The night pressed in thick around the intelligence bureau, Naboo’s moonlight cutting pale ribbons through the office blinds. Cassian Abrantes sat alone amid the glow of datapads and holographic feeds, their quiet hum the only company left at this hour.
He had been at this for hours, sorting, cross-referencing, rechecking. Reports from border cells, intercepted transmissions from smuggler routes, personnel logs buried behind civilian layers of Republic Intelligence. One by one, each lead dissolved into mist. Contradictory times, incomplete records, redacted details. It was as though someone had taken a vibroblade to the truth and left only fragments behind.
Except for one name.
Intelligence Administrator Vallen Marrel.
It kept surfacing, quietly, almost apologetically, beneath mission summaries and encrypted accounting reports. Sometimes he appeared listed as an oversight liaison, other times a consultant or intermediary. Nothing concrete. But always there. Always close.
Cassian leaned forward, eyes narrowing as he expanded a string of data entries. The deeper he dug, the stranger it became. A handful of agents, trusted ones, had Marrel’s name brushed against their logs. Not in a way that suggested open collaboration, but adjacent enough to raise every alarm in his instincts. They weren’t supposed to have contact with Republic administration channels at all, and yet the traces were there: small transfers, overlapping assignments, encrypted correspondence under aliases that, when decrypted, led back to Marrel’s node on Naboo.
And then there was Nar Shaddaa.
One of Cassian’s external contacts, a slicer known as Aren D'Shade , had flagged a pattern weeks ago: mid-tier payments from private-controlled accounts and reappearing in cleaned Republic channels. Tonight, that trail resurfaced, thin, but undeniable. Cross-referenced through a half-buried ledger out of Nar Shaddaa’s financial district, Cassian found the rerouted credits had one final destination.
Marrel’s personal accounts...
Amounts varied, nothing that would trigger automatic audits. But they were consistent, steady, the kind of payments that came from completed work. The kind of work someone wanted kept quiet. And every time a payment cleared, one of Cassian’s flagged agents seemed to surface on assignment, their mission filed neatly under the Republic’s humanitarian or intelligence sub-branches.
Coincidence? He doubted it.
The stylus in his hand hovered over the datapad, then began marking out a new chain. Arrows. Names. Transfers. The faint glow of numbers reflected in his eyes as the picture formed, slow, quiet, damning.
Vallen Marrel was Intelligence Administrator and he was sitting with flags between Republic and the Black Sun capital, funneling credits through phantom operations and using agents like pawns. Whether for power, blackmail, or something deeper, Cassian couldn’t yet tell.
But one thing was certain: if this was true, Naboo’s intelligence office wasn’t chasing rumors anymore. It was staring straight into the shadow of something larger than a single corrupt official.
And Cassian Abrantes wasn’t about to let it go. Not now, not when the pattern was finally beginning to take shape.
The following night, Cassian Abrantes sat once more beneath the cool hush of the intelligence office. The hum of the terminal screens felt heavier now, as though the building itself knew what was coming. Outside, Theed slept beneath a drape of starlight, serene, unaware that beneath its marble spires, a quiet reckoning was unfolding.
Marrel’s name no longer lived in implication. The data was tangible now, ugly in its clarity. Cassian had spent the day weaving together the threads, and by evening, the pattern had become undeniable.
A comm signature from a High Republic courier vessel tied to Marrel’s oversight node had been logged on Nar Shaddaa, of all places. A courier supposedly en route to Arbra, whose navigation records had been falsified post-mission. Attached to that same packet was a communication tag, an encoded message from an operative already under internal review for “unauthorized field activity.” Cassian decrypted the payload himself, watching as the holo-text unfolded like a confession.
Transfer complete. Instructions confirmed. V. Marrel will receive confirmation within forty-eight standard.
The words hung in the air long after he’d closed the file.
Then came the secondary hit, the financial cross-check he had requested from the Republic Treasury earlier that week. The results came in just past midnight, sealed under encryption, but Cassian’s clearance pulled it through. What he saw chilled him:
Two separate accounts, one under Marrel’s name, the other under the identity of an unrecognizable biometric access point. Each account had received incremental deposits traced to shell corporations on Nar Shaddaa. And those companies? Fronts owned and operated by a consortium that Naboo’s own intelligence had long suspected of laundering funds for contract killings and political coercion.
The amounts were precise, tidy, consistent. The timing aligned perfectly with incidents in Cassian’s compiled timeline.
And through it all, Marrel’s signature authorization codes appeared in the metadata, faint but irrefutable.
Cassian’s stylus trembled as he jotted his final notation across the glowing screen. The evidence was no longer circumstantial. It was a net.
He straightened, eyes narrowing as he keyed in a secure transmission to the oversight board. “This is Agent Cassian Abrantes, on my authority...” he said, voice low but steady. “Authorization code Alpha-Three-Nine-Delta.” His tone hardened. “I am submitting formal recommendation for detainment and investigation of Republic Intelligence Administrator Vallen Marrel on charges of conspiracy, embezzlement, and collusion with known criminal elements.”
The silence that followed was brief, punctuated only by the soft hum of encrypted relays spinning into motion.
When the reply came, it was terse. “Acknowledged. Arrest team will assemble discreetly. Stand by for confirmation.”
Cassian set down his stylus and leaned back, exhaling slowly. The exhaustion in his bones warred with a grim satisfaction. Weeks of sleepless nights, half-truths, and broken leads had finally converged into something real.
Through the window, dawn began to edge across the horizon, casting Solleu's surface in soft gold. Somewhere beyond those waters, Vallen Marrel was likely sitting in comfort, unaware that his walls had already begun to crumble.
Cassian reached for the datapad once more and locked the file.
He took a deep breath and leaned back into his chair, taking a deep breath as he looked back out the window.
“The mask has slipped.”
