As long as His Majesty the Emperor rules with might and shows no signs of faltering, I am willing to keep my ambitions in check and take up his banner. However, if he shows signs of being incapable of leading the Empire, I have no choice but to challenge him.
—High Admiral Antonius Valak
Antonius Valak was an Imperial high admiral who had served as the military Governor-General of the Javin Oversector and was most notable for his role in leading an uprising against Emperor Palpatine. The member of a minor aristocratic family from Empress Teta, Valak joined the Imperial Navy out of both ambition and a desire to get away from what he viewed as a dead-end career on his home planet. He proved to be a capable commander and brilliant strategist, rising through the ranks quickly. The Tetan nobleman attained the rank of rear admiral at the age of 29, and became a high admiral four years later. By 3 ABY, Alliance High Command came to regard Valak as one of the Empire's best admirals.
Biography[]
Early life[]
Antonius Valak hailed from the Deep Core world of Empress Teta, where he was born to a minor aristocratic family in 31 BBY. The planet's remote location meant that the hardships and upheaval caused by the Clone Wars largely had no effect on his early life. The Valak family was not particularly wealthy, but they did have a comfortable lifestyle and were better off than many of the people on their home planet. His father, a viscount of the Tetan nobility, wanted the younger Valak to succeed him in his position as a local government bureaucrat and help the family raise its position in Tetan hierarchy. However, his son had no interest in remaining on his homeworld and viewed it as a constraint that would prevent him from making any 'major contributions to history', as he put it. Thus, Valak left his family as a teenager by applying for an Imperial Academy and in the Core Worlds.
He was accepted, and spent several years studying the arts of war at a military school. Little was known of Valak's time there except for the fact that he performed fairly well in most of his subjects, graduating in the top quarter of his class. He kept mostly to himself and was not noted by his instructors as being anything other than a slightly above-average cadet. Also due to his home world's remote location, Valak was not as aware of galactic happenings, and thus was shielded from the knowledge of the Empire's atrocities for most of his early life. Even upon finding out about various Imperial crimes while at the academy, the Tetan aristocrat was mostly indifferent to them, as he viewed the incidents as something that happened only occasionally and far away from him. Valak continued his Imperial education at the military preparatory school and graduated in 14 BBY, being commissioned as a lieutenant aboard the Munifex-class light cruiser Relentless Protector.
Rising through the ranks[]
Although many of the details regarding his early service in the Imperial Navy remained obscure, it was known that Valak had first worked as a gunnery officer aboard the Relentless Protector. The light frigate was assigned to the fleet of the backwater Tynquay sector as an anti-piracy and anti-smuggling vessel. It was there that Valak first proved himself to be a capable officer despite having a mostly unremarkable time at the military school. He performed well during engagements with pirates and other criminals, shooting down many enemy spacecraft and effectively coordinating the ship's eighty gunners. Within a few years, Valak reached the rank of lieutenant commander, and became a full commander not long after that. As his rank increased, so did his position: he became the chief gunnery officer upon his first promotion, and then the ship's first officer after his second one.
By 7 BBY, Valak had become a captain and received a transfer to the Vindicator-class heavy cruiser Upholder as its commanding officer. The Tetan aristocrat oversaw a number of anti-piracy missions, cleaning out the systems he was assigned to. As his subordinates noted, Valak was a methodical strategist and did his best to not place the crew in unnecessary risk during missions. Those facts raised the trust and loyalty of his comrades, which made ship's crew more effective overall. In 4 BBY, Valak was promoted to the rank of commodore and placed in command of several patrol squadrons within the Haserian sector fleet. His successful service in that position, most notably in eliminating a numerically superior Black Sun-affiliated pirate fleet, caused Valak to be noticed by the Navy's upper echelons. When the Galactic Civil War broke out in 2 BBY, he was promoted to rear admiral and given command of a larger force.
