The Imperial officer sat on a bench seat on the starboard side of the Shuttle's passenger compartment. Shed of his armor, his uniform was rumpled and dirty, his black hair was unkempt from the sweat and the helmet, and his pale face streaked with dust and grime from the mission. His brown eyes closed, he was silent and engrossed in thought as he replayed the operation in his mind, taking note of everything that was done right, and everything that could have been done better. As always, the latter was a long, sobering list. He drew a metal box from the inside breast pocket of his tunic, and opened it, withdrawing a cigarra. He absentmindedly stuck it between his lips and lit it with a small pocket torch, inhaling deeply the first cloud of tabac. He exhaled the smoke in a sigh as one of the scout troopers sat down beside him.

"Another successful mission, Commander Tharcourt." The trooper commented, removing his helmet. The soldier, a tanned man in his early twenties with short black hair and dark eyes, placed his helmet beside him and leaned back against the bulwark. The officer nodded and glanced at the trooper. Sergeant Rix Felian was quite possibly one of the best trackers in the Imperial Military. He hailed from some forested Mid Rim planet that Commander Drakken Tharcourt couldn't remember. The Imperial Special Forces commander had his suspicions from the man's appearance and skill that the Scout was the son of some clone veteran. Not that it mattered. Felian was the squad member charged with tracking the unit's quarry, either electronically, physically or both. This made him the de-facto second in command up until the team assaulted the enemy. Then Sergeant Daraay took over the role as Tharcourt's right hand. That was how this new special unit worked; everyone was a specialist, and whoever had the expertise in a situation was in charge. Save for Tharcourt. He was always in charge…nominally. This made him smile. He took another drag from his cigarra.

"We could've been more prepared to move the ordnance after the takedown." The commander noted out loud. "Of course, it would have been kriffing impossible to sneak a hover cart into position. And on the same track, it was a mess trying to maintain cover after the shooting stopped. We were in the middle of a well-populated town, so that much couldn't be helped, unless we wanted to glaze the whole neighborhood from high orbit."

"And…that defeats the purpose of a precision unit." Felian stated with a raised eyebow.

"Exactly. Sometimes things like this can't be helped." Tharcourt commented. "Just have to eat it and tab on."

"Bright side, we hit the insurgents hard and caught them completely unaware." Sergeant Daraay stated from her bench across the floor from the commander. "We're getting better at seizing the initiative quickly." She gave a confident grin. "Comes with experience."

"And I'm sure we will all soon be on your level of combat experience sergeant." Tharcourt commented dryly with a smirk. The death trooper shrugged innocently and sat back on the bench. Meeka Daraay was a strange one, Tharcourt believed. Eight Hundred death troopers, and only twenty were female. Not to disparage the ability of women in combat roles, Drakken Tharcourt mused. Just not many women…or men…or other sentient species wanted to be in the death trooper corps. They were the definition of intense. He had vetted and handpicked all of the members of the unit. It was a stipulation he had badgered Moff Tarkin's office into accepting, stating that it was 'necessary for efficient operations and unit discipline'. The Eriadu Moff must have seen those words personally, because the request was granted immediately.

After reviewing personnel records for days, Felian and TKM-371, a stormtrooper medic from the 501st were Tharcourt's first two choices. Felian was an expert tracker. The medic, a trooper named Recho Dall, had once saved a wounded lieutenant by using an unconventional and low-tech direct person-to-person transfusion. His ability to improvise in the field made him a logical choice for an unconventional warfare unit who would often be operating far from supply and logistics structures. Sergeant Daraay was a wildcard. She was the first of the team to actively apply for a position. Somehow, she knew the unit was being put together. Given the death trooper corps' relationship with Imperial Intelligence, that much wasn't a surprise. The unit was slated to be essentially a patchwork made up of soldiers from different units and branches, maybe it was inevitable that a death trooper would be included, if just to showcase their versatility. Daraay had said that it was mostly classified, but that it had been on a voluntary basis, and she had insisted on it being her. Then, the commander had reviewed her file. He remembered the exasperated feeling of seeing a personnel file which read as follows:

