The out of the way place in the Mid-Rim called the Tabbir Sector is home to the 6th Independent Contracting Unit of the Heiter Industries - better known as the Black Cobras. The Black Cobras are a group of highly trained counter-terrorist and hostage rescue professionals. They are a highly secret part of the Heiter Industries hierarchy - only a dozen or so people within Heiter Industries know of its existence, even fewer know the unit's name. The 6th ICU falls under the auspices of Heiter Securities, a deceptive name since the company makes high technology items such as advanced droid neural networks and encryption algorithms. Within Heiter Securities, only two men know of the Cobras: Felix Strong, the company's CEO, and Vincent Syrf the Chief Intelligence Officer and the Cobra's contact. Outside of the two men in Heiter Securities, there is one more who knows of the ICU's existence: Alek Heiter - the owner and CEO of Heiter Industries.

The Cobras serve a fairly narrow role for Heiter Industries, but a slightly broader one for the galaxy at large. Despite being a part of Heiter Industries, the Cobras are often called upon by the various Tabbir planetary governments when a "situation" arises. Numerous times they've been called upon to storm a building and free hostages being held by Rebel terrorists. Other times they have been used as a pre-emptive strike team. One such example was when information was divulged about a Rebel safe house on Tabbir Prime. The Imperial Moff knew that a spy in his chain of command would send out word the second an Imperial strike was ordered, so he unofficially called up Alek Heiter and requested that he use one of his publicly-known SWAT teams to storm the building. A cover story was conceived and the plan was set in motion. But instead of using either of his 2nd or 3rd Platoon SWAT teams, Heiter gave the Cobras the nod. A mere four hours later the building was stormed, all inside killed and the safe house compromised. This single action put a huge damper on Rebel activity on Tabbir Prime. And better yet, nobody knew the fact that it was not Heiter Securities' 2nd or 3rd SWAT platoon that stormed the building - not even the Imperial Moff himself.

The Cobras, despite being technically a corporate branch, have a large amount of freedom to accept other jobs - as long as they do not interfere with Heiter operations. The Cobras have been known to accept jobs outside of company orders - under a different name and using a different set of cover information, a set untraceable back to Heiter Industries in any way. They do not work for the Rebellion, nor do they accept jobs directly from Imperials. The Cobras prefer to take independent jobs: jobs for crime lords, other corporations, and certain guilds. In general they will work for anyone who can come up with their extravagant fee. Beside hostage rescue and counter terror operations, some of the Cobras' independent employers have requested jobs such as assassinations and security consultation. Assassinations are fairly straightforward and do not require a lot of effort. Security consultation on the other hand requires a fair amount of work. During a consultation job, the Cobras are sent in to test how thorough a target's defenses are. They stage mock takedowns and terrorist attacks, and gauge how well the company's security teams reacted. Extensive reports, suggestions and comments are written up and presented.

Main

This is an original work by Ross Hedvicek