Dyne-G217

SPARTAN-III Gamma Two-One-Seven, better known as Dyne G217, was a member of the Spartan III Gamma Company and one of three Spartans in Ion Team, designated ION-2. Born in New Alexandria, Reach, under the name Dyne Peregrin Zaytsev, he was recruited at age seven into the Gammas by SSgt. Pete Stacker. Within their ranks, he would be deployed just in time to see the close of the Human-Covenant War, after which he would be assigned to military exploration and serve in dozens of minor covert operations throughout the Rebuild Era.

The details of Dyne’s birth are somewhat sketchy, as his parents gave him to the Pendleton Orphanage in New Alexandria after his first few infant months. Dyne had once mused that the subjects of the Spartan-I and Spartan-II classes were old enough to be his parents. During his training on Onyx and aboard the UNSC Hopeful, he promised himself that he would go back to Reach one day and find his family. This was not to be, however, as word reached the Gammas of Reach’s Fall just before their deployment.

His training was specialized towards marksmanship and reconnaissance, under the guidance of the man who would have been the Spartan-IIs greatest scout, Fhajad-084. From a wheelchair, Fhajad taught Dyne and Morgan G018 to be very competitive, pitting them against each other in contests of survival and patience. Dyne later formed a relationship with his fellow trainee, though Fhajad feigned ignorance of the pair’s closeness and never reported it.

Birth and Conscription as a Spartan
The true circumstances of Dyne’s birth are known only to his own parents, an ODST medic named Otis Len, and Dyne’s overseer as a Spartan, Erin Coney. In a counter-insurgency mission that went very wrong, Isaac-039 and Vinh-030 were caught in the city underground of Dorado, Kholo as the planet was glassed in the Covenant assault, and a group of Wraiths with excavation guns began trying to dig them out. They broadcasted the Oly-Oly-Oxen-Free signal in hope of rescue, but quickly gave up on it. Believing themselves to be in their final moments, the two long-time teammates and friends had relations which led to Dyne’s conception. Later, in an unexpected turn, stealth-coated Pelicans flew in under the Covenant’s sensors and dropped off tanks to counterattack Field Master Vract Aeramee’s squadron of Wraith tanks. Lt. Erin Coney, an ONI operator and Spartan-I, had picked up the signal, and with the help of a Prowler, had organized a mission to rescue them with the help of a group of ODSTs of the 11/6 Shock Troops under Captain Boris Alfonso ‘B.A.’ Felton. Ironically, after this Coney swore she wouldn’t make any more attempts to rescue crazy Spartans, which led her to abandon Dyne and Kodiak years later.

A week later, deployed on another counter-insurgency operation, Vinh experienced a sharp pain in her midsection during a high-G turn made by their Pelican. The operation was immediately put on hold as a medic examined her. It was revealed to Isaac and Coney that Vinh was pregnant. After a great deal of confusion, Vinh swore Coney and the medic to secrecy. SPARTAN-030 was discreetly transferred to Reach after refusing to abort the child, and stayed one month after having the boy, whom she named Dyne Zaitsev, using the last name of his grandfather. Against all odds, Dyne lived through infancy without any complications as a ‘Spartan 2.1’.

Erin Coney would make several visits to Pendleton Orphanage, never letting the boy see her. Dyne never found himself happy there, and used every opportunity he got to escape, returning a few days later to the irritation of the caretakers. As years went by, Coney mentioned Dyne as a Spartan candidate for the Spartan IIIs. GySgt. Pete Stacker investigated him as a possibility, almost missing him due to one of his escapades. Dyne would have missed out on the chance to become a Spartan, if not for his later teammate Kodiak. The other trainee had snuck down to the planet aboard Stacker’s Pelican, and intended to sneak back up the next morning the same way. That night, the two met each other in the back alleys while spying on a gang of older kids, and were caught by the bullies. In their first fight together, the pair held off three kids much larger than them, proving their potential as Spartans. Stacker sighted them, and tried to chase down Dyne after the two split up, but he evaded him a second time. Stacker downheartedly prepared to leave Reach that morning. The ODST was quite surprised to find both Dyne and Kodiak trying to hide in one of the crates onboard his dropship. From that moment, the Drill Instructor knew that the pair was going to give him trouble.

