Courier

Couriers are a type of starship heavily employed by humanity, primarily for the purpose of superluminal communications. Prior to the mid-26th century, human faster-than-light communications relied courier vessels to manually move between the stars and colony worlds of human space to link together the Unified Earth Government's domain. Most courier ships take the form of small shuttles; fast, versatile, reliable, and requiring only a minimal crew for their journeys. However, the role can be performed by essentially any ship with a memory bank within which to store data, such as freighters like those used by the UNSC Department of Commercial Shipping. Couriers carry large communications arrays that let them upload and download large masses of data when entering a given star system, communicating with the system's developed network of satellites and laser communications infrastructure.

Couriers maintain a strong presence in the more developed worlds of humanity, and have been likened to the 26th century equivalent of the Pony Express. They are used in both civilian, governmental, and military roles, and may also be used as diplomatic shuttles. The Valiant-class super-heavy cruiser command refits often serviced couriers for wartime use.

Courier classes

The following represent some of the most commonly-used couriers in human space. However, many other kinds of human ship such as freighters may serve in the role.

• Gypsum-class courier
• Vancouver-class courier
• Zheng He-class courier

• 

  The Han, a Vancouver-class courier in Office of Naval Intelligence service.

• 

  Endymion II, a Zheng He-class courier.

List of appearances

• Halo: The Fall of Reach (First appearance)
• Halo: Contact Harvest (Indirect mention)
• Dr. Halsey's personal journal
• Halo: The Fall of Reach - The Animated Series
• Halo Infinite: Memory Agent
• Halo: The Television Series