UNSC Appeal To Authority

The UNSC Appeal to Authority is a , seeing nearly thirty continuous years of service throughout the Insurrection and the . The Appeal to Authority had seen action in several major fleet actions during the , most commonly seen escorting carriers or battleships. Thanks to her reputation for surviving where her comrades had fallen, during the most intense of battles against the Covenant fleet, some of the cruiser’s crew had begun to consider the Appeal a lucky ship, while others had considered her cursed. After all, in order for the ship to be lucky, it must be in danger. Sailors and marines alike had grown attached to the Marathon-class, taking discarded items from the ship as good luck charms and reminders of their service. The Appeal to Authority’s final major battle would be over , while she was crippled by plasma torpedo fire, a remarkable number of her crew survived to abandon ship. After the Human-Covenant War, the Marathon-class was slated to be replaced by the , despite this, the Appeal to Authority was “refloated” at the insistence of her captain and placed on long patrol duties, far from any of the massive fleet actions that composed her wartime service record.
== Service Record ==
=== Battle of XI Boötis A ===
The Appeal to Authority’s first engagement against the Covenant was during the . Having spotted the enemy fleet in the star’s Kuiper Belt, appearing to be salvaging the larger asteroids for resupply, the task force moved to overwhelm the enemy while they were unprepared. The Appeal to Authority had led the charge into the Covenant lines, alongside the heavy cruisers UNSC Madagascar and UNSC Fullerene Dream, managing to quickly overwhelm a pair of outlying assigned to picket duty. With their ambush sprung, the rest of the UNSC task force had burned in to link up with the cruisers before the enemy could muster a response. This response would come in the form of a pair of , the Soul of Piety and the Righteous Sun, along with their attendant heavy corvette escorts. The Appeal to Authority along with the rest of the cruisers had positioned themselves to blunt most of the Covenant counterattack, preventing them from destroying the task force’s flagship, the , UNSC Irascible. While the Covenant were unable to break their line, it came at a great cost, the Madagascar was destroyed and the Fullerene Dream crippled. The combined firepower of nearly half the task force was directed on the Righteous Sun in a single barrage, and in a storm of and missile fire the battlecruiser was all but annihilated. 
As the lighter ships of the task force had hunted down the remaining heavy corvettes, the cruisers were to continue the attack against the remaining Covenant battlecruiser. The UNSC force had been bloodied, and while retreat was considered by the captains of the task force, they instead chose to continue the attack. The Appeal to Authority had led the assault against the Soul of Piety, hammering its shields with MAC rounds before destroying it with Archer missiles. The Appeal emerged victorious, but not unscathed. After the confrontation at Battle of XI Boötis A, the cruiser was taken into drydock to repair the extensive plasma damage she had suffered, only returning to the fight in 2530.  
=== Battle of Sol ===
The UNSC Appeal to Authority along with the remains of its task force was dispatched to join the in 2552 as part of a general reinforcement of the fleet in anticipation for engagement with the Covenant. The Appeal had spent much of this downtime participating in war games and training exercises in order to prepare the rest of the fleet for the coming battle. The experience of the veteran crews of the Appeal were highly valued amongst the other sailors in the Home Fleet, honing the Home Fleet’s personnel into even sharper weapons, ready for the coming storm. The Appeal to Authority was dispatched on long patrols on the edge of the , alert for any sign of Covenant attack. While for the most part these patrols were uneventful, they were no less tense and draining for the crews participating in them. The Appeal to Authority and her patrol were among the first to encounter Covenant forces entering the Sol System, making contact with a small Covenant patrol in the termination shock of Sol. A picket of Covenant ships consisting of three SDV-class heavy corvettes and two were dispatched to probe human defenses and gather information on the disposition and strength of the defenders. The Appeal along with another Marathon-class Heavy Cruiser and a quartet of had intercepted them as they attempted to return to their parent fleet. Forced to stand and fight, the Covenant picket had targeted the heavier ships first, intending to mop up the lighter vessels after the threat of the Marathon-classes was dealt with. Intending to prevent the Covenant from eliminating their frigate escorts, the Appeal to Authority and the UNSC Dakar were dispatched to locate and overwhelm the enemy light vessels. The Appeal to Authority was used as bait, with the Dakar following close behind her with many nonessential systems powered down. As expected, the Covenant forces had lunged towards the seemingly unsupported cruiser, confident that their superior numbers would be able to make short work of her. Just as the heavy corvettes neared firing range, the Dakar appeared on their flanks, unleashing a barrage of MAC rounds at the corvettes. Quickly finding themselves pinned down in a crossfire between two heavier vessels, the Covenant corvettes had attempted to make a quick exit using their superior speed. However, the extended weapons ranges of the pair of cruisers made doing so near impossible. 
