Too Much Ballast

A member of the Covenant Engineer/Huragok species caste, Too Much Ballast was one of a handful of Covenant personnel interrogated by the Office of Naval Intelligence. Prior to that, he was a crewmember of the Covenant Destroyer Killing Blow, tasked with maintenance and repair work. Unusually, he took part in the Battle of Sigma Octanus, where he was captured by UNSC forces.

History
Huragok reproduction is complicated and mysterious, and generally something they simply refuse to talk about. Ballast's birth was no exception. Created by the union of three parents in 2538, he was given his name because he floated too low, tentacles dragging on the ground. During his early life, he lived on his homeworld of Cloistering Expectancy in the Huragok arcology set apart from the rest of the colony, learning about his life. For most of his life, he had little idea that there was more to the Covenant than his little planet, and it came as a rather dramatic shock to him when he was conscripted into service that it encompassed hundreds more worlds, most larger than Cloistering Expectancy.

Military Career
Given his technical expertise, Ballast was initially assigned to a Prophet excavation work force, cleaning and preparing relics recovered from the field by military forces, working in the High Charity Archives under the Vice-Minister of Acquisition. After two years assigned to relic restoration work, he was reassigned in 2551 to the Destroyer Killing Blow as a technical maintenance crewmember, part of the dozen Huragok members. Unfortunately, Shipmaster Elma 'Mopadee was a harsh master, and while repair work was few and far between, the Huragok work teams were kept constantly busy with minor maintenance and upgrade work, more so than most Huragok were able to. The strain resulted in two implosions, while a third suffered a mental breakdown and was executed by the Sangheili for incompetence and insubordination. This was Ballast's first experience of cruelty, and yet another shock the outside world brought him.

In 2552, the Killing Blow was part of a taskforce sent by the Prophet of Acquisition to the Sigma Octanus System. Fortunately for Ballast, he and the other Huragok aboard the ship were reassigned to the taskforce's Carrier, Enlightenment, and incorporated into the artefact excavation and recovery teams, and were therefore absent when the Carrier's Destroyer escorts were destroyed by the UNSC Iroquois. Aboard the dropship Unmatched Purity, the Huragok of the Killing Blow were transported to Cote d'Azure, the colony's capital, and tasked with retrieving any artefacts present in the city, interfacing with any human computer terminals to retrieve information on other "unclean" worlds, and technical support of the combat forces. Though Ballast had been exposed to cruelty and malice before, Sigma Octanus was his first encounter with war, and it was more than he could take. As the dropships dropped him off, he witnessed the brutal slaughter of human civilians by Kig-yar forces - fleeing in terror, Ballast became separated from Covenant forces. Alone in the city at night, he wandered far, unsure where exactly to go.

As it happened, his desertion coincided with the evacuation efforts made by the UNSC Marine Corps, pushing into the city to reach trapped civilians. Wandering amongst the rubble of Cote d'Azure, Ballast heard a cry for help, and though alien to him, he responded in true Huragok fashion. Cobbling together nearby equipment into a crude digging device, Ballast uncovered a number of people from the rubble, including a young boy, Sam. While most of the saved civilians fled at the sight of their saviour, Sam kept close to him, eager to learn more about the creature. When UNSC Marine forces arrived a few hours later, young Sam was the only thing keeping the Marines from shooting him on sight - instead, the two were bundled into a dropship and sent for interrogation by the Office of Naval Intelligence.

Interrogations
For the most part, ONI interrogations of Covenant personnel had been unproductive affairs - Unggoy were too terrified to be coherent and knew little worth gleaning; Kig-yar were incomprensible and feral; Sangheili and Jiralhanae were too difficult to subdue, and unable to be broken by human interrofation techniques; and other Covenant species were simply too alien to understand. When the interrogators entered Ballast's holding cell, they were unsure of what to expect.

Fortunately for them, Ballast was all too willing to cooperate. The first thing Ballast did was "fix" the ONI translation devices they carried - now able to interpret the Huragok's dual verbal and sign languages, he would divulge much of what he knew of the Covenant's capabilities to ONI. His improved translation software would be introduced into service months later, after the fall of Reach, assisting the alliance between humanity and the Sangheili.

Earth
When the Covenant invaded Earth, Ballast's holding area underneath the Sydney ONI facility was one of many areas hit hard by the invasion. In true Huragok fashion, he busied himself repairing crucial damaged systems, earning the nickname "Mr Fix-It" from the UNSC engineers he worked alongside. As a vital asset, he was evacuated early in the battle, and wasn't present when the Covenant destroyed the city.

On the dropship, he was reunited with Sam, also being evacuated by ONI. The dropship was hit by Covenant anti aircraft fire, crashing just south of Darwin. When UNSC forces found the crash site, they were met with the sight of a Covenant Engineer carrying a young boy to safety, certainly an oddity. He was "captured" and confined, and eventually loaded aboard one of the many transports carrying UNSC forces to the fallback point of New Guinea. While there, he was kept busy studying and repairing various pieces of equipment - his improvements to a prototype railgun artillery cannon would allow the UNSC to hold Port Moresby long enough to evacuate.

When the Righteous Crusader arrived with its taskforce, the UNSC had assumed that Ballast would be an important part of the negotiations - his experience under Shipmaster 'Mopadee, however, had given the creature an aversion to Sangheili in general, and it was only with the coaxing of Sam that he consented. In coordination with other Sangheili-led Huragok, Ballast managed to decrypt a number of Covenant transmissions, translating the raw glyphs in real time, providing crucial intelligence to the Sangheili and UNSC.

As the joint counterattack got underway, Ballast was brought along aboard one of the UNSC ships as a Huragok-UNSC liaison. Saying goodbye to Sam, he was a part of the taskforce that entered the Aperture portal, arriving at Magus. His current fate is unknown.

Quotes

 * "It stinks to high heaven, but once you get over that it's actually pretty cute. All pink and cuddly. Awww..."
 * "I've seen a lot of things during this war, but man...a cable got cut by Covenant plasma, nearly fell right into my foxhole, half-flooded as it was. If Mr Fix-It hadn't caught it, I'd have been fried - and then it ties the two ends together, works its magic, and suddenly the power's back online. How does it do it?"
 * "Imagine being this cute little ball of innocence, and discovering that you're surrounded by monsters. Definitely some mental scarring-potential there."
 * "When the battlegroup arrived at Cloistering Expectancy, we could visibly see the poor thing sag in horror. His home had been one of the first things the Brutes hit - wiping out forty thousand Engineers with a single torpedo."