Chapter 174 · The Question

Faro’s question settled over the table more heavily than anything that had come before it.

Eli had spent most of the journey considering how to explain the situation without making it sound either impossible or deranged. The difficulty was that, stripped of context, it was both. Thrawn had vanished aboard the Chimaera after an attack involving purrgil, the Ascendancy had eventually sent people to find him, and every conventional attempt to reach the region where he had disappeared had failed against a boundary no ordinary vessel could cross. There was no elegant version of that story.

“We need information,” he said at last. “And possibly access.”

Faro gave him a look that made it clear she expected considerably more than that.

Eli continued. “When Thrawn disappeared, he wasn’t killed. At least, we have no reason to believe he was. The purrgil took the Chimaera with them.”

Faro’s expression barely moved, but her eyes sharpened. “I heard the reports.”

“I assumed you would.”

“I also assumed half of them were nonsense.”

“That would have been convenient.”

Faro leaned back slightly. “Start there.”

So Eli did.

He gave her the short version of Lothal: the battle, the creatures entering the system, the Chimaera being caught in the middle of something no tactical model had anticipated. He avoided details he did not personally know and made no attempt to decorate the gaps. What mattered was simple enough. Thrawn and the ship had disappeared together, and every trace suggested that the purrgil had carried them somewhere beyond the ordinary navigational limits of known space.

Faro listened without interrupting. That, more than anything, told Eli she was taking him seriously. When he finished, she looked toward Stent. “You believe this.”

“Yes.”

“No qualification?”

Stent considered the wording. “The evidence supports it.”

Faro exhaled slowly through her nose. “Of course it does.”

Eli smiled faintly. “You’re taking this better than I expected.”

“I served under Thrawn. My standards for improbable explanations changed years ago.”

“That’s fair.”

She took another drink, then set the glass down carefully. “And the Ascendancy sent you after him.”

“Eventually.”

“Eventually?”

Eli glanced at Stent. The Chiss answered. “The Ascendancy does not commit resources lightly beyond its borders. There were political considerations.”

Faro looked at him for a moment. “That sounds like a very diplomatic way of saying somebody argued about it for a long time.”

“Yes.”

Eli resisted a smile.

Faro noticed anyway. “And somehow the result of those political considerations was the two of you.”

“There were more people involved initially,” Eli said.

“Initially.”

“That part is also complicated.”

“Everything is complicated.”

“Yes.”

Faro rubbed two fingers against her temple. “I am beginning to regret asking.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Do not presume.”

“You always complained when you were interested.”

Her eyes narrowed. Eli smiled.

That old familiarity surfaced again for a moment, brief enough not to soften the conversation but enough to make the years between them feel less absolute.

Then Faro looked toward Stent. “So what stopped you?”

“The boundary.”

That changed the tone again.

Eli leaned forward. “We reached the region. Or close enough to understand the problem. There’s a point beyond which ordinary navigation stops working properly. Sensors degrade, power systems become unreliable, hyperspace calculations fail. It isn’t an Imperial interdiction field or anything artificial. It’s just... space behaving differently.”

Faro frowned. “The edge of the galaxy.”

“Something like that.”

“And you tried to cross it.”

“Yes.”

“How many times?”

Eli hesitated.

Stent answered. “Enough to determine that another attempt using the same methods would be irrational.”

Faro looked from one to the other. “So more than once.”

Eli sighed. “Yes.”

“And?”

“We got pushed back.”

“Every time?”

“Yes.”

She considered that. “That’s why the edge of the Galaxy hasn’t been crossed yet. And you think the purrgil can cross it.”

“We know they can.”

That earned him a sharper look. Eli continued before she could ask. “They were there when Thrawn disappeared. We’ve found enough evidence since then to be certain they use routes conventional ships can’t follow. Whatever they do, whatever mechanism they use to navigate, it lets them pass through something that stops us.”

Faro was quiet for several seconds. Then she said, “Star-whales.”

Eli braced himself. “Basically.”

“Maker,” she sighed.

“That was more or less my reaction. I need more data on the subject.”

“You want Imperial records on them?”

“Yes.”

Faro leaned back. “I do not have specialized intelligence on migratory space fauna sitting in my personal files, Vanto.”

“I wasn’t expecting you to.”

“You looked hopeful.”

“I am hopeful.”

“That is not the same thing.”

“No.”

