Rae Sloane

"I'm Admiral Rae Sloane. You are under arrest for conspiring against the Galactic Empire, long may it reign."

- Rae Sloane, arresting Jas Emari and Norra Wexley

Rae Sloane was a dedicated human female naval officer in the service of the Galactic Empire, and was instrumental in its survival in the aftermath of the Battle of Endor. While an Imperial cadet at the Defiance Flight Training Institute, she foiled a plot by Commandant Pell Baylo to assassinate Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader. Sloane went on to rise through the ranks of the Imperial Navy.

Despite only filling in for the actual captain, Yale Karlsen, who was on assignment to a construction committee, she was proud to have achieved captaincy of a capital ship by the age of thirty, an Imperial Star Destroyer called the Ultimatum. She was charged with escorting Count Denetrius Vidian to the planet Gorse and was subsequently drawn into the Gorse conflict. During her tour of the Gorse system, Sloane foiled a plot by Vidian to destroy Gorse's moon Cynda and its thorilide reserves in order to enrich himself. Due to her efforts in saving Cynda and its thorilide reserves, Captain Sloane was given permanent command of the Ultimatum.

Later, Sloane tried to capture the rebel Kanan Jarrus by using his old friend Morfizo to lure him into a trap. During the Battle of Endor, Rae Sloane served as an admiral in the Imperial Navy and commanded the Star Destroyer Vigilance. Following the Empire's defeat at Endor, she would organize a secret Imperial meeting on the planet Akiva. After the New Republic liberated Akiva, Sloane fled offworld.

In the following months, Sloane would attain the distinguished rank of Grand Admiral, bestowed unto her by the mysterious Fleet Admiral Gallius Rax. From there, she was given command of the Imperial Navy and became its new commander.

Meeting the Sith
A human female, Rae Sloane was born on the Core planet Ganthel ninteen years prior to the galactic conflict known as the Clone Wars. In order to avoid being employed at a shipyard or loading dock, Sloane left Ganthel and enrolled in the Galactic Empire's naval academy on Prefsbelt, graduating high in her class. She ended up training as a cadet on board the Defiance Flight Training Institute, a facility run by Commandant Pell Baylo based onboard the Defiance cruiser. During her time on the starship, Galactic Emperor Sheev Palpatine was invited by Baylo to hold meeting with several chiefs of the Imperial Navy which aimed to decide how the military schools the Empire had inherited from the Galactic Republic could be incorporated into the Imperial academies. The Emperor, and his apprentice Darth Vader boarded the Defiance in the Denon system where Baylo started running Sloane and the other cadets through drills and simulations on the ships bridge for the Emperor and Vader. Palpatine remained only a short time but ordered Vader to stay and observe, which he did for several hours as Baylo constantly berated his cadets as they worked.

When Vice Admiral Tallatz&mdash;the last of the Naval chiefs&mdash;arrived on the Defiance, Sloane programmed a course from the Denon star system to the planet Christophsis, where Palpatine and Vader were transferring from the Defiance to the Imperial-class Star Destroyer Perilous in order to travel to the planet Ryloth and quash the insurgency there. Baylo then gave the order for the course to be plotted, and when Sloane showed that she had already done it, Baylo claimed her course would send them into Wild Space and changed it. Sloane's course had in fact been correct, but Baylo was planning to kill the Emperor and Vader and had changed the course to take the Defiance into the heart of the sun. Once the course was set, the Commandant left the bridge and Sloane looked over her calculations to find where she had gone wrong. Vader then approached her and stopped her from jumping the ship to hyperspace, changing the course back to Sloane's original. Vader then left and executed Baylo in his office in front of the Emperor. Shortly after the Defiance arrived at Christophsis, Sloane entered the office and found Baylo's body, after which Palpatine and Vader disembarked and traveled to Ryloth.

Escorting Count Vidian
"These yokels act as if they haven't seen a Star Destroyer before!"

