Chapter 10 · Chapter 10 - Audit results

Ressa Var arrived with three datapads, a physical notebook and the expression of a woman who had spent several days discovering that her subject had failed to commit any of the financial improprieties she had been professionally prepared to enjoy.

Caro recognized the expression immediately. “This is going to disappoint me.”

“It disappointed me first.”

Talia Veyr looked up from the financial disclosure order in front of her. “That suggests either an extremely clean audit or an extremely dirty one.”

“Clean.” Caro frowned. Ressa set the datapads on the conference table. “Offensively clean.” That improved his mood.

Alden Sorn joined them from several systems away, his holo occupying the far end of the table at slightly larger than life size. This time he was not in a conference room or a hotel suite. Behind him stretched a wall of dark glass and, beyond that, the slow movement of stars. He appeared to be seated in a small private study, dressed considerably less formally than he would have permitted himself on Coruscant, although with Sorn that still meant a shirt whose tailoring probably cost more than some junior associates’ monthly rent.

Caro studied the background for a moment longer, then narrowed his eyes. “You took the yacht.”

Alden glanced briefly toward the dark glass behind him, as though confirming that the stars had not somehow become misleading. “Yes.”

“For this trip.”

“Yes, Caro.”

Caro leaned back. “Why?”

“Because it is more comfortable.”

Talia looked toward the holo. “That is an unusually honest answer.”

“Would you prefer I invented a logistical necessity?” Alden raised a brow.

“No. I’m merely enjoying the absence of one.”

Caro gestured toward the room visible behind him. “You crossed three systems for negotiations and decided the appropriate solution was to bring your own yacht.”

Alden’s expression remained perfectly composed. “I had several days of meetings, two secure conferences during transit, and no reason to spend the intervening hours in commercial accommodation when I own something more comfortable.”

Caro looked at Ressa. “This is the man who is about to help us judge another person’s spending habits.”

“I have made no judgment,” Alden said. “I have merely optimized the journey.”

Talia lowered her eyes to the financial report. “Of course you have. I know abstractly. Seeing you conduct a financial audit from it alters the moral texture of the conversation.”

Alden’s expression did not change. “You are welcome to exclude me on grounds of excessive comfort.”

Talia glanced toward the holo. “No one has ever successfully excluded you from anything.”

“Not for lack of imagination.”

Ressa waited until the partners had finished being themselves. “May I?”

Caro made an expansive gesture. “Please ruin something.”

Ressa activated the first display. A career chronology appeared, stripped of almost everything except rank, compensation and personal expenditure. The earliest figures were unremarkable. Junior officer salary. Standard allowances. Modest savings. A pattern of discretionary spending that Ressa had marked in pale annotation.

Caro leaned closer. “What is all that?”

“Your client had a hobby.”

Talia looked interested. “Art?”

“Not initially.” Ressa enlarged the purchases. Military-surplus dealers. Restoration shops. Specialist auctions. Private collectors. Several transactions routed through obscure technical exchanges whose catalogues appeared to consist almost entirely of things sane people had discarded forty years earlier.

Caro began to smile. “Clone Wars technology.”

“Yes.” Ressa brought up the individual purchases. “Old navigation components, tactical processors, Republic-era communications hardware, two Separatist sensor assemblies, a targeting unit removed from a decommissioned gunship, several obsolete droid-control components and what appears to have been most of a damaged battlefield relay system.”

Talia stared at the list. “How old was he?”

“Lieutenant.”

“Of course.”

Caro looked delighted. “He collected antique electronics.”

“He bought antique electronics and, based on resale records, occasionally restored them.”

“That is substantially more charming than I expected.”

Ressa ignored that. “It also largely stops.” The graph moved forward. As Thrawn’s rank increased, the hobby dwindled to a handful of isolated purchases. A piece of technology here. A technical reproduction there. Later came art licenses, books, occasional physical artworks and a few specialist instruments. The spending never rose with the income. Quite the opposite. Ressa shifted the display again. “By the time he reaches senior command, his personal expenditure becomes remarkably flat. There are variations, obviously, but no year in the surviving record exceeds sixty thousand credits in identifiable personal consumption.”

