Rachel-343

"I heard some of my fellows in Section One talk about him; called him Antichrist, and not without reason; he has so far killed everything in his path, becomes a savage monster in battle, and fights the religious Covenant. On top of it all, he isn't a Christian. Hell, he despises those who are."

- Laszlo-108 about Richie.

Richard-358, nicknamed and almost always called Richie, occasionally codenamed Antichrist, was a Spartan II Class III SPARTAN. Following the death of his teammates, he became a lone wolf agent for the UNSC, and ONI in particular, also developing a hunger for revenge and bloodlust.

Early Life
"I was naïve at that time. I took everything for granted, when in fact, something as obvious as a family member could suddenly disappear from your life, leaving yourself to suffer alone. That's the selfishness in dying, and that is why I will not let myself be missed."

- Richie about his past.

Richie was born in 2534 on Reach in Granite Belly, a town in close proximity to the Highland Mountains. His father was a worker in one of Reach's many titanium mines, while his mother was a kindergarten teacher. He became the younger brother to his three siblings, Mac, Jenna and Victoria.

The family had many problems with their economy, and often barely managed to pay their taxes and bills, which came at the expense that the children were forced to live cheaply, with very few luxuries. This sometimes caused arguments between the oldest child, Jenna, and her and Richie's parents. After a particularly intense argument, when Richie was four years old, it ended with Jenna leaving the house and moving in with a friend instead. She also refused to talk with her parents, something that made them so sad that they started to forget to go to work.

After a while, Richie's mother was fired because of having neglected work too many times. Losing her job was the last straw for her, and she took her own life a few days later. With his wife dead, meaning less money for the family, Richie's father was forced to work overtime to cover their expenses, leaving Mac to take care of the family, a duty he dropped out of school to do.

However, a year later, the stress became too much for Richie's father, causing him to accidentally cause part of the mine he worked in to fall in on itself, killing him. Having lost half his family Richie was for a long while mentally scarred from his experiences. However, his destiny didn't lie with his slowly collapsing family.

Conscription, Training and Augmentation
"For once in my life, I was happy. But life isn't about happiness. I learned that when all I held dear left me."

- Richie about the training period.

In 2540, the Spartan II Class III program, headed by Captain Griffin Standoff, was permitted by HIGHCOM, and a total of 50 subjects, including Richie, were found. After having seen and visited the candidates, Standoff initiated Operation: CLOAK AND DAGGER. A flash-clone of Richie was created and replaced him as he himself was kidnapped by Office of Naval Intelligence operatives and brought to a top-secret training facility on Reach.

There, Richie and 49 other children were told by Captain Standoff that they were all destined to become the greatest soldiers humanity had, Spartans. He explained what their lives would be like and how they would become Spartans. Although initially nervous, Richie eventually simply became intrigued and embraced his new life as an opportunity he never could have had in his former life.

The training for Richie and the rest of the Spartan II Class IIIs was intense and harsh under then-Gunnery Sergeant Dean Jackson, and very identical to the training undertaken by the earlier Spartan-IIs. Before the bell on the pole exercise, Richie was put into a team of four other recruits; SPARTAN-314 "Domnic", SPARTAN-334 "Gregory", SPARTAN-353 "Rick" and SPARTAN-369 "Alai". Together they would later be known as Cyan Team. Although the team had a hard time at working together, Domnic and Greg even more so, they managed to complete the bell exercise, albeit the second last team to do so.

Richie would on his own become one of the best Class IIIs, although like with the rest of his team, his teamwork skills were lacking, partly because of his wish not to grow too close to people, as he knew they could be lost so easily. Despite this however, he started to care for his teammates and sought to improve himself in order to protect them. He became the neutral party within Cyan Team during arguments, trying to solve them, although it was practically a lost cause, as nothing could stop Domnic and Greg's arguments for any length of time, except for in-battle situations.

With his dark past behind him, and his bloodlust and cold nature suppressed because of his care for his teammates, Richie, Rick and Alai managed to make Cyan a decent team, although Domnic and Greg continued to dislike one another. At the same time, Richie developed a great talent in close quarters weapons, and the Flamethrower in particular. However, just when things seemed to go his way, the time came for another great change in his life.

In 2548, having completed the eight years of intense training, the Spartan II Class IIIs underwent their augmentations procedure, which was almost the same as the Class Is received. Although the augmentations would give the Spartans enhanced vision, muscle mass, bone density and reflexes, there was a high risk of the side effects crippling or even killing the Spartans. Approximately 40 percent of the Spartans died, including Rick and Alai. While Richie survived, losing two of those he cared about scarred him just as much as his lost family members had. Blurred nightmares of his family haunted him for weeks, causing him to sleep badly and fall into decline during daytime.

First mission
However, Domnic and Greg, temporarily reconciled after surviving the augmentations, managed to cheer up Richie, unknowingly also keeping him from falling in to his hidden dark, bloodthirsty and cold personality.

Cyan Team was one of last teams ordered out into the field, after having received their designated Semi-Powered Infiltration (SPI) armor. As Dean Jackson had told Standoff that Cyan Team was somewhat unstable, it was deemed necessary to give the team a "test run" first. They were ordered to take out a band of pirates on the asteroid Kiribati in the Paris system.

When arriving to the Paris system, Richie, Domnic and Greg hid on a cargo freighter, waiting for the pirates to attack it. However, the attackers turned out different than what they expected. Instead of a small band of human pirates, a small fleet of Kig-yar privateers arrived in-system and decided to capture the freighter for study.

Despite the new foe, Cyan Team proceeded with the assignment as initially planned; to not leave their hiding place until they were hooked up with the enemy ship. When the jackals had finally hooked up to the freighter and had sent scouts to search through the ship, Cyan slipped out of their cover, killed the scouts (stealing their point defense gauntlets and grenades) and assaulted the jackal ship. Instead of simply destroying the ship, Domnic decided that they would take it over and use against the rest of the privateers.

After gunning down more than half of the ship's defense contingent, the team finally entered bridge, killed the crewmen and took control. Although unsure of how exactly to use the ship, Greg managed to activate the ship’s sole plasma cannon and use it to take down one of the enemy ships. However, the third and final ship attacked, causing heavy damage to the captured ship. Rerouting power from their already strained reactor, the plasma cannon was able to fire again, damaging the remaining enemy ship enough to send it crashing into the asteroid.

With the reactor overloading and the ship's weapons detonating because of the pressure, the ship started to fall apart, forcing Richie and the others to abandon ship. However, on the way out, Domnic became trapped under a chunk of debris. Greg told Richie to go on back to the freighter while he helped her loose, which he reluctantly did. He took the controls of the freighter and prepared to leave as soon as Greg and Domnic returned. Unfortunately, when the two had almost returned, the jackal ship's plasma cannon overheated and caused a chain reaction with the ship's methane suit, setting most of the ship on fire and cremating Domnic and Greg before they got onboard.

For a moment Richie prepared to go after them in the false hope that they were alive, but ultimately decided to admit that they were gone, and unhooked the freighter and flew out of the blast radius just before the other ship exploded.

Operation: STRAGGLER (2548)
"I was consumed by anger; it ate away from me, yet made me stronger than I had ever been before. Ever since, I realized revenge and fury are my ultimate weapons."

- Richie about his revenge.

With the last people he cared about gone, Richie succumbed to his hidden dark personality that had been suppressed for so long. Instead of returning to the local ONI headquarters as ordered, he gave in to his desire to have revenge on those that caused the death of his teammates. He landed the freighter on Kiribati and made his way into the crashed jackal ship where there were still survivors struggling to repair their ship and leave.

Using his rage and his flamethrower, Richie slaughtered every jackal he came across in as brutal and painful way as possible, snapping legs and arms, burning them alive and stomping straight through their gut-sacks. By the time he had made it to the near-critical reactor, more than 90 percent of the enemies were already dead. But to be ultimately sure and make his revenge final, he overloaded the reactor and returned to the freighter, escaping the blast radius just in time. He then finally returned to ONI headquarters, with a new personality to guide him into the future.

Operation: GHOST (2548)
"A pain in the ass, that's what it was. The rebels fought on, even though they knew they couldn't win. A waste of good ammo."

- Richie about Operation: GHOST

After losing his team and after his new personality became evident, ONI decided not to assign him to another team, instead allowing him to operate alone, mostly for the safety of others, as some feared that he was so terribly unstable that he would kill anything, even though he wasn't violent towards other humans (except for enemies of the UNSC).

A week after the Paris system incident and Operation: STRAGGLER, Richie was put into Operation: GHOST, a UNSC effort to once and for all destroy the rebels in the Paris System, in their overall plan to hold Paris IV against the inevitable Covenant attack. A total of five rebel bases, on Paris I, Paris III, Cook, Polynesia and Archipelago (first two planets, other three asteroids) would be taken out as stealthily as possible, which would hopefully shut down all rebel operations in the area.

Richie was assigned to carry out the task. He was first deployed to Paris I to locate Alpha Outpost, where the rebels stored a large amount of explosives. After silently assassinating the outer guards, he moved directly into the outpost's barracks, slaughtering the off-duty garrison. After clearing the barracks, he moved for the storage facility, for the moment still unknown to the rest of the base.

However, he was seen in the corridors by a guard, who alerted base security. Although the whole guard garrison attacked him, it was weakened enough for Richie to defeat, as more than half the guards had been killed in the barracks. The guards, battered and defeated, fell back to form defenses around the command center and the storage facility. Richie, by then very tired of the mission, raided the command center, killing the guards and then capturing the rebel leaders and locking them inside a small room.

