Sir Titus Hauptmann

Titus Andrew-Louis Hauptmann, Duke of Andernach and First Strategos of the Centaurine Primarchate, was one of the Sollan Empire's foremost military commanders -- a veteran of nearly four centuries of Cielcin war who held the frontier longer than any other Imperial officer, commanding the Centaurine Legions from his flagship the Sieglinde and answering only to the Imperial Council and the Emperor.

Hauptmann's conviction that a lasting peace with the Cielcin was impossible shaped his most consequential decisions: ordering Bassander Lin to sabotage Hadrian's Vorgossos mission, authorizing Raine Smythe to supply colonists to Kharn Sagara for his undead army, commanding the fleet that killed Sagara at the Demiurge, and directing his forces to Vorgossos after Aranata's defeat only to find the planet had vanished. Despite his hostility toward Hadrian's aims, he recommended Hadrian for a knighthood and the Order of Merit, and at Berenike he accepted Hadrian's strategic analysis and appointed him lieutenant to Legate Leonid Bartosz in the ground defense.

Hauptmann is killed at Ondu Station when the Cielcin execute a cascade matter-antimatter detonation inside the station's shields. Having clustered his ships too tightly, the chain reaction destroys his entire cordon. Hadrian regards him as perhaps the single greatest Imperial asset in the Veil and Expanse, and mourns his loss as an elementary error in warcraft that cost the Empire its most experienced frontier commander.