Fernando Esparza

"This is UNSC Pelican Echo 216. Can you hear me?"

- Echo 216's pilot tries to hail a friendly signal. The Pelican Echo 216 is piloted by a serviceman of the United Nations Space Command Armed Forces who, at some point following the advent of late 2561, had a chance encounter with Spartan-II John-117 after being stranded in his dropship for some time around a shattered Halo ring.

Biography
"We lost. Lost everything. There's nothing left for us here. I don't even know where here is."

- The pilot lets the Chief know about their present situation. At some point around late 2561 this pilot was asleep in the cockpit of his Pelican around a Halo ring when a shaking of craft and repeated warnings suddenly woke him. Pressure was building in multiple lines but he managed to initiate a protocol which caused the warnings to cease. Just then, however, a piece of debris impacted Echo 216's rear, creating a breach. Her pilot rushed to seal it and was successful in doing so, but in the process he slipped and fell from the box he had been standing on to reach it. When he hit the floor a recording device came out of his pocket and rolled away. This device—containing a recorded message from his wife and daughter—was a small comfort to him over the weeks which followed, during which time he remained stranded in the Pelican near the broken ring.

Eventually, after repeated viewings of the same message his recording device lost power. It was almost immediately after this, however, that Echo 216 alerted him to the presence of a signal with a friendly designation. He raced to the cockpit and hailed the signal, but before he could identify himself twice he wiped away frost on the cockpit window to reveal an armored Spartan floating nearby: Master Chief Petty Officer John-117.

The pilot restored power to the Spartan's MJOLNIR Powered Assault Armor (GEN3), reviving the Master Chief. Upon the Spartan's awakening, the pilot would express joy at the prospect of being able to make it home, and proceed to attempt to help with John's armor diagnostics before being asked for a status report. The pilot would simply respond saying that "we've lost everything". When the Pelican was hit by an EMP, the pilot would show fear at "them", before proceeding to lock himself in the Pelican's cockpit as John-117 opened the dropship's troop deployment bay for EVA.

Production notes

 * The pilot was first revealed in the Halo Infinite - E3 2019 - Discover Hope Trailer, in which he rescues John-117 from space. He was confirmed to be a new character for Halo Infinite in a blog post on Halo Waypoint on the same day.
 * He has the Human-Covenant war era UNSC insignia on his shoulder, rather than the post-war era emblem.

List of appearances

 * Halo Infinite