AN: Sorry about not being able to update my other fic, writers block… but here's the best I got since the MC will NOT be showing up in Lucks Ascension.

Lucks Ascension: The Dawn

The UNSC marine Knight Team were keeping the aft half of the Forward Into Dawn roughly intact as it floated past Mars, though Cortana and Mecaindant Bias kept the Charon class light frigate from disintegrating, the slipspace and Forerunner artifact put on the Dawn interfered with the slipspace portal, sending the Dawn into a charted but at the same time unknown Sol System.

The crew of the ship included 3 ODSTs that escaped Installation 00, the remains of Vassal Platoon, which was only the five man Knight Team and the Master Chief. Even though three UNSC "Smart AIs" were on the frigate as it moved through the slipspace portal, the interference from the unknown Forerunner artifact caused the three AIs to suddenly vanish after the ship was bisected.

Forward Into Dawn Hangar Bay 1

Knight 1 walked around the hangar sighing to himself. A survivor of the Fall of Reach, he fought with Noble Six in the evacuation of New Alexandria and eventually escaped on the Dead Man's Hand off planet. After the escape from Installation 04B he had been assigned to the motor pool to keep whatever vehicles were still operational running. He was taking inventory of the remaining stocks of vehicles that they still had. The vehicles that they had at operational status was a Longsword, 1 Scorpion main battle tank, 3 spy drone UAVs, 2 Pelicans, 2 SOEIV atmospheric re-entry vehicles, 3 Mongeese, 2 Falcons, 5 Hornets 1 Gauss Warthog, 3 regular scout warthogs, 1 Troop transport warthogs and 2 Bumblebee life pods.

'A bloody lot for a goddamn crew of 5 marines, 3 ODSTs and 1 SPARTAN II' Knight 1 thought as he was fixing the hydrogen fuel cell in a Mongoose. In all it would take at least 20 people to drive all the vehicles, not even including the gunner or passenger spaces. Though it was a lot less stressful than the assigned Quartermaster, after all he pretty much had to keep inventory on all of the ammo and weapons that were still on board.

Forward Into Dawn Armory 2

Knight 5 was having a blast, as he got to handle all of the high explosives on board along with all the weapons, he managed to find 4 BR55 battle rifles, 10 M7S SMGs, 2 Beam Rifles, 10 plasma Pistols, 1 plasma cannon, 2 Fuel Rod Guns, 8 MA5C assault rifles, 2 Gravity Hammers, C-7 foaming explosive, C-10 explosive charges and thermite, Smoke, Frag, Plasma and 2 spike grenades. A pyromaniac at heart he fought at the Battle of Verge before it was captured by Covenant troops; he managed to escape on the freighter Old 666. He managed to get onto the Dawn by using a Hornet that happened to have its pilot shot out and fly to the Dawn with Knights 3 and 5. Both were working in the med bay keeping inventory and debugging systems with the "dumb" AI that one of the ODSTs had.

He laughed manically to himself and remarked, I wonder how Knights 3 and 5 are doing right now…"

Dawn Medbay

Knight 3 grumbled while she took inventory of the remaining medical supplies in the medbay, 50 canisters of biofoam, 15 medkits, bandages, healing salve and the one automated section run by a class 3 dumb AI supplied with the Dawn as a doctor if a corpsman wasn't around.

As the squad medic and sniper, her job was to provide keep the rest of the team alive from far range, though she constantly scolded the rest of the squad for their recklessness, she cared for the rest of the squad, even though she was conscripted right before the battle of Earth and was therefore the FNG.

Dawn Cryo storage and (Temporary) CIC

Right down the corridor from the medbay was the cryo chambers, where the rest of the crew laid, Miranda Keyes (KIA), the Master Chief and 3 ODSTs quietly slept in their cryo tubes, though in the case of Keyes, her corpse was being preserved in the tube. The silence was broken by the sounds of Knight 2 cursing as she ran into another loop of error reports in reactor management, slipspace drive calculations and food preparation temperature. Without the forward half of the frigate and a smart AI, flying the chunk of Titanium-A battleplating was becoming a pain in her ass to fix, along with the fact that the cryo bay was the only location that allowed her access to any type of major systems, and even then only accessible though prolonged periods of hacking.

Though she wanted to smash her fist through the monitor, she was decided that it always could be worse; after all they could be flying at an unprotected Earth with another alien species made by the creators of those blasted sentinels… right?