He then used the control panel to call all remaining rebel guards to the command center, where he lied in wait, planting trip mines around the entrances. When the first guards had arrived and been blown apart by the trip mines, Richie ambushed the remaining ones, making it nothing short of a massacre. He then contacted the ONI prowler in orbit, telling it to pick up the prisoners and the explosives.

After the prisoners and explosives had been delivered back to HQ on Paris IV, Richie was taken to Paris III, where Bravo Outpost was located. Unlike Alpha Outpost, Bravo was mainly a training center, where they trained new rebel soldier recruits. Richie chose to wait until nightfall before raiding the base, to be sure that most of the base’s inhabitants would be asleep.

In the middle of the night he attacked, swiftly and quietly killing the tired night guards. He then got into the base and moved from dormitory to dormitory, murdering the sleeping recruits so quietly that he remained undetected until he had broken into the command center, when it was far too late. However, the resulting firefight forced him to kill the rebel commanders, leaving no prisoners for the UNSC to take. After the outpost had been secured, he was moved to the nearby asteroid Cook to take out Outpost Charlie.

Charlie Outpost was a factory for rebel weapons and vehicles, so Richie was ordered to simply destroy the factory, which would destroy the whole base and save them time, as they feared the rebels would start to sense something was wrong. Richie was dropped practically in front of the factory in a HEV, causing him to be detected by the guards. Instead of staying and killing all the guards, Richie simply shot his way through the guards and into the factory.

After entering the factory core, he quickly planted several sets of Satchel Charges on important points in the core, killing all the guards present that tried to stop him. After making sure all Satchels would go off and were in place, he sprinted out of the factory, barely making it out in time. As the factory’s core was overheated by the Satchel explosions, it was torn apart and fell in on itself, causing fires all over the area. With all rebels at the factory gone, he was picked up for his next target.

Next, Richie arrived on Polynesia, a short distance outside Delta Outpost, a titanium mine. Unlike Charlie Outpost, the UNSC wanted Delta Outpost intact, with the hope of using the titanium to aid the war effort. Richie took on a stealthier approach for the mission, instead of slaughtering everything in his path, he made use of his camouflage cloak and stealth abilities to quietly assassinate the guards, clearing out the mine swiftly. After a short while, the rebel personnel had been killed, and the UNSC sent their own miners down to start get the mine working for them.

With Delta Outpost under UNSC control, there was one last outpost, Echo, which served as a shipyard for the rebels. By then, the rebels knew well that someone had taken out the other outposts and were on full alert. To make it harder, the UNSC wanted the shipyard intact as well for their own use.

Richie once again tried an extremely stealthy approach, but it was made harder because of the sheer amount of guards present and their alertness level. Booby traps had also been planted, slowing down Richie’s progress significantly. Ultimately, however, he managed to clear out all areas of the shipyard, claiming it in the name of the UNSC. After the operation, Richie was commended for his success and promoted to Petty Officer First Class.

Operation: BROKEN CHAIN (2548)
"Watching the Covvies' own guns turned against them was the funniest thing I had seen in quite some time."

- Richie about Operation: BROKEN CHAIN.

With the immediate problems to the Paris-front dealt with, Richie was moved closer to the current area of Covenant activity. In the Eden System, a system without planets and consisting only of a massive star, dust clouds and asteroids. The asteroid field had, for the last three years been contested territory, with parts controlled by the Covenant, while other parts were still under UNSC control. The UNSC, hoping to get the upper hand in the area, sent Richie to aid in Operation: BROKEN CHAIN to capture the asteroid Taulus, a vital link between the Covenant-held areas.

Dropped in a HEV pod, Richie was ordered to destroy the Covenant's ground-based plasma cannons in order to let the UNSC ships safely engage the orbiting Covenant fleet. After killing a few patrols, he approached the first plasma cannon, and witnessed the cannon's caretakers firing a test shot with it. What he saw gave Richie to idea to capture the cannons and then have them fire on the Covenant ships instead of destroying them. Going against his orders, he killed the guards and then programmed the cannon to fire at the Covenant fleet. However, he placed a remote explosive on the cannon’s plasma coils just in case.

He proceeded towards the second cannon, encountering and killing a few more patrols. He repeated the same procedure with the second cannon, programming it to fire into orbit while also planting a remote explosive. After a while, the same thing had been done to the third and final cannon. Then he gave the UNSC forces the go-signal. When the fleet arrived, they found two Covenant ships already destroyed and several more taking damage from their own cannons. With the focus on their cannons, the UNSC forces struck the enemy fleet from behind, destroying more than half almost instantly. A half hour later, the Covenant fleet had been destroyed, and the Covenant-held asteroids had been split into two separate areas.

With the Covenant 'chain' broken, the UNSC fleet spread throughout the asteroid field, taking over the asteroids one at a time, creating a rare, perhaps unprecedented, chain of victories for the UNSC. At the end of the year, most of the asteroids were under UNSC control, a few Covenant bastions remaining, unable to strike back without reinforcements.

Battle of New Beijing (2549)
As the Eden system front was well fortified by the UNSC, the Covenant decided to attack the New Asia System in the hope of breaking into the UNSC outer colonies through that route. A taskforce of fifteen vessels assaulted the first New Asia system colony, New Beijing. Much less fortified than the Eden system, most of New Beijing fell under Covenant control in a matter of hours.

Richie was sent to New Beijing's surface with the order to reactivate the colony’s Mass Driver cluster, which had been deactivated by Covenant stealth strikes. Upon reaching the surface, he was found and attacked by several grunt groups. Although he survived the attacks, he suffered several injuries, including needler rounds in his right arm and plasma burns on the leg. He managed to make his way to the Mass Driver generator nonetheless.

However, awaiting him at the generator were several elites. Despite severely handicapped, he engaged the enemies. Through all his wit, cunning and a good share of luck, he managed to defeat the Elites and reactivate the generator. With the Mass Drivers back online and firing at the unprepared Covenant fleet, several of their ships were destroyed before they counterattacked and glassed the area, destroying the Mass Drivers.

The battle was, despite Richie's actions, ultimately lost, and all UNSC forces were ordered to evacuate. Richie barely made it back to the landing zone and was returned to an ONI prowler. After the mission, he was awarded a Purple Heart for the injuries he had received.

Siege of Paris IV (2549)
"You can't imagine how painful it was, to see what you had worked so hard to prevent for over a year was made in vain."

- Richie about the Siege of Paris IV.

With New Beijing, and along with it, the New Asia system under Covenant control, the way to Paris IV was open. The UNSC did everything in its power to fortify the system, including having Richie quickly returned there. Reinforcements from Reach arrived, a super MAC and several standard orbital MAC platforms were constructed, old defunct mass drivers on the surface reactivated and citizens recruited into emergency militias, everything deemed possible to hold the planet.

However, as much as the UNSC wanted to hold the planet, the Covenant desired it destroyed, and when the fleet arrived, it numbered no less than 200 vessels of varying sizes. Luckily, the MAC guns forced the ships to keep their distance, although it didn't stop the Covenant from sending most of their dropships and boarding craft against the UNSC fleet. Several boarding crafts latched onto the human ships and battles erupted on the ships and MAC platforms.

Richie was assigned to the super MAC, the most powerful weapon the humans at Paris IV held, with the ability to destroy any Covenant ship with a single shot, and therefore a prime target for the Covenant boarding parties. Richie took position together with some marines in hangar A, knocking the first wave of boarding craft out cold. The second and third waves followed the same fate. But with fourth and fifth waves, the Covenant troops started to push the defenders back. With the arrival of the sixth and seventh waves, the Covenant troops swarmed Richie's and the Marines' positions, dealing heavy casualties to both sides. With the arrival of the next waves, the Marines fell and Richie rushed back to the HEV drop pod bay, where he was granted permission to leave the station.

After being fired out of the bay, he tried to steer the pod towards the UNSC Antique, which had almost been taken over by boarding parties. As a string of luck and precision, Richie managed to crash the pod into the ship's hangar bay. Despite being severely injured by the crash, he got back up and ferociously attacked the Covenant raiders in the back, allowing the Marine contingent to counterattack. A half hour later, the Covenant troops had been mowed down and slaughtered. With the ship secured, Richie went back to the hangar bay and hijacked a boarding craft, unhooking it from the Antique and piloting it back towards the super MAC, whose defenders had almost been completely annihilated. Two ODST squads from the Antique took after him and manned their own boarding craft.

The three boarding craft latched onto the super MAC station and they began to systematically hunt down the Covenant teams, after sweeping through the hangar, gunning down the few unaware sentries. After minutes of intense hunting, the Covenant troops were overwhelmed as they were attacked and slaughtered from behind while trying to break through the surviving marine garrison.

Although having lost a great amount of Marines, two orbital MACs and three ships, the UNSC forces had repelled the Covenant boarding parties, and the Covenant were still forced to keep their distance, otherwise risking extreme casualties. Instead, the Covenant main commander ordered a siege of the system.

After two days, one of the Covenant fleet commanders grew impatient and blinded by his zealous fury, took 50 ships and assaulted the human formation in the hope of overwhelming it with the sheer strength of the Covenant ships. The foolish maneuver cost the commander a quarter of his ships after just a short while into the battle. The rest of the ships fiercely engaged the UNSC fleet, all the while trying to get a clear shot on the super MAC. However, the commander's ships fell one by one, until only half a dozen remained.

Using his subordinate's recklessness to his advantage, the main commander had three Carriers perform a precision slipspace jump to just above the planet, giving them room to send fighters, dropships, vehicles and troopers down to Paris IV's surface, all with the ultimate objective of destroying the MAC gun generator. To respond to the new situation, Richie once again used a HEV pod to get to the surface as quickly as possible.

