Chapter 25 · The Proffer

The secure room Brant chose had no windows, no art, no decorative molding, no visible data ports, no exterior wall, no unnecessary furniture, and, after she finished with it, no character whatsoever.

“It looks like a closet designed by a paranoid accountant,” Han said when Leia showed him the layout later.

Leia, who had spent twenty minutes in that closet-designed room while Brant described acoustic isolation, independent recording chains, power redundancy, transmission delay safeguards, counsel verification, emergency cutoffs, and line-of-sight limitations with the grave intensity of a woman explaining how not to die from a chair, had found the description both unfair and extremely accurate.

The room sat three levels below the Defense Ministry annex, inside a secure communications suite usually reserved for joint intelligence briefings too politically sensitive to hold in the actual intelligence wing. That had been Vorr’s contribution. The room could not belong too clearly to Intelligence, because then Veyr would object. It could not belong too clearly to the military, because then the civil oversight office would object. It could not sit anywhere near Mon Mothma’s office, because Brant had simply said “no” and looked prepared to make that answer architectural.

So: a room no one wanted, made temporarily important by everyone’s distrust.

Leia arrived first.

That had not been the plan. She was early because waiting elsewhere had become intolerable, because the baby had decided that morning that food was an uncertain political concept, and because she had learned, over years of war and government, that entering a room before others did gave her a moment to decide what shape she would have inside it.

She chose stillness. Not calm. Calm was too expensive. Stillness would do.

The table held four seats on the New Republic side and one empty projection field at the far end. A secondary channel had been prepared for defense counsel, though Veyr had refused to let Thrawn appear alone even by secured link. Caro Antilles would be physically present at Aurek-Seven with him. Selra Tann would join from the firm’s office on a separate authenticated channel. Veyr herself had sent the terms and stayed away, which Leia disliked more than if she had come. Absence, with that woman, had weight.

Kallus entered next, carrying two datapads and no caff. Leia noticed. He noticed her noticing. “Do not say anything,” he said.

“I was not going to.”

“You were.”

“I was going to congratulate you.”

“That would have been worse.” He took the seat to her left and began checking the recording chain without sitting fully into the chair, as if comfort might weaken suspicion.

Madine arrived with Admiral Ackbar’s representative, Commander Varkal Tessek, a Mon Calamari officer with the patient, grave manner of someone who had already decided that most humans confused speed with clarity. Tessek carried no visible documents. Madine carried a folder so thin it could only contain something serious.

Vorr arrived last, which meant the legal situation was bad enough to require visible exhaustion. His hair remained immaculate. His eyes did not. “Rules,” he said before anyone greeted him.

Madine sat. “Good morning to you too.”

“It stopped being good when Antilles sent an addendum at 0600.”

Kallus looked up sharply. “What addendum?”

Vorr transferred it to the table display. “Defense counsel requests that any refusal to accept the evidentiary packet after today’s proffer be accompanied by written rationale within one standard cycle, sealed if necessary, specifying whether refusal rests on authenticity concerns, security concerns, legal concerns, political concerns, or unwillingness to accept conditions.”

Leia closed her eyes. Kallus said something under his breath.

Madine leaned back. “They are narrowing our exits.”

“Yes,” Vorr said. “With courtesy.”

Tessek blinked slowly. “The request is logical.” Everyone looked at him. He continued, untroubled. “If they offer information under conditions and we refuse, the reason for refusal is relevant.”

Kallus stared. “You sound like them.”

“I sound like process. That may be why you dislike both.”

Madine’s mouth twitched.

Leia pressed the heel of her hand briefly against her temple. “Are we accepting that condition?”

“No,” Vorr said. “We are acknowledging receipt. Which, in practice, means almost yes but with more denial.”

“Wonderful.”

“That is not the legal term.”

“It should be.”

Brant’s voice came over the room speaker. “Link authentication beginning.”

The projection field at the far end of the table flickered once, then stabilized into a pale image of Aurek-Seven’s consultation room.

Thrawn sat at the table on the far side, not in uniform, not in prison clothing, but in the plain dark civilian garments his counsel had negotiated after three separate filings, two medical notes, and one argument over whether clothing without institutional markings could be considered a dignity provision or a symbolic concession. The answer, as with most things now, had been yes to both and satisfaction to no one.

He looked better than he had in the medical wing. That did not mean well. The sharpness of fever had left his eyes, but not the impression of damage beneath composure. He sat straight, hands folded loosely on the table, sensor cuff visible at one wrist, a glass of water placed to his right, untouched. Caro Antilles sat beside him with the expression of a man who had already told his client not to improvise and did not believe he had been heard.

“Audio authentication complete,” Brant said. “Visual recording active. Independent transcript active. Delayed external review disabled. Counsel privilege not engaged for this session except for private recess requests. All participants confirm identity.”