Name: Meeka Daraay

Birth Name: Redacted

Date of Birth: Redacted

Planet/System of Birth: Redacted

Date of Enlistment: Redacted

Unit Assignment: Stormtrooper Corps/Special Assignment/Classified

Commanding Officer: Classified

Medical History: Classified

Rank: Platoon Weapons Sergeant

Specialized Training: Close Quarters -Redacted- ; Long R-REDACTED- ; Espio-REDACTED- ;

Software en-CLASSIFIED- ; heavy weapons ; explosives

It went on like this for five additional pages, with three pages dealing with her combat record being completely blacked out. Tharcourt decided immediately to accept the death trooper into the ranks of his fledgling counter-terrorism unit. As every good officer knows, if you don't have the security clearance to view a soldier's operational history, it means they are good.

His next pick was out of necessity on two levels. It had been stipulated that the unit must include representatives of both the Imperial Navy and the Imperial Army. It was a well-known fact, even if the Navy didn't accept the truth, that the Imperial Army had some of the best shooters in the galaxy. Out of the ranks of Imperial Army marksmen, the commander had narrowed his search to three individuals. When one was killed in action, it left two, and Tharcourt had chosen the one who had the most disciplinary infractions, a corporal named Reeso Gallen. His personnel file was intriguing.

Gallen had won the honor of 'longest combat shot on record' from his predecessor, then had won it from himself three months later. He had a total of 34 combat missions under his belt, in which he was engaged in a long-range scouting and sniper role for 28 of them, and as a designated marksman for the rest. He had also been dressed down by superiors five times, twice for nonregulation modifications to his blaster and scope, once for uniform modification 'not meeting Imperial standards' for creating a camouflage cloak, and twice for insubordination. The latter it turned out involved disagreements with commanding officers on how to employ long-range interdiction against leadership roles of the enemy. Feeling that this trooper would both aid the unit with his skills, as well as be more of a fit in a unit with less regulations, Tharcourt gave him an interview. Gallen it turned out was so fed up with what he called the 'discipline over competence' mentality of his old unit, that he was thinking about letting his term of enlistment (TOE) expire, and becoming an exhibition shooter.

"Why did you join the Imperial Army, corporal?" Commander Tharcourt had asked him. "Wanted to learn how to shoot?"

"No sir," Gallen had replied. "I could already shoot. I grew up with a blaster. I joined because I love to shoot, and the Imperial Army promised me free ammunition."

"You a sportsman, corporal?"

"Yes sir. I grew up on farmstead on Saleucami. Ever been? You have to shoot half the beasts there to eat, and the other half to keep from being eaten."

"Well, how would you like a job where you get free ammunition, choice of weapons, and a target-rich environment of radicals and terrorists?" Tharcourt asked, dangling a tempting carrot in front of the marksman.

"I think I'm your man, commander." Gallen replied with a salute.

From there, filling out the rest of the team was fairly straightforward. Ekks was a stormtrooper who had grown up as one of those infamous street urchins from Corellia. Tharcourt was both pleased and somewhat appalled at the fact that Ekks could steal anything. And anything could be a console screen from a crowded room, a chaincode ID chip from a suspected enemy informant's pocket, or a Corellian YT 1250 freighter from the docking bay where it was being repaired. This made him invaluable in case the team had to commandeer transportation or steal items or data for intel. It also made everyone in the team constantly guard their credits.

There were the two scout troopers that Felian had recommended. Jashin Mets and Yarzan 'Zip' Coleth. Both were good shots, good scouts, and both claimed to be the best speeder bike riders in the Navy. So Commander Tharcourt had picked them both. Daraay had been tasked with finding 'two of the best stormtroopers in the corps'. Her choices were sound. TK-994, called 'Walker' was a specialist in the 501st. He was trained not only as a stormtrooper, but as a driver for the AT-AT and AT-ST platforms.

HT-079, a young trooper named Hitster Lago was pulled from garrison duty on some desert world to join the team. He had grown up on some Outer Rim wasteland of a planet. What was its name? Tatooine or something of the sort. Until he looked into it, Drakken Tharcourt had only vaguely heard of the planet, and was sure it was in Hutt Space somewhere. Well it wasn't, it turned out, but close enough, as the world was practically owned by the syndicate. Lago had grown up there, the son of some poor, obscure shopkeep. Living on Tatooine, he had learned to speak decent enough Hutteese, some binary, an impressive amount of conversational Rylothian, and a bit of a strange chittering language called 'Jawaese'.

