In Outbound Flight, there's that whole unhappy issue of Thrass and Lorana sacrificing themselves for the survivors, who would never know what they did. While the remains of Outbound Flight shudder through hyperspace, Lorana holds the engines together through the Force while Thrass tries to find his way to the survivors, but the pylons are blocked. In that last stretch, when they have to crash on a planet with the Dreadnaught they're on hitting first so that the survivors and the single hyperspace-capable fighter will be above the surface, they have a More Hero than Thou moment that ends with both of them staying, since Lorana has to land this thing and keep the systems from self-destructing, and Thrass knows she can't afford the time it would take for her to clear a path for him. Lorana has a lightsaber, and could have given it to him and let him cut his way out. But while Thrass has seen the lightsaber deflect his charric bolts, he doesn't know about its cut-through-anything ability. And Lorana may have decided not to tell him, since he's a Chiss, does not know Basic, and would be instantly associated with the attackers if he met the survivors, and anyway cutting his way out might simply have made holes that let in the vacuum. Or perhaps she simply never thought of it, considering all the shocks she'd just had and the incredible pressure that was on her. Either way, her bones and Thrass's were found mixed together fifty years later.
This book subtly explains why Thrawn will be so hostile and dismissive towards the Rebellion in the Thrawn Trilogy. His only contacts from the Republic are some smugglers, who obviously view it in a negative light, and Doriana and the Trade Federation (likewise). Furthermore, this is a time when the Jedi are being stretched thin and the Republic is struggling with loads of internecine conflicts thanks in large part to almost a millennium's worth of Sith manipulations behind the scenes, though it's not as if Palpatine's ever going to tell him that. Since Thrawn only ever sees the Republic through the lens of the smugglers, Doriana, the Trade Federation, and later hears about it from Imperial sources, of course he would think that it was inefficient and doomed to fail, the New Republic likewise. Had Thrawn's first contacts been with, say, Bail Organa or a Jedi, he almost certainly would have gained a greater appreciation for the Republic.
