Silver Angel

The Silver Angel was a repurposed Nebula-class freighter assembled and modified by the mechanic and aspiring pilot Trace Martez, who lived on Level 1313 of the planet Coruscant during the Clone Wars. Pulling mostly from spare parts gathered in Coruscant's underworld, Martez sought to build a starship much faster than the average Nebula freighter, adding her own special modifications. The Silver Angel was a personal labor for Trace, who hoped to craft a vessel capable of taking her away from the planet where her parents were killed. Work on the vessel was completed in 19 BBY, and, after its owner befriended the former Jedi Ahsoka Tano, the ship saw its first flight when Trace accepted a job from her sister Rafa to ferry sansanna spice aboard the Angel from Kessel to Oba Diah.
When Trace discovered that they were working for the dangerous criminal organization known as the Pyke Syndicate, however, she grew fearful of what the crime lords could do to her and her ship and dumped the spice into hyperspace. The crew attempted to deceive the Syndicate's leader, Marg Krim, and avoid his wrath, but the Pykes saw through their ruse and captured them, impounding the Angel at Krim's palace. Although the sisters were briefly allowed to leave the planet aboard the freighter after Tano convinced Krim that the spice shipment was off-world, the siblings soon returned in the hopes of rescuing their new friend. After escaping the Pykes' dungeons, Tano helped the Martez sisters fight their way to the Angel and flee from the Syndicate's palace before returning to Coruscant, at which point she departed their company with the Mandalorian Bo-Katan Kryze.
After the rise of the Galactic Empire, the Angel became a mobile homebase for the Martez sisters as they became smugglers, taking work from those who sought to fight back against the newly-formed dictatorship. One such individual, the former Clone Captain Rex, sent the sisters to Corellia to obtain strategic information from a decommissioned tactical droid to help with his resistance effort. During the mission, Trace and Rafa encountered the Bad Batch, a group of renegade clone commandos who had deserted the Imperial Military. After retrieving the intel, the sisters departed aboard the Angel and informed Rex about the rogue clones.
==Description==
Although recognizably a Nebula-class freighter, the Silver Angel contained a number of modifications made by its owner, Trace Martez, who streamlined the vessel in order to make it faster than the average freighter and swifter than baseline Nebula-class freighters.Star Wars Encyclopedia: The Comprehensive Guide to the Star Wars Galaxy The ship's speed was of particular pride to Martez, who often bragged of her vessel's capabilities to anyone who would listen, even before she had actually flown the ship. The ship shared its name with the Angels, a species of beings who inhabited the moons of Iego.
Assembled from spare parts, the ship measured at 55 meters in length and had a variety of systems, including a hyperdrive, a communications interface, and air brakes, as well as front- and rear-facing deflector shields and six engines. The Angel could support a crew of at least three members and had enough capacity to carry at least three containers of unrefined spice. For offensive capabilities, the Angel had one ventral retractable laser turret that could fire in any direction. The Angel cockpit, which was on a different level from most of the ship, had a similar design layout to the VCX-100 light freighter, featuring enough space for a pilot, co-pilot, and third passenger.
==History==
===Assembly===
Living in the seedy underworld of the Core Worlds planet Coruscant with her sister Rafa during the pan-galactic conflict known as the Clone Wars, the young mechanic Trace Martez dreamed of becoming a pilot and flying away in her own starship. Although the sisters had little money, Trace was determined to realize her dream. By working odd jobs on Level 1313 of the underworld and accepting help from her older sister, Trace was able to earn enough credits to acquire the materials to build a ship. She assembled her ship piece by piece, constructing it in a hangar the sisters had inherited from their parents. Over time, Trace used the parts she had gathered to build a heavily modified Nebula-class freighter. The ship became Trace's pride and joy, and she gave it the name Silver Angel.
Trace was working on her ship in 19 BBY when the Force-Sensitive Outcast Ahsoka Tano crashed her Joben T-85 speeder bike onto the hangar's landing pad. Trace assisted the stranger and introduced herself to the Togruta, who took note of the freighter in the garage and identified it as a Nebula-class. The hopeful pilot was impressed with Tano's eye for ships and offered to repair her bike for a price. The two became quick friends, with Tano saving the young mechanic from the debt collector Pintu Son-El and assisting her in catching a renegade binary loadlifter—one of three droids that Rafa intended to sell to the criminal Lokann. Although Trace was welcoming to Tano, Rafa did not trust her sister's new companion.
