Chapter 179 · The Empire’s Maw

The contract to Coruscant had been almost embarrassingly easy to find.

That, more than anything, reminded Eli what kind of world they were approaching.

Every major freight exchange within three systems had carried listings for the capital: machine components, medical consumables, packaged foods, replacement circuitry, industrial chemicals, luxury goods, ordinary goods pretending to be luxury goods, and several categories of cargo whose descriptions had clearly been written by people hoping no one would ask too many questions. Coruscant consumed everything. It produced some of its own, but a planet whose population covered nearly every usable meter of surface had long ago stopped pretending it could support itself.

They had selected something deliberately boring: sealed containers of replacement filtration membranes and thermal-control components destined for a municipal contractor.

The pay was respectable, the schedule generous, and nobody at the exchange had found anything remarkable about Horatio Figg and Ren Viros accepting it.

Activity concealed intent. Stent had been right about that. More importantly, arriving with cargo gave the Faded Glory a reason to be there that had nothing to do with other reasons besides business.

The last of the containers disappeared through the freight station’s loading hatch with a mechanical clunk.

Eli watched the indicator beside the cargo controls change from amber to green.

TRANSFER COMPLETE.

A second message appeared beneath it.

MANIFEST CLOSED. FREIGHT LIABILITY TRANSFERRED TO RECEIVING AUTHORITY.

“Well,” he said, leaning back in the pilot’s chair. “That was painless.”

Stent glanced at the chronometer. “Forty-three minutes.”

“For Coruscant, that counts as painless.”

The Faded Glory was docked to one of the hundreds of orbital freight stations hanging above the planet, this one an ungainly assemblage of cargo spines, container racks and pressurized transfer tunnels that looked as though successive governments had simply kept attaching new pieces whenever demand exceeded capacity.

Which, Eli suspected, had been continuously for several centuries.

Beyond the cockpit glass, Coruscant filled half the sky.

Even from high orbit it scarcely looked like a planet. There were clouds, certainly, and the faint suggestion of atmospheric haze along the curve, but beneath them stretched light without interruption. Night covered part of the hemisphere below, yet the darkness was only theoretical. The surface glowed through it in dense networks of white, gold and red, so complete that the outlines of continents had ceased to matter long ago.

Ch’eth had discovered the view several minutes earlier.

The kivren stood with his front paws braced against the lower edge of the viewport, nose almost touching the transparisteel, tail twitching each time another vessel passed close enough to throw light across the cockpit.

Tee remained beside the navigation console, where he had been supervising the unloading process with the grave intensity of a dockmaster despite having no actual authority over any of it.

Eli checked the final cargo receipt and forwarded it to their commercial account. “Payment confirmed.”

Stent looked over. “The full amount?”

“Minus station handling fees.”

“That was expected.”

“It can be expected and still be offensive.” Tee produced a short electronic trill. Eli pointed at him. “Exactly.”

Stent had already moved on. “We cannot request atmospheric clearance until we have a registered berth.”

“I know. Have we received the available choices?”

“Not yet.”

Eli sighed and opened the planetary docking network. That was the real beginning of the problem. Delivering freight to Coruscant was easy. Getting onto Coruscant was not.

Ships permanently based on the planet had assigned facilities, registered descent routes and recurring traffic permissions. Government vessels, military craft and corporate transports with standing agreements had their own systems layered over those. Everyone else had to secure somewhere to put their ship before planetary traffic control would even consider authorizing atmospheric entry.

The interface offered several thousand available berths.

Most were useless.

Some were intended for passenger liners. Others charged rates that made Eli briefly suspect they included ownership of the landing pad. Several were on levels or districts so far from their destination that they might as well have landed on another planet and taken a shuttle.

He narrowed the search. Civilian freight vessel. Under sixty meters. Independent power. No bonded cargo. Multi-day occupancy permitted. The list contracted sharply.

Stent leaned over his shoulder. “Your medical facilities are concentrated primarily within the upper and middle sectors.”