Caro looked at the salary column. Then at the spending column. Then back again. “That cannot possibly be right.”

“It is.”

Talia leaned toward the display. “Housing?”

“Naval.”

“Food?”

“Naval.”

“Transport?”

“Naval.”

“Medical?”

“Naval. All living expenses are covered by the Navy.”

“Vehicle?”

“None.”

“Second residence?”

“None that I can find.”

Caro raised a hand. “The Coruscant apartment.”

“Palace residential grant. Thrawn did not buy it or rent, he only had to pay ordinary maintenance costs.”

“Which Selra already established.”

“Yes.”

Ressa moved to the next part of the analysis. “He spent most of his Imperial career aboard one vessel or another. His basic living costs were effectively absorbed by military service. He ate aboard ship. Slept aboard ship. Travelled aboard military vessels. When he needed to be somewhere else, it was generally because the Navy had sent him there.”

Talia looked at the figures again. “And vacations?”

Ressa’s mouth tightened very slightly. “That required a separate search.”

Caro’s eyebrows rose. “Oh?”

“The service records repeatedly show accrued leave being forfeited because he failed to use it.”

Alden’s eyes shifted toward the display. “How much?”

“Enough that Personnel began noting it.”

Ressa opened a supplementary record. “There are several instances in which accumulated leave reached the maximum permitted carryover and expired. On at least four occasions, a superior appears to have explicitly instructed him to take leave.”

Caro smiled. “And did he?”

“Administratively.”

Talia looked at her. “That is not an answer.”

“It is the answer the records provide.”

Ressa changed the display. The locations corresponding to those leave periods appeared. Every one of them was aboard the vessel to which Thrawn was assigned.

Caro stared. “He took leave on his own ship.”

“Yes.”

“Did he actually stop working?”

“There is no financial indication that he left the vessel, and the system-access records I sampled show no meaningful reduction in terminal use.”

Talia looked toward Alden, almost accusingly. Alden regarded the display in silence for a moment. “It would appear Grand Admiral Thrawn was married to his work.”

Caro immediately looked past him toward the stars moving behind the holo. “Says the one currently participating in this meeting from his private yacht.”

“Yes.”

“While offworld.”

“Yes.”

“I question your standing to criticize him.”

“I left the office.” Alden argued.

Talia glanced at Caro. “That places him ahead of you.”

“I leave the office.”

“You relocate the argument.”

“That is different.”

“Only geographically.”

Ressa waited.

Caro noticed. “You may continue.”

“Thank you.”

She brought the salary progression forward.

“This is where the numbers stop being amusing.” The junior ranks disappeared. Commodore. The compensation line rose sharply. “Imperial base pay for a commodore begins at approximately two hundred and eighty thousand credits and rises toward three hundred and thirty, depending on seniority and assignment.” The next line appeared. Admiral. “Four hundred and thirty to four hundred and ninety thousand.” Caro nodded. Then the Grand Admiral figures appeared. Even Talia paused. Ressa let them look. “Base compensation between one-point-three and one-point-six million credits annually.”

Caro sat back. “That is obscene.”

“There were twelve.”

“Yes, I understand the institutional argument. It remains obscene.”

“And that is base salary.” Ressa added the supplemental compensation. Operational command allowances. Strategic-security compensation. Special-access stipends. Representation funding that could be taken as personal allowance where not separately expensed. Hazard and deployment premiums. Several categories whose Imperial terminology seemed deliberately designed to avoid using the phrase the Emperor likes you. “Depending on year and active assignment, another one-point-one to one-point-five million.”

Talia looked at her. “Per year.”

“Yes.”

Caro whistled softly. Alden said nothing. Caro glanced toward him. “You are taking this remarkably well.”