Once on the ground, he rushed to reach the generator complex before the defenders were overrun. However, Covenant forces had already reached the ground and several patrols slowed down Richie's progress. By the time he finally made it to the generator complex, a Covenant bomb detonated, destroying the generator and disabling the MAC guns. At the same moment, the entire Covenant fleet assaulted the UNSC fleet. The battle quickly tipped in the Covenant's favor. The UNSC fleet fell apart, shattered by the powerful attacks, and their ground-based units were slaughtered by massive invasion forces.

A general evacuation order was given, and Richie was reassigned to one of the pick-up locations to defend it against Covenant attacks until all personnel had safely evacuated. The Covenant raided the area over a dozen times, but the incredible efforts of Richie and the Marine and ODST squads present kept them at bay. However, during the final moments of the evacuation, Richie was hit by multiple Needler and plasma rounds, burning through his armor and sustaining grave injuries to his chest and stomach area.

When the defenders finally evacuated back to the ships, Richie was carried into a medical bay, floating between life and death for several days. But ultimately, he managed to recover, although his desire for revenge grew even more intense than ever, as his many missions before the siege had been done to help the UNSC in standing a chance, only for it to turn out to be in vain.

Operation: RECOVERY (2549)
The fall of Paris IV was a terrible loss for the UNSC, who had lost another, and one of the last, of the major strongholds. But there was also other problems caused by the Covenant's victory. Hundreds of Marines and civilians, and also notably, a whole platoon of Mark IV/G "Goliath" Prototype Exoskeletons, all had been stranded on various places in the Paris system.

Although not yet dead or found by the Covenant, HIGHCOM and ONI knew it wouldn't be long before the Covenant found and destroyed them. Hoping to rescue the lost people and hardware, ONI prepared several stealth ships and a small taskforce, including Richie. Little more than three weeks after the disastrous battle at Paris IV, the task group arrived in the system, carefully cloaked to avoid being found by the Covenant.

Upon arrival, the UNSC group found the stranded survivors hidden on Paris I struggling to fend back Covenant scouts. With very limited time before the Covenant ships in the area arrived at Paris I and glassed their foes to death, Richie was sent down in a HEV pod to the planet's surface just outside the makeshift base. Arriving just in time, he tracked down and killed the Covenant scout parties in their fortified positions, allowing the survivors to quickly board the ONI ships.

Just when the evacuation was completed and Richie had returned to the lead prowler, the Covenant ships arrived and destroyed one of the stealth ships. However, the others managed to escape into slipspace before the Covenant vessels attacked again. After performing the required sets of random jumps, the group returned to Reach, where the survivors were taken care of.

Operation: FLASHLIGHT (2550)
"I hated the damn clown the second I met him. Can't deny he was good with tech and a pistol in-hand though."

- Richie about Lavernius-108.

A year after the loss of Paris IV and the successful rescue of several hundred stranded humans from a Covenant-held system, the dwarf planet Beorn dropped out of contact. Richie was paired together with Lavernius-108, a Class I Spartan and agent for ONI Section One to investigate and confirm possible Covenant activity.

The two quickly discovered that they hated one another intensely, their personalities being as different as it could possibly be between two people. While they continued to argue with one another, their prowler arrived near Beorn, to their surprise finding a Covenant presence on the moon – which had not been glassed. However, the civilians and the existing garrison had been slain, and the Covenant on the moon was in the process of turning it into a rally point for Covenant forces in former UNSC space, constructing refineries, factories and shipyards.

Knowing they couldn't afford the Covenant to have that kind of advantage, the two Spartans set their personal feelings aside to stop the Covenant operation before they could complete the constructions. Together with ODST squads, the two Spartans dropped to the surface in stealth HEVs and then split up to place a SHIVA Nuclear Warhead each at certain locations to make sure to destroy the partially completed structures and killing the Covenant personnel.

Although encountering sporadic Covenant patrols, both Spartans completed their tasks with minor difficulties (mostly because the Covenant had neglected to send ships into the system, believing the humans wouldn’t investigate). After the SHIVAs were in place, a stealth-Pelican picked the two squads up and returned them to the prowler. The two SHIVA blasts were enough destroy the refineries, whose destruction caused a chain reaction which resulted in the destruction of all the Covenant structures and personnel, along with making most of the moon unusable for future Covenant construction attempts.

Battle of Ballast (2550)
Later that year, Richie arrived on Ballast, a research colony, to receive upgrades to his SPI suit. However, shortly after his arrival, a small Covenant patrol found the Colony and attacked its small defense group. Covenant ground forces managed to capture the elevator shaft leading down to the research labs and started their descent to root out the humans inside.

After quickly having his upgrades installed, Richie waited together with the labs’ MPs at the bottom of the elevator. The first load of Covenant troops were quickly killed without many difficulties, and Richie boarded the elevator, taking him up the elevator shaft. There he stealthily killed the Covenant troops, stopping a second wave of Covenant troops from entering the labs.

But the Covenant wouldn't let itself get stopped. More troops arrived, and despite Richie's new armor upgrades that improved his performance, he was forced to take the elevator back down to the labs. When at the bottom, he disabled the elevator’s controls to prevent the Covenant from summoning it.

However, the planet was practically lost, and a retreat order was given. But before Richie, the MPs and the researchers could find a way out of the underground complex, all the ships in orbit were destroyed. With their only remaining hope lying in decommissioned Chiroptera-class Stealth Vessel further into the complex, the group changed their route. But on the way, Covenant troops had managed to enter the labs, and did everything in their power to stop the human group from escaping.

Nonetheless, Richie and the others reached the stealth craft before the Covenant and reactivated it. They managed to avoid Covenant discovery long enough to perform a random slipspace jump. After several more randomized jumps, the group returned to Reach to tell HIGHCOM about Ballast's fall.

Operation: FIREWALL (2550)
"The only thing we managed to do was make them pissed off."

- Richie about Operation: FIREWALL.

The Human-Covenant war had dealt an unusually heavy strain on the Covenant war machine, which proved that they were facing a fierce enemy. To cover their losses, many from all the races that would normally be seen as 'unfit' for military duty, were forcefully recruited. To make sure there were enough commanders for all these new troops, some considered 'less competent' became commanders in important positions.

The victory at Ballast increased the Covenant's confidence even more than it already was, to the border of stupidity, as some of these new, 'less competent' shipmasters, filled with zealous fury, disobeyed orders and moved their ships through vast areas of human space in the hope of killing more humans and gaining great favor among the Prophets.

The result was several Covenant ships moving independently through human space, more vulnerable than ever. When ONI prowlers confirmed what had happened, a special response group was assembled to take down Covenant vessels one by one, in an Operation known as FIREWALL. Richie was put into the response group's Special Forces detachment, also including ODSTs and the two final members of Spartan Black Team, Max-122 and Linda-011, both part of the original Class Is.

For the first two months, none of the Spartans were needed, as the battle group could easily take out the lone enemy vessels without even suffering casualties. During these two months, a total of fifteen vessels had been found and destroyed.

However, the sudden disappearance of vessels reached the ears of the Covenant Hierarchs, who sanctioned an Arbiter, Zorg 'Zamamee, to deal with the problem. The new arbiter prepared a clever trap for their enemy, building a fake shipwreck near the areas that the ships had disappeared.

The UNSC response group, curious about what had destroyed a Covenant ship and hoping to obtain important samples of Covenant technology for study, sent Richie and Spartan Black to search through the ship. Entering the ship EVA style, the Spartans initially found nothing. But when they had gotten far into the vessel, the Arbiter's specially assigned teams attacked. In the resulting firefight, Max succumbed to seven clean shots to the chest, killing him almost instantly.

Richie and Linda fled through the ship, with heavily scorched armor, to alert the UNSC response group about the trap, but when they finally had captured a Spirit dropship and contacted the UNSC force, a Covenant task force arrived. Unlike the new near-incompetent shipmasters the human forces had encountered during the rest of Operation: FIREWALL, this task force consisted of long-time hardened veterans, and after just a few minutes half the human ships had already been destroyed.

The battle group prepared to jump into slipspace, but several boarding crafts from the 'shipwreck' managed to latch onto the UNSC flagship just before they entered slipspace. Lead by the Arbiter, these troops started to capture the ship. Richie and Linda managed to intercept the Covenant group and engaged them up close. After killing the Special operations troopers, the two faced the Arbiter personally. Despite being a particularly dangerous and skilled foe, the two Spartans managed to kill him.

The battered response group returned to Reach, unable to continue the operation. Richie was rewarded another purple heart and promoted to Chief Petty Officer.

Operation: HORCRUX (2551)
"It was nice to have a victory again; and even better, to know I played an important part in it."

- Richie about Operation: HORCRUX

While Operation: FIREWALL was partially successful, in that it destroyed many Covenant vessels, little was gained in the end. In fact, the operation taught the zealous commanders a lesson, and from then on, they were more disciplined, moving in larger formations like ordered to. Additionally, they avoided moving recklessly through human space, instead taking a slow, safe and steady approach.

This made the Covenant threatening once again, and the Inner Colonies fell one by one. But one place in the inner colonies continued to resist the Covenant; the Eden system's asteroid belt. Over the years, the UNSC forces had finally managed to destroy the Covenant bastions. All but one. The asteroid Davos was still in Covenant hands. With the rest of the asteroids well fortified, self-supplying and maintaining its own civilian population, the Eden garrison was considered vital for the war effort.

Thus, Richie was sent by stealth ship to the Eden system to aid in the attack on Davos. If it worked out well, the Eden system would be an excellent failsafe system in case the rest of the Inner colonies fell, so failure of Operation: HORCRUX wouldn't be tolerated.

