An aggressive, territorial species of the Delphic Expanse who controlled a nebula containing the entrance to a subspace corridor that Enterprise NX-01 needed to reach its meeting with Degra in 2154.
The Kovaalans are a spacefaring species of the Delphic Expanse who guard their territory fiercely and attack ships that enter it. Their space includes a nebula that hides one end of a subspace corridor, a shortcut covering light years in minutes.
They feature in the Enterprise episode E². Captain Archer plans to use the corridor to reach a rendezvous with the Xindi scientist Degra, but a second Enterprise appears, crewed by the descendants of his own people. Its captain, Lorian, explains that in their history the corridor threw the ship back more than a century.
The two crews work together to modify the engines, and both ships fight their way past the Kovaalan vessels in the nebula. Archer's Enterprise passes through safely, while the fate of Lorian's ship is left unknown.