Work Text:
The planet was wild.
Eli Vanto stood at the edge of the camp, watching Imperial stormtroopers pick their way through the underbrush, and reflected that his career in the Imperial Navy had begun in a manner that was, perhaps, a touch too interesting. He had come to the Royal Academy of Myrist to study supply — not for lack of ambition, but because he knew precisely what he wanted. Logistics, supply chains, the economy of war. There was something beautiful in it. Mathematics with consequences. People underestimated quartermasters, and Eli took a quiet pleasure in that: to be the one nobody notices while everything runs smoothly, and without whom everything falls apart.
But now he stood on an unnamed planet in the Unknown Regions, because Captain Park had decided that a cadet who knew Cheunh was reason enough to pull him out of class.
— Vanto! — Park called. — Over here.
Eli straightened his uniform — out of habit, the way he always did — and went over.
The hut was crude. Deliberately crude, he noted, because the materials had been fitted together far too precisely for a man supposedly eking out a living in the wild. Inside, it smelled of smoke, dried herbs, and something else — something foreign.
And there, in the half-light, sat a Chiss.
Eli had seen pictures of Chiss before — glimpses in old trade catalogs from Lysatra. Blue skin, black hair, red eyes. But pictures could not convey presence. He glanced at him. This one looked at the Imperials filing in the way a man looks when he has already counted every exit from the room and decided, for now, to stay.
The red eyes drifted over the stormtroopers, over Captain Park, and came to rest on Eli.
Then the Chiss spoke.
In Cheunh. Not the traders' pidgin Eli had picked up from smugglers on Lysatra, but clean, correct Cheunh — too correct for an exile.
— My name is Mitth'raw'nuruodo, — said the Chiss. His voice was level and deep. — I pose no threat to your ship. I request an audience with your command.
Park turned to Eli.
— What's he saying?
Eli opened his mouth — and stopped.
Pieces were already falling into place: a Chiss, alone, on a wild planet, in a hut that looked like a stage set, speaking flawless Cheunh in sentences prepared well in advance. This was not survival. This was theater.
This Chiss wanted to be found.
Eli met the Chiss's gaze directly. The red eyes narrowed a fraction — not in hostility, but in interest. As though the Chiss were taking his measure too, and had not expected what he found.
— He says his name is Mitth'raw'nuruodo, — Eli translated. He pronounced the full name cleanly, without a stumble — he had always been good with languages. — He claims he's no threat and requests an audience with command.
A pause.
— He requests an audience? — Park repeated. — Not surrender?
— No, sir. He requests it.
Eli glanced at the Chiss again. The Chiss tilted his head slightly — a gesture that on Lysatra would have meant respect. Or the acknowledgment of an equal.
— I'd also like to note, sir, — Eli added, his voice even, — that this hut wasn't built for survival. It was built to impress whoever found it. No long-term supplies, no defensive works, no sign of prolonged habitation. He was waiting for us.
Silence.
Park looked at Eli with an expression the cadet couldn't quite read — irritation, maybe, or a quiet reassessment.
The Chiss — Mitth'raw'nuruodo — looked at Eli with an expression he could read.
It was surprise.
Aboard the Intrepid, Eli translated the interrogation. Not all of it — the Chiss said exactly as much as he wished to say, and held his tongue exactly when he wished to hold it. He called himself a warrior of the Chiss Ascendancy. Said he had been exiled. Did not say why. Expressed a wish to serve the Empire.
Park was intrigued. His first officer, Commander Barlin, was not.
— Could be intelligence, — Barlin said once the Chiss had been led away. — A plant. An exile's a convenient mask.
— Possibly, — Park allowed. — Vanto. Your thoughts?
Eli blinked. Captains of Star Destroyers didn't ask supply cadets for their thoughts. But Park had asked, and Eli wasn't about to hide.
— He's certainly not what he says he is, sir, — Eli said. — But I don't think he's a spy in the usual sense. A spy would try to seem less... capable. This one wants us to know he's dangerous and clever. He's selling himself. The question is what he's asking for.