“I am a partner in this firm.”

“That is a vulgar answer.”

“It is also accurate.”

Ressa continued. “During his Grand Admiral period alone, Thrawn’s annual compensation falls between roughly two-point-four and three-point-one million credits.”

Caro looked again at the expenditure line. “Still less than sixty thousand in personal spending?”

“Yes.”

“That is absurd.”

“It is mathematically excellent.”

Talia folded her arms.

“How long was he receiving Grand Admiral compensation?”

Ressa gave the period. The accumulated figures shifted accordingly. Then she added the earlier years as commodore and admiral, followed by the more ordinary salaries beneath them. The result was a substantial column.

Caro stared at it. “So the answer to the question of how Thrawn became rich is…” Ressa looked at him. “He was paid an extraordinary amount of money and declined to have a life.” Talia lowered her eyes. Caro laughed. Even Alden’s mouth moved faintly.

Ressa turned to the next set of records. “And before you ask, I specifically checked whether those figures were artificially inflated through Naval funds.”

Caro’s amusement disappeared. “Were they?”

“No.” She opened the expense reconciliation. “I checked personal expenditure against procurement authority. Command accounts. Reimbursement claims. Travel costs. Housing. Operational discretionary funds. Classified acquisition budgets. Anything that might have been used to disguise personal consumption.”

Talia leaned closer.“And?”

“Nothing.” Ressa brought the records into alignment. “No personal purchases routed through Naval procurement. No private property maintained with fleet accounts. No personal travel concealed as operational movement. No civilian entertainment charged through command budgets. No unusual reimbursements. No unexplained cash-equivalent benefits.” She moved down another line. “He even paid for his own dress uniforms.”

Caro looked up. “Those weren’t covered?”

“Standard service uniforms were. The Navy stipend provided two regulation sets per year, although most officers maintained three or four identical changes in rotation. Formal dress was different. One was generally considered sufficient for an ordinary officer.”

Talia glanced toward the salary history. “And for flag officers?”

“Commodores and admirals were expected to maintain two.”

“Expected,” Caro repeated.

“Not necessarily provided.”

“Of course.”

Ressa brought up the purchases. “Thrawn bought the additional dress uniforms personally. Tailoring, insignia work, replacement pieces, all of it. Not one charge against command representation funds.”

Alden’s voice came through the holo. “Even when the uniform existed primarily because the Navy required him to appear in it.”

“Yes.”

Caro leaned back. “That is almost aggressively correct.”

“That,” Ressa said, “is why I checked the rest twice.”

Caro glanced toward the Defender records. “What about the TIE Defender project?”

“I spent most of a day on it.”

“And?”

Ressa looked irritated. “Exemplary.”

Caro smiled. “I knew you were going to dislike this audit.”

“The accounting is extremely good. Allocations are traceable. Changes in procurement were documented. Cost overruns were attributed properly. Material transfers correspond to actual production requirements. There are no obvious personal diversions, no hidden commissions and no unexplained supplier relationships.”

Talia looked toward Alden. “He really is upsetting her.”

Alden nodded. “Professionally.”

“Entirely professionally,” Ressa said.

She closed the Defender analysis. “I have audited Imperial flag officers before. The usual problems are not sophisticated. Personal travel buried inside command itineraries. Staff assigned to private estates. Fleet procurement used to refurbish residences. Suppliers offering favorable personal arrangements in return for contracts. Direct theft, occasionally.”

Caro’s expression sharpened. “And Thrawn?”

“Separated his money from the Navy’s with almost pedantic consistency.”

“That sounds like him.”

“Yes.”

Ressa changed displays. “So his accumulated personal wealth is not suspicious.”

The total appeared. It was very large. Caro leaned forward. “How large?”

“Before investment growth and excluding assets whose current valuation is uncertain, several million credits in legitimately retained income.” She brought up a model. “Depending on how conservatively I treat early records, tax withholding and certain allowances, he could easily have accumulated between seven and nine million credits from compensation alone by the time of Lothal.”

