Grace-093

Grace-093 was a SPARTAN-II supersoldier. She was the SPARTAN-IIs' principal explosives expert. During Operation: SILENT STORM in early 2526, she served as part of Gold Team, led by Joshua-029.

Conscription and training
Grace-093 was a genetically, intellectually, and physically gifted child chosen for the SPARTAN-II project. She was abducted by the Office of Naval Intelligence and replaced with a flash clone when she was around six years old. She and seventy-four other children were taken to Reach in the Epsilon Eridani system. There, she was trained by the "dumb"AI,Déjà and Chief Petty Officer Franklin Mendez, with the two serving as the Spartans' teacher and drill instructor, respectively. In 2519, she was taken alongside her fellow trainees to a Military Wilderness Training Preserve for a mission that required each trainee to be left alone in the woods with a only a single piece of a map. It was up to them to find one another so that they could piece the map together and locate the designated extraction point. The mission was ultimately a success. At another point during training, Grace and the others traveled to Emerald Cove for an underwater mission. There, they abandoned Mendez and lived on their own on an island for a few days. By July 14, 2523, Grace and her fellow Spartan-IIs had begun facing the formidable and ruthless UNSC Marine Corps' Tango Company in simulated war games. On March 9, 2525, Grace and the rest of the Spartan-II candidates underwent their augmentation procedures at Medical Facility Endurance orbiting Reach. After successfully enduring the procedures, Grace later attended a military funeral aboard the carrier, the UNSC Atlas, in the Lambda Serpentis system for the Spartans who died during the process. Afterwards, they all returned to Reach for their final training phase in the Highland Mountains.

War with the Covenant
After the Covenant attack on Harvest and the beginning of the Human-Covenant War, Grace and the rest of the Spartan-IIs were brought to the Reach FLEETCOM Military Complex, where Rear Admiral Michael Stanforth and the AI, Beowulf, briefed them on the Covenant. In response, the training of Grace and the rest of the Spartan-IIs was accelerated, and the Spartans were sent to Chi Ceti IV in the Chi Ceti system to receive their new MJOLNIR Powered Assault Armor from the Damascus Materials Testing Facility in order to combat the alien threat. While en route to Chi Ceti IV aboard the Paris-class heavy frigate, the, they were attacked by the Covenant warship, Unrelenting. The Commonwealth was able to ward off the Unrelenting and the Spartans were deployed to Chi Ceti IV with Halsey, where they each received a set of armor. While the Spartans were returning to the Commonwealth, the Unrelenting returned and engaged the frigate. To provide aid to the Commonwealth, John-117 had Grace and the other Spartan-IIs use thruster packs to embark towards the Unrelenting so that they could destroy the warship with Anvil-II AS missiles, though only John, Kelly-087, and Samuel-034 made it aboard. Grace and the others missed the Unrelenting, but were picked up after the battle.

Netherop
By early 2526, Grace had been assigned to Gold Team, led by Joshua-029. On March 5, Grace, her teammates, and eight other Spartans were organized into an assault squad led by John-117 with orders to board and capture a Covenant frigate, Radiant Arrow, orbiting the planet Netherop. To accomplish this, they were all deployed from the prowler for an EVA boarding action. Using a flight of Type-27 Banshees for cover, the Spartans stealthily approached the alien vessel. They boarded the frigate via its underslung hangar and eliminated the Covenant forces stationed there without the rest of crew realizing they had been boarded. As Blue and Green Teams pushed further into the alien vessel, John instructed Gold Team to collect weapons and corpses to be piled into the Banshees, which would then be pushed out into space for ONI to recover later on for study. Once that task was completed, Grace and her team acted as support for Blue and Green, watching their backs. As the two forward teams continued on, a sensor operator aboard one of the prowlers "accidentally" broadcast a transmission on the Spartans' SQUADCOM, revealing their presence to the frigate's crew. Unbeknownst to them, the crewman's apparent mistake was part of an insurrectionist plot designed by Hector Nyeto, who intended to get the Spartans killed. With their presence known, Blue and Green Teams split up, with John leading his team to the bridge. John was unable to prevent the frigate's shipmaster from activating a self-destruct sequence, forcing him to order all of his teammates to abandon ship immediately. All of the Spartans—including Grace—made it to safety before the Radiant Arrow detonated.

SILENT STORM
On March 8, 2526, Grace, Gold Team, and the other Spartans that had participated in the pervious mission were given a new assignment as part of Operation: SILENT STORM. They and the UNSC Marine Corps' 21st Space Assault Battalion would board and destroy Covenant vessels and stations in an attempt to slow their destructive advance through humanity's Outer Colonies. For the duration of this mission, the Spartans would be assigned to Task Force Yama, a small fleet of prowlers that would serve as both transport and support. As a Covenant fleet was currently glassing the colony of Etalan, the nearby world of Biko was chosen as the theater for the task force to launch its first attack. Specifically, an abandoned ice quarry on its third moon of Seoba was selected to house the prowlers until the moment presented itself.

During the voyage through slipspace, Grace and the others trained with the ODSTs in the 's mission preparation hold. The Spartans made short work of the veteran marines in each exercise until Staff Sergeant Avery Johnson taught them some unorthodox strategies that proved to be much more effective against the supersoldiers. After four days of training, Colonel Marmon Crowther had them all gather in the ship's drop hangar to be briefed on the specifics of the operation. Despite their exemplary performance against his ODSTs, Crowther was still skeptical about deploying the Spartans to the front lines due to their inexperience on the battlefield, as well as their apparent young age, much to their frustration. Grace's squadmate, Daisy-023, was particularly vocal in her dissatisfaction.