This had rounded out the ten-man team envisioned by Moff Tarkin, and brought to fruition by Commander Drakken Tharcourt, an officer who seemed to have little on his plate to other officers of his rank, mainly because of his involvement in 'Special Projects', which kept him from the rigors of ship command and clerical work that most Lieutenants, Commanders and Captains in the Imperial Navy experienced. Kept in offices, training arenas, schools and lecture halls for nearly all of the last 10 years of his career, the tall, black-haired officer had been mostly present on his last Star Destroyer of assignment in name only, and barely a blip on the radar of everyone aboard the Accuser.

Then again, it seemed as though he had been training for his current job his entire life. At six feet tall, with a medium build, dark brown eyes, a well-kempt moustache and a short goatee, he looked the part of a combat officer. His black hair, which had recently been showing the slightest strands of silver, was always kept extremely short on the sides, with enough of a mop on top to part if he wanted to look presentable. Otherwise, it was usually covered by his cap, so it was one less thing to worry about. Always carrying his issue RK-3 blaster pistol in a leg holster, even on board the ISD he was stationed on, most officers assumed he was some ISB or vessel security commander without bothering to ask.

The obscure officer from Garos IV had started his career eighteen years earlier on his homeworld. A self-sufficient world, Garos IV lacked the political and economic reliance on other worlds that tended to draw many systems into deep relationships with other parties. Still, like nearly all worlds throughout the galaxy, Garos had been sucked into the Clone Wars while still reeling from a deep rift within its own society. A civil war inside a civil war. A young Drakken had watched the Clone Troopers and battle droids annihilate one another and lay waste to portions of his city and the beautiful forests and glens nearby.

That had been enough to make the fifteen-year-old want to fight. His were a strong-willed people who took care of themselves and each other. He had soon after joined a paramilitary group who conducted small-scale raids and attacks against the occupying forces, even after his government had ceded to the Separatists. This is the world Drakken Tharcourt had come to age in. And he had learned not only to fight, but to be smart about it early on. His insistence on fighting the enemy 'hotly…but smartly', along with his connection to one of the wealthier land-owning families of the planet, had seen him earn promotion to a junior commander in the resistance forces by the time the war had ended, and the Empire had expunged the last of the Separatist forces from his home world.

Being firmly locked into Separatist Space until the rise of the Empire, Garos was soon forgotten by and large, and left to deal with its own internal turmoil. Already drawn into the life of a soldier, Tharcourt volunteered for service in the new Galactic Empire. He had enlisted in the Imperial Academy, who at first was hesitant to accept him, coming from a former Separatist world. His credentials of having served as a resistance leader against the droid army, as well as his connections in his planet's aristocracy finally prevailed. He was brought into the academy, where his will and ability to improvise and think quickly on his feet often overshadowed any shortcomings he had, especially in more technical matters.

Completing academy with mediocre scores in everything except combat and leadership, his next step was the same as that of any other newly commissioned officer graduating from training with the rank of ensign. He was placed under a junior officer to act as a sort of adjutant or personal assistant. This position was for some, a great experience for the new ensign, allowing them to learn from a professional and experienced officer and get a feel for their surroundings gradually. For others, it was a nightmare; being placed under overbearing and sycophantic officers who treated ensigns like unwanted hangers-on, and who threw them in the deep end to sink or swim. Fortunately, Ensign Tharcourt was among the former.

His first duty assignment was on a Venator under a young Lieutenant named Firmus Piett. Also being from a formerly Separatist-controlled world, and sharing many common interests, the two struck up an odd friendship, with Piett truly taking the younger Tharcourt under his wing and showing him not only how to command, but how to navigate and avoid the complicated world of Imperial politics and the convoluted web of Imperial military rank structure and jurisdictions. Off duty or on leave, the two would often take trips to officer's clubs or spar in Imperial training facilities. On the clock, Piett would sternly but fairly push Tharcourt to the limits of his mental abilities, often giving him contradicting orders just to see how he would carry them out. This sort of exercise strengthened Tharcourt's ability to make quick, decisive decisions on the fly. When he failed, Lieutenant Piett would chastise him. Not for failing, but for failing to find a way to win.

