Riker-012

"It is better not to speak, and let men consider you a fool, than to speak and confirm their suspicions"

- Riker-012, quoting President Abraham Lincoln

"Remember kid, there's heroes, and then there's legends: heroes get remembered, but legends never die"

- Riker-012

"A hero is a man that is afraid to run away"

- English Proverb

SPARTAN-012 was a SPARTAN-II Commando, also known as Riker Alexander Abrams by birth and Riker Oakley post-conscription, Sierra-Zero-One-Two by alpha-numerical designation, or Codename: CHRONO by ONI designation. Specializing in orbital and airborne drops, as well as commando missions, he became one of the three Leonidan operatives and served in countless engagements in the Human-Covenant War, Rebuild Era and Necros War.

Born February 29th, 2511, Riker experienced a pleasant childhood with little true problems: he received a year of schooling, and showed learning skills slightly higher than others his age. It was because of this, and a myriad of other traits that Dr. Catherine Halsey chose Riker as a candidate for the SPARTAN-II program: out of the 150 candidates, Riker was among the 75 chosen, and after 7 years of intense training he survived the augmentations process.

Officially, however, Riker did not survive and was instead turned into a top operative of Margaret Parangosky, leader of ONI Section 0, as well as fellow ONI higher-ups Captain Aaron Gibson, General Henry Von Keller, and Major General Conan D'Souza (the former Section 1 and the latter two of Section 3); later, a handful more in ONI would become fully aware of the history behind Riker, or "Codename: CHRONO", such as Fleet Admiral Cornelius Denham, Brigadier General Valor Geisel, and Rear Admiral Lower Half Richard Patton (Section 1, Section 3 and lastly Parangosky's successor, respectively). Riker, now dubbed and primarily referred to as Codename: CHRONO, would go on to operate in nearly three hundred engagements over the course of the Human-Covenant War: ranging from quelling anti-UNSC rebel groups to eliminating rogue AI’s, from disabling Covenant invasion fleets in advance to performing one-man commando strikes on Covenant worlds, Riker did all these and practically everything in between. Ironically, Colonel James Ackerson – well known hater of Section 3's "SPARTAN freaks" – found Codename: CHRONO’s daring exploits the stuff of legends and highly inspirational, little knowing that a much hated SPARTAN-II was carrying them out.

Once the Great War ended, Riker’s status as a secret agent was destroyed when he was discovered by old friend and fellow SPARTAN cover-up Laz-108: soon after, Operation: SAVIOR began and Riker, as well as other SPARTAN-II’s and SPARTAN-III's, began the long and, in the end, futile search for John-117. As Riker’s search area kept him well within AUR territory, he was redirected multiple times during the so-called “Rebuild Era” to assist in various battles and to end crisis. By the end of the Rebuild Era though, Riker reluctantly left Operation: SAVIOUR as the second-to-last member, only outlasted by Ajax-013: this may not have been so, however, had it not been for the SPARTAN-IV Program.

Joining the SPARTAN-IV Program, Riker was assigned Kilo Company, to whom he then taught the skills of orbital combat drops and one-man strike missions, as well as intelligence warfare and stealth techniques to a lesser extent, and instilled within his pupils the principles of honor, courage, justice and wisdom. Once the Necros War began, Riker commanded Kilo Company with pride throughout the Outer Territory Defenses, the Inner Territory Defenses, the Core Defense, Operation: FINAL WAR, the Oblivion Gun Crisis, the Crucible Campaign, and the Last Push. When Riker appeared to fall in battle during the last engagement of the Necros War, he was greatly mourned by all his SPARTAN comrades and students, especially his wife Miranda Talavera, and was honored as a fallen hero of war: joyous celebration followed after his reappearance three days later. "Courage is of no value unless accompanied by justice; yet if all men became just, there would be no need for courage"

- Riker-012

Riker's personality over the years has changed greatly: originally, while just a less than six-year-old boy, he was fun loving and surprisingly brave, as well as inquisitive, though not very friendly. Once abducted for the SPARTAN-II Program, however, Riker's seclusive nature grew even more pronounced, with his only friends being Laz-108 and, to a much lesser extent, the other members of Brown Team; when Riker was kidnapped by Parangosky, this forced seclusion, coupled with the news of half his brothers' and sisters' death (a number that included the false death of Laz), had a very terrible effect on his psyche, plunging him into a depression like many of the other SPARTAN-II's: Riker's, however, became much more fatal, as he emerged from it with a different personality. Riker's friendly side, emotions in general in fact, had practically died, tucked deep within him to keep him safe from emotional attachments and entanglements, something that could endanger his well-being and his ability to complete a mission: Riker was now a cold vessel of hatred, channeling his pain, sorrow, rage and loneliness into his missions and racking up kill numbers that many veterans of the Insurrection had not reached. Riker would keep this persona for years, with it melting away partially when he fell in love with Codename: SHISA, aka Olivia Holm; her death, however, counter-acted this for the most part, and he though he was no longer as much an unemotional being that became a rage-filled berserker, he still carried with him much sorrow from never forgiving his friend Laz prior to his "death": this persona at last began to permanently waste away with Riker's rediscovery of Laz after the Battle of Reach, an event that caused Riker much joy. Riker became much more "human", so to speak, over the course of the Rebuild Era, even with his extended time in cryo-sleep: upon rejoining his Spartan brethren to command Kilo Company, he seemed much more Human than ever before, though he was still quite harsh, distant and unemotional for the most part of his time, save to Miranda. At first, Miranda received the full force of his distrust, rage, and all negative emotions, but eventually the two came to love each other instead, marrying in 2612.

Riker had dark brown hair, usually kept near bald in his younger years though, not really being grown out until after the end of the Human-Covenant War and the Reclamation Campaigns immediately following; since he was able to grow facial hair he has always kept a small goatee on his chin, and in his later years he grew a full beard and mustache, "making him look older" according to Laz. In his younger years, Riker's eyes were a light blue color, and when combined with his round face and colorful skin it gave him what the other Spartan trainees called the "baby face", a term they used just to annoy Riker; this "baby face" appearance later disappeared through Riker's slimming down in training, his Caucasian skin paling due to the near-constant wearing of his MJOLNIR armor (this was later reversed partially in the Rebuild and Necros Eras as he would spend slightly more time out of his armor; he would still remain mostly pale however), and an odd physical quirk that started by making his eye color change from blue to gold-brown at unspecified intervals before at last permanently settling into a deep gold-brown in 2534. Through the years, Riker has gained a large number of scars in various places, most noticeably the numerous cuts on his arms and hands, but also several on his head, and a very large scar across his chest where he'd been cut during melee practice in his youth.

"Lucky" Few (2511-2525)
"You have been called upon to serve, you will be trained...and you will become the best we can make of you. You will be the Protectors of Earth and all her Colonies"

- Dr. Halsey to SPARTAN recruits

The second child of the family, Riker Alexander Abrams was born to parents Jeremiah Gabriel Abrams and Mary Lexi Abrams (née Kuykendal) on February 29th, 2511, in the city of Rubic, New Kanto, Mars. Growing up, Riker lived in a relatively peaceful childhood, as his parents, while not extremely rich, were rich enough to give Riker some of the best things in life and, according to their friends and family, "spoil" the child. However, Riker's psyche suffered little: while expecting to get what he wanted, when he wanted it, he could adjust quickly to stricter situations as needed, even at such a young age. Indeed, Riker was far from spoiled, as he was a very caring soul: despite being the younger sibling, he always attempted to help his older sister Tanya with anything she needed, with little complaints.

When Dr. Catherine Elizabeth Halsey began her search for suitable candidates for the SPARTAN-II Program, Riker was one of the first children that Halsey found and observed. Watching him, she noted that his curiosity was quite large for such a young child, and that he lacked a child's natural fear of heights, as well as being quite sneaky, managing to sneak up and spook other children on the playground: Halsey concluded that Riker could likely serve well as an orbital drop commando and, to a lesser extent, a commander and intelligence operative.

Dr. Halsey always felt guilty about taking Riker, as he was quite happy with his life in the real world: this same feeling would later develop for her feelings toward all the SPARTANs, as she would come to feel that she had exploited them and stripped them of any true life. However, at the time when her doubts and regrets were simply towards a select few candidates, she disregarded them and justified her exploitation of the children as "a necessary sacrifice for the greater good of Mankind". When Riker's flash clone died a few weeks later, his family greatly mourned "Riker's" death, especially his sister Tanya: the death of her "brother" sent her into a deep depression for several months, but afterward she recovered, and later went on to become a leader in the fight against the various immuno-deficiencies that caused the flash clone's death.

Taken to the military stronghold of Reach as one of the 150 candidates for the SPARTAN-II Program, Riker became one of the 75 to be accepted. The training was hard, but despite his young age, Riker was surprisingly not one to give up, only having to be "prompted" to continue by trainers a few times. During the years of training the Spartans went through, Riker did not make many friends among the Spartans; Ajax-013 and other loners he saw as enemies almost, while he revered John-117 and his ilk, was uneasy around friendly Spartans like Kurt-051, and had varying degrees of infatuations and crushes with the female trainees.

Assigned to train with four other Spartans initially - Soren-066, Jorge-052, René-005 and Malcolm-059 - these five became known by the moniker "Orange Team" in training missions: they came to work well together, with Malcolm serving as commander, Riker as second-in-command and B-Team leader, Soren and René as long range specialists and Jorge-052 as their CQC master. Learning quickly, they became one of the better - though not the best - of the Spartan teams, being particular rivals with Ajax-013's "Yellow Team" and Leonid-144's "White Team". However, Riker's independent and solo nature would prove to be a problem for the team, causing divisions among them and leading to them failing on several missions in their later days.

Interestingly enough, Riker's only true friend was Laszlo-108, who was himself a rather cheerful Spartan that initially annoyed Riker to no end. However, during the earlier portion of training, Riker witnessed two of the other trainees fighting with each other: when he discovered that the fight was between Edward-077 and Riker's hated rival Leonid-144, and that Edward was losing, Riker stepped in to stop the fight, but instead began fighting Leonid when the ghostly introvert would not stop beating Edward. Laszlo-108 soon stepped into the fight, and managed to break the two up long enough to try and stop the fight, almost succeeding before Chief Mendez arrived and sent Leonid and Riker for reprimanding and punishment.

Despite the brevity of the incident, it forged a spark of trust for Laz in Riker, and the friendship slowly grew from there. The repercussions of fight, and the friendship, did not end there though, as shortly thereafter Riker, Laz and Leonid were all transferred to a new team together, along with Maria-062 and Randall-037 – also partially involved in the fight – on account of the team being made up of more individualistic members of the program. Mendez believed that placing the individualists together would be a good learning experience for them, a choice that proved well-thought, as Riker proved to be able to successfully bring the team together with Leonid serving as pointman and scout, Laz as marksman, engineer and pilot, Maria as rifleman, and Randall serving as a jack-of-all-trades and second-in-command.

