Rejlii Mithel

"The Empire needs quick and creative minds, Ensign. You're hereby promoted to lieutenant."

- Grand Admiral Thrawn to Ensign Mithel

Rejlii Mithel was a male Human who served as an officer in the Imperial Navy as a lieutenant. He was the son of "Mauler" Mithel, who had been a famous TIE pilot.

Early military service
"Can you handle the rest of this?''" "''Yes, sir. Unless Lord Odo&mdash;I mean unless Nuso Esva has left us more surprises, we should be all right."

- Commander Pellaeon and Mithel discuss the Chimaera status

Rejlii Mithel was a Human male who served in the armed forces of the Galactic Empire as a weapons technician specialized in tractor beam operation. His father, a TIE pilot who perished in the Battle of Yavin, kept a hologram of a young Rejlii on the control yoke of his TIE fighter. By 0 ABY, the younger Mithel had completed his training and had been assigned to the Imperial-class Star Destroyer Chimaera as a tractor beam operator. In that year, the Chimaera was sabotaged by the alien warlord Nuso Esva during a battle in the Poln system and set on a collision course with a Golan I platform orbiting the planet Poln Major. With the Chimaera captain dead, command of the warship fell to Commander Gilad Pellaeon, who was faced with the task of averting the impending collision with assistance from Senior Captain Thrawn, Esva's Imperial nemesis.

Thrawn devised a plan to use the Chimaera tractor beams and his transport, the light freighter Lost Reef, to knock the Star Destroyer off course. Given the Chimaera situation, Mithel was the only tractor beam operator available, and it fell to him to enact the strategy. Mithel succeeded in snaring the Lost Reef with the Star Destroyer's tractor beam, drawing in and releasing the smaller vessel in a repeated pattern. Due to the nature of the tractor beam, Mithel's execution of Thrawn's tactic enabled both the Star Destroyer and the freighter to move to their common center of mass, slowly shifting the Chimaera off its path. With the collision avoided, the warship was able to rejoin the Imperial forces in driving off Nuso Esva.

The Thrawn campaign
"Sir, I had just established a positive lock on the freighter when it broke up into a cluster of trac-reflective particles. The targeting system tried to lock on all of them at once and went into a loop snarl.''" "And what did you do?" "I&mdash;sir, I knew that if I waited for the particles to dissipate normally, the target starfighter would be out of range. So I tried to dissipate them myself by shifting the tractor beam into sheer-plane mode." "It didn't work." "''No, sir. The target-lock system couldn't handle it. It froze up completely."

- Ensign Mithel explains his actions to Grand Admiral Thrawn

Mithel continued to serve aboard the Chimaera as a tractor beam operator, and, by 9 ABY, he had attained the rank of ensign. In that year, Thrawn, now a Grand Admiral, launched a military campaign against the New Republic in the wake of the Empire's fragmentation five years prior, using the Chimaera as his flagship. As part of his campaign, Thrawn set a trap for New Republic hero Luke Skywalker on the planet Poderis, hoping to capture the Jedi Knight. After evading the Imperial forces on the planet, Skywalker fled aboard a Class 720 freighter into space, where Thrawn and the Chimaera were awaiting him.

As Skywalker attempted to escape the system, Mithel prepared to capture the Jedi's freighter using a tractor beam. However, Skywalker had been prepared for such an occurrence&mdash;using a covert shroud maneuver, he activated his ship's self-destruct sequence and flew off in an X-wing starfighter held in the vessel's modified cargo bay just as the tractor beam secured a lock on the freighter. When the ship exploded, the tractor beam was unable to compensate for the large amount of debris, prompting Mithel to improvise. The ensign attempted to counteract Skywalker's maneuver by quickly adjusting the beam's setting in an effort to lock on to the X-wing, but the attempt failed as the tractor beam froze. Though the Chimaera opened fire on the X-wing, Skywalker was able to make the jump to hyperspace.

Realizing his failure, Mithel expected to be executed for allowing Skywalker to escape. Nevertheless, the tractor beam operator calmly explained what had transpired when questioned by the Grand Admiral, noting that he had been unprepared to deal with a covert shroud maneuver. Rather than punish the ensign, Thrawn applauded Mithel for his quick thinking and innovative, if unsuccessful, response, promoting him to the rank of lieutenant and assigning him the task of finding an effective response to the covert shroud. Shocked by the turn of events, Mithel graciously accepted the assignment.

Personality and traits
"Several methods have been suggested over the past few decades for counteracting the covert shroud gambit, none of which has ever been made practical. Yours was one of the more innovative attempts, particularly given how little time you had to come up with it. The fact that it failed does not in any way diminish that.''" "Sir?" "''The Empire needs quick and creative minds, Ensign. You're hereby promoted to lieutenant&hellip; and your first assignment is to find a way to break a covert shroud."

- Thrawn lauds Mithel's attempt at counteracting a covert shroud maneuver

Mithel was an energetic and courageous officer committed to serving the Empire. During the battle in the Poln system in 0 ABY, Mithel was able to use his command of the tractor beam to successfully employ Thrawn's makeshift tactic, saving the Chimaera from destruction. He later reported on the Star Destroyer's status with an audacity that caught Pellaeon off-guard, as Mithel was merely a crewer, not a bridge officer. Years later, Mithel continued to serve as one of the Chimaera tractor beam operators, and he was charged with capturing Jedi Luke Skywalker above Poderis in 9 ABY. He attempted to counter Skywalker's covert shroud maneuver by altering his tractor beam's mode, a quick-thinking improvisation that ultimately failed to capture the Jedi. Mithel feared he would be executed for the failure; nevertheless, he calmly explained his actions to Grand Admiral Thrawn, who knew that an effective countermeasure to the covert shroud had never been developed. Impressed by the ensign's effort and potential, the Grand Admiral rewarded Mithel with a promotion and a new assignment to put Mithel's creativity to use in developing a successful response to the covert shroud maneuver. Thrawn saw the tractor beam operator as the kind of talented being whom the Grand Admiral wanted to make up a renewed Empire.

Behind the scenes
Rejlii Mithel was created by author Timothy Zahn for The Last Command, the 1993 conclusion to his Thrawn Trilogy. The following year, Mithel was given a visual depiction in The Last Command Sourcebook, which also contained some roleplaying statistics for use in Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game. He also appeared in the first issue of The Last Command comic adaptation, released on November 26, 1997. After the character went over a decade without another appearance, Timothy Zahn included Mithel as a minor character in his 2011 novel, Choices of One.

Appearances

 * Choices of One
 * The Last Command
 * The Last Command 1