Mart Mattin

Mart Mattin was the nephew of Commander Jun Sato and the leader of Iron Squadron. After his father died, Mart took over leadership of the squadron. The Iron Squadron became the only rebel cell on the planet Mykapo and harassed Imperial forces there.
In 2 BBY, the Empire imposed martial law on Mykapo and dispatched an advance patrol there. The Iron Squadron's YT-2400 light freighter Sato's Hammer was attacked by the Imperial patrol. With the help of the Spectres and Phoenix Cell, the Iron Squadron managed to wipe out the patrol. Mart declined Hera Syndulla's advice to leave the system.
While his crew left with the Spectres, Mart took on Imperial reinforcements led by Admiral Kassius Konstantine. His ship sustained damaged during the skirmish and Mart was forced to send a distress transmission to the Spectres. The Spectres and his Iron Squadron comrades rescued him with the help of his uncle Commander Jun Sato. Mart and his crew then joined the rebellion.
==Biography==
===Background===
Mart Mattin lived on the planet Mykapo during the Age of the Empire with his father and mother. His father was the leader of a rebel cell called the Iron Squadron, which consisted of the Theelin Gooti Terez, the human Jonner Jin, and the astromech droid R3-A3. These rebels operated from a YT-2400 light freighter called Sato's Hammer. At some point, Mart's father was killed during a clash with Imperial forces. Mart took over leadership of the Iron Squadron and did not maintain contact with his uncle Jun Sato, the commander of the Phoenix Cell. Mart and his fellow Iron Squadron members regarded Mykapo as their home and harassed Imperial forces there.
===Joining the rebellion===
In 2 BBY, the Empire decided to impose martial law on Mykapo. They dispatched an advance patrol, consisting of a Gozanti-class cruiser and several TIE fighters to lock down the system. Mart's Iron Squadron clashed with the Imperial patrol and sustained damage to their ship's hyperdrive. Shortly later, Hera Syndulla and her Spectres along with Phoenix Squadron arrived to evacuate rebel sympathizers on Mykapo. They came to the aid of Iron Squadron by attacking the Imperial fighters. Hera contacted the Iron Squadron and told them that they needed to evacuate the system. Mart thanked the rebels for their help but declined their offer of assistance. When Hera reiterated her warning, Mart replied that the Iron Squadron did not run. He then flew the Sato's Hammer towards the Gozanti cruiser and dropped several explosive cargo pieces which destroyed the Imperial ship.
Following the skirmish, Mart chatted with Hera via the intercom and invited her and her crew aboard the Sato's Hammer. Hera's ship Ghost docked with the Sato's Hammer and Mart's crew entertained Hera and her rebel comrades Ezra Bridger, Sabine Wren, and the astromech droid Chopper. Mart met with the Spectres in his ship's cockpit and acknowledged that he was Commander Sato's nephew. When Mart asked Hera if his uncle had sent him, Hera replied that she and her fellow rebels had come to evacuate rebel dissidents from Mykapo. Mart rejected any idea of evacuating Mykapo as cowardice and remarked that he could hold off the Empire. When Hera warned them that the Empire would return, Mart responded that he and his crew had just destroyed a Star Destroyer; mistaking the Gozanti cruiser for one. In the end, Mart and his crew decline Hera's offer to leave and reiterated that they would defend Mykapo from the Empire.
Despite the unsuccessful meeting, Ezra persuaded Hera to let him, Sabine, and Chopper stay behind to repair the Iron Squadron's hyperdrive. Ezra was still determined to win over the squadron. Hera reluctantly sanctioned his mission but warned the rebels that they needed to leave at the first sign of Imperial activity. Mart and his crew allowed Sabine and Chopper to assist R3-A3 with the repairs. However, he still thought that it was a waste of time. Sabine and the droids managed to repair the hyperdrive. However, their efforts came to naught because Mart redirected the power to the armaments and deflector shields. Upon sighting Imperial reinforcements, Mart ordered his crew to their battle stations. This second Imperial force was commanded by Admiral Kassius Konstantine and consisted of an Arquitens-class command cruiser and two more Gozanti cruisers.
Despite the odds stacked against the Iron Squadron, Mart refused to back down and flew the Sato's Hammer towards Konstantine's forces. Ezra and Sabine disagreed and managed to convince Gooti, Jonner, and R3-A3 to accompany them into their shuttle, Phantom II. When the ship's power broke down, Mart saw reason and accompanied the rebels aboard the Phantom II. Once everyone else had gone aboard, Mart stayed behind and disengaged the airlock. Changing his mind, Mart launched a frontal attack on Konstantine's light cruiser. However, the Admiral neutralized his explosives by unleashing his frontal batteries. Mart attempted to flee but the Sato's Hammer engines were knocked out by TIE fighters. Trapped, Mart then told the Spectres and his crew to flee without him.