Talia raised an eyebrow. “And spent…”

“Very little of it.”

Caro stared at the numbers. “There is no mystery in how Grand Admiral Thrawn became wealthy.”

“No.”

Ressa let the figures remain visible. “The mystery would be how he could possibly have avoided it.” She moved on. The next display showed two investment portfolios.

Caro recognized one of the names immediately. “Oh, no.”

Talia looked at it and sighed.

From the holo, Alden said, “Of course.”

Ressa looked between them. “You know Terenne Capital.”

“We know Terenne Capital,” Caro said.

Talia added, “Some of them under oath.”

“Several repeatedly.”

Alden’s expression remained composed. “They send excellent Life Day baskets.”

Talia turned toward his holo. “They send excellent Life Day baskets because Caro sued them for eighteen months.”

“I prefer to view that as evidence of a mature professional relationship.”

Caro pointed at him. “Exactly.”

Ressa continued before the history of Terenne Capital could consume the meeting. “Thrawn established two self-directed portfolios administered through Coruscant financial institutions. Terenne handled one. The second sits with Halcyon Meridian.”

Talia nodded slowly. “Both survived his disappearance?”

“They never needed him present.”

Ressa expanded the account structures. “The investment mandates were established in advance. Risk parameters, asset classes, reinvestment rules, automatic rebalancing. He modified them occasionally while he was active, but both were designed to continue operating without daily intervention.”

“And they did.”

“Yes.”

Caro studied the growth curve. “Very successfully.”

“Yes.”

“How much?”

“Enough that the Republic has already requested provisional freezing orders over both.”

That produced a different silence. Talia spoke first. “Restitution preservation?”

“And potential criminal forfeiture. Nothing has been adjudicated. The request merely prevents liquidation or transfer while the proceedings remain unresolved.”

Caro nodded. “Expected.”

“Yes.”

Ressa moved through several years of returns. The first portfolio was conventional enough: diversified equity, infrastructure, manufacturing, sovereign and corporate debt, long-term positions that appeared designed primarily to preserve wealth. The second was more active. Materials: Industrial alloys. Rare metals. Superconductive compounds. Reactor feedstock. Ceramics. Shipbuilding materials. Electronic-grade minerals.

Caro looked at it. “That feels more like him.”

“I thought so too.”

Ressa moved farther back. “Before we get there, however, there is one investment that does not fit either portfolio.” A single transaction appeared. 350,000 CR

Talia looked up. “That qualifies as one of his larger personal expenditures.”

“It is the largest single discretionary transfer I found.”

“Purchase?”

“Equity investment.”

Ressa opened the corporate record. VANTO SHIPPING CO.

Nobody spoke for a second. Then Caro slowly leaned back. “Vanto.”

Talia’s eyes moved immediately toward the witness material. “As in Eli Vanto?”

“I cannot establish from the financial record alone what personal relationship existed between the officer and the company, but the corporate registration originates from the same Outer Rim region and the ownership records include several individuals carrying that family name.”

Caro looked at Alden. Alden was already thinking. “When?”

Ressa supplied the date. “One year after Thrawn became Grand Admiral.”

That mattered. Eli Vanto had already disappeared from the Imperial personnel system by then. Caro looked at the company history. “What happened?”

“Piracy.”

Ressa expanded the operating records. “Vanto Shipping is a small regional carrier. Family-held. Mostly freight routes in the Outer Rim. They suffered repeated pirate attacks over approximately eighteen months. Lost three ships outright, another heavily damaged, insurance costs increased, several contracts were cancelled because they could no longer guarantee schedules.”

Talia read the figures. “They were failing.”

“Very nearly.”

Ressa brought up the capital injection. “Then Grand Admiral Thrawn bought a minority shareholding for three hundred and fifty thousand credits.”

