Chapter 11 · Chapter 11 The Missing

By the end of the second day, Selra Tann had concluded that dead witnesses were administratively easier than missing ones.

Dead people generated paperwork. They generated casualty reports, estate proceedings, pension claims, property transfers, memorial notices, tax closures and, in military systems, an almost pathological quantity of forms confirming that the institution no longer expected them to report for duty. Missing people generated most of the same paperwork badly, contradicted themselves across departments, and occasionally left behind senior officers with sufficient influence to instruct everyone to stop asking questions.

Her witness map occupied the largest display above her desk.

VOSS PARCK.

ELI N. VANTO.

LYRA PYRONDI.

KARYN FARO.

Four names that had looked almost encouraging when suspended above Caro’s conference table.

Two days later, Selra considered that optimism evidence of inexperience.

Parck had been the simplest. That did not mean the result was useful. Captain Voss Parck had not remained a captain. His career after bringing Mitth’raw’nuruodo to Coruscant had continued quietly upward through the Imperial Navy: command assignments, strategic reconnaissance posts, promotion to commodore, then rear admiral, then full admiral. The progression was not spectacular by Imperial standards, and certainly not comparable to Thrawn’s, but it was steady enough to suggest that presenting Palpatine with an unknown Chiss had not harmed him professionally.

Selra had briefly wondered whether it had helped. There was no document saying so. She therefore did not write it down.

What she did write down was considerably less convenient. ADMIRAL VOSS PARCK — KILLED IN ACTION, BATTLE OF ORINDAN REACH.

She opened the casualty record again.

Orindan Reach had been one of those late-war engagements that existed in several incompatible histories depending on which government had written them. Imperial records described a defensive action against superior Rebel forces. Republic records described an attempt by an Imperial task group to retain control of a strategic hyperspace corridor after the regional government had already declared for the Alliance. Local records mostly described six days during which civilian shipping had been unable to go anywhere without being shot at.

Parck’s formation had been caught in the middle of it. His command vessel was recorded lost during the final engagement. The Imperial after-action report listed him among confirmed command casualties.

Confirmed, however, was doing considerable work.

Selra opened the supporting documentation. No body. No medical confirmation. No recovered remains. No identifiable personal effects.

The actual basis for the death determination appeared to be the destruction of the command section, loss of communications and testimony from surviving officers that Parck had been aboard when the ship went down.

Good enough for a wartime casualty declaration. Less good for a lawyer who wanted to ask him questions. She entered another line beneath the first. DEATH NOT INDEPENDENTLY VERIFIED AFTER IMPERIAL COLLAPSE. Then, after considering it: NO KNOWN POST-ORINDAN ACTIVITY.

That was as far as evidence permitted her to go.

She moved his name to one side.

Eli Vanto was worse.

Not because there were no records. Because there were just enough records to show that someone had made considerable effort to ensure there would not be more.

Selra had started with Naval Personnel. The original designation was inconsistent across surviving copies. One database listed Vanto as missing. Another showed a temporary transfer status with no receiving unit. A later personnel reconciliation marked him as having deserted. A payroll archive simply stopped paying him and attached an internal reference to a security disposition that no longer existed.

None of those records agreed on a date closely enough to make Selra happy.

Then she found the inquiries. The first had been routine. A personnel clerk had requested clarification because Vanto remained attached administratively to a command from which he was no longer drawing salary. The inquiry had been referred upward.

No answer survived.

Three months later, another office asked whether he should be formally declared missing, transferred, detached or absent without authorization.

That one had an answer. Not from Naval Personnel. From the office of Grand Admiral Thrawn.

Selra enlarged it.

The memorandum was almost aggressively brief. Vanto’s disposition had been resolved under strategic command authority. No further personnel action was required. All administrative queries were to be closed unless specifically reopened by Seventh Fleet Command.

Selra stared at it.

Then she checked the date. Thrawn had already been Grand Admiral. She opened the routing history. The personnel office had complied.

Six months later somebody else had tried again, apparently because auditors disliked officers who occupied unresolved categories indefinitely.

That request had gone higher. The result had been the same: MATTER CLOSED BY COMMAND AUTHORITY.

