Chapter 176 · The First Absence

Berchest was expensive before they even landed.

Eli had suspected as much from the freight listings. The rates charged by the main commercial ports were bad enough, but the moment he began comparing berthing fees against the expected profit from their cargo, he discovered that the planet appeared to regard empty duracrete as a luxury commodity. Anything within a reasonable distance of the principal tourist districts cost substantially more than equivalent facilities on worlds where visitors did not arrive specifically to admire the scenery.

The Faded Glory therefore ended up on the wrong side of that scenery.

Their assigned berth lay at a secondary freight field nearly ninety kilometers from the city containing Thrawn's contingency address, surrounded by cargo depots, bonded warehouses and the sort of inexpensive industrial development that rarely appeared in travel advertisements. The landing fee was merely offensive rather than criminal, and the three consignments they had brought from Porus Vida covered it comfortably enough: packaged food for a hotel distributor, environmental-control components and a collection of exhibition fittings ordered by a cultural institution whose receiving depot was considerably less picturesque than its public galleries.

Eli watched the last container disappear aboard a local cargo hauler and signed the delivery confirmation with considerable satisfaction. The contract had not been especially profitable, but it had done exactly what he wanted. Horatio Figg and Ren Viros had arrived on Berchest carrying perfectly legitimate freight for perfectly legitimate customers, and nobody had shown the slightest interest in why they had chosen this particular world.

“That went suspiciously well,” he said when he returned aboard.

Stent was at the common-room table with the questis in front of him, reviewing the address from Thrawn's datastick against a local street map. He looked up only briefly. “A commercial delivery completed according to its manifest is not generally considered suspicious.”

“You haven't spent enough time running freight with me.”

“I have spent considerably more time doing so than I originally intended.”

“That isn't quite the same thing.”

Ch'eth was curled in Stent's lap, his narrow body tucked into the space between the Chiss's forearm and stomach. He opened one eye when Eli sat down opposite them, decided nothing edible had arrived and immediately closed it again.

Eli glanced at the map.

Their destination lay farther inland, well beyond the tourist areas dominating the planetary guides. When he had first entered the address into the public transit system, he had assumed there was an error. The advertisements he had seen aboard incoming shuttles had been full of crystalline promenades, luxury hotels and dramatic architecture designed to catch the famous reddish light. Thrawn's apartment was nowhere near any of it.

Instead, the map showed a dense residential district built along the outer edge of the metropolitan transport network.

Schools. Clinics. Grocery stores. Municipal offices. Apartment blocks. The places required by people who actually lived on Berchest rather than visiting it.

Eli enlarged the district. “So our mysterious emergency bolt-hole is in the suburbs.”

“Residential zone,” Stent corrected. “Primarily permanent population. The census data shows relatively low short-term occupancy.”

“Which is a polite way of saying tourists don't go there.”

“That would presumably be desirable.”

Eli had to concede the point.

There was something characteristically Thrawn about selecting a contingency location on one of the galaxy's better-known vacation worlds and then placing it in a neighborhood where nobody on vacation would ever have a reason to go. A person arriving under pressure could disappear into a population of teachers, mechanics, clerks, hospital or hotel staff and service workers while everyone searching the hotels and transport terminals wasted time looking for someone wealthy enough to afford the view.

The only drawback was getting there.

The public transport route was perfectly adequate. It was also going to take them slightly over two hours and require two changes.

Eli looked at the itinerary, then at the rental listings. For once, he did not immediately close the second screen. “We could just rent a speeder.”

Stent glanced toward him. “Yes.”

Eli waited. Nothing followed. “No warning about unnecessary expenditure?”

“We can afford it.”

That still produced a small, unreasonable amount of satisfaction.

They had spent enough weeks measuring every decision against fuel, docking fees and the possibility of an unexpected repair that the simple ability to choose convenience felt faintly luxurious. Eli selected one of the cheaper civilian models available from the freight field: four seats, modest range, nothing remotely fashionable and a paint finish best described as serviceable.

