Rasus-pattern interdictor

"Chief Weapons officer"

The Rasus-pattern interdictor, nicknamed the "Covenant battleship" and "Covenant super-destroyer" by humanity, was a type of Covenant warship that was in service within the Covenant's fleet during the Human-Covenant War.

Design details
The Rasus-pattern interdictor is approximately two kilometers long and one kilometer wide. It is larger than many Covenant warships, even surpassing the keel length of the CCS-class battlecruiser, but itself is dwarfed by other starships such as Covenant carriers. The super-destroyer's hull is composed of five bulbous sections - a swollen prow, two lateral lobes, a dorsal bulb and a protruding stern - presumably housing the array of ancient and puissant Forerunner weapon-cores that the ship is built around. The loss of any of these ships was considered a tragic event, with a super-destroyer impossible to replicate without finding an appropriate new trove of weapon-cores.

Armament
The super-destroyer is equipped with enough weapons and firepower to destroy most United Nations Space Command fleets from long range. Considered a mobile altar of wrath, the ship is one of the most heavily-outfitted warships in the Covenant arsenal. It boasts enough firepower to take on dozens of enemy ships at once, with twelve Worthy Fire-pattern plasma lances, ten Luxor-pattern heavy plasma beams, twenty-four Melusean-pattern heavy plasma cannons and four Jaet-pattern plasma torpedo silos forming the core of its anti-starship armament.

Defenses
Alongside the aforementioned weapons complement, the Rasus is outfitted with a considerable point-defense of 124 Reskuk-pattern pulse laser turrets. Though most of its power is likely used up by its large number of weapons, the ship can project a shield strong enough to protect it from multiple nuclear missiles and MAC rounds. However, the shield and hull will buckle under concentrated fire, as occurred when the twenty-seven ships left in Cole's fleet were able to destroy one.

Ships of the line

 * Heaven's Brilliant Bier

Operational history
The interdictor Heaven's Brilliant Bier was encountered by the Colonial Military Administration's Battle Group 4 during its investigation of Harvest in July 2525; the CMA frigates Arabia and Vostok were destroyed after a minute-long skirmish, while the destroyer Heracles was heavily damaged and was forced to retreat. Vice Admiral Preston Cole's forces later encountered the same vessel during the Second Battle of Harvest in March 2526. It single-handedly destroyed thirteen ships in Cole's battle group before being destroyed by concentrated fire.

Several interdictors served in the Fleet of Particular Justice during the Fall of Reach on August 30, 2552. Weeks later, several battleships were among the vessels comprising the Prophet of Truth's secret fleet gathered at Unyielding Hierophant. Though these vessels were intended to attacked Earth without the knowledge or consent of the other Hierarchs, a team of SPARTAN-IIs sabotaged the platform before the invasion could commence; the battleships, as well as hundreds of other warships, were destroyed along with the station.

Production notes

 * Halo: Fall of Reach - Boot Camp and Halo: The Fall of Reach - The Animated Series replace the super-destroyer encountered at Harvest with the cruiser Rapid Conversion.
 * For the longest time, the "Covenant super-destroyer" as described in The Impossible Life and the Possible Death of Preston J. Cole and the "Covenant battleship" as described in Halo: First Strike were considered to be two separate ship classifications, with no source explicitly tying the two together. The 2022 release of the Halo Encyclopedia explicitly provided the name and statistics for the "super-destroyer" as almost identical to those described in First Strike, effectively confirming that the two ship classifications were one and the same.

List of appearances

 * Halo: First Strike
 * Halo Wars: Genesis
 * Halo: Evolutions - Essential Tales of the Halo Universe
 * The Impossible Life and the Possible Death of Preston J. Cole
 * Halo Mythos
 * Halo: Silent Storm