“My medical facilities?”

“The facilities capable of providing the assessment you require.”

Eli tugged absently at his waistband.

The belt was already two holes tighter than it had been a few weeks ago. It held, but the trousers still sat differently on him than they used to, and now that Stent had made the weight loss impossible to ignore, Eli seemed to notice it every time he moved. “Our other destination isn’t exactly upper-level,” he said.

The fourth point in Thrawn’s network lay in a residential sector several layers below the districts that appeared on most tourist maps.

The address itself had survived every database check they had made during the flight. That was encouraging. Or ominous.

Eli had stopped trying to decide which.

“We need somewhere reasonably connected to both,” he continued. “And I’d rather not pay enough docking fees to purchase the pad outright.”

“We now possess sufficient funds.” Stent said, in his usual way of joking while being serious.

“That is not the same thing as wanting to waste them.”

Stent seemed to approve of that distinction.

They searched for another ten minutes before Eli found a surface port that looked tolerable. K-97. Civilian. Mixed freight and transient traffic.

Nothing prestigious about it, which was reassuring. The location sat several levels below the major passenger terminals but connected into the public transit grid. The posted security rating was adequate, berth sizes suitable, and the daily charge merely unpleasant rather than insulting.

Eli submitted the Faded Glory’s civilian registration under Figg’s commercial account. The system requested a projected stay. He selected five days.

Stent noticed. “You expect to remain that long?”

“I expect Coruscant to make anything we need take three times longer than it should.”

“That is not unreasonable.”

“See? You’re learning.”

The request went into processing.

Ch’eth abandoned the viewport without warning, launched himself across the narrow gap between the seats, and landed squarely on Stent.

The Chiss caught him more by reflex than intention. That should have been the end of it. Instead, Ch’eth twisted, found the opening at the collar of Stent’s shirt, and vanished inside. Stent went completely still.

A small moving bulge travelled rapidly beneath the fabric, down across his chest and toward his side. Eli stared. Stent looked at him with profound accusation.

“Are you ok?”

“I am.” Ch’eth changed direction abruptly. Stent inhaled sharply. Eli bit the inside of his cheek. “Do not laugh.”

“I’m not.”

“You are about to.”

“I’m really trying not to.”

Ch’eth’s head suddenly emerged from the collar beside Stent’s neck, whiskers forward and entirely pleased with himself before ducking down again.

Another freighter detached from the station outside and slid slowly away toward one of the orbital lanes.

Eli watched it go. He remembered arriving here in Imperial uniforms. Not merely uniforms. Thrawn’s uniforms.

Back then, Coruscant had seemed to recognize the Chimaera before anyone aboard had said a word. Military priority corridors opened ahead of them. Traffic disappeared from the route. A Star Destroyer did not request somewhere to park and then ask permission to descend.

It announced that it was coming. The planet adjusted accordingly.

A soft chime pulled him back. 

BERTH REQUEST APPROVED.

PORT K-97. TRANSIENT BERTH 418-C.

RESERVATION WINDOW: 26 STANDARD HOURS.

ATMOSPHERIC ENTRY ELIGIBILITY CONFIRMED.

Eli smiled. “There. We officially have somewhere to put the ship.”

Stent nodded and squirmed in place for a moment because of Ch’eth’s antics. “Now we may request descent.”

“Exactly.”

Eli opened planetary traffic control.

The system accepted their registration, berth assignment and current orbital coordinates. It processed for several seconds.

Then displayed:

CIVILIAN ENTRY QUEUE ASSIGNED.

HOLDING BAND 47-G.

ESTIMATED CLEARANCE: 14 HOURS, 52 MINUTES.

Eli stared at it.

Stent leaned closer. “Fourteen hours, fifty-two minutes.”

“I can read.”

“I was confirming.”

“That doesn’t improve it.” Tee produced a flat descending whistle. Eli looked at the droid. “Yes. That.”

The freight station released their clamps a few minutes later.