They did.

Thrawn inclined his head once when his turn came. “Mitth’raw’nuruodo.”

Kallus’s stylus paused at the full name. Leia did not look at him.

Vorr stated the purpose of the session with legal precision: controlled evidentiary proffer, no classified disclosure to the detainee, no acceptance of conditions implied by listening, no interrogation beyond scope, no waiver by any party, no admission by the government that the packet existed, was valid, or would be accepted, and no admission by the defense beyond willingness to describe the nature of potential disclosure.

When he finished, Antilles smiled faintly. “Counsel appreciates the Republic’s commitment to making a conversation sound like a collapsed bridge.”

Vorr looked at him. “Counsel is invited not to test the bridge before we determine whether anyone needs to cross it.”

Madine murmured, “Point to Vorr.”

Leia almost, almost smiled.

Thrawn said nothing. That was worse.

Vorr turned toward the projection. “Former Grand Admiral, you requested this proffer through counsel. Describe, without disclosing substantive classified or operational details, the nature of the packet you are offering.”

Thrawn’s gaze moved once across the room. Leia knew, rationally, that the image he saw would be limited, flattened, stripped of environmental cues. Brant had ensured it. He should not be able to learn the room’s dimensions from the projection, should not see door placement, should not read reflections, should not infer more than faces, posture, voice. She also knew the word should had become less comforting since meeting him. “The packet contains incident correlations, partial route reconstruction, threat-behavior models, and three verifiable predictive indicators relevant to the pattern identified in my prior contextual statement,” Thrawn said.

Kallus leaned forward. “Predictive indicators.”

“Yes.”

“You are claiming you can predict future incidents.”

“No.”

Kallus’s eyes narrowed.

Thrawn continued. “I am stating that the pattern, if present, produces pressure on vulnerable systems. The indicators may allow your review group to identify where pressure is likely to appear next.”

Madine’s expression changed. Tessek’s did not, but his hands stilled on the table.

Leia looked at Ackbar’s representative. “Commander?”

Tessek’s eyes remained on Thrawn. “That distinction is significant.”

“I noticed,” Leia said.

Antilles looked as if he had noticed all of them noticing.

Vorr said, “The packet’s source?”

“Partially from my own records. Partially from observation outside known Republic space. Partially from inference based on adversary doctrine.”

The room went still at adversary. Not named. Still not named.

Leia felt something cold settle under her ribs.

Kallus said, “Whose doctrine?”

Thrawn looked at him. “The packet is offered under terms.”

“That is convenient.”

“Yes.”

Antilles placed one hand flat on the table. “Director, this session is to establish whether there is something worth receiving, not to extract it before terms exist.”

Kallus did not look at him. “Former Grand Admiral, are you withholding the identity of a hostile force from the New Republic?”

“Yes.”

The bluntness cut through the room. Even Antilles went still for half a second, though to his credit he recovered before anyone could enjoy it.

Leia’s pulse moved once, hard. “Why?” she asked.

Thrawn turned to her. “Because a name without context will create false confidence.”

Kallus’s voice sharpened. “A name lets us search.”

“A name will let you search for the name.”

“And what is wrong with that?”

“You will look for confirmation under the category provided. You will disregard incidents that do not yet fit that category. You will inform people insufficiently prepared to interpret what they learn. The name will leak, be politicized, mispronounced, dismissed, mythologized, and eventually used by three Senate factions before any officer has determined what the adversary does.”

Antilles closed his eyes very briefly.

Leia suspected that had not been in the agreed phrasing.

Thrawn continued, voice level. “Information without context will be misused. Misused information will produce false confidence. False confidence will kill people. I do not enjoy spending lives to correct avoidable errors.”

The silence after that had weight.

Vorr wrote the sentence down. Kallus stared at Thrawn with open hostility, but beneath it, Leia could see the recognition he hated. Madine’s face had gone hard in the way it did when he was no longer thinking about politics.

Tessek said, “The doctrine. Is it state-based, expeditionary, raiding, infiltration, territorial, or coercive?”

Thrawn looked at him.

Antilles lifted a finger. “Within scope?”

Tessek answered before Vorr could. “Barely.”

Vorr frowned.

Thrawn considered. “Coercive infiltration with expeditionary capacity.”

Tessek’s eyes closed once.

Madine looked at him. “Commander?”

“That combination is unpleasant.”

“That was not a military assessment.”

“It was a restrained one.”

Kallus said, “You have records.”

“Yes.”

“How recent?”

“Some within the last standard year. Some older.”

Leia’s breath caught. The last year.

While the Republic debated demobilization, symbolic reconstruction, procurement morality, Senate representation, and how many ships it could retire without looking defenseless, something outside their maps had been moving in ways Thrawn considered recent enough to matter.

Madine asked, “Why not bring the packet when you surrendered?”