By the time of his ascension to flag officer rank, Valak considered his personal loyalty to and admiration of Emperor Palpatine to be a result of the man's strength. He respected the way the Emperor seized power in the Galactic Republic and was able to establish himself as supreme ruler, eliminating all opposition. Thus, although Valak himself was very ambitious, he kept himself in check as long as the Emperor remained in a position of strength and the Tetan admiral had no opportunity to rise up. As for the rest of the Imperial government and the Emperor's entourage, Valak viewed the majority of them to be either unremarkable at best or incompetent at worst. He never had any qualms with the Imperial system itself, though, and believed autocracy was more efficient than democratic government.
Military campaigns[]
Conquest of the Tingel Arm[]
These rebel upstarts are intoxicated with the perceived righteousness of their cause and have made a major blunder. We just need to sober them up a bit.
—Valak, prior to the Tingel Arm campaign
The Arbiter during one of the many engagements in the Tingel Arm.
When the Alliance to Restore the Republic began its war against the Empire in 2 BBY, Valak was promoted to rear admiral by Naval High Command, which hoped that he would be equally as successful against rebels as he was against pirates and smugglers. Imperial Rear Admiral Valak's first assignment was to pacify the Tingel Arm region, where a number of local governments proclaimed their independence and aligned themselves with the Alliance. The Empire's authority over the Tingel Arm was tenuous to begin with, and the Declaration of Rebellion seemed to give local factions that were never fully subjugated a stimulus for reasserting themselves. He led a force superiority formation of 90 ships, led from his new flagship, the Imperial I-class Star Destroyer Arbiter.
The campaign began with the attack on Thela, a world located on an important route in the Tingel Arm and the home of an upstart pro-Rebel government. The Thelan government gathered a fleet of several hundred ships, though most of them were lower in quality than the Imperial vessels. Valak began the battle with a frontal assault on the enemy flotilla at the edge of the system. Initially, he placed the Arbiter and the two other Star Destroyers of the task force in front, with the smaller vessels firing from in between and above the bigger ships. The enemy fleet's numbers dwindled away due to this tactic with relatively minor Imperial casualties, but after several hours of battle the rebel commander attempted to change that by charging directly at the center of the Imperial formation. Valak responded by detaching two groups of 25 vessels each to attack the enemy from the flanks while the Star Destroyers took the brunt of the assault. After three more hours, the rebel force was nearly annihilated, taking 80% casualties.
Continuing on, Valak's task group fought against smaller forces in several more Tingel Arm systems over the course of a month. As the rear admiral predicted, the recently-formed Alliance Fleet was too small and unorganized to provide any meaningful assistance to the rebellious frontier sectors, and their individual forces were no match for the Imperial Military. The largest engagement occurred towards the end of the operation, in the Wenderal system. A large force, consisting of former pirate and smuggler ships, mercenaries, local patrol fleets, and remnants of Separatist holdouts gathered there for a decisive battle with the Imperial Navy. Its commander was a Neimoidian veteran of the Clone Wars, and had experience in fleet battles. Unbeknownst to Valak, the Neimoidian detached a small squadron which hid in an asteroid field not far from the chosen battle site, as a secret reserve force.
When the Imperial fleet arrived and engaged the gathered rebel force, the battle was initially at a stalemate. The Imperials had the smaller amount of vessels, but the two fleets were equal in firepower due to the resistance possessing outdated and older ships. Valak then gave the orders for part of his fleet to move above and below the three Star Destroyers, attacking the enemy from different angles. The enemy force began taking heavy losses from fire coming from in front, above, and below them, unable to hold their line. However, that was when the reserve detachment arrived and attacked the Imperials from behind, destroying a number of frigates and cruisers. At that moment, the enemy fleet in front also pressed its attack, so Valak ordered his force to concentrate its fire on their center and break through it. The resistance force fell apart in the face of the Imperial charge, with its commander dying aboard his flagship when it was destroyed.
