A/N: Alright, another project by me for a group of friends of mine on Spacebattles, particularly the Halo thread there, why? Because damnit we deserve our own space ship since we think we can do it better ourselves. For those following Fantasy Kaleidoscope, don't worry, I'm working on it.

Captain Marquis shook in his padded leather command chair as a pulse laser blasted the starboard side to his frigate, the UNSC Competence, a Paris-class frigate with over 30 confirmed kills on various Covenant ships. The Competence, along with six other UNSC ships, were currently engaged in a fierce battle of the planet of Madrigal, a battle of which they were losing.

"Hard to port, fire archer pods B5 through C6!" Marquis shouted as he stood up from his chair and pointed dramatically at the main viewscreen. The two corresponding officers, Helmsman Gardener and Weapons Officer Kraken punched in the appropriate commands and the frigate burst off in a heated burn to a full broadside with dozens of archer missiles firing from their pods to their intended target, a CCS-class battlecruiser with a blackened purple hull.

The missiles were shot out of existence with pulse laser blasts, however, a dozen managed to make it through and impacted along the shimmering silver shields of the cruiser, creating a ripple effect as if stones were impacting stagnant water.

Gardener quickly whipped out his signature black comb and slipped his slickened brown hair to the right side, which caused him to take his hands off the controls to the ship, earning him a shout from AI Gall, causing the man to put his fingers back on the controls and pulled the ship into a tight turn to get a clear firing solution for the MAC.

Marquis quickly pointed to the viewscreen once more, a wild grin on his face as the glass of fine brandy shook around in his right hand. Suddenly, he took a sip, some of the liquid running down his chin before he promptly smashed the glass down on the titanium floor of the bridge, earning a collective groan from the entire bridge crew.

"Alright men!" Marquis exclaimed, "let's show what these split-lipped bastards what we're made of! Execute OPERATION: Sexy Data Tango!"

"Fucking damnit Marquis" Gardener exclaimed as he glanced back at his commanding officer, "first, that isn't a dance move, second, it's actually an old early 21st century song based off of Star Trek."

"It has tango in it, so it's enough for me, besides, our ship is fully functional, and anatomically correct!"

"Dear Enma sir, have you no shame!?" Nevertheless, Gardener began inputting the controls for the "operation", whatever that meant.

Gall internally groaned as the MAC coils charged up for a blast at the side of the CSS, but not before the Covenant ship opened a slipspace portal and disappeared, leaving the bridge crew silent and dumstruck, especially when the MAC round fired off into space.

"Uh...Captain?" Communications officer Shane Wallis said as he looked back at his captain, a nervous tinge in his voice, "they just...jumped.."

"I know son...I know..." Marquis sat back down and adjusted his fancy captains cap and black silk cape, "we need a plan...alright guys, execute OPERATION: Slow Dance!"

Another collective groan echoed on the bridge, suddenly, a loud beeping echoed with the groan, prompting Shane to examine the source, "Sir! Slipspace rupture off the stern!"

The CSS reemerged into realspace from its portal, its energy projector primed and aimed directly at the Competence. The rear cameras displayed on the various screens on the bridge, giving everyone a full view of what was aiming at their precious frigate. The cruiser didn't waste much time and discharged the blue/purple beam of energy directly at the frigate. Gardener, who typed commands furiously at his console, executed a maneuver in the nick of time that saved the ship from being gutted, he did a barrel roll. The frigate moved like a fighter for a single moment in time, everything seemed to slow down just as the Competence came to a halt from the overloading of the engines, and just as the beam grazed the port side of the ship, igniting the archer pods that contained missiles. The ship shook violently as it was hit with the beam, the entire port side seemed to bubble away from the hit, exposing it to hard vacuum and killing anyone unlucky enough to be in that section.

Competence was slung to the starboard side as a result from the impact, causing it to spin out of control as Gardener frantically attempted to regain control to no avail, the hardlines to the engines were obliterated from the impact of the particle beam. AIs Gall and Hierarch worked frantically in the ship's systems to reroute the engines before the cruiser could get closer to fire off a volley of plasma torpedoes to finish the frigate off.

However, their effort wouldn't be required, for the battlecruiser silently glided by them in the darkness of space, it's plasma torpedoes cooling down as it seemed to mock the crew of the crippled frigate before jumping into slipspace.

"..Fuck," was all that escaped the captain's lips while the rest of the crew breathed a sigh of relief, "status report Hierarch."

The green-hued avatar of a Covenant Prophet emerged on the holotank next to Maquis' chair, a grim look on its face, "Over seventy-five percent casualties from that blast alone, we got lucky, had Gardener not pulled off that maneuver, we'd have been a floating husk."

Gall appeared next to Hierarch, its avatar being a blue-hued dog standing on two legs, "We're also adrift, when the rest of the fleet gets back here, we'll have to either be towed...or scrapped."

"Meanwhile, we have a lovely view of our mission objective getting glassed," Wallis brought up the image of Madrigal, which was currently being turned to molten glass by the remaining Covenant ships.

Gunnery Chief Orsai stared in anger at the vid feed before opening his mouth to speak, "...Wait...that doesn't seem consistent."

Private Dovah turned to Orsai with a raised eyebrow, "What do you mean?"

"I mean, it's not consistent with what we see in terms of the other various Covenant power-scaling, why not use that much energy against our ships in space instead of taking hits?"

"..Because I assume glassing requires a huge amount of energy that they'd have to divert to the main excavation beam."

"Of course, but WHY does it have to be either all or only a little? No middle ground at all?"

"...I don't think this is an appropriate time to discuss this."

"It totally is because we're watching a glassing."

"Yeah, but what about the people?"

"What about them?"

Marquis sighed and pinched the space between his eyes in irritation, Dovah and Orsai always got into arguments like this over even the most trivial things going on in the UNSC, they'll even rant against the Covenant if they so deem it fit. The captain picked up his data pad and raised in eyebrow in curiosity when he saw that he had a new private message. He opened it up and it promptly read, "You only get one, Heretic. -Vae Mirnamee"

Marquis slammed his pad down on the floor, snapping Orsai and Dovah out of their conversation, as well as getting the attention of the rest of the bridge crew. The Competence had been dogging for a CSS-class battlecruiser commanded by Vae Mirnamee for almost five years now, this was supposed to be the deciding battle between the two ships, however, whatever mercy Vae had had been given to the Competence one last time.

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Their ship had to be scrapped, rather unfortunate, considering they had it since the second battle of Harvest to retake it from the Covenant, and the crew had been together longer than that.

Now at a space yard in the Sol system, towards the Kaiper Belt, they awaited their next assignment. Little did they know what immense adventures awaited them on their soon-to-be new ship, the UNSC Orion.

A/N: And there you go, I hope it's satisfactory for a prologue, and forgive me, I haven't done space battles in a long time so give me time and I'll get back into the groove. R&R please!