Rakesh

Rakesh was a member of the UNSC Marine Corps. He was assigned to the Marine contingent aboard the prowler in October 2552.

Mission aboard Mona Lisa
He was part of the Marine detachment led by Sergeant Zhao Heng Lopez, sent to investigate the prisoner transport Mona Lisa. Unbeknownst to the Marines, the mission had been ordered by the Office of Naval Intelligence, which had been using the vessel as a research facility for experimentation on the Flood.

Upon boarding the Mona Lisa, the Marines were immediately engaged by several unarmored Sangheili in a cargo bay. Rakesh joined Sergeant Lopez and her team when they went looking for Rabbit, who had disappeared during the skirmish. When they found Rabbit's body, thoroughly mangled by a Sangheili stomping on her chest, Rakesh was disgusted by the sight and smell and vomited on Mahmoud's boots.

Shortly thereafter, the Marines received new orders to initiate the Cole Protocol and purge the Mona Lisa's navigational databases. They split into two teams, with Rakesh being assigned to the team led by Sergeant Lopez, along with Mahmoud, MacCraw, Percy and Singh. On their way to the bridge, the team came across a safe room, where they found a lone survivor, John Smith, who later revealed them the nature of the Flood parasite. Not long after, Lopez ordered Smith to open a code-locked door on the team's way. When he did, a Pod infector immediately leaped out, latching onto Rakesh's chest, as he was standing nearby. Percy attempted to save him by pulling the infection form off him, but he was knocked aside as Rakesh struggled in agony. Smith then pushed Rakesh to the other side of the door and shut it again, leaving Rakesh to be devoured by a mass of Flood.

The Flood repurposed Rakesh's body as a combat form, which later chased Lopez and MacCraw as they made their way to the Mona Lisa's bridge. The Flood form nearly reached the uninfected Marines before they closed the bridge's security doors. It would then proceed to repeatedly pound on the door in an attempt to get in, and was soon joined by more Flood forms.

Trivia
Along with a number of other Marines, Rakesh is not present in the motion comic adaptation of The Mona Lisa.

List of appearances

 * Halo: Evolutions - Essential Tales of the Halo Universe
 * The Mona Lisa