Herald-Class Colonial Support Ship

Commissioned in 2411, the Herald-class colonial support ships are among the longest-serving ships still in use in the UNSC Navy. Originally intended for use as colony ships, transporting colonists and terraforming gear, a number were appropriated by the Navy for conversion into troop transports, freighters and carriers. Today, only seven Herald-class ships remain in service serving as carriers, troop ships or orbital support craft, the last of their kind.
==Commission==
While the Odysseus-class colony ships had served the UNSC well since their construction in the 2300’s, advancements in construction and design technologies made them obsolete and the UNSC’s Department of Colonial Affairs began Project Lief Eriksson, releasing target criteria for civilian contractors to meet. Fourteen companies submitted proposals, though ultimately Sierra Space Systems won the bid, with their proposal of what would come to be the Herald-class, then known as the Mercury-class.
Initial construction was begun in 2402 at the Luna Commercial Shipyards, but it was eventually decided that the Reyes-McLees Naval Shipyards over Mars were better suited to the ships construction, using many components and design features found in contemporary military vessels. Initially, Sierra had planned to create three demonstration prototypes, but this number was reduced to two due to budgetary concerns. The titanium-vanadium superstructures were completed in 2407, with work beginning on the external hull and then fitting the rotating internal sections and installation of the engine room and thrusters finished by 2409. Several modifications to the original design were made during construction – the method of propulsion was switched from the Orion propulsion system to the then-standard chemical rockets for political reasons, and rudimentary point-defences weapons were installed, given the recent troubles with pirates and privateers among newly established colonies. Final fittings were completed in 2410, and the two prototypes were launched in 2411, christened the UNSC Herald and UNSC Mercury.
==History==
Between 2411 and 2460, more than fifty Herald-class colony ships would be commissioned to deal with the influx of colonists and the rapid expansion of the UNSC, pioneering new and innovative colonisation techniques. Some, such as the UNSC Tanngrisnir, took part in the colonisation efforts of several projects, making several journeys back and forth ferrying colonists, while others, like the UNSC Bilskirnir, were only used to colonise a single planet, its hull, and superstructure used in the establishment of the first settlement.
Through their decades of service, they gained a widespread reputation as unwieldy and clunky ships, requiring frequent maintenance and refits in order to remain at optimal efficiency. By the 2460’s, advances in construction and design technologies had allowed several breakthroughs to be made, rendering much of the Herald-class obsolete, as the Odysseus-class had been before. By the 2470’s, the Navy began searching for a replacement which would eventuate in the introduction of the Phoenix-class colony ships, and the decommissioning of Herald-class. Most of the ships were sold to civilian shipping or colonisation colonies, serving as freighters or transports. A small number were refurbished and used as luxury liners, while others were utilised as messenger ships, carrying data transmissions between star systems prior to the advent of the Hermes II Shaw-Fujikawa Space Transmission Array. Within a few decades, these too were replaced with newer and more efficient designs, most of them sold for scrap metal. The UNSC Navy purchased fourteen, converting them into troop transports for UNSC Marine Corps personnel, and augmented their offensive weaponry, and at least two, the UNSC Aeneas and the UNSC Ajax, served in Operation TREBUCHET, but the entire line had been removed from service by 2532.
Five survived decommissioning, and were retrofitted with state-of-the-art technology and weaponry, serving as testbeds for prototype ship classes. The UNSC Aeneas was the first of these to enter service, transporting the 427th and 88th Marine Regiments, the 506th ODST battalion, and the 43rd Naval Air Wing through the Pavo Prime and Minorca theatres of combat, serving with distinction in both theatres. The other four ships were pressed into service earlier than intended, due to the loss of Reach and the impending invasion of Earth by the Covenant.
	
==Design==
The Herald-class was originally designed as a colony ship, transporting up to a thousand colonists and terraforming equipment. It possessed fourteen hangar bays, carrying eight personnel transport shuttles. Spare hangars are able to be used as spare storage for supplies, spare equipment or terraforming gear. For rapid drops of equipment and supplies, the Herald-class designers developed what was supposed to be a revolutionary de-orbiting system – payloads were loaded into durable and dense canisters and released, entering the planet's atmosphere where they would be recovered by ground teams. Though ultimately unsuccessful, this system would later be the basis for the THOR weapon system. The number of hangars was deemed unnecessary for a civilian vessel, but enabled it to carry large payloads as a commercial/military vessel, with some converted for other uses, such as 
Originally, the herald-class was intended to be a colony ship. For long-duration journeys, holding a large number of human passengers would be extremely expensive, and a wastage of supplies and power. As such, the Herald-class was the first to incorporate cryonic storage facilities, allowing an efficient use of resources and internal capacity. Later versions would have these augmented, with onboard hydroponics-storage bays, recreation chambers and other nonessential areas converted into additional personnel storage. Freighters, requiring few actual crew members beyond navigators and engineers, had most of these areas converted into extra cargo facilities.
