Erkhart’s capsule was not found soon. During 12 years deep in anabiosis, he drifted in the neighborhood of the black hole running the risk of getting into its gravitational well. Nevertheless, he was lucky. One of adventurers, who was gathering flinders of ships near the black hole, found the capsule and sold it to the Empire. Already at the beginning of the Third Wave of Intrusion, Erkhart command a corps, which attacked one of the Protectorate’s border sectors. He was one of few Lords, who were not occupied with numerous rebellions on earlier captured planets, but attacked the Protectorate and attacked successfully. Erkhart together with Lord Shindgy captured almost fifty planets and by the time of the Watchful Peace agreement became a war hero. However 12 years in the cold sleep had not changed Erkhart’s nature and on many planets of the Protectorate and even Empire, parents browbeat children with his name.

To put it mildly, Lord Erkhart’s hard lot couldn’t help affecting his mind.

The legendary cruelty of this Lord appeared to be nothing compared with what he did during the years of Usurpation. Erkhart had not simply got mad he got mad so manifestly that even Usurper tried to keep him as far as possible from the inner worlds of the Empire. He used Erkhart for the purposes, which he could do best of all – for quelling revolts. And just Erkhart insisted on applying Star Rapier as a deterrent to rebellious worlds.

The more time passed the more queer form took the insanity of the Lord. His fleet became an absolutely closed system – nobody knew what was happening there, only most terrible rumors. At Usurper’s court they whispered that Erkhart had introduced some kind of religious cult, which required bloody sacrifices on the ships of his fleet. In bygone days, Emperor, of course, had not tolerated such an initiative, but the awesome effectiveness, with which Erkhart quelled revolts, led to the fact that he was left alone – let him do what he wanted provided that he coped with his duties. As a result, villains from the whole Empire armed forces were banished to Erkhart’s fleet and all those, who made a slip, fell into disgrace and became unwanted. Assigning to Erkhart was taken almost as a death sentence – nobody had ever heard that at least a single man, who had been sent there, came back. Nevertheless, the fleet existed and did its work “pacifying” rebellious worlds one by one. Any checkups certainly were out of the question, so the only sources of information about Erkhart’s deeds were the inhabitants of the “pacified” planets.