Stent spoke before Eli could continue. “The Empire has encountered purrgil repeatedly. There may be navigation records, zoological studies, military reports, hazard assessments or archived observations from ships that survived contact. Any of those could be useful.”

Faro’s gaze shifted to him. “Useful how?”

“We need patterns. Routes. Environmental conditions. Anything that might indicate where they gather or how they enter and leave hyperspace.”

Faro’s expression changed very slightly at that. “You think you can use them.”

Eli answered. “We think they may be the only way through.”

There was no humor in Faro’s face now. “You’re planning to follow them.”

“If we can.”

“That is insane.”

“Probably.”

Stent looked at him. Eli corrected himself. “Potentially.”

“That is not an improvement,” Faro said.

“No.”

For a moment she simply studied them.

The noise of the café continued around them: quiet conversation, cutlery, footsteps crossing the stone outside, the distant murmur of visitors moving between museum buildings. The ordinariness of it made the subject feel even more absurd.

Finally Faro spoke. “I can look.”

Eli straightened. “That’s all I’m asking.”

“No, it isn’t.”

He stopped.

Faro’s tone had shifted again, not hostile but precise. “You did not cross nine days of space for a database search you could theoretically have requested through an encrypted channel. You wanted to see me because you needed to know whether I would help you before telling me what you were actually doing.”

Eli opened his mouth. She lifted a hand. “Do not.”

He closed it again.

Faro looked satisfied. “You wanted access.”

“Yes.”

“To Imperial records you cannot reach as civilian freight contractors.”

“Yes.”

“And possibly clearance through areas you should not be entering at all.” Eli glanced at Stent. The Chiss remained perfectly still. Faro noticed. “That means yes.”

“It may become relevant,” Eli said.

“That also means yes.”

He sighed. “Fine.”

Faro folded her arms. “I should have known.”

“You did know. That’s why you asked.”

“That is not the point.”

“It feels like the point.”

She ignored him. “How much access?”

“As much as you can safely give us.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It’s the only honest one.”

Faro looked genuinely irritated by that, which Eli privately considered a good sign. Irritation meant she was already thinking about what might be possible.

After a moment she said, “I can give you limited contractor recognition under my authority. Nothing dramatic. Your ship can be flagged as an auxiliary civilian transport used by my supply wing.”

Eli blinked. “That fast?”

“No.”

“Ah.”

“It requires records, verification and enough bureaucratic clutter that nobody thinks to examine it too closely.”

“That sounds more reassuring.”

“It should not.”

She reached for her datapad.

“If I do it, it gets you through routine inspection points and makes your presence in some military-adjacent systems less interesting. It does not make you Imperial personnel, and it absolutely does not give you unrestricted access to classified archives.”

“I wasn’t expecting unrestricted.” Faro looked at him. Eli amended that. “I was hoping.”

“Of course you were.”

Stent leaned slightly forward. “It would still be useful.”

“Yes,” Faro said. “Which is why I’m considering it.”

She entered something on the datapad, then paused. “I’ll need your ship’s registry and transponder signature.”

Eli hesitated only briefly. At this stage, withholding it would be pointless. He transferred the data locally.

Faro examined the vessel information. “Faded Glory.”

Eli smiled. “It grows on you.”

“I doubt that.”

“It did on us.”

Her eyes moved across the registry details. “Independent commercial freighter. Recent supplemental transport authorization. Several completed contracts.” She looked up. “You really are doing freight.”

Eli spread his hands. “I told you.”

“I assumed you were simplifying.”

“Never underestimate the power of logistics.”

“I worked under Thrawn. I learned that lesson.” That earned a small smile from Stent. Faro noticed. “See? He understands me.”

Eli looked at the Chiss. “Don’t encourage her.”

“I said nothing.”

“That has never stopped you before.”

Faro returned to the datapad. “I can probably insert the Faded Glory into a secondary contractor list without creating enough interest for anyone to care. If somebody does care, you are on your own.”

“Understood.”

“And you do not use my name unless there is absolutely no alternative.”

“Also understood.”

“If anyone challenges your authorization, transmit the secondary key and stop talking. Do not improvise.”

Eli looked mildly offended. “I do not always improvise.”

Faro stared at him. Stent looked away. Eli sighed. “Fine.”

She resumed entering data.

For a while the conversation became almost disappointingly practical. Registry codes, probable inspection levels, which authorities could verify the contractor status and which could not. Faro explained that the recognition would help most with routine Navy and logistics checks but would mean very little if ISB became genuinely interested in them. “ISB is not something I can protect you from,” she said. “Not without creating exactly the sort of attention you are trying to avoid.”