Two of the heavy corvettes were destroyed and the remaining one was crippled and scuttled by its crew. Rushing to reinforce their lighter ships, the pair of light destroyers were forced to break off their attack on the UNSC frigates, claiming the UNSC To Whom it May Concern and the UNSC Full Court Press before reorienting to attack the heavy cruisers. While the remaining frigates were relatively damaged by the fight, they had taken the opportunity to stabilize their ships while the enemy destroyers had their attention elsewhere. The pair of destroyers had inflicted serious damage into the UNSC Dakar, and it was forced to retreat after withstanding multiple hull breaches, but managing to down the shields of a destroyer with a MAC round before falling back. With the Appeal to Authority and a pair of frigates being the only ships still able to fight.The Appeal and her attendant ships were rushed back to Earth following the termination shock engagement, and she spent time alternating between drydock and patrol routes, while much of the battle damage she had suffered during the termination shock engagement was largely repaired, the internal systems of the Appeal to Authority were more significantly damaged, and she was earmarked for more extensive repairs in the fourth quarter of 2552. The Appeal’s crew had made do with substandard sensor equipment, relying on smaller ships, like the to range ahead for her. The cruiser was finally authorized for deep structural repairs in August of 2552, upgrading her detection capabilities with newer telescopes and RADAR/LIDAR devices. Her crew would get little chance to rest, however, as they were once again sortied along with elements of the UNSC Home Fleet to participate in the defense over Mars. The Appeal to Authority along with Pulsar, consisting of the UNSC Dakar, two , five and five Paris-class Heavy frigates were dispatched to intercept a Covenant squadron on full burn towards the space station cluster over Eos Chasma. The Eos Chasma cluster consisted of a number of military installations, such as drydocks and shipyards, but also multiple orbital habitation stations. Pulsar’s task was to defend the cluster from the incoming attack for as long as possible, while screening the evacuation efforts from the habitats, which were predicted to only be approximately halfway complete by the time of the Covenant assault.
Unwilling to split up their forces to secure both objectives, it was Battlegroup Pulsar’s belief that losing the numerical advantage would guarantee defeat in the face of the Covenant. Using what little time the battlegroup had to prepare, Pulsar intended to draw the incoming forces into a lethal trap; by attaching remotely activated SOS beacons to the half-finished bulkheads in the gantries of Eos Chasma’s orbital shipyards before seeding them throughout unoccupied vectors around  the station cluster. These decoy vessels were also fitted with what anti-ship munitions the shipyards still had in stock, numbering approximately eight and along with thirty four . When the sheer amount of nuclear munitions was intended to overwhelm Covenant shield generators and render them vulnerable for a follow-up attack from the battlegroup, ideally destroying lighter Covenant vessels outright.
It is perhaps fortunate for Battlegroup Pulsar that the of Impartial Adjudication was more reckless than most, for a more cautious and perceptive commander might have recognized the trap for what it was. The Fleet had dispatched a number of its lighter ships to investigate and finish off the survivors of the apparently marooned human convoy, this picket force consisting of three and a had encountered the trap. The combination of nuclear mines and missiles had countered the ability of Covenant point defenses and shielding systems with sheer numbers, nearly totally annihilating the light cruisers Castigator and Blessed Ministration. The cruiser Succor of Light had managed to escape the worst of the nuclear detonations by being at the rear of the formation, however her shields were downed and it was destroyed by a MAC round. The heavy destroyer Relentless Excoriator was crippled and left immobile by these explosions and soon destroyed.Wary of any further spaceborne traps and now even further outnumbered by the human forces, the Fleetmaster of Impartial Adjudication had held his attack back, contacting the larger Covenant armada for assistance in the destruction of Pulsar. However, much of the Covenant’s forces were directed towards the siege of Earth, and little consideration was given to battles on other fronts in the Solar System. With the outcome of his mission in serious doubt, the Fleetmaster had intended to withdraw from Eos Chasma to join in the assault on Earth. However, his fellow flag officers had concluded that regrouping with the main Covenant force in a timely manner would necessitate destroying Pulsar. 
Luckily for the evacuating civilians, the new Covenant plans had resulted in their fleet taking a vector far from their predicted evacuation corridor. With all of Eos Chasma’s orbital citizens on their way to habitats ready to receive them on and .
