress-analyze her voice to verify that she wasn't lying) that not every A.I. had the fail-safe, which was the truth, just not the whole truth. Kalmiya had to be destroyed as part of Operation: WHITE GLOVE to prevent the Covenant from collecting any information in the base. Dr. Halsey activated the fail-safe in her Riemann Matrix, revealing to her that not every A.I. has such a fail-safe, only the ones that matter.

Trivia

 * "Whateverittakes" (Whatever it takes) was the nullification code for Kalmiya's ethics subroutines.
 * Kalmiya was a potential alternative vessel for the Forerunner data found at the Babd Catha Forerunner Complex, however Halsey wasn't confident trusting humanity's only hope for salvation to an obsolete AI, and instead opted to split Cortana for the task.

List of appearances

 * Halo: First Strike
 * Dr. Halsey's personal journal