Chapter 6 · The Right to Counsel

Breakfast arrived in the Chancellor’s outer security office at 0717, which was too early for food to be comforting and too late for anyone in the room to pretend the night had contained sleep.

It came on a repulsor tray pushed by one of Mon Mothma’s junior aides, a young Mon Calamari woman whose expression had the careful blankness of someone who had been ordered to bring nourishment into a room where no one wanted it and several people might take offense at the implication that they were still biological. There were fruit slices, soft grain rolls, protein cakes, three small pots of jam, a thermal carafe of caf, another of tea, and a bowl of something pale and steaming that might have been porridge if one believed optimism could survive institutional catering.

Leia looked at the tray and felt her stomach object on principle.

“Thank you,” she said, because Alderaan had died but manners, apparently, remained harder to kill.

The aide inclined her head, retreated, and let the door close behind her with a discretion that lasted exactly three seconds before the hallway outside resumed its low murmur of controlled panic.

Kallus took a cup of caff first.

Then another.

Then, after staring at the second as if uncertain whether it had appeared through legitimate means, took one of the protein cakes and bit into it with the absent determination of a man who had not chosen to eat so much as accepted evidence that his body could no longer be ignored. He looked worse than he had the night before, which was impressive given the competition. His beard had gone rough at the edges, his eyes were too bright, and there was a fine tension beneath his movements that Leia recognized with professional disapproval.

“Stimulants again?” she asked, discreetly.

Kallus paused mid-chew.

“Caff.” He lied.

Leia looked at him. He swallowed.

“And regulated alertness support.” he admitted.

Captain Tessa Brant, the security officer who had overseen Thrawn’s transfer to detention, made a small sound from where she stood beside the room’s central display. It was not quite judgment. It was too tired for that. Her dark hair was tied back with military severity, her uniform still immaculate in the way of officers who had long ago learned that if one could not control events, one could at least control a collar seam. The scar along her jaw caught the office light when she turned her head.

“Director Kallus has been awake for more than a full cycle,” she said.

“Barely more,” Kallus corrected.

Brant glanced at him. “You were not asleep in the transport review room.”

“I was thinking with my eyes closed.”

Leia wrapped both hands around her tea.

The cup was warm. That was its primary virtue. The tea itself was mild, herbal, almost sweet, and much less offensive to her stomach than caf would have been. She had tried, out of habit, to quit caff when she woke. But today the smell alone had made her reconsider several life choices. So now she sat at the edge of Mon Mothma’s conference table with tea, an untouched roll on a plate in front of her, and the unpleasant sensation that exhaustion had turned her bones into damp cloth.

“You both look terrible,” she said.

Kallus gave her a sidelong look. “Thank you, Senator.”

“I include myself in that assessment.”

“You look perfectly composed.”

“That means you are overtired and your judgment is failing.”

Brant’s mouth twitched.

Kallus reached for the caff again. Leia moved the carafe an inch farther away without looking at him.

He noticed.

He did not protest, which was how Leia knew the stimulants were truly beginning to worry him.

On the central display, the overnight intelligence summary remained open: transit route, personal effects, medical verification, press amplification, legal inquiries, internal footage breach investigation. The words had begun to look less like a report and more like a catalog of doors Thrawn had opened simply by walking through the correct one.

The final section blinked amber.

EXTERNAL LEGAL AND CIVIL OVERSIGHT ACTIONS — URGENT.

Leia took a careful sip of tea.

“Tell me this is less bad than it looks.”

Kallus leaned back in his chair, one hand pressed against the side of his cup as though the warmth might hold him together.

“It is differently bad.”

“I hate intelligence answers.” Leia sighed.

“They are often accurate.”

“They are often evasive.”

Kallus allowed himself for a brief smile. “Also accurate.”

Brant folded her arms. “The first civil liberties petition arrived at 0442.”

Leia closed her eyes.

“Of course it did.”

“Filed by the Inner Core Committee for Democratic Detention Standards, co-signed by the Republican Prisoner Rights League, the Alliance of Postwar Legal Observers, and two academic institutes whose names are longer than the filings.”

Kallus tapped the display. The petition opened in neat legal formatting, with polite language and the moral force of a thrown stone.

