Catalina Calle

{|style="width:100%; color:#FFF;"
 * valign="top" style="padding:5px;"|

"I can't move mountains, but I can bring them down with enough firepower and high explosives, and that's nearly as good."

- Gunnery Sergeant Catalina Calle, 2550.

Gunnery Sergeant Catalina Calle is a veteran of numerous operations and battles against the Covenant. Her service record surpasses that of many other soldiers within her unit, and she routinely pushes both herself and her squad to be at the peak of their physical fitness and performance, at all times. She's been described as a demanding leader, and a determined soldier. Her policies on troop duties and punishments in the face of negligence have rarely been described as 'fair'. She's harsh, holds everyone to as high a standard as she holds herself, and routinely pushes far beyond her own limits as well.

For those reasons, the squad she commands—as well as her platoon leader—begrudgingly respect her, though regular psychological evaluations depict her as being insecure, quick to anger, and judgmental. These insecurities may stem from her teenage years, in which she was bounced around various orphanages and social care programs until her enlistment in the Marine Corps at age 17.

Her judgments and harshness towards the soldiers she commands in the field of duty may be a projection of her own feelings towards herself. She is harsh, and holds everyone to the same standards as herself, because she believes she should also live up to those standards. When something around her fails to meet those expectations, it may serve as a reminder to her that she herself cannot yet meet said expectations, and so she lashes out at what she perceives to be a reminder of her personal failings.

Despite several commendations and various accolades in the line of duty, Gunnery Sergeant Calle reports low overall job satisfaction, particularly in these tumultuous post-war years.

=Early Life=

Catalina's early life was marked by near-constant pressure, either from her parents, from other extraneous factors, or by her struggling to socialise following the glassing of her planet. Indeed, her formative years were spent in a transitory state, as she was moved around various orphanages and social care programs on overcrowded inner colony worlds, rife with influxes of Outer Colony refugees.

Her rebellious streak never fully faded after the death of her parents, and she redirected it to all forms of authority she felt had failed her in some way. The orphanages she was held in consistently had to discipline her for her outbursts, her schoolwork suffered due to her having never received a proper, formal education up until that point, and she lashed out in response.

This may have also contributed to the various social care workers and programs dealing with her to be more willing to send her elsewhere, which only thereby exacerbated her attitude problems and desire to rebel against the systems who, in her mind, had failed her.

Birth
Catalina did not have a conventional birth. Instead, she was conceived via IVF, and artificially-created cells were used for this process. In essence, Catalina shared nearly no genetic data, nor hereditary epigenetic similarities, with her two parents.

She was a genetically-modified child, designed in much the same way as one would design a flash-clone. Her parents paid a hefty sum of credits for this privilege, as they wished to avoid all potential defects or congenital conditions. Catalina was, in essence, a 'designer baby'; a practice heavily criticised by the UEG and illegal on all Sol colonies, and many Inner colonies.

The concept of designer babies traces its roots back to early twenty first century genetic experiments on Earth. While these experiments were largely theoretical, they raised interesting ethical qualms about the morality behind dictating what ones child would be on a genetic level.

When Humanity took to the stars during the Domus Diaspora, this genetic modification would return in the way of environmental resistances, induced into the colonists to better survive their harsh prospective homes. While some worlds fought back with diseases and toxic food, genetic alteration would become a necessity for colonists to survive these new challenges. Immune systems, predisposition towards cancerous growths, melanin levels, and even bone density could be altered at birth to better prepare the colonists for their new environment. These would be useful on worlds with thinner atmospheres, wild ecosystems, microbial-rich soils, increased solar activity, etc.

When the Domus Diaspora largely ended, human colonisation did not, and genetic tailoring of colonists continued in a limited capacity up until the Great War's end. These various techniques and technologies would be adapted to fit various military uses, most notable of which being the ORION project, and its successors.

However, the practice of genetically-designing children from birth would be among the most nefarious uses of the technology. While understandable during periods of colonial expansion, genetically designing and artificially creating a full organism by means of in-vitro fertilisation became a hotly debated topic, particularly when it was discovered that many colonies continued the practice well after reaching what would be considered a stable population.

