Kodiak-G114

"Because of him, I chose a course of life in which I’ve had to watch people I loved die and then let a chance to bring them back slip away. I hate him for that. But if not for him, I would have never had the chance to become a Spartan. And for that I'll always owe him one."

- Dyne-G217

"I've seen great and terrible things in this universe. The aurora - on six different worlds - and a Covenant glassing. Endless expanses of forests and a world covered by Flood infestation. It doesn't matter how much of the world is terrible. Every little bit of greatness is worth fighting for."

- Kodiak-G114

SPARTAN-III Gamma One-One-Four, better known as Kodiak-G114, was a member of and one of three SPARTANs in Ion Team, designated ION-1. Born under the name Kodiak Meriadoc Jacques, he was recruited when he was barely four years old to Gamma Company by SSgt. Pete Stacker. Within the Gammas, 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 minor covert operations throughout the Rebuild Era, only after roughly twenty-five years, four of which MIA, would he return to combat operations under the Codename: GUILDENSTERN.

Born on New Constantinople, Kodiak's family moved too often for him to call any place home. Caught on the colony of Emerald Cove when it came under attack, Kodiak was saved by a member of SPARTAN-III, though it cost the SPARTAN his life. It was because of this that when Pete Stacker found him and offered him the chance to be one of these heroes, he accepted without a second thought. Taken to with the rest of the Gamma candidates, he became part of training Team Machete. When the team leader was listed KIA to become a, Kodiak became leader of the reformed Ion Team.

After serving in Operation: ETERNAL SPIRIT defending the military production facilities in Tokyo, Japan, Kodiak received a suit of MJOLNIR Mark V(B) Powered Armor, and with the Covenant Remnant in retreat he and his team were assigned to military exploration. Though he initially disliked a station with little chance of combat, he quickly changed his mind after setting foot on the first of many completely untouched life-sustaining worlds he would explore.

Early Life
Kodiak's was born on New Constantinople, but spent only a few months there. His father, Caleb, led an organization against the UNSC-imposed colonial government and was personally responsible for the deaths of countless officials. However, he did not seek a full revolution, only the deaths of people he believed corrupt while the system itself remained intact. For his own safety, Kodiak took his mother's last name. Leaving New Constantinople shortly before it was attacked by the Covenant, they found themselves fleeing both the Covenant advance and UNSC mercenaries. Kodiak was younger biologically than he was chronologically, spending a considerable amount of time in cryostasis.

They were finally caught between a rock and a hard place on Falaknuma. As Admiral engaged a Covenant force in the Battle of 18 Scorpii, a small ground force ravaged the planet's capital, including civilian areas. Though both his parents fought back, they were killed by the last Sangheili of its lance, and Kodiak's death would have followed if not for the arrival of Brian-B063. With more enemies advancing, the soldier took Kodiak to a Pelican dropship, but was mortally wounded before take-off and would die months later in a hospital on, the same place Kodiak would be recruited for Gamma Company by SSgt. Pete Stacker.

Conscription as a SPARTAN
"Of course he lived, kid. Spartans never die."

- Pete Stacker, to Kodiak when he was recruited

Upon meeting him, Stacker offered Kodiak the chance to be a SPARTAN, which Kodiak eagerly accepted after hearing his stories of their exploits. He would be reported succumbing to a sickness, while really taken out of system aboard the UNSC Themistocles. As the sole occupant of a two-bunk room, he quickly grew bored of his surroundings. After observing how Stacker went down aboard Pelicans to the surface, he made a plan to escape and have an adventure, and return before he was missed.

While the ship orbited Reach, Kodiak snuck down aboard the same dropship carrying Stacker, planning to adventure all night and sneak back aboard the dropship in the morning before it went back up. Wandering into, he first met his friend Dyne cornered by some bullies. Kodiak immediately came to his aide, together holding their own against the three larger opponents. When Stacker chanced upon them searching for Dyne, they fled in different directions, only to meet again hiding. Becoming fast friends, the pair agreed to stick together. As Dyne believed he needed to flee the planet, Kodiak agreed to smuggle him aboard the Themistocles and take Dyne with him to Onyx.

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 Gamma drill instructor knew 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 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. Kodiak was all too eager to follow Dyne’s lead, and while sometimes equally responsible, was never seen as guilty in Stacker’s eyes. Only Erin Coney kept him and Dyne from being expelled or worse. Nonetheless, he would join Dyne in plenty of missed meals and manual labor to make up for the damages.

Kodiak found himself in Team Machete with Sam-G019, Marcus-G228, Dyne-G217, and Sepia-G330, and got along well with them. Machete as a whole couldn't match well organized Saber, Katana, or Gladius, but its individuals were talented at what they did, and for Kodiak, it was assault. Taking extra time to scope out a building and consider what its layout was, and then how best to breach it was a favorite pastime for him.