- Rae Sloane, upon entering the Gorse system

Captain Sloane would eventually serve as the Executive Officer aboard the Star Destroyer Executrix, the personal ship of Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin. Upon her promotion to captaincy, she was assigned to the Imperial Star Destroyer Ultimatum and was present during the events of the Gorse conflict. During that tour, Rae was tasked with escorting the Emperor's efficiency expert Count Denetrius Vidian on a mission to speed up the production of thorilide in the Gorse system. Vidian was a cyborg who had overcome Shilmer's syndrome to become one of the galaxy's most respected management gurus. Most of the thorilide was extracted from Gorse's moon Cynda and then transported to Gorse for refining and export. At that time, Rae's captaincy of the Ultimatum was originally intended as a temporary position since the ship's nominal Captain Yale Karlsen was away on business in Corellia.

Upon entering the Gorse system, Captain Sloane ordered the mining traffic between Gorse and Cynda to stay clear within a kilometre of the Ultimatum per Imperial Navy procedure. Vidian them intervened and convinced Sloane to back her ship away from the mining traffic in order to avoid slowing down production. Rae and her crew including Commander Nibiru Chamas were present when Vidian ordered the Ultimatum to open fire on a damaged laggard freighter called the Cynda Dreaming in order to "speed" up the traffic. Sloane stayed aboard the Star Destroyer while Vidian conducted his tour of the mines on Cynda. While patrolling the mining fleet, Sloane had a brief but hostile exchange with a "cheeky" freighter pilot named Kanan Jarrus, who made snide remarks about her appearance. Unknown to Sloane, Kanan was a Jedi Padawan who had survived the Jedi Purge.

After Vidian returned from his tour of Cynda, Captain Sloane informed him that the recent blast within Cynda's mines had been deliberately planted by a dissident miner named Skelly, who had been apprehended by a blasting team. Vidian then told the Captain that he needed to change his itinerary and visit the refineries on Cynda. The Count's original plan had been to correspond with the planetary managers by hologram. In truth, Vidian's real motive for visiting Gorse was to destroy the medcenter in Gorse City in order to conceal his past as the safety inspector Lemuel Tharsa. Nonetheless, Sloane complied with her superior's orders. Officially, Tharsa was listed as a free-lance mining consultant who worked for Vidian.

On the day before Vidian's scheduled tour of Gorse, Sloane and Commander Chamas privately discussed their impressions about Count Vidian. Besides commenting on Vidian's efforts to increase economic productivity and security crackdown on the planet, they also noted his personal habits including his frequent calls to his main office on Calcoraan Depot and the damage to Vidian's personal quarters. Chamas told Sloane that he suspected that the Count had a temper; in fact, the Count had flown into a rage after learning from his rival Baron Lero Danthe that the Empire had doubled Gorse's thorilide quota. The two also questioned Vidian's official biographical account that he was a disgruntled ship-building engineer who had rebuilt himself as a successful managing tycoon. Sloane and Vidian made an agreement to keep an eye on Vidian's activities while protecting him from the "rabble" during the tour.

The following day, Captain Sloane accompanied Vidian on his tour of Gorse City. Their first stop was the Moonglow Polychemical refinery where Vidian was hosted by the company's chief operating officer Lal Grallik and her husband Gord Grallik, the head of ground security. Despite the best precautions put in place by Sloane and Gord, Vidian's tour did not go as planned. The dissident miner Skelly, who had escaped with the help of the rebel Hera Syndulla, attempted to convince Vidian not to destroy Cynda. The count instead assaulted him but he managed to escape into the factory conveyer belt system.

Sloane and her men were unable to apprehend the fugitive but instead caught another intruder who turned out to be the same Kanan she had encountered earlier. Kanan claimed that he was a bus driver but Sloane found his explanation unsatisfactory since he had been found loitering in the security zone. Sloane also recognized Kanan as the cheeky pilot whom she had encountered earlier in the Gorse system. Sloane was also about to detain Kanan's friend Hera for unauthorized entry but decided to let them go after receiving new orders from Vidian to return to the Ultimatum immediately. Vidian claimed that he had come up with a new strategy that would serve the Emperor. Sloane reluctantly released Kanan and Hera.

