Shiela Polaski

Petty Officer Second Class Shiela Polaski  was a blonde-haired UNSC Petty Officer Second Class assigned to the 23rd Naval Air Squadron in 2552. She was stationed aboard the UNSC Pillar of Autumn as a Pelican pilot. When that vessel fled the Battle of Reach and ended up at Installation 04, Polaski survived the Autumn's crash landing.

She was never mentioned during The Battle of Installation 04 but was among the handful of survivors who fled in a Pelican when the Halo was destroyed. She, Lieutenant Elias Haverson, Staff Sergeant Avery Johnson, and Corporal Locklear hid in the debris field until they met with SPARTAN-117 and Cortana in their Longsword fighter. Despite the harrowing experience of Installation 04, she was relatively levelheaded. At some point, Locklear developed a crush on her. She apparently returned his feelings.

She helped the Chief capture the Covenant flagship Ascendant Justice. She then learned to pilot its Covenant Dropships, and when they returned to Reach, she piloted the ship to the surface so they could locate the Spartans who had survived the fall of Reach.

When they returned to the Ascendant Justice and were caught in an anomalous Slipspace bubble, Polaski volunteered to pilot the Spartans outside the vessel to conduct extra-vehicular repairs. She was killed along with SPARTAN-044 and SPARTAN-008 when a renegade charge of plasma flash-vaporized the dropship's cockpit.

It is possible that she or Haverson are the other soldier behind the Chief on the cover of First Strike, because the only other soldier is Johnson, and neither of the featured soldiers looks remotely like him.

It is also possible that the weapon that she uses to kill the elite in the first section of the book may be the first sighting of the M6C Pistol chronologically. Since it took ten rounds to break the shield and two headshots to kill it, it may have been the M6C pistol. Also, she was a navy flier, which meant that the best weapons would have been reserved for the Marines, ODSTs, and Spartans that were onboard.