Caro’s expression changed. “Minority.”

“Yes. No control rights beyond those normally associated with the share class. No management position. No board seat.”

“What did they do with the money?”

“Bought ships.” Two replacement freighters appeared in the company accounts, followed by repairs, insurance payments and working capital.

“They recovered?”

“Gradually. The new capacity allowed them to keep their remaining contracts, replace the lost routes and survive long enough for the piracy situation to stabilize.”

Alden asked, “Return on investment?”

“Good, eventually.”

Ressa brought up the dividend record. Then stopped.

Caro noticed. “What?”

“They declared dividends. They were legally obliged to.”

“Yes?”

“Thrawn never collected them.”

Talia frowned. “Never?”

“Not once.”

Ressa enlarged the account entries. “The distributions accrued. Notices were issued. His ownership remained valid. He simply never executed payment to a personal account.”

Caro stared at the record. “How much?”

“Modest. Very modest compared with the rest of his assets.”

“Reinvested?”

“Yes. By instruction.”

Ressa brought up the shareholder record. “The first dividend notice generated a standing direction from Thrawn. Any distributions attributable to his shares were to remain with Vanto Shipping and be reinvested in the company.”

Talia looked at the figures. “So he never took anything out.”

“Not a credit.”

“Additional shares?”

“No. That is the interesting part. He did not use the dividends to increase his ownership percentage. The money remained available to the company as retained capital.”

Caro’s expression changed slightly. “So his investment kept producing returns, and he kept giving the returns back.”

“Essentially.”

Ressa moved through several years of records. “The amounts are not especially significant by his standards. Certainly not compared with the growth of his other portfolios. But they helped Vanto Shipping rebuild reserves, maintain the replacement vessels and eventually expand operations.”

Alden’s voice came quietly through the holo. “Without increasing his control over the company.”

“Correct.” Caro looked again at the name. VANTO SHIPPING CO. “That makes the commercial explanation somewhat less convincing.”

“So he gave a struggling shipping company three hundred and fifty thousand credits, took shares so it was technically an investment rather than a gift, and then never touched the return.”

“That is what the records indicate.”

Caro’s expression became thoughtful. “After Vanto had disappeared.”

“Yes.”

No one said anything for several seconds.

Alden finally broke the silence. “Do not romanticize it.”

Caro looked at him. “I said nothing.”

“You were about to.”

“I was thinking.”

“That is usually where it begins.”

Talia ignored both of them. “Could it have been commercially motivated?”

“Certainly,” Ressa said. “The investment was rational. The company was undervalued because of a temporary operational crisis. Once recapitalized, it recovered. Had he collected the dividends, it would have been a perfectly respectable investment.”

“But he didn’t.”

“No.”

Caro looked at the company name once more. “Interesting.”

“Very.” Talia pointed.

Ressa marked the transaction. “But financially harmless. The money came from his personal account, the ownership was declared properly, the shares were registered in his name and there is no evidence Vanto Shipping received preferential Imperial contracts afterward.”

Talia looked sharply at her. “You checked.”

“Of course I checked.” Ressa looked professionally offended.

Caro smiled.

Ressa ignored him. “If he intended to funnel money to them improperly, he chose a remarkably transparent method.”

“So it stays in the legitimate column.”

“Yes.” She moved it aside.

“What about the two portfolios?” Talia asked.

Ressa returned to them. “That is where things become less tidy.”

The materials portfolio filled the display. Thrawn had traded heavily but not recklessly. Positions shifted around construction demand, military production, reactor development, shipbuilding cycles and shortages in specialized industrial materials. Returns were consistently strong without becoming implausibly perfect.

Caro studied the graph. “He was good at it.”

“Very.”

“Surprising no one.”

“No.”

Ressa advanced the timeline. “Most profits were reinvested automatically.” A series of transactions appeared. Then another pattern emerged beneath them. Withdrawals. Small ones. Regular enough to exist as a pattern, irregular enough not to look automated: Nine thousand. Twenty-three. Fourteen. Thirty-two. Eleven. Twenty-seven.

