The Spire Guard are one of the many governmental anomalies present throughout the Empire. They constitute both a defacto political rank as well as a proxy-Imperial academy for gifted prospects form the Callipsean Corridor.

Named for the enormous industrial space port on the garden world of Hyacinth, the Spire Guard constitute the premier combined arms fighting force in the Hyacinth system. While officially recognized as an arm of the Imperial Army, they have an independent training facility within. Upon admission to the unit, each recruit gains the honorific rank of 'Esquire' and enters the labyrinthine tangles of Hyacinth aristocracy. While the governor is nominally the honorary unit commander, they may freely take operational control of the unit, such as is the case of current Governor Dacette Zayer.

It is a standing myth within the local population that the white uniforms of the Spire Guard were the inspiration for the Imperial Stormtrooper Corps. Naturally, both the prestigious Imperial military arm, and the local Hyacinth Imperial army regiment have histories entirely independent of one another. Nevertheless, the 'First Legion' legend has considerable traction among the local pro-Imperial p opulation. Given the disproportionate number of Hyacinthians in the sector's military enlisted ranks, there is little reason for the Imperial authority to actively dissuade a supportive population.

Backed by an apocryphal history, an ingrained political affluence, and led personally by a reigning Imperial Governor, the Spire Guard are a well motivated and surprisingly competent unit.

The Sirpar Dragons come from the military fortress world of Anaxes, one of dozens of units churned out over the course of a standard year, each as high-quality as the last. The 228 ^th are merely the continuation of the older military units long preceding the rise of the Galactic empire, and have their roots in the classical Anaxes military caste. The 228 ^th embodies the the same iron discipline and codified tactical acumen which has allowed the Empire to exist. While many of their predecessors might disagree with the units current 'disposable' dogma, the 228 ^th has a reputation for getting the job done.

The unit owes its presence in the Sujimis sector to favours allegedly collected upon by Flag Captain Hackett. While it has not activated the entire unit, a full fighter group remains aboard the Interdictor Astral Claw , two fighter groups have been assigned to the Pegasus under Hackett's personal command. With the Dawnguard days away from its refit, and the approach of the Imperial battlegroup summoned by Admiral Kassik being sighted near Alzoc, the Ceknell subsector's dwindling military resources are prepared to received a considerable boost.

Operationally, the Sirpar Dragoons cooperate closely with the Lawbringers under Hackett's personal command, acting as a functional milti-role protection to the Lawbringer's heavy bomber group. In tandem, they are well equipped to hunting down and destroying the Lions of Korrell 's main fleet. Indeed, thanks to Kassik's choice in transferring all available Tie SA to the Lawbringers , the Sirpar Dragoons and the Lawbringers are the only operational units capable of conducting extended surface assaults.

'Grandfather' Perch had led them here, the infernal reaches of the riven moon of Dragal, the lifeless rock orbiting Hyacinth. Amid the ashen grey blastscape, mile high plumes of dust were kicked up as laser fire raked its surface. The Imperial patrol fleet tightened the noose, even now the Waywatcher prowled through the jet-black fields of razor sharp rock. It preyed upon the renegade's crude corvettes and freighters that lay moored among isolated crevasses. Those foolish few that had anchored against the cliff faces were already smouldering wrecks strewn across the crater floors and sprawling fields of jagged quartz.

Flashes of light marked where Tie advanced and X-wing met their doom among the pinnacle and pillars jutting up from the moon's pitted face. “Delta flight,” a tiny voice hissed across the congested comnet, “continue on your present course. Search and report back so the Lawbringers can make their attack run.”

Ghalt shot a look at the instrument panelling and artificial horizon. Red positional dots swam and danced, enemy contacts in their dozens. The scattered and disordered blips were threaded between the neatly arrayed rows of green. Peering out of the viewport, he kept an eye on the two strings of Tie bombers that Delta flight was responsible for. The ponderous bombers looked at ease, though here and there dual-hulled husks were scattered across the wastes. The whole arrayed formation sped out from amid the cover of a pool of dust, one that now shrouded the Waywatcher from sight.

“Delta three,” the voice of his acting commander' chimed in his ears, “take your wingman and go check out those rocky crags at two-o'clock low. I'm picking up sensor ghosts.”

“Copy that Delta lead.” Ghalt licked his lips, hearing the reverb from his flight helmet. “Delta four, roll out and break into search formation.”

“Sir,” the younger wingman acknowledged and followed suit when Ghalt banked his craft.

The two Bats broke from the group and crossed the open expanse over the desolate grey wastes. A dark maw of a canyon loomed up in front of them, and sure enough, there was a few flickering white blips somewhere deep inside the wending chasm.

“Keep your eyes open Delta four, there's something in there. Can't risk it being a few fruit-flies getting ready to take out the duelies” The canyon was a fair distance, but an A-wing or even an R-22 could cross that in a few seconds. A thousand-and-one possibilities raced through the pilot's analytical mind, but in the end he squinted and listened for anything disguised in the audio-feedback.

