Ascendant Justice

Summary
The Ascendant Justice is a Covenant Flagship, probably the UNSC equivelant to a destroyer. It appeared in Halo: First Strike. It had seven plasma turrets and was noted to have three thousand Covenant personnel, mostly Engineers, along with quite a small crew of combat personnel, a light company of Grunts and only a hundred Elites, when its size was taken into consideration. There were apparently enough Engineers on board to merit them having an access tunnel of their own. The Master Chief noted that he "hadn't seen anything like this on the Truth and Reconciliation" (p. 63), and that it was "armed like a ship of war... yet had the support staff of a refit vessel" (p. 63).

This ship was present at the destruction of Installation 04, and was hijacked by surviving UNSC forces. The ship was in turn, used against the Covenant, and was responsible for the destruction of the battle station Unyielding Hierophant, delaying Earth's inevitable doom. Prior to its sacrifice, the ship also helped rescue survivors from Reach, more specifically, from ONI's CASTLE Base.

The Slipspace generators were placed on the Gettysburg, making it the fastest and most accurate ship in the UNSC to navigate Slipspace.

The future Arbiter was mentioned as "the incompetent" (p.340) "who lost Ascendant Justice" (p. 340) at the end of First Strike, and the High Prophet of Truth instructed Tartarus to "let his fate match the magnitude of his failure" (p. 340). Although not THE head starship of the Covenant forces that pursued the Pillar of Autumn to Installation 04, Ascendant Justice obviously was of great importance to the Covenant for Truth to issue such a severe punishment as witnessed in Halo 2.