Leia skimmed the first lines.

Her headache sharpened.

“They want access to confinement conditions.”

“They want confirmation of medical treatment,” Brant said. “Confirmation that the detainee has not been denied counsel. Confirmation that he has been informed of charges. Confirmation that no enhanced interrogation methods are being considered. Confirmation that his species-specific needs are being met. Confirmation that his detention status is not being used to create an unlawful intelligence exception.”

Leia stared at the list.

“He has been in custody less than sixteen hours.”

“Yes.”

“They filed before breakfast.”

“Yes.”

Kallus took another bite of the protein cake. “In fairness, most Imperial abuses also began before breakfast.”

Leia looked at him.

He lifted a hand slightly. “I did not say I enjoyed their timing.”

That was the problem.

Leia wanted to be irritated. She was irritated. Deeply. Viscerally. In the part of her that had spent the night watching newsfeeds turn a dangerous prisoner into whatever each commentator needed him to be, the arrival of civil liberties advocates with language about humane confinement and legal transparency felt like someone arriving at a firefight to critique the angle of the barricades.

But they were not wrong.

That made them worse.

The New Republic could not disappear prisoners. It could not invent a category called too dangerous for rights and expect that category to remain clean in anyone’s hands. Leia had seen what happened when governments decided fear was an acceptable shortcut. She had been tortured by a man who would have called it security necessity without hesitation. She had watched Alderaan burn in the name of order. She knew, in a place deeper than policy, that the first exception always arrived wearing the face of reason.

She also knew Thrawn had chosen this.

Not the committees specifically, perhaps. Not their names. Not their exact filing time.

But the pressure? The contradiction? The fact that every decent instinct the New Republic possessed could be turned into a channel of access?

Yes.

He had chosen that very carefully.

“What do we know about the committees?” she asked.

Kallus pushed one file toward her on the display.

“Mostly legitimate. Some grandstanding. Some donors I dislike. No direct Imperial remnant ties identified in the leading groups. The Prisoner Rights League has been a problem before, but a consistent one. They objected to the detention conditions of captured ISB officers, Outer Rim pirates, two New Republic intelligence assets accused of extrajudicial operations, and one senator’s nephew who absolutely deserved the cell he was in.”

Brant gave him a dry look. “That last one is not in the official assessment.”

“It can be.”

“No.”

Leia continued reading.

“Democratic Detention Standards.”

“They were one of the committees that denounced this room,” Kallus said.

Leia looked up.

“This room?”

“This room, the holding level below it, and half the emergency coordination architecture built during the Provisional Council phase. Their phrasing was ‘an alarming persistence of clandestine carceral design inherited from wartime necessity and insufficiently accountable to civilian review.’”

Brant’s expression remained neutral. “They were not entirely wrong.”

“No,” Kallus said. “They were not entirely useful either.”

Leia rubbed her forehead.

“And the pro-Imperial pressure groups?”

Kallus’s face changed.

The fatigue remained, but something colder settled over it.

“They started later. Which tells us something.”

“Does it?”

“Yes. The civil liberties people reacted from principle. The nostalgia blocs waited for messaging.”

Brant keyed another report.

This one was uglier.

Not openly treasonous. Not illegal. Not even crude. Leia almost would have preferred crude. Instead, the statements were polished, mournful, patriotic in that broad, self-forgiving way Core lobbies used when they wished to sound reasonable while implying democracy had been a lovely experiment conducted by children.

The Core Stability Forum urged the Chancellor to avoid “vengeful prosecutorial theatrics” and consider whether “experienced military minds may yet contribute to galactic security.”

Citizens for Orderly Reconstruction warned against allowing “old insurgent resentments” to override “strategic realities.”

The Imperial Administrative Legacy Association, which Leia personally wanted investigated on name alone, released a statement noting that while “the excesses of the late Emperor cannot and should not be defended,” many former Imperial officers had possessed “a seriousness of governance now visibly absent in certain sectors of the New Republic.”

Leia’s hand tightened around her cup.

“Certain sectors,” she repeated.

Kallus nodded. “They mean all of it.”

“I know what they mean.”