The class was originally meant to incorporate an Orion nuclear propulsion drive, but the public backlash against the perceived threat and political reasons forced a change in design, and the installation of conventional chemical rocket thrusters. Across the other axis of the ship, twelve RCS rockets were installed for control of the ship’s yaw, pitch and roll, in addition to four bow-mounted emergency thrusters for emergency deceleration and two emergency thrusters on the port side, starboard side, ventral and dorsal surfaces for emergency course corrections. During its later refit for military service, the Navy updated the thrusters for superior efficiency and during its 2550 refit, they were replaced entirely by more efficient Hall-Effect Thrusters. This makes it extremely agile in manoeuvres, though its considerable tonnage makes a slow accelerator.
The Heralds were fitted with five 50mm autocannons for point-defence against potential threats – asteroids or meteors that might damage the hull or radiators, privateer boarding craft, or missiles. Over time, more defences were added – Titanium-A battle plate augmented its hull exterior, while the addition of another five turrets and three archer missile pods added enough firepower to serve as a strong deterrent for any pirates foolish enough to mistake these ships for civilian freighters. After the class was phased out of service, most of these were removed as proprietary technology of the UNSC, and the ships operated by private enterprises were often unarmed except for the few that could afford to refit weapons to their acquisitions. The few that remained in military service received a drastic upgrade in 2549, serving as testbeds for newly developed technologies meant for introduction among the rest of the fleet. The UNSC Aeneas, for example, mounted two double-barrelled Magnetic Accelerator Cannons on its bow, a precursor to the Halcyon-class cruiser Pillar of Autumn’s repeat-fire MAC’s, as well as pivoting pulse-laser turrets mounted on its dorsal hull, twenty-six archer missile pods, and usually stocked three Shiva or HAVOK nuclear missiles. The Aeneas and the other refit Heralds were also fitted with the LX2 CEMFG, a condensed electromagnetic field generator, designed as a UNSC equivalent to Covenant energy shield technology, though operating using different principles entirely. Though innovative, it is scheduled to be replaced by actual shields in 2553, during Project EXCALIBUR, a modernisation effort throughout the fleet.
Internally, the main section originally consisted of a cylindrical rotating hull generating artificial gravity with g-forces. While effective, the advent of true artificial gravity rendered it obsolete by 2525, and most ships had gravity plating installed as standard. This led to some unconventional internal designs – corridors could suddenly reorient themselves, with gravity decided arbitrarily. What was the ceiling could become the floor, and vice versa. The five ships that underwent refit in 2549 were mostly gutted as part of their decommissioning, but were otherwise untouched, and were reconstructed in a more logical manner, with a vertical layering of the decks. The bridge is located at the bow, though a sensor tower protrudes from the dorsal hull, while engineering is located aft of the ship, just fore of the thrusters. Between then are the cargo, passenger, equipment and mess compartments, with hangars on the port and starboard sides carrying fighters and dropships or serving as additional storage.
==Variants==
*Civilian
**Colonisation (2411 – 2473)
**Freight (2473 - 2525)
**Message Runner (2473 - 2490)
**Luxury Liner (2473 - 2535)
*Military (2473 - 2552)
**(AP) Troop Transport (2473 - 2535)
**(AK) Freighter (2473 - 2535)
**CFV) Assault Carrier (2549 - 2552)
==Ships of The Line==
In total, Sierra Space Systems commissioned fifty nine of the Herald-class, selling them to civilian buyers or to the military. Thirteen of the first wave were scrapped before their completion to allow attention to be reallocated to the other twenty, and to speed up construction. The next wave was comprised of fourteen ships, and the last would have comprised a mere twelve, but these were scrapped before they could be finished, is readily apparent that the Heralds were deemed a spectacular failure. A number were appropriated by the military cheaply, while others were sold off to commercial contractors as freighters or message runners, though all but five were scrapped by 2535. The last five, the Aeneas, Ajax, Achilles, Hephaestus, and Poseidon, were modernised as part of Project EXCALIBUR.