He was secretly inserted through a HEV onto Davos’ surface, and was ordered to destroy a Covenant energy reactor, which would hopefully deactivate a massive Energy Dome around the Covenant fortifications, leaving it wide open for MAC bombardment. While the other UNSC forces performed diversionary attacks, Richie infiltrated the reactor complex.

The diversionary attacks caused many of the reactor's guards to aid other positions, making Richie's job easier. The weakened garrison was unable to halt his progress, and after a short while, he had found the reactor core and killed the guards. After placing several C-12 charges, he left the complex and found his Calypso-class Exfiltration craft, which he used to leave the Eden system and return to Reach. Meanwhile, the energy dome was deactivated with the reactor's destruction, and the UNSC fleet in orbit bombarded the asteroid with MAC slugs, cracking and destroying it all. With that, the Eden system was finally under UNSC control, and the garrison could focus on preparing for the Covenant’s next attack on the system.

Operation: VEIL (2551)
"A sword without a shield can be cut down. But a shield without a sword cannot attack. When together, they make the perfect balance. And that is why the Covenant is so hard to beat; they have both impressive offensive and defensive power."

- Richie about Operation: VEIL.

It turned out the Covenant's counterattack came earlier than anticipated; just two weeks after Davos' fall, a Covenant fleet of 180 ships arrived in the system, starting their search throughout the asteroids for the UNSC bases. However, the UNSC had an advantage in this area; they knew the terrain inside out. UNSC ships and space mines could easily be hidden in the tight clusters of asteroids and thanks to having experienced ship commanders aware of how to navigate; they could ambush Covenant forces and take down the search groups one by one.

Nonetheless, the size of the Covenant response fleet worried HIGHCOM, who decided to send Richie (halfway back to Reach) back to the Eden system and aid the UNSC garrisons there in every way possible. Somewhat annoyed, Richie piloted the exfiltration craft back to the Eden system. He arrived a week after the Covenant's return to the system.

By the time he arrived, the Covenant had managed to establish a string of bases across a well-defended asteroid cluster in the belt, commonly known as the Chiron-Theta chain. While the fleet made a plan on how to drive away the Covenant ships in the chain, Richie was ordered to assist ODST Bear Team in taking down the bases to make the future attack easier for the Eden system fleet.

Richie and Bear Team dropped onto the first asteroid, Forall, whose base hadn't been fully constructed, but still had a massive gravity-lift connecting the asteroid to three other nearby asteroids. The group made swift progress, wiping out the Covenant formations on Forall and securing the gravity-lift. At this point, the Eden system fleet approved to send in a company of marines, Bravo Company, to aid in Richie's and Bear Team's efforts. The marines split into platoons, while Richie and Bear Team split up to follow with one platoon each. Richie followed 1st Platoon, taking the lift leading to Wewin.

Although a hundred grunts awaited Richie and 1st platoon at their destination, they quickly finished off the methane-breathing aliens and proceeded through the Wewin base, securing it along with its ground-side plasma cannon. While half of 1st platoon remained behind to hold the cannon and base, Richie and the rest of 1st platoon fought their way to the other side of the asteroid in order to use the gravity-lift built there to attack their third target; the base on Raiser.

The Raiser base was lightly fortified and fell after a short time. Meanwhile, the other platoons and Bear Team proved successful in securing or capturing their bases, leaving only the major Covenant outpost in the area left; Canwe. After all the remaining marines who weren't used as garrisons on the captured bases, Bear Team and Richie had regrouped on Raiser, they assaulted the Canwe outpost, leading to a short but intense battle, ultimately resulting in Covenant loss.

With the Covenant footholds in the Chiron-Theta chain destroyed or captured, the Eden system UNSC fleet led an overwhelming ambush on the orbiting Covenant ships, wiping them out. With that, two thirds of the Covenant fleet had been wiped out, which in turn rendered all continued Covenant operations in the system fruitless, until they were finally ordered to retreat in late December, leaving for other fronts. As the Covenant left the system, some ships in the Eden system fleet returned to other human colonies, reinforcing them in an effort to continue to stall for time. Richie finally left the system in January 2552 for Reach.

Battle of Sigma Octanus IV (2552)
By 2552, Richie had, ironically, become a legend among the UNSC soldiers in his own right (a reputation he disliked). However, despite everything all of the Spartans had done, humanity was being brought closer and closer to their demise.

In 2552 the Covenant found Sigma Octanus IV (also known as Cote d'Azure), although the small taskforce was stopped and defeated by the UNSC Iroquois because of Commander Jacob Keyes' maneuver, later called the "Keyes Loop". But the taskforce's last ship, a carrier, didn't leave before dropping ground forces that proceeded to attack the planet's capital, Cote d'Azur.

To counter the incoming Covenant fleet, HIGHCOM sent a fleet to defend the planet, Richie stationed on one of them. However, instead of aiding in the recapture of Cote d'Azur, Richie was sent to the other side of the planet, near the town of Montagne Portée, where a small element of the Covenant forces had set up mining operations for unknown purposes.

After reaching the outskirts of the abandoned town, Richie found the Covenant had hastily constructed a Locust factory alongside their excavation devices. Knowing the Locusts were deadly in combat in addition to their primary role as diggers, Richie decided that destroying the factory was essential to the success of his mission. Tapping into his traditional revenge-lusting rage, he raided the factory, surprising and killing most of the guards, until he encountered a hunter pair.

The two new foes surprised him enough to have him being slammed by one of the hunters, causing severe internal damage. He nonetheless managed to evade his pursuers long enough to plant several C-12 charges near the factory's core. The charges detonated before he got out of the factory, and explosions and fires erupted all over the area, affecting and tearing down the nearby excavation equipment. Summoning all of his remaining strength, Richie managed to get out before the building completely collapsed. After getting out and into a nearby forest, he collapsed because of exhaustion and injuries.

Concerned with his whereabouts, ONI sent an ODST squad to search for him. The ODSTs found and carried him back to a Pelican, who took him back to one of the surviving ships in orbit. While he was treated in the medical bay, the rest of the UNSC forces celebrated their victory over the Covenant on Sigma Octanus, although they didn't know that the Covenant had gotten what they came for.

Battle of Reach (2552)
//Currently Classified under ONI Romeo-Tango Directive One//

First Battle of Earth (2552)
After the fall of Reach, most remaining UNSC forces returned to Earth (the Eden System asteroid belt garrison being a notable exception) to prepare humanity's final stand. A total of 300 Orbital MAC gun stations had been constructed over Earth, the home fleet numbered more ships than ever before, emergency militias were recruited from Earth's citizenry, long-time deactivated mass drivers on both Luna, Earth, Venus, Mars and the Jovian moons were reactivated and refitted for military use; it would be win or lose.

To the UNSC's surprise, the first Covenant forces arriving in the Sol System weren't a large fleet; in fact, it numbered only fifteen ships (two Assault Carriers, thirteen Cruisers). The vastly outnumbered Covenant force tried to get the MACs offline by having boarding parties destroy them to have a chance at breaking through the orbital perimeter. Madrid Station, the MAC Richie was assigned to, was no exception.

Although multiple boarding parties attacked the station, all the attacks were knocked out cold by Richie and the marine garrison. After a short battle, the Covenant fleet was destroyed and the flagship Carrier (along with the UNSC In Amber Clad) had fled, devastating New Mombasa in the process. The easy victory was celebrated by both Richie and most other UNSC personnel. However, more Covenant forces would arrive, and they wouldn't be as easily beaten.

Battle of Mars
When new Covenant fleets arrived in the Sol System, Mars and the Jovian moons became the first targets. Richie was sent to Mars to aid in its defense. Just after arrival, Covenant plasma fire caused the frigate he was on, the UNSC Raigeki to crash. Richie along with the Frigate's ODST contingent escaped the crashing ship with HEVs. Cut off from their superiors, Richie assumed command of the small group and moved towards the Martian town of Tenwa, where a pack of Brutes had started to attack and feast on the citizens. Richie and his ODST companions searched through the town, successfully killing all Brutes they came across.

In the end, only the Chieftain and his personal bodyguards remained. After a climactic battle, resulting in the ODST corporal Burdock's death, the Chieftain was slain by Richie's shotgun. With the immediate threat to Tenwa gone, the town's citizens informed Richie and the others about a major Covenant presence in the nearby metropolis, New Legaspi. After borrowing several civilian warthogs from the Tenwa citizens, Richie and the ODSTs proceeded to New Legaspi, where small Marine and Militia elements continued to resist the Covenant occupation. After successfully breaching through a Brute blockade, the group linked up with the resistance movement to be given orders.

While the ODSTs were tasked to help in raids, Richie was ordered to destroy a stadium, which had been turned into a Covenant motor pool, storing most of their vehicles. Given a Fury TAC nuke, Richie silently rushed throughout the ruined the city, evading or assassinating Covenant patrols in his way, until he reached the stadium. There, he used his invisibility to plant the nuke without raising the Covenant alarms. The nuke successfully destroyed the stadium, and more than ninety percent of the Covenant city garrison's vehicles.

With the Covenant hold on the city weakened, Richie linked up with one of the resistance raiding parties and helped them capture a Covenant armory. Armed with new and fresh weapons, the group linked up with two other groups and together attacked a Covenant-held shopping mall. A few minutes of intense firefights later, the shopping mall was in the resistance movement's hands.

As the Covenant continued to lose its hold of the city, more and more raids succeeded, ultimately driving the covenant back to the city's orbital elevator. There, the battered Brutes received reinforcements and heavily fortified their defenses. Despite the defense line's strength, it was decided to raid and capture the elevator. Most of the resistance's forces, Richie included, turned their attention to and attacked the elevator with previously unseen fury, with the hope of driving the Covenant out of their city.