Perfect.

They left Tee aboard the Faded Glory with Ch'eth. The astromech considered the arrangement unsatisfactory until Stent reminded him that the ship would otherwise remain unattended, which transformed abandonment into responsibility quickly enough that Eli accused him of manipulation. Stent denied manipulating the droid, and Tee supported that position with such enthusiasm that Eli found himself outvoted.

The speeder turned out to be exactly as unremarkable as advertised.

The seats were comfortable enough, the navigation system worked and somebody had apparently decided that a storage compartment large enough for two cups constituted a premium feature. Eli approved immediately.

Driving across Berchest gave them a rather different view of the planet than the incoming approach had.

The commercial outskirts disappeared first, warehouses and maintenance yards gradually giving way to denser residential development. Farther in, the roads widened and the architecture became more elaborate, with red crystal worked into facades, pedestrian bridges and public spaces in ways that made even ordinary municipal infrastructure look considerably more expensive than it probably was.

By the time they reached the metropolitan districts, Eli understood the tourism.

He also understood why the locals avoided certain parts of the city whenever possible.

Traffic slowed sharply near the central avenues, where hotel shuttles, hired speeders and sightseeing transports competed for space with ordinary commuters. Stent rerouted them twice before they finally broke away from the worst of it and continued toward the residential district containing Thrawn's address.

Finding the district was easy. Finding somewhere to leave the speeder was not.

They passed the apartment building once, then again from the opposite direction. Every legal space was occupied.

The first parking structure displayed a cheerful FULL sign before Eli had even finished turning toward it. The second had vacancies but required local residential authorization after eighteen hundred. A small surface lot three streets over appeared promising until Stent noticed that half the spaces were reserved for a medical clinic.

Eli drove past them. “This was supposed to save time.”

“It has.”

“We have been looking for somewhere to park for twelve minutes.”

“The train would still have taken longer.”

“That is not currently making me feel better.”

On the next block they finally found an open public space between a battered family speeder and a utility van bearing the logo of a plumbing company.

Eli pulled in before anyone else could take it.

The apartment building was three blocks away.

He shut down the engine and looked toward Stent. “Excellent. We rented a speeder so we could walk.”

Stent opened his door. “Only three blocks.”

“Yes. A triumph of personal transportation.”

They locked the vehicle and continued on foot.

The walk, at least, gave Eli a better sense of the neighborhood.

This was not the Berchest advertised to visitors. There were no hotels, no luxury restaurants and no shops selling polished fragments of local crystal at prices intended to separate tourists from their credits. The streets were lined with apartment buildings, grocery stores, small cafés, schools, clinics and the ordinary businesses required by people who actually lived here.

The neighborhood might have been on any reasonably prosperous Core World if not for the occasional exposed vein of red mineral running through retaining walls and public spaces. Apartment buildings occupied most of the blocks, generally five to eight floors high, with small shops at street level and communal courtyards tucked between them. Ground traffic was light. Most residents appeared to rely on the same transit network they had just used.

There were no hotels. No souvenir shops. No tour groups.

Eli saw one visitor taking a picture of an unusually large crystal formation beside a municipal library, and the expressions of passing locals suggested that even this limited display of enthusiasm was mildly embarrassing.

A woman emerged from a corner market carrying two bags of vegetables. Several children in school uniforms crossed ahead of them, arguing loudly about something on a datapad. An elderly man stood outside a repair shop discussing the internal organs of a domestic heater with enough intensity to suggest that the machine had personally betrayed him.

Eli looked around. “This makes considerably more sense.”

Stent glanced toward him. “The location?”

“The planet. I was beginning to think everyone here either worked in a hotel or owned one.”

“There are approximately twenty-three million permanent residents in this metropolitan region.”

“Yes, thank you. I understood conceptually that locals existed.”

