Dromedar incident During the Imperial Era , an incident occurred when the freighter " Dromedar " was raided and captured by the pirate band Culoss , which was led by the insurgent leader Nevil Cygni . The pirates took the crew prisoner and captured the ship ' s tibanna cargo . When an Imperial boarding party led by Captain Thrawn answered the " Dromedar " distress call , they were greeted by Cygni , who trapped the Imperials . However , Thrawn managed to turn the table on his captors by using a buzz droid to cut a hole in the cage and expose parts of the shift to the vacuum of space . Despite his efforts , Cygni and some of his followers managed to escape with the smuggled tibanna canisters . Prelude . During the Imperial Era , the Galactic Empire faced numerous insurgent groups that threatened its rule over the galaxy . One of these was the insurgent leader Nevil Cygni , who was part of a pirate band called the Culoss , an offshoot of Q ' anah ' s Marauders . He regarded the Empire as a corrupt tyrannical government that oppressed the galaxy . Cygni engaged in the smuggling of doonium and tibanna in order to raise funds to help avenge people whom he claimed had been hurt by the Empire . History . The " Dromedar " was a Freighter led by Captain Fitz and crewed by several people including Toom . Sometime before 3 BBY , Nevil infiltrated the " Dromedar " by posing as a new crew member . His fellow Culoss pirates attacked the freighter while it was carrying Tibanna gas . They overpowered the crew and locked them in a metal cage in the cargo hold of their pirate ship . The " Dromedar " distress call was picked up by the Imperial " Gozanti " - class cruiser " Blood Crow " , led by Captain Filia Rossi . Captain Rossi reluctantly dispatched a boarding party consisting of Lieutenant Thrawn and his team — Ensign s Eli Vanto and Merri Barlin and engineering technician Jakeeb , and electronics technician Layneo — to investigate the " Dromedar " distress call before responding to a crisis on Moltok . They found Nevil Cygni and his crew , who claimed that their comrades had been kidnapped by pirate s . Cygni tricked Thrawn into revealing how to extract the tibanna from their cylinders by disengaging their static locks . Thrawn , however , was aware that he was a pirate due to his dusty clothing but played along in order to trick Cygni . Despite Rossi ' s objections , Thrawn convinced her to allow him and his team to remain aboard the " Dromedar " to protect the crew . After the " Blood Crow " had left for Moltok , Cygni asked the Imperials about how to extract tibanna from the cylinders . After Thrawn and his team had divulged this information , Cygni and his fellow pirates revealed their true intentions and disarmed Thrawn and his team . The Imperials were locked inside the improvised brig on the pirate ship with the " Dromedar " real crew . A pirate called Angel wanted to kill them but Cygni refused and insisted that Angel keep his promise to drop the prisoners off unharmed . Cygni and Angel then departed aboard the " Dromedar " with the stolen tibanna cargo . Before leaving , Cygni left one of Thrawn ' s buzz droid ' s behind to test the Chiss captain ' s resolve . With the help of the Imperial technicians , Thrawn managed to reactivate the buzz droids he had brought and used it to cut a hole through the cage ' s bars . The Imperials and the " Dromedar " crew then overpowered the pirates that had been left behind to guard the ship . In addition , Thrawn had another buzz droid secretly moored to the ship ' s hull . This buzz droid then exposed the pirate ship ' s entrance chamber and amidships section to the vacuum of space , eliminating the other pirates while still leaving the ship intact . Aftermath . Despite rescuing the crew of the " Dromedar " , Lieutenant Thrawn was chastised for failing to prevent the pirates from stealing the freighter and its tibanna cargo ; the latter an important commodity for the Imperial Navy . Thrawn and Ensign Vanto were ordered to remain behind on Ansion . Despite this setback , Thrawn took the opportunity to help Admiral Wiskovis interrogate three of the surviving pirates . Knowing that the pirates were descendants of Q ' anah ' s Marauders , Thrawn managed to convince the pirates to cooperate by offering to protect them from Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin . While the pirates discussed Thrawn ' s offer , Thrawn used his knowledge of Sy Bisti to eavesdrop on the pirates ' conversation and learned that that Angel and Cygni had fled with the " Dromedar " to Uba . In an attempt to mislead Thrawn , the pirates claimed that Angel and Cygni had traveled to Cartherston on the planet Keitum . After the pirates accepted Thrawn ' s offer , Thrawn revealed the information he had yielded from the eavesdropping to Wiskovis . Acting on this information , Admiral Wiskovis dispatched an Imperial Security Bureau agent to Uba . While the Imperials managed to recover the canisters and capture more pirates , they found that the pirates had extracted the tibanna from twelve of the twenty recovered tibanna cylinders . Despite the cordon , Angel and Cygni manage to elude the Imperial authorities . Thrawn was later exonerated by an Imperial court martial panel and promoted to Captain of the " Arquitens " - class light cruiser " Thunder Wasp " . Using his Nightswan persona , Cygni later hired smugglers on an oceanic planet to smuggle iridium inside mollusk shells in order to raise funds to buy Vulture droid parts . However , this was foiled by Thrawn , who continued his hunt for Nightswan . Behind the scenes . The " Dromedar " incident first appeared in Timothy Zahn ' s 2017 novel " Thrawn " , a rebooted origins story of the titular character . This incident also introduced the novel ' s main antagonist Nevil Cygni .