A third query, from Imperial Security this time, requested supporting documentation. The response survived only as metadata. ACCESS DENIED — STRATEGIC COMPARTMENTATION.

Selra leaned back. There it was. Not an explanation of where Eli Vanto had gone. Evidence that Thrawn had possessed both the authority and the inclination to prevent Imperial bureaucracy from finding out.

She added it to the witness file. THRAWN DIRECTLY INTERVENED TO PREVENT FURTHER ADMINISTRATIVE INQUIRY INTO VANTO DISPOSITION.

Then she stared at the sentence for several seconds and changed prevent to close. Sorn would approve. Probably. She continued. The Republic had inherited almost nothing useful. No surrender record. No confirmed prisoner file. No pension. No estate transfer. No civilian re-registration. No tax identity. No marriage record. No death certificate she trusted.

There were, however, rumors. Those proved distressingly easy to find.

Veyr, Antilles & Sorn had existed long before the New Republic, and several of its older clients had spent the Imperial period close enough to senior government and military circles to have heard things nobody had ever considered important enough to put into a memorandum. Selra obtained permission to make a handful of discreet calls framed precisely as what they were: background inquiries concerning an individual connected to an existing client.

The first former client had once represented an Imperial shipping conglomerate and possessed the smooth confidence of a man who had survived three governments by never admitting that any of them had surprised him. “Vanto?” he said. “Thrawn’s human.”

Selra disliked the formulation immediately. “Former aide.”

“That too.”

“Do you remember what was said about his disappearance?”

The man smiled in the holo. “My dear Counselor, everybody remembered what was said. Nobody knew anything.”

“I’m interested in both.”

“That is how lawyers get indigestion.”

“Mr. Derren.”

“All right.” He settled back. “One version was that Vanto discovered something he should not have discovered and Thrawn had him killed.”

Selra wrote it down under UNSUBSTANTIATED. “Another?”

“That Vanto attempted to blackmail him.”

“With what?”

“If anyone knew that,” he grinned, "it would have improved the story enormously.”

She made another note.

“There were also people who said Vanto deserted,” he continued.

“That appears in some official records.”

“Official records said many useful things.”

“To whom was he supposed to have deserted?”

“The Rebellion, according to that version. Then he died before Endor.”

“Where?” she questioned.

“No idea.”

“Unit?”

“No idea.”

“Source?”

The man smiled again. “Counselor Tann, you have a touching faith in gossip.”

“I am documenting its deficiencies.”

“That sounds less fun.”

It was.

The second call was worse. The woman had been a senior banking executive under the Empire and had evidently spent enough time around Admiralty functions to remember precisely which rumors had been socially dangerous and therefore memorable.

“Oh, Vanto,” she said when Selra gave the name. “They were sleeping together.”

Selra stopped writing for half a second. “Who?”

The woman looked at her. “Really?”

“I prefer not to infer.”

“Thrawn and his aide, Vanto.”

Selra resumed writing. “Basis?”

“None whatsoever.”

“Thank you.”

“But everyone thought it.”

“Who’s everyone?”

“Enough people.”

“Why?”

“Because Vanto was always there, then suddenly wasn’t.”

“That seems insufficient.”

“You are a lawyer. Imperial society operated under lower evidentiary standards.”

Selra almost smiled despite herself. “Was there another version?”

“Several. Palpatine had Vanto killed. Thrawn had Vanto killed. Vanto tried to blackmail Thrawn and then Thrawn had him killed. Vanto fled because the relationship ended badly. Vanto was secretly running intelligence operations for Thrawn. Vanto was secretly running intelligence operations against Thrawn.” The woman paused. “Oh. And there was one involving a governor’s daughter.”

Selra lowered her stylus. “I think we can leave the governor’s daughter out.”

“I always thought so.” The woman paused. “For what it’s worth, I always gave the Thrawn-and-Vanto affair theory rather more credit than the others.”

By the fourth call, a pattern had emerged. Not in what people believed.

In the complete absence of agreement. Every rumor existed because Eli Vanto had occupied a visible place beside an increasingly prominent alien officer and then vanished without an explanation anyone in the Imperial social or military ecosystem could verify. Thrawn’s later refusal to permit administrative inquiry had not silenced speculation.

