Ascendant Justice

The Ascendant Justice was a Covenant Flagship, one of the seven ships sent to Installation 04 shortly after its' destruction. It was the ship that MCPO John-117 and the other survivors of Installation 04 had taken over.

Background

It has seven Plasma Turrets and was noted to have three thousand Covenant personnel, mostly composed of Engineers, along with an unusually small crew of combat personnel: a light company of Grunts and only a hundred Elites. 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," and that it was "armed like a ship of war... yet had the support staff of a refit vessel."

History

The ship was present at the destruction of Installation 04, searching the wreckage for transmissions from survivors. It was boarded and captured by a small team of UNSC forces, among them was John-117 (Master Chief), and Sergeant Johnson, who used it to return to Reach and evacuate a small number of Spartan survivors, Vice Admiral Danforth Whitcomb and Dr. Halsey, as well as a Forerunner artifact from the planet, attaching to the wreckage of the UNSC Frigate Gettysburg for additional power and escaping through Slipspace to the Eridanus Secundus System, becoming the first ship to ever go into slipspace so close to a planet. It was forced to engage multiple Covenant warships, such as Cruisers and Carriers, in an alternate slipspace. To make things worse, some surviving Elite crewmembers had sabotaged the Ascendant Justice's main power conduit, forcing the Spartans to go on an extravehicular mission. This mission resulted in the deaths of the entire surviving Elite crew, but also killed Warrant Officer Polaski, and Spartans Anton-044, and Li-008.

The ship received assistance from remaining Eridanus Rebels in a small asteroid colony, who provided personnel and repairs for the ships weaponry, before being discovered by the Covenant. Though the Ascendant Justice engaged the initial Covenant forces in ship-to-ship battle, reinforcements arrived en masse, forcing it to abandon the colony to the Covenant.

Vice Admiral Whitcomb initiated Operation: FIRST STRIKE. The UNSC-commandeered Ascendant Justice then inserted John and his Spartans near the Unyielding Hierophant in a slightly-modified Spirit dropship, and started a self-destruct sequence in one of the station's reactor rooms. The Spartans managed to escape from the station and travel to the far side of a near moon where the UNSC Gettysburg was waiting for them. Vice Admiral Danforth Whitcomb and Lieutenant Elias Haverson had detached the Ascendant Justice from the Gettysburg and taken it in a slingshot orbit around the moon. Vice Admiral Whitcomb pretended to have the Forerunner crystal (by using a hologram) and challenged the Covenant to come and claim it (the Covenant did not want to fire on the Ascendant Justice because the crystal was supposedly on it). He used the momentum from their slingshot orbit to crash into the station even after the Covenant had cut the ship's engines off with laser fire. Whitcomb then ordered Spartan-117 to see what was left of the Covenant and then "hightail the Intel back to Earth." The last few seconds of visual and audio record from the Ascendant Justice showed the door crashing to the ground and the Admiral opening fire with an SMG. The reactors on the Unyielding Hierophant then overloaded and exploded, destroying the Ascendant Justice and over four hundred enemy vessels. Only a few Covenant ships survived the catastrophe and likely were part of the force that the Prophet of Regret lead to Earth soon after. Both Vice Admiral Danforth Whitcomb and Lieutenant Elias Haverson are listed as Killed in Action.

The Ascendant Justice's Slipspace drive allowed the UNSC Gettysburg to reach Earth and warn the UNSC leadership of the Covenant's plans to reach Earth. It is not currently known what has become of the Ascendant Justices Slipspace drive, though it is assumed that it was studied by UNSC technicians.

Only four members of the Ascendant Justice's original Covenant crew survived its capture. A Special Operations Elite who engaged the Master Chief in hand-to-hand combat was shot and pushed into an escape pod, and a few Engineers that were taken to Earth on the Gettysburg and were then turned over to ONI scientists.

Trivia

• Fans originally believed this vessel to be the flagship of the Fleet of Particular Justice, though this idea was contradicted by the Halo Graphic Novel story The Last Voyage of the Infinite Succor. In Halo: First Strike, the ship is suggested to be part of the Second Fleet of Homogenous Clarity protecting High Charity.

• When the Ascendant Justice first arrived at Reach in the greeting that Cortana received, someone called the 'Guardian of the Luminous Key' was supposed to be in command of the ship, according to the string of honorifics attached to the greeting. It is not possible that "Luminous Key" refers to the Index, the key for the activation of Halo, as Cortana had the Index and the Covenant had no way of knowing this.

• The Ascendant Justice's computer had a software replication program which allowed Cortana to make imperfect replications of herself, which made it easier to destroy the Unyielding Hierophant.

• Though Ascendant Justice contained a very small amount of combat personal, it was very heavily armed. Being part of the "advanced scout", it was likely used this way to attack enemy ships with little casualties, the many Huragok would have been assigned to make constant repairs.

• The Ascendant Justice's upgraded weapons, thanks to Cortana, seem to resemble the weapons of the unnamed supership at the Battle of Reach.

• While aboard, Cortana successfully completed the first known in-atmosphere slipspace jump, usually impossible due to the inter-lapping gravitation fields. This information was later leaked to the Covenant Fleet around Reach by the Covenant AI. The second was performed by the Prophet of Regret.

• The Covenant AI aboard the Ascendant Justice was the first of its kind to be discovered and after being found, was copied and deleted by Cortana
• Due to having the same length, purpose and ship armament, it is likely a Reverence-class Cruiser.