Battle of Hollow Point

Sometimes romanticized as the “Last Stand of the Outer Colonies”, the Battle of Hollow Point was one of the last major battles in the Outer Colonies fought during the Human-Covenant War.

Prelude
Hollow Point was the last stop in the Outer Colonies before the Inner Colonies. It was once a booming mining world known as Arthur’s Point, with rich deposits of tantalum and titanium fueling mining operations throughout the system and its asteroid belts. But centuries of over-mining had hollowed out the planet’s wealth and the colony dried up, resulting in its name changing to Hollow Point.

By 2535, it had the dubious honor of being referred to as the “Last Outer Colony”, since the majority of the Outer Colonies at this point had been glassed or had gone dark. Though it was somewhat hyperbolic it was true that Hollow Point was one of the very last major human worlds before the Covenant reached the Inner Colonies. As a gateway world to the Inner Colonies, the planet was flooded by refugees fleeing from the Covenant. As the war drew closer the planet had also become a staging point for various UNSC fleets and ships returning to and from battles.

With the invasion of the Inner Colonies now inevitable, HIGHCOM ordered the Covenant delayed at Hollow Point at all costs while they redeploy their defenses. Vice Admiral Tera McBay was originally selected to lead the defense but she was killed in an ambush at the Scorpion Nebula so HIGHCOM reluctantly chose Rear Admiral George Elliot as her replacement.

Elliot was a hero in the Outer Colonies, a charismatic and experienced officer who had decades of combat experience against the Covenant and insight into their tactics. However, he was a regarded as a maverick, a former-CMA officer unpopular with the brass and politicians with a long history of disobeying orders and clear colonial loyalties. He had chosen to defend Outer Colony worlds against unwinnable odds whereas the UNSC would have abandoned rather than spend resources on. But someone like him could rally their forces and the colonists so HIGHCOM promoted him to Vice Admiral and gave him overall command of the defense.

Preparations
Elliot’s first issue was the state of his troops, the forces under his command were in ragged shape. Admiral Elliot had assembled a hodgepodge fleet cobbled together from various depleted fleets and broken battlegroups from surrounding systems. Many of those ships were from battlegroups returning from battles fought and lost with the Covenant. They were exhausted, depleted, and in desperate need of repair and rearmament. He had requested fresh forces to bolster his forces but received little from HIGHCOM. He asked for reinforcements from Epsilon Eridani or other Inner Colony bases but his requests were denied as most of the UNSC’s resources were being used to bolster the Inner Colonies for the inevitable invasion. Admiral Cole was sympathetic but his fleet was still scattered across several fronts and could do little to aid him. The only other Admiral he could count on for support was Vice Admiral Jean Mawikizi, who would lead his battle group in the nearby Theia system to split the Covenant’s forces.

He had two Cradle-class refit stations in his support fleet but they were insufficient to refit the whole fleet. The UNSC Hephaestus, a Phoenix-class vessel converted into a mobile repair yard arrived from Mawikizi’s battle group to assist. The Hephaestus could refit six frigates or destroyers and a cruiser at a time but this still wasn’t enough.

Morale among the soldiers and civilians was also dangerously low. The refugee population on Hollow Point was at critical mass and their desperation and fear were demoralizing their forces. Their over-flowing population was also draining their already scant resources. To help combat both problems Elliot levied the refugees for volunteers, offering lost and hopeless refugees a chance to contribute to the war effort and a chance for revenge. As a former colonial officer as well as a famous hero to the colonists, tens of thousands of homeless refugees volunteered to fight and Elliot was able to raise a large militia from them to bolster their forces. Many others who did not wish to fight still volunteered to help in the dockyards to repair their ships. With the near-limitless supply of fresh workers working around the clock, the repair crews were able to bring their fleet back to full combat readiness within days. This massive combined effort had helped to raise morale and restored hope to the defenders.

With their fleet beginning to resemble fighting-shape again, Elliot ordered the evacuation of the remaining refugee population on Hollow Point to. There they would be out of harm’s way when the Covenant arrived and they could now focus on the enemy. He hired dozens of independent ship captains to assist and tasked Rear Admiral Corrigan of the UNSC Odysseus and Battlegroup Whiskey-3 with escorting the refugees and colonists to the.

The Signal Corps would keep communications traffic in those systems busy as a red herring to keep the Covenant preoccupied a while longer.