Vaika Raud

Name: Vaika Raud Homeworld: N/A Species: Human Career: Navy Officer Rank: Admiral Affiliation: 145th Squadron Starship: Invader

The daughter of an itinerant but honest spacer, Vaika grew up aboard freighters and spaceports. She didn't set foot on a planetary surface until she was eleven. Her mother struggled to manage her business while raising a child, but the collapse of galactic order during the Clone Wars forced her to sell her freighter and take a job as a dock worker at spacedock.

Vaika hated the sedentary lifestyle and ran away from home when she was fifteen, lying about her age to sign on as a loader on a heavy freighter out of Boz Pity. Honest labour didn't suit Vaika and she started selling information about freighter routes to pirates. She soon amassed enough funds doing so to take out a loan on her own small tramp freighter which she outfitted with weapons and became a minor league pirate herself. Operating independently was becoming dangerous, though, as the newly formed Galactic Empire clamped down on piracy in the Mid Rim, so she soon joined up with a larger group of pirates calling themselves the Krayt Independent Space Force. Her skills as a navigator and administrator saw her rise in the ranks.

The Krayts were successful enough to draw the notice of the Imperial Navy. Driven back by Imperial patrols, they tried to relocate to the Outer Rim, but Vaika saw the way the wind was blowing and once again changed sides. She gave the Imperial Navy the location of the Krayts' secret asteroid hangar in exchange for a regular commission in the Imperial Navy. The request was highly unorthodox, but the Admiral was desperate for a success to take to Grand Moff Tarkin, and used his power to make field commissions to give her what she wanted. The Krayts were eliminated and Vaika Raud became a provisional Lieutenant in the Imperial Navy.

Because her piratical background made her untrustworthy, she was sent to the Kuat drive yards in a minor administrative role, overseeing the assembly and delivery of Star Destroyer engines. Surprisingly she proved an efficient and trustworthy administrator, increasing the output of ion drives by 35% in a year. Asked to replicate the feat, she was promoted and transferred to a smaller production facility on the mining world of Disentis. There she was given almost total freedom to organise the factories as she wished. After putting down a worker's strike with the assistance of a Stormtrooper squadron, she was promoted once more and given her first combat command as the skipper of the Imperial Star Destroyer Mandator.

Since then Raud has steadily climbed the Imperial hierarchy, alternating between administrative and combat commands with equal efficiency. Few who know her as their commanding officer could imagine that she was once a pirate, let alone a stowaway on a tramp freighter. Perhaps to compensate for her modest beginnings and shadowy past, she is a devout adherent to Imperial ideology and law, refusing to look the other way or bend regulations the way many Admirals on the fringes do. Recently she was promoted to an Admiral's rank and placed in command of the 145th Squadron in the Savarkar Sector. Based on Disentis, the site of her first independent posting, she hoists her flag aboard the Star Destroyer Invader.