Samuel-034 (Earth-4001)

Petty Officer, Second Class Samuel-034 was a Spartan-II supersoldier of the UNSC Naval Special Warfare Group. Samuel was notably the tallest and strongest of the Spartan-IIs, and often acted as the second-in-command of Blue Team. At the age of fourteen, Samuel was the first Spartan-II to be killed in action—on November 27, 2525—in battle against the Covenant during the Battle of Chi Ceti IV.

History
The history of Samuel-034 is the same as his mainstream counterpart.

Personality & Traits
Samuel-034 was quiet and a careful listener, but extremely sociable when among his fellow Spartan-IIs and had a larger sense of humor than most of his peers. He cared little for those outside the SPARTAN-II program, and was known to display ruthlessness and pragmatism towards hostiles in combat situations, including human insurrectionists and later towards the Kig-Yar soldiers aboard the Unrelenting. During Operation: TALON, Sam detonated a C-12 shaped charge on a docking bay at the United Rebel Front's Eridanus Secundus, irreverent to the obvious URF-affiliated civilian casualties that would be involved with the act. Sam did not display the same great leadership qualities as John-117 or Fred-104 did, but he did act as John's second-in-command in Blue Team throughout the duration of his naval career. Like all Spartan-IIs, Sam was an extremely talented individual, even at a young age. Known to be the strongest Spartan-II, Sam was also an expert with explosives. According to John, Sam had the best sight and hearing capabilities of all of his subordinates. Samuel admittedly found it difficult to fall asleep prior to a mission's undertaking.

By the first days of their training, despite their initially rough first interactions, Samuel formed a close friendship with John-117 and Kelly-087. Sam was the first Spartan to have spoken to and befriend John at Reach and, in 2552, John considered Sam to be his first and best friend. The three of them became inseparable, with John considering them to be members of his family. Sam was close to most of his fellow Spartan-II candidates during training and was deeply saddened by many of their deaths after the SPARTAN-II augmentation procedures killed nearly half of them. Sam and John were like brothers, they could always depend on each other. When Sam died, John and Kelly were the most devastated.

Physical Description
Samuel-034 had a darkly tanned skin complexion with sandy blond hair and green eyes. By 2525, Samuel had grown his hair out to three centimeters and was warned by Chief Petty Officer Franklin Mendez that he would look like a civilian if he continued to do so. Samuel was 223.4 centimeters (7 ft 4 in) in height with armor and 135 kg (298 lb) in mass without armor at the age of fourteen. Without his helmet, John-117 noted that Samuel was taller than him by a head. After recovering faster than any other Spartan from the augmentation procedures, he became the largest and strongest Spartan-II supersoldier.

Equipment
Following his augmentation procedures and the beginning of the Human-Covenant War, Samuel-034 was equipped with MJOLNIR Powered Assault Armor/Mark IV from Chi Ceti IV's Damascus Materials Testing Facility along with the rest of his fellow Spartans. Samuel donned a Materials Group developmental helmet permutation that shared visual cues with the armor variant that would eventually be known as the CQB-class Mjolnir variant. Samuel's weapons of choice appeared to be the BR85HB battle rifle, along with two M6G magnums.

Trivia

 * There was a number tag conflict between Samuel-034 and Fhajad-084, as the latter was identified as "Fhajad-034" in Halo: The Fall of Reach. However, all subsequent media refers to Sam as "SPARTAN-034", while Fhajad is now identified with his current tag of "-084".
 * In Halo Wars, Spartans will occasionally say "For Samuel!" after killing an enemy unit.