Kurt Ambrose

"Die? Didn't you know? Spartans never die."

- Kurt's last and most memorable line. Spoken to Fleet Master Voro Nar 'Mantakree.

Lieutenant Commander Kurt-051, also known as Kurt Ambrose, (UNSCMID: 045888947) was a SPARTAN-II super-soldier. One of the leaders of the Spartan team, he was close to many of the other Spartans, before he went missing during a mission in 2531. Although the other Spartans were lead to believe that Kurt had died, he was actually recruited by Colonel James Ackerson to spearhead the SPARTAN-III program. "Ambrose" is not his true surname; rather Colonel Ackerson gave it to him after his abduction, due to the fact that thanks to the extensive mental conditioning involved in the SPARTAN-II program, Kurt actually could not remember his full name.

Personality and Description
Kurt was unusually sociable for a Spartan and considered the well being of his team mates more important than that of his commanding officers. Where the rest of his teammates were closely guarded and private, unless around other Spartans, Kurt spent a considerable amount of time making friends. This made some of his fellow Spartans uneasy, as they were not comfortable with a leader who was so easily distracted. Still, Kurt was an extremely proficient leader. After his indoctrination into the SPARTAN-III program, his leadership qualities became even more pronounced.

Kurt had an uncanny ability to "feel" traps, and avoid walking into them. When something was wrong, Kurt would often get a bad feeling. When John-117 and Kurt were on separate teams during training, John often lost as a result of Kurt's feelings. His teammates grew to view this as an asset, trusting Kurt's instincts and common sense.

Kurt was among the best of the SPARTAN-IIs, right next to John-117 in skill and superiority. Kurt, Fred-104 and Fhajad-084 are the only SPARTAN-IIs to make the rank of an Officer, Lieutenant Commander Kurt by "courtesy" of Colonel Ackerson.

Early Childhood
When he was marked as physically and mentally superior by Dr. Catherine Halsey in 2517, she had him abducted and sent to Reach to begin his Spartan training. As with the other candidates to become Spartans, he was replaced with a flash clone that would appear to die of natural causes, just like all the other future Spartans replacements. Not much is known of Kurt's early training, except that he would often beat John and his team in training.

Early Career
During training, he often was selected to lead Green Team in field exercises, in which he won almost every course. He graduated with the rest of the Spartans in 2525 after augmentation. After the death of Sam-034 during the Battle of Chi Ceti, Kurt replaced Sam on Blue Team under John-117's leadership and command. At first, his fellow teammates were uneasy and apprehensive with the transition, but their minds were changed on a mission to Camp New Hope to recover nuclear warheads. There Kurt's "feelings" saved the rest of the Spartans from being captured by the URF General Howard Graves. Graves' ingenious plan to use a gravity disruptor to fool their armor into thinking gravity had increased, therefore knocking them unconscious, then keeping them immobile with neural disruption collars had worked, and John, Kelly, Fred, and Linda were trapped in Graves' clutches. Kurt saved them with four Asteroidea anti-personnel mines, then removed their collars and got them out in a patchwork Warthog. Any mixed feelings John had previously vanished. John told Kurt never to hide his "feelings" again, and Kelly, better with words than John, told him "Welcome to Blue, Spartan. I know we'll make a great team."

Disappearance
Soon after, Kurt disappeared during an extravehicular mission to Station Delphi to investigate a ruptured Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engine when his T-PACK "malfunctioned", sending him spinning away into deep space. He was listed as MIA and presumed dead. However he had actually been recruited by Colonel James Ackerson he was given a new surname and an officer's commission, as Lieutenant, Junior Grade Kurt Ambrose and sent to Onyx to train the Spartan-IIIs. Over time, he was promoted for his successful efforts in training the new Spartans, eventually reaching the rank of Lieutenant Commander.

Onyx
At the outbreak of hostilities in Zone-67, Kurt regrouped with Tom-B292 and Lucy-B091, the last two remaining Spartans of Beta Company, and opted to use the SPI armor used by the Spartan-IIIs instead of his superior Mark IV armor (which he had upgraded) as he told Lucy that he was one of them now, a Spartan III, once again displaying his utmost concern for the morale of his team. Later on during the battle for Onyx, he reunited with Dr. Halsey and Kelly. Dr. Halsey, along with the help of the ONI AI Endless Summer, was able to send a message through Slipspace by using Cortana's original broadcast from Installation 05. She asked Lord Hood to send Spartans to Onyx in order to acquire possible Forerunner technology. The Spartan-IIs on Earth, Frederic-104, William-043, and Linda-058 infiltrated and captured a Covenant vessel, the Bloodied Spirit, which they took to Onyx where they met Kurt. Kurt then led the Spartans on a mission into the newly uncovered Forerunner city on Onyx to locate the technology Dr. Halsey had been looking for.