“One commentator on a Hosnian business channel said Thrawn’s surrender could represent an opportunity to ‘recover lost traditions of disciplined statecraft.’”

Brant’s eyes hardened.

Leia set her tea down very carefully.

“Lost traditions.”

Kallus leaned forward.

“They are not Palpatinists. Not most of them. That is what makes them difficult. They do not want the Emperor back. They want the comfort of believing the Empire worked except for the parts that embarrassed them at dinner parties.”

Leia let out a humorless breath.

“They want the trains to run on time and prefer not to ask who was loaded into them.”

Kallus’s expression flickered.

“Yes.”

For a moment, the office felt colder.

Brant broke the silence.

“They are positioning themselves to claim him.”

Leia looked at her.

“As what?”

“As proof that competence belonged to the Empire and mercy belongs to the New Republic. If we treat him harshly, they call us hypocrites. If we treat him properly, they call him valuable. If he warns of an external threat, they say the Empire knew. If we resist his warning, they say the Republic is naïve. If we listen, they say we have finally admitted Imperial military doctrine was necessary.”

Kallus looked at her with something almost like approval.

“That is exactly the trap.”

Leia looked back at the display.

Civil liberties advocates from one side. Imperial nostalgia groups from the other. News channels feeding both. Military commands demanding restricted briefings. Hera Syndulla barely contained by distance and Kallus’s carefully phrased messages. Mon Mothma preparing a public address that would have to confirm enough to prevent panic, conceal enough to preserve intelligence value, and sound humane enough to stop half the Senate from remembering why it had supported her in the first place.

And beneath all of it, in a white prison uniform behind reinforced doors, Thrawn was probably sitting with infuriating composure, letting the government define itself around him.

Leia picked up her tea again.

It had gone lukewarm.

“Where are we on charges?”

Brant’s mouth tightened.

“There are several categories under review. War crimes, unlawful military action against recognized systems now under New Republic jurisdiction, command responsibility for operations conducted by the Seventh Fleet, material support to Imperial governance—”

“But?”

Kallus answered.

“But much of it depends on evidence captured after Endor, incomplete Imperial archives, witness testimony scattered across liberated systems, and whether we classify him as a military prisoner, criminal detainee, intelligence asset, or foreign political actor.”

Leia stared at him.

“Foreign political actor?”

“He is Chiss.”

“He was an Imperial Grand Admiral.”

“Yes.”

“And he surrendered as himself.”

“Yes.”

“So naturally the legal answer is no one knows what he is.”

Kallus spread one hand.

“The law is precise wherever history has been polite enough to repeat itself.”

Brant’s comlink chimed. She glanced at it. Then her expression changed in a way Leia did not like.

“What?” Leia asked.

Brant read once more before answering. “We have received a formal notice of representation.”

Leia closed her eyes. Kallus set down his caff.

“From whom?”

Brant looked up. “Veyr, Antilles and Sorn.”

For a second, there was only silence.

Then Kallus said, flatly, “Of course.”

Leia opened her eyes.

“I’m sorry. Did you say Antilles?”

Brant’s mouth twitched again, despite the situation.

“The firm states, preemptively, that Partner Caro Antilles of Coruscant has no familial relation to General Wedge Antilles of the New Republic Defense Fleet.”

Kallus stared at the ceiling.

“They included that in the notice?”

“They appear to include it in all public-facing legal documents since the Seswenna tribunal.”

Leia, despite herself, laughed once.

It escaped before she could stop it, sharp and tired and wholly inappropriate. Kallus looked at her. Brant looked at the datapad. Leia covered her mouth with the back of her hand and shook her head.

“No,” she said. “I’m sorry. It’s just—of course they have a disclaimer. Of course the first famous Imperial-defense firm to crawl out of the marble has a legally distinct Antilles.”

Kallus’s expression was dry enough to preserve documents.

“General Antilles will be delighted.”

“General Antilles must not hear this from a newsfeed,” Leia said.

“I’ll add it to the list of fires requiring immediate water.”

Brant transferred the notice to the main display.

The document appeared in immaculate formatting, all restraint, confidence, and predatory courtesy.