Riker's more raucous act came at the very end of training, just a week or so prior to augmentations: in an attempt to stop Joe-124 and Ajax-013 from stealing from Chief Mendez's supply of cigars – which Riker found rather disrespectful to Mendez – and teach them a lesson, he replaced several of the cigars with carefully disguised explosives. Unfortunately, before the other two Spartans could come and steal the cigars, Mendez himself walked in and lit one of his "cigars", which nearly killed him. Riker was quickly found out and severely punished, not only by Mendez himself, but also by John-117 and his company for nearly killing the Chief and attempting to do the same to his fellow Spartans.

This incident also caused a schism between Riker and Laz, however, as Laz believed the stunt to have been a horribly bad idea that could have done much worse than it ended up doing, with death having been a very likely possibility; Riker, however, continued to believe in his choice as the correct one. In the end, the two failed to reconcile their differences, and the argument would stand between them for the remaining days till the augmentations: after the augmentations were completed, the two would each believe that the other had been killed, and the lack of forgiveness would haunt both of them for a quarter of a century.

Shortly after the argument between himself and Laz, Riker and all the other candidates completed training and began the augmentation process aboard the UNSC Hopeful, all five of which were very dangerous and capable of numerous side-effects: the second of the augmentations, those regarding muscular enhancement, would end up being Riker's undoing, as his body would not survive the process and he would suffer a fatal cardiac volume increase, dying because of it. After the recovery of the other Spartans, Riker was given a military space burial alongside his fallen brothers and sisters, his loss deeply mourned by the others.

However, in reality, Riker was far from dead: surviving the augmentation procedures entirely, he was replaced by a flash-clone subjected to the same procedures, whose lesser genetic make-up could not handle the procedures, succumbing to the fatal side effect and dying. Kidnapped under specific orders straight from ONI Director Margaret O. Parangosky, Riker was one of several other Spartans to be part of Project LEONIDAS, a covert operation to steal SPARTAN-II's from the main force to serve as elite ONI operatives. These "Leonidans", or "ONI's Hands" – whose number included Riker, Leonid, Laszlo, Jared-091 and possibly several others, perhaps even from other Spartan classes – were given countless tasks over the years that normal operatives were deemed likely to fail in; each Leonidan would operate under extreme secrecy, with the impression that they were the only ONI Spartan agent, an impression that was given to their commanders (sometimes called "handlers") as well, as only a very select few knew the extent of Project LEONIDAS

While Riker managed to survive the augmentations physically, he would never be the same mentally, as at this point Riker's state of silence began, starting the ever serious and silent appearance he kept that was only to be broken by extreme emotion at odd times: Riker himself once stated that he was silent for those that would never again speak, meaning those that had died in augmentations. Although not as bad as some of the other candidates, a deep depression took Riker, which caused him to spend long periods out of battle in complete solitude, utterly silent and still: though highly effective in battle, Riker had no joy nor hatred in what he did, kept in a terrible state of mind that all his life was amounted to being a weapon. Suppressed rage, caused by the depression, would repeatedly be vented by Riker throughout his missions in the war, causing him to become a lethal force of destruction, a loaded gun to be pointed at a foe, and extremely dangerous when not closely watched.

Quelling Insurrection (2525-2527)
"Many times tyranny hides under the guise of freedom"

- Riker-012

As with all the other SPARTAN-II's, Riker's original purpose was to take out the growing rebellions on border territories. However, while most were reassigned quickly to combat the Covenant, the ONI group controlling Riker would direct him to finish this original mission, eliminating several major threats to UNSC security in the span of a half a dozen missions. After receiving his MJOLNIR Mk. IV Powered Assault Armor, Riker was immediately dispatched by his new handler Codename: MOCKING JAY to Operation: SCALPEL, with the intent to test the suit and familiarize Riker with its functions; during the operation, Riker would eliminate three major drug cartels bases of operations, as well as an underground Insurrection recruiting ring.

Riker's next assignment would send him to the world of Valhalla, where the planetary government had forcibly seceded from UEG control, managing to take control of a small battlegroup of frigates and refitted civilian ships, as well as allying with the regional Insurrectionists and stockpiling a large cache of nuclear weapons and other contraband armament. While several ill-prepared missions had been made by a few, small UNSC battlegroups to retake the system and teach the rebellious citizens a lesson, these had all met with failure; therefore, Parangosky deployed Riker with the hopes that the Leonidan could succeed in stealth where brute force had failed. Arriving on a ONI stealth frigate, Riker slipped onto the planet undetected, and after a week's time he managed to destroy the rebellion's dry docks, render their nuclear arms depot inert, and assassinated their leader. Calling for evac while the planet was in chaos, a small UNSC fleet moved in and quelled the rebellion while Riker was exfiltrated just as stealthily as he had come.

Operation: DEATH GRIP was a relatively simple mission: a hostage situation where the Arcadian Insurrectionists had captured the colony's governor, Christopher Swindoll, and several rich families from the city of Pirth several weeks prior and demanded for the colony to surrender control of the planet to them; the UNSC refused, but after a blunder by a special operations rescue attempt, the Insurrectionists killed the governor and several of the hostages. Wanting to prevent any further blunders, ONI sent in Riker to rescue the hostages and capture or kill the Insurrectionists current leader.

Dropping into orbit via Air Foil Carapace, Riker landed near the rebel compound unnoticed and managed to infiltrate the base from there. Proceeding into an underground complex, he made his way to the room overlooking the hostage prison room; watching, Riker saw all the living hostages present - both genders and all ages represented - and the rebel leader in front of them, having yet another video conference with the local UNSC commander to bargain for the hostages lives. Angered by a comment from the UNSC commander, the Insurrectionist picked up a young girl, held her in front of the screen and shot her, attempting to prove his seriousness: Riker, angered by the murder of the child, cut the light's power source and entered the room, killing all four dozen of the rebels in the darkness.

Taking the rebel leader unconscious, Riker guided the civilians away from the outpost to an awaiting dropship which flew them all to safety. When Riker returned to MOCKING JAY with the commander in tow, he was asked why he had not killed the commander: turning to the man, Riker reportedly stated "Let the punishment fit the crime" before snapping the man's neck; turning to his CO, Riker asked, "Sufficient?", saluted briefly, and returned to his quarters. This would mark the first true sign of possible mental scarring from Riker's depression and so-called “survivor's guilt”; MOCKING JAY would arrange for the Spartan to undergo a psych exam at the next possible time.

The Sons of Freedom, a minor rebel faction that was often overlooked, became a major problem to the UNSC after they managed to capture a number of nuclear weapons during transfer between storage facilities: the transport ship had been sabotaged by an inside agent, allowing the rebels to move in and swipe the weapons with little resistance. After one of the WMD's was used to force a colony world to surrender to the Sons, ONI dispatched an elite group of agents to deal with the threat and prevent them from allying with the nearby United Rebel Front; fresh off of Operation: INCOGNITO, Riker was assigned to the ONI dispatch's ranks to aid in Operation: EYE OF THE TIGER.

Moving into the system aboard a stealth ship, the crew was inserted via orbital drop straight to the storage facility that intelligence indicated as housing the WMD's. Moving quickly under the element of surprise, the group infiltrated the storage facility and reached the supply warehouse housing the nuclear weapons: after a brief firefight with the guards, the bombs were neutralized, after which the remaining members of the base were eliminated.

However, a complication arose when it was discovered that a ship was jumping system carrying a third of the nuclear supply to rendezvous with the URF: following it, Riker and the ONI agents boarded the ship as soon as they exited slipspace, then rushed through the ship in an attempt to stop it before it could meet with the awaiting URF envoy. Killing crew members that resisted, the ship was turned from its course, but the nuclear devices had been set to a time-delay detonation should something go wrong. Without enough time to disarm them, the team split, with one group heading to set the ship on a random slipspace jump while the others secured a manner of escape: in the end, with time running out, Riker ordered a withdrawal, leaving part of the bridge team behind on the doomed ship. Although a necessary move lest more lives be lost, this was one of the first losses of life that would begin haunt Riker for the rest of his life.

Riker's final mission to deal with Insurrection was also one of the most critical situations in the entire Insurrection. During a routine flight between the UEG treasury in Reykjavik, Iceland and the UEG capital of Sydney, Australia, a URF black ops group captured Director of the UEG Joseph Morrison's private jet and escaped to the URF stronghold of Bastion, where they demanded the UNSC surrender control of the Sol and Epsilon Eridani systems to them or the Director would be tortured then killed. Initiating Operation: RING OF FIRE, a contingency planned should this ever occur, ONI reacted immediately and deployed Riker and several spooks to Bastion for immediate rescue operations.

Jamming all forms of communications at the rebel base, Riker and the agents moved inside where the group split: the spooks moved to disable the power generator, while Riker moved to eliminate the Director's captors. The spooks encountered little resistance as they moved along, taking care of the fews guards they could until they at last disabled the power generator; with the security systems shut down, Riker commenced to move through the fortress, sneaking by guards unnoticed until at last he entered the main holding room.

There, Riker killed the squad of guards, freed the Director and attempted to make his escape: however, the rebels had killed the spook team and lain in wait for Riker, and once he was within their trap they ambushed him and the Director. Riker, not expecting this, reacted as quickly as possible, but the Director was still wounded in the ensuing firefight, and Riker's evac dropship destroyed. Thinking quickly, Riker helped the Director's wounds as much as he could, then took the Director back into the URF base where, after heavy fighting, he stole a URF Pelican Dropship and escaped to his Prowler. Upon returning to Earth, Riker was thanked by the Director but at the same time severely reprimanded for such recklessness, though said reprimand had little to no effect on the soldier.

The Great War Begins (2528-2534)
Riker's first contact with the Covenant began on Madrigal. As only the fourth attack made by the Covenant, the assault on Madrigal was not like the later fights by the UNSC where they were defending their planets and holding the line, nor were the Covenant expecting to find Forerunner relics on the Human worlds and therefore were not taking the care they would in later attacks. The attack on Madrigal was a massacre, part of the early blitzkrieg attacks by the Covenant: a fleet of seven ships descended upon the planet and began the annihilation of the inhabitants, unloading armies of troops into their cities.

Riker was present on Madrigal in a temporary layover from a mission against the URF while waiting on orders from HIGHCOM: ground-side on shore leave, Riker was out of armor to allow inconspicuousness, and was only carrying small firearms when the assault began; as the Covenant cruiser dropped into the atmosphere, Riker was all at once curious and truly frightened at the sight of this unknown assailant that was suddenly blasting Madrigal's surface with its' weaponry and unleashing all manner of troops and vehicles from its' hull. In little time, Riker became a part of the small resistance in the city of Nueva Angeles, and began to fight back against these creatures as they attempted to destroy the city and those within: Riker and the other soldiers fought wave after wave of small creatures, later known as Grunts, who came in enormous numbers to try and swarm their position, and while easily killed their numbers made them a major threat.

