Suan Halder

Standing at 5’8” with a slender, lithe frame, Suan is built more like a runner than a soldier. Her skin is pale, mainly from long years aboard warships, while the lengthy, brown hair is kept in a ponytail. Suan’s face is angular, full of severe lines and deep-cut frown lines, while her posture is much of the same. She is not one to relax easily. Suan prefers to wear a the Imperial gray uniform of the Navy bereft of whatever medals and honors she has accrued over her years in the service, having only the rank insignia plaque to show that she is, indeed, an Admiral.

Uncompromising, hard-charging, and aggressive both in person and upon the fields of battle, Admiral Halder’s by no means an officer to allow her enemies to dictate the violence of action. To take the battle and destroy the enemy, one must act first and act fully, wholly, and through this she has developed into the officer seen now. Preference is taken to lead from the front; if subordinates cannot do the job at hand or the job at hand is simply too important to allow one’s attention to deviate elsewhere, there is no hesitation to be there and command there. As such, it is more common than most for Adm. Halder to be seen aboard vessels which are not her own, observing the battle and commanding the fleet.

In some ways inspiring, the woman has built a reputation as a sailor’s officer, one who lacks the refined natures of High Coruscanti society or Kuati custom. She speaks her mind and her mind is quite often more vulgar than most others would expect. This is only reinforced through her speeches, undeniably effective and undeniably in the style of a soldier’s speech. To those same soldiers and sailors Halder holds to high standards; a soldier is a soldier, no matter the circumstance, and quality of work, professionalism in action, and economy of motion are valued. If she demands the impossible it is merely, in her mind, that the soldiers underestimate themselves and what they are capable of doing.

Biography:
Born on Carida, Suan would receive what can charitably called a ‘traditional’ style of education. With parents involved directly with the GAR Supply Corps as civil quartermasters for construction procurement, she led a rather normal life with the few exceptions of going to the bunkers during the Clone Wars. She was too young to fully remember such incidents as the attack on space station Valor, but she would remember the start of the Galactic Empire as a child, the time when her parents switched out uniforms, when things were built on the planet at a rapid pace. The Academy was restructured and rebranded for the Imperial Stormtrooper Corps as well as, later on, the Storm Commando School. On Carida, when one lacked the funds to go to any sort of University one invariably would go into the military; it was simply the natural thing to do.

She would go to the Academy at age 18, finding herself at odds with the rigid hierarchy and structure of the storied institution. Simulations and war games would reveal a propensity to adapt to challenges instead of imitating past tactics and strategies, something her professors would loath, such as tendencies to utilize environmental aspects to her advantage. More infamous would be the brief moments wherein she would be granted control over Victory I-class vessels and other similarly missile-based warships, a tendency to utilize vast missile strikes in unpowered approach, often concealed through nebulas and the like, against enemy forces. When given the final assignment, that of being in command of a heavily damaged Venator-class in fighting retreat against CIS fighters, bombers, and warships, Suan would go against normal standards and pushed her vessel into an asteroid field, firing on the same in order to generate bursts of makeshift flak before eventually ramming the CIS Lucrehulk-class. All in all a 70% crew casualty rating, nearly destroyed vessel with all hangars vented and unusable, and passing score. Suan would be commissioned and, now an Ensign, be transferred to the Resentful, an older Acclamator-class assault ship on the Outer Rim.

On that vessel Halder would cycle through a variety of roles, first being Division Officer for the warship’s Electrical Division, the Electro, where she provided for a full overhaul of the maintenance scheduling system before commencing and helping with rewiring and maintaining for 30% of the vessel’s electrical systems. The Resentful had been somewhat neglected under the prior Electro, mainly due to a lack of maintenance periods available, and Halder was determined to fix that. She heeded the advice of her experienced NCOs, enabling their ad hoc and jury-rigged repairs. Following this, she was assigned as the Communications Officer aboard and dealt with the miasma of problems which marked the vessel’s cryptological area.

It would only be when Halder, now a Lieutenant, was assigned to the vessel’s hangar operations that she finally found an area which was not perpetually issued. Her time aboard the Resentful, by and large, proved helpful to her career development and would see the young woman be sent to several command and carrier operations schools. Following this, she was promoted to the rank of Commander and assigned as X.O. to the Trident, an Imperial II-class frigate plying the Pabol Sleheyron, a hyperlane to the north of Hutt Space. There LT. Halder would find herself combating pirates and Hutt smugglers, working her Flight Officer, pilots, and maintenance crews relentlessly with a tireless regimen of patrols and strikes against such forces. In Halder’s mind, no weapon was better suited to the disjointed, undisciplined ranks of piracy than TIE squadrons, the Trident being simply only able to be in one location at any time; it was ill-suited to the task at hand. Through her leadership and initiative, new tactics for the countering of pirate snub fighters would be developed. Such tactics relied upon the coordination of fighter squadrons and wingmates, the glory for a singular pilot significantly lessened as a conscious result. The X.O. desired tools of war, people who destroyed the enemy and came back alive, not a few singular glory-seekers, and despite this drew heavy criticism from those same pilots. After several years in that position, the old C.O. transferred out to Coruscant for his retirement leave and Halder became that position. It was just in time for a resurgence in activity, the awakening of a new-born Rebellion.