Eli guided the Faded Glory away from the loading spine and into the stream of vessels departing the orbital facilities. They were not descending yet. First came another set of approach vectors, another automated handoff, and finally the transition from freight-station traffic into the immense civilian holding network encircling Coruscant.

The guidance system seized control of their permitted vector almost immediately.

Their speed dropped.

Eli watched the throttle response flatten under traffic authority. “There we are,” he said. “Now we’re part of the problem.”

Ahead, behind, above and below them, ships filled the orbital approaches. Not chaotically. That would almost have been easier.

They moved in carefully regulated bands, thousands upon thousands of vessels following invisible channels around the planet. Freighters, passenger transports, yachts, tugs, shuttles and ships whose original purpose had been obscured beneath decades of modifications all moved at the same patient crawl.

Coruscant traffic control did not so much direct them as absorb them. The Faded Glory became one more point of light in the system.

Stent studied the tactical display. “The density is extraordinary.”

“It’s Coruscant.”

“That does not explain it.”

“It explains most things here.”

Stent continued examining the flow. “The orbital stations should reduce surface traffic substantially.”

“They do.”

His eyes shifted toward Eli. “This is reduced?”

Eli laughed. “Now you understand the problem.”

They reached holding band 47-G twenty minutes later. The ship settled into its assigned corridor, speed and spacing locked to the vessels around them. Then nothing happened. Or rather, an enormous amount happened without any of it getting them closer to the surface.

Eli watched three bulk freighters move into a priority descent lane. A medical transport followed. Then a passenger liner whose registered capacity exceeded the population of several towns on Lysatra.

Their own position advanced by nineteen places.

There were still several thousand ahead of them.

Stent studied the route map for another minute. “There are unused corridors.”

“Not unused.”

“No vessels are occupying them.”

“Government.”

“Currently empty.”

“Still government.”

“Another corridor appears capable of handling civilian displacement.”

“Diplomatic.”

“Also empty.”

“Very diplomatic.”

Stent gave him the look again.

Eli smiled. “I had this exact argument with myself the first time I came here as a civilian.”

“You were previously assigned to Imperial vessels.”

“Before that.”

Stent considered. Then returned to the map. “You were correct to be irritated.”

“Thank you.”

“I did not say your response was productive.”

“Less thank you.”

The first two hours passed tolerably.

Eli reviewed the port reservation, checked their commercial accounts, confirmed that the orbital station had not somehow misplaced part of their freight delivery, and went through the shortlist of medical facilities he had downloaded during the flight.

The warning from the implant reader had not repeated itself.

That did not make Stent any less interested in it.

Eli knew because every time he switched away from the clinic listings for too long, Stent’s eyes drifted toward his screen. “I’m looking.”

“I said nothing.”

“You don’t have to.”

Stent raised an eyebrow but returned to the traffic display.

Eli kept scrolling. There were dozens of hospitals capable of servicing endocrine implants. Several advertised synthetic-organ programs. Others offered advanced metabolic reconstruction, adaptive hormone-regulation systems and treatments Eli had only ever seen mentioned in specialist material.

Coruscant, for all its faults, did medicine very well.

At Coruscant prices.

He opened one listing, saw the preliminary consultation fee and closed it again. The two hundred thousand credits aboard the Faded Glory changed what was possible. It did not make him enjoy numbers with that many zeroes.

By the second hour, Ch’eth had become convinced the cockpit was intolerably dull.

He climbed down from Eli’s lap, investigated Tee, attempted to climb Tee, was discouraged by a sharp burst of binary, and eventually disappeared toward the galley.

Eli listened. A faint clatter came from aft. He closed his eyes. “What did we leave unsecured?”

Stent considered. “The fruit container?”

Another clatter. Eli stood. “Of course.”

He returned several minutes later carrying Ch’eth in one hand and the remains of what had once been a neatly sealed packet of dried fruit in the other. The kivren looked entirely without remorse. Tee whistled. “You are not helping.” Tee whistled again.