Dead bodies soon covered the streets, both Covenant and human, but Richie and some ODSTs managed to break through the Brute defense line and secure the elevator's interior. With the elevator lost, most of the Covenant forces were finally mowed down by the human attackers. The city and its elevator retaken, Richie managed to reestablish contact with command, and was issued his new order; Operation: MAILBOX.

Operation: MAILBOX
As Mars was progressively reclaimed, Covenant ships gathered over the Jovian Moons, glassing them mercilessly. To prevent the Covenant fleet from getting away with their deed, Richie was issued the order Operation: MAILBOX, in which he and several Marines would fake a defense of a NOVA bomb location, when in fact they wanted the Covenant to take it, in the hope of destroying the new Covenant fleet.

Redeployed to the corvette Mad Runner, Richie prepared himself for the unusual assignment. Meanwhile, the ship sent an open message with request for reinforcements to help protect the experimental bomb. As hoped, the Covenant fleet took the bait and surrounded the corvette, sending boarding parties to claim it.

Richie and the Marines made a valiant defense (as planned), but made their retreat quite quickly, rushing for the transport craft in the corvette's hangar, manned it and made it escape into slipspace. Meanwhile, the Covenant forces had engineers investigate the explosive to learn its properties, something that caused the NOVA to go off, destroying the entire fleet.

Battle of Venus
Unfortunately, after two days more Covenant fleets arrived, besieging Earth and the other Sol System strongholds, including Venus (one of the first terraformed planets). Mars once again practically fell under Covenant control after the Battle of Mare Erythraeum, and soon afterwards, Cleveland was attacked by the Covenant in the hope of finding the "Key of Osanalan" (in reality a fantasy object invented by James Ackerson and his brother, Ruwan). Meanwhile, the Prophet of Truth himself, along with his fleet, arrived and started to breach the lunar perimeter.

Venus was violently attacked from a detachment of Truth's fleet, led by the Minor Prophet of Peace (in reality a bloodthirsty commander urging conflict). Venus' naval forces were reduced to almost nothing, and the surface was swarmed by Brute and Grunt packs.

Richie's transport craft, which had dropped out of slipspace near Venus due to the slipspace drive's inaccuracy, decided to go in to help Venus from the Covenant attackers. They landed on the continent Aphrodite Terra, not too far from the port town of New Macedon, where the Covenant was in the process of building a ground based plasma cannon. Richie and his marine companions fought their way through the beach's jungle and some of the ruined suburbs of the city. It was made clear that the covenant had been relentless in their desire to kill every inhabitant, as corpses laid all across the broken streets and blood smeared on walls. Filled with rage over this desecration of human lives, Richie mowed through the city's defenders in a rampage.

The almost desperate Brutes, trying their best to keep their Grunt subordinates calm, gathered in a defensive perimeter around the cannon. After a while, Richie finally calmed down, and managed to find a lightly guarded hidden passage into the cannon's area. After killing the sentry squad, he and the marines moved through the underground tunnel until reaching Covenant machinery, marking the start of the cannon.

After interrogating a crazed Grunt, the group learned that to disable and destroy the cannon they needed to disable three separate core reactors, which would disable the anti-gravity systems holding together the incomplete weapon. The marines split into two teams, while Richie went towards the third reactor by himself.

After sneaking or breaking through various tight corridors filled with Brutes, he finally reached the core reactor. After firing at the device for a while with his flamethrower, it collapsed. Shortly thereafter, the marines succeeded in taking down their assigned reactors, causing the whole place to fall apart, killing the all the Covenant inside. Richie and some of the marines barely got out in time.

With New Macedon liberated, the group mounted several surviving Covenant vehicles and used them to attack a Brute encampment a short while outside the city, where survivors from New Macedon rallied. Surprised by the attack, the Brutes were taken out before managing to fight back.

Moving on, the UNSC group moved through the countryside, taking out the occasional Brute security checkpoints, until reaching New Thermopylae. There, they found the Brutes holding a surviving marine garrison prisoner, to await an enjoyable execution. Richie and his marines intervened, killing the captors and releasing the marines.

Together, the now larger group raided another Brute encampment to great success, claiming several more vehicles and weapons. Some of the marines remained behind to protect the encampment, while Richie and the other marines proceeded into the city itself with their vehicle convoy. The convoy blew straight through the Covenant defenses, quickly progressing into the center of the city. Despite the Covenant forces there attempting to fortify themselves against an attack, it had been crudely and hastily done, allowing Richie and the others to succeed in capturing the city center.

However, the sudden loss of New Thermopylae gained the attention of the Minor Prophet of Peace, who finally sent reinforcements in the form of a scarab. The scarab was dropped just outside the captured encampment, tearing it and the marines down, progressing into the city to stop Richie and the others. While looking for straggling Brutes, Richie and the marines were ambushed by the scarab. Most of the marines fell, while Richie and the survivors retreated down a man-hole into the sewers to safely come up with a plan. Meanwhile, the scarab presumed all hostiles were dead and reported to the prophet, who directed his attention elsewhere, although he told the scarab to stay put.

After a while, Richie and the marines decided to follow the sewers out of the city to look for other surviving UNSC units. Without their vehicles, the travel from the New Thermopylae sewers to the town of Aphrod took two days. Luckily, Aphrod was still under UNSC control, and Richie and the marines were happily taken in.

They were reviewed on the new events, such as the glassing of Voi and other parts of Africa, the arrival of the UNSC's new ally, the Sangheili and the joint Human-Sangheili group that went through the Ark Portal. As a consequence of these events, the Covenant ships above Venus had fallen back to Earth and gone through the Ark Portal with Truth before the UNSC-Sangheili forces. This gave the left-behind UNSC and Sangheili forces a better chance than ever to retake the Sol System.

Richie was ordered to help a convoy of marines in vehicles to take out the brute encampments and fortifications in the Dit Valley to let a Sangheili frigate, the Virtuous Blessing safely land and provide Venus with reinforcements. He mounted a captured Chopper and followed the convoy to the valley, widely considered an impressive natural formation.

The convoy moved from encampment to encampment, dispatching of the struggling enemies trying to hold the valley. Halfway into the mission, a brute convoy of Choppers and Prowlers arrived, giving the UNSC convoy some trouble. However, Richie daringly rammed his Chopper straight into the brute convoy’s center, distracting them long enough to let the UNSC vehicles take down the Brute ones.

After the final encampment was destroyed, the Sangheili frigate landed, dropping Wraith tanks, other vehicles and Sangheili warriors onto the surface, whom quickly spread all over Venus, taking down brute positions and reclaiming the cities. After only two days, the whole planet was back under human control. However, locations on Earth were still controlled by abandoned brute garrisons, so Richie followed with the Sangheili frigate to Earth to finish the fight against the Covenant.

Siege of Cairo
During the intense moments of when the Ark Portal had finally been uncovered and activated, multiple groundside Covenant garrisons were left behind while Truth's fleet went through the portal. Some of the garrisons banded together and took strong positions in fortified locations. As a result, most of the northern African garrisons fortified themselves within Cairo, the capital city of the former state Egypt.

Although the Sangheili suggested that they simply glass the cities that the Covenant had entrenched themselves within, Lord Hood refused, wanting to recapture the cities with conventional methods. Thus, most of the few surviving veteran units and soldiers, including Richie, were ordered to Cairo, to destroy the Covenant inside and reclaim the city for humanity's sake. While most of the marines and Sangheili attacked the city outright, a joint UNSC-Sangheili special operations unit, including Richie, ODSTs and Special Operations Sangheili, was sent through a secret passage running underneath the Nile and the pyramids, appearing just inside the city.

The joint group split up into smaller teams to deal with their various objectives. Richie proceeded alone towards the city's museum, which the Covenant had converted into a storage area for ammunition and explosives. Richie, filled with hope that the war might be over soon, performed almost flawlessly throughout the mission. After reaching the storage area, leaving several dead Covenant soldiers behind him, he triggered several of the stored explosives and then rushed as far away as possible.

The resulting explosion destroyed the ammunition and explosives reserves as well as several Covenant soldiers. Soon, the Covenant ran out of ammunition, and combined with the stealth strikes by the other spec ops teams, allowed the allied forces to relatively easily capture the city.

During the following weeks, the frontal section of the Forward Unto Dawn returned to Earth, containing the Arbiter, Thel 'Vadam. With his return, it was revealed that the Prophet of Truth had been killed and the Flood finally defeated. After this, the Human-Covenant War officially ended, with the only issue that had to be dealt with being to reclaim the lost worlds from the now leaderless Loyalists.

Reclamation Missions (2552-2556)
Richie followed with the joint UNSC-United Sangheili Republic "Reclamation Fleet", tasked with taking back all worlds held by the Loyalists and to destroy the Loyalist remnants. He participated in almost all the important reclamation battles, helping to retake the Sol System, and also helped in the Battle of Doisac, where he disabled several Anti-Air Turrets to let air squadrons attack the resisting Brute forces.

Operation: KILLERBEE
"It was supposed to be an easy op; just get down to an asteroid, take out the outpost and confirm the theory of a small pirate smuggle or raid operation. But it turned out the turkeys were planning...a bigger score."

- Richie about Operation: KILLERBEE.

After the nasty business at Salvation's Trove, Richie was allowed to take a year's rest, as no other really notable things happened. However, in Mars, 2564, it was discovered that the Jackal Pirates had constructed several armed outposts on the edges of the Jaguar Expanse, close to the borders of human space. As humanity had colonization interests in the area, and since these outposts were uncomfortably close to the new human colony Blitz, Richie was put back into service to "take the first shot" in this planned campaign against pirate interests.