It had fed it.

Selra collected the versions anyway:

ASSASSINATED BY THRAWN.

ASSASSINATED BY PALPATINE.

BLACKMAIL ATTEMPT / RETALIATORY DISAPPEARANCE.

ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP / CONCEALED SEPARATION.

DESERTION TO REBELLION / SUBSEQUENT DEATH.

CLASSIFIED INTELLIGENCE ASSIGNMENT.

That last one was the only theory she could not dismiss as pure social invention. It was also the one nobody interesting seemed to have discussed at parties. Naturally.

She looked again at the Grand Admiral’s memorandum closing the personnel inquiry. Whatever had happened to Eli Vanto, Thrawn had known enough to tell the Empire to stop looking. That made the next call considerably more important.

Vanto Shipping Co. maintained its administrative headquarters on Lysatra, although the company’s actual operations now stretched across several Outer Rim freight corridors. Ressa’s audit had already established the ownership structure, including the minority block acquired by Thrawn after the company’s piracy losses. It had also established the names of the principal family shareholders.

One of them was Laro Vanto, Eli Vanto’s brother. Established, this time.

Selra submitted a routine request through the company’s legal-contact channel. She expected a solicitor. Instead, twenty-three minutes later, her terminal informed her that Laro Vanto himself was available. Selra moved into one of the small secure interview rooms before accepting.

The holo resolved into a human man perhaps a little older than Eli had been in the last Imperial images. There was enough family resemblance that Selra identified it before reminding herself that resemblance was not evidence: same general build, similar coloring, something around the eyes that made the connection easy once one was looking for it.

He was dressed for work rather than a formal call. Shipping office behind him. Freight schedules on one wall. A window showing the upper hull of a transport being serviced outside.

He looked at Selra’s identification for longer than necessary. “Veyr, Antilles and Sorn.”

“Yes.”

“You represent Grand Admiral Thrawn, I’ve been told.” It was not a question.

“We represent Mitth’raw’nuruodo in matters arising from his current New Republic custody.”

Laro’s face became impressively uninformative. “I saw the news.”

“I imagine most people did.”

“That depends where you are.”

Interesting. Selra did not pursue it. “Mr. Vanto, I’m trying to confirm some historical information concerning a former Imperial officer. Eli N. Vanto.”

The stillness on the other end was very slight. If Selra had not spent the last several days looking for reactions to that name, she might have missed it.

“He was my brother.”

Was.

She noted the tense. “Was?”

Laro looked directly at her. “My brother died at the start of the civil war.”

Selra did not move. “I’m sorry.”

He gave a small nod that accepted the conventional phrase without inviting another.

“When?”

“Around the time the Empire lost track of him.”

That was an unusual answer.

“Do you have a date?”

“No exact one that would help you.”

“Was your family formally notified?”

“Yes.”

“By the Imperial Navy?”

Another pause.

“Through Imperial channels.”

Selra changed the question. “Were remains returned?”

“No.”

“Was a place of death provided?”

“No.”

“Cause?”

“Classified service.”

The phrase came smoothly. Too smoothly, perhaps. But perhaps was not evidence either. Selra glanced at the records beside the holo. “The surviving Imperial personnel files do not contain a confirmed death determination.”

“I can’t help what survived their filing system.”

“That is becoming a common problem.”

For the first time, something almost resembling humor appeared in Laro’s face. “Then you understand why my family stopped expecting useful answers from it.” The humor vanished almost as quickly as it had appeared. “We live in Wild Space, Counselor. This ain't Coruscant. We’re the ass end of nowhere. There were thousands of people dying, ships disappearing, whole units being written off. Why would anyone in the Imperial Navy have cared whether some family on Lysatra got a proper explanation about one missing officer?” He gave a small, bitter shrug. “We weren’t important enough for them to give a damn.”

Fair.

Selra let the silence settle before moving to the financial connection. “Vanto Shipping later accepted an equity investment from Grand Admiral Thrawn.”

The humor was completely gone. “Yes.”

“Three hundred and fifty thousand credits.”