To the Office of the Chancellor of the New Republic, the Office of Parliamentary Security, and any military or intelligence authority currently exercising custody over Mitth’raw’nuruodo, known in certain former Imperial records as Grand Admiral Thrawn:

Leia read on, jaw tightening with every line.

Veyr, Antilles & Sorn formally notified the government that they stood ready to represent the detainee in all matters arising from his surrender, detention, interrogation, and potential prosecution. They demanded immediate clarification of the legal basis for confinement, confirmation of his physical condition, disclosure of any charges under consideration, preservation of all recordings from the moment of first contact, and confidential access to their client pending recognition.

Their client.

Leia looked at Kallus.

“He has not retained them.”

“Not that we know of.”

“Then they’re not his counsel.”

“Not yet.”

Brant scrolled further.

“They argue that, given his status as a high-profile detainee, the government is obligated to inform him that counsel has presented itself, and that if he recognizes them as his representatives, denial of confidential consultation would constitute a breach of due process.”

Leia hated the phrase more because it was true.

Kallus leaned forward, eyes narrowing.

“They moved fast.”

“They were built to move fast,” Brant said. “The firm has represented Moff Tannick’s administrative council, Admiral Resh posthumously during asset seizure, Governor Barso in the Kuat labor trials, and fourteen senior procurement officials charged with material support for planetary suppression campaigns.”

Leia looked at her.

“You had that ready?”

Brant’s expression was flat. “I spent part of the night reviewing who would try to reach him first.”

“And? What were your candidates?” Leia asked.

“The Orlan Defense Consortium. The Core Rights Litigation Guild. Parnass & Vale. The Association for Wartime Due Process. The Chandrilan Committee for Lawful Detention. Retired Officers’ Legal Trust. Harrick, Sol & Fenrith. And, apparently, Veyr, Antilles & Sorn.”

Kallus looked up. “Apparently.”

“They filed first,” Brant said. “Formal notice, full preservation demand, provisional representation language, and a due process warning wrapped around the whole thing like a thermal detonator.”

Leia stared at her for a moment. “They are brave, to say the least.”

“Not really,” Brant agreed. “But it does mean Varo won the office pool.”

Leia’s stare shifted by a degree. “There was an office pool?”

“There is always an office pool,” Brant said. “Four hundred credits. He had Antilles before breakfast.”

Kallus’s mouth twitched despite himself.

Leia looked between them. “You were betting on institutional dysfunction.”

“Forecasting response patterns,” Brant said. “With morale incentives.”

Kallus gave a short nod. “Good.”

Brant did not look pleased. “It was not a difficult list to build.”

Leia returned her attention to the notice.

Veyr, Antilles & Sorn. She knew the name. Everyone did, if they had sat through enough postwar accountability briefings. The firm had perfected a style of defense that did not praise the Empire, exactly, but dissolved responsibility inside it until no individual hand could be found holding the knife. Their clients never ordered massacres; they approved pacification frameworks. They never profited from forced labor; they participated in legally authorized industrial relocation. They never collaborated with tyranny; they ensured continuity of essential services under regrettable political circumstances.

Leia had once said, during a closed hearing, that if Veyr, Antilles & Sorn had represented Tarkin after Alderaan, they would have argued the planet had failed to exhaust administrative remedies before exploding.

Mon Mothma had not laughed. Madine had.

“They are not getting near him,” Leia said. Kallus gave her a look. Leia hated that too. “Don’t.”

“I have not said anything.”

“You’re about to.”

“Yes.” He folded his hands on the table, the old ISB still visible in the economy of the movement, the Fulcrum in the restraint. “If we refuse to inform him, the civil liberties groups will have a legitimate complaint by noon. If we inform him and then refuse access after he accepts, Veyr, Antilles & Sorn will file emergency relief before the afternoon session. If we delay under intelligence classification, the nostalgia blocs will call it a secret military proceeding. If we allow access, we create a secure communication problem with a prisoner whose entire arrival pattern suggests he understands exactly how to make our procedures serve him.”

Leia looked at the ceiling for a moment.

“Differently bad,” she said.

Kallus nodded. “Differently bad.”

Brant scrolled to the final page.

“They also request confirmation that the detainee’s basic needs are being met.”