“You appeared surprised.”

“I am surprised Thrawn chose the equivalent of a commuter neighborhood.”

“That is exactly where I would expect him to choose.”

Eli gave him a sideways look. Stent continued walking. “You are enjoying this.”

“I approve of the choice.”

“Same thing.”

Their destination came into view at the end of the next block.

Thrawn's building was completely unremarkable. Eli stopped across the street and looked at it. Seven floors, pale stone, recessed balconies and a narrow vertical strip of translucent red crystal running beside the main stairwell. A grocery occupied one corner of the ground floor. The opposite side contained a laundry service and what appeared to be a small repair shop specializing in domestic appliances.

People came and went without ceremony. A man pushed a pram through the entrance. An elderly woman emerged carrying two reusable shopping bags.

Nobody looked at Eli or Stent for more than the half-second Stent naturally attracted in a place where Chiss remained unusual.

Eli lowered his voice. “I don't know whether I'm impressed or disappointed.”

“By what?”

“I spent months imagining Thrawn's secret contingencies, and apparently one of them is living above a grocery store.”

“That would be considerably less conspicuous than a secure military facility.”

“I know. That's the impressive part.”

They continued past the entrance rather than going inside. Neither had suggested doing so. It was simply instinct now.

They walked to the end of the block, crossed at a pedestrian signal and returned along the opposite side. Eli checked reflections rather than turning his head whenever possible. Stent did much the same, although with rather greater subtlety.

Nothing obvious followed them. No one remained stationary after they passed. No vehicle repositioned. The local surveillance cameras were municipal models with visible identification markings and predictable coverage.

By the time they completed the circuit, Eli was becoming annoyed with himself. “We're being ridiculous.”

“Cautious.”

“We've just walked around an apartment block twice because a Rebel slicer told us our business registration could be traced.”

“And because we are following a contingency network created by Grand Admiral Thrawn.”

“That too.”

They crossed the street. The outer door opened with the first code. That was reassuring in one respect and deeply unsettling in another.

The entry hall contained mailboxes, a notice board and an elderly turbolift that looked as though it had survived several generations of maintenance budgets. Someone had taped a handwritten notice beside the controls asking residents not to force the doors open when the lift stopped between floors.

Eli looked at it. “Very secure.”

“The apartment is the secure element.”

“I hope so.”

They took the stairs.

The contingency address was on the fifth floor, near the back of the building. There were six apartments along the corridor, all externally identical apart from small variations in door decorations and resident notices.

Thrawn's had none.

The final access code released the lock without hesitation.

Eli waited while Stent checked the corridor once more.

Then they went inside.

The apartment smelled empty. Not abandoned. Not neglected.

Empty.

The distinction became apparent immediately.

Environmental controls were running. The temperature was comfortable, the air clean and the interior free from accumulated dust. Someone—or some automated service—had maintained the property well enough that it could have been occupied that morning.

Nothing suggested anyone had.

The main room contained practical furniture of the sort selected by someone who expected function rather than comfort: a table with four chairs, a narrow couch, two storage units and a small terminal integrated into the wall. The kitchen was open to the living area and stocked with sealed containers, water filters and enough basic equipment to prepare actual food.

Eli opened one cupboard. Emergency rations. Another contained ordinary dry goods sealed in long-term packaging.

He checked the dates. “Still good.”

“Expected.”

“You're going to say that about everything, aren't you?”

“No.”

“Anyway, these things are good for years…”

The bedroom had a properly made bed, although the fabric still possessed the stiff, untouched appearance of something arranged by a maintenance service and never disturbed afterward. A wardrobe contained civilian clothing in several sizes, none tailored specifically enough to identify an intended wearer.

Eli ran his fingers across one jacket. “This wasn't for Thrawn.”

“No?”

“Too small. Also too cheap.” Stent glanced at him. “You know I'm right.”

“I was going to agree.”