Sloane's efforts to ferry Vidian back to the Ultimatum was fraught by danger and hostility. Skelly blew up two Imperial shuttles that Captain Sloane had diverted from the Star Destroyer to pick up Vidian. She and the Count survived but several stormtroopers were killed. The Imperials' problems were complicated by a vengeful Gord seeking to confront Vidian for callously murdering his wife Lal and Skelly being helped by the rebel Hera and her friend Kanan. Despite dispatching Imperial Troop Transports and two TIE fighters after the fugitives, the rebels managed to escape on a hoverbus which they dumped on a quarry. Sloane was forced to divert a third shuttle Bastinade to pick up Vidian.

Thwarting Vidian's conspiracy
"Then I am just in time. Ultimatum technical crews&mdash;rescind the Detonation Control link to Forager... And all stormtroopers aboard Forager, in the name of the Emperor: Arrest Count Vidian"

- Captain Sloane thwarting Vidian's plot

Once safely aboard the Ultimatum, Captain Sloane and her science officer Lieutenant Deltic were present when Count Vidian outlined his "new strategy" which involved destroying Cynda so that his thorilide collection vessel could harvest the moon's thorilide reserves. Vidian proposed using the baradium-357 stored at his Calcoraan Depot. When Lieutenant Deltic expressed her concerns that destroying the moon would cause the thorilide crystals to dissolve, Sloane demanded that Vidian conduct a test to prove the viability of the test since it would have severe repercussions for Gorse. However, Vidian was prepared for this and produced fake test results under the pseudonym Lemuel Tharsa which supported his arguments that destroying the moon would not damage Cynda's thorilide crystals. In truth, Vidian wanted to discredit Sloane and his rival Baron Danthe in order to secure favor with the Emperor.

As part of the test bombing, Vidian with the tacit approval of Captain Sloane bombed the Moonglow mining facilities on Cynda, killing many workers. The explosion was blamed on Moonglow's management and was later used as a pretext by the Empire to nationalize the company. Despite the loss of lives involved, Sloane accepted Vidian's arguments that alerting the miners would lead to unrest in the Gorse system. The captain was also satisfied by Lemuel's report, which supported Vidian's claims that the resulting asteroid field would continue to yield thorilide for the next two thousand years. This would do more than fulfill the Emperor's recent decision to triple Gorse's thorilide quota.

Putting Vidian's plan into action, Sloane ordered Gorse Space Traffic Control to divert all mining cargo ships in the system to pick up shipments of baradium-357 from the Calcoraan Depot. The Imperial captain and her ship traveled to the Calcoraan system where they supervised the loading of the mining freighters. Captain Sloane was skeptical of Deltic's figures that the debris resulting from Gorse's destruction could continue to supply a hundred interstellar Empires for a century. Shortly later, Chamas informed Sloane that Baron Danthe wanted to talk to her. During their conversation, Danthe expressed concern that Vidian had not informed him of his latest venture and asked her to inform him if she needed any help.

Sloane later visited the Calcoraan Depot where she was given a tour of the facility by Count Vidian. She noticed his employees reverse-engineering Baron Danthe's heat-proof mining drones. While touring the baradium depot, she learned that Vidian's mechanised lungs were capable of filtering out poison. Sloane encountered a disguised Kanan, who had created a blockage in the tramcar tube by shoving a maintenance droid inside. Sloane believed Kanan's report that there was a blockage, which enable Kanan and his rebel friends Hera, Skelly, and the Sullustan Zaluna Myder to infiltrate Vidian's personal quarters.

The rebels managed to incapacitate the Count with a sleeping serum and then downloaded his mind into a computer. As a result, the rebels learned that Vidian was actually Lemuel Tharsa and that he had faked the test results for his own personal enrichment. In order to halt Vidian's plan, they decided that they had to send the original test results to the Emperor. The rebels found an unlikely ally in the form of Captain Sloane. Kanan lured Sloane into Vidian's personal chambers and trapped her in a stasis field. Sloane quickly recognized Kanan as the mouthy pilot but Kanan managed to convince her that he was an "agent of the Emperor." He told her about Vidian's falsified results and asked her to send the original results to the Emperor via a secure channel on her Star Destroyer. Despite her dislike of Kanan, Sloane complied with his request due to her loyalty to the Empire.