Spartan Training and Augmentations
"I’m actually not all that concerned about the mongooses, not even my Warthog. I’m a little curious about the rest of the Warthogs, and I’d love to know why the generator building is a big crater, but what I really want to know is WHERE ARE MY GODDAMN TANKS!?!"

- Sergeant Pete Stacker, yelling at Dyne and Kodiak after a particularly large shenanigan

His suspicions would prove all too true, with Dyne and Kodiak wreaking general havoc on a regular basis around the training facilities. While their escapades never actually resulted in human casualties, material damage estimates have never been fully tallied up. Within the first three months, Dyne and Kodiak had accounted for the destruction of eight Warthogs, a dozen Mongooses, two Scorpion MBTs, three storage sheds, and an unknown quantity of explosives, food supplies, and miscellaneous equipment. For this, Lt. Commander Kurt Ambrose almost wanted to have them put down or expelled from the program, but Stacker and Mendez were able to convince him otherwise. They did end up paying for the adventures with plenty of manual labor and missed meals.

While put in Team Machete with Sam-G019, Marcus-G228, Kodiak-G114, and Sepia-G330, Dyne would receive special training from Lt. Commander Fhajad-084, who had he cleared augmentations would have been the Spartan-IIs greatest scout. Fhajad, through some force, made Dyne work with Morgan-G018 of Team Bayonet, who at the time were bitter rivals. Though they once came to blows, the pair turned out as one of Gamma’s best sniper/spotter teams, rivaled only by Mark and Olivia of Saber.

It was late in his training that problems began to surface. Because of the extensive augmentations his parents had gone through, his body began to have complications. His independent structures began growing at their own erratic rates. Despite acute pain, he kept it to himself until one day he collapsed in the middle of an excercise. Rushed to Onyx's hospital, the best that the medicals could offer was to prescribe painkillers and hope for the best. When time came for augmentations, Sergeant Stacker argued to wait to put Dyne through it, but Ambrose overrode him.

Aboard the UNSC Hopeful, Dyne was one of the candidates Ambrose, Mendez, and Stacker worried over most. Their anxiousness proved to be for nothing, as he coped the best of the entire Gammas with the augments. It seemed as if his body had been waiting for them to occur. Being on the small end of the class, Dyne nearly doubled in size by the end of it, and joined the rest as full-fledged Spartans.

Visit to Earth (October 2552)
Though no Gamma was killed by the augmentations, many were listed as such to join the Headhunters, two of which were Sam and Marcus. Kodiak was made the new leader of three-man Ion Team. After the majority of S2s were declared MIA at Reach, Kurt vied for the already produced suits of Mark VI armor, and Ion was chosen to be the test group. Arriving in Seongnam, Korea, they were able to meet several other Spartans of various classes, and witnessed Maria-062’s test of the Mark VI’s sub-orbital jump capabilities. Maria later encountered the young Spartan outside the training field, having to shake off his praise of her abilities. She told him of her plans to retire, which Dyne didn’t understand. He accused her of abandoning humanity, and the argument quickly led to a brawl between armored supersoldiers. Maria was much stronger and faster, and repeatedly threw the Gamma to the ground. Dyne refused to stay down, despite a number of broken bones and exhaustion. Finally, however, he collapsed on his own, still trying to get to his feet. She helped the unconscious Gamma to the shade of a wall to cool off. While Dyne hadn’t convinced her to stay with the Navy, his determination had made Maria change her mind about the Gammas ‘pretending’ to be Spartans.

To the disappointment of Ambrose, the small number of Mark VI suits were given to other supersoldier groups. But a small variety of unused Mark V variants were given to the Gammas and loaded aboard the Themistocles. Though not enough to outfit the entire unit, Dyne was one of thirty to receive mismatched armor pieces. A few days later, the morning of October 20th, Ion Team left Earth to head back to Onyx. As their ship left the system, Dyne, Sepia, and Kodiak were able to catch a broadcast of part of John-117’s award ceremony, and jumped into slipspace minutes before the Prophet of Regret’s fleet arrived in-system.

