Thomas Koepke

Thomas Koepke was a police constable on the colony world of . Formerly a university student, he was forced to drop out after losing his savings and joined the Talitsa Public Safety Authority. He quickly became embroiled in the rampant corruption throughout the police force and was used as little more than extra muscle for the Syndicate officials who rule the planet from the shadows. Thomas's criminal activities brought him face to face with the vigilante known as "The Renegade" on several occasions and frequently saw the hapless constable hospitalized for his trouble. Upon meeting Karina Larina and several other Renegade supporters Thomas began to aspire to becoming more than a criminal accomplice and started feeding the Renegade intelligence on the Syndicate's movements. After Insurrectionist forces led by Redmond Venter seized control of Talitsa Thomas was forcibly conscripted into the rebel forces along with the rest of the local authorities. His time as an Insurrectionist was cut short when a UNSC counterattack destroyed Venter's forces. Thomas was one of the few rebels to survive the fighting.
==Biography==
===Early Life===
Thomas Koepke was born on Mars in 2538. The youngest child in a family of industrial workers, he grew up in the residential district near the factory where his parents worked. As the youngest and smallest of his siblings, Thomas learned to be quiet and follow after his brothers and sisters as they roamed Seven Hills. Unfortunately, shy children stuck out in the community of factory workers and Thomas often needed his siblings to protect him from childish harassment. Although the Koepkes were not wealthy Mars's highly developed infrastructure guarunteed enviable living conditions, education, and employment opportunities. Because employment in Martian industry was so desirable, native-born Martians like Thomas and his siblings were raised to be highly competetive and mistrustful of the offworld laborers who came seeking to make their fortune on the affluent colony. But while Thomas joined his siblings in industrial trade school he actually had little desire to live the rest of his life in a factory and dreamed of venturing out into the galaxy beyond Mars.
One day while exploring the area beyond his residential district, Thomas met a boy named Irgen observing the local wildlife. Thomas struck up a conversation with Irgen and learned that he was the son of immigrants from the . The two boys began spending time together and soon became fast friends. However, Thomas's siblings did not take kindly to their brother associating with an offworlder and led a gang of other locals to ambush Irgen on his way home from school. Beating the immigrant boy bloody, they warned him to stay away from Thomas and any other Martian children. Furious at his siblings and even angrier at himself for failing to protect Irgen, Thomas became more determined than ever to escape Mars. Spending as little time with his family as possible, he took odd jobs in between school hours in the hopes of earning enough money to buy his way off-world.
Although Mars was spared the worst of the 's carnage, it was inundated by a flood of refugees fleeing the war. Thomas was often dragged off to join his family in large demonstrations protesting the local government's refugee integration policies. By 2552 the war situation turned desperate and several of the Koepke children were conscripted into the Martian planetary defense force. When the Covenant fleets finally arrived in the , the martialled an enormous military force to hold the line on Mars and buy time for Earth to shore up her defenses. When martial law was declared across the planet, Thomas was sent into the factories to help produce munitions for the battles raging to defend the vital industrial centers. Although the UNSC forces on Mars were utterly defeated, the civilian population was spared when the Covenant redeployed its forces to bolster the attack on Earth. Thomas continued to labor in the factories as sporadic fighting continued across Mars. He and his parents were reeling from news that two of Thomas's elder siblings had been killed in action when the ended the most destructive conflict in human history.
Though the had ostensibly won the war, Mars continued to struggle in the aftermath of the Battle of Earth. Its industrial centers were still intact, but the strain of mass production under military management wreaked havoc on the planet's corporate infrastructure. Refugees continued to flood the planet, threatening the local factory workers with their willingness to work at lower rates and with less benefits. As food riots broke out across Mars, Thomas saw no future left in remaining on his homeworld. After a terse goodbye with his surviving family, he hired himself onto a freighter called Rubble Chunk as a mechanic and left Mars behind.
