UNSC Hopeful

The UNSC Hopeful was a UNSC Research facility and mobile hospital.

Overview
The Hopeful was undoubtedly one of the oldest and most revered ships in the UNSC fleet. As of 2551, the ship had been damaged multiple times in engagements against the Covenant but had survived due to a mixture of luck, skill, and daring. It has been involved in eighteen naval battles with rebel forces and four encounters with the Covenant. Since at least 2525, it has been commanded by the legendary Vice Admiral Ysionris Jeromi. The ship has taken on near-mythical status to soldiers fighting on the front lines.

Unlike any other ship in the fleet, the station was built of two scrapped repair stations, each a square kilometer of plate, scaffolding, and cargo trams. The two plates had been connected to make an off-center "sandwich", which had become known to certain naval officers as 'the ugliest thing to ever float in zero-g' although many soldiers whom Kurt-051 spoke to and had been in the Hopeful describe her as 'the most beautiful thing ever to be seen'. Within the ship, a state of the art hospital was constructed.

Operational History
In 2495, the UNSC took control of the station and added six fusion reactors and a Shaw-Fujikawa Slipspace Drive, turning Hopeful into the largest mobile battlefield hospital in history. It had the facilities, doctors, and supplies to treat thousands of critically injured patients at a time. With the horrors of the Human-Covenant War taking their toll on the UNSC forces, the Hopeful was always busy. In many cases, the Hopeful was known to literally 'bring the dead back to life'.

In 2525, Dr. Catherine Halsey messaged her former instructor Admiral Ysionris Jeromi about a set of hypothetical augmentation experiments performed upon Bonobo Chimpanzees aboard the Hopeful, much to the displeasure Admiral Jeromi at the thought of such an experiment, concerning Dr. Halsey's upcoming SPARTAN-II Augmentations. The data presented to Dr. Halsey by the admiral was used by Halsey in the augmentations on the SPARTAN-II and SPARTAN-III soldiers.

In 2551, Spartan-III Gamma Company underwent their physical augmentations on board the Hopeful. The procedures had to be done in the utmost secrecy, so Vice Admiral Margaret O. Parangosky ordered that the ship park in Sector K-009, much to Jeromi's displeasure. The Hopeful's eventual fate is unknown. Also unknown is whether the previous Spartan-III company, Beta, underwent their augmentation procedures on board the Hopeful, although it is known that Alpha Company did so.

Trivia

 * The Hopeful as seen in the Birth of a Spartan trailer for Halo: Reach is quite faithful to its description in the books. It is made of two space stations which resemble Anchor 9, connected to make an off-center "sandwich".