Arnold Leroy Lewis Junior

"At least we were human."

- Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps Arnold Lewis on the SPARTAN-I program.

Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps (Ret.) Arnold Leroy Lewis Junior is a Staff Noncommissioned Officer (SNCO) of the United Nations Space Command (UNSC) Marine Corps. He would serve in the Human Civil War as a SPARTAN-I, and later as a NAVSPECWAR operator and Orbital Drop Shock Trooper. He would rise through the ranks during the Human-Covenant War to become a Sergeant Major, and would become Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps after the war. Although he would have no children, his legacy would live on in the myth and legend of the Special Operations community, in addition to the spoken history of the Marine Corps.

Early History
Lewis was raised in the greater-Colorado Springs Metropolitan Zone, in the United Republic of North America. He worked hard in secondary school to go to college, as his parents wanted him to. After a failed United Nations Naval Academy candidacy and being rejected from several schools, he turned to the Marine Corps as an alternative to staying at home, despite the fact that the Marines were engaged around the Milky Way in the numerous brush wars that appeared throughout the outer colonies. Against his parents’ wishes, he shipped out to recruit training, and would graduate as a Private First Class. After serving several months in an infantry unit, his name would appear in the database for the Military Intelligence Division, who were searching for qualified recruits for their special program.

Upon being ordered to report to Reach, Lewis underwent numerous medical examinations, only being told that he was being examined by the UNSC’s Medical Division for a study. After this, he was taken to a top-secret compound somewhere on the planet, and would be assigned to a fire team that consisted of Hank Wimbleton, Avery Johnson, Frank Mendez, Dean Jackson, and James Lee. They had trained together, bled together, shared countless cold nights together, and had even dragged each other out of bars when one said something stupid in a drunken stupor. They knew each other better than most brothers did, and ended up becoming one of the best, if not the best fire team within their own hierarchy. Following nearly five years of incessant training and augmentations, they were activated. Their first mission was codenamed CHARLEMAGNE.

Special Special Forces
Their team, as well as the other ORION fire teams were covertly inserted via Single Occupant Exoatmospheric Insertion Vehicle, at the time a controversial and experimental technology. The theory was simple; put a man into a pod, and shoot him out of a ship from orbit to the ground, usually under the cover of meteor shower. The bad thing was that it was not guaranteed that one would even make it to the ground in the pod, or if one did, if you came out of that pod alive. During insertion, a complication arose in another SPARTAN's pod, and they were killed from the extreme heat before even impacting the planet, named Eridanus II. Following their landing, Lewis and his team covertly moved to their objective, which was a warehouse on the planet known to house the kidnap victims of the Secessionist Union, the organization they were sent to dismantle.

Upon reaching the warehouse, the fire team breached through several entry points, and using suppressed weapons they quickly neutralized any threat that had presented itself. However, they had come too late; several of the hostages, especially the one they were tasked to retrieve in the first place were tortured to death, and several others executed. Whoever was left alive were secured, and escorted out of the warehouse and to the extraction site, where Lewis and his team were picked up by Falcon helicopters.

Following this simple task, the fire team was sent out once again to capture or kill Jerald Mulkey Ander, leader of the Secessionist Union. They covertly infiltrated his stronghold via the sewage system, and after navigating several hallways, cornered the traitor. But, Ander escaped through a window into the waters below, leading the team to believe that he was dead. They exfiltrated from the stronghold through the sewage system, and would return to base with several pieces of high-value intelligence, including, but not limited to several arms shipping logs, connected to high ranking members of the Colonial Military Administration, phone numbers and personnel records, as well as several maps that showed the location of bomb manufacturing facilities and targets. Throughout the entirety of the forty-eight hour operation, the SPARTANs would effectively dismantle the Secessionist Union, and had seized thousands of kilos of illegal narcotics, thousands of weapons, and had stopped several bombings that were being planned against high-ranking Unified Earth Government dignitaries. Even though Ander had escaped, the operation was effectively a success for the United Nations Space Command, and the Military Intelligence Division's Section II milked the victory for all it was worth, sending fear into the hearts of many who had planned rebellions. However, it wasn’t enough, and the rebellion began to heat up.