“You already know the amount. Then why are you asking?”

“To establish the relationship around the transaction.”

Laro leaned back slightly. “The company was in trouble. We had lost ships to pirates. He invested.”

“Why?”

“You would have to ask him.”

“We will.” That answer arrived quickly enough that Selra wondered whether Laro had expected the question for years. “Had Grand Admiral Thrawn had any business relationship with Vanto Shipping before Eli’s disappearance?”

“No.”

“Did your brother ever discuss the company with him?”

Laro snorted. “How the hell am I supposed to know? I wasn’t sitting in the room with them.”

There. Selra did not react, but she felt her attention sharpen. She had tugged at a thread. Until now Laro had been guarded, occasionally bitter, but controlled. That answer had come out faster and rougher than the others. She made no attempt to pull harder. “Did Thrawn ask for any operational control after the investment?”

“No, he didn’t.”

“Board position?”

“No. Only my father and I are on the board. Come on, this is a family business!”

“Preferential access?”

“Never.”

“Imperial contracts?”

“Imperial Navy has no business around here.”

“Did he collect dividends?”

Laro’s eyes narrowed slightly. “You have done your research.”

“Yes.”

“No. He told us to leave them in the company.”

“Did he explain why?”

Laro stared at her for a second. “Are you especially dense, Counselor, or do people in the Core just not know what friendship looks like?” Selra did not answer. He gave a short, incredulous shake of his head. “Eli was dead. Thrawn knew what this company meant to him. We were in trouble, and he had more money than he knew what to do with. So he helped us.” His expression hardened slightly. “That’s it. He didn’t want a board seat. Didn’t want control. Didn’t want the dividends. He was honoring my brother.”

Selra watched him carefully. “You’re certain that was his intention?”

Laro gave her a look that made the question itself seem faintly offensive. “What the hell else do you think it was?”

Selra considered one other question and discarded it before it reached her mouth.

The rumor about Thrawn having an affair with his aide had surfaced often enough that she could no longer pretend it did not exist. If there had been a relationship between them, it might matter—not for the reasons Imperial society had apparently found entertaining, but because it would alter the context of Thrawn’s later intervention in Vanto’s personnel records, the investment in his family’s company, and perhaps the weight of anything Eli had witnessed during their years together.

But asking Laro whether he believed his dead brother had been sleeping with Thrawn would be professionally dubious, evidentially premature and, judging by the flashes of temper she had already managed to provoke, an excellent way to end the conversation.

She left it alone.

There were other witnesses she could ask about rumors. There was only one brother.

Selra looked at Laro again. “Did you ever meet him?”

“No.”

That one she believed less readily, although she had no specific reason for doing so. “Did you ever communicate with him directly?”

“About company matters. Twice.”

“When?”

“During the investment process. And after.”

“Anything concerning your brother?”

Laro went very still. “No.”

The answer was clean. It was also the first one Selra actively distrusted. Not because of anything as simple as eye movement or hesitation. She had no interest in pretending lawyers possessed mystical abilities to detect lies through holo quality and breathing patterns. She distrusted it because everything surrounding Eli Vanto had become too carefully empty. The Navy had no answer. Thrawn had ordered the Navy to stop asking. Imperial society had filled the silence with either murder, sex, blackmail or treason. And Eli’s own brother, whose failing company had later received three hundred and fifty thousand credits from the man Eli had served beside for years, had nothing whatsoever to say about him.

Selra lowered her stylus. “Mr. Vanto, I’m not asking you to speculate about Imperial history. I’m trying to determine whether there are surviving witnesses who can speak to events now subject to legal proceedings.”

“My brother can’t.”

“You’re certain.”

Laro’s expression did not change. “He’s dead, Counselor.”

There was nowhere useful to go after that without turning an inquiry into an accusation. Selra thanked him for his time. He gave her precisely enough courtesy in return. The holo vanished.

Selra remained seated for another minute.

Then she opened Eli Vanto’s file.

She did not enter DECEASED. She entered: FAMILY REPORTS DEATH DURING CLASSIFIED IMPERIAL SERVICE. Below it: NO INDEPENDENT CONFIRMATION. And, after a moment: NO REMAINS / NO SURVIVING FORMAL DEATH RECORD LOCATED.

