Vaughan

Major Vaughan, called the Mustang, is a human officer of the UNSC Marine Corps and a company commander within the Orbital Drop Shock Troopers. He is the commanding officer of Boomerang Company, an element of the 9th Shock Troops Battalion assigned to, and personally leads the company's command squad Sunray 1-1.

Early life and career
Vaughan was born to a family of politicians and corporate executives on Earth, and lived his early life in luxury and privilege in some of Earth's most prestigious arcologies. He was rebellious in his youth, and an escalated family argument led to Vaughan enlisting in the UNSC Marine Corps. After being accelerated through boot camp during the height of the Insurrection, Vaughan had no time to regret his decision before being deployed in combat against terrorists and insurgent movements throughout the Outer Colonies.

His first duty station as a fresh recruit was aboard, an old colony ship retasked with transporting UNSC military and police forces to colonies it once helped establish. Vaughan found his first assignment rather ironic, given the role his own family played in exacerbating tensions across the colonies.

Human-Covenant War
In the early years of the Human-Covenant War, Vaughn had become a commissioned officer within the Marines' Orbital Drop Shock Troopers. He soon found himself stationed aboard Spirit of Fire again assigned to the 9th Shock Troops Battalion, serving as the commanding officer of the unit's Boomerang Company.

Aboard Spirit of Fire, Vaughn served in several campaigns against the Covenant throughout the Outer Colonies, namely the Harvest campaign in February 2531. His assignment aboard Spirit of Fire later led to Vaughn participating in the Battle for Arcadia, and finally a battle over the Forerunner shield world, Trove. During the battle, Spirit of Fire had sacrificed her slipspace drive to prevent the shield world from falling into the Covenant's hands, and Vaughn was forced to enter cryosleep alongside the rest of the crew while they awaited rescue drifting through space.

Installation 00
On 2559, Vaughan woke up from cryosleep after 28 years of drifting in space, arriving at the Forerunner Installation 00, where he fought against the Banished during the battle for the Ark. Vaughan partook in Operation: SPEARBREAKER in May 2559, deploying onto the Ark's North Spire at 0247 hours via an M8900 Human Entry Vehicle alongside Warrant Officer Quinn, Petty Officer Gruss, Corporal Turpin, and Lance Corporal Sparks, and tasked with halting Colony's plan. Vaughan led Sunray in the field, frequently conversing with WO Quinn and reporting back to Spirit of Fire command. Sunray 1-1 were ultimately able to capture a number of the Forerunner control towers projecting a cloaking field around the target site and destroy a Banished Outpost and a Retriever Sentinel, with the collapse of the cloaking field revealing the target of Colony's operation - a dormant currently being assembled inside a subsurface dock.

With the path to the Despair fighter clear, Sunray proceeded to advance to the target. Spirit of Fire command noted that their reconnaissance D81-LRT Condor had imaged several charging columns feeding energy into the fighter, leading Sunray to begin targeting the columns to buy time for their assault force to reach the construction site. The team were ultimately successful in cutting off the fighter's power feed, allowing a flight of AV-14B Hornets to attack the site with an air strike.

Upon returning from their successful mission, Sunray wasted no time in moving on to meet additional challenges. Deployed into some of the most hostile, Banished-occupied areas of Installation 00, Sunray has encountered hostile resistance from Warlords, Sentinels, and Forerunner armiger contingents alike. Sunray's most recent missions involve the elimination of Banished commanders identified by Isabel as being critical to Atriox's attempts to harness the Ark's power. Shortly after SPEARBREAKER, Major Vaughan led Sunray on a successful clandestine assassination of a Jiralhanae captain.

Personality and traits
As the commanding officer of Boomerang Company, Vaughn and his Orbital Drop Shock Troopers consider the unit to be the most elite force of ODSTs within the entire United Nations Space Command, a common sentiment held by all ODSTs for their respective units. Rebellious in his youth, Vaughan considers his enlistment with the UNSC Marine Corps to be both the best and worst decision he made in his life. Vaughan takes solace in the fact that his military career is definitely not the course his family had pre-charted for him. He rarely speaks of the dog tags he carries with him, and his fellow ODSTs know not to ask about them. Vaughan has a long history of service together on Spirit of Fire with Warrant Officer Quinn.

Although currently one of the highest ranking officers aboard Spirit of Fire, Vaughn avoids strategy and high-level operational planning, preferring to leave it to the "experts". As an ODST, he considers his place to be in a drop pod headed into battle.

Equipment
Major Vaughan arms himself with a M41 SPNKR rocket launcher, stylized with a hand-painted mustang, emblematic of his early career as an enlisted Marine. He occasionally uses the rocket launcher as a blunt teaching instrument to knock sense into younger Orbital Drop Shock Troopers. Vaughan always keeps spare chemical light sticks on hand for situations where other methods of signaling are unusable or unsafe.

Halo Wars 2
In Halo Wars 2: Operation: SPEARBREAKER's campaign, Vaughan is one of the ODSTs present in the Sunray 1-1 hero unit. For gameplay information on Sunray 1-1, see here.

List of appearances

 * Halo Wars 2
 * Halo Wars 2: Operation: SPEARBREAKER