Following the success of CHARLEMAGNE, Lewis and his fire team would be tasked to join in the manhunt for Ander. The operation, operating under the umbrella name of TANGLEWOOD, involved Lewis' team as well as three other ORION fire teams, in addition to a contingent of Military Intelligence Division intelligence analysts and collectors. They believed that they had narrowed Ander’s position to the colony of Tribute, and began to search for him in the colony’s numerous population centers. After raiding several safe houses, they failed to locate Ander, although they did find evidence of him having recently stayed in them. TANGLEWOOD was called off, even after the capture of several Secessionist Union lieutenants, who provided valuable intelligence as to whether or not the Union was growing in size or dwindling. Shockingly, the Union’s member base was growing, and they had set up a new base of operations on Harvest. For now, Lewis and his team would be assigned to put down a rebellion on the colony of Arizona III, during Operation: SAGUARO. The rebellion was eventually suppressed; however, the ORION’s actions during the operation are highly classified, even to this day.

After SAGUARO, Lewis and his team would be sent all around the Orion Arm of the galaxy, breaking up the Secessionist Union, as well as tracking down arms shipments by corrupt Colonial Military Administration officers, as well as taking out the Union’s financial backing. Ander had resurfaced on Harvest, and was serving as a police official in the colony's law enforcement. While Lewis and four members of his team raided Ander's apartment, Avery and Frank were sent on an assassination mission. Both missions were successful, ending with the Military Intelligence Division gaining a large amount of intelligence, and Ander being killed. Acting on this intelligence, Lewis and his team were sent to Charybdis IX to take down several arms dealers known to operate on the planet. The raids would lead to the United Nations Space Command absorbing the Colonial Military Administration, due to the fact that most of the arms dealers were rogue Colonial Military Administration officers, and the arms themselves were from the CMA. The intelligence gathered would take the team to Mamore in order to further stop the proliferation of weapons, especially since they had uncovered the disturbing fact that a nuclear device had been sold to a rebel group on the planet, mainly composed of Kelorists. After discovering the location of the nuclear device and recovering it, the rest of the group was decapitated in several assassination and capture missions. After several other operations, the ORION Project was deactivated in 2506, and its members reassigned elsewhere. Lewis would be assigned to Naval Special Warfare as a team leader.

Initiated in 2513, Operation: TREBUCHET would be the UNSC’s operation to finally demolish the People's Occupation Government (POC), which had established itself on Eridanus II, Tribute, and Epsilon Eridani IV, effectively taking over the governments of the colonies, all of which were on the UNSC's doorstep, being close to Reach. All forces the UNSC could spare were called up and rotated in and out for the offensive, breaking down into a stalemate by 2514. At this time, Lewis was a Corporal in a Naval Special Warfare unit, and would serve on Eridanus II for much of the operation. During the operations on Eridanus II, Lewis the other operators in his unit were providing security to the UNSC negotiators whilst taking down the high-ranking members of the POC, trying to break the will of the "Governor" of Eridanus II, who was also second in command of the POC. However, this only strengthened his resolve, leading to a tragic chain of events that would eventually break down the negotiations; the Governor had taken out a grenade during a negotiation session, holding the negotiator hostage. This prompted a NAVSPECWAR sniper to eliminate the Governor; however, upon the Governor being shot, the pin on the grenade was pulled, detonating and killing the Governor’s family as well as seriously wounding the negotiator. These events would literally end the negotiation process, and Elysium City would be literally burned to the ground by UNSC Army soldiers, leading to more public dissatisfaction with the war.

After the tragic events at Eridanus II, Lewis volunteered for the Orbital Drop Shock Troopers, and due to his special status as a former ORION operator, was immediately accepted and assigned to the 105th Marine Expeditionary Brigade (SOC) as a member of a combat team. At first assigned to the 7th Shock Troops Battalion, he would serve with them during the remainder of TREBUCHET, hunting down terrorists on Circumstance and Tribute before being pulled for rest and recuperation. He would float around to several other ODST battalions, including the 10th Shock Troops Battalion during the course of the newest conflict, the Human-Covenant War.