Stent took the damaged packet from him. “Approximately sixty percent remains usable.”

“Wonderful. We’ve suffered only forty percent casualties.”

Ch’eth wriggled until Eli put him down. This time he settled beneath the auxiliary console, apparently satisfied with the success of his campaign.

By the sixth hour, even Stent had stopped studying the traffic as though a superior solution might reveal itself through persistence.

The Faded Glory required very little from them while locked into the holding pattern. Traffic control dictated their vector, speed and spacing, and the autopilot obediently kept them in place within the stream. One of them still checked the cockpit at regular intervals, but there was no reason to spend fifteen hours sitting in front of a view that changed only by degrees.

So they went back to living aboard the ship.

Stent took over the galley and began assembling something that smelled considerably better than the ration packs Eli had been expecting. Eli carried one of the datacard cases to the table and resumed the cataloguing they had started after Kiros, working through the next stack while the ship crept around Coruscant without their assistance.

The collection was beginning to acquire a shape. Not a simple one. There were navigation records beside cultural studies, technical files indexed with political assessments, art references grouped with old regional intelligence. Eli had stopped trying to guess at the logic before reading each card and had begun recording the associations instead.

Stent glanced over from the cooker. “Another unclassified?”

“Three.”

“That is an improvement.”

“Yesterday it was two.”

“Then it is not.”

Eli moved another card into the growing uncertain pile.

Tee rolled between the galley and cockpit every few minutes, apparently unwilling to trust either the autopilot or Coruscant traffic control without personal supervision.

Ch’eth was nowhere in sight. Eli had checked the enclosure earlier and found it empty, which meant the kivren had selected one of the several hiding places aboard the Faded Glory that no one else had yet discovered. When Ch’eth disappeared that completely, he was usually asleep. Or preparing something.

Eli preferred the first possibility.

A soft tone sounded from the cockpit. Tee spun around immediately and disappeared through the hatch.

Eli looked up. “Anything important?” A moment later the droid answered with a short sequence of beeps.

Stent continued stirring the contents of the pan. “Routine vector correction.”

“You understood that?” Eli blinked in surprise.

“No. The display is visible from here.”

Eli leaned sideways far enough to see the edge of the cockpit console. “Right.”

He returned to the datacards.

Outside, Coruscant continued turning beneath them while the Faded Glory moved obediently through its assigned loop, carrying on with the ordinary domestic business of a ship that happened to be waiting for permission to land on the busiest world in the galaxy.

Coruscant turned below them.

At this altitude the curvature of the planet was obvious, but the scale of the city still resisted comprehension. Weather systems moved over illuminated continents that were no longer continents. The night side glowed brighter than some orbital stations.

Stent watched it too. “Csilla has nothing comparable.”

Eli glanced across. “I thought Csilla had some pretty substantial cities.”

“It does.”

“But?”

Stent took several seconds before answering. “They end.”

Eli followed his gaze. Coruscant did not.

Even its oceans had been altered, reduced, buried or forced beneath infrastructure. The surface had become a single connected act of construction.

“No divisions,” Stent said. “No natural boundary visible from orbit. Only layers.”

“Lots and lots of layers.”

“It is excessive.”

“That’s basically the planetary motto.” Stent ignored that. Eli smiled faintly and returned his attention to the view.

He had seen Coruscant from the bridge of the Chimaera. From military shuttles. From Imperial offices where the windows looked down over air traffic so far below it resembled drifting dust.

Back then, the planet had felt like the center of everything because the Empire had spent a great deal of effort convincing everyone that it was.

Now Eli looked at it from the cockpit of a battered commercial freighter, with a sleeping kivren presumably somewhere under the console and an astromech plugged into a charging socket, and found the whole thing strangely diminished.

Not smaller.

Coruscant could never be small. Just less important than it remembered itself being.

“You came here often with him?” Stent asked.

Eli did not need to ask who he meant. “Enough.”

“Did he like Coruscant?”

