TK-462 served as the designated operating number for a human male Imperial stormtrooper. He hailed from the planet Eriadu and, defying his father's wishes, enlisted in an Imperial Junior Academy following the death of his younger sister, Xea. Xea's demise occurred during a botched rebel attempt to pilfer air scrubbers from the family's farm. After a smooth graduation from the Junior Academy, he underwent training at the Imperial Academy of Eriadu in Eriadu City, where his instructor, Commander Lassar, subjected him to relentless abuse. The commander orchestrated regular beatings by the cadet's squadmates and forced him to run five kilometer with shattered glass inside his boots, an ordeal that necessitated two weeks of recovery and foot reconstruction.
Despite this adversity, TK-462 successfully graduated as a stormtrooper, becoming part of the elite shock troops within the Galactic Empire's Imperial Army. Initially, he was stationed on Eriadu, where he and his squad apprehended minor offenders in the fashion district of Eriadu City. However, when a call went out for additional troopers to be deployed to the planet Lothal to combat rebels, TK-462 volunteered, venturing beyond his homeworld for the first time. On Lothal, the stormtrooper's orders grew increasingly morally questionable as he was instructed to set villages ablaze in the Empire's name. After his squad received orders to capture kyber crystal thieves, his captain initiated the execution of civilians in a resettlement village—suspected of harboring the criminals—hoping to lure them out. A firefight erupted after TK-462 fatally shot a man emerging from his home with a blaster rifle. In the ensuing chaos, the deceased man's daughter seized her father's weapon and shot TK-462, inflicting a fatal wound.
The human male who would later be known by the designation TK-462, a member of the Imperial Army's Stormtrooper Corps, was born twenty-six years prior to the Battle of Yavin. He spent his childhood on an air scrubber farm located on the planet Eriadu, raised by his parents. His mother gave birth to his younger sister, Xea, when he was four, but tragically passed away before he reached the age of twelve. TK-462 and Xea often played together on the farm while their father worked, transforming the fields of air scrubbers into imaginary forests or armies of droids, depending on the game they were playing.
One night, when TK-462 was twelve, he allowed Xea to sleep in his bed because she was feeling unwell. As they slept, a group of rebels launched a raid on the farm, attempting to steal several air scrubbers by using tow cables attached to their starships. TK-462's father began firing at the vessels with a blaster in an effort to thwart the theft, which awakened TK-462, who was drawn outside by the commotion. The boy watched as one of the air scrubbers detached from the ground but remained connected by a power conduit. His father began firing at the conduit, hoping to sever the connection and prevent the machine from falling back to earth if something went wrong. However, his efforts proved futile as the rebel's tow cable soon snapped, causing the scrubber to plummet back to earth through the roof of TK-462's bedroom, fatally crushing Xea in her sleep.
Later that year, Wilhuff Tarkin, the former governor of Eriadu, was promoted to Grand Moff and implemented stricter laws on the planet. As a result of Tarkin's governance, Eriadu became safer, allowing TK-462's father to permit him to travel to the nearby city of [Phelar](/article/phelar] alone. Sometime after Xea's death, Tarkin visited the family's air scrubber farm. The Imperial conversed with TK-462's father, but the boy was far more fascinated by the stormtroopers accompanying Tarkin. When TK-462 asked his father for permission to enlist, his father refused, having already lost two members of his family. However, TK-462 disregarded this refusal and, upon reaching the appropriate age, secretly left home one night to join the Empire, leaving only a note for his father.
TK-462 enlisted in the Junior Academy in Phelar and, after a year, graduated with his entire class of seven students without difficulty, as the local authorities were eager to provide as many local recruits as possible to the Empire. TK-462 was not surprised when his father did not attend the graduation ceremony, but he was disappointed when his father was also absent at the spaceport when the trooper's transport departed for the Imperial Academy of Eriadu. At the academy, TK-462 was assigned to Commander Lassar, a retired clone trooper instructor who immediately developed a dislike for the boy due to his short stature. From the cadet's first day at the academy, Lassar had all of TK-462's squadmates beat him in bed every morning until he stopped moving. After about a week of daily beatings, his squadmates began to soften their blows, and TK-462 began to exaggerate some of the pain that Lassar expected to see. When new recruits arrived at the end of the first year, Lassar failed to find anyone he hated more than TK-462 among them, so he continued the beatings into the next year.
A few weeks before TK-462's graduation, Lassar gave a toast to all his students just before they were scheduled to run five kilometers in full gear. At the end of the toast, he alone drank a glass of emerald-colored wine and then smashed the glass with his foot. He then picked up the shards and ordered TK-462 to remove his boots, placing the shattered glass inside and then having the trooper put them back on. TK-462 then managed to complete the run despite the shards, but blacked out after crossing the finishing line. He awoke in the academy's infirmary after having his feet reconstructed and was informed that he was to rest for two weeks but had successfully made the rank of stormtrooper.
