Martio Batch

"Grand Admiral Batch had been tasked by the Emperor with developing a working cloaking device, and he used the Tarkin to demolish the burned-out planet Aeten II&mdash;blasting loose millions of rare stygium crystals."

- New Republic historical document

Martio Batch was one of the twelve original Grand Admirals of the Imperial Navy appointed by Emperor Palpatine two years before the Battle of Yavin.

An engineer at heart, Batch was not as well-known as Rufaan Tigellinus or Danetta Pitta, as he preferred to keep a low profile aboard his research station, Imdaar Alpha, earning him the nickname "the invisible admiral."

Biography
Martio Batch, a Human male, was an officer of the Galactic Empire who rose to prominence and became one of the twelve Grand Admirals appointed by Emperor Palpatine during an elaborate New Year's Fete Week ceremony two years before the Battle of Yavin. Unlike his fellow Grand Admirals, Batch had a distaste for Imperial court politics and made fewer public appearances, earning him the nickname "the Invisible Admiral."

After the loss of the Death Star at the hands of the Rebel Alliance at the Battle of Yavin, the Emperor tasked Batch with designing a fool-proof cloaking device. The Imperial loss at Yavin had enraged the Imperial hierarchy, who sought a weapon that would catch the Rebels off-guard and ensure the Empire's ultimate victory, and Palpatine considered Batch an ideal candidate to lead the secret development project due to his low profile.

Batch spent years aboard the Imdaar Alpha research station trying to develop the cloaking device. The devices had once been common, operating on stygium crystals mined from the planet Aeten II in the Dreighton Nebula. However, as the mines began to run dry, cloaking technology became increasingly rare, with the Sith Infiltrator developed shortly before 32 BBY being among the last known examples of stygium-cloaked vessels.

Using hibridium as an alternative, Batch developed an experimental cloak, but it suffered from a fatal flaw; while the cloaked ship would be invisible, the pilot would be unable to see out. Around 3 ABY, Batch abandoned the hibridium-based cloaking technology and instead attempted to recreate the successful stygium cloaking screen used in the Sith Infiltrator. Batch came upon success when he pulled rank to divert the Empire's new Tarkin superweapon, a stripped-down version of the Death Star, to Aeten II. Using the weapon's powerful superlaser, Batch shattered Aeten II, releasing millions of free-floating crystals from the planet core. This was the Tarkin ' s only offensive action before it was destroyed by a Rebel strike team at Patriim.

Now that he had crystals at his disposal, the Grand Admiral easily recreated the stygian screen used long ago. Under Batch's command, the Empire began fitting modified V38 assault fighters with the technology at the facility on Imdaar Alpha, with the aim of producing a fleet of the cloaked starfighters. In addition to the stygium, the fighters required a supply of oridium fuel, and the Empire established a mining facility in the Belt of Arah to extract and process the ore. To protect his investment, Batch requisitioned the Executor-class Star Dreadnaught Terror, under the command of Admiral Sarn. Both the Terror and the Imdaar Alpha facility were also fitted with the cloaking technology.

The initial prototypes of Grand Admiral Batch's new TIE Phantom starfighters were tested near Dreighton; however, some early mishaps caused delays to the project and the Dark Lord of the Sith Darth Vader eventually arrived to oversee the final stages of the project. Under the Dark Lord's supervision, the final field tests were soon completed and Vader ordered the full scale production of the new fighters. Before long, a fleet of thousands of the TIE Phantoms stood ready at Imdaar Alpha.

It was around this time that the Rebel Alliance discovered Batch's project and they soon launched an operation to steal one of the cloaked fighters to be studied.

The new starfighters possessed slightly more firepower than production TIEs, and they had a unique feature in that they automatically cloaked in between firing their laser cannons, rendering them invisible during most flight operations. These preliminary successes came to the attention of the Rebel Alliance, and they sent a task force to destroy Terror and end the new threat to the Alliance. Aided by the sabotage of the sole B-wing pilot to face the Phantoms and survive, Terror was successfully destroyed. The Alliance also managed to steal a prototype, although it self-destructed shortly thereafter, rendering it useless.

After this colossal failure, Batch stole the remnants of the forces attached to Terror and fled to the Outer Rim Territories in his personal Imperial-class Star Destroyer. Eventually, his executive officer, blaming him for the loss to the Rebels and the subsequent death of Admiral Sarn, betrayed and executed Batch. The second thereupon joined "Supreme Warlord" Harrsk's fleet deep in the Deep Core.

Legacy
Years after Batch's death, one of his discarded cloaking designs, which was plagued with the double-blindness flaw, was used during Grand Admiral Thrawn's military campaign to retake control of the galaxy from the New Republic.

Personality and traits
One of the twelve officers Emperor Palpatine entrusted with being a Grand Admiral, Martio Batch earned the nickname the "Invisible Admiral" due to his aversion to Imperial Court politics.

Behind the scenes
Martio Batch was created by Star Wars authors Kevin J. Anderson and Daniel Wallace for The Essential Chronology, released on April 4, 2000. Batch's backstory was later expanded upon by Wallace, along with fellow author Abel G. Peña, in the Star Wars Insider 66 article Who's Who: Imperial Grand Admirals. Further details of the Grand Admiral's backstory were featured in the New Essential Chronology, and Batch was given a small entry in the 2008 reference book, The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia.

Who's Who: Imperial Grand Admirals co-author Daniel Wallace has unofficially suggested that Batch's personal Star Destroyer was named Meniscus on his StarWars.com blog. The blog entry also included an equipment list for Batch, which included a blaster pistol, a comlink, his code cylinder, a datapad, and a stygium splinter.

The Who's Who: Imperial Grand Admirals article appearing in Insider 66 was originally slated to appear in Star Wars Gamer, though when the magazine was discontinued, it instead appeared in Insider. The original Gamer article, titled Dirty Dozen: Imperial Grand Admirals, contained more information and was longer than the version appearing in Insider.