Talia leaned closer. “Personal spending?”

“No.”

“Fees?”

“No.”

“Tax?”

“Already accounted for.”

Caro looked at the destinations. “More materials?”

“Yes. That’s how it started.”

The withdrawals entered a second layer of transactions: direct purchases in commodity markets, usually industrial inputs rather than financial instruments. Refined metals. Specialty alloys. Conductive materials. Ceramics. Reactor-grade feedstocks.

Nothing dramatic. Nothing obviously restricted. Nothing individually large enough to attract attention.

“And then?” Caro asked.

“They were sold.”

Ressa advanced the records. Usually at a profit. The principal returned. Most of the profit didn’t.

Talia saw it first. “There.”

Ressa nodded.

A small fraction separated from each completed cycle. Not enough to change the portfolio’s performance. Not enough to make the investor appear to be draining it. But persistent.

Caro’s face lost its amusement. “Where does that go?”

“That,” Ressa said, “is the first genuinely interesting question I found.”

She expanded the settlement trail. Clearing account. Materials exchange. Broker intermediary. Secondary settlement. Then nothing.

Caro leaned forward. “Nothing?”

“Nothing visible to the Republic’s financial system.”

“Cash?”

“Probably, and that can’t be tracked.”

“Another account?”

“Not one I can identify.”

“Foreign institution?”

“Possibly.”

“Imperial black account?”

“I looked.”

“And?”

“No match.”

Talia studied the accumulated total. “How much has disappeared?”

Ressa did not answer immediately. She changed the calculation. The small withdrawals became one figure. It was no longer small.

Caro stared at it. “All from his personal investments?”

“Yes.”

“Over how long?”

“Several years.”

Alden’s voice came quietly through the holo.

“Deliberate?”

Ressa looked toward him. “I cannot prove intent from the transactions alone.”

Alden waited.

Ressa glanced back at the immaculate separation between Thrawn’s Naval and personal finances, at the carefully documented Defender appropriations, at the investment mandates that had continued functioning exactly as designed for years after his disappearance.

Then she answered the question he had actually asked. “But nothing else in this man’s financial history suggests he misplaced money by accident.”

The room went quiet.

Ressa closed the personal-expenditure display.

For the first time since the meeting began, Caro was no longer smiling. “What happened to the profits then?”

“I don’t know.”

Talia looked at the broken trail. “Can you find out?”

Ressa’s expression shifted. “I think so. But it will take time… unless you talk to your client and he cooperates.”

That was not the answer Caro had expected. He leaned back. “We will. But meanwhile… how?”

Ressa brought the materials transactions forward again. “Because money may disappear.” She selected the purchase records. “Materials usually don’t.”

Alden had been silent for several moments. Now he shifted slightly in his chair. “There is another possible issue.” Ressa looked toward his holo. “The returns.”

“What about them?”

“You said they were consistently good.”

“They were.”

“Thrawn was a senior Imperial officer with access, at various points, to strategic procurement information.”

Caro understood immediately. “Privileged information.”

“Potentially.”

Alden’s gaze remained on the materials curve. “The Imperial materials markets were hardly behaving normally during those years. The Death Star program alone distorted demand across shipbuilding metals, reactor materials, high-grade conductors and specialist ceramics on a scale the civilian market could not possibly have understood in real time.”

Talia glanced at Ressa. “Could he have traded ahead of that?”

“I considered it.” Of course she had. Ressa opened another layer of analysis, this one comparing Thrawn’s positions against large movements in strategic-material prices. “There are trades that benefited from Imperial demand. There are also trades that benefited from shortages, refinery failures, military losses, shipping disruptions and ordinary market cycles. At his rank, there are probably dozens of categories of information he could have encountered before the civilian market did.”

“That is not comforting,” Caro said.

“It is not evidence either.”