Instead of blasting Mart and his ship, Admiral Konstantine ordered one of his TIE bombers to plant a magno-mine on his ship's hull. Panicking, Mart sent a distress signal to Hera and her crew. Konstantine allowed him to transmit the signal before shutting it off. While Mart reflected on his mistakes, Hera, her crew, and the rest of Iron Squadron decided to rescue him. Mart was relieved when Hera's ship Ghost exited hyperspace. He then informed Hera that the Imperials had attacked a magno-mine to his ship. Mart watched as Hera led Konstantine's TIE fighters on a pursuit. This distraction enable Chopper and R3-A3 to deactivate the magnonmine and its detonator. They then reattached the mine to one of Mart's cargo boxes.
Following a brief dogfight, Hera managed to attach the Ghost to the hull of Sato's Hammer. Shortly later, Mart's uncle Commander Sato arrived on a CR90 corvette and attacked Konstantine's cruiser. Sato reassured his nephew over the com that he was here to get him out. Hera then told Mart to get the bomb ready since she was making a run for Konstantine's cruiser. The rebels flew over the light cruiser and Mart dropped his explosive cargo. The magno-mine damaged the forward section of Konstantine's cruiser and set the ship ablaze. The rebels escaped the system just as Grand Admiral Thrawn arrived on his Star Destroyer Chimaera. Upon seeing the Star Destroyer, Mart and his crew realized that it was difficult for them to take on the Empire by themselves.
Hera flew Mart and his ship to Chopper Base on the planet Atollon. There, Mart embraced his uncle Sato, who thanked Hera and her crew for saving his nephew. Mart then embraced his crew in the presence of the Spectres and Commander Sato. Following the recent events, Mart and his crew decided to join the rebellion.
===Assault on Lothal===
Mart took part on the Rebel assault on Lothal under the callsign of Phoenix Two, where he flew an X-wing starfighter. However, the attack failed as Thrawn had anticipated that they would have broken through the outer blockade, and had a large group of TIE fighters intercept the strike force. Mart crash-landed in Capital City, managing to survive. However, three Imperial stormtroopers had surrounded him, and his droid, R3-A3, attempted to fend them off, before being disintegrated by them. Hera and Chopper, who also survived their crash-landing, saved him by hijacking the nearby troop transport and ramming them into the troopers. Mart allowed Hera to take off R3's transmittor, stating that the droid would have helped in any way possible.
Soon after this, they were ambushed by the assassin Rukh, who was tasked with capturing rebel pilots. They managed to drive him away temporarily, and upon finding a sewer entrance, was told by Hera to create a distraction. Mart distracted the two stormtroopers, shooting at one, prompting the other stormtrooper and the AT-DP to chase him. Mart overpowered the other stormtrooper while Hera immobilized the AT-DP. Rukh made his move again, successfully separating Hera from Mart and Chopper. Mart was concerned with Hera's safety, who told him to escape before the Imperials could apprehend him. He followed the starbirds and was eventually rescued by Kanan Jarrus, apologizing to him for not being able to protect Hera.
===Kanan's death===
Mart, Ryder Azadi, and Jai Kell watched while the Spectres Ezra, Sabine, Zeb, and Chopper built three Loth-bat gliders for their mission to rescue Hera Syndulla. Though the rebels managed to rescue Hera, Kanan was killed when Governor Arihnda Pryce bombarded the Lothal City fuel depot. Following Kanan's death, Mart along with Kell and Azadi listened to a propaganda broadcast by the Imperial broadcaster Alton Kastle claiming that the Rebellion's on Lothal was a lost cause. However, the Spectres later learnt that Kanan's sacrifice was not in vain and that the explosion had knocked out the production of TIE Defenders on Lothal.
===Trapping Governor Pryce===
Mart and the other rebels later participated in Ezra and Azadi's plan to liberate Lothal from Imperial rule. The first step involved using Ryder to lure Governor Arihnda Pryce and her forces into a trap at the Lothal cliff dwelling. Prior to the assault, Mart and Jai Kell sensed movement. Pryce assaulted the rebel base with a fleet of patrol transports, stormtroopers, and jumptroopers.
During the fighting, Pryce managed to corner the rebel forces on top of a Mining Guild ore crawler. Though the Imperial forces managed to overwhelm and capture the rebels, they were then ambushed by Hera's reinforcements and a pack of loth-wolves. Pryce along with several stormtroopers were taken prisoner; allowing the rebels to proceed with their plan to liberate Lothal.
===Liberation of Lothal===
During the Liberation of Lothal, Mart along with Cikatro Vizago and Commander Wolffe stayed behind at the Lothal cliff dwelling. Their job was to evacuate the other rebels once their mission to launch and infiltrate the Dome had been accomplished. However, they were ambushed and attacked by Grand Admiral Thrawn's Noghri assassin Rukh, who almost killed Mart with his blaster before being driven off by the White Loth-wolf. Still, Rukh managed to steal their patrol transport.