Second Battle of Earth (October 2552)
Less than an hour after returning, the news reached them of Earth being attacked, and the Gammas were to be deployed. Now armed with the old Mjolnir Mark V suits, the UNSC Themistocles left for Earth with Gamma Company aboard. Ion was (THIS PARTICULAR AREA YET TO BE DECIDED IN THE DETAILS).

Ion Team was equipped with a Warthog LRV for the battle, and moved around in the fight providing support to dug-in teams where needed. While defending a span of four blocks against scattered Covenant infantry lances, the team encountered SPARTAN-030 on her own and fleeing from enemies. Vinh-030 was Dyne's mother, and had been looking for him, but while she knew he was part of the UNSC military and assigned to NAVSPECWAR, she didn't know he had become a Spartan. Ion’s jeep swooped in from the Covenant’s flank, Dyne using the chaingun to eliminate the attackers. Dyne and Kodiak talked with her, not knowing that she was Dyne’s mother.

The enemy received reinforcements, and in the firefight Vinh fought alongside Dyne and his team. She was wounded, and evacuated on a Pelican once the Ion had cleared up the area. Vinh’s last thought before meds knocked her out was that she was proud of her son.

TGL-49 Expedition (2574)
More than twenty years after the Human-Covenant War came to a close, Ion Team, now composed of only Kodiak and Dyne, were launched to map and record a life-sustaining planet numbered TGL-49, as part of a compliment from the UNSC Themistocles. Using Mongooses to get around, the team was called upon to go after Golem Team Three, who had broken off communications. They discovered a bloodied Spartan helmet, and immediately unlocked weapons. Inside a dormant lava tube, they found Aspen G145, and two other ‘930’d’ Spartans. Returning outside to find their mongooses destroyed, Dyne did his best to commandeer the Golem crawler and return to base. En route, Erin Coney reached them over radios and warned that Flood had been encountered, and the exploration teams were to evac immediately. In a battle over Checkpoint One, Mirage Team and most of the marine force made it aboard an Albatross Dropship, but Coney, Kodiak, and Dyne were left behind.

After waking up the next morning, having been knocked out after being thrown from a tower, he grabbed some supplies and found the other two survivors. The three of them then made for Checkpoint Two onboard a derelict Cougar AFV to find a means of faster transport. Dyne helped fend off Flood using an external Gauss turret and hand combat.

Inside the checkpoint, Coney sent the other two to complete separate tasks, with Dyne responsible for fueling the Pelican. He never got the chance, as Flood entered the base and engaged him. Linking up with Kodiak, the pair made to grab onto the rising dropship, but the Pelican rose up and left them behind. Coney contacted them on a video feed, and said that she regretted leaving them behind, but it was necessary. She wouldn’t make it far without fuel, and the two of Ion Team quickly caught up to her after escaping the base in a Warthog. Dyne opted to watch the Flood kill her, but Kodiak forced him to help save her, as she was the only one who could get the prowler, the UNSC Nightshade, off the ground. Making it to the Nightshade’s hangar, they barely escaped the clutches of a Proto-Gravemind, leaving behind an active Shiva nuclear warhead.

Demon Hunting
Rather than killing Coney after her betrayal, Ion Team decided that following her on her mission would end up being more interesting. Their first target location was a deserted Covenant fortress on the edges of what had been UNSC space before the war. Though empty, a colony of Yanme’e had survived and maintained the building, having no other directed purpose for their simple minds. Two massive plasma turrets still sat outside guarding the front entrance, and Dyne displayed his marksmanship skills in running out into the open with the guns tracking him, and shooting the small motion sensors that controlled the turrets, rendering them useless. Once inside, Coney explained to them that early on in the war, humans had traded with Elite Heretics for technology, and had given five children with some Spartan-like augmentations. The Heretics had evidently run tests on them, doing their best to apply Forerunner technology and create their own ‘demons’. Coney learned from the systems inside that two had been killed during the tests, while three may still be alive. Dyne was assigned to look for one of them on the glassed surface of Madrigal. He also received his first AI, a dumb unit named Jasmine that specialized in biology.