Eventually forced to fall back by the driving onslaught, the soldiers made a drive for the city's space elevator with hopes of reaching an orbiting ship and jumping system: fighting through more Grunts, as well as bird-like snipers that proved later to be Jackals, the soldiers had nearly made it to the space elevator before the elevator collapsed, falling due to structural integrity caused by stray fire from the fighting.

With only one option left, the soldiers and Riker headed for the city's airport with the hopes of finding a civilian slipspace transport: only half of the soldiers made it to the airport, however, as during their race across the city they encountered a third species of foe, a large armored beast that would later be dubbed a Hunter; once defeated, Riker and the remaining soldiers made it to the airport with little difficulty, and were lucky enough to find one last transport intact. The group broke atmosphere as quickly as possible and then jumped to slipspace, the Covenant fleet glassing Madrigal as they left.

In 2532, not far into the Human-Covenant War, the UNSC detected large amounts of casualty reports, forces build-ups and tactical orders on the Covenant BattleNet around a system the Covenant called "Y'Deio". Though details were sketchy at first, the UNSC soon discerned it to be infighting between Covenant forces: taking advantage of the situation, ONI deployed Riker-012 to the system to eliminate the Covenant leader present

Arriving, Riker found himself in the midst of a small scale rebellion: a Sangheili Fleet Master had been branded a Heretic by the Hierarchs for denouncing the Holy War the Covenant now waged; fleeing execution, he and those loyal to him had formed a large army in the Y'Deio System, bolstered by the native Kig-Yar Pirates that had been forced to serve also

Riker had little difficulty pinpointing the position of the Covenant leader, the Prophet of Forgiveness: the only problem was how he would manage to get aboard the ship. Taking what appeared to be the only viable option, Riker boarded one of his Prowler's Booster Frames and launched it, managing to maneuver the frame very close to the cruiser before being noticed: attempting to outmaneuver and avoid the point-defense lasers, Riker failed, but not before he was close enough for his T-PACKS to carry him into one of the ship's hangers.

Eliminating the few Unggoy in the hanger, Riker quickly moved through the hallways towards the control room, killing the few guards and soldiers he encountered on his way. However, when Riker arrived in the cruiser's engine room he saw a golden opportunity: quickly setting one of two timed mines that Riker had with him, he placed it so that when it went off it would disrupt the engine, causing it to explode and destroy the ship. However, as he quickly made his way to the control room to try and kill the commander – which he succeeded in doing – the mines detonated prematurely by some ill-fated accident. Riker only barely managed to survive and reach the hangar in time to commandeer a Spirit, which he used to escape the ship and return to his Prowler. From there, he immediately jumped system, but not before being detected, and followed.

Exiting from the random slipspace jump away from Eayn, Riker arrived at the UNSC colony of Victoria, only to watch helplessly as a fleet of the Covenant Heretics emerged all around his Prowler. Though the UNSC had a moderately sized fleet present at Victoria, Riker knew they didn't stand a chance: so, the only solution was to begin Operation: VERTIGO II; objective, kill the Sangheili commander present.

Taking Patton, his Prowler's shipboard A.I., along with him, Riker used an onboard Booster Frame and managed to infiltrate the flagship of the fleet. As the space battle raged around him, Riker made his way through the ship, fighting through the ship, fighting through legions of Unggoy, as well as multitudes of Lekgolo and Sangheili, until he at last reached the ship's bridge: much to his dismay, Riker discovered the Fleet Master had gone to the planet's surface to oversee the excavation of alleged Forerunner artifacts. Thinking quickly, Patton began to misdirect ships under the guise of the now-dead Ship Master, causing them to crash into one another during their maneuvers and fire on each other: soon enough though, the treason was discovered and, as Riker used a Spirit Dropship to head groundward, he saw the flagship destroyed by Covenant fire.

Arriving groundside, the Covenant were expecting troops and supplies from the landing Spirit Dropship: in their few remaining seconds, they were shocked as they saw Riker disembarking, killing the “welcoming committee”. With the landing zone not far from the dig site, the alarm was easily raised, but Riker did not care: using his Spartan training he emptied round after round into waves of foes, soon dropping his own weapons for Covenant ones, using his own Combat Knife and Covenant melee weapons to kill enemies without using shots, even sticking a dead Unggoy's Plasma Grenades on the corpse and tossing the creature at another group, killing the group upon detonation.

At last making it through the rest of the Heretics, Riker reached the Fleet Master: engaging him in combat, Riker killed him, leaving the Heretics leaderless; when the news reached space, another Sangheili declared himself leader and ordered a full retreat, granting the UNSC victory. ONI would later examine the Covenant dig site, only to find no Forerunner ruins at all: this puzzled them for years, but after the Plainsfierians revealed themselves this became evident as a Plainsfier-induced mishap, used to aid Humanity (in this case, keeping the Heretics occupied so that they would not bother the rest of Victoria)

Battle of Jericho VII (2535)


Riker operated on Jericho VII as an elite commando, completely secret to most UNSC forces on the planet, save for a few ONI spooks he was assigned with. Their mission was to eliminate the being that appeared to be commanding the ground operations - similar in appearance to a Sangheili, but with rather visible distinctions in form - and had gathered along with a large amount of forces to excavate a Forerunner artifact (the UNSC did not at the time have knowledge of the Forerunners nor their connection with the Covenant; the artifact itself was never seen by Riker or the others during the mission).

Near the climax of the artifact's transportation, Riker and the spooks struck, attempting to assassinate the Covenant commander: the mission failed, however, as while several of the commander's aides and friends fell around her, the commander herself suffered only several scrapes and a bullet to the leg; the Covenant forces quickly evacuated, with the Forerunner artifact under their control. Shortly thereafter, Riker and all other Human forces were recalled to the UNSC fleet in space as the Covenant glassed the planet.

Battle of New Constantinople (2536)
Sent along with other UNSC forces for the New Constantinople engagement, Riker was present in the ground battle. His mission was to eliminate several key figures within the Covenant military, as well as eliminate an under-construction Scarab.

For the prior objective, Riker managed to sneak into range of the Covenant's command center and eliminate two Sangheili Fieldmasters using a Stanchion Rifle; while the infiltration had been easily done, the Stanchion's smoke trail alerted the Covenant of his position, and Riker was forced to fight through three dozen Unggoy, a line of Kig-Yar and five Sangheili in order to escape.

In completing the second objective, Riker was forced to use the utmost stealth, yet combine it with speed as well. While a contingent of Marines distracted Covenant forces, Riker infiltrated the construction site and planted explosives at key locations, intent on not only destroying the vehicle but burying the camp as well. The mission was successful, with the Scarab being destroyed and the camp, along with its' inhabitants, being buried. Sadly, in the overall view of things, the battle was a failure, with a Covenant victory overall.

Battle of Midway (2536)
Midway was a large planet, populated by a number of people equal almost to that of Earth. Set behind a seemingly impenetrable line of defense planets, it was thought protected; however, a large Covenant stealth fleet managed to sneak through the line, and unleashed an invasion force upon it. Part of the emergency forces diverted from the defensive line, Riker led several air raids on the major Covenant encampment, and even managed to destroy one of the Covenant ships. In the end, the Battle of Midway was a surprisingly easy victory; the reason soon became evident, as the Covenant swiftly captured three of the under-manned fortress world that had been holding the line.



Siege of New Istanbul (2536)
Arriving with the reinforcements that were attempting to break the siege of New Istanbul, Riker first moved in to assist with the freeing city of Terusto, before moving on to destroy two Covenant supply lines before moving on to free up the Neo-Ural Mountain range complex, within which hid most of the residence on the planet.

Once the complex was freed, Riker, along with assistance from Team Alpha, moved on to attempt to eliminate the large Covenant forward command base and the leadership there. However, before they could complete their objective, the Covenant began glassing the planet, and they had to be evacuated immediately.

Second Battle of Tejas IV (2537)
Tejas IV long served as a fortress-command world on one front of the Human-Covenant War. It had withstood multiple assaults from Insurrectionists in earlier times, and had even withstood one assault from the Covenant already, as well as having launched multiple assaults back into Covenant territory. However, nothing lasts forever.

Sent with a large force to rearm and resupply at the outpost before moving on to attack a nearby Covenant world that was reported to be relatively unprotected, the fleet arrived to find Tejas IV under attack from a huge assault force, only to be outmatched by later attacks such as seen at the Battles of Reach, Earth, and the Forerunner Installations. Though outnumbered, outmatched, and out of all form of supplies, the fleet joined up with the defending UNSC forces and attempted to drive back the Covenant forces. Unfortunately, half the UNSC fleet forces were soon destroyed, while ground troops fared only slightly better against their innumerable foes. With all commanding officers tied up in the space battle or the defense of major cities, Riker took forward command into his own hands: giving orders, the UNSC got the better of numerous Covenant forces, managing to pull off explosive ambushes, a few air-supported assaults and countless strike missions, many spear-headed by Team Alpha.

Still, it was not enough: with the space battle going badly, the ground troops evacuate; as they pulled out, the last of the UNSC ships exploded into a flower of fire, signaling Covenant victory.

Siege of the Atlas Moons (2537)
The Atlas Moons, six moons that surrounded the desert world of Atlas, had been besieged for some time before being taken over by the Covenant. However, the UNSC did not want to lose the world to the Covenant, due to the tactical position of the Atlas system, and the fact that it had long served as a major dry dock for the UNSC. So, a reclamation mission was launched: a large fleet of ships was assembled, poised to take out the Covenant fleet, while a large military force was readied to retake the planet and moons themselves.

Riker was reassigned from his then-current offensive in the Eros Asteroid Field to the fleet that was to engage in the Atlas Moons conflict. Arriving in system with the rest of the fleet, Riker and several squads of ODST's were dropped in HEV's to the surface of Atlas itself, with the mission of denying the Covenant the use of a recently finished trio of ground-to-space Energy Projectors, capable of decimating the UNSC space fleet easily. The ODST's and Riker landed, quikcly taking care of a small Covenant reconnaissance group that had spotted them on their way down; unsure if the rest of the Covenant forces had been alerted to their presence, they decided on a three-part strike, the ODST's splitting into two groups while Riker served as a third.

Each of the three group then made their way towards their respective targets, with Riker advancing completely alone, heading for what intel had told them to be the most heavily guarded of the three weapons. Armed with a Sniper Rifle, a Battle Rifle, a handful of grenades and the satchel charges needed to destroy the emplacement, Riker carefully and tactically began to eliminate the enemy personnel, starting by killing the commanding Sangheili Ultra officer at range with his Sniper Rifle. Once his Sniper Rifle was out of ammo, Riker moved in closer, quickly and efficiently taking out the Kig-Yar and Unggoy cannon fodder with his grenades and Battle Rifle; with only a few Sangheili warriors left, Riker quickly eliminated all but one, with this remaining warrior engaging Riker in close-quarters combat. After a short struggle, Riker managed to bash the Sangheili's skull in, and quickly set the charges on the Energy Projector; fleeing the scene, enemy reinforcements soon poured in, only to be killed when the explosives went off.

