After Krennel executed Captain Rensen, he gave Darron his command, the Direption, and gave him his first order: carry out the task that Rensen had refused, and destroy a village on Liinade III that had housed a would-be assassin of the admiral. Darron, not wanting to kill innocents but also not wanting to be killed himself, complied, although in a way that spared deaths. He let the villagers know why they were to be targeted and explained to them methodically how he would level the community. By the time he had run a lengthy maintenance of all his ships armaments, the villagers had evacuated. Krennel was irritated by Darron's actions, but did not crush the commander's throat as he had Rensen's, instead informing him not to fail him again. Darron used his position to take all of the 'insubordinate' officers from Krennel's other commands (mostly those who had been slow in acclaiming the admiral when he arrived on deck), thus preventing their execution.
The Direption was stationed over Liinade III to guard the world against possible New Republic incursions. However, although Darron saw the target Liinade III presented, Krennel had refused to allocate troops to defending the planet. Instead, only a token force remained on the ground, and only the Direption and a lone Dreadnaught was left to defend the planet from space. When the New Republic did attack, Darron concentrated solely on the Moonshadow, an Imperial II-class Star Destroyer, ignoring the Swift Liberty, a Victory II-class Star Destroyer which assaulted the underside of his ship. Darron called in for support when matters grew dangerous, but the newly-arrived Freedom easily crushed the solitary Dreadnaught which jumped into the skirmish.
Darron attempted to take the Direption further into the system, but the combined firepower of Moonshadow and Swift Liberty, coupled with the looming threat of the undamaged Freedom, forced him to reconsider. Darron surrendered his command to the New Republic task force.