SPARTAN-II Program, Class II

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"Dr. Halsey and her Class I SPARTAN-II program, while incredibly effective, still had their own flaws to them. Class II, however, would be completely different. Newer and more ruthless DIs, expanded training methodologies, more focus on lone-wolf or duo tactics, and a lot more. Dr. Halsey's restrictions had limited the original program from its actual success rate. With a higher starting list of candidates, we're gonna produce a better batch of Spartans."

- Andrew Johnson, debriefing about the SPARTAN-II Class II program, just before its activation.

The SPARTAN-II Program, Class II, also known as S-II Class II or simply Class II was the second generation of the, a super-soldier program initially conceived by and operated under the. Originally intended as the second phase of the, the SPARTAN-II program drastically changed when Dr. Halsey established it as the program which would later produce the widely-known SPARTAN-IIs, the protectors of humanity during the.

After the first Class ended in 2525, the initiation of Class II was nothing short of a struggle. The tremendous costs required, maintaining utmost secrecy, and the high success-failure ratio made Class II almost impossible to be started. However, in 2537, due to the combined efforts of Commander Andrew Johnson and Dr. Johan Hansson, a former ORION operative and a staff member of SPARTAN-II Class I respectively, Class II was started, with significantly higher recruits having the desired genetic markers. The abducted recruits were taken to 's, the same place as Class I, and trained until the year 2545, where they underwent their , transforming them into super-soldiers.

Over the years of the Human-Covenant War, the SPARTAN-IIs saw widespread action across various colonies, participating in more than a hundred battles and skirmishes. After the Battle of Installation 00 and the end of the Human-Covenant war, all surviving Class II SPARTAN-IIs were provided the. While all SPARTAN-IVs and select SPARTAN-IIIs were transferred to the branch, Class I and Class II SPARTAN-IIs, along with the remaining SPARTAN-IIIs, however, continued to work under 's.

Origins
The SPARTAN-II program was created by Dr. Halsey after the Insurrection, a massive rebellion against the UNSC started. Afraid of the calculation that in a few decades the UNSC could lose the war against the rebels, Dr. Halsey, a brilliant scientist, proposed the SPARTAN-II program to ONI, which was soon after started reluctantly. It involved abducting the candidates and replacing them with flash clones, who would soon after die due to the errors in complete human cloning, and covering up the abduction. The recruits were taken to Reach, where they were trained for eight years in all forms of military methods, before undergoing biological and chemical augmentations at the age of fourteen. These augmentations had a high rate of failure, and out of the 75 recruits who underwent them, only 33 passed through, unscathed, although ONI had secretly listed some Spartans as killed during augmentations, with them using the Spartans for different uses other than the mainstream ones, such as Black Team.

Around the same time, humanity was threatened with extinction by a massive alien empire known as. After the aliens attacked and destroyed the human colony world of Harvest, a war started between humans and the xeno-organisms for the former's survival. Thus, the SPARTAN-IIs, who were initially made to suppress the Insurrection, found a larger foe to fight. Although after ONI Section Two publicly revealed the SPARTAN-IIs as the protectors of humanity, the top-ranking brass at ONI knew that the SPARTAN-II program had cost an unusually high amount, so much that an entire battlegroup of warships could be built for that amount. This led to ONI shutting down the program after Dr. Halsey opted out of Class II, saying she needed more time to work towards other projects, specifically Project MJOLNIR. Although the scientists did try to bring back the program, ONI wasn't easily convinced.

The real reason behind the shutdown, however, was, who was a direct opposer of the SPARTAN-II program. Unknown to many others, Ackerson, Vice Admiral and a few other high-ranking officers initiated the, an effort to create cheap and expendable Spartans, who would be sent on suicide missions with a low rate of survival. Simply put, ONI wasn't exactly thrilled with a new SPARTAN-II program, and they had to be convinced in order for that to happen.