Dropping onto the asteroid Ruk-Ya through a HEV pod (as part of Operation: KILLERBEE), Richie was ordered to track down and raid the jackal outpost, and, if possible, find information of the pirates' plans. At first, everything went alright; he dispatched the guards at the entrance and entered with ease. Moving through the corridors, killing all guards he came across, nothing seemed to go wrong. But a while into the structure, Richie found several bored caves. After following them, he was met with heavier jackal resistance. But, after using the cave system to his advantage, he collapsed several tunnels onto the heads of his attackers, allowing him to safely continue to the security mainframe.

After accessing the mainframe, he made an astonishing discovery; the pirates planned to mount a great offensive into human outer colonies with the assistance of several rogue Brute packs currently located on the captured Tengu System orbital listening post. After downloading the relevant files, he cleared out the rest of the structure, sweeping it through thoroughly.

After being certain that all hostiles were taken out, he left the structure and was picked up with Pelican. While he was returned to the prowler in orbit, it dropped a HORNET mine onto the structure, destroying it utterly.

Operation: STINGER
After the successful Operation: KILLERBEE, where Richie had managed to obtain information revealing the jackal pirates' plans to swarm the UNSC's new outer colonies. As also learned, the pirates were going to be helped by several rogue Brute packs. Richie was ordered to the Tengu system listening post together with Team Bravo, a team of TROJAN supersoldiers, to take out the brutes, hopefully also causing the pirates to give up their plans.

After the group's prowler arrived in the system and connected itself to the station, Richie and Bravo boarded the station. After the paths split up, the group decided to split up, with Bravo splitting into three teams while Richie proceeded alone. However, all of them found the resistance very light considering it was the hideout of several packs. In fact, they started to suspect that they had somehow been misled. To see if their suspicions were right, the group joined back together and raided the command center, which was only lightly guarded by outnumbered sentries. However, on one of the corpses they found a storage device containing their orders and transmission logs for the last week.

After Bravo's technician had managed to unlock the stored data, and after several minutes of reviewing it, it turned out that they had indeed been deceived. The data found on Ruk-Ya had been carefully planted there to deceive the UNSC, and the brute packs inhabiting the Tengu system outpost had already mounted the pirate raiding ships. And while Richie and Bravo had busied themselves with investigating the Tengu outpost, the pirates had assembled all their ships and attacked their true target; Azuke, one of the major military strongholds in the new outer colonies (which had had its defenses wakened due to sending many ships to reinforce Blitz, the first presumed target).

The discovery prompted Richie and Bravo to immediately leave the station, return to the prowler and have it leave the system for Azuke. However, unbeknownst to them, one of the station's survivors had managed to plant a tracker on the prowler.

Siege of Azuke
"While it was a well executed plan, you have to admit that they were quite stupid to think that they would get away with it."

- Richie about the Siege of Azuke.

Meanwhile, the human forces on Azuke had been surprise attacked by the pirates, losing most of their vessels in the first wave. While the remaining ships regrouped on the dark side of the planet, the pirates landed their slaver craft and foot soldiers to grab as many slaves and loot as possible. The marines made desperate attempts to protect the planet, but the pirates had already spread too quickly, overrunning most of the areas and continuing their pillaging, robbing and slave grabs, with Brutes assisting them.

After several hours, Richie and Bravo's prowler arrived in-system, deploying stealth systems in the hope of sneaking up on the pirate fleet and deploy HORNET mines to destroy the ships. However, the tracker placed on the vessel allowed the pirates to discover them anyway. After several pulse laser hits, the prowler almost fell apart and crashed towards Azuke's surface.

Richie and Bravo barely survived by leaving the ship in its only HEVs. However, strong wind currents that were normal for the planet caused the drop pods to fall far apart from one another, splitting everyone up. Richie’s pod dropped directly into the city Zura together with Simon Powell from Team Bravo. The duo quickly learned that the city was a hot-zone; jackals were swarming all over the city, chasing scared civilians to haul them to the slaver craft. Both of the two were enraged by this horrible treatment of humans, and violently attacked the jackals. They mercilessly moved through the city streets, killing all jackals they came across and freed captured humans when required. No difference was made to the brutes that helped the jackals; they faced similar deaths.

After an hour of low-intensity, close and tight quarters combat throughout the city, Richie and Simon found multiple marines trapped in a prison, held captive by a brute pack. The duo stealthily infiltrated the prison, killing the guards silently. Before the Chieftain and his bodyguards finally realized that there was trouble, Richie ambushed them with a flamethrower, burning them to death. With the prison cleared, the marines picked up weapons and informed Richie and Simon of a slave camp just south of the position.

Together, Richie, Simon and the marines fought their way to the slave camp. There, they ambushed and slaughtered the guards, letting the captured people escape into safety. Meanwhile, Richie and Simon, along with five marines, hijacked one of the slavery craft and piloted it towards a jackal cruiser waiting just above the city, with the intent of boarding it. While Richie and the others made their way into the ship through one of the hangars, some of the UNSC forces sent to reinforce Blitz returned to Azuke, attacking the pirate fleet. However, the forces remained even for some time, forcing the UNSC fleet to maintain a siege of the system, while looking for ways to successfully break through the jackal blockade.

Meanwhile, Richie and the others made steady progress on capturing the small cruiser, with the jackals unable to put up much of a fight. Over a hundred dead jackals with either bullet holes covering their bodies or snapped necks later, the group reached the bridge, where they slew the shipmaster and his crewmen. With this, they took control of the ship, using its pulse lasers to quickly take down the pirate fortifications on the ground.

After taking down the fortifications, which caused the surviving marines to regain hope and attack again, Richie and the others took the captured cruiser to the dark side of the planet, where the surviving Azuke Home Fleet was being chased by several pirate vessels. While the ground was slowly retaken, the support of the captured cruiser allowed the battered UNSC ships to evade their pursuers long enough to counterattack, destroying two of six pursuing ships. With the scales slowly turning in the humans' favor, the ships returned to the blockade.

After two more hours, the UNSC fleet finally managed to punch a hole in the pirate blockade, allowing them to breach it. The pirates panicked, all remaining vessels leaving the system, stranding hundreds of foot soldiers. With space around Azuke under UNSC control, ground forces could be sent down to aid the battered garrison in retaking all remaining parts of the planet.

After two days, all pirate hostiles on Azuke had been reported destroyed. Richie and the reunited Team Bravo participated in several reconnaissance missions to look for stragglers, but to their great pleasure, they found none. Heavy damage had been dealt to Azuke, however, with a great deal of its military forces gone.

Operation: EAGLEBEAK
"It felt great to give the damn saurians some of their own medicine, after all they had done to Azuke."

- Richie about Operation: EAGLEBEAK

On the other hand, the pirates had suffered worse; half of their assembled fleet had been utterly destroyed over Azuke, and thousands of ground forces lied dead on Azuke's rocky plains. The battered and exhausted pirates had fled to the then once again abandoned Tengu system orbital listening post, which had received some additional space after taking apart two crippled ships.

With the victory at Azuke, HIGHCOM decided that it was the right time to once and for all terminate the pirates' operations on the UNSC borders, issuing Operation: EAGLEBEAK. A battle group with reinforcements arrived after two weeks, making last-minute preparations before making the jump to the Tengu system. One of these preparations was having Richie, Team bravo, and the newly arrived Team Charlie, stationed with the battle group.

After their arrival to the Tengu system, and while the battle group engaged the pirate vessels, Richie and Teams Bravo and Charlie were dropped EVA style onto the orbital station. After cutting their way in, they split up into smaller groups to cover the whole station, while also focusing on their prime objective; to overload the station's core. Stressed by the battle raging out in space, the guards were unfocused and unsure; something that proved disastrous with a Spartan and almost two dozen additional, though weaker, supersoldiers. In a quite short amount of time, the entire group had reached the generator. After Bravo's technician overloaded the core, they rushed to the hangar, where they manned the last remaining dropship. They flew the dropship away from the doomed station, leaving the blast radius with a great deal of time left (something original judging from Richie's earlier detonation/run experiences).

As the station exploded, the pirates lost their foothold in the system, and what remained of the fleet fled back to the jaguar expanse. In the following years, humanity would continue colonization of the area, while the pirates were left unable to do anything but angrily watch, as their operational capacity had been hampered so badly that it took two decades before it had returned to its former strength.

Operation: HARD CONTACT (2568)
"It looked like the baby kongs had been busy, so I decided it was time for me to make a mess of my own."

- Richie about Operation: HARD CONTACT

In July, 2568, human reconstruction and reproduction efforts finally paid off, and human economy and population recovered and rose above its former levels. However, in this time of blessing, there was also a curse.

The rogue Jiralhanae Chieftain Calorus, a competitor for supreme power over the scattered Loyalists, managed to rally two major Loyalist fleets to his cause. In the hope to gain prestige (and consequently power) over the other fleets, Calorus led a brutal raid on the human colony New Kyoto, slaying most of the colonists and massacring the local defense force. After establishing a stronghold on the planet, he renamed it Barloc ('the victorious' in Jiralhanae language), and pleaded to other Loyalist fleets throughout the Milky Way to rally with him there and deal humanity the crippling blow "they so rightfully deserved for dishonoring the gods".

Intent on preventing a resurrection of the Loyalists and ensure humanity's continued growth, ONI assigned Richie and an elite platoon of ODSTs to infiltrate New Kyoto and assassinate Calorus, and if possible destroy secondary targets of Anti-Air emplacements, weapons storage, methane reserves and vehicle factories, to make it easier for the rallying human fleet to drive off the brutes from the human colony.