===On The Frontier===
After living through the demands of wartime labor, Thomas adjusted quickly to life aboard the Rubble Chunk. Although the reserved boy was troubled by the more raucus habits of his fellow spacers he kept himself out of trouble and stayed in the officers' good graces with his dependable work ethic. Thomas soon learned that his crewmates had a loose view of the law and did not hesitate to violate UEG shipping laws as they made their way through the war-ravaged colonies. Worried his Inner Colony origins might land him in trouble with the mostly Outer Colonial crew, Thomas aquired forged documents identifying him as a native and had his savings transferred to a banking conglomerate known for doing extensive business along the independent frontier. He had no intention of remaining a spacer and hoped he might soon find a way off the freighter and build a new life for himself on one of the frontier's burgeoning independent colonies.
The post-war frontier was a hotbed of criminal and Insurrectionist activity. It wasn't long before the Rubble Chunk was contracted by a rising power on the frontier: a far-reaching criminal empire known as the Syndicate. Though few ships could afford staying independent of the Syndicate--which had agents in every port and charged huge "protection fees" for non-compliant crews--Thomas was troubled by the ease with which his crewmates agreed to smuggle illegal drugs and weapon hauls. He was shocked when the Rubble Chunk took on "live cargo": young men and women abducted by Syndicate enforcers, destined for brothels along the frontier. The human trafficking disgusted Thomas, but he had no way to free the slaves and simply continued to carry out his usual duties. During the Slipspace jump to its destination the Rubble Chunk experienced a critical engine failure. Thomas's quick response to the malfunction saved the ship and earned him a hefty bonus from his grateful crewmates once their "cargo" was delivered. Thomas took the money, feeling like a coward for letting himself be counted among men and women who were little better than slavers.
Eager to get off the Rubble Chunk, Thomas found his chance to escape when the ship took on a shipment of genetic samples. As the cargo was being loaded, he was approached by an elderly man who offered him a huge sum in exchange for help stealing some of the samples. Thomas easily slipped into the shipment and retrieved the old man's sample. Upon delivering the stolen stample, he was surprised to learn that he'd been assisting Tobias Lensky, a legendary spacer and wealthy entrepreneur. The grateful Lensky made a show of hiring Thomas off from the Rubble Chunk's captain, then offered the confused young man another fee to accompany him on a charter flight to the independent colony . Thomas was suspicious of Lensky's motives and could hardly believe it when the eccentric old man proved entirely true to his word: he simply wanted a bit of companionship over a long shuttle flight. Still shocked by his good fortune, Thomas parted ways with Lensky upon reaching Talitsa. Thanks to Lensky's easygoing patronage, he now had enough money to live comfortably for some time. Eager to escape the working class life--which he now felt was inescapably tainted by criminal activity--Thomas rented out a city apartment and enrolled in a local university.
===Talitsa===
Thomas arrived on Talitsa in the thriving population center of . There he parted ways with his strangely amicable beneafactor, who promised that they would meet again someday soon. Glad to be free of the spacer life, Thomas used Lensky's generous fee to rent himself a small apartment. Despite ongoing clashes between Insurrectionist and UNSC forces in the countryside, Talitsa's cities prospered as some of the few examples of independent human settlements. As long as his falsified records hid his Inner Colony origins, Thomas saw opportunity in finding himself a position in the local government. To this end he enrolled in a local university in the hopes that a degree would enhance his career prospects. Though he had little formal education besides his colonial schooling Thomas quickly acclimated to the university environment and proved himself a diligent student. But despite his academic success he remained isolated from his fellow students. Fearful that someone might discover his real homeworld he kept to himself and did his best to stave off loneliness by immersing himself in his studies.
A year into his stay on Talitsa, Thomas was shocked to receive a message from one of his siblings on Mars. His family had hired a private investigator to discover his whereabouts and pass on the message that his mother was deathly ill and needed money to cover her hospital bills. Thomas was instantly torn: though appalled at the thought of abandoning his family, he was also suspicious that his supposedly destitute siblings had been able to hire someone to track him down--and that they merely requested money rather than his return to Mars. As he grappled with his conscience, another urgent message informed him that his mother's condition had worsened. Unable to bear the guilt, Thomas withdrew the last of his savings and passed them on through the same investigator who had tracked him down. Now unable to pay for further schooling, Thomas finished his current semester at the university and then dropped out. He never heard from his family again.
