Grand Admiral Demetrius Zaarin, realizing his attempted kidnapping of Palpatine failed, had contingency plans against the Empire. After he had succeeded in destroying the Empire's TIE Advanced starfighter factories in the Omar system. His focus was now to strip the Empire of their hold on TIE Defender research and technology, as he sought whatever advantage he could against the Empire.
Realizing that this could cause a positive feedback loop between the Rebel Alliance, gaining a reprieve from the situation and result in a comeback and Zaarin, who could, in turn, take advantage of the situation, the Empire sent a strike force, lead by Maarek Stele, to stop Zaarin's attempt at striping the Research platform. The Secret Order, also approached Stele with orders to disable as many craft that try to escape as possible as they wanted to root out every leak and mole Zaarin had.
Stele and wingman arrived to engage Zaarin's TIE/sa bombers, while that was going on one of Zaarin's cargo ferries, Sakin had docked with a container and jumped to Hyperspace. Stele, not wanting the rest to escape broke of and attacked the rest of the cargo ferries and destroyed them, he then proceeded to disable all Shuttles carrying officers, technicians, and staff. Soon Utility Tugs left the station under suspicious motives, Stele not wanting to not take chances took them out whenever he could.
Soon a Ton-Falk-class escort carrier Jitte arrived to reinforce the station. The Jitte launched TIE Fighters that were modified to have Shields and missile launchers. Despite these upgrades, they weren't enough as all TIE Fighters were destroyed by Stele. While that was happening Assault transports arrived and launched Heavy rockets at Jitte, helping Stele destroy it. The transports soon turned their attention to the platform and with Stele's help disabled to platform so that they could send a contingency of Stormtroopers to capture it. When the operation was complete, the Star Destroyer Adarga arrived and began launching Heavy Lifter group Pacho, to dock with the containers, and Stormtrooper transports to dock with the disabled shuttles.
Suddenly a Rebel A-wing arrived and Stele was ordered to intercept it. After doing so, 4 more A-wings arrived, followed by 4 X-wings and 4 B-wings. All the Rebel starfighters were shot down by Stele and his wingmen.
With the battle over all captured shuttles, transports, Heavy lifters and TIE Defenders flew to the Adargas hanger battle weary but victorious. But they knew it would only be a matter of time before Zaarin would attack again. The Secret Order, meanwhile, wasted no time interrogating the prisoners that were captured.
The battle was first featured in the 1994 LucasArts video game Star Wars: TIE Fighter, in which players fly as Maarek Stele. The battle is depicted in the mission "Capture Platform", the first mission of the game's ninth tour of campaign, "T/D Technology."
This article assumes completion of all "Primary", "Secondary" and most, if not all "Bonus" objectives. It also assumes that one Cargo Ferry, Sakin 1, escaped into hyperspace. However, it is possible to destroy all Cargo ferries before they escape.
- TIE Fighter: Defender of the Empire: Official Secrets & Solutions
- TIE Fighter Collector's CD-ROM: The Official Strategy Guide