However, Dr. Johan Hansson, one of the scientists who worked on the augmentations of Class I, did not give up hope. While he had been distracted by other projects, especially Project MJOLNIR, Dr. Hansson finally managed to meet Commander Andrew Johnson, a former ORION operative who was a supporter and a fundraiser for Class I, even going so far to launch the second-generation of ORION called Project VALKYRIE, although failed to gather enough support. With both the gentlemen sharing their similar beliefs, they took it to and convinced ONI to restart the SPARTAN-II program. ONI was happy to do it this time, unlike previously, seemingly content with it running under Johnson and Hansson rather than Dr. Halsey, who they despised of due to her gaining huge reputation and a place in their SWORD Base on Reach. In 2537, Class II was given the green light to start, and after a year or two of finding the recruits, Class II officially began on July 8.

Recruitment
For Class II, the researchers at the program expanded their search area by including all of the human colonies and extended the age limit for the candidates from five to seven years. To acquire statistics about the children, ONI Section Two falsified a disease known as "Bernier's Syndrome" that was associated with the genetic coding of a child between five to seven years of age. All the colonies initiated blood test programs, with the staff being researchers of ONI. This yielded some good results, as they identified one hundred and fifty such candidates within nine months, faster than Class I which took twelve months instead. Although most of them originated from the outer colonies, such as Lancaster-205 and Varun-173, a few came from inner colonies, such as Ren-172.

To interview and talk with the recruits, Dr. Hansson and Johnson together went and personally met each of the one hundred and fifty candidates, although in some instances Johnson was replaced with Dr. Abraham Taylor, another scientist of the staff. Each of the candidates was given a numerical tag ranging from 151 to 300. In the daytime, they'd go meet the children and ask a few questions and analyzing a few demonstrations of their skills. If they had passed the test, then soon afterward, at a random night, they'd be abducted by ONI agents who replaced the children using flash-clones. The flash-clones would die within a decade, due to the fact that full-body human cloning was not yet possible, due to the various aberrations in the genetic code. This was to make it appear as if the children had died naturally, thus covering up their abduction.

Out of the 150 candidates, only 90 were successfully abducted, leaving out 60 candidates. This was caused either by the candidates not having the exact desired qualities after the interview, or were unable to be recruited, for reasons mostly unknown. The candidates were recruited and taken to Reach aboard the UNSC Andraste, an Impulse-class stealth frigate. On July 7, 2537, the recruits were taken to Reach's FLEETCOM Military Complex's auditorium, where they were debriefed by Dr. Hansson about the program, in simpler words such as "being offered a different, better life", "protectors of humanity" and other phrases. Most of the recruits were eager, with a few exceptions who did not want to have their lives changed, but all of them were scared nonetheless. When they tried to leave, the DIs stopped them and made them sit. After the debriefing, the recruits were immediately sent to bed, to prepare them for the big day ahead.

Training And Team Assignment
The next day, all the recruits were woken up sharply at 0500 hours; those who hesitated were immediately attacked with shock batons, waking them up. They were taken outside, where they were made to do continuous sit-ups, jumping jacks, push-ups, etc. After they were done with that, Master Sergeant Bryant Wilmer took them on a hike around the complex and the hills nearby, covering two miles in total. Finishing the hike, the recruits were allowed to relax for five minutes, before being sent to a class, taught to them by a 'Dumb' AI whom everyone simply called as 'CB'. Williams taught the recruits about the Insurrection and following it, the Human-Covenant war. The classes were followed by a competition of the classic 'Ring the bell'. The recruits were divided into teams of three, forming thirty teams. They were instructed to reach the bell on the top of a huge pole and ring it. The team to ring the bell last would not be given dinner, and had to go on another hike. At the end of the day, Sage Team, comprising of Ren-172, Varun-173, and Élise-171, lost and had to skip dinner, rather having to eat biscuits and drink only water.

The next day was a similar routine, albeit was more tough and longer. The topic of the lesson was the ancient Battle of Thermopylae. At evening, all the recruits were taken on two Albatrosses and were given parachutes. They were supposed to jump from the Albatross, in order to test their bravery. Surprisingly, every one of the recruits made the jump; not one had opted to not jump. Impressed by this, Wilmer decided to qualify all the teams for dinner. The next six months included the same schedule with some minor changes, in order to toughen the recruits' will to fight and win.