Depressed and haunted by the thought that his own family had played him for a fool, Thomas struggled to come to turns with yet another abrupt reversal of fortunes. He desperately needed money, but his incomplete schooling and lack of local credentials meant that his prospects for higher employment were dim. Fortunately, he learned that the Talitsa Legal Authority--its strength sapped by members leaving to join Insurrectionist divisions--was hiring new members. Attracted by the thought of being able to do some good, Thomas signed on with the Iribit police department and quickly underwent training as a police constable. But he quickly discovered to his dismay that the police on Talitsa hardly stood for law and order. Instead, the department and the rest of Talitsa's government was riddled with corruption. The Syndicate controlled Talitsa's government and economy with an iron fist, ruthlessly doing away with anyone who refused to fall in line with its system of bribery and extortion. With the planetary governor, one URF General Albrecht Darrow, establishing his administration in Irbit the city was the nexus for Syndicate activity on Talitsa. When the police weren't turning a blind eye to crimes within the city they were actively perpetrating it themselves, essentially serving as little more than a uniformed private army for the local Syndicate crime lords.
At first a disgusted Thomas tried to come up with some way to fight back against the Syndicate corruption. But his efforts at undermining criminal activities attracted the ire of his new co-workers. One night a group of off-duty police officers cornered Thomas on patrol and would have beaten him half to death were it not for the intervention of police sergeant Vale Irving. A popular figure within Irbit's police department, Sergeant Irving talked the irate gang down by promising to "educate" their newest member. Taking Thomas under his wing, he advised the young man to keep a low profile and toe the Syndicate's line. Though Irving accepted Syndicate bribes without question, he also did his best to take care of the civilians along his patrol routes. His careful compassion convinced Thomas to follow his lead in accepting that Syndicate control was simply the way things were done on Talitsa. The rookie cop began accepting kickbacks of his own, helping maintain the Syndicate's shadowy authority despite the occasional pang of conscience.
Soon after partnering up with Irving, Thomas and his mentor found themselves under attack by a gang of disgruntled vigilantes during an evening patrol. Irving led Thomas to a nearby apartment where he was sure the citizens he had done his best to treat well would shelter them. But the apartment residents instead rallied to support the vigilantes and Irving was shot dead trying to cover Thomas's retreat. The gang pursued the terrified Thomas, who fled inside a warehouse and frantically called for backup. He eluded the vigilantes long enough for a massive police response team to arrive. The gang was quickly gunned down and Thomas found himself praised by the rest of the force for his "heroics" in single-handedly holding the line against a gang of notorious cop-killers. Saddened and angry over Irving's death, Thomas lost much of his sympathy for Irbit's civilians and threw his lot in completely with his new comrades in the police force. With no family and no friends outside his work, Thomas had little to his name besides his role as a police constable.
===The Renegade===
Shortly after Irving's death, a new urban legend rose up to plague Governor Darrow and the Talitsa Legal Authority. A mysterious vigilante began targeting Syndicate and Insurrectionist operations in the city, disrupting meetings, arms deals, and other sources of criminal revenue. Though this strange new figure used exclusively non-lethal tactics the disruption was enough for Darow's administration to pressure the Irbit police department to find a quick solution to the menace. Thomas and his fellow officers began working overtime to patrol the city and defend Syndicate interests. Tasked with guarding a low-level arms dealer, Thomas had the misfortune of being one of the first police officers to encounter the vigilante. A helmeted figure in an advanced bodyglove incapacitated Thomas and his fellow officers with ease before destroying the arms shipments and disappearing into the night. Shaken by the incident but happy to be alive, Thomas was quickly returned to duty. He again happened upon the vigilante when he and another officer raced to answer a police distress call that turned into a one-sided brawl that again put Thomas in the hospital. Before long news of the vigilante's exploits reached an Irbit public tired of Syndicate dominance and police corruption. An underground net publication took to calling the vigilante "the Renegade" as it glowingly reported its triumphs over the police and Syndicate. A nervous Thomas once again returned to duty as the Irbit police force mobilized to take down the Renegade once and for all.