With its commander dead and nearly half of the fleet lost, the remaining rebel fleet began scattering and retreating. Valak's fleet, meanwhile, turned around and pursued the fleeing ships, destroying several more of them. Ultimately, the resistance force suffered about 75% losses, while Valak Fleet only took 20% casualties. The battle also signaled the end of the revolt in the Tingel Arm, as most of the forces capable of resisting the Empire's assault had been eliminated. For his success in the pacification operation, Valak was promoted to vice admiral, while the officers on his staff received promotions as well.
Defense of Kamino[]
Thanks to our commander's decision, we must now withdraw as well. Its preferable to bleeding out slowly like this.
—Valak to his adjutant
For the rest of the year, Valak was assigned to a desk job at the strategic planning department of the Admiralty on Imperial Center before being transferred to Kamino in 1 BBY. That year, Darth Vader had been experimenting with clones of a former apprentice of his, and was anticipating a Rebel assault on the planet, he amassed a large fleet over Kamino, under overall command of Fleet Admiral Touler. Valak commanded a force escort of 108 ships, as part of the combined Imperial fleet gathered over Kamino. He anticipated that the Rebels would launch an immediate strike through the Imperial formation to reach the planet surface, and thus suggested to Touler the idea of moving to the sides and first letting them pass through before turning ninety degrees, then opening fire at both of their flanks. However, the fleet admiral was not very imaginative, and turned down Valak's suggestion in favor of taking the enemy assault head-on.
Valak did not expect Touler to be successful in stopping the Rebels from reaching Kamino with that kind of formation. However, the Tetan aristocrat restrained himself at the urging of his chief staff officer, Commodore Markus Kreldon, who suggested that they could take advantage of this by salvaging the situation after Touler's failure. When the Rebel fleet did arrive and begin its assault, they did as he thought: engage the Imperial armada head-on, entering into a close-quarters melee in which the probability of hitting a friendly ship was high. Therefore, the ships in the center responded poorly, and ended up falling prey to the Rebel ships. Valak, who was commanding the left wing of the fleet, ordered his vessels to turn to the side and attack the Rebels from the flank. He did not want to hit any friendlies, however, and thus was forced to be more cautious about targeting.
This resulted in less damage being done to the Alliance Fleet, but the losses inflicted on them by his assault were still significant. The Rebels finished destroying and driving the remaining confused Imperial vessels in the center towards the right and left wings, with a number of their ships breaking through to the surface. Valak continued to fire accurate and coordinated bursts of lasers and missiles at the Rebel vessels, destroying them individually. However, his actions did not prevent a total collapse of the Imperial line on the other side of the Rebel forces. Fleet Admiral Touler ordered an immediate retreat, fleeing with his surviving ships in a hurry, causing more losses from Alliance pursuit. The Rebels began concentrating on Valak's force at that point.
His fleet held the line for some time but was outnumbered and outgunned, ultimately forced to withdraw. To prevent taking high casualties in their retreat, Valak ordered his Star Destroyers to hold the front, acting as shields while the smaller ships withdrew. Once they had reached a certain distance away he ordered the Star Destroyers to do the same, allowing them disengage with minimal casualties. The battle was an Imperial defeat, and thus Valak was not promoted, but his quick thinking during the fight that allowed his fleet to inflict significant casualties on the Rebels and his orderly withdrawal were not missed by Naval Command. Shortly after the destruction of the Death Star at the Battle of Yavin resulted in the deaths of many high-ranking officers, Valak was promoted to full admiral. Since he was 31 years old at the time, that made him one of the youngest admirals in the Imperial Fleet.
The Solimar Revolt[]
We could spend weeks and tens of thousands of lives attacking the Fortress in a head-on assault. But there is a much better way to go about this. All we need to due is lure the bastard out.
—Valak explaining his plans to his subordinates
The Valak Fleet engages Moff Solimar's forces near Belnar.