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. Despite that he had a hard time coping with the loss, Lieutenant Commander Kurt Ambrose began testing Kodiak's skills relentlessly. He was desperate to ensure Machete would have a leader, instead of having to be accepted into new and unfamiliar teams. Kodiak passed with flying colors, and was promoted to lead the reformed Machete, now known as Ion Team.

With the Fall of Reach, most of the SPARTAN-II class roster were declared MIA. However, production had already started of the Mark VI MJOLNIR Armor, and now the suits stood empty. Among other programs, Kurt would try to secure the already made sets for his soldiers, and sent a team for proof-of-concept and compatibility testing.

Ion Team 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. A few days later, the morning of October 20th, Ion Team left Earth to head back to their training site. As their ship left the system, Dyne, Sepia, and Kodiak were able to catch a broadcast of John-117’s award ceremony, and jumped into slipspace minutes before the Prophet of Regret’s fleet arrived in-system.

Post-War
Against formal complaints, Ion Team was put on military exploration for the forseeable future. Surveying glassed colonies for hypothetical recolonization and charting new habitable or terraformable planets became the norm for them, and during month-long Slipspace jumps, often stayed out of cryo-freeze and made use of time aboard the UNSC Themistocles. Kodiak took this time to practice his hand-to-hand combat skills, though for a time he was unable to find a sparring partner. Eventually, Vinh-030, who had requested a place on the Themistocles as a technician, offered to mentor him in the use of long blades, and he eagerly accepted. They also collaberated in creating a wrist-mounted knife for the MJOLNIR gauntlet. But while most of their time was spent exploring, as one of the ships farthest from Earth, the Themistocles would be called upon to support combat units nearby, leading to a number of battles Kodiak and his team would participate in. And as SPARTANs, the Office of Naval Intelligence and NavSpecWep would call upon them for a small number of their own operations.

Sigma Octanus Recovery Operation (2554)
One of the first post-war actions Ion was assigned to was to accompany an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper platoon to Sigma Octanus IV after picking up a distress signal sent long ago over radio channels. They were split to different possible locations, one SPARTAN with each squad. Kodiak's was led by the platoon leader, Lt. Joseph Dekyser, and included Lance Corporal Derek Marin and Private Benjamin Dansen. They found the city of had not been burned to the ground, but encased in glass. Blasting into one of the skyscrapers upper levels, they used an elevator shaft to rappel down to the underground. After some searching, Kodiak, Marin, and Dansen found a marine survivor named Gatsby, who explained the other survivors were being held in cryostasis tubes. But almost immediately, they found themselves attacked by someone in a MJOLNIR suit.

With some difficulty, the troopers dealt with the attacker, though Kodiak was wounded. Gatsby showed them that it was an automated suit, one of over a dozen prototypes that had either malfunctioned or were under the control of a rampant AI. Traversing the city underground, they engaged several combat drones, during which the Lieutenant was killed, and reached the room where the survivors were being held. Dansen, Kodiak, and most other troopers helped the civilians back to the surface by their route, while Lance Corporals Marin and Adam Jennings went on to detonate the suits' remote power source and escape on their own. The operation was deemed a success, but the knowledge of the Mark III suits was deemed classified. This led Kodiak to speculate whether it was an ONI project or if a private corporation had somehow gotten hold of the technology.

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 MJOLNIR helmet, and immediately unlocked weapons. Inside a dormant lava tube, they found Aspen-B145, and two other 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 the 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 being awakened by Dyne the next morning, having been knocked out after the base reactor exploded, they found Coney and grabbed what supplies they could. The three of them then made for Checkpoint Two onboard a derelict Cougar AFV to find a means of faster transport. Kodiak drove, with Erin navigating, and were able to outrun the Flood horde.

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 executing Erin even after she'd left them to die, Dyne and Kodiak agreed to follow and assist her when needed, both out of interest in ONI secrets and the fact she still outranked them. Only after landing the Nightshade on an uncharted planet and infiltrating an abandoned Covenant Citadel did she explain her task: going after covered-up and highly sensitive breaches in the Cole Protocol. These included captured UNSC AI units, and unaccounted for subjects of supersoldier programs.

With Dyne taking the Nightshade on a seperate objective, Coney and Kodiak made their way deeper into the Citadel, avoiding the nest created by Yanme'e workers that had been left there and survived. Within, they encountered a man that had had his DNA modified and coupled with alien physiology, resulting in a disgusting hybrid. After the creature made several hit-and-run strikes at them, Erin was able to kill it by bringing down a pillar using a plasma grenade. The encounter left Kodiak with only more questions for Erin, but they would have to wait. When Dyne returned, they left in search of another target.

En route, however, they intercepted a distress beacon from the UNSC Themistocles. Arriving at the coordinates, they found only a field of ship wreckage. The only surviviors were Mirage Team; Branwyn-G160, Morgan-G018, and Andor-G180, along with Aspen-B145. They explained the Themistocles had been attacked by a Sangheili vessel, but without time to investigate, they moved on with Mirage accompanying them.