===In service to the Pykes===
After selling the loadlifters, Rafa made a deal with the Pyke Syndicate crime lord Marg Krim to transport sansanna spice from the Outer Rim planetSolo: A Star Wars Story The Official Guide Kessel to the Pyke Palace on Oba Diah, a nearby planet that acted as the Syndicate's base of operations. After the pilot she originally hired pulled out of the job, she was forced to turn to her fledgling-pilot sister, who was not informed of the journey's purpose. Trace was eager to finally pilot her ship and welcomed Tano and Rafa aboard the maiden voyage of the Silver Angel, ignoring her companions' distaste regarding the vessel's name. Despite never having earned a pilot's license, Trace Martez flew her vessel out of Level 1313 and took to the skies. Against Tano's warnings, she piloted the ship into a restricted military air lane being used by Low Altitude Assault Transports that were boarding a Venator-class Star Destroyer. Republic Navy Admiral Wullf Yularen, the commander of the Star Destroyer, hailed the Angel crew and threatened them with incarceration. However, they were allowed to pass by Jedi General Anakin Skywalker, who was aboard the Star Destroyer and sensed the presence of Tano, his former apprentice, aboard the Silver Angel.
Trace Martez piloted her freighter away from Coruscant and, forgetting to disengage the air brakes, made the jump to hyperspace, excitedly proclaiming that it was her first time doing so. The brakes made for a rough ride through hyperspace, causing the ship to rumble and creak as it traveled to the Outer Rim. The pilot finally remembered to disengage the brakes after noticing Tano and her sister's discomfort within the ship. The Silver Angel was brought out of hyperspace and entered the Akkadese Maelstrom, a giant cluster of gas and debris that surrounded Kessel. Trace landed the vessel at the palace of King Yaruba, the ruler of the planet. Yaruba's majordomo, Kinash Lock, sent the Silver Angel and its crew to retrieve shipments of spice from the mining sector of the planet, assuring the cautious Tano that the shipment would be used for medicinal purposes.
As Trace made the Kessel Run to deliver their shipment to Oba Diah, Tano realized that they were delivering to the Pykes and told the sisters that the gangsters were not to be trusted, warning Trace that they might steal her ship. As Tano and Rafa argued over the best course of action, Trace, angered at the possibility of losing the ship she had worked so hard to assemble, dumped the shipment of spice into hyperspace as a result. Rafa, in the wake of losing 30,000 credits worth of spice, threatened Trace with the prospect of giving the Angel to the Pykes to make up for the lost cargo. At Tano's insistence, however, the crew agreed to continue to Oba Diah and attempt to deceive the Pykes.
===Impounded on Oba Diah===
Once the Silver Angel arrived at the Pyke Palace, Krim greeted the spicerunners and demanded to see their cargo. Unbeknownst to the sisters, Tano had used the Force to perform a mind trick on Krim, persuading him to pay the sisters without needing to see the shipment. Convinced they were in the clear, Trace told Tano to fire up the ship's engines as she and Rafa unloaded the empty containers. As they began to leave, however, Krim's majordomo, Fife, found his superior's behavior suspicious and demanded that the Pykes be given the codes to open the crates, but Trace began to take off. Fife forced the containers open, and, discovering them to be empty, ordered Sarisa-class gunships to block the freighter's escape. Before the Silver Angel could flee the planet, the Pyke ships caught the vessel within a tractor beam and captured its crew.
Tano and the Martez sisters were thrown into the Pykes' dungeons and tortured to reveal what had happened to their spice. Their ship, meanwhile, was kept on a landing pad outside the palace. The trio managed to escape from their confinement and made their way to the city beneath the Pyke headquarters. As they wandered the seedy streets, Trace Martez climbed on top of a structure and pointed out the Angel silhouette to her companions. Although Trace desired to retrieve her ship, Rafa considered it too dangerous and told her that they should escape on the first vessel they could find. Trace reluctantly agreed on the condition that Rafa would pay for a new ship when they returned home; neither sister would get their wish before the group was once again captured by the Pykes.
In a bid to free her companions, Tano lied to Krim, telling him that the Martez sisters had hidden the spice on another planet. Krim thus allowed the sisters to leave to retrieve the spice while keeping Tano locked away in the Pyke dungeons. Trace and Rafa boarded the Angel and departed from Oba Diah for Orondia Refueling Station. The sisters decided to rescue Tano, but, knowing that they could not return to Krim empty-handed, conspired to trick the unwitting Toong workers on the Pykes' shipping docks at the refueling station into loading spice onto the Angel, hoping to then bring those shipments to Krim himself. As the sisters landed at the station, Rafa Martez hailed the Toongs from the Angel under the alias of "Transport 1519" and ordered the workers to perform a "special request pickup."
===Escaping to Coruscant===
After a small skirmish with the Toongs and their Trandoshan manager at the docks, the Martez sisters flew to the Pyke Palace with the stolen shipment, eager to rescue Tano and leave Oba Diah for good. However, Krim ordered for their immediate execution after pressure from his superior, the renegade Sith Lord Maul. Tano thus set off a series of explosives across the palace, buying time for the trio to escape to the Angel. Pursued by patrol ships, Trace piloted the freighter through the canyons of Oba Diah, giving control of the ship's rear gun to Tano while Rafa monitored its scanners. Tano destroyed two Pyke ships, but a third ship shot out the Angel gun and rear deflector shields, leaving the ship defenseless from behind. Putting her faith in the front shields, Trace Martez turned the ship around and flew headfirst toward the remaining fighter. As the Angel barreled forward, the smaller ship veered to the right to avoid a head-on collision and crashed into the mountainside instead.
