Chapter 175 · The Datastick

By the time they were back aboard the Faded Glory, Eli had already decided there was no reason to wait.

They were still docked, but the hatch was sealed, the ship's external network connections had been reduced to the minimum required by port control, and Tee had completed a sweep for anything that might have been introduced while they were away. Stent checked the communications board as well, more from habit than distrust of the astromech, then disconnected the ship from the public data net entirely.

Faro had carried the datastick for months. Thrawn had given it to her with instructions that had eventually led it into Eli's hands, and after everything she had told them there was little point in sitting on it for another hour out of some abstract sense of caution.

There was, however, one practical problem.

Eli opened one of the lockers beneath the navigation console and took out the questis.

They had brought the Chiss device with them when they left the Ascendancy mostly because Stent had insisted that abandoning functional equipment simply because Imperial technology was more readily available would be wasteful. Eli had agreed at the time without imagining that they would eventually need it to access something Grand Admiral Thrawn had deliberately hidden from Imperial systems.

The questis resembled a particularly narrow datapad, but that was more or less where the similarity ended. Its operating system, storage architecture and communications protocols had been developed independently from anything in common use in the Empire, and ordinary datapads had an irritating tendency to treat Chiss storage media as either damaged or completely blank.

Tee rolled toward the table as soon as Eli set the datastick beside the questis and extended an interface arm.

"You won't be able to read it." Eli warned. The arm stopped. Tee produced a doubtful whistle. "It's Chiss." The whistle changed pitch. "I know that usually doesn't stop you."

Stent sat down opposite Eli and picked up the datastick. "In this case, it will." Tee rotated his dome toward him and replied at length. "The operating system is incompatible with yours, the encryption is Chiss, and the contents are almost certainly written in Cheunh. You have none of those."

Tee objected again, this time with enough indignation that Eli could identify the complaint without needing a translation.

"It is not a personal criticism of your abilities. You simply can't read the language."

That did not appear to improve the astromech's mood.

Eli took the datastick from Stent and inserted it into the side of the questis.

The device recognized it immediately.

There was no warning about corrupted storage, no attempt to reformat the medium and no compatibility error. A dark directory pane appeared instead, filled with Cheunh characters and a series of storage indicators along one side.

"That's already more promising than an Imperial datapad would have managed," Eli said.

Stent leaned closer.

There were six entries at the root level. Five occupied relatively little space, while the sixth took up so much of the datastick that Eli initially assumed the storage meter was displaying incorrectly.

He tapped it again. "Eighty-nine point seven percent."

Stent looked at the figure. "Yes."

"One file."

"One directory."

"All right, one directory. It still takes up almost the entire device."

Tee chirped from beside them.

Eli glanced over. "No, I don't know what's in it yet."

The astromech rolled closer in obvious hope of seeing something useful. The Cheunh directory labels gave him nothing.

Eli opened the first file.

The text that appeared was formal but readable. He had spent enough time in the Ascendancy to manage Cheunh without translating each sentence back into Basic, though Thrawn's written language was considerably denser than ordinary conversation and occasionally relied on military vocabulary Eli had encountered only in reports.

He read the opening paragraph silently, then went back to the beginning.

"If these files have reached their intended recipient, then direct communication has become impossible or strategically..." Eli slowed over one compound. "Va'kri'eth."

"Va'kri'it," Stent corrected.

Eli glanced at him. "That's what I said."

"No."

"It was very nearly what I said."

"You changed the vowel and the final consonant. It doesn’t say flying boat."

Eli tried the word again, more carefully.

Stent nodded once. "That is correct."

"Wonderful. I have missed language lessons."

"You were the one who chose to read it aloud."

"I read one word aloud."

"You read it incorrectly."

Eli returned to the document before the discussion could continue.

The word had no tidy equivalent in Basic. It referred to a fallback structure capable of preserving function after the primary chain of command had ceased to exist, but the Cheunh term carried additional implications of continuity and retained purpose. A literal translation made it sound administrative. In context, it was closer to a system intended to survive the people who had created it.