Upon graduation, TK-462 was assigned to patrol district five of Eriadu's capital, Eriadu City, which was known as the fashion district. There, he and his squadmates spent their time apprehending shoplifters and other minor criminals. However, when word spread that the Empire needed more troops to fight rebels on the planet Lothal, TK-462 requested a transfer in order to finally avenge his sister. He was again disappointed not to see his father as he boarded the transport off-world, and he vomited as soon as his ship left Eriadu's atmosphere because he had never traveled in space before.
On Lothal, TK-462 was assigned to a stormtrooper captain who had grown up as a nerf herder and frequently used comparisons to nerf herding in order to explain tactics to his troops. The trooper's assignments on Lothal included burning at least one small village, and, four years before the Battle of Yavin, his squad was sent to recover a shipment of stolen kyber crystals. The stormtroopers managed to find it before lunch, as it had been dumped near a resettlement village after the thieves panicked at encountering checkpoints on every road in the area.
After eating, TK-462 and his squadmates traveled into the village to find the culprits, and upon arriving the captain pulled a Rodian shopkeeper out into the village center and threatened to kill him on the count of three unless the thieves gave themselves up. After no one came forward, the captain killed the Rodian and then grabbed a human woman, beginning his count again. As he counted, a human male ran out of a nearby building with a blaster, prompting TK-462 to shoot him. After the man fell, his young daughter exited the building that he had come from and tried to shake his corpse awake, laying down beside her father when she could not raise him.
Chaos then broke out as others in the village attacked, and TK-462 turned to locate a squadmate who had called for aid. In the moment that he turned however, the young girl brought up her father's rifle and shot the stormtrooper. Knowing that the wound was fatal, TK-462 collapsed to his knees and blood began filling his armor. He removed his helmet and stared up at the girl who had killed him, and recognized the same hatred in her face that he felt the day his sister had died. Knowing that one day the girl would grow up to kill Imperials for the Alliance to Restore the Republic as revenge for her father, he felt a strange pride overcome him, and in his final moments grinned at the girl before succumbing to his wound.
As a child, TK-462 and his sister were not bothered by the ugliness of the farm they grew up on, treating it as a playground and spending all of their time together while their father worked. While she was still alive, his mother taught him the importance of understanding the world around him, and as such he had a relatively proficient understanding of physics by the time he was twelve. When Xea died, a deep hatred for rebels was born within TK-462, and he became determined to enlist with the Galactic Empire in order to kill them. During his training he was driven enough by his determination to serve the Empire and kill rebels that he managed to graduate despite all of Lassar's bullying. During the run that the instructor made him complete with glass shards in his boots, spite for the commander got him through the first five hundred meters, with focus and determination getting him through another three steps. After that he felt as if the pain overwhelmed his brain and he completed the rest on autopilot, not even remembering crossing the finishing line when he later recovered.
While capturing petty criminals on Eriadu was not what TK-462 had signed up with the Empire for, he was still satisfied with serving the Empire and preventing crime, especially enjoying it when shoplifters tried to flee. The trooper was troubled by not seeing his father again before he left Eriadu, feeling that there were many things he had never said to the man, and regretting that goodbye was one of them. He enjoyed being deployed on Lothal, feeling that the hardships that the planet's people had suffered made them more genuine, and considering his squadmates there good people. He began to become slightly disillusioned with his work however, having expected morality to be more black and white but finding it increasingly grey as he was ordered to burn villages for the greater good of the Empire. Despite these doubts he always followed orders and took no issue with his captain executing civilians in order to draw out the kyber crystal thieves. Instead of despair he felt pride when he was fatally wounded on Lothal, knowing that he had started the girl who killed him on the same path in life that he had taken, only on the opposite side of the Galactic Civil War.
As a member of the Stormtrooper Corps, TK-462 wore standard stormtrooper armor and carried an E-11 medium blaster rifle.
TK-462 appeared as the titular character of the short story "TK-462," which was published in Star Wars Insider 166 in 2016 with illustrations by Drew Baker. The stories author Sylvain Neuvel was also interviewed by James Andrew Rosen for the issue of Insider and stated in the interview that he wished he could have fleshed out TK-462's life and character more but did not have space, lamenting that the stormtrooper never even got a girlfriend.
The dates for both Xea and TK-462's deaths were provided by Neuvel on Twitter; however, since Xea's death occurs in the same year as Wilhuff Tarkin's promotion to Grand Moff, Neuvel's approximate date of eleven years before the Battle of Yavin contradicts the novel Tarkin which states that the promotion occurs fourteen years before the Battle of Yavin. This article assumes that the novel instead of the tweet is correct, but still uses the date provided by tweet for TK-462's death.