When Mart awoke, he realized that there was a chance that Rukh had revealed the rebels' plan to Thrawn. Mart then revealed to Wolffe and Vizago that Ezra had entrusted him with a secret mission in the event that Thrawn returned before they could launch the Dome. The three rebels flew aboard the Spectres' ship Ghost. During the journey, Wolffe asked Mart about the details of Ezra's plan and remarked that nobody used Frequency Zero anymore. Mart replied that he was unsure if Wolffe would believe Ezra's plan and told him to trust Ezra. Following Ezra's orders, they issued a transmission on Frequency Zero, which summoned a large pod of purrgil, which attacked Thrawn's Seventh Fleet in orbit.
Flying the Ghost, the rebels led the purrgil pod to Thrawn's Imperial Star Destroyer Chimaera. As they approached the Chimaera, Mart asked Wolffe if he would have believed Ezra's plan if he had told him. Wolffe remarked that the plan had Ezra written all over it while Vizago added that it was going to work. The purrgil carried Thrawn, the Chimaera, and Ezra into the depths of space; something which had been Ezra's intention. Mart and his fellow rebels then evacuated their comrades aboard the Ghost before Sabine detonated the Dome, wiping out the Imperial garrison and ending Imperial rule on Lothal.
===Operation Starlight===
====Ambush near Felucia====
In 3 ABY,Star Wars: Timelines dates the events of Star Wars (2020) 10 to 3 ABY. Mart was recruited into Starlight Squadron, as part of the Fourth Division's Operation Starlight. Mattin, under the callsign Starlight Four, flew an T-65B X-wing starfighter, where he and the rest of the Starlight Squadron, participated in their first mission, led by Starlight Leader LieutenantStar Wars (2020) 12 Shara Bey, upon which they were tasked by General Leia Organa with finding the scattered divisions of the Alliance Fleet following the Battle of Hoth, to warn them that the Empire had cracked Alliance communications and to deliver a new Trawak security code that C-3PO and his team had developed. During their search, the squadron discovered wreckage of the Sixth Division near Felucia. Shortly after, they encountered Imperial probe droids waiting nearby. The probe droids latched onto Mattin's astromech droid, and those of his fellow X-wing pilots, and attempted to access the astromechs' archives by drilling into their conical domes. Fearing the Empire might learn the coordinates of the other rendezvous points, Commander Wedge Antilles suggested shooting them off, however Bey questioned his ability to actually pull it off. Instead, Bey ordered all pilots to set their astromech's self-destruct and eject them. However, doing this would mean losing their nav data that would make it difficult getting back to the fleet. With no other choice, the astromechs ejected and detonated, saving their valuable data from the Empire.
With no time to catch their breath, the Imperial II-class Star Destroyer Tarkin's Will arrived and ambushed the squadron. The Star Destroyer launched TIE fighters, which outnumbered the Rebel starfighters three to one. Mattin suggested the A-wings leave while they still had a chance, as there was no way they could coordinate a hyperspace jump during a dogfight without their astromechs. However, Bey made it clear that she was staying to fight. After studying the TIE's tactics, Captain L'ulo L'ampar (Starlight Three) noticed the TIEs were not ganging up on individual starfighters, per the Imperial Tactical Manual when outnumbering the enemy, and quickly realized they were being herded. The Tarkin's Will engaged its tractor beams, catching the squadron's starfighters to bring them in for interrogation. Evaan Verlaine and Antilles agreed that using brute force to try to escape would not work.
Antilles then suggested a maneuver that the Rebel pilots war-gamed back in Rogue Squadron but was untested. The maneuver involved accelerating full throttle and riding the tractor beam toward the Star Destroyer. As they did this, the Imperials aboard the Tarkin's Will remained unphased, as the starfighter tactics gave the impression the Rebels were planning to ram the Star Destroyer in a last-ditch suicide mission. As soon as the shields dropped to pull the starfighters in, the squadron targeted the tractor beam projectors and fired their concussion missiles and proton torpedoes, destroying it. With the tractor beam offline, and the Star Destroyer's targeting computers unable to lock on due to their speed, the Starlight starfighters raced into the hangar, and fired upon the TIE fighters and stormtroopers within. This prevented anymore TIEs from scrambling from the Tarkin's Will.