During the training, the trainers found out that some of the recruits found interest in sneaking past the various guards and meeting up with each other. They indulged in different activities, such as tutoring each other, reading collectively about whatever was taught every day by CB, or simply testing and improving their stealth abilities. Upon Hansson's requests, GySgt Wilmer reluctantly formed two unusual teams called Brown Team and Cyan Team, which were five and four members respectively, comprised of these recruits. These two teams were separated from the other teams for most of the time, specially trained in stealth, reconnaissance, and ambushes, unlike the rest who were trained for front-line combat.

After the six months, the recruits started learning about basics of the military. They were taught how to handle a rifle, how to prime a grenade, and how to heal a wound using bio-foam. Training courses were set up, where the recruits were forced to crawl under barbed wires, while the DIs continuous shot at them using Narq-dart rounds, which caused numbness and pain when hit. More training methods included passing over the, and agility training, such as ringing the bell at the middle of a booby-trapped field. Such training continued for two years, after which their training drastically changed.

Competitions and exercises
Unlike Class I, whose training was simply focused on how to improve and how to adapt while on the battlefield, all while assisting and protecting those on their side, Class II had a radically different approach. Similar to the training of the SPARTAN-III program, Class II had a bigger emphasis on teamwork and the competition spirit. The teams were continuously made to fight with each other, which strengthened their bond and the will to beat everyone else and win. For certain events, the recruits were also issued with, otherwise called simply as SPI Mark II. Their suits were a modified variant called the KNIGHT-class, which featured a different design to allow for more agile-tactics.

Aside from competitions, Class II also included a lot of exercises and events, which were added to give a feeling of an actual battle, to test how the recruits would react and fight back.

After the general training ended, the DIs put the recruits into a huge exercise. One team comprised of the one-hundred fifty recruits, while the other team consisted of all the four-dozen trainers. The recruits were posted on the and had to defend the complex and safeguard their flag, while the DIs had to infiltrate and retrieve it. The recruits were given general weapons such as assault rifles, battle rifles, pistols, marksman rifles and flashbang grenades along with TTR-training ODST BDUs. On the other side, the DIs, to make up for the odds being against them, had a large arsenal of weapons, vehicles, and turrets, and wore KNIGHT SPI suits. After a long fight, the recruits won, but only by a slight margin. The DIs had used a lot of traps to take down the recruits, but nonetheless happy that their recruits had been taught well.

Just before the time for augmentations, eight years later, the DIs put yet another large-scale test for the recruits.

Personnel
The entire number of people working in Class II, including the staff, the DIs, the scientists and researchers, the medics, and the Spartans themselves, along with other miscellaneous people was over 200. While the number decreased to somewhere below 200 after the augmentations, and some unfortunate casualties during training, the resulting number of people were still pretty high. After Class II was completed, all of them went in different ways, with the DIs and medics being assigned back to the frontline, while the scientists and researchers went on with other programs, except the Spartans, who were used for a multitude of operations, but mostly being in the battlefield.

Spartan Teams

 * Cobalt Team
 * Lancaster-205
 * Marcus-226
 * Jason-243


 * Maroon Team
 * Reggie-291
 * Katie-201
 * Frank-288


 * Peach Team
 * Judy-264
 * Judy-264
 * Judy-264


 * Tan Team
 * Varun-173
 * Ren-172
 * Élise-171

Staff & Trainers

 * Officers
 * CDR Andrew Johnson
 * Enlisted
 * MSgt Bryant Wilmer
 * SCPO Joshua Reeves
 * GySgt Roland Miles
 * Civilians and AIs
 * Dr. Johan Hansson
 * Dr. Abraham Taylor
 * Prof. Mike Rosalsky
 * Prof. Agnes Glassow
 * AI Williams

Creator's Notes and References

 * The SPARTAN-II Class II program was originally made as Project VALKYRIE, a fan-made program which recruited Spartan 1.1s and gave them training and highly-improved ORION augmentations, but was later changed to Class II in order to be more canon-friendly. However, VALKYRIE itself exists as a program by Johnson which failed to start.