That description proved to be appropriate.

Thrawn had not written a farewell message. He had written a contingency plan.

Nothing in the document referred to Lothal, Ezra Bridger or the circumstances under which the Chimaera had disappeared, which meant it had been prepared beforehand. Thrawn had not predicted what had happened to him; instead, he had considered the much broader possibility that he might eventually become unable to communicate with Eli at all.

The document described several conditions under which that might occur. Some were military. Others involved the compromise of Imperial communications or command structures. A few were framed carefully enough that Eli suspected Thrawn had been considering the possibility that the Empire itself might cease to be a reliable strategic partner.

Stent read beside him without comment.

Eli reached the paragraph dealing with Thrawn's broader objectives and slowed.

His service to the Empire, Thrawn had written, remained strategically useful only while Imperial resources could contribute to the defense of the Chiss Ascendancy and other regions threatened by forces operating beyond Imperial borders. If that condition changed, then the preservation of Imperial interests could no longer automatically take priority.

Eli read the paragraph twice. "He actually wrote that down."

"He expected the document to remain inaccessible to Imperial systems."

"Still."

Stent looked at him. "Does it surprise you?"

"No. That's the problem."

That earned a slight narrowing of red eyes.

Eli gestured toward the questis. "I knew it. You knew it. Anyone who paid attention for more than five minutes should have known it, but half the people around him behaved as though wearing an Imperial uniform had somehow rewritten the previous thirty years of his life. Apparently he thought there was enough chance of that misunderstanding becoming dangerous that he put the distinction into a contingency file."

"That seems reasonable."

"Of course you think it seems reasonable."

"It is."

Eli scrolled.

The first directory contained five locations: Berchest. Kiros. Borleias. Coruscant. Nentan.

Each was accompanied by authentication material, timing windows and technical instructions. Some referred to communications relays; others mentioned physical contacts or infrastructure without identifying the people involved. None contained enough information to reconstruct the whole network independently.

Eli followed one set of verification instructions through three separate tables before beginning to appreciate what Thrawn had built.

"He compartmentalized all of it."

"Yes."

"A contact at one point can authenticate the next one, but they don't necessarily know what the next point actually does."

"Correct."

"And several of these checks require information from two independent sources."

Stent gave a small nod.

Eli leaned back. "He built the whole system on the assumption that someone might eventually try to imitate it."

"Or compromise one part of it."

"Or both."

That part felt familiar. Thrawn had always disliked information that had only one source, especially if the source was convenient. The principle appeared repeatedly through the files in slightly different forms: confirm independently, compare behavior against previous patterns, do not accept authentication simply because the correct code had been presented.

Eli had barely opened the second directory when the ship's communications panel chimed.

Both of them looked toward it, hearts racing.

Tee immediately rolled away from the table.

"The external network is disconnected," Eli said.

The astromech beeped and indicated the port relay.

"Store-and-forward packet?"

Tee confirmed.

Stent watched as Eli crossed the common room and re-enabled only the isolated message buffer. Whatever had arrived had already been accepted by the port system before they shut down their external link and was waiting for local delivery.

The message was addressed to the Faded Glory rather than either of its registered operators.

The sender meant nothing to Eli. The subject line did.

Still waiting for that holo of Chet.

Eli stared at it for a moment.

Then he opened the message.

Hey. Still alive? Dara says that is an inappropriate way to begin a message, so obviously I kept it.

Eli laughed before he could stop himself.

Stent had come up behind him. "Nemi?"

"Yep."

The next paragraph was equally casual.

Also, congratulations on going respectable. Imperial supplemental freight contractor? Really? Figg and Viros, approved commercial operators. I nearly choked on my caff.

Eli's amusement vanished.

He read that line again.

Stent leaned closer to the display. "Our registration has been active for less than a week."

"I know."

"She found it quickly."

"She's a slicer."

"That does not make the speed irrelevant."

"No, but it does make it less surprising."

The message continued.