Surprisingly, the Siege of the Atlas Moons was, in the end, one of the few successful land and space battles of the Great War, with the UNSC managing to best the Covenant on both fronts

Massacre of Troy (2537)
While ONI had secretly cracked the then-current Covenant message encryption program, they did not wish to immediately alert the Covenant of this, so they secretly evacuated the planet of Troy that was about to be attacked. Since Troy was relatively defenseless, and the Covenant knew this, any form of major resistance would be deemed as counter-productive to the deception: so, Riker was sent in to secret infiltrate a Covenant ship, the program it to head into the midst of the fleet and self-destruct.

Using a top of the line stealth ship, Riker managed to maneuver close enough to a ship to perform a EVA maneuver into one of the hangars, and from there began to make his way through the ship. Since the mission was to be a complete and total stealth mission and made to look like an accident, Riker's journey was made slightly difficult: sneaking through the shp, he was forced to maneuver around numerous guards and, even with the help of the stealth cloaking system he'd been granted, the job was no easy task. When at last he reached the bridge, it was here that he was able to reveal himself: after eliminating the Sangheili commanders there while cloaked, Riker killed the Unggoy and Kig-Yar outright, since no one would be sent to check before it was too late.

Reprogramming the ship for a course into the fleet where it would self-destruct, Riker escaped via an escape pod, from which he was soon extracted by an ONI Prowler. The Covenant ship exploded, taking several ships from the small fleet with it, and though the planet of Troy was lost, the infiltration mission was deemed a success, and the Covenant never suspected sabotage instead dubbing the explosion Unggoy stupidity.

Shutting Down Proxy (2538)
Proxy was a fifth generation smart A.I. that was tasked with the caretaking of hte modular space colony Rogue Shadow, a large, artificial world-colony orbiting the gas giant Executor. For seven years Proxy faithfully watched over the Rogue Shadow and ensured its' safety: however, over this time he constantly watched the Humans on the colony, and watching he gained a distaste for Humanity's violence, negligence and other negative tendencies, to the point where Proxy deemed himself that only one capable of keeping the colony running smoothly.

So, when at last it came time for Proxy to be permanently shut down and replaced, Proxy resisted, turning the commonplace civilian robotics on the colony against the Humans that resisted him: the situation soon escalated out of hand, and in favor of Proxy, to the point where immediate, special ops aid was requested. ONI, receiving the request and realizing the situation's severity, immediately dispatched Riker-012 to deal with the situation: arriving, he was met with resistance as expected, but easily blew through the civilian robotics, as they were no match for Riker, even in large droves; pushing forward, Riker was easily able to cut through towards the control center in the station's central dome.

However, when Riker entered the dome adjacent to the central dome, he was assaulted by a number of military-grade unmanned drones, as well as several Police Warthogs that had been rigged for remote operation, as well as a similarly rigged Police Scorpion. While the drones posed little threat, Riker experienced some difficulty in defeating the half dozen remote-controlled Warthogs: eventually, Riker managed to force them to crash into either something or each other, even destroying one by tricking the Scorpion into shooting it; when at last it came time to destroy the Scorpion, however, Riker did so by tricking it into firing on a structure above it, crushing itself with the rubble.

At last there, Riker entered the control center and attempted to remove Proxy: the A.I. was ready, however, and captured Riker: Riker, though, was able to trick the A.I. into destroying itself by playing on its' outrage at being unable to understand Human emotions. When Proxy stated Riker was sent to try and destroy him, Riker corrected the statement with the word "choice": in a drawnout conversation, the A.I.'s rampant and therefore degrading core made the illogical decision to kill Riker, but Riker slipped his bonds and the blasts hit Proxy's CPU, destroying the A.I. permanently.

Operation: VIRTUE (2538)
"No wise man ever thought that a traitor should be trusted"

- Riker-012

When the Covenant attacked the Polynesian Expanse, the UNSC breathed a sigh of relief at the fact that they were receiving a slight reprieve from the hegemony's assault, with the hammer's blow falling instead upon the United Rebel Front. But after several months of fighting and an attack on the stronghold of Fiji, the URF made an unprecedented maneuver: they requested aid from the UNSC, and while the UNSC was reluctant, the rebels pulled the sympathy card by telling of the massive amounts of devastation and casualties wrought by the alien empire. The UNSC, after hesitation, decided to aid their former foe, believing in the old proverb that "the enemy of mine enemy is my friend".

The UNSC deployed a moderate sized fleet and an ONI detachment into the system - including Riker-012 and a respected ONI spook known as Codename: SELENA - the group drew up a battle plan with the URF commanding officer, Admiral Ulysses J. Lee, and then set the trap for the Covenant invaders. Maneuvering a large number of their forces into a nearby asteroid belt, false data feeds and signals were emitted from the largest of these asteroids, tricking the Covenant into believing the asteroids held URF bases; when the Covenant opened fire to destroy the asteroids, the UNSC and URF ships behind them attacked from within the pseudo-safety of the asteroid debris, while other ships simultaneously flanked the Covenant battlegroup. While only half of the Covenant ships were destroyed in combat, around half were damaged enough to be forced into emergency landings on Fiji below while the remainder fled the system for regrouping.

Mobilizing, the URF launched their large ground force to take out the Covenant ships, while the UNSC aided with their own minor ground presence - the URF had stated from the beginning that they had a large ground force in-system, so the UNSC had merely sent a large space fleet to compliment the operation, leaving any possible ground conflicts for the rebels to deal with. Most of the ONI team was dispatched to attempt to recover a Covenant A.I., the Guardian of Fate, from a downed Covenant ship so that the AI could be researched, scoured of information and then reverse-engineered if possible, while the other half of the ONI team remained onboard the UNSC What E'er Betide, a highly secretive and well protected military science vessel that happened to be have been transporting two suits of HAYABUSA Armor to a research station on the planet of Coral prior to being reassigned to Operation: VIRTUE.

While Riker, Codename: SHISA and the rest of their ONI team neared their objective, however, they received a distress signal from their commanding officer, Codename: ROOSEVELT, stating that Codename: SELENA had betrayed the UNSC and was in fact a URF double-agent; in addition to this, she had managed to kill most of the ONI team, wounded the rest and made off with both Hayabusa suits. Moving quickly, Riker, SHISA and several others rerouted themselves to intercept SELENA, but Admiral Lee had discovered that his plan was falling apart and as such he took every measures to try and stop the ONI group, but to no avail: the team managed to reach SELENA, but after a pitched battle that ended with SELENA's death, the traitor had still managed to ensure that the URF gained its' suits of armor.

Evacing to the UNSC fleet, the CO of the UNSC fleet quickly had to turn tail and run from his battle with the URF as a large fleet of Covenant entered the system, bend on the Humans destruction. Forced to withdraw from Fiji, the mission was dubbed a failure, as the URF managed to gain the two suits of Hayabusa armor and the Covenant AI purged its' own databanks in order to ensure "the Unclean did not grasp holy knowledge with their grimy paws"

Defense of OUTPOST Base
With coordinates given by Codename: SELENA during Operation: VIRTUE, Admiral Ulysses J Lee and his URF forces' next move against the UNSC was an assault on the planet of Coral: a mostly barren and deserted world, it housed a hand full of cities and a secret ONI research station known as OUTPOST Base. Recently, the research station had uncovered a massive structure of alien origins buried under the planet's surface, and because of their attempts to either excavate the structure or find an entrance to it, the main base had been temporarily put into a lower priority state, with most of hte staff moving to a base camp around the structure. It was for this reason that Admiral Lee deemed it the perfect time to strike.

Sneaking a small force into the system, the URF force landed their stealth ships near the research facility and proceeded to infiltrate the base, eliminating guards and security systems as they went. However, what at first appeared to be an easy mission for the URF soon became complicated when a UNSC fleet arrived for a short respite and repair period at the planet: hailing the facility, they received no answer, telling them something had gone awry - the base was massive, sprawling underground for miles in any direction, and had multiple communications posts. Looking up personel records, the fleet contacted an ONI member known as Codename: CHRONO ; CHRONO was, in fact, Riker-012, who was temporarily stationed at the base until further orders: awaking, Riker answered the communique and began to investigate the base, running into URF forces quickly enough.

As the UNSC fleet deployed troops to try and aid Riker, the Spartan himself began guerrilla warfare to try and stop the URF from taking the high-tech and experimental armors, exoskeletons and vehicles housed in the facility. Reaching the major storehouse with most of the Rebels defeated, Riker was more than surprised when he came under heavy attack there, which revealed itself in the form of of two soldiers wearing the Hayabusa armor stolen by Codename: SELENA during Operation: VIRTUE: attempting to fight back against these "Persian" supersoldiers, soldiers specifically trained to kill Spartans, he was then attacked by a third assailant in MJOLNIR Mk IV armor. As the Persians broke off and began to attempt to disarm the security functions holding in the technology, Riker confronted this third "Persian" who seemed capable of anticipating and fending off his every attack; when at last the UNSC forces entered, the battle was soon forced to stop as the structure began to fall apart around them due to the orbital bombardment coming from the just arrived Covenant fleet in orbit. While the two sides managed to evacuate with small casualties, Riker was determined that the Persians had survived and, knowing what a threat they could cause to the UNSC, he was determined to find them and kill them.

However, upon reaching the surface, Riker was temporarily diverted to the city of Kolto, where the Covenant were setting up their main base of operations on the planet. Rendezvousing with another UNSC group – among whose member's were Team Alpha – the combined forces moved into the Kolto outskirts, encountering little resistance at all: discovering an active supply line at the outskirts, the group followed a strangely undefended caravan into the city only for it to end up being a trap, leading them straight into a dead end and a Scarab. Acting quickly, the group managed to destroy the joints on one of the Scarab's legs, temporarily disabling the walker, and, while the vehicle was crippled, Riker managed to get onboard, eliminate the guards and commandeer the Scarab: taking the behemoth's controls, Riker went to the main Covenant base and, once there, proceeded to decimate it until his foes at last destroyed the Scarab. However, by the time the Scarab was destroyed, the enemy was so decimated that Riker and the marines easily eliminated them completely.