The mission was abruptly complicated due to the Covenant fleet led by Voro Nar 'Mantakree locating Onyx and learning of the humans' mission. Kurt and his team managed to acquire information pertaining to Onyx, managed to destroy a Sentinel production factory and locate the missing Spartans of Team Katana. However instead of escaping Kurt led his team towards the Core Room where he realized the true purpose of Onyx as a Shield World. He died in the Core Room Antechamber, saving the lives of the rest of Blue Team by opting to stay outside the rift and fight off the Covenant by detonating two FENRIS Nuclear Warheads. However, he commissioned Fred as an officer before sending them to the shield world in order to give the remaining Spartans a leader to follow.

Death


Kurt was wounded in the torso during combat by a Mgalekgolo. He used biofoam to hold himself together, but the biofoam was melted by a Needler-wielding Unggoy, and despite the fact that Kurt died, he also killed the Unggoy. It is possible that if Kurt still wore his Mark V armor, he may have survived the initial blow and lived up until the activation of the two FENRIS nuclear warheads.

Before detonating the two FENRIS nuclear warheads, Kurt marked the Spartan casualties as MIA - keeping with the policy of never declaring any Spartan KIA - and then did likewise for himself, adding Lieutenant Commander Kurt Ambrose to the list next to SPARTAN-051, Kurt. During this time, he saw all of his former Spartan-III's that were under his command give him the Spartan-II thumbs up, the "can-do" signal, as well as the Spartan-IIs Sam, Li, Grace, Will, and the rest of his fallen friends. Finally, right before detonating the warheads, he told the Sangheili Fleet Master who confronted him: "Die? Didn't you know?...Spartans never die." Shortly after the detonation of the two warheads, the closing of the slipspace rift caused the trillions of Sentinels making up the planet to destroy the crust of the planet, which had been covering the giant sphere made up of Sentinels, who then fired their lasers into space, destroying the Covenant ships and nearly striking the UNSC Prowler Dusk. Meanwhile, the surviving Spartans were shielded in the rift, which is revealed to contain a massive Dyson Sphere within it. It resides within the Core Room Antechamber of the planet, created by the Forerunners as a part of their plan to fight the Flood. The Spartans in the rift never actually left it, but just stayed in it, outside normal space.

Legacy
Kurt, according to John, originally made him uneasy. He did this by taking a lot of time to get to know his teammates on a more personal level. Other Spartan-IIs (Besides Samuel-034) did not care for "friends" as much as he did. He died in the end as a brilliant commander in the eyes of those he had known, and as a noble hero who continued to know his SPARTAN-IIIs and SPARTAN-IIs as comrades and friends, John-117 included.

Trivia

 * The name "Ambrose", the fake last name that was assigned to him, comes from the late Latin or Greek name Ambrosius, which was derived from the Greek name Αμβρόσιος (Αmbrosios) meaning "immortal" which could reference the fact that Spartans are never marked as KIA, in an attempt to uphold the belief that Spartans never die.
 * He could have also been named Ambrose after the late author Stephen Ambrose, who wrote many books about war, his most famous being Band of Brothers. The name of the camp that Kurt trained the SPARTAN-IIIs at, Camp Currahee, is a nod to Band of Brothers.
 * Kurt is the only known SPARTAN-II to wear S.P.I Armor. Because of this, he is the only Spartan-II that did not have any Energy Shields in Halo: Ghosts of Onyx, and did not bother to use the Kig-Yar Point Defense Gauntlet when he used the SPI Armor like the Spartan-IIIs did.
 * He was the highest-ranking Spartan-II in the Halo universe.
 * Kurt, Fred, and John are said to be the "Commanders of the Spartans" leading them, always, into battle in some way, shape, or form.
 * His last words "Die? Didn't you know... Spartans never die." is an obvious reference to the fact that Spartans are never listed KIA (due to UNSC protocols to not decrease civilian morale). These words have become famous in the Halo community.
 * He decided to wear SPI armor instead of MJOLNIR because he felt he would disconnect himself from his Spartan-III's. He felt he no longer belonged in the MJOLNIR armor, despite the vastly greater protection that it would provide him.
 * In Halo: The Fall of Reach, Doctor Catherine Halsey claims that out of the 33 post-augmentation SPARTAN-II's, only three were KIA, one was too wounded to continue active duty, and three were on battlefields too distant to be easily recalled. One of these three KIA SPARTAN's that Halsey mentioned may have been Kurt, due to the fact that his death was faked by Colonel James Ackerson so that Kurt could train the SPARTAN-III's. Halsey and the others had no knowledge of this.