First Battle Over Avalon

The First Battle over Avalon took place in orbit near the United Earth Government colony of Avalon and was one of the few naval victories of the Human-Covenant war, greatly thanks to the efforts of United Nations Space Command Fleet Admiral, Dalton van Schie, and his successor Ava Grieve as well as the crew of UNSC Arthur's Excalibur and many other sailors of the UNSC Navy. The battle was fought to a standstill with the UNSC forces losing a total of six light and heavy frigates, an Orbital Defense Platform and several cruisers and the Covenant attackers suffering the loss of twelve CCS-Class battlecruisers and a CAS-Class Assault Carrier with the remainder of the fleet being repelled or disabled by the unusually well equipped Avalon Defense Fleet led by the UNSC Ouranos.

May 5th 2551
17:00 Avalon Capital Time: UNSC Arthur's Excalibur and the UNSC Lady of the Lake come under attack from an unidentified craft. The Lady escapes however the Excalibur is caught by enemy fire and is unable to disengage, the Excalibur suffers several crippling hits to it's engines and is disabled.

18:00 ACT: The ship's captain is killed and his Lieutenant takes charge, with a large portion of crew left critically wounded or dead and with many survivors succumbing to radiation poisoning. Those who have the highest chance of survival are loaded onto transport ships.

19:00 ACT: Volunteer combat teams are loaded onto escape pods and are launched toward the enemy ship, several of the pods contain large amounts of ordinance and those that reach the enemy ship are used as boarding craft, many pods are destroyed by oncoming fire however those that survive either breach the hull with explosives or enter through previous breaches.

20:00 ACT: As fighting breaks out onboard the enemy ship the crew are evacuated aboard transport craft allowing for an escape. Several evacuating ships are caught in the radiation from the ship's engines, sentencing the crew to a painful death.

23:00 ACT: A UNSC-Llamrei-class battlecruiser arrives at the location and collects the survivors, confirming the destruction of the ''Excalibur. ''The ship's logs are recovered and the ship's last captain and members of the volunteer combat teams are issued with a post-humorous Colonial Cross for their efforts.

May 31st
09:00 ACT: A Covenant battlecruiser is spotted by a patrol of a Llamrei-class battlecruiser and two Crusader-class heavy frigates.

11:00 ACT: The Covenant ship is pursued but evades engagement and outruns the UNSC ships, upon returning to their route the patrol is flanked by a half dozen Covenant SDV-class Corvettes led by a CCS-class battlecruiser.

13:00 ACT: The patrol engages and the Llamrei's advanced shielding protects it long enough for it to disable the CCS-class and the Crusader frigates gain the upper hand against the Covenant corvettes. Another identical group of Covenant arrive and the three ships are overwhelmed, the captain of the Llamrei-class realises he is out of options and enacts a similar plan as that used by the ''Excalibur. ''With only a volunteer crew remaining and the two supporting ships disabled the captain rams the second CCS-class cruiser, firing the ship's heavy MAC cannon twice at close range before collision. Upon impact nuclear ordinance is detonated within the Llamrei, causing extensive damage to the head of the CCS-class.

20:00 ACT: Battlegroup Jupiter arrives as the Covenant finish off the Llamrei, and engage immediately, a half dozen corvettes are taken unaware by the new force and destroyed. The remainder turn fire on the Battlegroup however are outmatched without their battlecruisers and are quickly dealt with. Somewhere between five and twelve survivors are recovered from the patrol ships, taking refuge in rooms being slowly starved of oxygen.

June 10th-November 23rd
Covenant forces arrive en masse at Avalon's moon, Arthur. The mining colonies there are overwhelmed and swiftly obliterated by plasma bombardment. One hundred and twenty thousand souls are lost in minutes.