Sex: Female
Age: 7
Height: 6'2"
Weight: 175
Physical Build/Description: Cyan greened skin and dark purple hair mark her as Zentraedi, but her disposition is usually so friendly that it only puts people on edge for a little while.

Disposition: Nice, friendly, sometimes a bit too friendly. Comes off as a teenager still, despite having lived among humans for a year and a half now. Constantly flirts with co-workers, who have come to realize that she is completely innocent in this regard.

Background/History Kariza was always a bit too clever for her own good. An auxiliary specialist on the Thuverl Salan destroyer, Black Nova, she was known as the specialist to go to for modifications to armor, mecha, and weapons. The female elite of her ship were proud of their decorations, simple as they were. They were crude, because Kariz, like all Zentraedi had no true concept for culture or art, but they did add to the fearsomeness of the warriors whose suits she helped maintain. Invid Sensor eyes impaled on armor spikes were a common request, usually for a warrior's hundreth trooper kill, or thousandth scout kill. Kariza was put to the test not soon after she stepped out of the tubes that cryo tubes for the first time. Her ship was under assault and they needed workers to fix the combat damage immediately or the ship wouldn't fold. With a lot on the line, the Auxiliary crews got the fires under control and recovered all mecha and most of the pilots. Two of her line sisters fell that day, a loss she took to heart as a lesson to enjoy every day because it could be your last. This was the start of her eternally upbeat attitude.

The Black Nova was deployed to a colony world known as Syrtanansk, a world still under nominal rule by the robotech masters. Shipments of food had stopped to the battle group and they had to be started again. Kariza was deployed twice to help with the actions supporting the riot duty. Her rudimentary engineering knowledge led her to be instrumental in repairing an aqueduct that rioting farmers had destroyed trying to kill a zentraedi sitting under it without her helmet on. She ended up fixing this twice before the ship blasted off with the cargo ship in tow. Along the way an Invid attack almost destroyed the cargo ship, and did some damage to the Black Nova itself, including breaking the back of Kariza. She was placed in the medical tubes and the ship's auto-doc fixed her up through an innovating use of cloning and surgery that only worked because of her locally stored genetic information, though it took a year for the repairs to be finished and for her to be declared fit for duty.
Fresh out of the medi-tubes, Kariza spent an interminable time bored out of her skull. It was during this time she began making battle markings for the elite warrior meltran. They were sent back to the same sector they had left 2 years before, which had been attacked by Invid, and was revolting and not sending food to the fleet until the Invid were dealt with in their sector. The revolt was put down quickly, but the Black Nova began hunting for the slugs then.

The Black Nova did find the Invid - they were in a star hive, an invid base made purely for war. The hive would fold into local space, release scouts and then fold out again once their raid was done. They could not match the power of the Zentraedi fleet and knew it. However when they met the Black Nova, she was alone, her escorts out of reach and unable to come to her defense quickly. Using a nebula as cover, the star hive was stumbled upon by the Black Nova quite by accident. The first engagement went to the Invid, though the ship got away with minimal casualties. Kariza was cleaning scrap off the hull after the fold when she was quite nearly killed. She was put in a coma and it took the auto-doc a year to put her back to right. She helped finish out that campaign, including being there when the Star Hive was destroyed by the massed battle group. She experienced no other major injuries after that point. She had, however, developed a will of iron. She was quite good at any battle of wills, even with Aces. She became quite well liked by the warriors whose suits she tended, and they in turn looked after her. It was always this cadre of warriors which made sure she got a spot in the auto-docs over others less skilled and less resourceful. Shet hates the invid with a passion unknown outside of the warrior elite, but she had been informally accepted by them for sometime at that point, and they were beginning to influence the specialist.

When the Black Nova met to do battle with the Micronians, it was not blasts they met, but song and moving speech by Lord Breetai, and Miriya Parino herself. To see them fighting, passionately, for the Micronians was jarring. Kariza refused to help warriors get ready for battle, and a group of warrior elite who she regularly did custom work for helped keep her from being killed. The Executive Officer, an Auxiliary Specilist named Iliana Klaug, shot her commanding officer when it looked like she would rather fight than surrender, even though her own troops would rather desert her than fight a woman who had been an idol to most of them. Iliana turned herself and command of the vessel over to the Ace of the Air Wing, who then promptly joined the UEEF. Iliana and Kariza was among the few who wanted to become micronized and learn the ways of their micronian allies. Iliana and Kariza became good friends, all the way through their indoctrination period, and then later when both joined the UEEF directly. After graduation aboard Space Station Liberty, they parted ways, though they both try and keep in touch.

Kariza has stepped out of her genetically bred in shell and become a fairly well adjusted member of society. As she was not a warrior, she does not have quite the driving need to dominate her surroundings, except when it comes to her work. There the Zentraedi competitiveness kicks in. She strives to get the most done, with the greatest degree of accuracy. She's pretty decent, although her drive has not made her as many friends as she'd like. Outside of work she is fun loving, genuinely likes people, and tries to see the best in everyone. She is a bit naive in many ways, but has at least gotten well enough acquainted with most alcoholic drinks to be able to help maintain the still. She has even made a few variant batches with a bit more flavor than the normal rot gut. She can also make the chief's degreaser/190 proof liquor almost as well as he can.

She has been on one ship or another for the last four years since graduation. Her posting to the Gambit is fairly fresh though.