Covenant
Following the debriefing of the survivors of the First Battle of Harvest, the UNSC had entered a war against a xenophobic alien hegemony, which had been identified through numerous transmissions as the "Covenant". Lewis was assigned as a team member to an ODST unit under the command of a Major Sedavian. They were dropped onto the colony of Hat Yai in the first orbital incursion of the war. After regrouping with the other ODSTs, they realized that their leader was nowhere to be found; his pod's navigation equipment had sent him off course. Lewis decided to serve under Rahud, attempting to keep his special warfare background secret, as well as attempting to avoid a conflict within the unit. After taking the Covenant base, they were evacuated, and Lewis was sent to another ODST unit just in time for the Battle of Jericho VII. During the battle, Lewis' combat team was inserted via Pelican. After landing, they immediately went to work on securing their objectives, which included the destruction of several computers in the planet’s capital, as well as preventing the Covenant from capturing a UEG dignitary. After securing the dignitary and destroying the computers, they pulled back with other ODST squads to Jericho VII’s space elevator, where they engaged in close quarters combat before being evacuated. After the glassing, Lewis was assigned to an ODST detachment which was assigned to Vice Admiral Whitcomb's fleet.

This time, Lewis would serve as the leader of a combat team, just recently being promoted to Sergeant. The main task of Lewis' combat team was to repel boarders, which occurred rather frequently during the pitched space battles that occurred as the Covenant began to make their way into the inner colonies. They would finally be deployed to the surface of New Constantinople in order to assist in the evacuation efforts while the SPARTAN-IIIs demolished Covenant supply lines. After New Constantinople, Lewis would be called upon by the Military Intelligence Division to assist in the creation of the battle plan to take down the Insurrection of Mamore, due to his previous service on the colony. Strangely enough, Lewis believed these children to be the SPARTAN-II commandos that were known to exist; himself and several of the now retired Spartan Is had somehow kept themselves in the loop with ONI’s special projects, and were appalled by the training procedures and augmentation protocols. What had thoroughly disgusted them though was the fact that these trainees were not highly motivated soldiers who had already completed the entry level of training, but that they were children, dragged from their normal lives to undergo training that would be highly controversial had it been done to even the ODSTs. However, unbeknownst to him and the others, these were not their direct successors. The SPARTANs that were deployed to Mamore and New Constantinople were a third generation, and that they were being trained by Lewis' old squad mate, Franklin Mendez.

Rebuilding
Despite his honorable retirement, Lewis would still be well-respected as a former special operator, and his legacy would mean that he would be still called upon by the service to continue to serve as a per-basis consultant on sensitive issues for the UNSC Office of Naval Intelligence. In December 2564, Lewis would be formally called upon by Section Three to be one of a dozen handpicked senior UNSC flag officers and senior special-operator NCOs that would direct and advise Operation: PAIR RULE, the controlled "field testing" of Chief Petty Officer Kimberly Ivy Blackburn, Section Three's most au courant weapon. In the company of distinguished Navy and Marine officers such as Master Gunnery Sergeant Wimbleton and Admiral Gibson, the Chief of Section Three, he would be an architect for the highly precarious operation, and would don his dress uniform one final time aboard the UNSC Speed of Sound and the UNSC Behind in Twilight in the preparation for PAIR RULE and providing remote coordination while it progressed. He would witness the utter devastation wreaked by "Talon"; the next generation, the successor to everything his life had been.

After PAIR RULE, Lewis would live in comfort and seclusion somewhere on a newly colonized planet, writing a fiction novel based on his experiences with the SPARTAN-I program. He would die in his home in 2574 from complications with the augmentations from Project DANDELION, and was buried with full military honors. The next year, the Office of Naval Intelligence declassified all records relating to SPARTAN-I, and Lewis was posthumously awarded numerous medals for his actions.

Zombie Madness
In 2550, on the colony of New Harmony, several test subjects escaped from the Andromeda Military Science Institute.

Other Awards

 * Navy and Marine Corps Medal (2x)
 * Colonial Medal
 * Combat Action Ribbon
 * Colonial Expeditionary Medal
 * Covenant Campaign Service Medal
 * Separatist Campaign Service Medal
 * Colonial Defense Service Medal