Before you start dismantling your comm system, nobody sent me your details. The contractor database replicates into several civilian and military logistics systems, and apparently the Empire decided that compartmentalization was optional when money was involved. I was looking for something else and recognized the ship.

Eli folded his arms. "That doesn't make me feel substantially better."

"It should not."

Tee chirped from beside them.

"No, you are not slicing the contractor database to see whether she left anything behind." The astromech responded with a tone that strongly implied he had not suggested any such thing. "You were thinking it loudly."

Stent ignored both of them and continued reading.

The message shifted almost imperceptibly after that. Nemi did not suddenly become formal, and she did not use any names or locations that would make sense to someone intercepting the transmission without context, but the reason she had contacted them became clear.

Actual reason I'm writing: the people from your last job are gone.

Eli's expression tightened. They did not need an explanation of which job she meant: Stygeon.

The cell that had hired them to transport Nemi and Dara, and which had then involved them in a chain of events Eli had no intention of repeating.

They had seen Tarin arrested. They had already understood what that probably meant for the rest of the organization, but understanding a likely outcome was not the same thing as having it confirmed.

Nemi's next paragraph was more careful.

I don't know what "gone" means. Their primary channels are dead, the secondary aliases I knew haven't moved, and two financial paths were abandoned without cleanup. That could mean arrests, relocation, casualties or somebody deciding to disappear before things got worse. I can't distinguish between those without digging into places I don't want to touch.

Stent read over Eli's shoulder. The following line restored a little of Nemi's personality.

Dara told me not to poke it.

Then:

I poked it once.

And finally:

She's right. Don't.

Eli exhaled slowly.

"That's probably the most sensible advice she's ever given us."

"You have spent less than two weeks in her company."

"It remains accurate."

Stent continued reading.

There was one more reason Nemi had written.

Also, you two are becoming visible.

Eli frowned.

Not wanted visible. Boring visible. Commercial visible. Which is probably what you intended, and honestly it's a decent cover. But you now have a registered ship, two operator identities, completed Imperial contracts, fuel purchases, payments and a route history. If someone already knows to look for Figg and Viros, they can reconstruct a surprising amount without touching anything particularly secure.

Eli looked automatically back toward the questis. It was an uncomfortable coincidence.

He had spent the last several minutes reading a contingency system built around compartmentalization and independent verification while Nemi, from somewhere else entirely, demonstrated what happened when ordinary data accumulated in too many connected places.

Their freight business was supposed to make them less suspicious. It gave them legitimate reasons to travel, explained their income and allowed them access to ports where two unemployed former military officers would attract much more attention.

All of that remained true.

It also meant they were leaving a trail.

Stent spoke first. "We will need to vary the route pattern."

"We already vary it."

"We optimize heavily."

"Because we need to make money."

"Which means someone using the same assessment data could predict which contracts we are likely to select."

Eli disliked how quickly the logic assembled itself. "Not precisely."

"No. But enough to reduce the search area."

He reread Nemi's message. "She's not telling us to stop."

"No."

"She's telling us that boring does not mean invisible."

"Correct."

Eli scrolled to the final lines.

Anyway, I'm not trying to scare you. Your records look clean, and I didn't find any alerts attached to either identity. Just remember that administrative systems gossip.

Also, Chet still owes me a holo.

Dara says hello.

A second line followed.

Dara says she absolutely did not say hello.

Eli smiled.

He opened a reply and typed:

Ch'eth is fine.

He attached a holo from the previous week. Ch'eth had crawled inside one sleeve of Eli's discarded jacket and fallen asleep there with only his head visible.

Stent looked at the image. "You are sending that one?"

"Yes."

"He appears to have no body."

"She'll appreciate it."

Eli sent the message without adding anything about Stygeon, Faro or the datastick.

Nemi would understand.

Her answer arrived before he had fully closed the comm window.

Good. Your operational security remains questionable, but your priorities are sound.

Eli snorted. "I liked her better when she was paying us."

"She was not the one paying us."

"You know what I mean."

"Yes."

They isolated the comm system again and returned to the questis.

