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The Covenant boarding craft is a Covenant ship specifically designed for boarding an enemy vessel.

Overview
The Covenant, although their ships are fully capable of reducing most UNSC vessels to heaps of molten slag in a matter of minutes, have also shown a desire to board and hopefully capture a human vessel, in hopes of capturing valuable information from their computers. Thus far, they have done so by using boarding craft. This has only been done a couple of times, at 23 Librae and on the Pillar of Autumn. Infantry are deployed into the heart of a vessel for purposes the UNSC can only speculate. Suggestions and evidence collated so far for motivations have been:


 * To collect information/specifications of UNSC military equipment, vehicles, weapons, etc.
 * To capture key members of the vessels crew and thus unlock classified UNSC intelligence including the location of Earth.
 * To destroy or capture a shipboard AI.
 * To destroy the vessel from within (such as the Athens Station and Malta Station Orbital Defense Platforms during the Battle of Earth).

Operation
When a UNSC ship is being attacked by Covenant forces, if the Covenant determine that the ship holds valuable navigational data, AIs, or other materials, the Covenant may attempt a boarding operation. In such a situation, the boarding craft is used. So far, the Covenant have proved highly intelligent in their entry points, having burnt holes through hangar bay windows or used the empty UNSC escape pod docking rings to board a vessel.

The boarding craft is a reusable vessel and are able to leave the UNSC ship and return to a nearby cruiser should the need to retreat occur. When the craft boards via windows it seems to use the outer edge of the boarding tube to superheat the glass, thus the glass does not shatter.

Types of boarding craft
Boarding craft are first encountered in Halo: Combat Evolved, used by the Covenant to board the. These craft were only viewed partially and internally with only the boarding tube being accessible and the cockpit being off-limits behind a locked door. These vessels usually carried a compliment of up to 8-10 Covenant warriors, usually Unggoy and Sangheili.

Boarding craft were also responsible for the destruction of the ODPs Athens and Malta stations. Unlike in Halo: Combat Evolved, these boarding craft could be clearly seen through the station's windows. The craft used a long boarding tube to penetrate the windows of the station. The entrance/exit to the boarding tube was covered with an impenetrable energy shield that only allowed their considerable complement of Covenant soldiers out. The boarding tube seemed to function on a similar basis to the gravity conveyors found in the Covenant holy city High Charity. The tube, once deployed, had a superheated rim to melt glass instead of shattering it, therefore cooling down so air cannot escape.

Trivia

 * In Halo: Combat Evolved, they contained two Overshield power ups in the far corners of the pods, probably put there for the use of any Sangheili in need of assistance that were on board.
 * Even when the shields for the entrance of the boarding craft are turned off, players cannot enter.

List of appearances

 * Halo: Combat Evolved
 * Halo 2
 * Halo: The Flood
 * Halo: Evolutions - Essential Tales of the Halo Universe
 * Midnight in the Heart of Midlothian
 * Halo 4