Rapid Conversion

Rapid Conversion was a Covenant cruiser. In 2525, it was commanded by Maccabeus, the Chieftain of the Jiralhanae, and later by his nephew Tartarus.

History
Rapid Conversion was originally decommissioned by the Sangheili for their own use, but was deemed worthy of use by Jiralhanae. Many of its systems, including weapons and gravity lifts, were disabled. Upon taking command of the vessel, Chieftain Maccabeus commissioned a number of changes to its interior decor, including an authentic facsimile of a traditional Jiralhanae feasting hall with doors and ceiling supports of forged steel and lighting provided by primitive oil lamps on clawed floor stands. The crew was comprised of a pack of ten Jiralhanae, roughly sixty Unggoy, and over a hundred Yanme'e responsible for the vessel's upkeep.

The warship was used to deploy troops and vehicles to the surface of Harvest during the First Battle of Harvest and also used as the Covenant's command center. Though its weapon system, a plasma torpedo turret, had been disabled, the Huragok Lighter Than Some was able to repair them in time for the ship's actions against Harvest and its colonists.

Later, going into low orbit over Harvest's surface in order to deliver troops and gather the relics they sought, Rapid Conversion fell into a trap that had been laid by Captain Ponder and his troops and was hit by two rounds from a mass driver based on Harvest's surface. The first round did little damage. The second round, however, passed completely through the warship, severing the connections between the ship's reactor and anti-grav generators, causing the ship to plummet to the planet's surface.

In the following months however, the crew managed to repair the ship and began to glass Harvest, eventually reducing the planet's surface to cinder. In April, Rapid Conversion destroyed the Colonial Military Administration scout ship Argo. Six months later, the CMA's Battle Group 4, consisting of the Heracles, the Arabia, and the Vostok, was sent to investigate the loss of contact with Harvest and the Argo; the battle group was almost completely destroyed by the Heaven's Brilliant Bier that was holding station over the planet.

After ascending to the title of Chieftain of the Jiralhanae, Rapid Conversion remained under Tartarus' control. During the Great Schism, following Tartarus' death on November 3, 2552, Sangheili assassins led by Resa 'Azavayl under the banner of the Silent Shadow eliminated the remaining members of Tartarus' crew aboard the ship.

Production notes

 * Halo: Fall of Reach - Boot Camp and Halo: The Fall of Reach - The Animated Series depict Rapid Conversion in place of the Heaven's Brilliant Bier that Battle Group 4 canonically encountered at Harvest.
 * Halo: Contact Harvest refers to the Rapid Conversion simply as a cruiser. In the Halo: Fall of Reach comic adaptation, the vessel is depicted in the likeness of a . While this may indicate that the ship was a battlecruiser, it may also be an artistic liberty similar to the way the ovoid-shaped Unrelenting is depicted as a CCS-class battlecruiser. Based on the visual depiction in Fall of Reach, Rapid Conversion may also have been a (properly introduced in Halo 4), since the CRS class is virtually identical to the CCS class in outward appearance. However, the animated adaptation clearly portrays the ship as a CCS based on its scale in comparison to the ships of Battlegroup 4.

List of appearances

 * Halo: Contact Harvest
 * Halo: Fall of Reach
 * Boot Camp
 * Halo: The Fall of Reach - The Animated Series
 * Halo Mythos
 * Halo: Tales from Slipspace
 * Hunting Party
 * Halo: Silent Storm