Eli considered. “He liked what was available here.”

“That was not my question.”

“No. He didn’t like Coruscant.”

“Why?”

“Too many people making decisions for reasons they pretended were strategic.”

Stent looked thoughtful. “And the traffic?”

“He definitely hated the traffic.”

“That is reasonable.”

“Although he never had to sit in this part of it.” Eli gestured toward the packed orbital bands. “His clearance codes opened priority corridors. Half the time we went from approach to surface so fast I barely noticed the queue existed.”

“Authority.”

“Rank.”

“They are related.”

“Not always.”

Stent acknowledged that with a slight movement of his head.

Eli stared through the glass a little longer.

Thrawn had been here, that was sure. Not merely the old Imperial version of him preserved in military records. The contingency network said he had prepared something here deliberately. The fourth point.

Unlike Berchest, unlike Kiros, unlike the contact on Borleias, Coruscant was not merely another coordinate on a list. It had been one of the places where Thrawn had spent years moving through the machinery of the Empire.

If there was anywhere in Lesser Space where he might have left something complicated enough to matter, Eli could believe it would be here.

That did not mean he had returned after Lothal. Three points had already taught them that lesson. Prepared did not mean used. Possible did not mean visited.

Eli was getting very tired of learning the distinction.

At eleven hours the estimate dropped suddenly by nearly two. A whole traffic band had apparently reopened.

Eli regarded the new time with suspicion. “Do you trust that?”

“No,” Stent said.

“Good.”

Three hours later, planetary control finally transmitted an updated approach sequence. The cockpit woke around them. Tee disconnected himself from the charger and rolled forward.

Ch’eth emerged from beneath the console, stretched until his spine formed an improbable curve, and climbed onto Eli’s seat just as Eli was trying to sit properly.

“Move.” Ch’eth did not. “Come on.” The kivren stared at him. Eli reached for him. Ch’eth attempted bit him, somehow playful, but that was a bite. “Ah—dammit.”

Stent turned at the sound, took Ch’eth firmly around the middle before he could launch himself somewhere less accessible, and carried him aft. The kivren twisted in his hands, profoundly offended by the indignity.

“You know he bites me when I do that,” Eli called after him.

“He also bites you when you hesitate.”

“That is not helpful.”

A moment later came the soft click of the enclosure closing, followed by an outraged scrabbling from inside.

Stent returned to the cockpit. “Problem resolved.”

Eli sucked at the side of his finger and looked toward the hatch. “For now.”

“Correct.”

 The comm system chimed.

“Inbound vessel Faded Glory, Coruscant Traffic Control. Confirm berth K-97, four-one-eight-C.”

Eli keyed the channel. “Control, Faded Glory. Berth confirmed.”

“Manifest status.”

“Cargo discharged orbital. Hold empty.”

A pause. “Confirmed. Proceed to descent lane two-one-nine. Automated guidance mandatory until lower-atmosphere transfer. Maintain assigned velocity and separation.”

Guidance markers appeared across the display.

Eli felt something in his shoulders loosen. “Faded Glory copies two-one-nine.”

The ship finally left the holding pattern.

After nearly fifteen hours of circling the planet, movement felt suspiciously fast. Their assigned lane curved inward from orbit, joining a stream of descending vessels spaced at rigid intervals. Coruscant swelled beneath them.

The first brush of atmosphere touched the hull. The Faded Glory shuddered. Eli grinned and concentrated on the instruments. The haze thickened around them. Stars disappeared. For a few minutes there was nothing beyond the viewport but gold-white cloud and the diffuse glow of reflected city light.

Then they broke through. Coruscant opened beneath them.

Stent leaned forward. Eli had expected the reaction. He had not expected Stent to make no attempt to hide it.

Towers rose through the haze in every direction, some extending so high their upper levels pierced the cloud deck. Traffic lanes ran between them in streams of moving light. Rail lines vanished through buildings and reappeared kilometers away. Holographic advertisements hung in the air larger than ships. Beneath everything visible lay more city, descending in layers until sunlight became rumor.