Confident in their escape, Trace flew the ship into the planet's upper atmosphere, unaware that they were being followed by a Kom'rk-class fighter/transport. The Silver Angel was flown back to Coruscant and landed in the Martez sisters' hangar, completing its first voyage. As Tano and the Martez sisters discussed their adventure outside the ship, they were interrupted by the Mandalorian Bo-Katan Kryze, who had followed them from Oba Diah. She requested Tano's help in defeating Maul, who had forcibly taken over the planet Mandalore. After bidding Trace and Rafa farewell, Tano departed with Kryze, leaving her bike with the sisters.
===Smuggling in a new age===
In that same year, the Clone Wars came to an end when the Republic's Supreme Chancellor, Sheev Palpatine, proclaimed himself Galactic Emperor and declared all Jedi to be enemies of the state.Star Wars: Galactic Atlas Under the new Galactic Empire, the Martez sisters fled Coruscant and started life anew aboard the Angel, turning it into a mobile homebase to serve their work as smugglers. Dedicating themselves to resisting the regime, they also welcomed a new crewmember aboard: R7-A7, the former astromech droid of Ahsoka Tano. The group was later sent by the former Clone Captain Rex to obtain the remains of a decommissioned T-series tactical droid in Coronet City on the planet Corellia to help with his resistance effort against the Empire.
Although they were initially able to locate the processing unit of one such droid in a dismantling facility, complications arose when the sisters encountered the Bad Batch, a squad of rogue clone commandos that was after the same droid. Pursued by Imperial Police Droids, the two groups were rescued by R7, who brought the organics aboard the Silver Angel during the firefight. In the process, however, the tactical droid brain was destroyed. Fortunately for the sisters, the Batch had copied the droid's information onto a data rod. Believing that the sisters' quest was a noble one, the clone leader Hunter trusted them with the intelligence. After dropping the clone troopers off at their own ship, Trace and Rafa departed Corellia aboard the Angel and sent word to Rex, informing him of their successful mission as well as the location of the rogue clones.
==Owners and operators==
The Silver Angel was owned and maintained by the mechanic Trace Martez, who assembled the ship in her family's hangar after her mother and father were killed in the collateral damage of the Jedi Order's pursuit of Ziro the Hutt that took place in 21 BBY. Martez desired to fly across the galaxy and viewed the Angel as her escape from the squalor of Coruscant's underworld and the Jedi who led wars on the upper levels.
Throughout its mission to and subsequent escape from the Pyke Syndicate, the ship was piloted by Trace Martez while her sister Rafa would often handle the vessel's communication systems and talk her way through dangerous situations. When the Angel was pursued by Pyke ships on Oba Diah, Trace gave control of the weapons systems to Ahsoka Tano, whose Jedi training allowed her to swiftly take out their pursuers with the ship's turret. During the Imperial Era, the droid R7-A7 served aboard the Angel as co-pilot and resident astromech. While embarking on planetary missions, Trace and Rafa trusted R7 to helm the ship in their absence.
==Behind the scenes==
The Silver Angel was first shown in a television spot for the seventh season of the Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated series on March 17, 2020, and later made its debut in "Gone with a Trace," the fifth episode of the season, released on Disney+ on March 20 of the same year. The ship was not identified until the next episode, "Deal No Deal," which was released a week later on March 27. On the second volume of the season's soundtrack, the name of the ship is written incorrectly on the fifth track, "Launching the Silverangel."Star Wars: The Clone Wars - The Final Season (Episodes 5-8)
The ship's cockpit, which was originally designed for a sixth season of the original run of The Clone Wars, was repurposed as the cockpit of the Ghost, the ship flown by the main characters of Lucasfilm Animation's next series, Star Wars Rebels, as they felt its interior worked very well and did not think it would otherwise get to be seen at the time. Nevertheless, the full design of the Ghost cockpit was not an exact replica of The Clone Wars design. Series creator and executive producer Dave Filoni clarified that only pieces of the concept were used, much like how a live-action set would repurpose props and layouts.
Concept art for the cockpit done by Kilian Plunkett on April 25, 2018 shows that the Silver Angel was originally named Black Ace. Concept art of the ship's exterior was drawn by JP Balmet, and lighting concepts of the planets featured in the story arc done by Jason Boesch also include the vessel. Artist Marissa Bernstel created storyboards for scenes featuring the Silver Angel while under contract at Lucasfilm Animation, which were then later sent to animators for the animation process.
===Concept art gallery===
==Appearances==
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*The Clone Wars: Season 7: Volume 1
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==Sources==
==Notes and references==
Category:Nebula-class freighters
Category:Smuggler starships