"You must always find a workable way to perform your duty, even if there is no obvious way to do so." Piett told him time and again. And so for a year, Firmus Piett had taught his apprentice how to be a good officer in the Imperial war machine, and had even challenged Tharcourt to use his natural instincts and past experience in the Clone Wars to his advantage, encouraging the young officer to think outside of the box to solve problems. One day, just after Piett got promoted to captain, he could see the writing on the wall. He would be promoted and reassigned, and Tharcourt was due to get his junior lieutenant assignment soon. He sat his protégé down, and over tea, gave him a deeply philosophical speech.

"Your superiors will always be watching you, waiting for you to fail. If you do so regularly enough, you will lose any chance at advancement or a good assignment. That's not all, Drakken. Your subordinates will be watching too, seeing if they can exploit some failure or weakness on your part to climb over you. Once you become a mere rung on the ladder to officers clamoring for promotion, using you as an excuse for their failures, it will be a bloody stampede over your miserable body." Firmus continued after a moment. "This doesn't mean you should act in that way. Nothing good comes from a political officer. With command comes responsibility. Only disciplined and intelligent men and women deserve that responsibility…and can handle it. You are one of these, and I do believe that. But don't jeopardize your future by wrecking others' careers." He took a sip of his tea.

"You can, however make damn sure that these kinds of officers have enough rope to hang themselves with, if you play your cards right. Let them blunder into their own destruction, and just…fail to stop them. Then all you have to do is make certain that you don't foul up like they did. Don't think you will though. Know what it means to be a good officer, Drakken?"

"Do right by the people over you, do right by the people under you, and stay your post till the bitter end, sir." Tharcourt answered directly.

"Good man." Piett replied. "I'm sure we'll see each other again. Maybe at the top. One of us is bound to be an admiral one day."

Drakken had spent the next eight years intentionally skipping between different commands. Garrison duty, commanding a weapons arsenal, and a brief tour of duty on Mimban, where Tharcourt found himself in a fierce firefight for the first time since the Clone Wars. He soon after requested transfer to a new Imperial-Class Star Destroyer, the Furor and was accepted. Once on board, he was approached by Commander Firth, the officer in charge of the stormtrooper contingent on the ship. Firth had asked if Tharcourt was interested in heading up a platoon of his troopers. The (then) senior lieutenant accepted, and was whisked off to training for the next six weeks to learn how to command stormtroopers in the field, which Tharcourt was sure had been covered when he had been in academy. Once he returned to The Furor, he was immediately placed in charge of a platoon. Two weeks later, he was dropped onto a planet named Lothal under cover of darkness with a platoon of troopers, two scout troopers with their speeder bikes, and a crate of communications and long-distance observation equipment. His simple briefing beforehand was;

"Various revolutionaries and terrorists are suspected to be working on Lothal. You are to patrol the lands 20 kilometers east of the capitol. Report any findings at once. If you come into contact with any seditionists, you are authorized to use lethal force."

It was here that Tharcourt felt oddly at home, scouting the terrain, stopping anyone out in the wildlands to search and question them, and honing skills that would enable him to confront potential insurgents. He remembered his time back on Garos IV when he himself was the insurgent…the terrorist. He tried to get his men into the mindset not of soldiers of a vast and powerful empire, but of the lowly guerilla. He taught them to think more like a resistance fighter so they could best predict where their quarry would be. In six months, they made several arrests, uncovered two caches of weapons and food hidden in caves, and got into an intense firefight with a band of rebels that left two of Tharcourt's troopers dead and three wounded. The insurgents had a gunship at their disposal, and one hell of a good pilot. They were easily able to escape.