As the process by which one would create an artificial living organism was indeed an expensive one, many colonies found that those of higher social standing would pay dearly for what they would consider 'the perfect heir'. In light of this revelation being made public, several CEOs, Governors, and politicians were embroiled in major controversies all over human space. Most lost their standing, and a major bill was passed on Sol to immediately end the practice of genetically-manufactured children.

However, some colonies, most notably those with a history of making use of the procedure to supplement their below-average birthrates, protested the wholesale banning of the practice.

Catalina Calle was a product of one such scandal, in which a couple known for their lavish and opulent lifestyle sought not only to grow a child, but to import one from a fledgling Outer Colony, still struggling to find its feet. This came as a double-edged sword, as the colony was glad to have the investment of Catalina's parents as support, but was unwilling to become embroiled in such an obviously-selfish reasoning behind it.

Eventually, the Colony caved under pressures enacted by Catalina's parents, and accepted the money and organisational support. Catalina's parents invested heavily in the colony, producing branch offices and creating employment on the world, and in return, in 2524, they received their child, and the public entered into a frenzy.

The media ran story after story on the subject. Due to Catalina's parents having contacts within the government, as well as significant shares in the media production of the colony world, many of the stories ran positive spins on the situation, extolling their virtues and praising them for their investment in a fledgling colony, where many other corporations would shy away from such an expensive venture.

This media coverage, however, had the opposite effect on the populace, who immediately called for them both to resign their positions at their company, and face trial for the import of a child—effectively amounting to human trafficking. A court case was held, but before no jury, nor any witnesses. The parents received a minor fraud for improper import customs, and the case against the parents was considered closed.

The general population continued to protest, aggravated now by the lacklustre court ruling. Over time, as Catalina's childhood progressed, the scandal was largely suppressed, as her parents did not wish for her to discover the truth of her origins.

Catalina herself had been designed from a custom template, and did not fall in line with what the other colonists of the outer colony world were receiving in their own augmentations.

Childhood
Catalina's childhood saw a mostly home-grown existence. She was indoctrinated heavily to her parent's way of thinking, and received a home education. However, due in part to her legion of personal tutors and nannies, she wasn't a perfect replica of her parent's own prejudices and dogmas. She, in essence, became an independent person ironically through her parent's desire top limit her exposure to the outside world.

Her parents were of the opinion that they were the only thing standing between the colony and total anarchy. Their strict but fair rules on the governing of the colony were all that prevented it all from falling into chaos. Despite the fact that neither of them were politicians, they hand their hands deep in the pockets of the local senate, and exerted their control quite well through 'generous donations' to selected senators.

Entire territories of the planet were, effectively, under their corporate control, and they used that power to regulate their employees heavily, to the point where brand loyalty became more important to them than variety.

As Catalina grew, it became harder to hide the effects of the nascent Human-Covenant war from her, especially as the cultural zeitgeist at the time across the entire UEG was contact with an alien conglomerate. Definitive answer that mankind was not alone in the universe, and that the aliens were not friendly.

Catalina, ever the inquisitive child, asked her parents what they were planning to do to protect the colony from the aliens. As her parent's answers consistently failed to satisfy Catalina, she instead asked her tutors whether or not the UNSC could beat them. Not willing to lie to the child, but not wishing to risk their employment by displeasing her parents, her tutors and nannies likewise gave her unsatisfactory answers.

Catalina took this as indication that her parents were lying to her, and began to act unruly. She would consistently refuse to engage with her tutor's lessons, and call her parents liars whenever they gave her answers that she didn't feel answered her questions regarding the Covenant.

Disciplinary actions were fruitless, as Catalina would ignore isolation, refuse to apologise, and continue her behaviour. She was deemed an unruly child by her parents, who eventually became so annoyed with her persistence and difficulty that they informed her that they wished they had never bought her in the first place.

Catalina, having inadvertently pushed her parents to reveal the truth of her conception, demanded further information regarding what they meant. Her parents went on to explain that she was not a conventional child, but a designed and artificially conceived child, imported from a faraway colony, and designed from a template to give her quote-unquote 'perfect' genetic makeup, and a resistance to many developmental disorders—if not outright immunity.

Catalina refused to speak with her parents for the rest of the time she lived on the planet, viewing herself as a thign rather than a person, and convinced that her parents thought the same thing. When the colony was attacked when Catalina turned 12, her parents were killed, and Catalina struggled with how to process this grief for the rest of her life.