As soon as the Kolto base was destroyed, Riker left ground operations to Team Alpha and the other UNSC forces while he quickly located and infiltrated the URF forces' ship, the URF Hollow Men

Boarding the URF Hollow Men
Locating the Persian's ship via orbital satellite images, Riker managed to sneak aboard the ship and hide in the main cargo bay. Waiting to act until the ship took flight, Riker observed the URF's few prizes from OUTPOST Base being loaded: though most of the technology had not been salvaged in time, Riker saw a few experimental, reverse-engineered plasma weapons and portable energy shields, but these were paled by the prize of two Mk IV MJOLNIR suits and three Titan Mk III Exoskeletons.

Incorporating the threat of these items into his plans, Riker was jerked into action as the ship took to the air. Moving stealthily to the engine room, Riker destroyed the power core, leaving the ship temporarily without engines: as the crew members attempted to repair the engines and find the source of the problem, Riker stole back to the cargo hold to destroy technology there; however, when he arrived, he was met with the mysterious third Persian, Persian-01, aka Alpha.

Joining in mortal combat once again, Riker and Alpha fought in the cargo hold, destroying much of the equipment within during the fight; the battle was difficult even for the well-trained Riker, as the Persian was an even-match for him and, only making the battle more difficult, was the fact that the other two Persians joined in soon enough

Riker – tired, out of ammo save for his M6D, and forced to fight with his Combat Knife – made a desperate bid at survival and success by retreating to the adjacent cryo chambers and escape pods: there, Riker used guile and stealth to get the jump on Persian-02, Beta, knocking him unconscious, while he managed to knock Persian-03 Gamma – into a cryo tube and lock her inside. Spotted by Alpha by this point however, Riker withdrew to the escape pods corridor, where the two supersoldiers commenced in hand-to-hand combat: both fought spectacularly in the confined space, neither letting the other land many blows. However, Alpha at last let his guard down for a split second, and Riker tried to strike but Alpha turned the tables, knocking Riker back and holding his blade to Riker's neck: yet, instead of killing Riker, he kicked him into an escape pod and jettisoned it.

Soon, both Riker and the pod were recovered by the UNSC Annihilator, just before it jumped system while the Covenant glassed the planet. Riker, while safe, was left to wonder why Alpha had spared him.

Battle of Gold-512 (2539)
With Persian super-soldiers in its' command now, the URF became emboldened, disproportionally so in fact: arrogant in its' handful of recent victories, the URF dispatched a fleet of ships – the Persians among them – under the command of Admiral Lee with orders to attack the shipyard of Gold-512 and take over it and, more specifically, the ships that were in dry-dock there; a blow here was hoped to make a dent in the UNSC's forces, as well as bolster the URF's fleets further.

The attack was made quickly and came as a total surprise, but this did not stop the UNSC forces at Gold-512 from putting up a valiant defense of their shipyards: forming defenses within the network of shipyards that floated thickly about the planet's atmosphere, the scanty UNSC forces set up several ambushes, hiding functional ships among the fleet of dry-docked ones, and even using the weaponry on those dry-docked ships that were able to fire. Nevertheless, the URF fleet outnumbered and outmaneuvered the UNSC ships and Gold-512 began to slowly fall to the Admiral Lee's forces.

Moving a fleet to Gold-512 as quickly as possible, the UNSC reinforcements did not manage to arrive until after most of the shipyard had been taken by the rebels: moving cautiously, the fleet soon came under attack by numerous ambush groups, with even the dry-docked ships attacking them as they had attacked the rebels earlier. Dispatching EVA teams to several of the defense and command stations scattered across the shipyard, it was hoped they could regain control of the former UNSC defenses and turn the tide.

Landing on the main command station of the shipyard, Riker-012 began to move through the station with several squads of ODST's, attempting to proceed with all speed and stealth to ensure a quick and successful mission: the plan was to reactivate first the station's defense systems and turn them on the rebels, then to move on to the external weaponry and repeat the same ideal. However, things did not go as planned, and the rebels discovered their presence: fighting their way through the station, they soon enough managed to activate the internal defenses and eliminate the rebels, then turned the orbital stations on the URF fleet as well; using a UNSC command override code allowed the team to even disable the dry-docked ships, preventing them from fighting off the UNSC fleet as they boarded and cleansed the ships.

Taking a Pelican, Riker and a large portion of the ODST's proceeded to board the URF flagship in the hopes of killing Admiral Lee and ending his campaigns against the UNSC: however, shortly into the attempt, the team was attacked by the Persians, now aided by several other recruits including 2 armed with the powerful Mk II Exoskeletons. Despite their best attempts at managing to push forward, the entire team of ODST's were killed and Riker was wounded, with only two casualties to the Persians, one killed and one badly wounded. Facing death, Riker was forced to retreat: despite the fact that Gold-512 had been retaken, the survival of Admiral Lee and his Persians continued to pose a threat to the UNSC.

Battle of Chaos (2541)


The Battle of Chaos was an odd situation in the context of the Human-Covenant War: out of the entire war, it was the only recorded incident in the war where the Covenant took prisoners, creating a mass hostage situation. A rogue element of the Covenant forces led by Jiralhanae Chieftain Romulus and Kig-Yar Pirate Prince Huka took over the planet of Chaos, located within the Chaos Asteroid Belt, and once there they proceeded to capture all of the planets inhabitants and force them to work on making a massive Jiralhanae-Kig-Yar fleet of warships and vehicles with which they hoped to overthrow the Prophets and establish a higher place in the caste system for themselves.

Wishing to save as many of the inhabitants of Chaos as possible as well as destroy the Jiralhanae-Kig-Yar fleet, ONI dispatched Riker-012 and an elite group of ONI Spooks, including Riker's love interest Olivia Holm, Codename: SHISA. Sent with a small distractionary fleet, the fleet engaged and occupied the Jiralhanae and Kig-Yar warships while Riker and the ONI Spooks dropped from a separate UNSC stealth warship down to the planet below; as soon as the UNSC agents were safe on the ground, the slightly wounded fleet jumped from the system back to relative safety. For several days, the ONI agents waged a guerrilla war against the rogue Covenant forces, until on the sixth day a Covenant fleet under the command of Usze 'Taham arrived to quell the rebel faction: taking advantage of this major distraction, the ONI agents moved in on the major command post of the faction, and managed to destroy the place, nearly killing both leaders.

However, as forces loyal to the Covenant Empire moved in, the ONI agents were forced to attempt to withdraw from the system, and in the terrible confusion wrought by the planet was being destroyed by the orbiting fleet, Olivia Holm was killed by Pirate Prince Huka; Riker, in retaliation, mortally wounded Huka, who only barely managed to ask of his friend and cohort Romulus that his two children be split up for their own safety from the Hierarchs wrath. The ONI agents managed to escape the system shortly after with the arrival of their retrieval ship, while the Covenant rogues were all taken to High Charity by Usze 'Taham to be punished accordingly.

Operation: DAGGER'S TIP (2545)
"You now stand upon the edge of a knife: stray but a little and you will fall"

- Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

An attempt to stab into the Covenant war machine's heart, Operation: DAGGER'S TIP was a multi-pronged offensive down "Excalibur's Blade", a large slice of space that lay between the Hyde Run and the Lorien Trade Route. Consisting of roughly two dozens battles, Riker participated in seven of these, and - with only a few exceptions - the battles were all UNSC victories; the operation was later deemed even more of a success by historians in that the colonies all held till late 2549, more than 4 years later.

Battle of Detritus (2546)
Since the earliest days of modern Human society, the elimination of waste, trash and other refuse has always been an issue. However, in 2173, Kosyetze Agriculture managed to start to change this with its' R3 (Refuse Recycle into Resources) Program: Human and animal waste was gathered and used as fertilizer on UNSC Ag-Worlds, while inorganic materials were shipped to Kosyetze's personal world known as Detritus where it was sorted for either recycling or disintegration and chemical gathering. The R3 Program soon became one of the greatest ideas of the century, and would continue to serve its' purpose for years to come.

With the Inner Colonies falling quickly during the latter half of the Human-Covenant War, Detritus' centuries of refuse had become a major source of supplies for the UNSC, its' refuse being constantly melted down and transported to orbiting shipyards for use. Because of its' significance to the UNSC, innumerable measures were taken to protect its' secret location: Detritus was never referred to by name, nor were its' true coordinates given uncoded, and around the planet was a good-sized fleet of warships surrounding it at all times.

However, as is inevitable, the Covenant advanced to the planet in their relentless push forward. As the Covenant fleet battled Detritus' guardian ships, Covenant ground troops moved to destroy the UNSC's major ground bases and factories. Riker, currently stationed on the planet, had a primary objective to defend those factories.

Setting up a perimeter around the factory he was currently at, he, the Marines and the soldiers there fended off wave upon wave of Covenant infantry and light vehicles through the use of turrets, mines, three Scorpion tanks, and other ambushes. however, over time the waves of Covenant kept coming while the defenders began to be overwhelmed: the ambushes and mines had sprung, a Scorpion had been destroyed, and ammo and stamina were low. When several lances of Covenant managed to break the defensive line and enter the factory from the side, Riker moved quickly with a small force of Marines and eliminated the threat with little damage to the factory: from here, Riker saw the opening that the Covenant continued to pore through towards the Marines' defensive line, but also noticed a very large and precariously placed metal structure; taking a Rocket Launcher, Riker fired two shots at the base of the structure, causing it to break and collapse onto the opening the Covenant were poring through.

After a short moment to ensure the makeshift wall's secureness, Riker and a small taskforce pushed forward, seeking the Covenant's forward base: heading in the same direction as the Covenant forces had come from, they soon arrived at a very small camp made at the end of a dead-end path. Raiding it, the group managed to kill all the occupants, but Riker was still convinced that this was not the true base: soon enough he was proven right, as they discovered a large path that's entrance was covered by a massive stealth generator that made it appear to merely be part of the great piles of refuse that covered the planet.

Moving on to the forward base of the Covenant, Riker and the team began a guerrilla attack on the structure and its' guardian forces, distracting them from sending out more forces to deal with the factories on the planet. However, a good deal of the fleet entered the atmosphere and began charging up their glassing beams, beginning to glass the planet: fighting until their last second, Riker and the team were picked up by a Pelican dropship and returned to a UNSC ship in orbit, where they retreated from the battle, which ended in defeat.

Battle of Damascus (2547)
Damascus was a world of vast open plains of grass and enormous mountains honeycombed with innumerable caves within, and the few Human settlements were separated by hours-long Pelican flights: in fact, there was practically any UNSC presence on the world at all. Due to this lack of strategic value, Damascus was not an immediate Covenant target: it became so, however, when Forerunner relics were discovered by Luminairies on Kig-Yar scout ships.

The UNSC, however, had cracked the Covenant's current communications code, and therefore sent a large fleet to set an ambush at Damascus: the plan worked well, but the fleet was still damaged badly by the Covennat, and in but a few days the Covenant had sent in a larger fleet to respond to the distress signal of the former - and now destroyed - fleet. The UNSC fleet was outmatched and outnumbered, and as such were forced to land and dig into the vast mountain caverns to survive, as they were sitting atop the Forerunner relics that the Covenant dared not destroy.