After Vidian awoke, Sloane feigned loyalty and claimed that she had been accosted by the same rebels who had attacked him. After alerting security, Vidian ordered Sloane to make the Ultimatum ready for departure to the Gorse system. He also ordered that Sloane deploy TIE fighters and Gozanti-class freighter carriers. Believing Sloane to still be loyal, Vidian offered to support her career advancement in the Imperial Navy if she agreed to take part in the detonation of Cynda.

Back aboard the Ultimatum, Sloane and Chamas contacted Baron Danthe over a secure channel and passed the original test results to him. While Danthe was a civilian, Sloane and Chamas approached him because he was one of the few people who could directly approach the Empero and his highest officials. Upon arriving in the Gorse system, Sloane dispatched TIE fighters to intercept the rebels' freighter Expedient, which she termed "Renegade One." However, the rebels eliminated all the TIEs and managed to make a forced landing aboard Vidian's harvesting vessel Forager.

Despite being boarded, Count Vidian insisted on continuing the countdown. At that point, Commander Chamas informed Sloane that she had received a priority-message from the Emperor himself. While Sloane dealt with the Emperor, Chamas announced that the linkup to Detonation Control was live and that it was only ten minutes prior to the final charges being planted. After confirming Vidian's falsified results and identity with Emperor Palpatine, Sloane realised the full depth of Vidian's deception including his conspiracy to frame her and Baron Danthe for the loss of thorilide yield in the Gorse system. With Chamas and Baron Danthe watching, Sloane ordered her crew to severe the detonation link to Forager and issued orders for Vidian's immediate arrest.

Vidian then revealed that he had a final trick up his sleeve: he was still able to remotely control the injection towers and logistical systems from the Forager. In response, Sloane ordered the stormtroopers aboard the Forager to kill Vidian's cybernetic crew. She also ordered the Ultimatum gunnery crew to bombard the Vidian's ship's transmission tower and energy shields. The Forager was badly damaged during the bombardment. Vidian himself was personally killed by Skelly, who detonated a bomb that destroyed the vessel. Meanwhile, Kanan, Hera, and Zaluna managed to escape in a life pod. The death of Vidian and the destruction of his ship ended his plans to destroy Cynda.

Due to her role in stopping Vidian, Sloane was made the permanent Captain of the Ultimatum. She subsequently learned that Commander Chamas had been working for Baron Danthe all this time by supplying him with information about Vidian's phantom consultant. Baron Danthe himself was granted control over the thorilide mining operations in the Gorse system. Danthe ended all mining operations on Cynda and restored the moon to its former status as a tourist destination. He also embarked on mining operations in Gorse's sunward side using heat-resistant drones. Following a debriefing with one of the Emperor's intermediaries, Sloane came to rightfully suspect that Kanan was no agent of the Emperor and endeavoured to discover his true identity.

Riding the Levers of Power
In the years following the Gorse conflict, she ascended to the rank of vice admiral, but in her spare time she tried to learn more about the history of Kanan Jarrus, who she had met during the Gorse conflict, following his trail from the planet Gorse to Moraga where it ended. There she captured the rebel Morfizo, who was an old friend of Jarrus, and used him to lure Jarrus. She tried to capture him, but he knocked her down and escaped with Morfizo. After Jarrus's escape she was approached by the Grand Inquisitor, who told her to tell him everything she knew about Jarrus.

Sloane was assigned to the Vigilance, which she commanded during the Battle of Endor. Following the destruction of the Executor, Admiral Sloane was left as the highest ranking officer in that fleet, and organized the Imperial retreat following the destruction of the Death Star.

Akiva and Beyond
During the rise of the New Republic, Vice Admiral SLoane organized and led a secret Imperial meeting on the planet Akiva. The meeting was the start of the Imperial Future Council, the goal of which was to plan the future of the Empire after the death of the Emperor and his apprentice, Darth Vader. Before the meeting started, she captured pilot Wedge Antilles of the New Republic while he was scouting the system. As the meeting went on, she realized there was no hope for the IFC, as the members were constantly squabbling. When Wedge Antilles escaped his cell and summoned the New Republic to war, Sloane was forced to abort the meeting and abandon the planet. Narrowly surviving the Battle of Akiva, she would return to the Super Star Destroyer Ravager. There she met face to face with her superior, the mysterious Fleet Admiral Gallius Rax, who revealed that it was indeed he who orchestrated the Battle of Akiva, tipping off the New Republic of the presence of the Imperial summit meeting in order to purge the incompetent Imperial Military leadership. Sloane proved herself to indeed be competent, and so Rax promoted her to the rank of Fleet Admiral, and later Grand Admiral, and made her the de facto leader of the Imperial Navy, also promising to give her a bid for empress in time.