Alden inclined his head slightly.

Ressa continued. “I have not found a trade tied closely enough to a classified procurement decision to say he acted on protected information. And the portfolio was not constructed like an officer making occasional opportunistic bets after reading confidential reports. The strategy is too broad and too consistent over too many years.”

“But you cannot exclude it.”

“No.”

Alden looked at the figures for another moment. “Then flag it.”

“Already done.”

That earned the faintest suggestion of approval from him.

Caro looked between them. “I am beginning to resent everyone in this room anticipating my instructions.”

“You could try having less predictable instructions,” Talia said.

“I could. I choose not to.”

Ressa closed the market comparison. “For present purposes, my conclusions are straightforward. His declared income supports his personal wealth. His personal expenditure is unusually low but not fictitious. I found no meaningful commingling of Naval and private funds. The Vanto Shipping investment is legitimate and fully traceable. The two major portfolios are legitimate and have accumulated substantial value. The Republic has moved to freeze them.” She tapped the remaining transaction chain. “And a comparatively small but persistent stream of profits from the materials portfolio leaves the financial system through transactions I cannot presently resolve.”

Caro looked at the broken trail. “How concerned should we be?”

“You hired me to tell you what the money does, not what it means.”

“An admirable limitation.”

“One lawyers might consider adopting.” Talia smiled faintly.

Ressa began gathering her datapads. “I’ll send the written report with the transaction schedules, the Vanto corporate records and the privileged-information analysis separately marked. Nothing leaves my office except through your secure system.”

“Thank you, Ressa,” Talia said.

Caro gestured toward the final display. “And the matter of the disappearing profits?”

“Preserved. Mapped as far as I can take them without widening the investigation.”

“Good. Stop there for now.”

Ressa looked mildly surprised. “You don’t want me to chase them?”

“Not until we know what we’re chasing.”

She considered that, nodded once, and left. The door sealed behind her.

For several seconds none of the three partners spoke. Caro finally looked toward the empty chair she had occupied. “Well.”

Talia closed the financial disclosure order. “Eli Vanto.”

Caro turned toward her. “Yes.”

Alden’s holo remained still at the far end of the table. Behind him, the stars continued their slow movement past the yacht’s windows.

“He is now a priority,” he said.

There was no disagreement.

Until that afternoon, Eli Vanto had already been important. He had been present at first contact, had served as language intermediary aboard the Strikefast, had followed Thrawn through much of his Imperial career and then vanished from the personnel system before Thrawn became Grand Admiral.

The financial record added something different.

Years after Vanto disappeared, Thrawn had taken three hundred and fifty thousand credits of his own money and put them into a failing Outer Rim shipping company bearing the same name. He had taken equity, but no management role. He had accepted no board seat. When the company recovered and began producing dividends, he had ordered those dividends returned to the company rather than paid to himself or used to increase his shareholding.

Caro drummed his fingers once against the table. “That was not a random investment.”

“We cannot prove that,” Talia said.

“No. But if it was random, I will personally apologize to probability.”

Alden ignored that. “We need to establish the relationship between Eli Vanto and Vanto Shipping before drawing anything from it.”

“Family seems likely.”

“Likely is not established.”

Caro lifted a hand. “Yes, Alden.”

“And more importantly, we need Vanto himself.”

Talia looked at the witness map displayed on the side screen. ELI N. VANTO The annotation beneath it had already grown considerably since Selra and Calder returned from the Palace archives.

PRESENT AT FIRST IMPERIAL CONTACT.

LANGUAGE INTERMEDIARY.

LONG-TERM AIDE.

DISAPPEARED FROM IMPERIAL RECORDS PRIOR TO GRAND ADMIRAL PROMOTION.

Now Talia added another line.

POSSIBLE CONNECTION — VANTO SHIPPING CO.

Caro watched her. “Assuming he is alive.”

