Happy birthday to Spartan Edward Buck!
Today is his -487th birthday!
Buck is the leader of the Spartan-IV fireteam Alpha-Nine, and spouse of ONI agent Veronica Dare.
Buck was born on Draco III and lived with his parents and sister, Lucy. His mother was retired military, while his father and uncle were a dockworker and fisherman, respectively. At the age of eighteen, he stopped working for his uncle and enlisted in the UNSC Marine Corps, following in his mother's footsteps.
He was involved in many engagements during the Human-Covenant war, including the Harvest campaign. In 2530, he was part of a strike team which recovered a Sangheili survivor who was taken into custody and interrogated. It was then that the UNSC learned the Covenant's true reasons for waging war against them.
In 2545, Draco III was attacked by the Covenant but only partially glassed, preferring to use its inhabitants as hunting practice. Buck's entire remaining family was killed, and he obsessively watched the footage of Draco III's citizens being hunted and eaten. That same year, he put in for transfer to the ODSTs.
Still reeling from the attack on Draco III, he was ordered to take shore leave after his transfer. It was there that he met Veronica Dare, and the two had a short fling that ended poorly when Buck realized Dare worked for ONI.
Soon after, he was assigned as the commander of ODST squad Alpha-Nine, a position he avoided promotions to keep. Throughout his career, he continually encountered Dare agan, working under command during a mission to Belisk (where he rescued and met Sarah Palmer) and later in the Battle for Mombasa, albiet six years later.
Buck participated in the campaign on Reach, where he met NOBLE team. After Reach fell, he was assigned to UNSC Say My Name to participate in the Battle for Earth. The initial plan was to bombard the Prophet of Regret's flagship, which remained in orbit over New Mombasa. However, Dare took control of the mission, ordering them to land away from the ship. It would eventually be revealed that Dare changed the mission because she became aware of the presence of a Huragok--an organic Forerunner construct with a natural drive to repair and an invaluable wealth of knowledge about both Covenant and Forerunner technology. They would succeed in capturing the Huragok, surrendering it to ONI. After completing their campaign on Earth, Buck and Dare would rekindle their relationship and take shore leave together. At the end of their vacation, he was approached by Jun-A266, who offered him admission into the SPARTAN program, which Buck initially declined.
After the war, he returned to duty and was deployed to Draco III to combat Insurrectionists who had set up operations on the planet. During this engagement, one of his squad members, Jonathan "Rookie" Doherty, was killed. Later, Buck was once again approached by Jun to join the Spartans, adding that his squad would be offered a place, as well. After speaking to Dare, Buck accepted.
He, Romeo, and Mickey underwent augmentations, while Dutch, who was shaken by the Rookie's death, decided to retire with his wife, Gretchen.
In 2555, Alpha-Nine was assigned to a mission on Talista to combat the United Rebel Front presence there. There, Mickey would betray them, revealing that he had defected to the URF. Buck--a staunch anti-Insurrectionist--attacked Mickey, eventually apprehending him and handing him over to the UNSC. After these events, Alpha-Nine dissolved, and Buck was transferred to be a member of Spartan fireteam Osiris. He participated in the fireteam's mission to apprehend Master Chief and Blue Team, though he expressed concern about the mission's perception. Buck was present when Osiris and Blue Team learned of the threat of Cortana, the Guardians, and the Created, and changed their objective to stopping her.
After returning to Infinity, Dare once again gave him a new assignment: a mission to a URF-controlled settlement which was able to cloak itself from the Guardians. To Buck's dismay, the mission would require the help of Mickey, who was still in UNSC custody. After rescuing Romeo from the Unggoy homeworld of Balaho, he traveled to the secret Spartan training site which housed Mickey. He begrudgingly broke Mickey out of imprisonment, with the unexpected help of Dutch and Gretchen, who had quietly joined the Spartans.
With Alpha-Nine back together, the group was able to escort Dare to negotiate with the mayor of the settlement who, after witnessing the threat of the Guardians, reluctantly agreed to share the technology with the UNSC. After this mission, he slowly began to make amends with Mickey. His team restored, he accepted the offer to lead Alpha-Nine again, this time as a Spartan fireteam leader.
Back on Infinity, he and Dare met at the ship's bar, where she pressed him on their relationship, daring him to marry her. He agreed that he would, but was shocked when she immediately began making arrangements on the bar's datapad. Roland, the ship's AI, heard the exchange and offered to officiate. After a brief "ceremony", the two were married before the bar patrons, including Osiris and Alpha-Nine.
In canon (~2560), he is turning 50!