“Of course they do,” Leia said.

“That part we can answer,” Brant said. “Dr. Seln administered his medication under supervision at 0530 after chemical verification. He is stable. The medical note describes irritation.”

“Thrawn is irritated?”

“No. Dr. Seln.”

That tracked.

Kallus glanced toward the medical summary. “We should provide confirmation of medical care through the Chancellor’s office before the lawyers weaponize it.”

Leia looked at him.

“I hate that sentence.”

“Yes.”

“And I hate that you’re right.”

“Yes.”

The door opened then, and Dalen Vorr entered with the expression of a man who had been personally betrayed by the existence of morning. His iron-gray hair was perfectly arranged, which Leia took as evidence that he had either slept for twenty minutes or had evolved beyond human weakness. He carried three datapads and a thin folder of actual flimsi, which meant something had become ceremonial, legal, or catastrophic enough that someone wanted a physical record.

“Chancellor Mothma is delayed by the Corellian delegation,” he said without preamble. “They wish to know whether the appearance of a former Imperial Grand Admiral indicates an imminent security threat to Core trade routes.”

Leia stared at him.

“Does it?”

“No,” Vorr said. “But they would prefer a private assurance in writing that it does not, which is politically indistinguishable from asking us to predict the future and sign our names beneath it.”

Kallus reached for his caff.

Leia moved it farther away again.

Vorr noticed none of this, which meant his morning was worse than theirs. He placed the folder on the table. “I assume you have seen Veyr, Antilles & Sorn.”

“We were just enjoying the Antilles disclaimer,” Leia said.

Vorr sighed. “Yes. That poor man.”

“Wedge?”

“Both of them, I imagine. For different reasons.”

Kallus pointed to the document. “Legal assessment?”

Vorr sat, which was alarming. “If the detainee recognizes them as counsel, they have a right to consult, subject to security conditions appropriate to the facility and charges,” Vorr said. “But first we have to inform him that counsel has presented itself and ask whether he recognizes them.”

Leia leaned back. “He is one of the highest-ranking Imperial officers still alive.”

“Yes,” Vorr said. “That makes him dangerous. It does not make him rightless.”

There it was again. The infuriating moral center of the problem.

Leia looked at him sharply, but Vorr did not flinch. He had served Mon Mothma too long to fear displeasure when the law was unpleasant.

“Do we have to tell him today?”

“Yes.”

“How soon?”

“Sooner is better. Before the firm files publicly claiming we are concealing counsel.”

“They will do that?”

“They have already drafted it,” Kallus said. “Probably before sending the private notice.”

Vorr nodded grimly. “Almost certainly.”

Brant’s jaw shifted.

“Confidential consultation is a security risk.”

“Yes,” Vorr said.

“Any consultation room can be monitored for safety but not privileged communication if they are recognized as counsel.”

“Correct.”

“I am not allowing unmonitored contact between him and a firm with that client history.”

“Then we design conditions that preserve privilege without compromising facility security.”

Brant looked at him as though he had proposed balancing a thermal detonator on a legal textbook.

“Explain.”

Vorr adjusted the cuff of his sleeve.

“Physical separation. Transparent barrier. No exchange of objects. Counsel screened before entry. No personal devices. Written notes reviewed for physical security but not read for content unless probable cause is established. Audio privacy maintained through sound masking for staff, but session recorded under seal for emergency review by judicial authorization only if there is evidence of active threat.”

Kallus’s eyebrows rose.

“You had that ready.”

“I have spent nights being attacked by lawyers in advance.”

Leia picked up her tea and found it cold. She drank it anyway. “And if he refuses them?”

Vorr looked at her. “Then Veyr, Antilles & Sorn become a nuisance rather than counsel.”

“A public nuisance,” Kallus said.

“They specialize in that.”

Leia looked toward the detention schematic on the display. A single cell glowed in amber.

Somewhere below them, Thrawn was either asleep, meditating, calculating, or doing all three in some irritating Chiss sequence that would eventually be described as efficient. He had carried a medical file that was exactly a medical file. A reading datapad that was exactly a reading datapad. A transit pass that led to a dead start point. Seventeen credits and eighty, just enough to prove he had not been operating alone. A scarf made on Lothal, because apparently no object in this entire disaster was allowed to be merely an object.