The Trident, despite being an older vessel from a different war, operated well against initial Rebel forces. Disposable enough to be utilized as an escort for Imperial convoys it would fill that very role; most of the early Rebel pilots operated the very same fighter craft her pilots were trained to destroy, fought in the same tactics those pirates fought in, and as a result the Trident’s pilots accumulated a rapid reputation for being unusually lethal against the new enemy of the Empire. Such was that reputation that, once it was looked-into as to why they were performing in such a well-oiled manner, CMDR. Halder would be recalled to Kuat where she was both promoted and assigned to an Imperial I-class Star Destroyer fresh from the shipyard, the ISD-Polemarch. As commanding officer of that vessel, Halder continued to pursue the enemy wherever they might before they struck back. Her focus shifted from the guarding of convoys to the preemptive destruction of Rebel staging grounds, of engaging them at their heart.

To this effect, it would be several months before Halder bagged her first station, an asteroid outpost which had been carved out by raiders on the Kessel Run. It would be destroyed by the ISD’s bomber squadrons, not her turbolasers, forgoing normal conventions in favor of Halder’s previous tactics. After some months with success against Rebel forces, the enemy normally not having any vessels greater in magnitude than a gunship and therefore being easily dispatched by the ISD and her fighter wing, the Polemarch was transferred out for guard duty above the planet Kashyyyk. Seen as an easy duty, Halder took the time this gave her to drill the warship’s crews relentlessly in combat maneuvers, long range gunnery, and in executing rapid “small craft dumps” or quick-launches. The blatant slavery on the planet’s surface was, to the CAPT., neither her issue, nor her purview, nor was she in a position to change it. While the Wookie was most certainly not an equal to the Human, living among the trees and developing not an ounce of spacecraft, they were not animals either. In her mind, it was Humanity’s burden to uplift them, to better them, to strengthen them as the smith strengthens the blade. They were a challenge in creation and, in subjugating them, the challenge had been wasted away and new enemies had been made in the process. The Trandoshans, by contrast, were a putrid mess of a race, barbarians all. It was disgusting for Halder that she had to work with some of them, something she kept at arm’s length whenever possible and a blaster always nearby.

After some years there with little to show for it, CAPT. Halder was eager to get back into the fight. She would get that chance when the ISD-Polemarch was transferred out to Tarisian space to deal with a growing insurgent and pirate group there. While en-route, the ISD would receive a distress call from an Imperial supply convoy. Jumping into range, she found a squadron of converted freighters and fighters attacking a half dozen Action IV freighters, the Gozanti-class escort already critically damaged and venting fuel about itself. What resulted was perhaps one of the most one-sided engagements Halder had ever had the pleasure of participating in, the Polemarch launching her fighter wing, in full, within thirty seconds while the gunners scored their first hits with the second salvo. Needless to say the converted freighters were little to no match for the heavy Imperial turbolasers, crumpling under the impacts. Restraint was shown, however, when two freighters were incapacitated by TIE/ln fighters and brought in under tractor beam. The crews, in typical Imperial fashion, were first interrogated for information before being tortured; CAPT. Halder had neither the time nor the inclination to take her time in simply questioning them. She wanted her answers.

The result of the interrogations, as supervised by the ISB, was information about the Aquaris Freeholders. A group of pirates, they were based from a planet of that very same name. The Polemarch requested immediate permission for a punitive action against the water planet; there were no continents there, no actual civilization, only pirates and therefore the ROE was significantly different. The local Moff consented, seeing it as a benefit only with nothing going against him, and before ever reaching Taris the ISD made her detour. Entering the system and launching fighters, she engaged the fleet of small vessels and three frigates which awaited her, destroying them in a conventional, pitched battle before a long, arduous process was made reality. A Base Delta Zero was executed on the planet Aquaris, the oceans boiling, the atmosphere burning, and Halder had gotten, taken her chance to deal damage back to the enemies of the Empire. The time at Taris was fruitful, through in reality merely served to place Halder and her vessel within the interests of some above her. When the Battle of Yavin occurred, the ISD was nowhere near it. The repercussions would be felt nonetheless. After some months, the operational tempo increasing, Death Squadron found the aggression and talent upon the Polemarch as useful to their needs and took the warship under that command.

Under the operational command of Death Squadron, Halder and her Polemarch participated in the Raid on Syvris shadowport in 3 ABY as well as, later on, the Battle of Hoth and Battle of Endor. At Hoth, her crew would not experience action as it was not within range to the fleeing Rebels to reach them in time, though the vessel’s fighters would provide screening for transports going to the surface, while at Endor she found far more action. There, the Polemarch would engage a Neutron Star-class and two Quasar Fire-class carriers in tandem with a Tartan-class vessel. Despite destroying the cruiser and mortally damaging the carriers, her own Star Destroyer received heavy damage by Rebel bomber squadrons which had punched through her overwhelmed fighter wing. As a result, along with multiple other ISDs from Death Squadron, Halder would be among those who transferred over to the command of ADM. Blitzer Harrsk. There, another chapter to her story would begin as Halder, unsatisfied with the tarrying nature of the Admiral and having been elevated to Admiral due to casualties sustained at Endor, worked on her own designs for a true, effective Imperial fighting force. It only would become worse when Harrsk named the fleet Zero Command and himself a self-indulgent, overblown title. She had no desire for fools in the fleet.

Since then, she has elevated herself to command of Titan and, today, stands as what many describe as an Imperial Warlord. Halder’s intentions are anything but.