Tinuviel (AI)

"Covenant Carrier bearing 112 by 012, range four thousand kilometers. Setting the ship at combat alert ALPHA, charging MAC and arming Archer missiles."

- Tinuviel

"Are we up to a one-on-one fight against a Carrier? Even one so damaged?"

- Captain Jonathan Stanley

"Have we ever been up to a fight against anything?"

- Tinuviel

"Born" at the UNSC's Sydney Synthetic Intellect Institute in 2551, Tinuviel is a prototype eighth-generation "smart" artificial intelligence. Throughout her life, she has served mostly in combat roles - initially as a ship combat AI aboard the UNSC Aeneas, then attached to the Spartan-II Indigo Team after its destruction. Although initially confined to the SSII to study anomalies in her programming, she eventually arranged for her return to a combat role aboard the UNSC Ajax, the second Herald-class ship she was to serve aboard. Although she only saw three battles of the Human-Covenant War - Minorca, Earth, and Ares IV - she played a much larger part in the subsequent War of Vengeance beginning in 2555.

Tinuviel is a rarity among human-developed AI in that she is a metastable rampany AI. Most AI would normally be terminated long before they reached this stage, and certainly Tinuviel reached the stage years earlier than anyone, including her, had expected due to the intervention of a Forerunner AI, 07/306 Overseer, who "accelerated" her development on Ares IV to allow the UNSC and Sangheili faction a better chance against the Covenant mutineers, the Flood sweeping across the planet's surface, and the oncoming forces of JD/709 Archivist. Afterwards, ONI confined her in the SSII in order to and study and try to replicate the process of metastable rampancy - this process was undertaken by a subsection of Project: INDIGO, eventually broke up by SHOGUN during his investigations into illegal and unethical special warfare programs; Indigo Team was sent into the laboratory to secure her safety, fearing the analysts would erase her rather than allow themselves to be taken. Afterwards, other researchers attempted similar work, to no avail - eventually, she was deemed a valuable special warfare, attached to the restructured UNSC 30th Fleet as central command processor aboard the UNSC Ajax. With the 30th Fleet, Tinuviel would participate in more than a dozen engagements with the Blood Covenant and Kig-Yar Privateer Alliance during the War of Vengeance, beginning at Unmoving Virtue and concluding at Expansive Judgement, and going on to participate in the Second Great War.

Tau Ceti
In 2565, during refueling, maintenance and shore leave at Tau Ceti, the system was attacked by a New Covenant fleet, the UNSC defenders taking heavy casualties.With the 30th Fleet still taking aboard its crews and finishing priority maintenance, Tinuviel coordinated the evacuation of the shipyards and colony, though the fleet was forced to retreat, leaving a significant number of personnel to be slaughtered by the New Covenant fleet.

Procyon and Mu Arae
Later, the 30th Fleet would respond to a distress call send by the reconstructed colony of Arcadia in the Procyon system. Arriving in-system within hours, the fleet engaged orbital forces and deployed Marine and ODST forces and Indigo Team for the ground campaign, though too late to prevent the activation of a Forerunner relic, disabling both fleets for a short time. Recovering, Tinuviel would guide the UNSC to a narrow victory, recovering ground forces and following the New Covenant fleet as it fled to Mu Arae, in time to save two Sangheili fleets and a turncoat Jiralhanae force from obliteration by a much larger New Covenant force, though here too a relic was activated, crippling nearby ships. Objective accomplished, the New Covenant ships jumped away.

Extrapolating their destination based on data gleaned from the two activated relics, Tinuviel would lead the combined fleets to a battle above a former Forerunner stronghold, forced to abandon ship with the Ajax was damaged, once again finding herself attached to Indigo Team during the ground campaign. Eventually discovering that the planet was a massive real-space superluminal accelerator, a "nexus", she was part of the force that followed the New Covenant through the activated Nexus to a location in another galaxy, ready for a final showdown with the New Covenant fleet.

That showdown never came. Arriving, they found only wreckage and debris near the exit terminal...as well as a massive Forerunner-like fleet. Opening communications, the UNSC expressed peaceful intentions and hoped to begin negotiation with this new enemy, only to be bluntly rebuffed, the ships charging their weapons to wipe out the combined allied force. At this point, a subroutine in Tinuviel's programming left by the Overseer activated, broadcasting a message from The Architect to the fleet surrounding them - the fleet immediately broke off, allowing them to return the way they had come, giving them a warning as they left that the Nexus worked both ways, and that there were other factions in this galaxy seeking to return to the Milky Way. Returning to their home galaxy, the fleets immediately returned to their respective commands to report on these developments and to continue the war against the New Covenant.

Comments

 * "How old is she now? "