During this phase you can load your ships onto your carriers.  The ships to be loaded must be in the same sector as the intended carrier, which must have sufficient free rack space to hold the cargo ships.  Loaded ships cannot move under their own power, scan surrounding space, or attack other ships, with one exception: a missile can be fired only if it has been loaded onto a friendly carrier.  (See the Fire Guns phase for details.)
 
You can never load your ships onto a foreign carrier unless it is owned by one of your formal allies.  Both carrier and cargo empires must issue identical load orders; otherwise, the load action will fail.  If multiple allied empires are attempting to load cargo onto the same carrier, the carrier owner decides the order in which rack space is allocated.
 
If a carrier ship is destroyed all cargo ships loaded onto that carrier are also destroyed, regardless of DP.  If a loaded ship is self-destructed, it immediately destroys its carrier and any other cargo ships loaded onto that carrier.
 
Note that nested loads are prohibited, i.e., you cannot load cargo onto a carrier which is itself loaded onto a third ship.
 
Allies: Allied ships are the only foreign cargo that can be loaded.
 

Abandoned Empires: Abandoned missiles will be loaded onto any available friendly racks, starting with the missile having the most guns and the carrier having the most free racks, operational rating, and tonnage (sorted in that order).  Abandoned empires never submit load orders for allied ships.