SPARTAN-III Delta Company (Morhek)

The Post-War period was marked by a period of near-collapse by the UNSC. Although it had just barely survived the Covenant's onslaught, saved only by its own fragmentation, as it always has it quickly realised that the greatest threats to its survival were internal. Rogue agencies had acquired significant power, greater than ONI was comfortable with; colonists still bitter over just how ineffectual the UNSC had been in defending their families and homes and frustrated by the slow rate of reconstruction turned to the Insurrection as an outlet for their rage; and the various factions formed by the former Covenant still in existence and threatening humanity, as well as the UNSC still holding little trust in their alliance with the Sangheili. The UNSC knew that it needed to boost flagging confidence in itself, and to do this they needed Spartans, and plenty of them. So few Spartans had survived the war - almost the entire run of S-II's, and hundreds of S-III's, had been killed in separate engagements or on Reach when it fell. The SPARTAN-III Program had been about to initiate the training phases of Delta Company, the next generation of Spartans - while Onyx was now a quarantine zone, and both Lieutenant Commander Ambrose and Colonel Ackerson were declared KIA, ONI was eager to restart Delta Company's progress. The children who had volunteered were still in cryonic storage, and funds and materiel were not deemed a problem for ONI - the problem was finding a suitable training ground for the super-secret program. The kidnapping/recruitment of children and training of them to become Spartans was still classified November Black, and any largely inhabited worlds, such as Earth or the other colonies that had survived the war, were deemed too insecure for the task - if it leaked that the UNSC had taken children to turn into soldiers, the Insurrection would have flared up again completely and crushed the fragile UNSC.

A site was eventually found in the form of