- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
I’ve found a contradiction in the Halo books regarding the covenant shipboard plasma weapons.
In the Fall of Reach, when the Covenant were attacking Reach and attempting to take out Reach’s orbital defence platforms, a number of covenant ships performed slip space jumps into a close orbit of Reach. In other words, these ships sneaked behind the defences the UNSC had stationed around Reach – they had jumped directly into the midst of the orbital defence platforms. These Covenant ship were quickly destroyed by the combined firepower of the UNSC’s ships and defence platforms, but not before they unleashed a volley of plasma torpedoes at the orbital defence platforms. These plasma torpedoes continued toward the orbital defence platforms, even though their originating ships had already been destroyed.
In order to understand the discrepancy, we have to understand how covenant ship board plasma weapons work. Covenant plasma torpedoes are not torpedoes in the sense where it contains a warhead, an engine, and guiding mechanisms. They are blobs of superheated matter, or plasma, which are guided by electromagnetic energy produced by the covenant ships. To launch a plasma torpedo, Covenant plasma turrets produces the plasma, release it, and then squeeze it into a “bubble” of plasma with electromagnetic fields. This “bubble” can them be guided toward enemy ships by altering the electromagnetic energy that is holding the bubble together. In other words, the Covenant plasma torpedoes would simply “disperse” into space if the electromagnetic field is removed. In fact, this is exactly what happened during the First Strike.
During a chapter of the Fall of Reach, the captured Covenant flagship (the Ascendant Justice) commanded by the Master Chief comes under attack by a number of Covenant ships. One of these ships fires a plasma torpedo at the Ascendant Justice, but is immediately destroyed. Due to the destruction of its originating ship, the plasma torpedo heading toward the Ascendant Justice disperses into space.
Here’s the problem – if the covenant plasma torpedoes cannot retain their integrity without the electromagnetic fields produced by their originating ships, them how did the plasma torpedoes destroy a number of Reach’s orbital defence platforms, even though their originating ship had already been destroyed?
Is it possible that the sections of the covenant ships that generate the electromagnetic fields remained intact after the destruction of the ships, and continued to guide the plasma torpedoes to their target? In my opinion, this possibility should be ruled out for 2 reasons:
First, weapons systems aboard any ship, Covenant or human, require immense amounts of energy to operate – energy that is simply unavailable, considering that the Covenant ships had been severely damaged. In this case, severely damaged is probably an extreme understatement, which brings us to the second reason. This is the manner in which the Fall of Reach describes the destruction of the Covenant ships: quote “As soon as they exited slipstream space, a white hot line streaked across the blackness. A super MAC gun (from one of the orbital defence platforms) had targeted then and fired. The Covenant ship only existed for a moment longer. Its shields flashed and the hull blasted into fragments” Later… “The orbital MAC guns fired again, a streak of silver and the port Covenant vessel shattered, a split second later the starboard ship exploded, too… but their plasma torpedoes continued toward their targets, splashing across two of the orbital defence platforms. The guns melted and collapsed into boiling molten spheres in the microgravity…” Considering the degree of destruction the Covenant ships experienced (note the used of the words “shattered” and “exploded”), it is extremely unlikely that any part of them could have survived, let alone guide the plasma torpedoes.
But how is it, then, that the plasma torpedoes destroyed their targets, given that the First Strike tell us that plasma torpedoes simply “disperse” when not guided by their originating ships?
Discuss…