First, a detachment from the fleet performed a diversionary attack on the brute forces while a prowler secretly inserted Richie and the ODST squads onto the surface. After that, the task group fled, leaving the brutes to think they had defeated their enemy again. However, unbeknownst to them, Richie and 32 ODSTs had successfully arrived and prepared the assassination of their leader, the only thing holding together the ragtag armada.

Richie and the ODSTs silently made their way through the planet's thick bamboo forests, capturing several jackal scouts for interrogation along the way. The threatened saurians informed the humans that Calorus' base was located just ahead. After activating his invisibility cloak, Richie scouted the base, determining its defenses were too heavy for a straight-on assault. Instead, they killed two of the three captured scouts, planted several explosives inside their mangled bodies and then set fire to the last one.

The yells of pain the burning scout let off caused half of the brute guards to go investigate. By the time they arrived, the jackal was dead, and Richie and the ODSTs activated the explosives hidden inside the other corpses. The resulting explosion killed most of the brutes present, leaving the way more open for Richie and the others to enter the base. After using his invisibility to kill most of the remaining guards, Richie was discovered, but when the remaining brutes turned to attack, they were ambushed and all killed by the ODSTs. With the base's outer defense taken out, Richie and the others entered the base itself.

A short while later, the group had fought their way into Calorus' "throne room", where they finally engaged the Chieftain himself and his bodyguard to battle. While the ODSTs distracted the bodyguards, Richie engaged the Chieftain in one on one. After a long and intense battle, resulting in Richie breaking his leg after the Chieftain had used its hammer on it, Richie managed to stick a napalm grenade into the Chieftain's forehead, burning up his skull and killing him.

With Calorus dead, the ragtag fleet's other Chieftains started to fight each other over the right to lead the fleet, giving Richie and the ODSTs the break they needed to escape the base unnoticed and move for their first secondary target, to destroy three Anti-Air guns. The assignment went smoothly as the brutes were busy fighting themselves. After a short time, Richie and his ODST companions had attacked and disabled all three AA guns, also taking possession of a whole convoy of brute vehicles as well as several captured UNSC warthogs.

The group boarded the vehicles and moved for their next target, a vehicle factory south of the AA emplacements. The convoy rolled over and attacked several fighting brutes along the way until reaching the factory, which turned out to be in the possession of a pack led by the Captain Rorlus (since it had lost its Chieftain), who had reactivated it with the purpose of constructing a Scarab to use on his enemies. Richie and the vehicle-born ODSTs assaulted the factory, being forced to take out the beleaguering brutes before finally entering the factory itself.

Once inside, the group split up to cover more ground, while Richie personally went on to destroy the incomplete scarab. Attempting to reach the scarab's completed power core undetected, Richie used his invisibility cloak to bypass the brute patrols. However, at the power core, he was discovered by Captain Rorlus and some of his bodyguards. But the brutes proved unable to Richie, and they fell by his favorite flamethrower and ever handy shotgun. While more brutes were breaking into the factory, Richie was forced to overload the scarab's core early, leaving him and the scattered ODSTs little time to escape. While Richie got out in time, half the ODSTs didn't. The survivors, including the leader, Dexter Parker, felt betrayed by Richie and took their distance from him.

Meanwhile, the UNSC fleet arrived in orbit above New Kyoto, smashing the infighting brute fleet with little difficulty. With this, the possibility of an early resurrection of the Covenant was thwarted and humanity continued to reestablish itself across the Milky Way, coming closer to bypassing their former strength and establishing themselves as one of the galaxy's most influential factions.

The Rampant Crisis (2578)
"It was a damn nasty business; our AP rounds simply bounced off their armor with little to no effect. And there were thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of them."

- Richie about The Rampant Crisis.

Operation: LISTENER
In 2578, an ancient Forerunner bunker was found by a human research expedition on the planet Mana. It was discovered that it was a container for several Forerunner Frigates and Destroyers, along with all kinds of sentinel prototypes. However, unknown to the scientists, the central intelligence construct of the installation had under mysterious circumstances fallen in disrepair and turned rampant.

Without a stable guiding intelligence, the sentinels had gone into sleeper mode, which the monitor also did. However, when awakened by the arrival of the human scientists, the confused sentinels started to attack anything organic in sight, slaughtering the expedition. After the monitor awoke, it gave the sentinels a new programming; to kill organics. The constructs manned the Forerunner vessels and spread into the neighboring system, the Blitz system.

The by-then major outer colony Blitz was attacked by the rogue constructs (dubbed 'The Rampant' by the Alliance of United Races afterwards). As a twist of fate, Richie was on Blitz at the time, receiving major upgrades to his armor, including a shield generator and various performance-enhancing modifications. With the upgrades installed, he was suddenly thrown into combat against a unique foe to defend a human colony.

He was rapidly moved to Blitz' orbital elevator hub, where sentinels had cut their way in and was fighting to make their way towards the command center. However, their armor made human weapons ineffective, rendering Richie and the colony's defenders more defenseless than ever before. The orbital elevator was destroyed, with Richie barely making it out in time by throwing himself out an airlock.

He was picked up by a pelican just before his oxygen supply was emptied, and was taken to the surface, where a wide variety of sentinels were in the process of searching organic life to destroy, already having leveled several marine bases with the ground. Using the pelican's weapons, they managed to destroy several sentinels advancing on Blitz City, until they were shot down. Although surviving the crash, he was wounded and his armor badly damaged. Though he did his best to protect Blitz City, he was forced to fall back together with its marine defenders. Meanwhile, the battle in space was lost, as the Forerunner ships proved superior to any vessels the UNSC tried to put up against them. Before the evacuation could begin, all the ships were destroyed, stranding the surviving UNSC forces, including Richie, on a planet with hostile constructs looking to kill them.

After recovering from his wounds and repairing his armor, Richie took part in the guerilla war the survivors tried to mount against the Rampant, although they achieved little except for destroying an in-progress sentinel factory, which could have increased the amount of constructs significantly.

Meanwhile, the AUR gathered an emergency response fleet to counter the threat of the Rampant, with retaking Blitz being their top priority, codenamed Operation: LISTENER. When arriving in the Blitz system, three weeks had passed, and Richie and the rest of the human resistance had wasted almost everything they had. The sudden arrival of such a massive fleet surprised the Rampant enough to let the AUR get a head start.

With ground forces armed mainly with directed energy weapons issued by the United Sangheili Republic landing on the surface, the sentinels were finally driven back, returning Blitz to human hands. Richie and the other survivors were taken aboard the fleet to be patched up. Meanwhile, the joint fleet destroyed the Rampant ships, producing a victory and reducing the Rampant fleet to half its size.

Operation: SILENCER
AUR stealth ships managed to track the remaining Rampant ships to their point of origin, the discovered Forerunner bunker on Mana. Armed with this information, the AUR issued Operation: SILENCER. The joint fleet arrived at Mana in a relatively short amount of time, but this time the Rampant fleet was ready for an attack by 'organics' (although several Guardian ships also participated on the AUR's side), and heavy fighting commenced. While the two fleets engaged one another, Richie as well as a very large joint-species special operations contingent was sent to Mana's surface to infiltrate and, if possible, find a way to disable the sentinels.

Richie was teamed up with Team Bravo and Charlie again, along with ONI Recon 112, Lavernius-108 and his elite friend, Bowe 'Honkr and some of his fellow Ascetics. Together the group, armed with weapons better suited for battle with Forerunner constructs, breached a Rampant blockade and entered into the ancient bunker.

Inside the bunker, Lavernius (with the assistance of his support AI, Leonidas) hacked into the structure's schematics system, obtaining a map of the whole complex. Using the map, the group learned that there wasn't a way to disable the sentinels, but they could destroy the complex by deactivating four separate reactors. After relaying the information to the fleet, Richie and the others were ordered to deactivate the reactors.

Despite heavy sentinel resistance, the group disabled the first two reactors with relative ease. However, at the third reactor, the sentinels had placed several Protectors, which kept the group at a distance, killing one of the Ascetic elites and two members of ONI recon, until Lavernius managed to disable them with the use of his EMP rifle. With the protectors defeated, the group disabled the third reactor.

Around the fourth reactor, even more protectors, as well as enforcers, sentinel majors, standard sentinels and several other variations stood guard. Intense fighting followed, with half of ONI recon and the Ascetics dying. Richie and the others were almost overwhelmed, until several of the various other special contingents arrived. With the arrival of reinforcements, the sentinel guardians were destroyed and the fourth reactor disabled.

As the whole complex started to collapse in on itself, the joint AUR-special ops forces were evacuated by waves of dropships, being informed of the fleet's great victory in orbit. When the Mana structure finally fell apart, it proved the end of the short, yet intense, Rampant crisis.

SPARTAN-IV Program (2600-2610)
"I will be your worst nightmare. I will be what you fear the most. I will be your commander."

- Richie to the SPARTAN-IV recruits of Omega Company.

After the Rampant crisis, things were quiet in the Milky way for a long time, with the worst thing to worry about being small pirate bands and a few rebels here there, both of whom easily quelled, rendering Richie practically useless. To give him something to do, he was sent in a new experimental corvette to look for John-117 like the Class I Spartan-IIs, preventing him from aging as he spent most of his time in cryo sleep.

However, in 2590, the Covenant Remnant started to move, launching raids into human and Sangheili colonies. With the new threat, and with the return of the United Rebel Front, HIGHCOM started a large-scale remilitarization program. As part of this program, the SPARTAN-IV Program was conceived and passed. But the massive amount of recruits that the program required also put the UNSC on heavy strain; trainers couldn't be found in the quantity and quality required to train a new generation of Spartans. Thus, all surviving Spartans were called back to Arcturus, a military world, to lead this mammoth undertaking and take command of the new generation.