Seoba
Upon the task force's arrival at Seoba on March 18, 2526, Colonel Crowther planned to practice the mass deployment of the Spartans and ODSTs into the ice quarry, in an exercise dubbed Operation: ICE DANCE. However, entrenched insurrectionist forces were detected in the quarry, and they were preparing to stage a coup against Biko's chancellor. Crowther decided that ICE DANCE would proceed as planned, but now with the objective of taking the quarry from the rebels. An intense battle ensued, with the Spartans leading the way. Blue Team focused on destroying a convoy of Civets moving to repair the rebels' damaged communications relay as the other Spartans—including Grace and Gold Team—were engaged elsewhere. Ultimately, the insurgents were soon defeated and the quarry fell under UNSC control.

The next day, Captain Halima Ascot, commander of Task Force Yama and captain of the Starry Night, held a meeting to discuss the events of the previous day's battle. John was reprimanded for his maverick actions at the start of the battle, and his Spartans' experience was called into question once more. Due to some of Nyeto's sly comments, the truth about their young ages was revealed to the few personnel present at the meeting. Learning this disturbing fact, Colonel Crowther refused to send the Spartans into battle again, instead ordering them to guard the insurrectionists captured during the fighting and prepare them to be sent to Biko to be processed. While this meeting was being held, a Covenant flotilla was detected as it arrived in-system and began heading for Seoba. As the rest of Task Force Yama mobilized to meet the alien vessels, Grace and the other Spartans were sent to Subsurface Maintenance Grotto 6M430 where they would direct the captured insurgents onto a transport. While the line of roughly 300 prisoners marched onto the vessel, John noticed that a group of them were hiding the presence of an officer, General Harper Garvin of the United Rebel Front. He ordered the officer to step forward, but another rebel presented herself instead, clearly trying to stall for Garvin. To show that he meant business, John grabbed the woman by her tunic lapels and threatened her with summary execution for interfering with a guard while on the field of combat, as per the UNSC Military Code of Conduct. John's plan worked and General Garvin presented himself. He began trying to pry information out of John, but this effort was interrupted when a situation with Captain Ascot's flagship was relayed over the task force's command channel. The Starry Night had been shot down on takeoff, crash-landing back into the quarry. Crowther was unable to send a unit of his Black Daggers to search for survivors without putting more prowlers at risk. Since they were the only unit available to assist, John decided that he and his Spartans would go for the Starry Night once the transport was loaded. After sending Garvin back to his people and ordering the transport pilot to launch, John had his Spartans move out, much to the concern of Joshua-029 and Kurt-051. Not only would they be disobeying a direct order from Crowther, operating without the support of the task force in such a situation would be very risky.

The Fall of Reach
During the Covenant's invasion of Reach, she was designated Red-Twenty Three and assigned to Red Team under Frederic-104 team by John-117. Their mission was to defend the generators for the orbital MAC guns around Reach. As their Pelican, Bravo 001 was descending to the surface, it was shot down by Covenant AA plasma fire, and their pilot Mitchell was killed. The Spartans were forced to jump to the surface of the planet, gaining many injuries and a few deaths.

Grace was then assigned to "Gamma" team, along with Anton-044 and Li-008. They were sent to evacuate Vice Admiral Whitcomb. They found him but were unable to rally with the rest of the Spartans due to Covenant activity. They then retreated to Camp Independence, where they broadcast Oly Oly Oxen Free and went on hit and run missions for three weeks until they were found by John who recognized the Oly Oly Oxen Free tune. They then proceeded to rescue "Alpha" and "Delta" teams from the Forerunner caves beneath CASTLE Base. Grace then boarded a captured Spirit and went to the captured Ascendant Justice, under control of the AI Cortana.

The vessel then became trapped and ensnared when it tried to jump into Slipspace. The Forerunner crystal Dr. Halsey found warped Slipspace into an anomalous Slipspace bubble, and several Elite survivors of the ship sabotaged its main drive conduit. Grace was designated Blue-Six during this operation. Despite the rogue plasma and an ambush by the Elites, Grace managed to survive, as did John-117, Frederic-104, and William-043. However, Anton-044, Li-008, and Petty Officer Second Class Polaski did not survive.

Operation: FIRST STRIKE
Grace then participated in Operation: FIRST STRIKE, boarding the Covenant space station Unyielding Hierophant with the other Spartans. However, as they entered a temple, they were ambushed by Brutes. Three rounds from a Brute Shot hit Grace in the stomach, and blew her midsection apart, killing her. John was forced to activate the fail-safe detonation system on her MJOLNIR armor, and it self-destructed the armor's fusion pack. She took out four Elites and a dozen Grunts in her "funeral pyre". John thought Grace would have liked that.

Personality and description
Grace was the Spartan-IIs' explosives expert. She could shape a charge to cut into a single steel bolt with only a whisper of sound, or rig a hundred thousand litres of kerosene to blow into a "firestorm from hell". Ironically, her temper was nonexistent. It seems that she liked calamari, a type of seafood, which she fondly remembered eating during one the Spartans' training missions on Emerald Cove.

List of appearances

 * Halo: First Strike
 * Halo: Silent Storm