Barlin snorted.
— You're a cadet, Vanto. Not an analyst.
— I'm a cadet who grew up in a port city on Lysatra, where half the business ran through smugglers out of the Unknown Regions, sir, — Eli said, meeting Barlin's eye. — I know what a man looks like when he's making a deal. This one is making a deal.
Park smiled, barely.
— Thank you, cadet. Dismissed.
He wasn't dismissed, of course. While the Intrepid made for Coruscant — because Park had decided to bring the Chiss before the Emperor himself, a thought so far above Eli's clearance that it made his head swim — Eli was assigned as translator.
Which meant hours alone with Mitth'raw'nuruodo.
The Chiss studied Basic. Fast. Frighteningly fast. Eli brought him datapads loaded with texts, and within a day he was reading Imperial regulations. Not novels, not phrasebooks. Regulations.
On the third day, the Chiss spoke to him in Cheunh — but differently now. No more prepared phrases. Fluently.
— You told the captain I was trading, — Mitth'raw'nuruodo said. Not a question. A statement.
Eli sat across from him, on the other side of the table. Guards stood outside the door, but the Chiss wore no restraints — Park had ordered him treated as a guest. A politically shrewd move.
— Yes, — Eli said in Cheunh. — I did.
— Why?
Eli considered it for a moment.
— Because it's true. And because the captain needed to know it to make the right call.
The red eyes held his without blinking. Eli held them back. Not out of stubbornness — out of principle. He saw no reason to look away.
— Most people, — the Chiss said slowly, — when they meet something they don't understand, either fear it or try to please it. You did neither.
— I grew up among traders, — Eli said. — Fear and flattery are bad strategy in a market.
A pause. Then the Chiss did something Eli hadn't expected.
He smiled.
Barely — the corners of his mouth, a small shift. But from a being who had until now shown a control bordering on the mechanical, it was like a whole speech.
— You may call me Thrawn, — the Chiss said. — It's... a sufficient shortening.
— Thrawn, — Eli repeated. — All right. You can call me Eli.
— I know, — Thrawn said. — I've heard what they call you. Eli Vanto. Cadet in the supply program. You're here because you know Cheunh. You've stayed because you're observant.
Eli leaned back in his chair.
— You already understand Basic well enough that you don't need a translator. You understood Captain Park from the start, I think. Or near enough.
Thrawn said nothing. He didn't deny it, either.
— You could at least look guilty, — Eli said.
— Why? — Thrawn asked. In Basic. A faint accent, but the grammar was flawless. — You wouldn't have believed it.
Eli laughed.
He hadn't meant to — it just came out. The whole situation was absurd: sitting on an Imperial Star Destroyer across from a blue-skinned alien who pretended not to speak Basic and yet could quote Navy regulations on his third day with the language.
— No, — Eli agreed. — I wouldn't have.
Thrawn tilted his head.
— You're not angry.
— I didn't say I wasn't angry. I said I wouldn't have believed it. Different things.
— Explain the difference.
Eli looked at him.
— I can be unhappy that I was played and still admit the play was well done. One doesn't cancel the other. But, — he raised a finger, — I'd prefer that to be the last time you use me for cover without telling me.
Silence.
— Is that a condition? — Thrawn asked. In Cheunh. Formally — the language of contracts.
— It's a standard, — Eli said in the same tongue. — I'm willing to work with you. I'm not willing to be a tool that doesn't know what it's being used for. If you need a puppet translator, find another. If you need someone who understands what's happening and is useful because of it — I'm here.
Thrawn looked at him for a long moment. A very long moment.
Then he nodded. Once. Slowly.
— Acceptable, — he said.
On Coruscant, everything got worse.
Not for Thrawn — for Thrawn, Coruscant became a springboard. The Emperor received him. Of what passed in that audience, Eli learned only this: the Chiss walked out of the throne room with a posting to the Royal Academy on Coruscant. Not as a cadet — as an officer-candidate. An alien in an Empire built on xenophobia. Eli measured what Thrawn had offered the Emperor by the size of what he'd gotten in return.