That took some of the satisfaction out of it.

The refresher told the same story. Sealed hygiene supplies. Unused towels. No personal products. No residue in the waste system beyond scheduled maintenance cycles. Nothing had been opened, discarded or replaced because an actual person had required it.

Eli returned to the main room. “He never made it here.”

“We have not finished.”

“You can say probably if it makes you happier.”

“It does.”

They began checking the systems. Power consumption remained at maintenance baseline. Water records showed automated flushing cycles but no residential use. Door access consisted of service authentications performed at regular intervals by the building maintenance network.

The apartment had been waiting for years.

Eli found that more uncomfortable than he expected.

He had spent much of their search looking for evidence that Thrawn had passed through particular places. Here, absence itself had become evidence.

Everything was ready. Nothing had ever been needed.

Stent was examining the wall terminal when he stopped, but instead of activating it he reached for the small field kit they had brought from the ship and took out the signal scanner.

Eli watched him calibrate it. “You think there may be something in here?”

“I think we should establish that there is not before we trust anything connected to this apartment.” Stent glanced toward the walls. “If the location was discovered at any point, the terminal would be an obvious place to monitor whoever eventually came looking for it.”

That was difficult to argue with. They had already learned what happened when a supposedly safe place had been compromised, and Berchest was the first location on a network Thrawn had prepared for circumstances serious enough to make ordinary communication impossible. Assuming the apartment was secure simply because it looked untouched would have been exactly the sort of mistake both of them had spent years warning other people not to make.

They began with the obvious places. Stent worked slowly around the main room while Eli identified the apartment’s own systems against the scanner: environmental controls, building network, door lock and the low-power maintenance link used by the property service for scheduled checks. Once those signals were accounted for, the display settled into an uninteresting pattern. Nothing suggested a hidden transmitter, but they repeated the sweep anyway rather than treating one clean pass as proof.

The second inspection took considerably longer. Stent checked the light fittings, ventilation grilles, power outlets and narrow service panels behind the kitchen units, while Eli went over the furniture, doorframe and windows with the handheld detector. They inspected the wall terminal without opening it, then moved through the bedroom and refresher, checking fixtures and the small communications socket beside the bed. None of it produced an unexplained signal, a secondary power source or the sort of interference that might indicate a passive recorder buried somewhere in the structure.

Eventually Eli lowered the scanner. “Unless whoever might have bugged this place is considerably better equipped than we are, this place is clean.”

“So far,” Stent said, and took the device from him for one final pass around the bedroom. When that produced exactly the same result as the first two, he appeared willing to accept it. “The only active electronics are the systems we already identified. Nothing else is transmitting.”

“That should be reassuring.” Eli looked around the quiet apartment. “I’m not sure why it isn’t.”

He knew why, of course. After the last few months, he had grown accustomed to discovering that every apparently simple situation contained another layer of trouble underneath it. Berchest, so far, seemed determined to remain exactly what it looked like, and the absence of complication had become suspicious in its own right.

Once they were satisfied that nobody was listening, they moved on to the physical search. If Thrawn had prepared the apartment as a contingency site, Eli reasoned, there was at least a chance he had also left something more useful than clothing and preserved food. A secondary communicator, a weapon, credits, false identification or even a sealed message would all have made sense, so they checked the storage units properly rather than merely opening the doors. Drawers came out, shelves were examined from beneath and back panels were tested for movement. Stent checked the wardrobe while Eli worked his way around the bedroom and the base of the kitchen units.

They found nothing hidden.

The wardrobe contained only sparse clothing. The kitchen held rations, dry goods and basic utensils, while the refresher had sealed hygiene supplies and spare towels. A narrow cupboard near the entrance contained cleaning materials, replacement filters and folded bedding. Everything was generic, practical and ordinary enough that someone could have arrived with nothing and remained in the apartment for several days without needing to buy anything, but there were no weapons, no hidden currency, no spare ident cards and no sealed compartment waiting to be discovered.