Pulsar and Impartial Justice had met in the orbit of Phobos, with the first engagement between the fleets being a skirmish between the Gladius-classes Superluminal, Storm In A Teacup, and Caught Red Handed and the SDV-classes Unrelenting Fervor and Truthful Guide, the only ships able to reinforce both sides of the Eos Chasma battle. The battle between these lighter warships was uneventful and resulted in only superficial damage on both sides. No officers wished to lose their ships prior to the battle. However, the UNSC corvettes had accomplished their objectives, piercing the Covenant sensors baffling and locating the enemy’s position before they were forced to retreat back to Earth. Faced with little further options but to fight, Impartial Justice dispatched their largest ships to reinforce their corvettes, a pair of , the Sanctified Spirit and the Hammer of Righteousness. The UNSC corvettes pulled back from the battle at best possible speed and the Appeal to Authority and Dakar had burned in to reinforce them, accompanied by the fleet’s destroyers. The Halberds had harried the heavy cruisers with successive MAC strikes, forcing their captains to temper their aggression. However, these destroyers were beset by the Covenant’s remaining three light cruisers and they were forced to contend with the Covenant picket. 
Taking advantage of the opening created by the Halberds, the Marathons of Pulsar had advanced against the Covenant heavy cruisers, with their light cruisers following closely behind. Isolating the ORS-classes from each other, they were able to surround and destroy the Hammer of Righteousness, killing Impartial Ajudication’s fleetmaster, though at great cost. The Dakar and the Appeal to Authority had endured a great deal of damage, nearly being taken out of the fight. The Halcyon-class Snowball Effect was also lost in this skirmish. Pulsar’s frigate force had moved to reinforce the flagging destroyer contingent, having lost the UNSC Twice Bitten and Chomolungma. Forced into a corner with little chance of egress, the Sanctified Spirit and the SDV-classes had driven towards Pulsar in a last ditch effort to destroy them. The ferocity of their final attack had rapidly resulted in the destruction of the Paris-classes Break The Ice, Square One, and Sacramento. Appeal to Authority had managed to land the killing blow on the Sanctified Spirit. Despite their victory, none of the surviving ships in Pulsar had emerged from the battle unscathed. Pulsar was forced to sit out the remainder of the Battle of Earth.
=== Post-War Service ===
The Appeal to Authority had spent many of the early post-war years still undergoing repairs, which were stymied by constant resource and manpower shortages. While the UNSC desperately needed any and all intact ships, the surviving crew of the Appeal to Authority was more than grateful for the extended period of peace after months upon months of frontline duty. Many of her officers had been invited onto news networks for interviews and documentaries as part of a general morale boosting effort after the war. Several had written about their experiences during the war, earning enough royalties to retire from the service. Many of the enlisted crew of the Appeal had continued their service aboard the cruiser in her postwar years. Much of the Appeal’s time was spent patrolling the Sol System, primarily as a customs and security enforcement vessel. 
By the end of the Human-Covenant War, the Appeal to Authority could count herself among the few Marathon-class heavy cruisers in service, with this number further diminishing as more were scrapped and the Autumn-class heavy cruiser was slated to replace the venerable Marathons. While a shield generator was included in an upgrade package for the Appeal, her outdated reactor was unable to sustain the generator for long periods of time, leading to subpar shielding uptime and poor deflective capabilities. Like most Marathon-classes, the Appeal was slated for second line and anti-piracy duties as the UNSC started to expand and recontact lost colonies. The Appeal along with a force of four were assigned to escort colonial convoys to worlds newly flagged for settlement. While this force had encountered resistance during these voyages in the form of Covenant raiders and scattered remnant ships, they were unable to pose a significant threat to the escorts. 
The Appeal to Authority had also participated in a variety of humanitarian missions throughout UNSC space, delivering food to recently recontacted colonies and offering the expertise of its contingent of engineers to assist with developing infrastructure. 
While the Appeal to Authority was relegated to second line duty, its career during the postwar era has been marked by engagements against pirates and privateers, typically equipped with low tonnage but fast ships. These engagements had involved both Covenant and human elements, aiming to seize resources from burgeoning colonies or even take control of the smallest colonial sites. While the Appeal to Authority was showing her age in the late 2550s, she was nonetheless more than capable of engaging scores of corvettes and cutters with little damage incurred. While she was unable to catch up to these smaller vessels, to engage her head on would be a death sentence for most pirates. A small squadron of were deployed on the Appeal to assist in this task, chasing down and destroying any craft too fast for the Appeal to Authority to intercept. 
