Rapid Conversion

Rapid Conversion was a Covenant cruiser. In 2525, it was commanded by Maccabeus, the Chieftain of the Jiralhanae, and later by his nephew Tartarus.

History

Rapid Conversion was originally decommissioned by the Sangheili for their own use, but was deemed worthy of use by Jiralhanae. Many of its systems, including weapons and mechanical lifts, were disabled. The crew was compiled of a pack of ten Jiralhanae, roughly sixty Unggoy, and over a hundred Yanme'e responsible for the vessel's upkeep.

The warship was used to deploy troops and vehicles to the surface of Harvest during the First Battle of Harvest and also used as the Covenant's command center. Though its weapon system, a plasma torpedo turret, had been disabled, the Huragok Lighter Than Some was able to repair them in time for the ship's actions against Harvest and its colonists.

Later, going into low orbit over Harvest's surface in order to deliver troops and gather the relics they sought, Rapid Conversion fell into a trap that had been laid by Captain Ponder and his troops and was hit by two rounds from a mass driver based on Harvest's surface. The first round did little damage. The second round, however, passed completely through the warship, severing the connections between the ship's reactor and anti-grav generators, causing the ship to plummet to the planet's surface.

In the following months however, the crew managed to repair the ship and began to glass Harvest, eventually reducing the planet's surface to cinder. In April, Rapid Conversion destroyed the Colonial Military Administration scout ship Argo. Six months later, the CMA's Battlegroup 4, consisting of the Heracles, the Arabia, and the Vostok, was sent to investigate the loss of contact with Harvest and the Argo; the battlegroup was almost completely destroyed by a Covenant ship over Harvest, possibly the Rapid Conversion or the Covenant super-destroyer that arrived later.

Trivia

• Given the fact it is commanded by Jiralhanae, the name of the ship may be a reference to the species taking to the Covenant belief system faster than most of the other client species.
• Halo: Contact Harvest only refers to the Rapid Conversion as a "cruiser". In the Halo: Fall of Reach comic adaptation, the vessel is depicted in the likeness of a CCS-class battlecruiser. While this may indicate that the ship was a battlecruiser, it may also be an artistic liberty similar to the way the ovoid-shaped Unrelenting is depicted as a CCS-class battlecruiser. Based on the visual depiction in Fall of Reach, Rapid Conversion may also have been a CRS-class light cruiser, since the CRS-class is virtually identical to the CCS-class in outward appearance.

List of appearances

• Halo: Contact Harvest (First appearance)
• Halo: Fall of Reach
  • Boot Camp