Stent stared. “The orbital view was insufficient.”

“That’s usually how it gets you.”

“There is no horizon.”

“There is. It’s just behind buildings.”

Stent continued looking. Tee gave an appreciative whistle from behind them.

Eli smiled despite himself. “Welcome to Coruscant.”

Their guidance vector took them downward through successive traffic levels. The upper districts glittered. Glass. Polished metal. Private landing balconies. Buildings designed to make their occupants forget that several billion people lived beneath them.

Then they descended farther. The architecture aged. Colors dulled.

Bright corporate facades gave way to maintenance scaffolds, freight platforms and residential towers whose outer walls had been repaired so many times that no two panels quite matched.

Port K-97 occupied part of an enormous transit structure built into the side of a lower-mid-level district. Nothing glamorous. Exactly what they wanted.

Traffic control released automated guidance three kilometers from the berth.

“Manual control authorized,” the system announced.

Eli flexed his fingers over the yoke. “Finally.” He brought the ship around the final tower.

K-97 appeared ahead, its landing bays cut into an immense vertical wall crowded with freight elevators, service platforms and blinking navigation lights.

Berth 418-C flashed amber.

“Visual.”

“Alignment is good,” Stent said.

“See? All those years of pretending to be a pilot paid off.”

“I was unaware you were pretending.”

Eli glanced at him. “That was almost a joke.”

“No.”

“Definitely a joke.”

Stent ignored him.

The Faded Glory eased into the berth. Landing struts touched metal with a soft jolt. The engines wound down.

After the constant noise of Coruscant traffic, the cockpit suddenly seemed almost silent.

Eli leaned back. “Fifteen hours in orbit.”

“Fourteen hours and forty-one minutes.”

“I liked fifteen better.”

“It was inaccurate.”

“It was emotionally accurate.”

Tee rolled forward and chirped.

Stent collected the small civilian datapad containing the contingency coordinates, wrote them down in a piece of flimsi and pocketed it.

“Let’s go.”

Tee beeped something sharp. Eli crouched beside him and rested a hand briefly on the yellow dome. “Yes, you are staying, but we won’t be gone all day.”

Stent checked the local transit information.

“Based on current estimates, the journey to the contingency address will require approximately one hour and twenty minutes.”

Eli straightened. “Then we absolutely might be gone all day.” Tee’s photoreceptor narrowed. “Coruscant,” Eli said. “Take it up with the planet.”

They changed into clean civilian clothes before leaving.

Eli tightened his belt again. The trousers still felt loose. He looked at himself in the small mirror beside the bunk, pulled the waistband higher and decided not to think about it. There would be time for that.

Coruscant had doctors. Coruscant also had Thrawn’s fourth contingency point. For once, two problems had had the decency to occupy the same planet.

—-

The dock outside the Faded Glory smelled of coolant, hot metal and recycled humidity.

Port K-97 was busy without being important. Cargo crews moved pallets between bays. Service droids vanished beneath ships with diagnostic rigs. Independent captains argued with automated kiosks over fees that no machine had authority to reduce.

Nobody paid much attention to Eli. Stent received a few glances.

Nothing more.

Coruscant had seen stranger things before breakfast.

They passed through port security using Figg and Viros without difficulty and emerged into a concourse lined with food stalls, equipment shops, ticket machines and advertisements for everything from engine rebuilds to cosmetic gene treatments.

Eli stopped at a public transit terminal. The city map appeared. It took several seconds to finish rendering.

Stent stared at it. “This is intentionally difficult to interpret.”

“No. That’s the worrying part.”

He entered the contingency address.

The system traced a route downward and across two major district bands. Rail. Transfer. Another rail. Short walk.

Estimated travel time: eighty-seven minutes.

Eli pointed at it. “See? Almost exactly what you predicted.”

“Eighty-seven is not eighty.”

“You’re going to have a difficult time here, my friend.”