While most of the encounters with piratical groups had ended either in the rapid retreat of the pirates or their quick defeat and arrest, the Appeal and a force of attendant ships had encountered a group known as the Red Pack, boasting a number of CPV-class heavy destroyers. The Pack started broadcasting on all channels that they had intended to seize all material goods and enslave the residents. The Appeal to Authority along with a pair of Strident-class heavy frigates and another pair of were on station to respond.
With a force of three CPV-class heavy destroyers along with six , the defending force was both outnumbered and outgunned. The besieged colony of Carpathia was home to a small population of a hundred thousand individuals, and was home to a small garrison of defenders, including a squadron of readied in launch silos. Despite this, the situation for Carpathia was exceedingly dire. With much experience in defensive actions and the usage of orbital traps, the Appeal to Authority and her attendant ships had seeded critical orbits with debris fields which concealed automated disposable missile launchers among decoys and sensor baffling systems. While the larger enemy ships could easily pass through these fields and withstand their missile strikes, the storm cutter captains were hesitant to do so, as volleys of could easily overload their shields and penetrate their hulls. The Red Pack’s destroyer captains were also loath to advance on Carpathia without their escorts, fearing being outmaneuvered by the smaller UNSC frigates. Being forced to engage the UNSC forces on specific vectors had somewhat alleviated their concerns over being outnumbered, as doing so greatly limited the maneuverability of the enemy and forced them into the predefined killboxes. The first UNSC MAC barrage and missile volley had severely damaged one of the Red Pack’s heavy destroyers and destroyed two of their storm cutters. Intending to overwhelm the UNSC fleet, the Red Pack had ordered their destroyers forward, allowing their more robust shielding and armor to withstand the enemy’s barrages. 
As the Red Pack had closed into striking distance of the UNSC task force, intending to leverage their wings of strikecraft, entangling the UNSC fighters into dogfights instead of attack runs against the Pack’s cutters. This had also allowed them to begin deployment of ground forces, intending to overwhelm the ground based defenders, capture whatever materials and manpower they could before retreating back into orbit. The Covenant drive towards Carpathia had shocked the UNSC forces and they scrambled to prevent the destroyers from closing onto the world. The Strident-classes UNSC Above All Else and By Any Means Necessary had scrambled to intercept the small craft and their storm cutter escorts. The point defense guns were able to turn back the Covenant smallcraft. Despite their efforts, a number of dropships had managed to break atmosphere and land their troops near Carpathia’s population centers. The storm cutters had inflicted moderate damage on these frigates during a series of hit-and run attacks. These cutters were decisively dealt with with MAC rounds. As the Stridents were occupied with handling the enemy light craft, the two remaining Red Pack destroyers continued their advance towards the Appeal and her escorts.
The jamming systems of the Anlace-class frigates had reduced the effectiveness of the enemy weapons fire through intense jamming. Despite this, a Pack heavy destroyer had destroyed an Anlace, the UNSC Spyglass with its excavation beam. Forced into a desperate retreating action, the Appeal had covered for the retreat of its remaining escort, the UNSC Optical Illusion.
The Strident-classes had returned to reinforce the Appeal to Authority, crippling another destroyer with a volley of MAC rounds. With the battle decidedly turned against them, the remaining Red Pack ships had made a hasty retreat from Carpathia's orbit, with the UNSC task for following close behind.
=== OPERATION: BLANK SPACE ===
Following the battle over Carpathia, the Appeal to Authority was once again deployed on a long patrol throughout UNSC space. Much to the chagrin and relief of her crew, this deployment had come with little danger, the presence of an outdated ship being enough to deter even well equipped human pirate clades. By early 2560, the Appeal was beginning to show her age to a greater degree, with frequent mechanical breakdowns and other such malfunctions. With many shipyards once tasked with assembling Marathon-classes either destroyed or charged with constructing Autumn-classes, replacement parts for the Appeal had become difficult to acquire, consigning her to drydock for months at a time. There was a great deal of debate within on when to decommission these remaining vessels, with some decrying them as wastes of resources and experienced crew that could be diverted to modern vessels and urging for their removal from the fleet as soon as possible, while others within Command had claimed that the Marathon-classes had at least another five years of service in them, and that they played a critical role in the defense plan of the UNSC by chasing down lower priority threats and thus allowing more modern ships to engage more serious threats. Ultimately, a compromise was reached and the Marathons were due to be decommissioned in 2564. Responses to this news had varied among the Appeal’s crew, with some resenting abandoning the vessel that had been their home years upon years, while others were eager to be deployed to a more capable vessel. 
