Dextro Xur-pattern Spirit

Spirit

Overview
The Spirit, otherwise known as the DX-Class Dropship, is a Covenant troop aerial transport vessel primarily seen in Halo: Combat Evolved. They are angular, tuning fork shaped craft with two parallel personnel bays along the exterior of each "prong". The Spirit is used by the Covenant alongside Phantom dropships. They are used to transport Elites, Jackals, and Grunts, and have been known to ferry Covenant vehicles within the purple colored energy field between it's prongs. Around the time of The First Battle of Earth it would seem that the Spirits were replaced with the more heavily built Phantom dropships.

It is speculated that the Spirit is not designed for combat drops. That particular job is for Phantoms. The lack of effective offensive or defensive weaponry coupled with the small troop carrying capacity of the Spirit tends to support this supposition. Since the fleet stationed above Halo was originally a research operation this use of non combat specific transportation would be understandable. During the events of the Battle of Installation 04 Spirits were placed into combat roles by necessity.

Operation
The Spirit is a moderately large craft, similar in size to the Pelican dropship of the UNSC. Capable of powered flight and hovering. The dropship appears quite cumbersome and awkward to pilot based on battlefield observations but has been known to reach speeds of 350 kilometers per hour whilst cruising and has a suspected maximum speed of 1100 KPH.

The craft is a dedicated transport of infantry and vehicles. As such it possesses only one defensive weapon, a heavy plasma cannon nearly identical to that of the Shade turret. The weapon is located beneath the main fuselage of the vessel. It fires slowly but with fairly high accuracy. However each bolt from the cannon takes a long time to reach its target.

The Spirit possesses two troop bays each capable of holding four Grunts, Jackels or Elites. Within each of these bays there appears to be a door hinting at the possibility that more soldiers could be unleashed from deeper within the vessel. Each of these troop bays has two doors that open and close vertically. However they do not close fully and leave a small opening along the length of the bay. Keen eyed snipers can take advantage of this and terminate soldiers before they touch the ground.

Between these extended personnel bays, an energy field fluctuates visibly as it generates the ship's anti-gravity propulsion (similar in appearance to the energy pulse of the "Gravity Lift" elevators the Covenant use to commute between the ground and the hovering ships). This same gravity-beam is used to ferry Shades, Ghosts and other ground vehicles to their destinations.

While these dropships have life support for use in vacuum, they do not have a slipspace drive. In Halo: First Strike, a Spirit was modified so it could be launched out of a ship already in Slipspace. Even with this modification, the Spirit was unable to travel into Slipspace of its own accord.

Spirit in Combat
The Spirit, as it occurs in Halo: Combat Evolved is indestructible. As such no amount of firepower (without modding an Xbox) that the player can bring to bear is capable of bringing the ship down. The best tactic, if on lower difficulty levels, is to attack the vulnerable infantry as they disembark from the Spirit. On higher difficulties this would be unwise, hiding behind cover until the ship leaves is often the best course of action in this situation.

Known Spirits

 * Brilliant Gift

Behind the Scenes
*The Spirit did not get an official name until Halo: Ghosts of Onyx was released in October 2006. Up until that point, the ship was simply referred to as the "Covenant dropship." Other sources unofficially referred to it as the "Apparition", the "Spook", the "Harbinger", and even the "Bandit", based on the military term for an enemy used by a Marine to refer to a Spirit in Halo (Level).

Related Links

 * Phantom - The successor of the Spirit