Admiral Valak and the fleet under his command spent the first few months after his promotion as part of the Yavin blockade. The Tetan nobleman hated his assignment, viewing it as a waste of time and wanting to begin an offensive against the Rebellion. He suspected that the blockade was mainly there for political purposes, rather than military, an attempt to keep information of the Rebel success at Yavin from getting out. That was why Valak was glad when his fleet was selected for a different operation. Shortly before the Battle of Yavin, the corrupt Moff Terrik Solimar of the Belnar sector began dealing with the Rebellion, hoping to sell them weapons for a profit. With the destruction of the Death Star, however, he felt overconfident in himself and underestimated the Empire's military capabilities, declaring his sector to be independent of the Empire. What made him overconfident was the fact that an experimental battlestation had been constructed in his sector earlier, known as Belnar Orbital Fortress.
The station possessed a large superlaser with one-third the power of the Death Star, in addition to regular turbolaser batteries. Valak's fleet entered the sector unopposed and headed straight to the Belnar system since the Moff intended to use his fortress to defeat any fleet that Imperial Center would send. When he entered the system, the Tetan admiral was met with the sector fleet, under Fleet Admiral Korvas Bacharan, who intended to lure them into the firing range of the main cannon. Keeping that in mind, Valak engaged the enemy force, though did not follow them as they attempted to retreat towards the fortress. Although they were initially outnumbered, the Valak Fleet's better organization allowed the casualties taken to be about even. He then sent a detachment around the side to strike at the sector fleet's flank. The attack took Bacharan by surprise, but his force quickly turned to engage the detachment. Valak's main fleet began advancing at that moment. Facing the threat of annihilation and being attacked from two sides, Bacharan was forced to withdraw, which he managed to execute without confusion or chaos.
Much to the Moff's annoyance, Valak did not pursue the fleeing vessels, which took up position on the sides of the Belnar Fortress. Instead, he took a small group of cruisers, leading it personally from the Arbiter, and began maneuvering back and forth just out of the range of the fort's main gun. Solimar, thinking that Valak was mocking him, ordered Bacharan to attack his detachment. The Imperial admiral waited until Bacharan's force opened fire before retreating back to his main fleet, deliberately telling his captains to move haphazardly in order to make an appearance of being in disarray. Having done that, Valak hoped that he would anger Solimar and make him underestimate the Imperial fleet, causing him to leave the fortress to attack them himself. Valak tried repeating the tactic one more time, finally getting the response he was hoping for: Solimar's remaining ships left the fortress, and the Moff himself took to the bridge of Bacharan's flagship, the Coruscant, to lead the assault.
The two fleets engaged each other once more just outside the range of the fort's batteries. Valak and his detachment began withdrawing immediately towards the main fleet, which was further away. Solimar, wanting to kill the man who was just mocking him, ordered the fleet to follow, ignoring Bacharan's warnings that it was a trap. As the detachment and its pursuers got towards the main Imperial fleet, which was left under Rear Admiral Kreldon's command, it half-enveloped the pursuers and opened fire, inflicting significant casualties. After an hour of fighting, the now-outnumbered sector fleet sustained losses too heavy to continue the fight, and Solimar was forced to give the order to retreat, fleeing back to the fortress. Valak and his fleet were in pursuit, however, dealing even more casualties to the enemy force, which was falling into disarray. The only reason it did not completely collapse was due to the old fleet admiral's efforts to coordinate their retreat, which Valak noted.
In the end, Valak stopped outside of the superlaser's firing range. He let the Coruscant and its surviving escorts to dock at the fortress, then broadcast a message there saying that all of Solimar's personnel would be pardoned. He also announced that whoever could bring him the traitor's head would be promoted to commander, even an enlisted man. Firefights between the Moff's supporters and Imperial loyalists soon broke out inside the fortress, with a message being sent to the Arbiter saying that the main control room had been captured. At that point, Valak had boarding teams of Imperial Marines and Navy commandos sent aboard to help the loyalist forces. Within a few hours, Belnar Orbital Fortress was under Imperial control, and Moff Solimar had shot himself in his chambers.
