Rasus-pattern interdictor

"How many of the Archers, sir? How many Shivas?"

- Chief Weapons officer of the UNSC Everest

"All of them, Lieutenant."

- Admiral Preston Cole during the Second Battle of Harvest.

The Covenant super-destroyer is a heavy capital warship classification within the Covenant Navy.

A super-destroyer was encountered by the Colonial Military Administration's Battlegroup 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 battlegroup before being destroyed by concentrated fire.

So far, super-destroyers have only been encountered in operations taking place primarily in vacuum, such as the Second Battle of Harvest, as opposed to planetary defense missions. This may mean that it is designed specifically for ship-to-ship combat, unlike s and destroyers, which are also used for glassing operations.

Design details
This warship is approximately two kilometers long and is equipped with enough weapons and firepower to destroy most UNSC fleets from long range. It is larger than most Covenant warships, even surpassing the keel length of the CCS-class battlecruiser, but itself is dwarfed by the Covenant assault carrier and supercarrier.

The super-destroyer's hull is composed of five bulbous sections - a swollen prow, two lateral lobes, a dorsal bulb and a protruding stern. The ship itself is a pale shade of purple. It is one of the largest ships in the Covenant fleet, being between a battlecruiser and an assault carrier in size. It is armed with energy projectors, along with pulse laser turrets and plasma torpedo batteries found on most Covenant warships.

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.

It is possible that John-117 witnessed a vessel of this class during Operation: FIRST STRIKE when Blue Team's spirit exited slip-space in the midst of a covenant armada. He observed "vessels with five bulbous sections that were nearly two kilometers stem to stem and had a dozen deadly energy projectors." This description matches that of the covenant super-destroyer in terms of length, armament and physical arrangement, lending credence to the theory that these vessels belong to the same class.

Production note
The quasi-canonical Halo: Fall of Reach - Boot Camp replaces the super-destroyer encountered at Harvest with the cruiser Rapid Conversion.

List of appearances

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