Silence followed that one. No one had yet established that he was. The surviving Imperial record did not provide a clean answer. Vanto had simply ceased to exist inside the normal personnel machinery. Depending on which fragment one trusted, he had been missing, transferred somewhere beyond ordinary access, or perhaps treated as a deserter by offices that had never been told where he had actually gone.

Alden spoke first. “If he is alive, he may be the most valuable factual witness we have identified.”

Caro nodded slowly. Voss Parck could explain the beginning. The decision on the unnamed world. The report. The transport to Coruscant. The phrase that had started all of this.

Eli Vanto could potentially explain what happened afterward.

He had been there before the Academy, before the rank, before the apartment, before Grand Admiral Thrawn became an Imperial institution rather than an unidentified blue alien aboard a survey ship.

“And if he knows what Thrawn believed his own status to be,” Talia said, “that matters.”

“Very much.”

“If he witnessed conversations with Palpatine, Parck, the Academy or Naval Personnel—”

“That matters even more.”

Alden leaned back slightly. “Which brings us to the increasingly obvious problem.”

Caro knew what was coming. “Our client.”

“Our client,” Alden agreed.

Talia looked from one to the other. “We have spent days reconstructing the existence of people Thrawn almost certainly knows how to locate.”

“Or knows are dead.”

“That would also be useful information.”

Caro’s mouth tightened. They had allowed Thrawn considerable latitude so far. Some of it was necessary. Some of it was strategic. He was in Republic custody, surrounded by people who wanted information from him for reasons extending far beyond his legal defense, and Caro had no intention of allowing privileged attorney-client conversations to become an indirect intelligence debriefing. But there was a difference between protecting a client’s interests and permitting the client to leave his own lawyers blind.

Alden said it before Caro could. “We have reached the point where discretion becomes obstruction.”

Talia nodded. “Agreed.”

Caro looked toward Alden’s holo. “You want me to talk to him.”

“You are counsel of record.”

“So are you.”

“I am several systems away on a yacht.”

Caro gestured at the holo. “The yacht has communications.”

“And you have a client in Coruscant custody whom you can look in the eye.”

Talia cut across the exchange before it could develop. “Caro talks to him.”

Caro looked offended. “I had reached that conclusion independently.”

“Then enjoy the validation.”

Alden continued as though neither had spoken. “Do not ask him to disclose military intelligence irrelevant to the case. Do not ask him for whatever classified structure he has spent the last six years protecting. But we need names, status and location information for material witnesses.”

“Starting with Vanto.”

“Starting with Vanto.” Alden confirmed.

Talia turned the witness map back toward Caro. “And Parck.”

“Yes.”

“Faro, Pyrondi, anyone who can establish how his status was treated inside the Navy, and anyone involved in the Academy process who may still be alive.”

Caro nodded.

Alden’s voice became quieter. “He also needs to understand that if Eli Vanto is alive and Thrawn knows where he is, allowing us to spend another week attempting to discover that independently is no longer acceptable.”

Caro gave him a sidelong look. “You would like me to phrase it more politely.”

“I assume you will fail.”

“Your faith in me is touching.”

“My knowledge of you is extensive.”

Talia closed the witness file. “Tell him what we found.”

Caro’s expression changed. “All of it?”

“Enough.” The original Parck report. The exploration directive. The absence of any later status correction they had yet located. Eli’s presence at first contact. Vanto Shipping. Enough for Thrawn to understand that his lawyers were no longer fishing around the edges of his Imperial career. They had reached the beginning.

Alden looked directly at Caro through the holo. “And then stop asking him what he thinks we need.”

Caro raised an eyebrow. “What do I ask instead?”

“What he knows.”

Talia nodded once. “For once, make him give us the information before he decides which parts are relevant.”

Caro rose from his chair. “That may be the most difficult assignment anyone has given me in forty years of practice.”

“Bill accordingly,” Alden said.

Caro pointed at him as he headed for the door. “Now that,” he said, “is why you are a partner.”