There was nothing, it was relatively quiet. In that gloomy silence, the two Ties ventured into the mouth of the yawning rift.

“Keep it loose and pick up your visual scanning.” Already the canyon was narrowing, being no more than twenty meters across with several sharp turns constricting it further. The jagged grey stone skimmed by unnervingly close at times, small clouds of debris and dirt forming little rippling rings on the deflector screen.

The Imperial pilot gazed up for an instant, intuitively hoping there wasn't a renegade fighter prowling above the cusp of the trench, but all he could see was a verdant globe and soft white streaks; Hyacinth was a garden, worlds apart from its barren moon.

Pallid grey spurs jutted from the crevasses walls like malformed teeth, ready to devour the unwary or negligent. Long splashes of black marred the walls, and several formations looked more like wreckage. “We could run out of space in here rea-”

“Heads up Delta three! Two marks at six-high!” his wingman warned.

Ghalt's head snapped back and shot a glance out the rear scope. Three wedge-shaped A-wings stalked the upper reaches of the canyon, their dull grey hulls camouflaged against the ashen walls. “Right, lets hope they don't see us.”

A yellow light flashed, “Delta three, missile lock,” the unconcerned electronic voice intoned.

“Hold on and throttle up!” Ghalt toggled his craft's engines as the first missile streamed past and exploded against the canyon wall. Scraps of rock and pulverized crystal expanded in a shimmering cloud as the Tie Advanced rasped over the rough surface.

Ghalt gritted his teeth and wrestled the yoke to steady his fighter. He grunted as the Tie finally freed itself from the wall in a flurry of sparks. The swift swerve to the side dodged a bracketing salvo of cannon fire, the renegade pilots were already ranging him in.

Even as a muttered curse passed his lips, a crackled voice whispered through the comnet, “Accelerate to attack speed and keep to starboard, prepare to bank hard to port.”

Any hesitation died the moment the missile lock klaxon bleated again.

“Sir?” his wingman chimed in.

Ghalt slammed the throttle up and listened to the engines protest, “Do it!”

The pair of fighters threaded the narrow canyon, swaying and staying to the right side as the shattered world rushed past in a colourless blurr.

The twist arrived more abruptly than expected. Ghalt instinctively leaned in, as if every single ounce of inertia was needed to keep the ship from bouncing off the opposite wall and exploding. In the end, that may as well have been the deciding factor as the solar panels raked across the wall in a wash of sparks and disintigrated crystal.

His wingman growled loudly but there was no explosion as they negotiated the hairpin turn. It was moments after that, his rear scope glowed red and orange as one of the red blips on his targeter disappeared.

“Good, full power to your aft deflectors.” The unidentified voice intoned.

He unquestioningly complied. The missile lock warning came too late; a blinding flash and ear-shattering bang left the pilot gasping and breathless. Ghalt's gaze left the canopy and focused on his hand. He flexed it experimentally on the flight yoke before looking down at his side.

A half meter wide section of the floot panelling had been shredded as if by some colossal claw. Silver spalling scraped the interior all around him as panels sparked as its mangled wire innards spewed out of the rents. All of it mattered little as his flightsuit was in much the same condition; crimson rivulets spilled out from wide gaps in the ribbing.

“-elta three! Ghalt! Pull up!”

Instinctively the Imperial pilot pulled back on the flight yoke and gasped as his side vehemently protested the sharp movement. The canyon wall rushed by in a sickening whirl scant few meters from the fighter. An explosion, a staccato chatter of cannon fire, he still made every attempt to let the Advance weave back and forth. The play in the peddles would have been concerning, but little of that filtered through the pain induced fugue.

The disembodied voice blathered on about something, but all Ghalt could focus on was the thump of his arythmic heartbeat and the cold chills running through his veins. The pilot blinked his eyes clear. They'd been spat out of the canyon and into a dimly lit cavern. It wasn't empty, a large hammer-headed ship floated in the void, silhouetting the entrance. Its enormous engine block hummed as it lazily listed to port and swung its fore towards the mouth of the cavern.

More by instinct than intent, Ghalt thumbed the trigger of the yoke and absently watched as the twin spirals of smoke hurtle towards the corvette. Its sensor dish and port turbolasers expanded outward in a breath of fire and debris. The stricken vessel shuddered again as another pair of missiles gutted its flank.

The debris clouds cleared as the fighters spat out from the canyon and into the void of space. Ghalt lazily rested back in his harness as the vast canvas of stars loomed overhead.

“-mmediate medical attention.... hit pretty bad.” Delta four's voice lazily registered in Ghalt's mind. Konata was always the kind of pilot to be worried about every little complication, this struck him as more of the same.

Ghalt lazily let his head loll against to the left and looked at his port scopes; a gleaming white Tie interceptor flew alongside his crippled fighter.

The breathy night air rasped across the rooftops of Pelatine's vast Neolith canton. Three hundred stories below, the string of speeder lights threading through the metropolis stretched out for miles in lambent ribbons intermeshed between the immense pillar-like towers. A single snub-winged commercial shuttle bearing corporate markings hardly seemed out-of-place as it broke from the writhing bands and sped towards a lonely rooftop.