Now lawyers had arrived.

Leia could already see the next shape of the trap. If Thrawn accepted Imperial-defender counsel, he gained a public shield and perhaps revealed something about his intended posture. If he refused, he looked less like an Imperial officer seeking old networks and more like something else, which might be exactly what he wanted. If he asked for New Republic counsel, the civil liberties groups would cheer, the nostalgia blocs would rage, and the Senate would spend three hours debating optics while Kallus quietly developed an ulcer. If he requested no counsel at all, everyone would argue over whether that was manipulation, coercion, alien legal custom, or arrogance.

Every route led back to him.

No, Leia corrected herself.

Every route led back through them.

That was his real talent. Not simply predicting an opponent’s movement, but arranging circumstances so that each move became self-revealing.

She set the cup down.

“Fine.”

Kallus looked at her.

Leia stood.

“We inform him. Properly. On record. No delay, no games. We tell him Veyr, Antilles & Sorn have offered representation. We ask whether he recognizes them as counsel. We do not argue. We do not advise. We do not let him turn the notification into an interrogation.”

Brant nodded slowly. “I’ll prepare the room.”

“No,” Kallus said.

Leia turned to him.

He looked tired enough to be brittle, but his voice was steady. Not a room. His cell, first notification only. Door closed, recording active, security present. No documents handed over until he states whether he wants to review the notice. If he requests details, we provide a sanitized copy through evidence-safe display. No physical flimsi. No datapad.”

Vorr considered. “Acceptable for notification. Not for consultation.”

“Consultation comes later if he accepts.”

Brant nodded. “I’ll take the notification.”

Leia shook her head.

“I’ll do it.”

All three of them looked at her.

Kallus was the first to object.

“Senator—”

“He surrendered to the civil authority of the New Republic. Mon is tied up, and if this becomes public, which it will, I would rather the record show he was informed by someone with political authority rather than handled like contraband.”

“He may use the interaction.”

“He will use any interaction.”

“That is not a reason to increase his access to you.”

Leia leaned both hands on the table. “Kallus, I spent yesterday with half the Senate trying to decide whether to panic, Hera demanding answers, Mon holding the government together with legal phrasing and willpower, and my husband buying noodles because apparently that is now my emergency response plan. I am aware Thrawn is dangerous.”

Kallus held her gaze.

For a moment, she saw the old instinct in him: assess, deny, contain, control. Then the newer discipline overrode it.

“Then I go with you.”

“Yes.”

Brant said, “I go with you.”

Leia nodded. “Yes.”

Vorr gathered the folder back with visible reluctance.

“I will prepare the formal record. And Senator?”

Leia looked at him.

“If he accepts them, this becomes much more difficult.”

Leia almost laughed.

“Dalen, if difficulty bothered him, he wouldn’t have taken public transport for six hours to surrender at the front door.”

Vorr absorbed that.

Then, very softly, he said, “Point taken.”

Kallus stood, too quickly, then steadied himself with one hand on the chair.

Leia noticed. So did Brant. Kallus pretended neither of them had. “I’m fine,” he said.

“No one asked,” Leia replied.

“You were going to.”

“I was going to tell you to eat another protein cake before you fall over in front of the prisoner.”

“I will not fall over.”

“Good. Then eating one should be easy.”

Brant picked up a protein cake and handed it to him with the solemnity of a weapons transfer.

Kallus stared at it. Then he took it.

Leia found, to her annoyance, that she was almost fond of them both in that moment: the over-caffeinated former ISB agent, the scarred security captain, the exhausted legal adviser, all standing in a room denounced by two civil liberties committees while preparing to defend the rights of a man who had helped build the military terror they had spent their lives fighting.

That was the New Republic, she supposed.

Not clean. Not simple. Not efficient enough for Thrawn’s taste, certainly.

But still trying to choose the harder thing on purpose.

She pushed the untouched roll toward the center of the table, took her cold tea, and headed for the door.

“Let’s go ask the most inconvenient prisoner in the galaxy whether he wants lawyers.”