Margaret-053

Chief Petty Officer Margaret-053 was a SPARTAN-II supersoldier of the UNSC Naval Special Warfare Command serving under the Office of Naval Intelligence. She was the leader of Team Black, and was designated in the team as Black-One. In armor, she was visually distinguished with the Roman numeral "I" on her visor.

Conscription and training
Margaret was abducted and conscripted into the SPARTAN-II program by Dr. Catherine Halsey in 2517 when she was about six years old. She was then taken to the Reach, and trained by the AI Déjà and CPO Franklin Mendez, along with the rest of the Spartan children.

Margaret-053 was assigned as the leader of Black Team, and trained with the other teams, including Red Team. While in training, she was in a secret relationship with Otto-031. Victor-101 was jealous of Margaret and ratted them out to Chief Mendez, who sent them both to the brig. Red Team tracked Margaret down as team leader and attacked her, claiming they were not taking their training seriously enough. She lost her left eye resisting them. Black Team later got payback, resulting in another ten days in lockup.

In 2525, she and the other candidates underwent a series of augmentations to improve their combat prowess. Margaret and the rest of Black Team washed-out, their bodies initially rejecting the augmentations. Presumably, they were retrained and re-augmented along with some of the other washouts. Following this, Black Team was recruited by the Office of Naval Intelligence for operations that were strictly off the record.

Raid on Verge
During the Human-Covenant War, Margaret led Team Black in various operations against the Covenant. During one of their missions, they destroyed a Covenant base facility, and in another, they boarded a Covenant cruiser using C-12 shaped charges. Another mission for ONI had them sent to Mamore.

In mid-2552, they were sent to destroy a Covenant Beacon in the city of Ciudad de Arias on the former UNSC colony of Verge. After landing on Verge, the team made their way past fortified Covenant anti-aircraft emplacements to the city, where the Beacon was situated. In a skyscraper, they observed a large swarm of Yanme'e, overseen by Kig-Yar and Mgalekgolo guards at the Beacon. Roma-143 then found an injured, apparently non-hostile Yanme'e. The alien, nicknamed "Hopalong", told them of an alternate, hidden route to the Beacon. While Margaret and the rest of the team were suspicious, they decided to trust the Yanme'e.

The next morning, the team proceeded to move to the Beacon through the tunnels. The Spartans eventually reached a large cavern near the Beacon and parted ways, each heading for one of the Beacon's four anti-gravity pylons. After a ten-minute countdown was up, Margaret-053 ordered the rest of the team to engage the guards near the pylons and place their C-12 charges on them. Meanwhile, Hopalong had acquired a Covenant device which it used to free the rest of the Yanme'e. It was then revealed that Hopalong had tricked the Spartans: the Yanme'e, who now started attacking the Spartans and the Covenant, were actually psychopathic prisoners incapable of normal socialization with the rest of their kind.

Margaret ordered the team to return to the rally point at the tunnel entrance, but Roma-143 discovered a better means of escape: an intact underground train. They decided to head to the train, but not before Roma, against Margaret's orders, went to rescue an injured Otto while Margaret and Victor regrouped at the train. While on their way to the train, Roma also detonated the charges on the Beacon, destroying it. Everyone managed to get onboard and they escaped the city as the tunnels caved in under the collapsing Beacon, and headed to a Pelican dropship for exfiltration.

Line Installation 1-4
"Margaret"

- Iona

Some time after the mission on Verge, the ONI-commissioned mining vessel Long Time Coming was ordered to transport Black Team while they were in cryo-stasis. Before the ship could reach its destination, however, it was shot down and crashed on an unidentified moon. The ship's AI, Iona woke the Spartans from their slumber. Roma-143 was then assigned to remain on the Long Time Coming to drop a Slipbeacon while the rest of team moved outside to investigate a nearby structure that appeared to contain breathable atmosphere. Unfortunately, they were ambushed by a group of Covenant, who had also been shot down on the moon. Both groups were then confronted by Forerunner constructs known as Gatherers, who brought Margaret and several Covenant soldiers to a Forerunner complex. Upon arrival, a Forerunner Monitor, 686 Ebullient Prism, greeted them and stated that he was going to dissect all of them to find out if any of them were immune to the Flood.

Luckily, Margaret was able to free herself and a Sangheili named Reff 'Talamee by using her helmet to deflect a laser at one of her ammo magazines lodged in one of the Gatherers. She then grabbed the robot's weapon to use against Ebullient Prism. Once they had avoided and blinded the Monitor, the two discovered the Installation's central control center. Accessing the console, Margaret-053 learned that a Covenant fleet was in proximity to the moon. She tried to contact the rest of her team but Otto and Victor were engaged in a brawl, having been manipulated by Prism into fighting each other. To stop this, Margaret told Victor that she forgave him, giving Otto the opening to jack in Iona's Data Crystal Chip into Victor's MJOLNIR armor, causing an influx of the team's various mission to remind Victor about his family and bring him out of his tantrum.

Margaret-053 was slammed into the console by a Mgalekgolo and knocked out. Reff tried defending to his brother Thon that the Spartan saved him. Thon snapped that he honored the truce he made with the Spartans only to rescue him. He then changed the subject to inquiring how to contact the holy city of High Charity. However, Reff stated that they should instead blow the servants of the Prophets out sky, believing that his kidnapping was the work of destiny. He then killed Thon when his brother attempted to kill him for speaking heresy. Reff was then vaporized by Prism. Margaret managed to recover to assist the rest of her team in stopping Prism, directing him into the path of the Installation's main gun, vaporizing the Monitor while simultaneously sending the Covenant fleet in Slipspace transit crashing down to the moon. Black Team then began to fight through the surviving Covenant to commandeer a functional Slipspace drive. The Spartans survived the skirmish and eventually managed to return to the UNSC.

Installation 03
In late July 2557, Margaret and her subordinates served on Installation 03 as an escort detail for a UNSC science team. On July 25, shortly after losing contact with the nearby Ivanoff Station, Team Black was on patrol near the scientists' camp in a desert on the Halo's surface. While there, the Spartans observed a large number of objects exiting slipspace and falling from the sky; one of the objects crashed near the camp, prompting Black to investigate. The team made their way to the impact crater and discovered an unconscious Ur-Didact, who had been knocked into a slipspace rupture by John-117 during the New Phoenix Incident. Unaware of who the Didact was, Team Black speculated the arriving objects to be an invasion force, though one member questioned the efficacy of the invaders given the Didact's unresponsive state. However, the Didact suddenly awoke. Furious at the sight of more Spartans, the Didact fiercely killed Team Black along with the nearby scientists.

Shortly afterward, Blue Team was sent to investigate the loss of contact with Gamma Halo. Upon their arrival the next day, Blue Team found the corpses of Margaret and the rest of Black Team, and were attacked by Promethean constructs shortly thereafter.

Personality and traits
Befitting her role as Black Team's leader, Margaret was not easily distracted from a mission and remained focused on the task at hand. Despite her no-nonsense leadership, she possessed a dry sense of humor which often manifested as lively military banter or sarcastic remarks. She was generally calm and capable of reasoning and logical decision-making, even in the most dire of situations.

List of appearances

 * Halo: Evolutions - Essential Tales of the Halo Universe
 * Blunt Instruments
 * Halo: Blood Line
 * Halo: Escalation