Amid the impossible pinnacles of civilization, one of more than a hundred megastructures that dotted the atolls housing the majority of the world's population, a trio of figures watched and waited for such an approach. A tattooed human stared at the rapidly growing dot, his magnoculars straining to focus on the innocuous craft. His two cloaked accomplices impassively waited, blaster rifles at the ready.

“All units standby. Shuttle Irenicus is on final approach” A tiny voice crackled over the encoded comnet.

They didn't have long to wait. The bland grey and orange striped craft switched off its running lights and quietly touched down. The thrusters backwash spilled over the three immobile figures as the ramp dropped with a pneumatic hiss.

A trio of figures descended from the vessel: two armoured trandoshan guards daubed in the same livery as the ship, and a short albeit proper looking reptilian with an elaborate fur-trimmed cloak.

None of the humans so much as flinched as claws tapped against the rockrete roof only to stop two meters short of them. The glassy-eyed mercenaries silently stared, leaving several seconds of awkward silence punctuated by the whispering quaver of the nocturnal breeze.

“You are the servants of the 'Deathmark' and that of the organization called ' the Lions of Korrell '?” The short Tiss'shar's slittted eyes darted between the two masked men before settling on the apparent spokesperson in the middle.

“I am. Senche Ashtek, senechal of his lordship Tacitus Lylent. I speak in his stead and with his full authority.”

The human adjutant casually stared down the Tiss'shar diplomat. The trandoshans fidgeted, their yellowed claws gripping their heavy blasters as the slighter of the scaled trio unswervingly gazed up at the human. As suddenly as a bolt of lightning, the smaller creature bowed low, arms outstretched and an undecipherable smile crossing its thin grey lips. “Greetings, I am K'Halla Dornain, and on behalf of Fangdon Factory Works incorporated, welcome to Pelatine. I am honoured to be the first point of official contact between our two groups, and I must reluctantly apologize for our previous misunderstandings, Senechal.”

“There were no misunderstandings. Armed conflict no longer benefits either party, you approached us through non diplomatic channels, and our presence here indicates we are powerful and connected enough to be on an Imperial garrison world without fear.” Senche spat back.

The corporate representative blinked its secondary lids twice, its forked tongue tasting the air before a more telling smirk slithered across its muzzle, “You are refreshingly forthright. The governing board has no interest in joining the Alliance to Restore the Republic.”

“Then we have at least one thing in common. I represent my lord Lylent, not the Rebel Alliance. Their presence here is merely convenient for the time being. Once that convenience expires, so to will our association with such Rebel entanglements. Fangdon Factory Works is not, and will not be, affiliated with the Alliance by way of these negotiations.”

Dornain stared for a moment, “We are prepared to entertain motions that will end the unfortunate hostilities between our two parties, in exchange for unfettered unilateral control of all related economic activity in the Sujimis sector.”

“Fangdon Factory Works survives because it still has industrial assets that are of some worth to my Lord. In exchange for fulfilling all required manufacturing, you will receive special economic consideration upon my lord's assent to the position of Governor. In the meantime, there will be no further attacks on our part. This will equate to a four-hundred percent yield increase in your market shares, pending the dismantling of the Havashin Dynasty.”

The reptile flicked its tongue out once before carefully scrutinizing the man's expression. “Dismantling?” Dornain ventures with a cool detachment.

“Competition is not in our best interest. These are the terms in exchange for Fangdon Factory Works pivot towards the new governing body and processing of material contracts, in addition to improved facility security.” Senche watched the creature's eyes shimmer as its smirk could hardly be restrained. As inhuman as it might be, the glimmer of avaricious delight was unmistakable.

....

“They agreed.”

Senche's voice echoed over the speakers in Lylent's room. The renegade lord looked back from the viewscreen and stretched in his private quarters. It was secluded, the quiet hum of martial tunes whispering over another network had only faintly dimmed since Senche contacted him.

“Did they?” Lylent scratched his cheek and smirked, watching the flecks of light outside his window.

“They... tentatively agreed, with the option of further negotiations at a further date.” Senche's slight hesitation had not gone unnoticed. Lylent dismissed with a casual 'hmmph'.

“Of course they did. They're hoping they can get a better deal if something were to happen. I'd have no use for them at all if they didn't, it means they still think they have some worth.” He chortled and took a deep breath. “Of course, we haven't lost any ground, with regards to our current bargaining position.”

The commodore lazily turned back from the window where the still smouldering hulks of several Munificent-class destroyers drifted through the void. Other hulks and wrecks trailed rivers of fire while smaller flickers sparked here and there where starfighters were chased down as they made their desperate bid to escape. The Shrike nosed in among one of the stricken CR-90's and with a flash, the smaller vessel broke apart.

“Quite the opposite.” Lylent mused aloud. “But it's heartening to think we won't have to deal with any of their so-called corporate security details. One down, two to go.”

8E is still cool.