Eli crouched beside the bed and ran his fingers along the edge of the floor paneling, more out of stubbornness than expectation. It was solid. He checked beneath the frame before looking up at Stent, who had just finished examining the wardrobe backing.

“Nothing there either?”

“Nothing. The apartment appears to contain exactly what we can see.”

Eli sat back on his heels. “He really did leave an apartment. I was hoping for at least one dramatic compartment.”

“A dramatic compartment would reduce the value of an inconspicuous safe location,” Stent pointed out, looking around the modest bedroom as if the argument should be self-evident.

“Thank you. I feel much better about being disappointed now.”

They restored everything they had moved and returned to the main room. By then the apartment looked almost exactly as it had when they entered, which was appropriate enough. It had been designed to wait quietly for someone who might need it, stocked with the mundane necessities of temporary occupation and apparently nothing else.

Only the terminal remained.

The authentication sequence from Thrawn’s datastick worked immediately. The local system opened into a sparse interface containing the apartment controls, contingency authentication routines and a small amount of reserved storage. Eli expected another encrypted directory to appear once access was confirmed, but the storage remained almost entirely empty.

He went through it twice before passing the display to Stent. “There’s nothing here.”

Stent examined the directory structure and then the storage map. The emptiness was not the result of an obvious purge. There were no overwritten sectors, broken references or irregularities suggesting that information had been hurriedly removed. The terminal contained its original configuration files, automated maintenance records and the periodic self-checks that had kept the system operational. Beyond those, the memory had never accumulated anything worth deleting.

Eli connected the questis while Stent reviewed the activity history, and together they compared the terminal against the architecture described in Thrawn’s datastick. The result was almost disappointingly straightforward. The contingency interface had been installed, tested and left waiting, after which it had continued to run its scheduled maintenance cycles without anyone ever opening a user session, retrieving a message or creating a local file.

“So he never got here,” Eli said at last.

Stent did not answer immediately. He went through the authentication history one more time, checking the dates against the system-generated maintenance entries before setting the questis down. “There is no evidence that anyone activated this location after it was prepared. Combined with the apartment records, I think that conclusion is justified.”

That was far more definite than Eli had expected to get from Berchest. He looked around the room again, and all the details they had already noticed arranged themselves into a much simpler answer. The sealed supplies had not been replaced because nobody had consumed them; the bed had never needed fresh linen; the water and power records showed only maintenance use because no one had lived here. The terminal was empty because nobody had ever arrived to use what Thrawn had prepared.

There was no hidden layer waiting for them to uncover, no secret cache and no trace left by a previous visitor. There was simply an absence.

For months they had been looking for evidence of Thrawn’s passage, trying to establish where he had gone after Lothal and whether any fragment of his contingency planning had survived with him. Berchest was the first point on that network they could actually reach, and it told them something with uncomfortable clarity: Thrawn had not come here.

Eli rested one hand on the back of the chair and looked at the untouched terminal. “Well. First one eliminated.”

“Four remain,” Stent said. It was not the answer either of them had wanted, but at least it was an answer.

They left a marker. Not a beacon and not anything that would transmit continuously. Stent embedded a small encrypted handshake into the local contingency system, designed to remain dormant unless queried using one of the cryptographic patterns associated with Thrawn's private files.

If Thrawn ever reached Berchest afterward, he would know someone had been there. More importantly, he might understand who.

Eli watched the confirmation disappear from the terminal. “Assuming he ever comes.”

Stent did not answer immediately. When he did, his voice was quieter than before. “That is why we leave it.”

They restored the apartment exactly as they had found it and took the stairs down.

The grocery was busier now. Several residents were coming home from work, and the entrance hall was briefly filled with people carrying shopping bags, school packs and takeaway containers.

Nobody noticed them.

One location eliminated. Four remaining. It was not much. But it was more than they had known that morning.