After passing her inspection, she and her sister ships were assigned, with the utmost secrecy, to the interdiction fleet at Caspar during the height of the Union-Republic scandal. While the suspicious eyes of the galaxy looked to the Imperial freighters landing on Union worlds to deliver humanitarian supplies, Tempest and her squadron quietly slipped through the Imperial held hyperspace routes to the Caspia system and secreted themselves among the Wall of Tumbling Teeth asteroid belt.