They joined the flow toward the transit station. Coruscant swallowed them almost immediately.

Hundreds of people moved around them in overlapping currents: workers, couriers, families, students, maintenance crews, beings Eli could identify and several he could not. Languages collided beneath the announcement system. Somewhere nearby, something was being fried in oil. Somewhere else, a machine alarm had apparently been sounding long enough that everyone had agreed to stop caring.

Stent stayed close. Not nervously. Tactically. His eyes moved constantly: exits, cameras, access points, crowd flow.

“You’re doing it again,” Eli said.

“What?”

“Mapping the terrain.”

“It is unfamiliar.”

“It’ll still be unfamiliar when we leave.”

“That is inefficient.”

“Now you understand Coruscant.”

Their first train arrived already crowded. They found standing room near one of the doors.

The city streaked past beyond the windows, although “past” was misleading. Coruscant moved in every direction at once. Buildings rose above them, fell away beneath them and crossed overhead on bridges large enough to contain entire neighborhoods.

Stent watched silently. Eli watched Stent.

Eventually the Chiss said, “There are people living in that structure?”

Eli followed his gaze. A residential tower flashed past, balconies crowded with laundry, plants and improvised sunlamps.

“Probably a few hundred thousand of them.”

Stent looked at him. “In one building.”

“Big building.”

“That does not make the number less absurd.”

“No.”

The train descended. The quality of the city changed gradually rather than suddenly. Polished walls became painted walls. Paint became bare metal. The advertisements grew smaller. The crowds did not.

By the time they made their transfer, the air smelled faintly of dust, cooked starch and overheated circuitry.

Their second line took them farther down.

When they finally emerged at the correct station, Eli checked the address again. “Ten minutes.”

The neighborhood was old but not derelict. That distinction mattered.

Walkways had been repaired with mismatched plates. Light panels differed in age by decades. Some shopfronts were new, others old enough that their signs had been repainted rather than replaced. People clearly lived here rather than merely passed through it.

Stent noticed the same thing. “Maintenance is decentralized.”

“Meaning?”

“Individual repairs. No coordinated refurbishment.”

Eli glanced at a railing whose damaged section had been replaced with a different alloy. “People fix what they can.”

“Yes.”

“That’s Coruscant below the money.”

They crossed a small commercial concourse. A noodle stall steamed under yellow lights. A droid repair shop displayed three disassembled protocol units in its window. Someone had converted an old freight container into a grocery kiosk.

Nothing about the place suggested Grand Admirals. Which was probably why Thrawn had chosen it.

The building identified by the contingency coordinates stood beyond the concourse.

Residential. Older construction. Forty or fifty visible levels before it vanished into the structural mass above.

Eli stopped beneath the entrance canopy. “This is definitely it.”

Stent checked the datapad. “Level nineteen-D.”

They took the lift.

It climbed slowly enough that Eli began to understand why the route planner had allowed several minutes for the building itself.

When the doors finally opened, they stepped into a quiet residential corridor. The noise of the city diminished at once.

Doors lined both sides. A child’s drawing had been attached beside one. A real plant sat outside another, its leaves turned toward an artificial daylight panel.

Eli looked at the address. Fourth door on the right.

They walked toward it. The plate beside the door carried the correct unit number. No name.

Eli rested his thumb against the access control. “You ready?”

Stent looked at him. “We came here to determine whether he used it.”

Eli nodded. “Right.”

The authentication from the contingency archive passed into the lock. For a moment nothing happened. Then the indicator changed to green. The door opened. Cool, still air moved into the corridor.

Eli stepped inside. The apartment was small. One main room. Compact kitchenette. Short passage leading toward a sleeping space. Sparse furniture. Neutral walls. Everything clean.

Everything waiting.

He stood just beyond the threshold, looking at a place that had apparently been prepared for a man who had never expected anyone to know it existed.

Behind him, Stent closed the door.

Eli took a slow breath. “All right,” he said.

“Let’s find out if he was ever here.”