Personality and traits
"If that's the way you [Count Vidian] want it. Death warrant extended to all workers on Forager's bridge. Stormtroopers, fire!"

- Captain Sloane was ruthless in exterminating any enemies of the Galactic Empire

Rae Sloane was an ambitious and loyal Imperial Navy officer who was devoted to serving Emperor Palpatine and his Galactic Empire. She was a tall, muscular human woman with dark skin and dark hair. A meritorious officer, Sloane joined the Imperial Navy in order to escape having to work in a shipyard or loading dock in her homeworld of Ganthel. While staunchly loyal, Sloane did not hesitate to question orders which she deemed treasonous and counter-productive to the Empire's interests. As an Imperial cadet at the Defiance Flight Training Institute, Rae chafed under Commandant Pell Baylo, a harsh but effective instructor who constantly berated his cadets. Using her mathematical skills, Rae foiled a plot by Baylo to assassinate the Emperor and Darth Vader during a visit to her ship-based academy.

As Captain of the Ultimatum, Sloane saw herself as a servant of the Galactic Empire. She had a tenuous working relationship with her superior Count Denetrius Vidian, the Empire's efficiency expert. While sharing Vidian's belief in the Empire, Sloane was uncomfortable with his volatile and narcissistic personality, micromanagement, and also observed discrepancies in Vidian's official biography. Sloane confided her concerns about Vidian with her fellow officer Commander Nibiru Chamas, who was secretly working for Vidian's rival Baron Lero Danthe. While Sloane expressed concerns about the repercussions of Vidian destroying the planet Gorse's moon Cynda, she complied with his plan after Vidian produced fake results claiming that the moon's detonation would not affect thorilide yields. After discovering Vidian's deception and alerting the Emperor, she did not hesitate to order Vidian's arrest and the destruction of his ship Forager.

While Captain Sloane had no qualms about using force and harsh measures to impose Imperial order on the the people of Gorse, she was still disturbed by her science officer Lieutenant Deltic's willingness to consider detonating Cynda just for the thrill of witnessing its destructive effects on Gorse. Regarding Deltic as an "embarrassment", Sloane toyed with throwing her out through her Star Destroyer's airlock and was relieved when Deltic was excluded from the party that accompanied Baron Danthe's promotion ceremony on Gorse.

As a loyal Imperial official, Sloane also disliked the former Jedi Padawan and rebel Kanan Jarrus due to his cheeky remarks about her appearance. Despite missing an opportunity to arrest him, Sloane was still able to forge an "alliance of convenience" with Kanan after he appealed to her loyalty to the Empire in order to sabotage Vidian's plan to destroy Cynda. Her willingness to work with her nominal enemy was motivated by the rationale that Vidian's actions endangered Imperial strategic assets. Nevertheless, Sloane would resume her hunt for Kanan once Vidian's threat had been eliminated.

Behind the scenes
Rae Sloane was created for John Jackson Miller's 2014 novel A New Dawn, which was the first in a new line of Canon literature produced in consultation with the Lucasfilm Story Group. She was a point-of-view character and served as a secondary antagonist in that novel. An excerpt from the novel including Sloane was first released on July 15, 2014, as part of the Star Wars 2014 Sampler. Sloane later appeared as in Chuck Wendig's 2015 novel Aftermath, which was produced as part of the Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens literature series. In addition, Sloane has appeared in several other Canon literature including Jason Fry's short story The Levers of Power, Miller's short stories Bottleneck and Orientation, and Greg Weisman's Marvel comic series Star Wars: Kanan.

Appearances

 * "Bottleneck"&mdash;The Rise of the Empire
 * A New Dawn
 * Star Wars: Kanan 12: First Blood, Epilogue: The Ties That Bind
 * "The Levers of Power"&mdash;The Rise of the Empire
 * Aftermath
 * Aftermath: Life Debt
 * Aftermath: Life Debt