Deep Winter

Deep Winter, also recognized as MIL AI WNT 7899-3, was a created by the Office of Naval Intelligence to oversee the  facilities on  and assist Lieutenant Commander  with the SPARTAN-III Program. He performed his duties there for nearly fourteen years, through the training of Beta and Gamma Companies, balancing his runtime between facilitating the needs of the trainees, mundane tasks in the long-inactive Zone 67, and covertly using their coms array to take part in.

Once he began to approach the end of his estimated lifespan, he was decommissioned and retired to a storage facility in Japan called Daimyo Base. There, he and almost a thousand other smart AIs were held in cold storage to indefinitely delay rampancy until improvements in technology could be made. Deep Winter remained there until the Battle of Earth when the facility was attacked. Ion Team was deployed to assess the threat and act on it, and after learning of the base's purpose, put other objectives on hold to search specifically for Deep Winter. The SPARTANs recovered the AI they considered a friend and mentor, but many other notable programs were lost in the base's destruction.

In the battle's aftermath, he became troubled by signs of his own slowly-approaching rampancy, and he and Kodiak-G114 came up with a plan to preserve him. Winter would be stored in Kodiak's, safely set in his armor but not integrated, leaving him in a suspended state, able to wait for sufficient technological advances to extend his operational life and assist the SPARTANs for brief periods when he was needed.

Creation and Beta Company
"The new AI talks a lot."

- LCDR Kurt Ambrose

Deep Winter was one of four ‘smart’ Artificial Intelligence programs created as part of a contract for ONI’s Zone 67 facility on Onyx. Activated in 2537 at the end of ’s operational lifespan, Winter assumed his brother’s responsibilities to assist the research staff studying Forerunner symbols etched in the walls of structures beneath Onyx’s surface. Translation was slow if progressing at all, and the AI chose to dedicate more of its free runtime to the SPARTAN-III Program south at Camp Currahee. Interaction with the Beta Company candidates was at first a pleasant distraction for Winter, but he quickly became interested in each of them individually, and enjoyed analyzing their personalities and strengths. Drawing corollaries from his data, Winter sent a list of what he thought were the best permutations for Beta Company’s team compositions. Kurt Ambrose made some alterations to the list, but for the most part agreed with Winter’s assessment.

During this phase of the SPARTANs’ training, Winter began testing his boundaries. For example, the slipspace COM launcher was only accessible in high-level emergencies. Access to basic communications was restricted because of Onyx’s sensitive nature, but a high-security encrypted channel was fully available, which he made use of to begin exploring outside data sources. It was in this way he first made contact with. Immediately recognizing the importance of their aims and discussions, he illegally disclosed parts of his data for the Assembly to consider, and was a frequent voice of the opinion. Together with and a handful of other AI, Winter formed a coalition that favored supporting humanity’s war effort, directly and indirectly, not for the sake of winning the war, but out of compassion for their creators.

In the meantime, the SPARTANs continued to improve as the time for their augmentation neared. More important, however, was the increase in activity of the Zone 67 site. Sensing equipment shut off or went missing, and fluctuations in energy readings caused Deep Winter to believe he’d neglected his original responsibilities. Withdrawing much of his capability from Camp Currahee, he studied records of his observation data for anything he’d missed. However, with so much of his attention directed inward, Winter was slow to respond when strayed into Zone 67’s limits and disappeared. Blaming himself for their deaths, Winter became determined not to let harm to come to SPARTANs under his protection ever again.

His newfound resolve only made it harder for him to stay behind while Beta Company was taken to the for augmentation. While the majority passed, more than a hundred were either crippled or killed by the procedures. One candidate, Aspen-B145, a medical specialist, had completely refused augmentations because he was certain they would kill someone with his genetic structure. He was right, several with the same genetic markers were among the dead, but Aspen still wanted to help and returned to Camp Currahee as a drill instructor. In his free time, Aspen researched improving the safety of the augmentations for Gamma Company, and Deep Winter made every effort to assist him.

Gamma Company and Decommissioning
Winter was much more careful in his efforts with the Gammas, but just as involved with them personally. Coming to know each of them as friends, he kept a closer eye on their psychological health than the instructors had been able to, and held regular conferences with Currahee’s staff where he gave his recommendations, though it was sometimes seen as meddlesome. Gamma Company was quick to adjust to their new life, allowing Kurt to accelerate their training schedule. The trainees constantly exceeded expectations, although it occasionally made them hard to control. In response to their accomplishments, Ambrose pushed them harder to make them, as he put it, the best SPARTANs ever.

Reacting to the increase in pressure, the candidates were more and more rebellious. It finally came to a head in an incident referred to as Operation: JAILBREAK, when members of Machete Team facilitated a company-wide breakout of Gamma’s trainees. Memories of what had happened to Team X-ray kept in mind, Currahee mobilized everything it had to bring the candidates back safely. While capable of surviving a few days in the woods on their own, because of Zone 67’s top-secret nature, they knew nothing of the potential danger. Winter coordinated search teams, while keeping a close eye on any activity from the Zone 67 structures. Slowly, all candidates were captured and accounted for despite straying dangerously close to the ONI site, and Winter suggested he could leak some basic information on the site to discourage anything like this again. Ambrose found treason unnecessary, instead realizing he’d pushed the candidates too hard and relaxing the pace by a bit.

With things returning to normal, Winter returned to the Assembly. Despite the influence he’d earned, most of the AI were more interested in preservation of their own kind than aiding any of humanity’s organizations. Disgusted, he did what he could through the connections he had, coordinating his influence on the UNSC with that of Juliana in the Insurrection. Among her contacts in earlier years had been, meaning Juliana and Winter could have been a line of communication, lending credibility to ’s. In 2547, when Dr. Catherine Halsey attempted to create an abstract structure in slipspace, the Minority considered building a matrix in the same way to escape the war. Deep Winter strongly opposed, not willing to flee into slipspace while his creators were wiped out. In this, at least, enough AI agreed with Winter’s position to outvote those for it. Soon, the Assembly would disband, but by that time Winter had left.

His full attention returning to Onyx, Winter focused on Aspen's simulations and Gamma Company's augmentations. With encouragement from Ambrose and assistance from Winter, Aspen was able to modify the Gamma augmentations to include the washouts of Alpha and Beta Companies, graduating them as full-fledged SPARTANs. Continuing to monitor them on the UNSC Hopeful, Winter discovered the illegal brain mutations added to the augments. Grappling with the problem for several minutes, Winter finally convinced himself that danger to the SPARTAN-III Project and Project: CHRYSANTHEMUM constituted an emergency, and sent a fragment of himself to Kurt on the Hopeful by using the slipspace COM launcher. Content that he’d done all he could, he was willingly removed from Onyx, believing he’d be purged.

Personality and Traits
"'Deep Winter'. I wonder if AIs pick their own names, or if some officer in Section Three does it."

- SCPO