Anki Hersh

Lieutenant Anki Hersh is a United Nations Space Command naval officer and the senior intelligence analyst onboard the. She led a number of signals intelligence (SIGINT) teams during Operation: RETRIBUTION, a mission in December 2553 to rescue the kidnapped family members of a murdered Vice Admiral and exact vengeance for her death. The mission changed when it became evident the family had been taken for the purpose of harvesting antibodies they possessed which granted them protection from asteroidea merozoite. Throughout, Hersh and her teams intercepted and analyzed signals, devised ways to plant hidden recording devices behind enemy lines, and explained intelligence findings to the captain, crew, and mission attachés present.

Biography
"Piers Ewen"

- Anki Hersh

On December 12, 2553, the Silent Joe was present in high equatorial orbit over Venezia. Operation: RETRIBUTION had been set into motion four days prior in response to the likilhood that the recent murder of Vice Admiral Graselyn Tuwa and kidnapping of her family had been undertaken by the Keepers of the One Freedom. On Venezia, two teams were meant to convincingly stage a fight that would make one of them seem like credible enemies of the UNSC and gain passage and undercover access to Salvation Base, a relatively new but yet unknown base of operations for the faction. To make the base's discovery possible, Hersh directed her team to modify a standard starship emergency locator beacon and disguise it as a HAVOK nuclear device (one of ten which the Ferrets would pass off as having stolen from the UNSC). The urgency of the mission did not allow field testing of their creation, dubbed a "slipbeacon", and Hersh was not entirely confident that it would work. Following success on the surface, the three Spartan-IIs of Blue Team returned to the Silent Joe while the "Ferret" team led by Veta Lopis settled in among Kig-Yar on the Stolen Faith. Anki Hersh met the Spartans in the hangar deck alongside Rear Admiral Serin Osman and the ship's captain, Piers Ewen. Hersh informed them that the spy gnats planted by Ash-G099 had been planted and were already transmitting recordings in randomly-timed microbursts. To demonstrate this, she played audio that included a conversation between the Stolen Faith's Chur'R and an underling. The Kig-Yar had discussed killing their human passengers while they slept with "the gas", which Hersh believed must be a reference to ostanalus. She doubted that Veta would be able to see the betrayal coming but Frederic-104 adamantly argued that she and her team could look out for themselves and would survive this. Osman and Ewen listened to Fred and decided not to pull the Ferrets out at that instance.

Fred had been right, and by the next day the Silent Joe exited slipspace near Pydoryn in the Shaps system, having followed a transmission sent from the slipbeacon. At that time Anki and other SIGINT personnel were able to download backlogged data from the spy gnats. Through what had been recorded, they learned that though they had beat the mudoat starsloop's backstabbing crew, they had been taken as prisoners by the Keepers of the One Freedom on the surface of Taram, one of Pydoryn's moons. The gnats had also been discovered by the enemy, which was clear from a translated conversation between Jiralhanae that referred to them as "midges". With the current status of the Ferrets uncertain, there was disagreement in the situation room about whether it was worth the risk to ping their TEAMCOM from the prowler. When asked, Hersh assured Captain Ewen that such an action would expose them to Keeper fleet but might not necessarily mean they would be found, though that was also likely. Ultimately, Ewen decided to take the chance and ordered Lieutenant Hersh to ping the Ferrets. Doing so broadcast the voice of Olivia-G291 from the room's ceiling speakers, but she was cut off unexpectedly after a brief few seconds of speaking. Hersh believed that the A.I. of the Turaco she was transmitting from was responsible. Following this, the Keepers managed to triangulate the Silent Joe's position as Hersh had feared. Relocating meant that new navigation data would need to be loaded into the Shivas' guidance systems. This suggested to Hersh that they should fire at the base then, but was astonished when the captain ordered all the missiles to be stood down. Hersh openly questioned his choice, arguing that they had exposed themselves and might not get a better opportunity. Ewen countered that the Joe was still a stealth craft and that they had a mission to complete.

After the Ferrets were exfiltrated with the bodies of the captured Tuwas and the Turaco, which had been stolen by Dark Moon Enterprises, was recaptured, Hersh put her best team to the task of retrieving its navigation history. By the time a meeting on what to do next was convened within the Silent Joe's wardroom, they had not had any success and the lieutenant did not believe they would. Further into the discussion, she agreed with Ash that a large vessel in a holding pattern wouldn't have escaped notice by all the anti-pirate assets the UNSC had in the Isbanola sector, and thus the evidence indicated it was likely that the Tuwas had been taken to a planet or other body with its own true gravity well. Veta had taken samples of tread castings left at Salvation Base by the footwear of the Dark Moon operatives there, and she asked Hersh about the analysis being performed on them. Despite not having an astrogeologist aboard, one of Hersh's materials technicians was an amateur mineralogist. By cross-referencing the samples with the botanical surveys used by bioprospectors on the Outer Colony of Gao, Hersh thought they might be able to tell whether the operatives had come from there. She did caution, however, that even this may not be of much use without a comparative database.

Appearance and traits
Anki Hersh is a tiny, dark-haired brunette woman. Fred-104 believes that it seems as if attention usually seems focused ten minutes into the future. She wears an oversized TACPAD strapped to one of her forearms. As the senior intelligence analyst on the, she spends most of her time monitoring intercepts in the Signals Intelligence Suite.

Trivia
"Anki" is a name of Dutch origin. The surname "Hersh" is Yiddish.

List of appearances

 * Halo: Retribution