===Prototypes===
Generally agreed by colonial enthusiasts to be unrepresentative of the overall class, the Herald and Mercury were some of the best ships of the day, meant as proof of the effectiveness of the class. The two were never used as colonisation vessels and were sold as luxury liners to Reach Cruisers. The two prototypes suffered none of the design flaws of their successors and were eventually appropriated and converted into hospital ships by the UNSC Navy Hospital Corps. Given the differences, they are usually not counted as Herald-class ships and continued to serve as mobile hospital ships up to 2552, when they were destroyed during the Fall of Reach.
*Herald
*Mercury
===First Wave (2420)===
The first wave was Sierra Space Systems' largest by far, including 33 ships. Intended to prove that the company was able to break into the interstellar colonisation industry, they had already decided to build forty ships, thought lack of accommodation at the Reach Naval Shipyards forced them to cut this number to thirty three. Another thirteen had to be discarded for budgetary costs, or due to accidents in construction - perhaps the earliest indication that Sierra was cutting corners in its hurried construction of the ships. The first wave was named after the warriors from the Illiad, establishing a strong Greek-theme for the class.
* Achilles
* Aeneas
* Agammemnon
* Agenor
* Ajax I
* Ajax II
* Asius
* Asteropaeus
* Automedon
* Cebriones
* Deiphobus
* Diomedes
* Eudoros
* Euphorbus
* Eurybates
* Eurypylus
* Glaucus
* Gorgythion
* Hektor
* Idomeneus
* Machaon
* Menelaus
* Mentes
* Meriones
* Ulysses
* Pandarus
* Paris
* Patroclus
* Phoenix
* Polydamas
* Sarpedon
* Sthenelus
* Teucer
===Second Wave (2445)===
The second wave was smaller, as the market was flooded with contemporary colony ship designs. The Herald class remained popular, but interest began to grow in the specialist craft - rather than the multipurpose colony ships, some companies began to use dedicated terraforming ships to establish a settlement, transporting colonists later on less expensive luxury liners. The second wave was named for Olympian gods.
* Aphrodite
* Apollo
* Ares
* Artemis
* Athena
* Demeter
* Dionysis
* Hades
* Hephaestus
* Hera
* Hermes
* Hestia
* Poseidon
* Zeus
===Third Wave (2466)===
By this time, demand for the herald-class colony ships dropped dramatically as reports of shoddy craftsmanship and constant accidents began to reach the ears of potential buyers. The last wave of the Herald class were all named for Greek Titans, perhaps ironically given that they were mothballed and scrapped before they could be completed.
* Oceanus
* Hephaestus
* Hera
* Hermes
* Oceanus
* Tethys
* Pyperion
* Theia
* Coeus
* Phoebe
* Cronus
* Rheia
* Mnemosyne
* Themis
* Crius
* Iapetus
==Quotes==
*“Jesus, these damn things are old! You’d think they’re more valuable as scrap metal, but no, FLEETCOM keeps these rust buckets in service to save costs. For the price of maintaining them, you could build three new Cruisers.”
*“From the outside, you can tell it was built in the 25th Century. The rotating section is still there, as well as the odd thruster layout. But once you get inside…well, its just as bad inside as out. The floors have ladders for zero-G conditions, bulkheads are manually operated, the engine room is a cavern – the list goes on!”
*“Most of the problems with the class were design flaws the architects hadn’t foreseen back then. Nobody had yet known that piracy would be as common as it is now, or that colony ships would be used as interstellar shuttles rather than one-way trips. They were never meant for prolonged use, and so it’s not a real surprise they started falling apart.”
*“All anyone has to say about the Heralds is bad things, and I guess I can understand that. But the modern Heralds are some of the best ships in the fleet – efficient, powerful, manoeuvrable and flexible.”
*"The Tanngrisner got turned into a space museum on Reach. I visited it in 2513, when I was just a kid. I never thought I'd get to command one, but, well, here we are." 
*"Megiddo, Thanatos, Ares IV, Minorca, Magog. All UNSC worlds colonised by Herald-class ships. Take note of Minorca and Ares IV - they were actually colonised by the Aeneas, which fought at both of them during the Great War. Kind of a coincidence, huh?"
Category:War of Vengeance
Category:UNSC Ship Classes
Category:Specops306
Category:Colony ship classes