Arriving on Madrigal’s surface, Dyne pinpointed a suit of battle armor that had been worn by the ‘demon’. He blew a hole in the glass with a grenade, and made his way down through the inside of a skyscraper. Sighting a sleeping bag in the middle of a room, he thought he had his target only to be ambushed and knocked out.

When he regained consciousness, he was confronted by the target pointing his own pistol at him. Named Metria, a Covenant number, she angrily revealed to him how she had been left to the San’Shyuum’s experiments, and how she had eventually broken free. Now, she kept several of the scientists alive for sustenance. Her procedures had proved effective, giving her strength and speed that outmatched even a Spartan, but for her survival required blood plasma. Dyne rolled into action before she had the chance to ‘taste’ him, and after a brief struggle, left, with Metria alive still under the glass.

Meeting up with Erin Coney and Kodiak, they proceeded to the last target, when a distress call from the UNSC Themistocles brought them in. In its rubble, they discovered Mirage Team in a lifepod; Branwyn G160, Morgan G018, Andor G020, with Aspen G145. Mirage’s members had thought Dyne and Kodiak dead, and the reunion was spirited, though Morgan still kept up her love-hate façade with Dyne. Their meeting was saddened by the news that Fury Team, six of their brothers and sisters, had been killed on the Themistocles.

Personality and Traits
Dyne had a natural ability to find ways to annoy anyone he met, for example, calling his overseer Erin Coney by her first name over high-priority radio frequencies. He was always looking to crack a joke and keep up the moral of those around him, but his use of humor to make friends cost him the initial respect of many Spartans. Though his ties to superiors were fairly loose, he felt a deep loyalty to those he considered friends, and didn’t take betrayals well. This characteristic showed itself after Sepia turned up years after her disappearance, only to kill Morgan. Losing her, his humor dissipated into a wall of bitter silence, his only real drive to find and take revenge on his former teammate.

After spending much time with his teacher Fhajad and a fellow Gamma trainee named Malak, Dyne learned to speak Egyptian Arabic. Though it had limited combat usefulness, he and Kodiak found it annoyed most of the other Spartans not to be able to know what they were saying, and used it as often as they wanted. Morgan and Branwyn got back at them, however, by speaking French in a similar capacity.

As with many of the Spartan III Gammas, Dyne felt he had something to prove to Spartans of other Classes. Twos thought of them as kids or ‘newer models’ while Alpha and Beta Companies thought of them as replacements for their comrades killed in PROMETHEUS and TORPEDO. Dyne was arguably the most driven to prove himself of his siblings. While he excelled in no particular area of combat, he had incredible determination and endurance, which reminded Maria-062 of Will-043.

Strengths and Weaknesses
While a competent sharpshooter for a Spartan, Dyne still couldn’t match the best of the lot, though he had training with automatic weapons and some heavy weapons to compensate. He was an excellent scout, in the few larger conflicts Ion Team saw he would be gathering intel on enemy fortifications and numbers beforehand. He was one of only a few UNSC personnel to use the rollover-prone M274 ULATV successfully in heavy offensive combat.

Though Dyne could follow orders, he worked best on his own. It hindered Ion’s performance and kept it from competing with Sabre, Katana, or Gladius, but within a few years Ion consisted only of himself and Kodiak and worked out for the best. His self-reliance would prove vital after the events of the Encoder, when he took on high-risk recon missions. Being transported alone onto Remnant-held worlds, Dyne reported enemy force strength to Naval Intelligence before battles took place.

Appearance
Dyne had his mother’s green eyes, and his golden-brown hair was a result of Vinh’s cinnamon and Isaac’s amber hair. His ancestors had been colonists, far-back American, German, and Korean, and his skin was a little too pale because he received little sunlight through a suit of Mjolnir armor. Lean for a Spartan, he had long fingers that quickly ran across whatever weapon he would be constantly adjusting. He kept his face shaved, and hair trimmed. He bore a small scar running down his forehead and high across his nose, from some fight long before becoming a Spartan. Other wounds came later on, including an acid burn along his leg, and a scar was left on his palm when Fhajad had forced him and Morgan to mingle blood after a particularly competitive exercise led to the pair fist fighting.