That was all she could prove.

Several sectors away, Laro Vanto watched the connection terminate completely before moving.

He remained seated until the security indicator on his terminal confirmed that the channel was closed, the local buffer cleared and Veyr, Antilles & Sorn no longer possessed a live route into his office.

Only then did he swear. Quietly. His brother was not dead. Of course he wasn’t.

Eli had been inconveniently, persistently and occasionally infuriatingly alive for years.

Laro saw him rarely. Rarely was not never.

The first time had been the worst. Eli had simply come back from the dead one day with a Chiss beside him and an explanation that, even now, Laro occasionally suspected his brother must have rehearsed and then abandoned halfway through: he was alive. He worked for the Chiss Ascendancy now. The Chiss was a colleague. They were looking for Thrawn.

That had apparently been the sensible version.

Laro had spent years working on a ship of his own, rebuilding and improving it whenever the business left him enough time and credits to spare. He had imagined a great many uses for it. Handing it over so his officially dead brother and an alien from somewhere beyond Wild Space could disappear into the dark looking for another officially dead alien Grand Admiral had not featured prominently among them.

He had done it anyway.

Then, impossibly, they had come back.

After that, Eli’s continued existence had acquired a strange sort of irregular normality. He would vanish for long stretches and then contact them as though being dead in Imperial records were merely an inconvenient administrative detail. Sometimes there was actual business attached: transport contracts for materials moving through Outer Rim routes, unusual destinations, cargoes whose end users Laro had learned not to inquire about too closely. Other times Eli appeared with some new request that sounded ridiculous until Laro discovered that, yes, apparently this too was now part of whatever life his brother had constructed beyond the edge of the maps.

They never saw enough of him. Their father made that clear every time he returned. Laro had made it clear in several less emotional and considerably more profane ways.

But Eli returned. That was the important part. And Grand Admiral Thrawn had just returned from the dead on Coruscant.

Then someone claiming to be a lawyer representing him had called asking whether Eli was alive.

Back on Coruscant, Selra moved to the third name.

Lyra Pyrondi was almost offensively easy. After Vanto, Selra initially assumed this meant she had missed something. She had not.

Pyrondi had left the Chimaera before Lothal, transferring into the Sienar organization during the Defender program. The change from Imperial liaison to civilian technical work after the war had generated an unbroken bureaucratic trail through corporate registration, professional licensing, employment records and two thoroughly ordinary changes of residential district on Lianna.

She was still there. Working for Santhe/Sienar Technologies as a Senior systems integration division. Married, with four children. Taxpayer. Property owner.

Current corporate contact details available through a directory Selra could have accessed without leaving her desk. Selra stared at the record with growing suspicion.

Then reminded herself that sometimes people merely continued existing.

She marked the file:

LOCATED. Then: NO CONTACT YET.

Pyrondi was not going anywhere, not wich such an stablished life and family. More importantly, nobody yet appeared to be trying to hide her. Selra preferred to preserve that condition until the partners decided exactly what they wanted from her.

Which left Karyn Faro.

Faro was not difficult to find. Faro was difficult to approach correctly. The Republic knew precisely where she was because the Republic had arranged for her to be there. Kuat, at the Naval Asset Recovery in a mandatory employment placement. Restricted travel. Monitored communications. Three years remaining on conditional status. Periodic review.

Selra had no intention of contacting Faro directly and allowing some compliance system to interpret an unexpected communication from Thrawn’s defense counsel as an attempt to influence a former Imperial witness.

So she contacted the person whose job it was to be suspicious first.

Senior Probation Case Officer Mara Sen answered after Selra had spent eleven minutes being transferred through a reintegration office whose automated directory apparently regarded lawyers as a form of weather. “Counselor Tann.”

“Officer Sen.”

“I understand this concerns Karyn Faro.”

“It does.”

Sen’s expression became cautious in the practiced manner of someone whose clients regularly attracted people with historical grievances. “Are you representing Ms. Faro?”

“No.”

“Then I need the purpose before I can discuss any conditions of supervision.”