Tee rolled with them, though the astromech had clearly resigned himself to participating as an observer. Eli reopened the root directory and looked at the five relatively small contingency files before his attention returned to the sixth entry, the one accounting for nearly ninety percent of the datastick.

"All right," he said. "Let's find out what required this much space."

The directory did not open.

Instead, the questis displayed a second encryption layer.

Stent leaned forward. "This one is different."

"Still Chiss?"

"The underlying structure is. The encryption method is not standard CEDF."

Stent leaned forward when the second encryption layer appeared.

"This one is different."

"Still Chiss?"

"The underlying structure is, but the encryption method is not standard CEDF."

Eli studied the prompt for another moment. Something about it was familiar, although not because he had seen that particular interface before. It was the sequence of characters at the bottom of the screen, waiting for an external key rather than a password entered manually.

"Oh." Stent looked at him. "I have the key."

That earned a more immediate response. "Here?"

"Technically."

Eli pushed his chair back and went to the storage lockers on his cabin. The compartment he wanted was behind his spare warm clothes, on the upper shelf. At the back lay an old Imperial datapad.

Eli pulled it out and regarded it with considerably less confidence than he had displayed when announcing that he possessed the key.

The old Imperial datapad had never been an especially elegant piece of equipment, and its time in the Ascendancy had done nothing to improve it. The casing had been opened and patched often enough that some of the repairs were still visible, remnants of the period when its original charging hardware had failed and keeping it alive had required an improvised power lead, scavenged Imperial components and considerably more effort than the device had probably been worth.

It had, in fact, stopped working entirely once.

Eli had eventually managed to resurrect it with parts taken from his old Lambda shuttle, but the experience had left him with very little faith in the datapad's willingness to survive prolonged neglect. He had kept it anyway. Too much of his old life was stored inside: his own notes, material from the Chimaera, Thrawn's writings and several encrypted files he had never trusted enough to transfer onto another system.

Including the key he needed now.

He turned the datapad over in his hands and looked at the patched casing.

"When did you last power that on?" Stent asked.

Eli considered the question and immediately disliked the answer. "Long enough ago that I'm going to be very polite to it."

He retrieved the battery from the same locker, fitted it into the datapad and pressed the power control. Nothing happened.

Eli waited several seconds before trying again. "Come on," he murmured. "We have already been through this once."

The screen remained black.

Stent watched from the table. "The battery may be fully discharged."

"I know."

"You removed it for storage."

"Yes, specifically so it wouldn't destroy itself while I wasn't looking."

"That was sensible."

Eli glanced at him. "Please don't sound surprised."

Eli connected the datapad to the power lead, but before he could reach for the battery pack, Tee rolled forward and extended one of his interface arms. "Can you give it a clean feed?" Tee answered with a confident chirp. "Low voltage first. The charging hardware on this thing has already tried to kill itself once."

The astromech plugged into the adapter and began supplying a carefully modulated current, stepping the voltage up only after the datapad accepted the initial charge. For several seconds the screen remained black, long enough for Eli to remember with uncomfortable clarity the last time he had sat beside the same dead machine wondering whether years of notes had disappeared with it.

Then a tiny charging symbol appeared in one corner.

Eli exhaled. "There you are." Tee gave a smug little whistle. "Yes, very impressive. Keep it stable."

Stent glanced from the datapad to the astromech. "This is preferable to relying on the old battery."

"Much. The battery is probably the least trustworthy component left in there, which is saying something."

Tee chirped and altered the feed by a fraction. A second series of tones followed almost immediately, more diagnostic than conversational.

Eli looked at him. "What?" The astromech repeated the sequence and extended one of his smaller manipulators toward the datapad's casing. "No." Tee stopped. "I know you can see something wrong with it." Another chirp. "I'm sure you can fix it." That produced a much more confident response.

Eli put a hand over the datapad before Tee could get any ideas about opening the casing while it was still connected to him. "And we're not doing that." Tee objected. "Because it works. Badly, intermittently and apparently through personal spite, but it works. I only need it alive long enough to give us one file." The astromech emitted a skeptical trill. "I know that's not how you approach maintenance. I'm choosing cowardice."