Arriving in the polar regions of an otherwise tropical world, they entered a pair of Covenant research outposts, which were built upon structures made to study. Almost as soon as they came upon them, a troop of Elites led by Vract 'Aeramee attacked them, forcing the the other SPARTANs into a firefight as Kodiak entered the complex. Inside, he was confronted by a woman he believed might be insane. Without explaining anything, she approached, removed his helmet, and entered his mind.

Through the Forerunner technology or possibly a form of telepathy, the entity referring to itself as an showed him several of the woman's memories. Kodiak was unsure if the woman was the one speaking or if she was some sort of mouthpiece for the entire installation. As the ancilla had been predestined to do, she imprinted him with a, a collection of Forerunner memories related to his future. He had only time to ask one question: the whereabouts of. The ancilla told him John was alive, but did not reveal his location.

Kodiak was jarred from the mental contact, finding the woman had been impaled by Vract 'Aeramee's Energy Sword. The Sangheili then attacked and wounded Kodiak, leaving to attack Dyne and Morgan, who were separated from the rest. Kodiak was able to stand and rejoin Mirage and Coney, fighting until a remote-operated Pelican was able to extract them. Dyne returned with Morgan, fatally wounded, who died as the Pelican broke orbit. Dyne told Kodiak that Sepia-G330 had killed her. Kodiak began to understand some of the information he'd been given, and ordered them to set a course for the colony of Jericho VII.

Retribution
"You know the worst part about dreams? You can't shut your eyes when they turn to nightmares."

- Kodiak on his dreams, caused by memories implanted in his mind.

Alternate Universes

 * 343i Canon
 * Against All Odds
 * Shards of Reality
 * The Saulosian Campaign
 * Survival of the Fittest

Strengths and Weaknesses
Like his father, Kodiak possessed an uncanny intuition, able to predict his foes in combat and react with incredible speed and accuracy. Despite a lighthearted attitude, he felt a strong need to risk his own life for others, and could be deeply affected by the death of an ally. This inability to make what could be deemed necessary sacrifices made Ambrose hesitate to let Kodiak lead Ion Team, describing him as still "too human", and was a factor in their assignment to exploration. Aware that he felt conflicted between the success of a mission and saving the lives of others, Kodiak sometimes doubted himself as a leader, but those who knew him by more than his service record only believed it was a strength.

Hobbies
"Look up."

- Kodiak to his teammates, after Tokyo's power grid went down, making stars visible overhead for the first time in almost 600 years.

After several dull, sleepless nights in the hopital bed on Sigma Octanus, Kodiak looked out of a window and noticed that the constellations were much different than those of New Constantinople. Since then, he has had a questing mind when it came to astronomy, and has memorized the constellation layouts from a myriad of worlds. He would long remember his first look at Earth's night sky, during Operation: ETERNAL SPIRIT.

After spending much time with one of the overseeing instructors for Gamma Company,, and a fellow Gamma trainee named Malak, Kodiak learned to speak Egyptian Arabic. Few Covenant translators could understand it, making it useful as a secure means of communication, but he and Dyne more enjoyed the perk of not being understood by their fellow humans. Morgan-G018 and Branwyn-G160 got back at them, however, by speaking French in a similar capacity.

Weapons and Armor
Though originally deployed wearing Mark III Semi-Powered Infiltration Armor, during the Battle of Tokyo the suit became heavily damaged and a replacement was deemed necessary. Ion Team was given access to the retired suits of Mark V MJOLNIR Armor, having to reclaim bits and pieces of older and damaged suits for their own use. Kodiak was fortunate to acquire a nearly-complete set of with  plates, but was unable to find a helmet, instead using an older Up-Armored  Helmet with an External Hardened Uplink module. It had been painted over with blue and white for snow and ice camoflauge, which for most of its service with Kodiak was never repainted, as a way to honor its previous wearer from.

The suit was heavily customized in later years with help from Vinh-030 during his time assigned to exploration missions, the SPARTAN-II being an expert in tinkering with the armor. Concealed within the suit was a multitude of knives, strapped to his chest, hidden under shoulderpads, and spring-loaded in his boots. Vinh also worked with him to create the ASSAULT/A3 Wrist Knife, inspired as an answer the.

Exceptional with the array of short blades he kept on him, Kodiak was also an expert with the Marine Corps' MA5 Series Assault Rifles, particularly the B and C variants, as military exploration was not a priority for armaments and were commonly outfitted with late-war era equipment. The MA5 is more durably designed than its Army, Navy, and Air Corps counterparts, having to be able to withstand the heat and shock of an ODST orbital insertion. He made the most of muzzle attachments to up its versatility, including flashlights, bayonets, and grenade launcher tubes.

He was also capable of wielding shotguns with proficiency and was a competent shot with any sidearm. Occasionally he carried a longer range weapon when spotting for his teammate Dyne, but as team leader these were infrequent. With long study under Vinh's tutelage, he learned to use both a Human longsword and Covenant.