The battle ended then, with the rest of the Moff's remaining supporters surrendering to Imperial troops. Fleet Admiral Bacharan also surrendered during the fighting along with the remainder of the Belnar sector fleet. Valak kept his promise and urged Imperial Central Command to pardon most of the participants, including Bacharan, with whom he was impressed by. The Tetan admiral thought that the old man had put up an impressive fight despite the circumstances he was in, and wanted to add him to his command. The Imperial Admiralty finally agreed to this after much bickering, and also promoted Valak to fleet admiral.
Governor of the Javin Oversector[]
Last year's Solimar Revolt was certainly not the first time Imperials turned their guns on each other. The ringleaders were punished, but that seems to ignore another fact. Who's poor leadership was responsible for making the conditions for such incidents to happen? People like the late Moff Solimar may be just symptoms of the disease.
—Valak reflecting on the revolt after becoming governor of Javin
Several months after the Solimar Revolt, Valak was promoted to high admiral and was given the position of military Governor-General of the Javin Oversector. The region was the site of an increasingly intense Rebel insurgency, and Grand Moff Sebastian Narsus, the regional governor, had proved incapable of suppressing it. He was a good administrator, but not a military leader, and was given a desk job on Imperial Center that was more fitting for his nature. The Tetan admiral replaced him in his position and was given full authority over the Oversector, and placed in command of the newly-formed Javin Oversector Security Fleet. His objective was to restore order in the area and suppress the Alliance cells there. To accomplish this, the Security Fleet was enlarged from the standard 2400 ships to a total of 3700 vessels, including 32 Imperial-class Star Destroyers. The large formation made Valak one of the most powerful admirals in the Empire.
The Tetan high admiral immediately went to work in restoring order in the region. Placing the Security Fleet under the command of Fleet Admiral Bacharan to eliminate Rebel privateer and pirate ships, Valak focused on weeding out the Rebel cells on the Javin Oversector's planets. He cooperated with Surface Marshal Rendolen, the commander of the Javin-stationed 19th Sector Army, to carry out ground operations against Rebel hideouts and bases. Additionally, Valak worked with the local Imperial Security Bureau office to arrest spies and corrupt officials in the Government-General. When not overseeing the campaign against the Alliance forces, he was busy carrying out his duties as an administrator, making sure the government continued to run efficiently. He left many worlds to civilian autonomy, with little Imperial intervention in their affairs, which increased the local people's support for Valak and the Empire.
By 2 ABY, the campaign had succeeded in eliminating the majority of the Alliance cells, and the Security Fleet, under Bacharan's command, kept the spacelanes secure. However, there were a few Rebel successes, including a successful raid on the central bank on Javin and the destruction of an Imperial garrison base on Mijos. From intelligence reports he found out that the organizer behind the events was the Rebel Lieutenant Colonel Bellek Solborne, leader of the sector's Alliance cells. Valak spent much of his time trying to catch the "bandit captain" (as the Imperials called him), but to no avail. He grudgingly came to respect the man's tactical ability to escape out of whatever scheme Valak had come up with. By and large, however, the counterinsurgency operation was successful, and the threat level in the region was lowered to stable by Imperial Central Command.
The Valak Rebellion[]
Origins[]
Your Excellency, please tell me that this is just nonsense made up by some paranoid and overzealous desk jockey at the ISB office."
"No, it's just as you heard, Kreldon. It seems I am joining Zaarin and Harkov on the list of traitors to the Palpatine Dynasty."
"Excellency ...
—Kreldon and Valak discussing an ISB inquiry
Personality and traits[]
Unlike Palpatine, who was a destroyer, Valak was a preserver, the kind who would do his utmost to serve a state in some high position. He might have become a Judicial Forces commander or even a Supreme Chancellor had he been born in a different era. But in the end, the galaxy proved too small for two such ambitious men to coexist.
—Historian Arhul Hextrophon
Valak.