Stent looked at the patched casing. "Given its repair history, avoiding unnecessary intervention is reasonable."

"Thank you."

Tee made a noise that suggested neither of them deserved functioning equipment.

Eli watched the charge indicator climb another few percent. "You can complain after we've got the key out of it."

Years earlier, Thrawn had given him the encryption key with very little explanation beyond an instruction to retain it. When Eli had asked what he was supposed to use it for, Thrawn had replied that, should the need arise, the purpose would become apparent.

Eli had found the answer infuriating then. It had not improved with age.

Once the datapad had accumulated enough charge to make an attempt worthwhile, Eli picked it up and carried it back to the table. Tee followed closely, matching his pace so the power lead between them never pulled taut.

"It may require time before it can boot," Stent said.

"I know."

Eli pressed the power control and waited. The screen flickered, showed the Imperial startup emblem for half a second and died.

They waited until the indicator reached eight percent before Eli attempted it again. This time the screen remained lit through the startup process, although the datapad took so long to reach the home interface that Eli began to wonder whether some internal component had failed after all.

Eventually the familiar old display appeared.

"Come on, you ancient piece of junk."

The datapad responded by taking another several seconds to recognize his touch.

Stent watched. "You preserved important encryption material on that device."

"I didn't know it was going to spend years in a cupboard."

"You chose to put it there."

"I was busy defecting, and had no other means of storage available."

"That does not improve the storage procedure."

Eli ignored him and navigated through the old directories.

Seeing them again was unexpectedly strange. Duty schedules from the Chimaera, supply notes, fragments of reports, personal reminders and several documents he had written in the Ascendancy were still exactly where he had left them. He passed quickly over all of it until he reached the encrypted utility folder Thrawn had instructed him not to delete.

The key was there.

It was not a conventional password but a small authentication package designed to be passed directly to another system. Eli had never opened it and had never found a practical use for it.

Until now.

He connected the datapad to the questis using an adapter Stent produced from their collection of Chiss equipment. For a moment neither device acknowledged the other, and Eli began contemplating the possibility that they had preserved the correct key in hardware too old to communicate with the system that needed it.

Then the questis displayed a new prompt. The authentication package transferred. The second encryption layer disappeared.

Eli looked at Stent. "Apparently Thrawn expected me to keep that ruin functional."

"Apparently you succeeded."

"Through neglect."

"That is not normally considered a maintenance strategy."

"It worked."

The directory unfolded across the questis before Stent could answer, filling the screen with thousands of subfolders and enough technical material to explain why a single file had consumed almost the entire datastick.

The screen filled with directories. Thousands of them.

For a moment Eli assumed the archive belonged to a capital ship. That would at least explain the size. There were structural schematics, reactor systems, power-distribution networks, life support, internal transit, docking facilities, weapons-control architecture and maintenance access.

Then he opened the main structural overview. A wireframe sphere appeared.

Eli expanded it. Dimensions populated the edge of the display.

He read them once, then again to make sure he had not misunderstood the units.

"That's not a ship. It's too big for a capital ship. Maybe a station, but..." Eli opened the propulsion directory and found the answer almost immediately. The structure carried a hyperdrive system scaled to something vastly larger than any vessel he had ever seen.

He sat back slightly. "It's mobile."

"It appears to be."

"A battle station that size with a hyperdrive."

Stent continued studying the structural model. "Yes."

The concept was ridiculous enough that Eli expected the rest of the archive to make it more reasonable. Instead, every directory he opened reinforced the scale of what he was looking at. The main reactor dwarfed the output of a Star Destroyer, and the station carried enough conventional weaponry to make a direct assault suicidal even before he reached the files associated with its primary system.

That was where the pieces began to fit together. Eli stopped scrolling.

Doonium.

The word came back to him before anything else.