As the Renegade's raids continued and Irbit hospital beds filled with police officers, Darrow and his Syndicate backers looked to more drastic measures to rid themselves of the vigilante. The Syndicate flooded the city with would-be assassins and bounty hunters while Darrow limited police action against the Renegade to Irbit's SWAT team. Meanwhile, beat constables like Thomas focused on reminding Irbit's populace that Darrow was still in charge. Though Thomas was grateful not to be thrown up against the Renegade he was quickly growing weary of his role in Darrow's corrupt administration. Despite the injuries Thomas had suffered at the Renegade's hands, the vigilante forced him to confront the ugly truth that he'd thrown his lot in with a gang of oppressive opportunists.
Irbit soon shook with explosive confrontations between the Renegade and his would-be assassins. In the meantime, Thomas was dispatched to monitor a small medical clinic suspected of providing aid to the Renegade. After the Renegade was injured in a firefight and spotted heading in the clinic's direction the police were ordered to raid the building—an order that grated on Thomas's already troubled conscience. As he crossed the darkened street to cover the clinic's exit, a nearby car sprang to life and struck him head on. Knocked senseless by the impact, Thomas awoke some time later in a stranger's apartment. His injuries had been hastily treated by the apartment's owner, a young woman named Karina Larina whom Thomas recognized as a former classmate from his time in the university. From Karina's nervous demeanor, even a second-rate officer like Thomas quickly recognized that she had been the car's driver. Thomas could not bring himself to arrest the apologetic Karina and, tired of his solitary lifestyle, bought her breakfast at a nearby diner before reporting back to the Irbit police headquarters. Only after parting ways with Karina did Thomas realize that she might have run him over on purpose.
Now suspicious of his erstwhile savior, Thomas was nonetheless unwilling to set Irbit's increasingly ham-fisted police on Karina. Claiming he'd been ambushed by the Renegade—who had in fact appeared at the clinic to beat several constables senseless—Thomas researched Karina in Irbit's police database and discovered that she was the author of an underground pro-Renegade news publication. Noticing that several of Karina's stories delved into incidents not reported to standard media outlets, Thomas suspected that she might be personally involved with the vigilante. The prospect of turning Karina in as a solid lead on the Renegade promised Thomas a promotion and perhaps even a cut of the Syndicate's bounty. But his lingering guilt over the police force's corruption stayed his hand and Thomas instead arranged for his daily shift to cover the area near Karina's apartment so that he could investigate the aspiring journalist himself.
Thomas's efforts to investigate Karina did not go unnoticed by her enigmatic friends. The Renegade ambushed Thomas as he attempted to tail Karina back to the clinic and once again hospitalized him. Thomas was undeterred by the setback and surprised even himself with his sudden determination to pursue the lead Karina represented. During his next attempted tail he was again confronted by the vigilante. This time however a patrol of Syndicate enforcers engaged the Renegade and bought time for Thomas to pursue and corner Karina. The journalist refused to be intimidated by the battered constable and stood by her decision to help the Renegade in his war against Talitsa's corruption. Her words pricked at Thomas's weary conscience and forced him to realize just how truly sick he was of being a tool in the Syndicate's criminal web. He was about to once again let Karina go when the Renegade leaped down from a nearby building and kicked him through a solid brick wall.
Returned to his now-familiar hospital bed, Thomas was surprised to receive an unexpected visitor. Karina, feeling responsible for the Renegade's hasty blow, hoped to make amends by assuring Thomas that he would not be targeted by the vigilante any further. Strangely touched by the gesture, Thomas admitted to Karina that he admired the courage of the Renegade and people like her in standing up to the real crimes plaguing Talitsa. His misgivings encouraged Karina to suggest he feed the Renegade intelligence on police movements. The prospect of defying Darrow and his powerful allies terrified Thomas, but the young man reluctantly agreed in the hopes of reclaiming some part of his lost pride while perhaps also impressing Karina. Thomas was released from the hospital soon after and returned to duty struggling to plan how he might assist the Renegade without getting himself killed. But a surprise awaited him at the Irbit police department: due to mounting street casualties and his repeated run-ins with the Renegade, he had been promoted to sergeant and reassigned to Irbit's Special Weapons and Tactics unit under its infamously brutal Captain Brendan Hoover.
