National Holiday
From Halopedia, the Halo wiki
The National Holiday was a Human luxury liner starship in service in the mid-2520's [1]. The liner was attacked in 2524 by two unmanned orbital taxis sent by the human Insurrectionist organisation above the planet Reach. The liner was just completing its load-in of more that 1,500 civilian passengers on a charter tour departing for Arcadia. The liners captain thought that the taxis were bringing late arriving passengers, but when they were hailed and failed to comply with his docking commands, the captain tried to initiate evasive maneuvers. Unfortunately, due to the amount of explosives that were packed into the two taxis and the ensuing explosion, the National Holiday was unable to get far enough away and was torn in half. The captain, while unable maneuver, calmly directed other ships out of the path of the National Holiday before it dropped into the atmosphere of Reach, burning up the liner and killing all crew, personnel and passengers. The explosion was also large enough to burn away the hull paint of every other ship within a two kilometer radius.
Sources
- ^ Halo: Contact Harvest, p.127