Doonium shipments that had never matched ordinary naval construction. Industrial allocations redirected into programs whose stated requirements had never explained what they were consuming. Procurement patterns large enough to distort entire markets, all feeding some project that neither he nor Thrawn had been permitted to see.

Nightswan had noticed it too.

For years they had followed those distortions through supply chains, mining contracts and production figures, trying to understand what could possibly require resources on that scale. At the time, every answer had only produced another question.

Now Eli was looking at the answer. "This is it."

Stent turned toward him. "What?"

"This is what we were following. Thrawn and I." He pulled several of the industrial directories onto the same display and began moving between them more quickly, no longer reading the files as isolated pieces of engineering. He was seeing the old procurement anomalies again, but this time with somewhere to put them. "The materials. The shortages. The production shifts. Nightswan." Eli looked at the sphere filling the center of the questis. "All of it."

Stent watched him for a moment before returning his attention to the display.

Eli opened the weapons architecture.

The station's conventional batteries were extensive, but they were secondary to the network occupying the center of the design. Power-transfer systems fed a massive focusing assembly built around kyber technology, with energy drawn from the primary reactor on a scale that made every other system aboard the station seem almost incidental.

He found the projected output. For several seconds he simply stared at it.

"That's planetary scale."

"Yes."

"Not bombardment."

"No."

Eli read the figures again, though they did not improve on a second pass. The weapon had not been designed to devastate a city, cripple an orbital network or make a world strategically unusable. The calculations described enough energy to destroy the planet itself.

And suddenly the answer was no longer merely technical. Eli looked back at the structural model. He knew this station.

Not because he had ever seen it in person, but because everyone in the galaxy knew what had happened at Yavin.

"The Death Star."

Stent's eyes shifted toward him.

Eli enlarged the sphere again, comparing the incomplete construction records, dimensions and weapons architecture with everything that had filtered through Imperial channels after the battle.

"This is the Death Star!"

The realization settled differently from the first shock of seeing the weapon yield. The station was not some abandoned Imperial concept or prototype that had never left a design bureau. It had existed. It had become operational. It had destroyed Alderaan, and then it had been destroyed in the Battle of Yavin.

And Thrawn had given Eli its plans.

He moved deeper into the archive.

The files went far beyond simple schematics. There were structural layouts, reactor systems, internal transit networks, weapons architecture, maintenance routes, life-support zoning, docking procedures, storage capacity and crew-support projections. Administrative directories were there as well: command structures, technical departments, operational divisions and enough organizational material to understand how the station had been intended to function as a military installation rather than merely as a weapon.

"Oh stars, this is the whole thing! All the schematics are here-" Eli said quietly.

Stent looked at him.

He gestured toward the directory tree. "Engineering, operations, internal organization, support systems, personnel structure. He collected everything he could."

For years, he and Thrawn had followed the resource trail without being able to see what lay at the end of it. Thrawn had eventually learned enough to understand what the Empire was building, but he had not been in a position to stop it. Whatever objections he had raised, the project had continued without him until the station was complete.

Now, after Yavin, the station itself was gone. The information had arrived to them somewhat later, but here it was.

Eli looked at the datastick beside the questis. Thrawn had preserved more than proof that the project existed. He had preserved the station's technical architecture, its internal structure, its operating systems and the organization that had supported it. If there had been any information available to him that might matter later, he appeared to have taken it.

Eli looked again at the directory tree. "This is everything we were trying to find back then."

Stent said nothing. Eli did not need him to.

The station they had spent years unknowingly tracing through markets and supply lines had already been built, had already been used, and had already been destroyed.

And now they had its plans.

The obvious question was what Thrawn had intended him to do with it.

If his goal had simply been to ensure that knowledge of the station survived, Faro could have carried the file indefinitely. If he wanted it released to the Rebellion, there had been easier ways to arrange that. If he wanted it preserved inside the Empire, he would not have wrapped it in Chiss encryption and arranged for it eventually to reach Eli.

There was no written instruction attached to the archive.

That felt deliberate.

"He wanted this information to reach the Ascendancy."