The Appeal’s last deployment was during OPERATION: BLANK SPACE, a joint long term anti-piracy operation between the and the UNSC. BLANK SPACE started during the latter half of 2561 and the Appeal was deployed into a frontier region notorious for its piracy known as the Obsidian Lanes alongside a small taskforce of lightweight Covenant vessels and UNSC . The joint task force had spread out through the Lanes, covering known vectors and blockading colonies and stations notorious for the black market dealings. The primary opponents of BLANK SPACE had included both human and Covenant pirates, equipped with many low tonnage vessels that raided trade routes and attacked colonies while returning to larger asteroid bases or capital ships with their spoils. While the blockades and policing actions were effective in stemming the tide of piracy in the region, it would not be stopped unless direct action against the centers of these various piratical organizations were neutralized. To this end, the Swords of Sanghelios had deployed two to bolster the offensive action. The UNSC committed a along with Autumn-class heavy cruisers to support this operation. 
The first target of the second phase of BLANK SPACE was the rogue assault carrier Pious Sanctuary, a ship aligned with the during the , when the Covenant Empire was defeated the assault carrier had fled, remaining unaccounted for for many years before making its reappearance with Covenant livery stripped. The Pious Sanctuary had begun mounting raids against worlds in the Obsidian Lanes. The escort ships lacked the firepower to effectively defend themselves against the assault carrier, and were forced to surrender their goods without a fight, with the Pious Sanctuary escaping before better armed Swords of Sanghelios fleet elements could intercept it.
Even with significant assistance from Sangheili fleet elements, facing the Pious Sanctuary would prove to be a daunting task. Her captain was made exceptionally canny and savvy by years of piracy, and was well acquainted with the tendencies and habits of his rival ship and fleetmasters. The Sanctuary had maintained its raiding posture even while BLANK SPACE was in effect, severely dampening trade through and into the Obsidian Lanes. Rather than capturing materials to sell, the Sanctuary had used their hauls to maintain their craft, salvaging destroyed and intact ships to repair their damaged hulls, though they continued to ransom captured crew back to civilian corporations. A number of these were also used as decoys, fitted with ramshackle signal broadcasters intended to disrupt pursuit of the Sanctuary and complicate efforts to remain on her tail. 
While the efforts of the Pious Sanctuary had made detection of the immense vessel difficult, it was only a matter of time before the allied fleets had caught up to it. While the pirate flagship had intended to avoid conflict in the hopes of escaping a superior force, it was certainly capable of holding its own in battle. With numerous attendant escort ships and a crack crew with experience in both the Human-Covenant War and after it, the Pious Sanctuary would prove to be a formidable opponent. When she was located in September of 2562 by a light squadron of CPV-class heavy destroyers and CRS-class light cruisers, she had chosen to fight instead of flee. This reconnaissance squadron was directly engaged by the Sanctuary and a number of her escorts, resulting in heavy Sangheili losses, with three light cruisers being destroyed and two heavy destroyers being crippled. While these losses were significant, the squadron had effected a fighting retreat that destroyed or disabled a number of the Sanctuary's escorts.  
The allied task force had jumped at this chance before the Sanctuary could escape, and the Appeal to Authority led a flanking action against the assault carrier. Fearful of the Covenant vessel’s weaponry, the Appeal’s captain had approached through an asteroid field, using the dense metal of the objects combined with sensor baffling drones to prevent the better armed vessel from gaining a lock onto the heavy cruiser or her escorts. They had lay in wait for the main thrust of the combined task force, and were intended to engage them from close range as the heavier vessels had made their advance. The Appeal had spent weeks evading detection, as the main force had made their approach, constantly relaying data on changes in pirate disposition as they prepared for the coming battle. 
As the pirate craft neared the asteroid field, the Appeal and her battlegroup had sprung into action, destroying lighter enemy ships piecemeal as they attempted to navigate the asteroid field. The scouting the Appeal had done had proven to be critical during this phase of the battle. The Appeal and a detachment of Halberd-classes had staged ambush after ambush, cutting off avenues of escape by herding enemy craft through especially thick fields of asteroids. While this had proven to be effective against the smaller craft, the Pious Sanctuary wasn’t deterred. The sudden appearance of the assault carrier before the Appeal had surprised her crew, resulting in substantial damage inflicted on the Appeal as it fired a MAC round through the Sanctuary.