“Because it would have been seized as evidence before any process existed to assess it.”

“That might have saved time.”

“No,” Thrawn said. “It would have given you possession without understanding.”

Kallus’s voice went low. “You mean without conditions.”

“Yes.”

“At least you admit it.”

“I have not concealed that I consider conditions necessary.”

“No. You’ve just waited until we needed what you had.”

Thrawn regarded him calmly. “Director Kallus, you would not have believed you needed it when I arrived.”

The answer struck too cleanly.

Kallus said nothing.

Leia looked at the water glass beside Thrawn’s hand. Still untouched. She wondered if he knew she had noticed. Of course he did, or did not care, which was its own answer.

Vorr stepped in. “The defense requests that any verified contribution enter the custodial review record as cooperation.”

“Yes,” Antilles said.

“Define cooperation.”

“Voluntary provision of material information under lawful conditions.”

“Not strategic bargaining?” Vorr inquired.

Antilles smiled. “Counselor, all cooperation involving custody has strategic value. That is why governments ask for it and defendants offer it.”

Vorr looked pained.

Tessek asked, “Would the packet allow independent confirmation without further contact with you?”

Thrawn answered immediately. “Partially.”

“Meaning?”

“Some indicators can be verified from existing New Republic records. Others require examination of frontier incidents your review cell may not yet have collected. Some will require questions.”

“Questions to you.”

“Yes.”

Kallus leaned back. “There it is.”

Thrawn did not deny it.

Leia said, “You are creating a reason for continued consultation.”

“Yes.”

Antilles’s head turned slightly toward him, but again he did not intervene.

Thrawn continued. “That does not make the reason false.”

“No,” Leia said. “It makes it convenient.”

“Yes.”

Madine looked at the projection. “If the packet is false?”

“Then you will know more about my intentions.”

“If it is true?”

“Then you will know more about your danger.”

“And in both cases, you gain something.”

“Yes.”

Kallus gave a short laugh.

Antilles said, “I know it is unfashionable in government, but accurate answers do save time.”

Brant’s voice came over the speaker, very dry. “Counsel is reminded that sarcasm is not a protected communication category.”

Antilles looked delighted. “I defer to Security.”

Veyr would never have allowed that, Leia thought. Which was perhaps why Veyr had sent him.

Madine turned to Vorr. “Can we receive the packet under seal without accepting the cooperation language?”

Vorr inhaled. “Yes. But the defense will record our refusal to record cooperation, which may become relevant later if the packet proves useful.”

“Can we accept the packet and reserve cooperation determination?”

“Yes. They will object to ‘reserve’ unless we define review criteria.”

Antilles lifted a hand. “Correct.”

“Can we refuse?”

“Yes,” Vorr said. “And then explain why we declined potential threat intelligence after Ackbar certified external operational knowledge in the first memorandum.”

Leia looked at Kallus. He did not look away. “You still think this is a mistake,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because every path leads to him.”

Thrawn’s expression did not change.

Leia did not look at him. She looked at Kallus. “That is not a reason.”

“It is the reason.”

“No,” she said quietly. “It is the situation.”

The distinction settled into the room. Madine nodded once, as if she had put a tactical marker in the right place.

Tessek said, “I recommend accepting sealed production under provisional terms. Chain of custody, review criteria, no admission, no classified disclosure, limited acknowledgment of potential cooperation pending verification.”

Ackbar’s office, then. Not officially Ackbar, perhaps. Enough.

Madine said, “I agree.”

Kallus closed his eyes.

Brant said, “Security will require production method before approval.”

Antilles said, “Of course.”

“Do not sound pleased,” Brant said.

“I am relieved by competence.”

“That sounded worse.”

“It often does.”

Vorr started drafting aloud, because apparently the only way to survive the moment was to make it language before anyone changed their mind. “Provisional sealed production accepted for the purpose of independent verification. No admission by either party. No waiver of prosecutorial rights. No use in criminal proceedings until authenticity and scope are reviewed. Cooperation value reserved pending determination under defined criteria. Defense representative may witness receipt but not retain unclassified access to restricted contents without court order. Ackbar or delegate present. Intelligence and military representatives assigned. Chain of custody recorded.”

Antilles listened carefully. “Better.”

“Not acceptable?” Vorr asked.

“Closer.”

Kallus looked at Thrawn. “You have not said how you intend to produce it.”

“No.”

“Will it require external contact?”

“Yes.”

There it was.

Brant’s head lifted; though she was not visible on the projection, Leia could feel the shift through the room.

Kallus went very still.

Antilles said, “Limited external contact through counsel-supervised protocol.”

Kallus snapped his gaze to him. “No.”

Thrawn said, “The packet is not in my possession.”

“Of course it isn’t,” Kallus said.

“It is held under contingency instruction.”

