Easterly-class migratory freighter

"Easterlies? We used to board those ships all the time. Bloody Eliza, what a mess that was. Some butterbar got it into his head that storming the ship through the gravity lift was the fastest way to take the bridge and engineering. That's true, but the gravity lift well runs between all the compartments. If the crew decides to put up a fight, they can come at you from all directions. Nowadays we board through a cargo hatch or poke a hole in the hull."

- SSgt Hep Armstrong, UNSC Marines, 93rd Marine Interdiction Unit

A migratory freighter is a large multi-compartment freighter built around a central gravity lift. Such vessels make long, winding journeys that can last years, wandering from one colony to the next before looping back around to a central trading hub.

Therefore, as many merchants boast, migratory freighters such as the Easterly knit the Covenant Empire together. The belief in the Forerunner and their mandate may be a unifying force, but it is the established trade routes that allow the worlds to specialize and become interdependent, rather than fragmenting into self-sufficient islands in a sea of stars.

Easterlies rarely stray far from a star system with a shipyard. However, because it is expensive to return to port for repairs, and such interruptions can cause the ship to miss the seasonal availability of trade goods, Easterly-class freighters are built for reliability. They may not boast the newest technology from High Charity, but they can last for a long time with minimal skilled maintenance. For this reason, most of the civilian ships that limped to the Strewn Shore were migratory freighters of one type or another, and they became a common sight in post-War UNSC territory.