“We’ll avoid ISB.”

“That is an excellent plan. I recommend maintaining it.”

Eli nodded. Then Faro stopped typing. Her hand remained resting against the edge of the datapad. “There is something else.”

Eli looked at her. The change in her expression was subtle, but immediate. “What?”

Faro did not answer right away. Instead, she reached into the inner pocket of her jacket and removed a small flat container. Black metal. No Imperial markings.

Stent went completely still. Eli noticed that before he noticed the glyphs. They were faint, etched into one edge of the casing, but unmistakably cheunh.

Faro placed it on the table between them. “I have been carrying this since before Lothal.”

Eli stared at it.

Stent leaned closer without touching it. “Where did you get that?”

Faro’s fingers rested lightly on the container. “Thrawn gave it to me.” That silenced both of them. “He gave it to me the day I left the Seventh Fleet,” she continued. “Right before my promotion. I had already cleared my quarters, handed over the last of my reports and was about ten minutes from leaving the Chimaera when he summoned me back.”

Eli could picture it immediately. “Typical.”

“Yes.” A faint trace of irritation crossed Faro’s face, softened by memory. “He said almost nothing. Only that I should keep it somewhere secure and that, if the appropriate person ever came looking for him, I would know when to hand it over.”

Eli looked at her. “He said that?”

“Not exactly in those words. You know what he was like.”

“I do.”

“He made it sound like a hypothetical exercise. I asked whether I was supposed to know what was inside. He said no.”

“That definitely sounds like him.”

Faro turned the container slightly beneath her fingers. “I tried to read it anyway.”

Eli smiled.

“I was an Imperial officer handed an unidentified data device by my commanding officer and told not to worry about what it contained. What precisely did he expect?”

“That you’d try.”

“Yes. Probably.”

She looked toward Stent. “Nothing aboard my ship could read the formatting. Eventually I realized the markings weren’t decorative.”

“They are Cheunh,” Stent said.

Faro nodded. “I assumed as much.”

He studied the sigils for another moment. “Not ordinary notation.”

“No?”

“Specialized administrative encoding. Possibly military.”

Faro’s expression tightened slightly. “That explains why every Imperial system treated it like corrupted data.”

Eli reached toward the container, then stopped. “Did he say who it was for?”

“No name.”

“Nothing?”

“Only that I would recognize the circumstances when they arrived.” Faro looked at him. “Then I received two jars of Lysatran quince from a man who vanished into Chiss space years ago and returned with a Chiss commander asking questions about Thrawn.”

Eli glanced at Stent. “Well.”

“Yes.”

“That is fairly specific.”

“I thought so.”

She pushed the container across the table. “It was never meant for me.”

Eli picked it up carefully. The casing was heavier than it looked. Old enough to have acquired a few tiny scratches, but otherwise untouched. He turned it over. The Cheunh glyphs meant nothing to him. To Stent, apparently, they meant rather more. The Chiss’s attention had narrowed completely onto the device.

“Can you read it?” Eli asked.

“Not here.”

Faro gave him a pointed look. “That is the first sensible thing either of you has said today.”

Eli ignored that. “What do you think it is?”

“I would prefer not to speculate before examining it properly.”

“Right.”

Faro leaned back. “I kept it off every formal inventory. When Thrawn disappeared, I considered handing it to Imperial Intelligence.” Stent looked up sharply. “But you did not.”

“No.”

“Why?”

Faro gave him a dry look. “Because I was not suicidal.” Eli laughed. She continued. “I would have had to explain why Grand Admiral Thrawn gave me an unregistered foreign data device, why I had kept it for months and why nobody else knew it existed. Best-case scenario, they confiscated it and interrogated me for a week. Worst-case scenario, someone decided I had been participating in whatever secret arrangement Thrawn had never bothered to explain.”

“That was probably wise.”

“I occasionally manage it.”

Eli looked down at the container again. Whatever was inside, Thrawn had prepared it before Lothal. Before the purrgil. Before anyone could have known exactly how events would unfold. And yet he had given it to Faro with instructions vague enough to survive his absence. That thought was not particularly comforting.

Faro watched him. “Do not thank me yet.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“You were.”

“Possibly.”

“For all I know, it could contain a lecture on military aesthetics.” Eli’s mouth twitched. “Or a dissertation on some obscure artist.”