For Eli, Coruscant became a transfer.
— You're being reassigned from Myrist, — a commander in the academy's reception told him. — Cadet Vanto, you're enrolled at the Royal Academy on Coruscant. The program... — he checked his datapad, and something like sympathy crossed his face — — officer training.
Not supply. Officer training.
Eli stood before the commander's desk, and several things happened in him at once. Anger — cold and tidy, like columns in a ledger. Understanding — someone upstairs wanted eyes on Thrawn, and a cadet-translator was a convenient solution. And somewhere at the edge of it, something he didn't want to call curiosity.
— Sir, — Eli said. — I'd like to file an official protest.
The commander raised his eyebrows.
— A protest, cadet?
— Yes, sir. My transfer out of the supply program wasn't initiated by me and doesn't match my training profile. I want it on record that I consider the decision a poor one and request review.
— This decision came from a level that doesn't get reviewed, cadet.
— I understand, sir. But I want the protest on record. For the file.
The commander looked at him — no longer with sympathy, but with something new. Respect, perhaps.
— It will be recorded, — he said.
Eli found Thrawn in the common room. The Chiss sat alone — alone, naturally; the cadets steered around him the way you'd steer around an unexploded shell — reading something on a datapad. Something with pictures. Art, Eli realized, catching a glimpse of a painting on the screen. The Chiss was studying art.
— You knew I'd be transferred, — Eli said, sitting down across from him. Not a question. A statement.
Thrawn looked up.
— I assumed command would find it convenient to have a familiar face near me.
— You could have warned me.
— Yes.
— So why didn't you?
Thrawn set the datapad down.
— Because I wanted to see how you'd react.
Eli felt the anger rise again — and again, cold and controlled. He didn't raise his voice. He leaned forward.
— I filed a protest, — he said. — Official. On the record. Not because I don't want to be here. Because nobody has the right to rearrange another person's career without explanation or consent. Not for convenience. Not even for the Emperor.
— That's a bold thing for a cadet to say.
— It's an honest thing to say. I'm not against working with you, Thrawn. I've told you that. But there's a difference between cooperating and being moved around the board like a piece in dejarik.
Thrawn said nothing.
— I told you on the ship, — Eli went on. — Warn me. You didn't. So I'll put it plainer. The next time you know something that touches my life or my career, you tell me. Not because I'm asking. Because if you don't, I'll leave. I'll find a way back to supply, and you'll be learning Basic off a datapad, alone, in a room where everyone's afraid of you except me.
Silence.
A few cadets at nearby tables were watching — the kid from Lysatra dressing down the red-eyed alien — but Eli didn't notice them.
Thrawn tilted his head. The same gesture as in the hut. Acknowledgment.
— You're right, — he said. — I should have warned you. I'm... not used to allies who ask for transparency.
— Get used to it, — Eli said. — Or find another translator.
— I'm not looking for a translator, — Thrawn said. — I don't need one. I need someone who sees what I see, but from the other side.
Eli went quiet.
That was... not what he'd expected to hear. It wasn't flattery — Thrawn didn't flatter. It was a definition. Functional, exact, and — if Eli was honest with himself — correct. He did see things differently. Numbers, flows, systems. Where Thrawn read strategy through culture and art, Eli read it through resources and logistics. Two halves of the same equation.
— All right, — he said at last. — But my conditions stand.
— Accepted, — Thrawn said.
Eli nodded, stood, and had turned to go when Thrawn spoke again.
— Eli.
He looked back.
— Your protest, — Thrawn said. — It won't be granted. But it will be noticed. People who file protests knowing they'll lose, because they believe it's right — those people are remembered.
Eli looked at him.
— I didn't file it to be remembered. I filed it because it was right.
— Precisely why, — Thrawn said, — you'll be remembered.