====Escaping from the Tarkin's Will====
Mattin and Verlaine's X-wings stood guard to keep the TIEs that were chasing them, out of the hangar, while L'ampar's A-wing covered the interior access door from stormtroopers. With the hangar temporarily locked down from further Imperial threats, the rest of the pilots landed and disembarked their ships. Getting close to the tractor beam generators had fried the A-wings' navigational memory banks, so Bey and Freyta Smyth scrambled to a group of Imperial astromech droids sitting idle nearby, while Antilles provided cover fire. Smyth sliced into one of the astromechs, and was surprised that it wasn't using tough encryption. Bey ordered Smyth to get the astromech back to an X-wing and start running the hyperspace calculations, while she stayed behind to do something. Just as L'ampar destroyed an AT-ST walker, more entered the hangar. Antilles urged Bey to hurry as the Imperial astromech in his X-wing had almost finished the nav calculations and all their ships were linked and ready to go. Bey explained that she was able to steal all kinds of valuable intelligence from the other Imperial droids in the hangar, which they could take back to the fleet.
====Abandoning Starlight Leader====
As Bey raced back to her A-wing, it was destroyed by an AT-ST, leaving her stranded. On witnessing this, L'ampar told Bey not to give up, as Starlight would continue to fight the AT-STs and steal her a ship. However, Bey recognised the foolishness of these actions, as staying to help would lose them their only chance to get back to the fleet, and so she issued a direct order to L'ampar to go, along with a request for him to tell her husband, Kes Dameron, that she loved and have him kiss their son, Poe, for her. L'ampar reluctantly acknowledged the order, and the squadron left without her. On the way back to the fleet, L'ampar, now Starlight Two, sent a transmission to the division, stating the mission was unsuccessful. He mentioned finding the remains of the Sixth Division, the ambush by the same Star Destroyer that had been hunting them across the galaxy, and fighting on it that resulted in leaving Starlight Leader behind. He finished off with the only bit of good news, regarding the capture of an Imperial astromech droid with memory banks full of useful navigational data, which was Bey's idea, and one Organa planned to use for Operation Starlight and in finding the Tarkin's Will so they can hunt down Commander Zahra. Later, Mattin's squadron leader Bey, who everyone thought had been caught, had managed to evade capture, and escape from the Star Destroyer's hangar deck. Bey had found a hiding place somewhere on the big, city-sized starship and managed to dismantle an Imperial astromech droid and slice into the Imperial systems to obtain valuable information. Bey raised comms with the Fourth Division and talked to her husband and then debriefed General Organa on the intelligence she had gathered while in hiding.
==Personality and traits==
Mart Mattin was a young human male with long black hair and brown eyes. He was a creative if somewhat reckless rebel. Mart was a natural leader and led his rebel cell, the Iron Squadron.
Until a Skirmish over Mykapo in 2 BBY, it was evident that neither Mart or the rest of Iron Squadron had seen a Star Destroyer before, even though they had heard of them. This lead them to mistake Gozanti-class cruisers and Arquitens-class command cruisers for Star Destroyers, making themselves confident that they can fight the Galactic Empire alone. However, when the Chimaera jumped out of hyperspace in front of them, Mart was astonished how massive and intimidating Star Destroyers really were.
Mart later used his piloting skills to aid the Rebel Alliance and flew a T-65B X-wing during the Attack on Lothal. Despite his piloting skills, Mart and his Squadron were shot down by Imperial forces. Mart was distraught when Imperial stormtroopers destroyed his Droid R3-A3. To honor the droid's sacrifice, he allowed Chopper to inherit his transmitter. Mattin also knew how to wield a blaster. He respected Hera Syndulla and was unwilling to abandon his commander. However, he reluctantly complied with Hera's orders to retreat while she held back their Imperial pursuers.
Mart's piloting skills and reckless nature led Ezra to assign him a sensitive mission to bring a pod of purrgil to attack the Imperial fleet during the Liberation of Lothal.
==Equipment==
When flying an X-wing, Mart Mattin wore an orange flight suit along with a gray and white flight helmet inscribed with Aurebesh across the top that translated to "Sammie."
==Behind the scenes==
Mart was voiced by Zachary Gordon in "Iron Squadron," the eighth episode of the third season of Star Wars Rebels. He was named after Matt Martin, a member of the Lucasfilm Story Group.
==Appearances==
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*Star Wars (2020) 10
*Star Wars (2020) 11
*Star Wars (2020) 12 
*Star Wars (2020) 15
*Star Wars (2020) 21
*Star Wars (2020) 22 
*Star Wars (2020) 36
*Star Wars: Hunters 
==Sources==
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*Star Wars: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know, Updated and Expanded
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*Star Wars Encyclopedia of Starfighters and Other Vehicles
*Ultimate Star Wars, New Edition
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*Star Wars: Timelines
*Star Wars: Dawn of Rebellion: The Visual Guide
*Star Wars Encyclopedia: The Comprehensive Guide to the Star Wars Galaxy
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==Notes and references==
Category:Humans
Category:Individuals with he/him pronouns
Category:Iron Squadron members
Category:Males
Category:Phoenix Squadron personnel
Category:Starlight Squadron personnel