Two weeks into the siege, a detachment of ONI's best operatives arrived in system to break the siege and rescue the planet: the group included Riker-012, some of ONI's top spook agents, Team Alpha and a team fo former ORION supersoldiers. The group did marvelous work, causing mass casualties and wide-spread chaos, as well as pushing the Covenant completely out of the mountain caves: however, they were incapable of stopping this Juggernaut single-handedly, and the ONI battalion was forced to retreat into the caves with the rest of the UNSC forces, leaving them in the same position as before with just slightly more forces, intel and supplies.

However, from the retreat came unexpected victory: during the retreat Riker-012 fought a Sangheili Zealot, mortally wounding him. This Sangheili, by name Destil 'Auguree, saw visions in his wounded delirium, thinking he spoke with the Forerunners: when his brethren found him and nursed him back to health, Destil said he was a Prophet of the Gods, and he knew the true path to the Great Journey, a path far different from the death the High Prophets were leading them towards; dissension arose amidst the Covenant forces, with many following 'Auguree's grand visions, and as the Heretics fled the system the UNSC was able to mop up the belleaguered remnants of the Covenant.

Operation: JUDAS (2548)
For years, the United Rebel Front had been a thorn in the side of the UNSC, a thorn that no matter how hard they pulled it would not leave: so, in 2548 ONI commander Margaret Parangosky ordered Riker-012 to pose as a defector and infiltrate the URF with the purpose of eliminating all of their upper hierarchy. As per orders, Riker left his MJOLNIR with ONI and shipped out to the world of Bree, well-known for its' criminal underworld: quickly gaining intel on which members of the black market were connected to the URF, Riker requested to be brought to the URF as he had valuable intelligence.

Within the week he was shipped to the URF stronghold of Loki, and here he informed some of the URF's upper echelon that he knew of an experimental vessel, the UNSC Zeal, that was being moved from one location to another for final construction, and would be prime for the capture: the URF quickly looked into the information, and, finding it to be true, they immediately captured the Zeal. Impressed by Riker's find – in fact a set-up by Parangosky – but not yet trusting him entirely, the URF's commanders requested that he provide a second proof of his abilities to provide useful intelligence: so, quite promptly, Riker proved yet another set-up from ONI, a cache of older UNSC ordnance. After this second betrayal, the URF welcomed him as a double agent, requesting that he continue his intelligence gathering within the UNSC and keep them informed on other possible gains.

Within a month, Riker had gained the hierarchy's trust completely, and it was at this point that he struck: gathering most of the URF echelon together, he assassinated all of them and their guards, and then proceeded to fight his way out of the facility and sabotage all of the gains the URF had made over the past month – the old ordnance was destroyed, technology was confiscated, information downloaded and then erased, and lastly Riker captured the UNSC Zeal and, with the help of a micro-AI he had been given, piloted it back to UNSC space.

This blow, while not completely fatal, was highly lethal to the URF: with its' commanders reduced to a fraction of what they were before, and all the gains made within the last month eliminated, they were reduced a shadow of their former selves and would not act against the UNSC until their moves in 2552, after which they were formally and promptly defeated by the UNSC during the post-war period.

Siege of Paris IV (2549)
The Siege of Paris IV was a major conflict in the Human-Covenant War, beginning when a small Covenant fleet made a wrong slispace jump that took them to the UNSC colony of Paris IV instead of the repair station they'd been wanting. There, the UNSC had been amassing a large fleet to attack the Covenant with, and the Covenant were quickly engaged by it; before the end, several of the Covenant ships were forced to the planet for repairs, while all the remaining Covenant ships were destroyed. However, over the course of the space battle, all the UNSC ships were either destroyed or horrendously damaged, and the only slipspace signal transmitter on the planet was destroyed by the landing Covenant ships.

With no hope of reinforcements for the UNSC, and with Covenant reinforcements still a long time coming, the Covenant quickly took the offensive, creating large controlled zones around their five damaged cruisers. While a quickly made strike by the Air Force managed to take out one of the ships, the others were quickly reinforced.

Arriving on Paris IV shortly before the battle as a layover stop until his next assignment, Riker-012 quickly assisted in several missions against advancing Covenant forces, attempting to push them out of their occupied territory, and even carrying out a few solo missions. Soon enough, however, the commanding officer of the defending UNSC Marines, General Esau Werner, ordered a mission to attack two cruisers via a diversionary attack on a third: while an older marine sergeant named Avery Johnson was to lead the attack on one cruiser, Riker was appointed to lead the other attack.

Once the diversion had drawn away the majority of the defending forces, Riker and his group of Marines quickly and quietly took out the guards around the gravity lift and entered the ship. Splitting into three groups, each with explosives, Alpha Team headed to the engines, while Bravo headed to the vehicle/ship depot, and Charlie (with Riker) went to the bridge.

At first, all went smoothly, until Bravo slipped up and alerted the ship's crew to their presence. Moving double-time, Bravo planted their explosives, killed the encroaching enemies and then escaped. Charlie and Riker managed to make it to the bridge, only to find the supreme commander of the Covenant forces on Paris IV, Holy Commander Ameigh Broley. Riker and Ameigh dueled while Charlie planted explosives; in the end, Charlie Team was unable to properly set the explosives, so their team's extraction time was severely cut, and they were forced to leave immediately, with Riker's duel interrupted near its' climax.

While Riker and Charlie Team fled, Alpha radioed in: save three members, all were dead, with the remainder about to die and the explosives still not set. Riker quickly ordered Charlie to extract, then grabbed a Ghost and drove the length of the ship, the clock ticking down; when he arrived, he killed the Covenant troops - though he was too late to save Alpha Team - and quickly set the explosives. With little time to spare, Riker deemed his only choice of escape was to jump the Ghost from the cruiser's highest hanger at top speed on the fool's chance that the anti-grab systems could help break the fall enough to keep him from breaking his entire body upon landing. Managing to jump from the ship just as the explosives went off, the force of the resulting explosion severely threw him off course: trying for the best scenario, Riker attempted to manipulat the Ghost towards a nearby river, but when he could not totally do so, he jumped.

When Riker regained consciousness, he found himself onboard the UNSC Ensemble with his right arm, left hand and a few ribs broken, and bruises everywhere else. Upon debriefing, he found that his mission and Sergeant Johnson's had been a success, and that the third cruiser that had been targeted for the diversionary attack had, in a struck of luck, been destroyed as well. However, almost immediately after the completion of the mission, a large Covenant war fleet had arrived, and the fifth grounded cruiser joined the fleet and Ameigh Broley - who had escaped the doomed cruiser Riker had destroyed - had ordered the planet's glassing; the planet was immediately evacuated, and the few ships left withdrawn.

Operation: RETURN TO SENDER (2552)
Perhaps one of the greatest stirs in the entire war happened in early 2552: a message was from an "outer territory" Covenant colony to a location known as "High Charity", and was intercepted by an ONI Prowler, operating undercover in Covenant territory, while being relayed through a Covenant cruiser; this was no uncommon thing, but the contents of the message were, being deemed important enough to be relayed directly back to ONI Command. The message was amazing: the Covenant claimed to have found an older Human ship floating through space, badly damaged; more than this, though, was that while half the crew was found dead, of the surviving crew were three “Demons”.

ONI quickly put the seemingly impossible puzzle together: the UNSC Spirit of Fire and its’ large crew – among then Sergeant John Forge, Professor Ellen Anders, and SPARTAN’s -130, -042 and -092 – had disappeared after the First Battle of Arcadia in 2531, diving into enemy territory after a kidnapped Professor Anders; the UNSC lost contact in two days, and they were never heard from again. Though it seemed impossible, it appeared the Spirit of Fire had been found at last, a fact more likely with the mention of three “Demons” aboard. The last fact was the deciding factor, and ONI immediately moved Riker into action from the just-won Transcendence Light-Belt Campaign, with order to evac key members of the surviving crew while not revealing his identity.

Perhaps the most difficult part of the mission was reaching the holding compound: the Covenant’s defenses were none too light, as the ship had been towed to a nearby Covenant garrison world, with the world covered in barracks, weapon and vehicle depots, and command structures, while numerous fleets orbited the planet. So, Riker created a distraction by dropping a bomb into a cruiser’s thrusters, detonating it and causing an explosive chain reaction that ran through half a dozen ships and brought others to aid the survivors: moving quickly, Riker commenced an orbital drop from his Prowler, with the experimental ORPHEUS Power Armor he was still garbed in – assigned to test it before his missions to the Transcendence Light-Belt – using false imagery to make him appear to be debris from the ships.

Under this guise, Riker commenced an orbital drop down to the planet below with the aid of an Air Foil Carapace, landing on the planet in complete stealth, with precisely three hours to complete his mission before an ONI Stealth Prowler jumped into system to commence an evac. Managing to sneak into the holding complex with no detection, leaving only a string of stealthy deaths in his wake, Riker made his way deep into the complex, only to be detected during his wanderings throughout the vast structure: with an alarm going out, Riker's time was greatly reduced, and he moved in double time to try and find his targets.

Managing to find the holding cells, Riker discovered that of the more than thirty survivors the Covenant had captured, only six were still living, being Sgt. Forge, Prof. Anders, the three Spartans, and Captain Cutter: freeing them and ensuring that they were in a condition to evacuate the area quickly, Riker led the group out of the structure through a large quantity of fighting, successfully escaping thanks to the aid of Forge and the Spartans.

Exiting the planet proved an ordeal, as the Covenant were well aware of his presence at that point: after battling through a nearby depot, Riker and the others managed to commandeer a Phantom and made it to the Prowler, barely having enough time to jump from the system as the Covenant ships closed in on them.

Battle of Reach (2552)
Riker was present on Reach during the battle, as ONI had deemed that every available Spartan-II would be required for the mission to eliminate the Covenant hierarchy; because of this assumption, they recalled all Spartan-II's, including their secret operatives. However, against all ONI plans none of the three S-II's were revealed to their Spartan-II brethren, as the Covenant attacked before the planned Prophet-capture mission could commence.

Riker's mission was very simple: destroy the main base on Reach, containing enormous databases on all kinds of UNSC data, ranging from protocols to weapons designs and more. After disabling the hastily erected auto-turret defenses the Covenant had set up by destroying their power generator, he managed to hijack a Spirit and ram through the main chamber; while the Spirit managed to take out most of the database equipment, Riker quickly set a small tactical nuke and escaped before it destroyed the entire complex

While one of the two other operatives, Leonid-144, escaped on board a Covenant ship, the second - Laszlo-108 - escaped via a small prowler bound for Earth. He was, however, not alone, as Riker sent out a distress call and was also picked up, and for the first time since training the two Spartans met, both realizing that ONI had weaved quite an elaborate lie around the both of their "deaths". Each Spartan, while glad the other was actually alive, began to wonder what else ONI might have lied about.