“Knowing him, both.”

That finally drew a genuine smile from Faro, brief but unmistakable. For a few seconds, the years disappeared.

Then she checked the time. The smile vanished with them. “I cannot stay much longer.”

Eli looked toward the café entrance. Pik and Waffle were still in position, apparently absorbed in their own datapads.

“How much time do you have?”

“Enough to finish this conversation. Not enough to start another one.”

“Fair.”

Faro gathered her datapad and slid it back into her bag. “I will send the contractor authorization through the same encrypted channel once it is active. Do not acknowledge receipt unless something is wrong.”

“Understood.”

“And I will search the archives for anything useful on purrgil movement, migration records or abnormal hyperspace phenomena. I cannot promise I will find anything.”

“Anything helps.”

“Yes.”

She hesitated. Then added, quieter, “And if I find something sensitive, you will have to come back through the same channel. I am not putting classified material into a civilian dead drop.”

Eli nodded. “Agreed.”

Faro stood. Eli did the same.

Stent rose beside him.

For a moment, nobody seemed entirely certain what the proper ending to the meeting was supposed to look like. They were not colleagues anymore, not exactly. Eli was no longer an Imperial officer, Faro no longer belonged to the Seventh Fleet, and Stent had never belonged to any of it.

Faro looked at Eli for a long moment before speaking. “Find the Chimaera.” He stilled. Her voice had lost the dry edge it had carried through most of the conversation. “Not just for Thrawn,” she continued. “For all of them.”

Eli knew exactly who she meant.

Pyrondi. Hammerly. Agral. The bridge crew, the officers, the technicians and troopers who had vanished with the ship at Lothal. People Faro had served beside for years and never had the chance to bury, because there had been nothing to bury and no certainty that they were dead.

“I don’t know who survived,” Faro said. “I don’t know whether any of them did. But if that ship is still out there somewhere...” She stopped, jaw tightening briefly before she continued. “Find it.”

Eli nodded. “We will.”

Faro held his gaze for a moment, then seemed to remember something. “Pyrondi wasn’t aboard.”

Eli blinked. “What?”

“Pyrondi. She transferred out before Lothal.” Faro’s expression softened by a fraction. “She’s working for Sienar now.”

For the first time since Faro had told him to find the Chimaera, some of the weight lifted from Eli’s face. “She’s alive?”

“As far as I know, yes.”

Eli let out a breath he had not realized he was holding. “Maker.”

“I thought you’d want to know.”

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I really did.”

Faro gave him a small nod, then added, “The others... I don’t know. Which is why I’m asking you to find the ship.”

Eli looked down at the black datacard container in his hand, then back at her. “We’ll find out.”

Faro held his gaze. No need to promise me you’ll bring them home.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“Good.” She exhaled slowly. “Just find out what happened.”

“That I can promise.”

For a moment neither of them spoke. The names sat between them without needing to be said aloud.

Then Faro stepped forward and pulled him into a brief, firm embrace. “Try not to disappear for another three years,” she said.

Eli laughed softly into the embrace. “I’ll do my best.”

“That has never reassured me.”

She stepped back. Her expression had already begun settling into the controlled neutrality of an officer preparing to return to work.

Then she looked at Stent. “Commander.”

“Admiral.”

“Keep him alive.”

Eli immediately objected. “I am standing right here.”

Faro ignored him. Stent inclined his head. “I intend to.”

“Wonderful. Everyone has a plan for me.”

Faro’s mouth curved slightly. “That has always been your problem, Vanto.”

She turned before he could answer.

Pik and Waffle rose almost simultaneously across the room and fell into place as she left, not obviously escorting her until one knew exactly what they were doing.

Eli watched them cross the plaza.

Only when Faro disappeared into the flow of visitors between the museum buildings did he look down at the black container still in his hand.

Stent had already focused on it again. “You recognize something.”

“The notation.”

“And?”

“I need to examine it aboard the ship.”

Eli turned the container over once more.

“Sure.”

They left the café without hurrying.

Outside, Porus Vida continued exactly as it had before the meeting. Visitors crossed the square carrying museum guides and shopping bags, children clustered around a public sculpture while an exhausted-looking adult attempted to keep track of them, and somewhere nearby a street musician had begun playing something Eli did not recognize.

Nothing in the world suggested that they had just been handed a piece of Thrawn’s unfinished business.