Huyen Marie Nghiem

**Name:** Huyen Marie Nghiem

**Gender:** Female

**Nickname:** None

**Date of Birth:** 8/30/2510

**Age:** 47

**Height:** 5’ 3”

**Weight:** 138 lbs

**Primary Specialization:** Grenadier

**UNSC Primary:** MA5D Assault Rifle

**UNSC Secondary:** M319 Grenade Launcher

**Additional Gear:** 2 Frag Grenades, 1 Smoke Grenade, Binoculars , and Knife

**Rank:** Master Sergeant

**Suit Colors:** Completely Black Plates. Otherwise normal Marine armor.

## Physical Description:

Huyen may be getting close to 50 but her outer appearance is more like that of a woman in her mid 30’s. She has caramel colored skin and hair so black that it almost looks unnatural. Her irises are a very dark brown and from a distance it almost looks like they are completely black. She has made sure to take care of her face and it shows as her face is almost unmarred by nicks and scratches. Her beautiful visage is only broken by a single scar on her right cheek though it is usually covered in makeup if she can get her hands on any in the field. Under Huyen’s armor is a different story as her body has been through decades of war. She has several surgical scars from hasty battlefield operations and explosion shrapnel.

Huyen combat gear is usually immaculately clean and in combat she will take any down time to keep it that way. Her armor and weapons are kept up to date and she will use the newest UNSC issue gear available to her. She hangs her 2 frag grenades on her right hip and her smoke grenade on her left. Her knife is attached to the left of her chest on her armor and her binoculars are attached to her right thigh when not in use. Her black armor is only adorned with her name and rank.

## **Personality:**

Huyen is a tough, dependable, and self-disciplined woman that doesn’t rely on others to get her through her troubles. She is smart and knows it but she doesn’t flaunt it like so many others. Instead, she listens to other people and judges them based on their merits. She sees the people around her based on their value to the task at hand or their influence on her life. This does not mean that Huyen is nice but that she is fair in her eyes. If she thinks that you are useless or some replaceable drone then she will pay you no mind and if you die she will think that it is a shame to lose another person to pull a trigger.

This cold calculus has helped her in the business world and so Huyen applies it to the military world as well. She is not callous about it as she doesn’t want those under her to die but if it can’t be helped she isn’t going to weep over the dead. One thing she can’t tolerate is someone not following orders as any organization needs to have a hierarchy that is followed. Another thing she can’t stand is wasting lives for no reason. Following orders is all well and good but if the orders are outlandish she is not above questioning them. She has been on enough battlefields that she can tell when some half-baked plan could get her whole team killed and will tell her commanders as such. If they do not budge on their plan she will follow them begrudgingly and may try to take liberties in the execution of the plan to make it less suicidal.

Of course, her men will not see her as being that forgiving. Huyen expects her men to be able to do anything that she can do and maybe more if they are an ODST or Spartan. Her flat face in the presence of jokes and chiding are a hallmark of her personality as she acts professionally at all times. She sees herself as a business woman even now and her appearance to others is important to her. She goes to great lengths to be patient and measured in her actions but she can fly into rage if she sees other cheating or being treated unfairly because of their status. She will also beat those being disobedient as that is how she was taught to be respectful.

## **Bio:**

Huyen was born in Hue, Vietnam on Earth to her business magnate mother. She was the first of four children and they all took her mother last name. Like her younger brother and sisters, she was taught by the best and the brightest how to run a business and conduct herself in a proper manner. They were taught the finer points of the businesses that they were to be inheriting as their mother was planning to make them fight amongst each other to see who will take over for her. For Huyen she was to be taking over the manufacturing arm of her mother's assets. This included many UNSC weapons production facilities across the galaxy.

As such, she is was well versed in her new craft as she toured from planet to planet, even as a child, looking into each factory and what they made. Huyen was so determined to be the best for her mother that she wanted to even test the weapons and machines that her factories would be producing. So she began practicing fighting and shooting at a young age to be able to test the products that she would be selling. Because of this, her childhood was not one of fun and games but of competition with her siblings for making the most profit. Huyen even married the son of a business rival to her mother at 18 to get a head. Soon she was a mother and the CEO of many factories producing equipment for the raging war against the Covenant.

After having three daughters of her own by 24, Huyen had them well on the way to being well to do business women like herself. Her new found order at home only lead her to look outwards for new problems to fix. She looked at the state of the UNSC and its loss of most of the outer colonies by this time. To her it was obvious what she was supposed to do to keep her children safe and her business alive, and that was to fight for the survival of the human race. Foregoing any attempt to ask her mother for permission she enlisted in the Marines. She left her possessions in the hands of her husband and went to go fight the enemy that was slowly encroaching on her life. Her mother didn’t try to stop her and Huyen kissed her kids goodbye to fight for their lives. She didn’t go to officer school or ty to be special as she saw the teeming masses of grunts as a place that she was needed. Their discipline, or lack thereof, was what she was worried about. She made it through bootcamp in one piece and headed out to the frontlines.

For the next 10 years were loss after loss for the UNSC, or at least in her eyes. They could not stem the tide of worlds being glassed and what few victories they had were pyrrhic ones. Huyen, like so many others, was shuffled around from world to world as they fell to the Covenant. She was at several of the big battles throughout the Outer Colony and Inner Colony Sieges like Jericho VII, Camber, Miridem, and Actium. She was wounded on many occasions but none of them were ever too life threatening that she was put out of action for a long time. In this time she steadily climbed the NCO ranks through determination and a little luck. Many of the openings that allowed her to advance were from the people above her getting killed in attacks on their bases. Though being on the frontlines wasn’t a cakewalk either as many NCOs around her died through the brutal life on the front.

After her tours, she would always come home to see her daughters growing up without her and it made her proud. They had become respectable young women in her absence, though a rebellious streak was in all of them from her husband’s teachings. Still, she was proud to come home each time with another set harrowing stories to tell them. Plus, after 10 years of war she was finally beginning to feel the effects slow her down. That was no excuse to stop fighting but the top brass had a different idea for her. They wanted her to be Drill Sergeant on a facility on Mars. There we would be able to take a break and still serve the UNSC. Huyen took up this new post with passion. Being closer to her children, and her corporate office, also made the posting desireable to her. So she became a Drill Sergeant for the next 7 years and would help train thousands of marines going off to fight the Covenant.

She would take small tours of the front from time to time for a year or 6 month so that she could see how the war was progressing, but Huyen only saw the end approaching. Her daughters were grown and in the work force back on earth. Two of them wanted to join the marines like their mother but then Reach fell and everything changed. Suddenly, it was only a matter of time until Earth was attacked. She filed for a transfer back to a combat ready battalion and headed to the cradle of humanity. There she was deployed to protect the orbital elevator in New Mombasa and fought in the Battle of Earth. She did not leave earth and managed to never encounter the flood.

After the end of the war, she went back to teaching on Mars. She lived a quiet life as an instructor and finally felt like she could go back to civilian life. Two of her daughters left to be in the UNSC, Bain in the Navy and Ai in the marines, while Quyen took over the business from her husband. Of course, this was too good to last forever and the rise of the fractured Covenant factions along with the Insurrectionists becoming active again only led Huyen to think about joining an active unit again. After the attack on New Alexandria she filed for a transfer once again and is waiting from her reassignment to a ship to serve on.