Margaret Parangosky

"If you're going to practice divide and rule to maintain some sort of equilibrium at ONI, it's not enough to just set people against one another. The trick is to make sure that you get some useful work out of them as well. Otherwise just dispose of them and save yourself some time."

— Admiral Parangosky to Captain Serin Osman.

Admiral Margaret Orlenda Parangosky (UNSCMID 03669271) is the director of the United Nations Space Command's Office of Naval Intelligence.

Background
Born in 2461, Parangosky was described as short and aged, yet sharp and cold as ice. Despite her withered appearance, she was very powerful and deadly: Dr. Catherine Halsey was the only person who had ever crossed her and lived. Colonel James Ackerson considered her to be the most dangerous person in the UNSC. Parangosky was a rear admiral by 2511, and vice admiral by 2531, She was promoted to full admiral some time later.

After the Battle of Groombridge-1830 in 2530, Admiral Preston Cole wrote a proposed protocol procedure that would slow down the Covenant from finding Earth. This proposal was approved by Parangosky and would later become known as the Cole Protocol.

Restriction of Onyx
In 2511, Parangosky restricted the planet Onyx from the rest of the UNSC after Forerunner ruins were discovered on the surface of the planet that same year. She presumably ignored a Geological Expedition Team's request to conduct further surveys on Onyx as well. She returned several times to check up on and report on the project; however, the project was eventually sidelined in 2525 so funding could go elsewhere.

SPARTAN-III Program
In 2531, Parangosky attended a meeting with Rear Admiral Ned Rich and Captain Aaron G. Gibson aboard the. During this meeting, Colonel Ackerson proposed the SPARTAN-III project, which would produce large numbers of expendable supersoldiers. Parangosky approved the creation of Alpha Company and authorized a plan in which Junior Grade Lieutenant Kurt-051 would be abducted and put in charge of training the SPARTAN-IIIs.

In 2537, Parangosky went aboard the Point of No Return to review the progress of the SPARTAN-III program and to authorize the formation of Beta Company, following the recent destruction of Alpha Company in Operation: PROMETHEUS.

Later career
By 2552, Parangosky had risen to rank of admiral and was named the head of the Office of Naval Intelligence. She continued working aboard the Point of No Return, green-lighting some of humanity's most controversial projects. At one point, she adopted the "washed-out" SPARTAN-II candidate Serin Osman as her protégé, grooming her to be her successor. It was noted that Osman is almost like a "granddaughter figure" to Parangosky, and one of the few people she cared about. By late March 2553, she was on the verge of retiring and planned to recommend Osman as her replacement.

Personality
Even though she is in her nineties, Pranagosky still has a very strong and determined personality. She is quite calculating, never doing anything without a clear prupose and outcome. She recognises that she has done questionnable and even inhumane things during her career, but is confident that what she did allowed more people to survive had she acted otherwise. She is feared throughout the UNSC, soldiers even referring to that fear as "Parangosky-itis".

Trivia

 * Her name is seen on a memorial plaque inside the ONI Alpha Site on Earth. As the Halo Encyclopedia states that she was still alive and onboard the Point of No Return at that time and a reference to Parangosky is made in a transcript of the psychological evaluation of Frederic-104 during the start of the invasion of Earth in the 2010 re-release of Halo: First Strike, this may have been an ONI cover-up or simply an Easter egg.
 * Her motto is "Strength through Paranoia".

List of appearances

 * Halo 3: ODST
 * Halo: First Strike
 * Halo: Ghosts of Onyx
 * Halo: Glasslands
 * Halo Wars: Genesis