Stent looked at him. "Possibly."

"That's not reassuring."

"It should be."

"No. It absolutely should not."

Eli closed the technical directory but left the root structure visible.

The five contingency points now seemed more important.

Faro had told them to find the Chimaera. Thrawn had left Eli a network designed to survive if direct communication became impossible. The station plans might matter later, perhaps enormously, but they did not answer the immediate question of where Thrawn had gone.

The contingency system might.

He opened the timing tables again.

Some of the points were designed to issue periodic authentication signals. Others required physical contact. Several included schedules that would continue automatically even if no one remained present to receive them.

"An active beacon won't prove anything."

"No."

"It could have been cycling since before Lothal."

"Yes."

"But if one of them has changed its pattern..."

"Then someone interacted with it."

Eli looked at the five names again.

Berchest was the obvious first point.

Eli transferred the coordinates into the navigation system and let it calculate the available routes. The answer appeared almost immediately. "Three days."

Stent checked the result and nodded.

The distance made the decision considerably easier. They did not need to spend weeks working their way toward the system or construct an elaborate sequence of contracts to disguise their destination. Berchest was close enough that they could simply go there.

The problem was explaining why.

Stent noticed. "There are several suitable routes. We go back to Lantillies and then we can move along the Perlemian Route."

Eli opened the Imperial freight board, skimmed the first page of available contracts and frowned. He filtered for Berchest itself.

The result was sparse. Most Imperial freight moving into the system consisted of administrative supplies, security equipment and routine government shipments, the kind of work usually assigned to regular carriers already attached to local installations. There was nothing impossible about two supplemental contractors taking one of those jobs, but it would be an odd choice for a small independent freighter operating out of Porus Vida.

Especially when Berchest's traffic was overwhelmingly civilian.

Eli leaned back. "We're looking in the wrong place."

Stent glanced at the board. "Explain."

"Berchest is a tourist world. Hotels, resorts, sightseeing traffic, people spending too much money on things they don't need. Two Imperial contractors arriving with a government cargo are going to stand out more than two freighters bringing in something boring."

"We are Imperial contractors now."

"We're licensed to take Imperial work. That doesn't mean every crate we carry has to belong to the Empire."

He closed the military board and switched to the civilian listings.

The difference was immediate.

Passenger-support supplies, imported food, replacement parts for resort facilities, decorative goods, hospitality equipment and private commercial consignments filled the screen. Several originated on Porus Vida itself, which made sense given the volume of high-end trade moving between affluent worlds.

Eli began sorting by destination. "This is better."

Stent read over his shoulder. "The profit margins are lower."

"Of course that's what you noticed."

"They are."

"Yes, but now our destination makes sense."

One listing caught his attention.

It was a consolidated shipment for three establishments on Berchest: climate-control components, packaged specialty foods and two crates of exhibition fittings being transferred from a Porus Vida cultural supplier. Nothing valuable enough to invite theft, nothing sensitive enough to require unusual security, and nothing remotely connected to the Empire.

Eli opened the details. "Three days, standard handling, no hazardous cargo, and the delivery point is inside the main commercial zone."

Stent examined the route. "The payment is mediocre."

"The payment exists. That's enough."

"You are deliberately choosing an inferior contract."

"I'm deliberately choosing a contract that explains why we're going to Berchest."

Stent considered that for a moment. Then he nodded.

Eli accepted the job.

The confirmation populated their manifest almost immediately, converting what had been a suspiciously convenient destination into an entirely ordinary freight run.

"Much better," Eli said.

Stent looked again at the contract. "You are adapting quickly to Nemi's warning."

"She's right. If we're going to leave records everywhere, I'd prefer the records to tell a boring story."

"And this does."

"Exactly. Figg and Viros leave Porus Vida with food, environmental parts and museum hardware, fly three days to a tourist world, unload, collect their credits and move on."

He looked toward the questis, where Thrawn's five contingency points were still displayed.

"What we actually do after unloading doesn't need to appear on the manifest."

That, Stent appeared to approve of considerably more.