“Fair.” Selra placed her credentials into the secure exchange and waited for confirmation. “My firm represents Mitth’raw’nuruodo.”

Sen’s eyes stopped moving. There it was again. Everyone had a reaction. Some were simply better at limiting the surface area. “I see.”

“We believe Ms. Faro may possess relevant factual information concerning portions of his Imperial service.”

“Batonn?” Sen knew Faro’s case well, it seemed.

“Possibly.” That answer did not make Sen happier. Selra continued before she could object. “We are not seeking to reopen Ms. Faro’s proceeding, challenge her disposition or ask her to violate any condition imposed by the Republic. I am contacting you first precisely because her communications remain monitored and I do not want an interview request to create a compliance issue by surprise.” That helped. Slightly.

Sen looked down at something outside the holo field. “Her conditions do not prohibit speaking with attorneys.”

“I know.”

“They also do not require my permission for every professional contact.”

“I know that too.”

“Then why are you asking me?”

“Because I would prefer you to know why one of Grand Admiral Thrawn’s lawyers is about to appear in her visitor log before one of your monitoring systems informs you without context.”

Sen considered her. “That is annoyingly sensible.”

“I work very hard at it.”

A faint change around the other woman’s mouth suggested that under different circumstances she might have smiled. “Are you proposing a remote interview?”

“No. I would like to travel to Kuat and speak to her in person.”

“Why?”

“Because she is a potential witness in a politically sensitive matter, because discussing Imperial command history over a monitored commercial connection would be stupid, and because if she refuses to talk to me I would prefer to discover that after looking at her rather than at a transmission-delay artifact.”

That finally produced the small smile. “Do all attorneys at your firm speak this way?”

“No. One is substantially worse.”

Sen did not ask which one. Probably wise. She reviewed Faro’s conditions for another moment. “I can notify her supervising office that a legal visitor may request access. That is not an instruction to Ms. Faro to speak with you.”

“I would not want one.”

“She can refuse.”

“Of course.”

“You cannot offer inducements relating to her conditional status.”

“I have no authority to.”

“You cannot represent that cooperation with Thrawn’s defense will improve her standing with the Republic.”

“I would never suggest it.”

“And if the conversation moves into material still covered by classified restrictions—”

“We stop.”

Sen looked at her. “You have done this before.”

“Not with a former Imperial admiral on probation.”

“That part is less special than you might think.”

Selra decided she did not want the statistics. “When can I go?”

Sen checked another screen. “If you are asking when you can travel to Kuat, whenever your firm pays for the ticket.”

“It will.”

“I suspected that.”

“If you are asking when Ms. Faro can receive a visitor without disrupting her assigned work, I can have her supervisor make a window available the day after tomorrow.”

Selra opened her calendar. “Morning?”

“Late morning.”

“I’ll take it.”

“I have not said she will agree.”

“No. You have said I can ask.”

Sen gave her a small nod.

“That I can arrange.”

The formal confirmation arrived six minutes after the call ended. Selra attached it to the witness file.

Then she sat back and looked at the four names again. The map had changed.

VOSS PARCK — IMPERIAL RECORDS: KIA, ORINDAN REACH. NO INDEPENDENT VERIFICATION.

ELI N. VANTO — FAMILY REPORTS DECEASED. NO CONFIRMING RECORD. DISPOSITION INQUIRIES CLOSED BY THRAWN.

LYRA PYRONDI — LOCATED, LIANNA. NOT CONTACTED.

KARYN FARO — LOCATED, KUAT. IN-PERSON CONTACT CLEARED THROUGH SUPERVISION.

Not exactly the witness list she had hoped for.

One man officially dead without a body. One man allegedly dead without practically anything. One woman she could call tomorrow and had deliberately chosen not to. One woman the New Republic monitored closely enough that Selra had just arranged a legal visit through her probation officer.

She looked at Faro’s file. Alive. Located. An address, an employer and a scheduled appointment. Two days ago Selra would have considered that the minimum requirement for a useful witness.

Now it felt luxurious. She opened Corporate Services.

TRAVEL REQUEST — KUAT.

For once, the system did not object.