They may not have been the biggest ships in the Covenant’s fleet, but the mighty CSO-class Supercarrier left a massive mark on the galaxy.
Descending from the clouds over the skies of Reach, the Long Night of Solace was many UNSC forces’ first (and last) impressions of the Covenant’s CSO-class Supercarrier. Also called Sh’wada-class, these vessels were mighty supercapital ships, each one more than capable of providing enough forces and firepower to facilitate the conquest and subsequent governing of an entire planet (or system in some cases).
The most famous of these was seen at Reach. But what makes these vessels terrifying? How do they manage to be flying a citadel and an attack carrier all at once? The answer lies somewhere during the Fourth Age of Conversion.
CSO-class Supercarrier – Design & Capabilities
Perhaps the single most impressive quality about the CSO-class Supercarrier was its size. Again, it wasn’t the largest of the Covenant ships (though it did come close), and it was designed for command and control and conquest and occupation. Its immense size meant that it could carry an advanced reactor capable of wielding a truly devastating array of diverse, heavy weaponry.
There were few problems that couldn’t be solved by the CSO’s array of 12 Urpeon-pattern superheavy plasma lances. Bristling with plasma lances, the CSO rivalled even Forerunner ships in terms of its superheavy energy weapons.
Indeed, a single CSO-class ship was estimated to have more than 100 plasma beam emitters of varying strength, including Ukk’wa-pattern heavy plasma beam arrays and Luxor-pattern heavy plasma beam emitters. But the plasma doesn’t stop there – these ships also carried 32 different silos capable of launching Mictix-pattern heavy plasma torpedos, allowing one of these vessels to take on an entire lesser fleet.
And that’s not even mentioning its close-in and ground-based weaponry as well, which included 800 R’Aka-pattern rapid-fire pulse lasers, and 490 Ferriel-pattern pulse lasers as well as the Covenant’s signature Lux-pattern superheavy excavation beam, which was mostly used to dig up Forerunner sites, but could quite readily be used as an orbital bombardment weapon par excellence.
The Long Night Of Solace
Perhaps the most infamous CSO-class vessel was the Long Night of Solace. This served as the flagship of the Fleet of Valiant Prudence. Commanded by Supreme Commander Rho ‘Barutamee, the Long Night of Solace lead the vanguard of the Covenant’s invasion of Reach. In the summer of 2552, the Long Night of Solace cloaked itself and a number of the other ships in the Fleet of Valiant Prudence, making landfall undetected and quickly setting out deployment spires and stealth pylons.
On August 12, when the UNSC launched its attack on the Covenant base in Viery, the Solace decloaked, and the UNSC realized just how dire the situation truly was. In its revelation, the Solace showed the true might of a CSO-class Supercarrier, destroying the UNSC Grafton and its escort in an intense volley.
Only the actions of a strike team of SPARTANs were able to destroy the ship. During a joint operation: UPPER CUT and LEFT JAB, the SPARTAN known as Jorge-052 was able to deliver an improvised bomb to the ship’s slipspace drive but had to sacrifice himself to ensure its destruction.
The resulting slipspace rift utterly destroyed the Long Night of Solace, where its wreckage remained throughout the post-war years. To this day, it is still an ominous blight on the scarred landscape of Reach.
The CSO-class Supercarrier proves that even being a big ship doesn’t make you immune to being killed by a SPARTAN!
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