===The Mole===
At first Thomas feared his new affiliation had already been discovered and the surprise transfer to Irbit's SWAT regiment was simply an excuse for him to meet an untimely "training accident." With little experience with firearms outside of basic training with police-issue small arms and no military experience to speak of, he was hardly an ideal candidate for a special response team filled with ex-military veterans of frontier conflict. However, it quickly became clear that he truly was just part of a backfill initiative to replace officers put out of commission during the SWAT force's countless skirmishes with the renegade. SWAT Captain Brendan Hoover ran Thomas and a dozen other recruits through an expedited training process in his rush to get his team back up to full strength. Though a poor marksman and completely lacking the aggressive intimidation exuded by most of Hoover's officers, Thomas somehow cleared the training and found himself taking to the streets as Irbit's SWAT force relentlessly hunted after the Renegade. Thomas was terrified of Hoover and his new teammates but nonetheless kept his promise to Karina and began covertly relaying the SWAT force's movements and planned operations to her chatter device. Though the Renegade responded to a few of these leaks, he mostly relied on Karina and his other allies within the city to move Hoover's intended targets out of harm's way before the police raids occurred.
Still worried about being discovered, Thomas nonetheless risked visiting the clinic he had once tried to raid during his off hours in the hopes of learning more about the people he'd thrown his lot in with. Karina, a regular volunteer at the clinic, introduced him to Cassandra, the young woman who ran the medical operation amidst Irbit's slums. Thomas began volunteering at the clinic and used the pretext of discrete investigation to report back to Hoover at police headquarters that suspicions about the clinic were misplaced. He was surprised to find that Cassandra's modest operation offered the most welcoming community he had seen in years. In gathering together to peacefully resist Syndicate corruption, the clinic volunteers created an environment free from the fear and greed that had dominated Irbit in the days before the Renegade.
Thomas continued to provide information on police movements to the Renegade. After over two months of spying, he was surprised when Cassandra and Karina invited him to the deserted clinic one night. There he encountered the Renegade, who shocked him further by removing his trademark helmet and revealing himself to be a young man called Dyne. Flummoxed to learn that the Renegade terrorizing Irbit's elite and powerful was actually a cheerful, friendly idealist, Thomas was now truly drawn into the Renegade's small inner circle. Shortly afterwards, at Dyne's request, Thomas arranged to have him, Cassandra, and Karina invited to a police ball attended by much of Talitsa's leadership. At the ball, Dyne stunned Thomas by introducing himself and even striking up a rapport with Governor Darrow himself—his idea of a joke. Thomas, for his part, used the evening to grow closer to Karina and—aided by a few alcoholic beverages and Cassandra's encouragement—proposed becoming more than just friends. He was both relieved and terrified when the young woman cheerfully accepted.
As Dyne's successes mounted, so too did resistance to the Syndicate-backed government. Unfortunately not all resistance was peaceful. During a SWAT team raid Thomas and his squad were hit by an improvised explosive device planted outside an apartment complex. Thomas was lucky enough to escape with a handful of scrapes and bruises, but over half the team was killed by the blast. Torn between the loss of his colleagues and the knowledge that he was ultimately on the side of their killers, Thomas pressed Cassandra to teach him more about battlefield medicine during his time at the clinic. Sensing his misgivings, Karina alerted Thomas when she learned of a vigilante raid on Captain Hoover's home. Thomas and another team of SWAT officers arrived on the scene in time to save Hoover's family. The incident ironically earned Thomas the respect and trust of the ruthless captain as well as increased standing in the force even as he continued to undermine it from within.
===Coming Apart===
The Renegade's successes had weakened the Syndicate's hold on Talitsa, but the vast criminal organization refused to be cowed by a small band of malcontents. Thomas and the other SWAT officers soon found themselves reinforced by offworld agents with ties to Syndicate-funded Insurrectionist groups. These military-style operatives proved to be the advance guard for one of the Insurrection's deadliest field commanders: the veteran soldier Redmond Venter. Thomas was particularly disturbed to discover that many of these operatives looked nearly identical. According to rumors passed on by Karina these lookalikes were the Syndicate's illegal "Knight" operatives, flash cloned and trained as commandos for Syndicate and Insurrectionist operations. Though Thomas and many other SWAT officers were disturbed by the Knight operatives, Captain Hoover pressed them into increasingly demanding shifts as Venter tightened his hold on Irbit.
===Rebel Offensive===
==Personality and Traits==