Battle of Andalia

"The TIEs lasted two minutes. I watched the Battle Dragons' turbolaserslance out, brilliant green, searching in the darkness. I watched the Hapan gunners find the range, begin to turn TIEs into flowers of flames. I watched fighters wheel around for another pass, their laser bolts sparking useless blue spirals and whorls off the Hapan shields. Then they were all dead, and it was our turn."

- Grand Admiral Osvald Teshik remembers the Battle of Andalia

The Battle of Andalia was an engagement between the Galactic Empire and the Hapes Consortium in the year 0 ABY at the planet Andalia during the Galactic Civil War. Imperial Emperor Palpatine had sent Admiral Osvald Teshik to the Hapes Cluster had the head of a taskforce, led by the Pursuit-class light cruiser Shepherd, on a doomed mission as a lesson for the other Admirals after Teshik failed him. Facing a Hapan fleet composed of five Hapan Battle Dragons and eight Nova-class battle cruisers, Teshik taskforce was heavily mauled, resulting in the loss of the entire taskforce, save for Tehsik, who managed to survive.

Prelude
"But he was angry that your privateers had been running wild in the core, and thatd kidnapped that swollen gasbag Advisor Veshiv from Esseles. Since I commanded that oversector, I had to sate his anger."

- Grand Admiral Osvald Teshik remembers Emperor Palpatine's reason for sending Teshik to Andalia

In 0 ABY, during the Galactic Civil War, a conflict between the Galactic Empire and the Alliance to Restore the Republic, privateers allied with the Rebels captured Imperial advisor Coh Veshiv from the planet Esseles. Because Imperial Grand Admiral Osvald Teshik commanded the oversector where the event took place, and failed to deal with the privateers, Imperial Emperor Palpatine taught the other Grand Admirals a lesson by using Teshik as an example. Palpatine sent Teshik and a taskforce comprised of the Pursuit-class light cruiser Shepherd, carrying two squadrons of TIE/ln starfighters, and eight gunships on a doomed mission to the Hapes Cluster.

Though most of the taskforce believed their mission was a recon patrol, with a purpose of keeping the Hapans honest, Teshik knew none of them would survive the mission's conclusion. After arriving in the star cluster, the taskforce proceeded to the world of Andalia after being ordered to go there and engage the enemy forces located at Andalia.

The battle
"Six of the gunships were gone inside a minute, vaporized by the battle cruisers. The captains of the last two gunships panicked. They collided head on."

- Grand Admiral Osvald Teshik remembers the Battle of Andalia

Upon reaching Andalia, the Imperial taskforce faced a tipped off Hapan fleet, composed of five Hapan Battle Dragons and eight Nova-class battle cruisers. Although the Imperials faced long odds and many expected the taskforce to flee, Teshik a deck officer launch the TIEs to engage the enemy as the start of the battle. Lasting just two minutes before both squadronds were eradicated by Battle Dragon laser fire, the TIEs managed to make two passes, their weaponry not able to penatrate the enemy deflector shields. The eight Imperial gunships were alos quickly destroyed; six being annihilated within a minute before the last two gunships crashed into each other head-on after their captains panicked.

The Shepherd was the last Imperial ship to fall against the Hapans. The shields of the Pursuit-class cruiser failed, and after a volley of proton torpedos launched by the lead Battle Dragon struck the ship, the Shephered reactor core blew, destroying the cruiser. Teshik managed to make it out of the Shepherd after he donned an enviro-suit after failing to find an escape pod and was ejected from the cruiser via a hull breach, though the survival suit was damaged in the process.

The aftermath
"The only survivor of the Battle of Andalia was the man sent there to die."

- Osvald Teshik remembers the events after the Imperial defeat at Andalia

In the wake of the Hapan victory, Teshik had a vision regarding nature of war. Later, Teshik was picked up by an Imperial snoopship sent by the Emperor to ensure that Palpatine's sentence was carried out after Teshik managed to activate a beacon on his suit. However, due to the damaged suit, only a quarter of Teshik surivived, the rest being replaced with cybernetics. In the end, Teshik, the man sent to die by the Emperor survived.

Teshik later recounted the details of the battle to his captors after he was captured by Rebels following the Battle of Endor in 4 ABY. Teshik was then executed for war crimes.

Behind the scenes
"I was struck, as tons of folks have been before, by its mix of beauty and despair – a sort of bleak transcendence. By the end of the song I knew what I wanted – an officer bearing witness to scenes that were terrible and yet somehow beautiful, and led to a strange vision."

- Author Jason Fry decribes the origins of the details envolving the Battle of Andalia after listening to Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah

The Battle of Andalia was first mentioned in 2003's Who's Who: Imperial Grand Admirals, a section written by Daniel Wallace and Abel G. Peña in the 66th issue of the Star Wars Insider magazine. A detailed description was only published in 2012, in the The Essential Guide to Warfare, written by Jason Fry and Paul R. Urquhart. Warfare also was the first source to identify the battle as the Battle of Andalia, and used the section as the prologue of the book.

Fry later wrote in his endnotes about the creation of the section that described the battle. Orignialy, instead of the prologue containing details of the battle, it had Imperial Admiral Conan Antonio Motti, engineer and architect Bevel Lemelisk, as well as an Imperial general and Doctor Insmot Bowen discussing in a briefing an anchient war between the Celestials and the Rakata. However, Fry's editor, Erich Schoeneweiss, felt the prologue needed to be a more engaging introduction to the book, and have some actual warfare in it, which was why the battle replaced the briefing. Fry later got insperation for the battle and its consequenses when he listened to the song Hallelujah, by Leonard Cohan.