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scattered halo headcanons (for the funnies)
#. Johnson and Master Chief see each other as sibling figures, and bicker constantly whenever they're both off duty at the same time and in each other's presence.
#. Fred is the one to patch up the other three in Blue Team whenever they fuck up and get themselves hurt in the process of doing something stupid.
#. Cortana thinks about Noble Six sometimes. She never tells Chief there was another Spartan before him she wanted to partner with. She thinks they might've gotten along anyway.
#. Rtas is the only one allowed in Thel's private quarters. Normally it involves a lot of shit talking other Covenant members they secretly hated or Thel doing mundane things while Rtas watches over him silently.
#. Chief really loves the color green. Even the ugly shades. Kelly thinks he's out of his mind for it.
#. Thel is silently terrified that Chief will hate him if he finds out that he was behind Reach. When Chief finds it out, he brings it up to Thel, and when he sees Thel stiffen, quietly tells him that it wasn't his fault that the Prophets manipulated him and everyone else in the Covenant.
#. Rtas and Thel are extremely protective of each other, and become extra aggressive when they get separated during battle.
#. Blue Team treats Cortana like she's family. It makes her extremely happy every time, without fail.
#. Buck catches himself missing his old team whenever he's alone. He thinks about Vergil a lot too. He doesn't tell the others about this. (Locke knows anyway, and has tried multiple times to arrange for them to work together so Buck can see them again. It never worked out.)
#. Thel accidentally picked up human phrases and slang when he fought on Earth. He uses them occasionally, and it confuses the fuck out of the other sangheli.
#. Johnson met Blue Team a few times and promptly said he understood why Chief was "like that" when he saw them bicker. Linda laughed herself to tears and Chief practically pouted about it.
#. Locke is really good at logic based puzzles. Vale enjoys teasing him for it and receives a blank, yet somehow incredibly disappointed stare every time.
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Something I’ve been thinking about since talking with @morganas-pendragons last week.
Remember Buck’s “If God can hear how scared I am so can everyone else” line in Halo 5?
Probably not because it’s an entirely forgettable line in an entirely forgettable game. Unless you’re me and exploit every spiritual reference in media to its fullest extent.
In that spirit (ha) I headcanon that Buck is given to dropping questionably applicable Scripture in the field.
—
Buck: No weapon formed against you shall prosper! [Isaiah 54:17]
Locke, about to be on the wrong end of a gravity hammer: Might wanna check your translation, Buck.
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Since nobody else asked it. So far.
Do we have ANY information on how Jun-A266 got off Reach.
(Aside from the events of A Fistful of Arrows, and offhand remarks by Frank O’Connor (is he still at 343i? I genuinely don’t know) about him climbing up a disabled space elevator.)
I’d love to know tbh, but haven’t heard anything.
The most widely accepted report of the events after Jun-A266 separated from the rest of his team on Reach are contained within ITEM/466F41.LV, though several conflicting reports exist. It details his encounters with members of Operation: WHITE GLOVE. Reading this official report, and cross-referencing it with other elements of the Operation, I can tell you that it contains the bare minimum of details and doesn't actually shed any light onto the matter. Or at least the truth of the matter.
I am not personally close to the Chief of Staff of Spartan Operations, so I have never had the chance to ask him about his survival. From what I can glean, however, after he secured Dr. Halsey at CASTLE base, he was assigned to evac ops for the base's personnel. We have a rough time frame here, as he was gone by the time SPARTAN Red Team arrived the next day. The evacuation of Reach was a poorly organised and the flight logs are a travesty. All I can say is that the base staff most likely got off Reach the day after they left CASTLE Base, but the SPARTAN did not accompany them.
This is the main void in information. The rifleman went completely silent. If he was recieving orders, they were not sanctioned or recorded through traditional means. If he was acting alone, he did an excellent job of covering his tracks by disruption of UNSC tracking and civilian logging systems - I absolutely do not mean to imply anything when I state that the logical endpoint of both these scenarios would be absolutely illegal and that somebody may be compelled to compile a falsified report to cover them up.
We know that at some point he met up with Gunnery Sergeant Edward Buck on the planet, which would eventually lead to the ODST's consideration for the new SPARTAN program that Jun would head in the coming years. However, as for how he actually got off-world? We simply haven't figured it out yet.
I am certain that ONI could come up with a definitive answer if we diverted enough resources to the matter, especially considering how there's a non-zero chance that it was one of our own that facilitated his escape from the planet. However, considering how much the rifleman has been through, the effort that clearly went into making ITEM/466F41.LV plausible and the good work he is doing today, well.
I am willing to allow this particular mystery to remain just that.
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