This, of course, included Richie. When he returned to Arcturus, he became the leader for Omega Company, the reserves. Instead of some of the other Spartans' approach to the IV recruits of showing compassion, care and trust in them, Richie treated them very harshly, forcing them to drill with each other, or alternatively, him personally (which no recruit ended up doing). He would also wake the recruits up and forcibly train them during the night to improve their performance further.

After years of training, his teachings had produced great results; the recruits were hardened, strong, brave and swift, like himself, even better than him. At the moment of the Spartans' graduation, he felt very proud of them and realized that he had cared for and loved them ever since their first year of training. The revelation caused him to somewhat loose his sociopath behavior slightly.

Operation: ON THE VERGE (2610)
"For years I taught them that making mistakes in combat isn't tolerated; you can't imagine how great it felt when they didn't actually make any."

- Richie about Operation: ON THE VERGE.

Operation: SPIDERWEB (2610-2611)
"Nasty business...took us a month to tie up all the loose ends."

- Richie about Operation: SPIDERWEB.

Operation: TRUE COLORS (2611)
"It's surprising how many turncoats you can find during a mission. Good thing the rest of Omega was there to back me up; I don't think I could've done it otherwise."

- Richie about Operation: TRUE COLORS

Operation: TRIPLE ZERO (2612)
"Operating three times in zero-gee isn't a funny experience; the slightest breach in your armor and you can kiss your sorry ass goodbye. That's what happened to Jeremy..."

- Richie about Operation: TRIPLE ZERO

Operation: TRIPLE ZERO II (2612)
"You know, I had gotten my fair share of zero-gee combat from before. But no, the higher ups wanted us to go out again. I still don't understand why they couldn't give Fox Company that assignment. That's their special job."

- Richie about Operation: TRIPLE ZERO II.

Overall Personality
Due to his rough childhood, Richie had very dark feelings hidden within him, although this sadistic, brutal and cold personality was suppressed during his training, because he developed bonds with others. However, after his team's death, leaving him alone alive, the dark personality came out and was embraced by him. After that, he became cold, calculating and brutal. He reveled in battle, making pleasure out of killing his enemies, developing satisfaction with taking revenge.

He was considered mentally unstable and insane by others, although his no doubt impressive results allowed him to remain in the military. But for their own safety, other Spartans and humans were kept out of his way, despite the fact that he was very loyal to the UNSC and showed most other humans respect (albeit a sociopathic one). By the time of the Necros War, he had become more stable and much less bloodthirsty. While still believed to be ruthless and almost sociopathic, he was no longer inhuman, and it was considered safe to be close to him again.

However, it later turned out that the sociopathic part of his personality was merely a mask, to hide his own personal thoughts. This was proven true when he admitted that he cared deeply for the Spartan-IVs of Omega Company, to the point of loving them as sons. The truth is, Richie maintains that tough mask in order to keep people from growing close to him, so that they wouldn't feel pain if he died, like the pain he had suffered numerous times before.

Although not sociopathic as initially thought, his lust for revenge on those that harmed humanity was an actual part of his personality, at least after his first mission, an emotion that wasn't a mask. He also did make pleasure out of making his enemies suffer or die. Many also believes that he is a slight pyromaniac, as he enjoys burning his enemies in particular, and usually carries a lighter with him, although not to the point of being dangerous to UNSC personnel.

Cyan Team
"I was very close to all of them. And their deaths made me understand how stupid it is to form bonds with others. I know better now."

- Richie about his teammates.

The members of Cyan Team were the only ones, beside his tragic former family, that Richie formed close bonds with, and losing them all was enough for him to became the sadistic, war-hungry, ruthless operative he was for most of his life.

Other Spartans
"They were all an idiotic assembly of fucking heroes. Going on with their bonds and saving humanity; they think it's that simple, do they?"

- Richie about his relation to other Spartans.

During training, Richie got decently along with the other Spartans, but after his first mission, he became uneasy with and even started to hate them outright. The Class I and II Spartan-IIs and the SPARTAN-IIIs also suffered this treatment from him, although by the time he met the Spartan-IVs, his personality had cooled down and he saw true potential in them. In fact, he even tried to train the platoon he was responsible for, Delusion Platoon, separately from the others in order to shape them in his own image, something he did well; in the end, they followed Richie and the few of those he respected and had loyalty to.

Over time, he grew to actually care for 'his' Spartans, just like he had cared for the members of Cyan Team, eventually even more. By the start of the war with the Necros, he surprisingly saw them almost as sons, something they returned by seeing him as a father figure, despite the fact that he still acted rough and tough in front of everyone to hide his personal thoughts.

Aliens
Due to his teammates' death at the hands of the Covenant races, Richie hated the Covenant for all his life, eager in his attempts to stop the Covenant and have revenge for his losses. He continued to distrust them even long after the peace treaty between the UNSC and the former Covenant races (an event that Richie disagreed with to the point of almost losing his loyalty to the UNSC, although he later accepted it).

Physical appearance
Richie's appearance was mainly Caucasian, but he had some Latino traits carried on from his mother. His hair is deep black and short, but very rough because he rarely does anything with it. Like the other Spartans, his physical structure is quite intimidating and he's very muscular. He isn't very long, but quite broad, although his muscles and armor make him appear bigger.

Strengths and weaknesses
Richie is skilled with close quarters weapons, especially the flamethrower, but also shotguns and sub-machine guns. He is also adept with assault rifles and grenades. He is an accomplished pilot and can be very stealthy if required, specializing in stealth commando raids. He is also very strong and skilled at snapping or breaking limbs. Due to his relatively weak armor, he's learned to become quite good at using point defense gauntlets (picked up from dead jackals) to help protect himself.

However, he is highly unskilled in the use of long-range weaponry, such as snipers or battle rifles. He's also only mediocre in the use of heavy weapons, such as rocket, missile or grenade launchers. And while a decent pilot, he isn't a very adept technician, and thus has difficulties in repairing or constructing things, something he sees as unnecessary.

Human-Covenant War/Rebuild Era

 * M7057/DP
 * M90 CAWS
 * M7S SMG
 * MA5B ICWS

Necros War

 * M705 DP
 * M90D CAWS
 * M7A SMG
 * MA6A ICWS

Armor

 * Semi-Powered Infiltration Armor (SPI): Like the other Class IIIs, Richie used Semi-Powered Infiltration (SPI) Armor, which uses a camouflage cloak to let the Spartans be very stealthy with less effort. However, the suit is also much weaker than the MJOLNIR armor, only able to take a few glancing hits before failing.
 * Mobile Joint Objective Light Nonstandard Individual Role Powered Assault Armor Mark VII (MJOLNIR): When he was recruited as a SPARTAN-IV instructor, he was issued a CQB variant of the MJOLNIR Mark VII armor with a camouflage cloak.

Human-Covenant War/Rebuild Era

 * M9 HE-DP
 * M8 NG
 * C-10 SC
 * TR/9 AM
 * Bubble Shield
 * Point Defence Gauntlet

Necros War

 * M9 DP/HE
 * M2 AM
 * M127 APM
 * C-13G
 * D-57 Decoy
 * DV-4 Energy Shield
 * DV-5 Energy Shield

Quotes
"Vengeance is all I live for. As long as I seek it, I feel truly alive."

- Richie about himself.

"We're all grieving, lost and bleeding."

- Richie, quoting an unknown source

"I quietly leave a lonely sight. Relieved of all my guilt to join a wall in deepest hell the devil himself has built."

- Richie quoting an unknown source

"Unleash all the beasts from imprisonment and arm them with sticks and stones. Bring them into the land of chaos. Watch mankind's last gate fall."

- Richie quoting an unknown source

"My body lives, but my mind and soul doesn't; I'm nothing more than a host for the feelings of revenge and hatred of half a dozen people."

- Richie about himself.

"Everything has a purpose in life; it just takes longer or shorter time depending on the individual to find that purpose."

- Richie about purpose.

"I am bound to the world until my purpose has been fulfilled. However, my task can never truly be completed. Thus, I will be bound to this world forever, in one form or another."

- Richie about life.

"You can't train soldiers with simulations or drills. They must come to face with death itself."

- Richie to the Spartan-IVs

"I feel genuinely sorry for any hostile who has the misfortune to face Omega Company in combat."

- Richie about Omega Company

Trivia

 * Initially only a minor character, the article was expanded and turned into a major article.
 * Rikard (the scandinavian form of Richard) is the name of a very close friend of mine.
 * Although not an Orbital Drop Pod expert, he is forced to use HEVs very often.
 * Richie's thoughts on how to train the Spartan-IVs compared to Spartans like Cassandra-115 shares some similarities to Walon Vau and Kal Skirata, in that Cassandra sees showing compassion to her Spartans is the way (like Skirata), while Richie sees it necessary to break the Spartans in order to teach them to be strong (like Vau).
 * Some parts of his personality is very similar to Walon Vau's; such as their tendency to hide behind a tough, sociopathic attitude while in reality caring for their subordinates.
 * During most of Richie's sabotage operations, he barely escapes the blast radius in time. While not clarified in the article itself, this is because he has the bad luck of always running into enemies after detonating/sabotaging whatever will cause a large blast, giving him little time to run.
 * Richie is the fifth longest article on Halo Fanon, disregarding stories and RPs; however, he is the 44th longest article overall.
 * Although the author's longest article so far, it's not considered his main character.

Related Pages

 * Cyan Team
 * SPARTAN-108
 * Spartan II Class III