R'ea'kuk-pattern command shuttle

The R'ea'kuk-pattern command shuttle is a large command-scale dropship employed by the Covenant.

Design details
The R'ea'kuk displays many outward similarities to the Spirit family of troop carriers; in particular the. It shares a number of features with the Dextro Xur such as the twin pronged hulls, though is equipped with additional capital ship-scale proselytization network relays and defensive augur arrays.

Usage
Befitting its name, the command shuttle served in a role comparable to the larger transport shuttles employed by the United Nations Space Command (UNSC) or various human megacorporations, working to ferry high-value Covenant military officers or political figures (such as Hierarchs, Minor Prophets, Ministers, San'Shyuum and Sangheili High Councilors etc) on their deployments outside of High Charity. In this role, they had many features such as capital scale proselytization network relays and specialty defensive augur arrays.

Due to this usage, the R'ea'kuk was rarely deployed on the front lines during the Human-Covenant War, and the rare occasions in which it did make contact with human forces saw the UNSC devote considerable effort to target analysis and tracking of the individual shuttles encountered.

Production notes
The command shuttle is one of many vehicles cut during the production of Halo 2. In the original storyboards, the command shuttle had a very different visual look, and was intended to be used to deploy the Arbiter and his Special Operations Sangheili during the level The Arbiter. It was later to be used at the end of deltatemple as the personal transport of the Prophet of Regret, before finally being seen in the final epilogue cutscenes.

The model for the command shuttle was unearthed by the Digsite project, and officially canonised in an issue of Canon Fodder The dropship reuses the textures of the original Halo: Combat Evolved Spirit in a similar fashion to the boarding craft, though was developed extremely early during the development cycle of Halo 2 - during the era in which the game was still mostly the Combat Evolved engine.

During the original production of Combat Evolved, the Spirit dropship was originally intended by concept artist Shi Kai Wang to fly with the cockpit section facing forward, and the troop bay twin hulls following in the back. While an animation miscommunication caused the ship's direction to be reversed into the form now-familiar today, the command shuttle as-developed for Halo 2 was originally designed to retain this original intent. As such, the craft's bow is the armoured middle pod, while the aft sections are the troop bay housing.