Hobbies
"Everything was better yesterday . .."

- Dyne, wishing for a time machine

While improving his aim and wreaking havoc on the training facilities were his primary extracurricular activities in his young Spartan days, Dyne had one interest that wasn’t related to combat. He loved to build model railroads. Asking for some wood and some tools, he built a large table running along the wall of his room aboard the Hopeful during therapy following their augmentations, claiming it would help him to handle small objects. After that, he took a Walthers catalogue and ordered a large quantity of items on Pete Stacker’s credit card number, which he had memorized.

He created a free-lanced rail line called the Washington & Pacific, running from Seattle to San Francisco in the 1970s. He said he had chosen the time period because while diesel-powered locomotives were taking over, the last few steam engines were running on mainlines, and he was proud of having a small fleet of 2-8-0 Consolidation locomotives. Dyne’s railroad remained in his quarters even after his field deployment, and whenever he returned to the space station he would run the trains by himself and for anyone who wanted to see them.

Armor
"I can’t believe they’re going to shaft us with hand-me-downs!"

- Dyne on his first suit of armor

Like the other Spartan Gammas, after augmentation Dyne received a suit of SPI armor for stealth operations, but was also given a Mark IV Mjolnir suit for equipment training, the particular suit being previously worn by his father, Isaac-039. Initially, it was planned to be his for use in field deployment until the point when Gamma Company recieved a limited number of Mark V suits. Taking mis-matched parts, Dyne wound up with a UA/Multi-Threat Bodyplate and Shoulder Pauldrons, with a Military Police Helmet. He chose to paint most of it sand-tan, while other portions lay bare steel and a few lines battle-red after a suggestion from Erin Coney.

Dyne had a hologram emitter in his left palm that allowed an AI to manifest itself should he ever possess one. When he first received the suit, he discovered that on the right side of the chest plate, someone had painted the image of a grenade across it. He took it up as his personal standard, sometimes marking equipment with it. This behavior was soon followed by several other Gammas, each with their own image for team or individual. After the death of Morgan in 2574, he painted her crest on his left shoulder on a crimson field, along those of other Spartans he had known whom had since fallen.

Weapons
Though he was not the premier Spartan marksman, Dyne commonly carried UNSC sniper rifle variants on missions regardless of the terrain or range that was expected. His logic was simply that he was trained with it, and he should carry one. He had an affinity for the BR-55 and its burst-fire option, though found the earlier DMR impossible with its mule-like kickback. In later years he replaced the battle rifles with an MA5C Assault Rifle, to balance against his long-range weapons.

Dyne also carried a pair of M7 Submachine Guns if he could find them, his primary choice for close-quarters fighting, and on occasion an M6 series pistol. A knife stashed inside his Mjolnir boot and at least one grenade rounded out his typical arsenal.

Equipment
There was little need for Dyne to carry much in the way of heavy equipment, as most of his military service was spent exploring uninhabited planets with the rest of his team. In later years, though, he would add a Universal Global Positioning System Database to his suit. Travelling light as Fhajad had taught him, the only things he carried routinely besides his armor and weaponry were a backpack the same tan color as his Mjolnir suit, containing a small biofoam canister, a large canteen, and whatever food he could find, which was usually something sugary.

Vehicles
As a scout, Dyne was capable of operating a wide range of UNSC and Covenant transports. Commonly, he used the M274 Mongoose as a means of reconnaissance transportation, and was an expert operator of the ATV. He was able to figure out the controls of a Golem Crawler, a forest-clearing vehicle used to rapidly cut trails through brush wide enough for an Elephant Troop Transport to use. Like other Spartans, he was trained to use standard front-line vehicles like the Warthog LRV and Scorpion MBT. While a fair driver, the only aircraft Dyne was capable of operating was the Pelican dropship.

Stories

 * Halo: AvS: A Worthy Foe
 * A Simple Objective
 * Following Orders