Soon after, Tharcourt was brought back aboard the ship, operations on Lothal being handed off to an ISB agent, and eventually Admiral Thrawn himself. Lieutenant Tharcourt spent the next six months with a volunteer workshop of Imperial officers and ISB agents who threw around ideas and wrote papers on asymmetrical warfare, and how the Empire should respond to small bands of resistance fighters. The Tarkin Doctrine was bandied about by many high-ranking officers, while Tharcourt found himself in a group of experienced soldier-officers, like the fiery captain Antone Gal, Captain Rae Sloane, the lone female officer in the bunch, and who only came to about half of the meetings due to the rigors of duty, and the extremely tactical-minded Major Maximillian Veers. These dissidents believed in surgical strikes against such enemies rather than the 'orbital bombardment to kill a blade of grass' approach, and they constantly prompted debates to that end. It was only when Admiral Thrawn himself had visited the sessions a few times that Tharcourt and his band of miscreants had any real power on their side. The Chiss Admiral was a seasoned expert on hunting rebel bands, and agreed that a more surreptitious and precise method was needed for such things. It was here that the seeds were planted for the Imperial Special Forces Units that would soon become common in the future rebellion.

After the brainstorming session ended, Tharcourt again found himself aboard The Furor…for all of three months. He was summoned to meet with Moff Tarkin himself, at which point, Tharcourt wasn't sure if he was being commended or executed. In fact, the Outer Rim governor was interested in setting up a training facility onboard another ISD to train officers and NCO's in guerilla and counter-guerilla operations. Tarkin asked Tharcourt to help train the instructors and set up the program. He accepted, and was promoted on the spot to Captain, and sent on his way. He spent the next year setting up a training program alongside eight more officers who had varying degrees of experience in Guerilla Warfare. Once the school was in operation and the first batch of trainees were initiated, Tharcourt was sent back to The Furor, where he was put in charge of shipboard security and boarding operations for the next year.

Then the fateful day arrived when he was brought aboard The Accuser. Captain Tharcourt had no idea why he was being transferred to another Star Destroyer, nor how much the lateral transfer would change his life. With his luggage being unloaded in the hanger of the new ISD, and the irritating procedures of having orderlies 'take your kit to the proper deck and suite', Tharcourt couldn't wait to see what idiot had pulled him out of a perfectly glum assignment of boarding pirate ships and interrogating prisoners, to nab him for a station on this shiny new vessel in the Mid Rim. He had no sooner reached his quarters, when the culprit revealed himself.

"Captain Tharcourt! Well you're quickly catching up to me, old man." Drakken spun about to see a familiar face.

"Firmus Piett." He stated, noticing the man's rank plaque and code cylinders. He saluted. "Commander Piett now. I take it you travelled a direct route to your position, huh? I took a more…winding road, I think."

"So I've heard." Piett agreed.

"I assume I have you to blame for my being here?" Drakken said with a mocking smile. "Just when The Furor was growing on me." Piett stepped close and leaned in.

"You mean it was growing on you as the rust and mynocks were growing on The Furor?" Commander Piett jested. "This is a much better ship. And no, I may have pulled some strings to get you here, but the real reason you are on board is that the Empire wanted someone on board with…technical expertise on insurgencies. This ship is to be used for duties befitting someone of your talents, my old friend."

"Meaning…" Drakken fished. Piett sighed.

"We need you to supervise all counter-insurgency operations conducted by this ship…in a way…ahem…" Captain Tharcourt raised an eyebrow.

"I'm terribly frightened now." He said dryly. Piett gave his old subordinate a friendly slap on the arm.

"Don't be. Get settled in. Explore around and get a feel for a real ship. I have work to attend to. Meet me tomorrow at 14:00 in the officer's briefing room. Full dress. You'll um…likely meet with people in positions of high authority, so be prepared for that." Drakken gave Piett a friendly nod, then came to attention and saluted.

"Sir."

Yes, the story began with a time-skip. Now you get to see the humble beginnings of Tharcourt's Tier-1 unit, and their missions and misadventures through the universe of Star Wars. Now that the story has truly begun, I do hope all of you find this as enjoyable to read as it has been for me to write. I will try to have a chapter posted every day from here on out, so you don't have to wait a galactic-standard-year between chapters. I would love to hear from you all as well, whether you want to compliment or condemn my writing style or my characters. I've always enjoyed feedback from my audience in the form of reviews, questions or just to chit-chat. Also, the story thumbnail is a rare photograph of Commander Drakken Tharcourt, taken just after a mission, in case you wanted to know what he looks like. New chapter soon, so don't touch that dial. -Drake