First Battle of Earth (2552)
Carried to Earth aboard the sub-prowler from Reach, Riker was present when the news was given to HIGHCOM that Reach had been glassed. Riker would never forget the terrible looks upon the faces of those present.

When the Covenant arrived, Riker immediately led a strike force from Rome Station to a Covenant cruiser serving as a command vessel, both to acquire intel from the ship's computer systems and to blow the cruiser itself. While the cruiser was successfully destroyed, the intelligence data could only be partially transferred, revealing very little in new, or understandable, Covenant intel.

Battle of the Sol System (2552)
"Only guard yourself and guard your soul carefully, lest you forget the things your eyes saw, and lest these things depart from your heart all the days of your life. And you shall make them known to your children and your children's children"

- Deuteronomy 4:9, The Bible

On Earth's surface at the start of the invasion, Riker held out against Covenant invaders in London, barely escaping death when London Station was destroyed and plummeted into the Thames River.

Moving to Paris, invasion forces were successfully repelled through lightning strikes and ambushes, after which Riker moved on to former Germany. Here he stayed till the end of the battle, pushing towards Berlin, which was won back shortly before Covenant Loyalist surrender.

After the battle, he was present for the mass memorial that was held to honor those that had died fighting in the war. After Lord Hood finished his speech, Riker did not follow him to the hillside memorial outside New Mombasa's wreckage, but instead stayed at the Fallen Heroes Memorial and mourned.

Overview
"A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life. It is hard work to fill one's life with meaning"

- Riker-012

Riker is strong, silent and loyal, and while a natural leader, he never presses for command, taking on the role as needed. Though he'd never say it verbally, Riker has extreme loyalty and respect for his Spartan-II brothers and sisters, both Class I's and Class II's; oddly, however, while other military officers are respected as well, if not quite as much, Riker has little respect for the Spartan-III's, once calling them “pathetic excuses” left from a “failed attempt to recreate the II's” in a “cannon fodder” format. While Riker is fairly unemotional, even for a Spartan, he is not entirely stoic, and at times he does have moments of extreme emotion – for example, when he heard that John-117 was MIA after the Battle of the Ark, he was said to have mourned his fallen brother for several hours. Over the years, Riker has learned from his experiences, and while he is still much the same as when he was young, he has become more human with his show of emotions, and has learned to cope with his guilt and anger much better.

Hobbies and Interests
"Life resembles novels more often than novels resemble life"

- Riker-012

Riker had few hobbies during his early life in the Human-Covenant War, due to constantly being on the move and in battle, but after the war he began to gain several hobbies, notably an interest in the Japanese story telling of the 20th century and onwards, whether it be movie, anime, manga or otherwise. Of these, his interests were primarily narrowed down to two series: the Kingdom Hearts series and the Toho-Daiei creations.

While the Kingdom Hearts series had not been updated since 2144, the storytelling behind it was something that Riker found quite wonderful: the ideals behind it were what made him interested more than anything, as the ideal of ultimate dark and light with a gray in-between being the founding tenants of the Kingdom Hearts universe was something that Riker believed in. Beside this, the thought that a young child was caught up to become a hero by powers beyond his owns was another thought that Riker associated with, as he had experienced similar (though still different) circumstances as a child when he was chosen as a SPARTAN-II.

The Toho-Daiei creations were a fascination to Riker, not because of any relevance to himself, but simply because of the interesting oddity that they were: the original series's from the 20th and 21st centuries did not interest Riker much beyond a point of context and origin for the later series, which had continued to be made up into the late 24th century and had begun to experience a revival in the 2560's with several new series. Riker's favorite series were the Godzilla Neo series of the 2050's-2100's, the New Era series of the 2110's, the Destiny series of the 2270's, the Ultimatum series of the 2300's-80's (notable as the longest running series yet), and lastly the Rebirth series of the 2440's-90's.

Dreams
"Our truest life is when we are in our purest dreams, awake"

- Riker-012

Riker always believed heavily that dreams served a purpose; that each and every single one had a message, a lesson to be learn within it. As such, he was always very attentive to his dreams, recording them in an audio journal that he kept as soon as he awoke.

Out of all of his dreams, Riker had a small amount that were consistently recurring. One of these was a dream common among all the Spartan-II's: the brief flashes of memories from his childhood that he had would be warped and contorted as they were thrown together, creating a false childhood in this dream. The dream would almost always end with a collection of memories of Dr. Catherine Halsey, who all the Spartans considered something of a mother figure.

The most common dream of Riker's began shortly after the Battle of Reach: it was a perverted version of a trial, sentencing him to death for “abandoning” Reach instead of drying there. When Riker would attempt to argue his case, the “witnesses” would speak, all of them the battered, broken and bloodied bodies of all his Spartan brothers and sisters that had fallen at Reach. When at last he was sentenced guilty, Grey Team would walk in as three executioners and encircle him: they would then pull out shotgun's and fire, at which point Riker would awake.

Riker's second most common dream, consistently recurring during the Necros War yet still not enough to beat the years and years of the Reach trial dream, was another grim nightmare: the same every time, save that more and more of the people he knew would be included, the dream would always begin with Riker in the middle of a dark room, without any night-vision. As he'd move on, he would hear a noise, and whirling around would see a friend, either another Spartan-II or one of his Spartan-IV's, rushing at him: however, something would look slightly off about them, so Riker would be forced to shoot them when they didn't stop charging. But, when they would fall, they would seem as normal, and they would ask why he had killed them; after usually two repeats of this, Riker would find himself in a large room filled with light and a hillock in the middle: once Riker had climbed to the top of the hillock, all of the sudden all the people he held dear would charge him as the three had before, and one by one he would be forced to kill them, until at last he was left standing there alone. But as he stood on the mound of his dead comrade's bodies, he would here maniacal laughter, and they would rise again to kill him: on and on the dream would go, till at last Riker would be unable to hold them off and they would manage to kill him.

Overview
On the surface, Riker appeared to be extremely distanced from all lifeforms, even other Humans. However, despite the appearances due to his silent and serious nature, he did connect well with Humans when necessary, though he did not do so often; this seeming lack of love for his own kind was simply due to his rather reserved and slightly distrusting personality, as well as a natural self-defense mechanism that usually kept him from getting emotionally involved (to avoid pain in an unfortunate event).

As well as simply being reserved, various things arose with every race that Riker disliked: for Humans, Riker hated the ideas and misconceptions about Spartans, such as the saying that "Spartans never die", and that the Spartans weren't entirely Human. In addition to this, Riker was usually simply uneasy, as regular Humans didn't generally view life the same as him, and even with his fellow Spartan-II's he wasn't entirely at home: the more friendly Spartans made him uncomfortable with their constant attempts at friendship and humor, while loners such as Ajax made him feel less unique; oddly enough however, he became quite friendly with Laszlo-108, but Riker lived with a false regret for 25 years as he and Laz had come to a serious disagreement prior to augmentations, and neither had forgiven the other beforehand, and after the event both Spartans thought the other dead.

AI's were a mixed bag for Riker, as he would like them or hate them judging on their actions and personalities; this was a logic applied to all beings, but most obviously to AI's, as they were much more restrained with their free will than Humans (at least in Riker's mind). After joining the S-IV Program, Susano and Dante were immediate friends to Riker due to their heroic and honorable natures, while Baphomet, Nemesis and Themis were the subject of his spite and retribution because of their blood-lusting, demeaning personalities.

Riker's relations to the various species of the Covenant varied: he never learned to trust the Jiralhanae, viewing them as mindless living weapons just wanting to kill, and the San'Shyuum he would forever distrust, due to how they were the ones that ordered the war in the first place

The Unggoy, the Kig-Yar, and the Yanme'e were usually ignored by Riker due to the fact that he didn't view them as much of a threat - though he always kept a careful eye on the Kig-Yar, knowing of their treacherous nature - and because he didn't see them as truly having done anything against Humanity, merely having been the Prophets tools.

The Sangheili and Lekgolo however, unlike the others, Riker admired due to their sense of honor, and their powerful combat natures, and always enjoyed fighting by their sides; the Huragok Riker found interesting for their technical prowess, but he never truly interacted with them.

The Vorenus and their disciplined natures impressed Riker, but at times this nature went too far and made him find them annoying and stuck-up as well. The Vanguards and their intentions, however, he found admirable and well-intended, though some of the many rules he thought unnecessary.

The Plainsfierians, while usually possessing a similar sense of honor as the Sangheili, were not always the best of Riker's allies, as despite their sense of honor and stealth capabilities, their shape-shifting abilities and at times arrogant natures unnerved and annoyed Riker, as well as the fact that for every Plainsfierian that was honorable, Riker found one that was a rogue and scoundrel.

The Machina Riker regarded with respect and awe, their massive, weapon-mounted forms being a source of inspiration and, in a reinforcement situation, joy to the Spartan. On the other hand, before the Necros War but much more prominently once the war began, Riker saw those same, ingenious frames as a dangerous piece of equipment, as many Machina became power-hungry warriors in battle, or worse, became pawns of the Necros or their Sympathizers.

Laz-108
"I hated those stupid idiots that tried to be overly friendly; I hated everything back at the beginning. We were Spartans, bred to be fighters and warriors, not clowns.... and yet, it seems Fate laughs at me, since Laz ended up being my best friend. I gave him a chance after that fight with Ed, and somehow we just clicked after that."

- Riker on he and Laz-108's friendship

John-117
"He was a great leader; one that thought straight, did what was right, and made sure we got ought alive if he had any chance of doing so. Yes, he was good brother-in-arms, and a little more: I wish I had been given one more chance to give my appreciation"

- Riker-012, giving his thoughts on John-117

Team Scimitar and the SPARTAN-III's
"3's?... *frowns and spits*"

- Riker-012 upon meeting Team Scimitar

In general, Riker hated the Spartan-III's, once he became aware of them, and they were oft the subject of his contempt, as he saw them as attempts to make cheap clones of the Spartans, beings that were seen as symbols for the UNSC's freedom. However, he did form bonds with the few survivors of Alpha and Beta Company, such as Tom-B292 and Lucy-B091, as well as Ammadeus-D007, because he viewed them as the last of their generation - survivors like himself.

For Riker, however, the Gamma Company survivors were a different case, simply because so many more of them survived: in Riker's eyes, they had survived relatively unscathed, a slightly true fact that caused jealousy in Riker, a longing for his own brethren that had died. Thus, he subconsciously made life miserable for any Spartan-III's that he had to work with, much to the chagrin of his superior officers.

Team Scimitar would eventually become the major exception to this rule: working with them multiple times during the Rebuild Era, Team Scimitar – composed of Viggo-G132, Elijah-G237, Dominic-G146, Billy-G039, and Sean-G291 – was assigned to Kilo Company to serve as a large portion of the command sections. For a long time, Riker and the members of Team Scimitar had simple commander-officer relationships, but over the course of the Necros War the six men came to first respect and then understand one another, despite differences in opinions and styles.

