Edward Valos

Edward Valos
Personal
Affiliation	Federated Suns
Career
Rank	Marshal

Edward Valos was the commanding officer of the New Avalon Crucis March Militia as of 3025 and later commanded the Forty-second Avalon Hussars during the War of 3039.

History

Major General Valos, serving with the New Avalon CrMM, was stationed on New Avalon in 3025.

Fourth Succession War

During the Fourth Succession War, Valos and the New Avalon CrMM were relocated to the world of New Aragon in order to defend the supply depot located in Grahamsville. When the planet came under attack from the remnants of the Capellan Confederation's First, Second, and Third Chesterton Voltigeurs, Valos's inexperienced troops were given the opportunity to prove themselves against the Third Voltiguers' First Battalion. While Valos had accepted command of the New Avalon CrMM in the expectation that his retirement would follow soon after and shared his troops' discomfort at being so far from home, his combat engineers were still quick to destroy the bridges leading to the city over the raging Graham River. This caused the Capellans to lose some of their machines during their crossing of the river but fierce fighting soon began in Grahamsville proper. Valos's militiamen met the Voltiguers' suicidal charge two kilometers from the city's warehouse district and, in the ensuing battle, both Valos and his Capellan counterpart were badly wounded and forced out of action. This proved to be the turning point of the fighting, as the soldiers of the New Avalon CrMM rallied under the command of Valos's executive officer and crushed all but a company of their demoralized opponents in the ensuing counterattack.

War of 3039

By the start of the War of 3039, now-Marshal Valos directly commanded the Forty-second Avalon Hussars and was placed in charge of the joint Federated Suns/Lyran Commonwealth invasion of Delacruz in May 3039. Valos used the cover of commercial DropShip traffic to land his forces on Delacruz while special forces strike teams simultaneously captured Delacruz's three space stations. The use of two wings of aerospace fighters to gain aerial supremacy worked even better than Valos had expected, preventing the defending battalion of the Eighth Sword of Light and its allied militiamen from threatening his landing zones. The fighting for control of Delacruz's space stations and jump points went less smoothly, with fierce resistance from the stations' crews leading to significant damage to key systems—and, in one case, to the scuttling of the entire station.

After the rest of the Forty-second Hussars and Third Lyran Regulars landed on Delacruz on 19 May, Valos pushed out from his landing zones and quickly eliminated both the Combine's fighters and most of the Eighth Sword of Light's Second Battalion. While the planet's two military bases fell within the next four days, the three regiments of surviving Delacruz infantrymen utilized the planet's mountainous terrain to put up a fierce fight. Believing he had plenty of time to methodically destroy any Combine resisters, Valos spent the next three months slowly cleaning up the planet of Combine soldiers—right up until Theodore Kurita launched a border-wide counterattack.

While Valos expected the rest of the Eighth Sword of Light to counterattack Delacruz in order to avenge their lost battalion, he began to grow increasingly worried as the Combine counter-invasion seemed to batter every invaded Combine world except his. Valos began preparations to relocate his soldiers quickly, either on Delacruz itself or off the planet entirely. When the Eighth Sword arrived on 3 August, it did so as part of a task force that included both the Second and Fourth An Ting Legions, although the aerospace forces Valos had left guarding his transport fleet prevented the Combine from gaining orbital superiority. The Combine's maneuvers on the ground proved far more successful, taking advantage of Delacruz's oceanic environments to launch an underwater surprise assault that cost Valos the world's primary military installation on the island of Goi-pa.

With the Third Lyran Regulars scattered and the Combine island-hopping across the planet, Valos was left with control of just two of Delacruz's islands by the end of August. Although he retained numerical superiority, Valos and his soldiers did not possess the morale necessary to hold on—a situation exacerbated by Field Marshal Ardan Sortek's orders to retreat if necessary—and he finally made the call to withdraw from Delacruz on 3 September.

Bibliography

• Historical: War of 3039
• House Davion (The Federated Suns)
• NAIS The Fourth Succession War Military Atlas Volume 1