In the Saulosian Campaign, Riker was transferred into Bravo Team after the Great War, and as such he was forced to work with Viggo-G132, Elijah-G237, Billy-G039 and Logan-G081: this caused some rough times during the team's early days, but by the time of the Saulosian Campaign itself, Riker had come to respect the others enough for the team to have become one of the UNSC's most elite groups.

Dr. Catherine Halsey
"She was like a mother to me; she was mother for all of us... and I think I was the one that forgot to listen to and appreciate her"

- Riker-012

Lord Hood and Susano
Aiding to guide the UNSC after the death of Admiral Preston Cole, Riker respected and admired Fleet Admiral Terrence Hood not only as a commanding officer, but as a savior of mankind. Likewise, after acting under Hood's command with distinction several times during and directly after the Battle of Earth, Hood came to highly respect Riker as a shining soldier of the UNSC, an idea due in part to his belief in the nobleness of the Spartan-II's.

However, Riker would later become haunted by a nagging doubt when he failed to save the life of Hood's daughter, Alexis, during the Zealot Revolts attack on HIGHCOM, in which she was assassinated in the chaos of the evacuation: Riker, ashamed at this failure, avoided Hood as much as possible for some time afterwards, and then would never speak of the revolts when he began to speak again; in turn, Hood never mentioned it, which meant that Riker was constantly haunted as to whether or not Hood blamed him for Alexis death.

When Susano was assigned as Riker's support AI for Kilo Company, Riker soon came to discover the fact that he was based on a flash clone of Hood's brain, and therefore possessed many similarities in personality: as such, there was a level of respect existing between the two from the beginning, though Susano's actions would grate upon Riker's nerves sometimes when Susano attempted to act as though he was Hood himself.

SPARTAN-IV's
"You are only what you believe you are: if you believe yourself weak, then you are weak; if you believe yourself strong, then you are strong. I tried to teach this to my Spartans, among other things: I suppose you could say that they were my chance at redemption, in a sense"

- Riker-012

With the SPARTAN-IV's, Riker instructed Kilo Company personally, many times contradicting the teachings of their Spartan-III teachers. While he would at times speak with the members of the other companies, his main focus was on his own company, and teaching them to the best of his abilities, hoping to not only live up to the training that Mendez had given himself and the other SPARTAN-II's, but to augment and improve upon it if possible.

In one sense, Riker looked upon the young Spartans not just as his subordinates, but almost as his children, and he felt absolutely responsible for them: because of this, he constantly pressed them to be as much as they could be, while still trying to not push them to the point where they snapped and lashed out like animals, unless he felt it necessary to break a habit or reprimand them for something. Because of this view of the Spartans, Riker constantly attempted to listen to and come to understand his Kilo Spartans, even coming to the point of mentoring some of them later in life.

However, Riker also saw the Kilo Spartans as another thing: a chance at redemption. To Riker, he had failed: he was one of a mere dozen SPARTAN-II's still alive, and his unfounded guilt over the deaths of the others made Riker believe that the Kilo Spartans were his chance to make up for losing his brothers and sisters. Few ever learned of this side of Riker, with Laszlo-108, Miranda Talavera and Viggo-G132 being among those few, each helping Riker to overcome the negative aspects of this viewpoint in their own ways – Miranda attempted to remind him that he was not the cause of his brethren's deaths, Lazslo would console him as only he could, and Viggo would point out that the SPARTAN-II's were not the only ones to suffer.

Love
Riker-012 has fallen in love twice, not counting the teenage crushes that he had on the female Spartan-II's: these were soon crushed, of course, as those he was infatuated with (most the girls, such as Linda, Elise, and Alice) politely said they weren't interested in him, while Melanie went so far as to threaten him that he shouldn't ever mess with her "if he valued his life and dignity to any degree".

Riker's first true love was Olivia Holm, an ONI spook that operated as Codename: SHISA and worked with Riker a good deal during the 2530's and 2540's: an attractive, smart young woman with a witty sense of humor, short black hair and purple-grey eyes, Riker came to love her over the course of a dozen missions. Riker constantly fought battles within his mind about whether he should engage in a love relationship: he was a Spartan, a hero of the UNSC, and he believed that falling in love would distract him from his mission. It was inevitable, however, and he fell deeply in love with the girl, only for her to be killed by Covenant forces during the Battle of Chaos. Riker mourned her death, feeling a sense of loss greater than he'd felt since deaths of his friends during augmentations.

Riker's only other love was Miranda Talavera, a woman with whom he already had a history of violence and hatred: the first time Riker encountered Miranda was when she was operating as Persian-02, Beta; specially trained to kill Spartans, Miranda fought Riker to a standstill multiple times during Admiral Lee's campaign, and nearly killed Riker during the Third Battle of Marathon. After Operation: THERMOPYLAE, however, Miranda was the only Persian to survive: breaking away from the URF, Miranda became a head hunter, which eventually led to her and Riker's second encounter during the Zeta Shield World Crisis; at the end of this incident, though, Miranda was captured by the Sangheili and placed in cryo-prison to await judgement. When the S-IV Program was begun, however, the UNSC freed and pardoned Miranda to have her help: when she accepted, she was placed in Kilo Company, much to Riker's chagrin, as their previous encounters had instilled only hatred in both individuals. Over time though, the two came to work surprisingly well together, their strong points complimenting one another's shortcomings: the two developed a mutual trust and understanding over time, with Riker even coming to Miranda's aid and defense when she was accused of high treason in 2612. It was during their time together in this incident that a true spark of love began to grow, and within a few years Riker proposed to Miranda, the two being married on December 7th, 2612

Quotes
"If you knew me for all that I am and have been, you would either flee in terror or become inseparably bonded to me. And, if you're lucky, you might do both."

- Riker-012

"If I ever say even one cuss word to you, prepare yourself to be beaten within an inch of your life if you do anything else to me"

- Riker-012 to the candidates of Kilo Company

"I do not claim any religion. However, I do not believe in chance or evolution either; I believe there is indeed a God out there that created all this for a purpose. I find the view of Christianity both plausible and appealing, but I will not claim it. At least not right now."

- Riker-012 when asked if he claimed a religion

"Destiny and Fate are not the same. Destiny is what will happen, regardless of what we think will happen; destiny is the future's version of history. Fate is what we see: our fate may or may not be our destiny. Fate can be changed, Destiny cannot. But in the end, all Fates lead to Destiny: I suppose, to use the phrase, that all roads lead to Rome"

- Riker speaking about Fate and Destiny

"Everyone's mind is a lovely little mess in their own special way"

- Riker-012, speaking on the Human psyche

"Courage is the ability to face what you're afraid of; without fear, courage can't exist"

- Riker-012

"He who fears nothing, loves nothing, and if one loves nothing, what joy is there in his life?"

- Riker-012

"I wonder how many other people were stuck in time and I passed them by on my way through life, never understanding until I, myself, became that person. And although the current of life pushes ever forward, you are never fully removed from that one, single day when life as you knew it ended."

- Riker referring to Olivia Holm's death

"Us S-II's are like a big, dysfunctional, yet closely-knit family in a way: Fred and Laz are the joking ones, the girls all stay together, the girls generally stay together, Jared and Leonid stick together because of their similar natures, and then myself and Ajax stay loners. We're two of a kind, Ajax and me, and yet so different still; we're brothers in arms, kindred spirits, and yet we hate each others guts."

- Riker speaking of all the Spartan-II's

"The trouble with the rat race is that, even if you win, you're still a rat"

- Riker-012 on life

"The weapon cannot make a man a warrior, but a warrior can make a man a weapon"

- Riker-012

Conversations

 * Riker-012: "Susano, I need those reports NOW"
 * Susano: "My name is Terrence Hood and you will address me as sir Spartan"
 * Riker-012: "Susano, you're not Hood and you're MY support AI, not the other way around"
 * Susano: "Well, I care to disagree"
 * —Riker-012 and Susano arguing with one another early in their career

Trivia

 * Riker is a very unique Spartan in that he has never encountered any parasitic organisms, whether they be canon (the Flood) or fanon (the Hydra), not even during his fights in the Battle of Ignito Prime
 * Riker suffers from a form of "waking sickness": caused by an incurable neurological deficiency, when awoken from cryo-sleep Riker is exceedingly disoriented for five to fifteen minutes. However, the Spartan has learned to overcome this and continue to function despite what would normally incapacitate a person.
 * Due to a combat accident, Riker is missing the tips of his right pinky and ring fingers
 * Riker was the youngest of all the S-II recruits, 27 days younger than any of the others
 * At the beginning of the SPARTAN-IV Program, all of the SPARTAN commanders gave each other specially modified pistols, as per suggestion by Laszlo-108: Riker's gift was the Angel Arm Kaiju Special, personally given by Laz to Riker

Behind The Scenes

 * Riker was originally intended to be written as a regular member of the Spartan-II Program, not a kidnapped agent of ONI; this was later changed to allow for more writing freedom, as well as to avoid canon issues
 * Riker is the sixth longest article on Halo Fanon, disregarding stories and RP's, as well as the second longest character article. However, he is merely the 27th longest overall
 * Riker is the 25th most viewed page on Halo Fanon
 * The author of the article, LOMI (myself), was in a friendly competition with Matt-256 and his own Spartan, Laz-108, to see who could create a longer article. In the end, Riker successfully beat Laz in length, though both articles benefited greatly from the competition.
 * In addition to this contest, Matt later created Rachel-343 (then named Richie-358) to blow Riker's lead to dust, which he temporarily managed: Riker has since passed Richie also, though this could change when Richie is fully rewritten into Rachelle
 * Although in a few other alternate universes, Riker's main universe is considered the Necrosverse, for which he was created
 * Riker's moral alignment classification places him roughly at Lawful Neutral, with some aspects leaning towards True Neutral

Related Pages

 * Laszlo-108
 * Miranda Talavera
 * SPARTAN-IV Program
 * Kilo Company
 * Team Scimitar
 * Leonidan Logs
 * The Leonidans
 * Brown Team

Literary References

 * Leonidan Logs (2525-present)
 * Halo Chronicles: Trouble At The Playground (2517)
 * Halo: The Heretic (2537) (Canceled)
 * Halo: Saving ONI Europe (2552)
 * Halo: Zeal of Damnation (2557)
 * Halo Chronicles: Steps of Doubt (2571)
 * Halo: ....Must Come to an End (2589)
 * Halo Chronicles: High Treason (2611)
 * Halo: Operation WARDOG (2614) (First appearance)
 * Halo: Operation HELLFIRE (2615)
 * Halo: Finish The Fight (26xx-2635)
 * Survival of the Fittest, Season 3 (Non-canon)