“By whom?”

“Someone competent.”

Vorr actually put his stylus down.

Antilles turned to Thrawn with the exhausted patience of a man who had had this conversation before and lost. “We discussed that phrase.”

“Yes.”

“And?” Caro asked, as if trying to remind him something.

“It remains accurate.”

Leia would have laughed if the implications had not been so terrible.

Kallus stood. “No.”

“Kallus,” Madine said.

“No. Unknown custodian. Unknown location. Unknown chain. Unknown loyalties. Unknown capability. He wants us to authorize a channel to someone who has been holding his intelligence packet outside custody and call it production.”

Thrawn said, “You may design the channel.”

“That is not reassuring.”

“It should be.”

“It is the opposite.”

Leia raised a hand. Everyone stopped. Even Kallus, though visibly against his will. She looked at Thrawn. “Does the custodian know you are in custody?”

“Yes.”

“Do they know where?”

“By now, I expect so.”

Brant’s fist tightened once at her side. She did not otherwise move.

Antilles paused. “For legal purposes, my client means no.”

“Do they know what the packet contains?”

“Not in full.”

“Are they Imperial?”

Antilles said, “Senator—”

Thrawn answered. “No.”

Leia’s eyes narrowed. “Former Imperial?”

A pause.

Kallus caught it. So did Leia. So did everyone.

Thrawn’s expression remained unchanged. “I will not identify the custodian in this session.”

Kallus laughed once, sharply.

Antilles leaned forward. “The production protocol can protect against operational instruction. One-way retrieval request, fixed wording, court-supervised, no embedded message structure, no private language, no open channel, no unsupervised reply.”

“Every message is structure,” Kallus said.

“Yes,” Antilles replied. “Which is why we are offering to litigate the structure before sending it.”

Vorr whispered, “I hate that sentence.”

Tessek said, “If the packet exists outside New Republic custody, some controlled contact may be unavoidable.”

Kallus looked at him. “Commander.”

“I do not like it either.”

“That is not helpful.”

“It is true.”

Madine leaned back, eyes fixed on Thrawn. “You planned this before surrendering.”

“I did.”

“Whoever holds it was told to wait.”

“Yes.”

“For what?”

“For evidence that the Republic could evaluate the information without immediately destroying its utility.”

Madine’s mouth tightened. “And have we provided that evidence?”

“Partially.”

Kallus looked at Leia as if asking whether she heard the arrogance.

She did. She also heard the trap. Not arrogance alone. Assessment. Leia stood slowly. “We are not authorizing external contact today.”

Antilles opened his mouth.

Thrawn spoke before Leia could cut across him. “That will not be necessary.”

The room went still. Kallus’s eyes narrowed.

Leia looked back at the projection. “Clarify.”

“No external contact is required to retrieve the packet.”

Antilles turned very slowly toward his client. The motion had the quality of a man discovering, in real time, that the floor beneath a carefully negotiated bridge had been optional. “Former Admiral,” he said, with dangerous calm, “this is a detail counsel would traditionally prefer to know before discussing external contact protocols for fifteen minutes.”

“I did not say there was no custodian,” Thrawn replied. “I said external contact would not be necessary.”

“That is,” Antilles said, “a distinction that will one day kill me.”

Kallus leaned forward. “Where is it?”

Thrawn looked at him. “In a storage locker in the Coruscant transit system. Lower exchange level, Station Merid Aurek, bank Cresh-Two. Locker seventeen.”

For one breath, no one spoke.

Then Brant’s voice came over the speaker, flat and immediate. “Security team moving.”

Kallus was already typing. “Station Merid Aurek,” he said. “Lower exchange, Cresh-Two, locker seventeen. I want station security feeds pulled now, all angles, last thirty days if they have them, last ninety if they lie about not having them. Transit authority logs. Maintenance access. Locker rental registry. Cash terminals. Nearby vendors. Droids. Refresher corridor. Waste collection. Anyone who stood within ten meters of that bank for longer than thirty seconds.”

Madine looked at him. “You had that list ready?”

“I always have that list ready.”

Leia did not look away from Thrawn. “How is it opened?”

“A numeric access code.”

Kallus muttered, “As if we need the code to open a locker on a transit station.”

Thrawn’s eyes shifted to him. “No,” he said. “But you need it to open the correct one without altering the condition of the evidence before chain of custody begins.”

Kallus stopped typing for half a second. Then resumed, harder.

Vorr, who had begun writing at the word locker and had not looked up since, said, “He is right.”

“I know,” Kallus said.

“That does not make the stylus responsible.”

Kallus ignored him.

Leia folded her arms. “You placed this inside a public transit station.”

“No.”

“Someone placed it there.”

“Yes.”

“How long ago?”

“I do not know.”

Kallus looked up sharply.

Thrawn continued, “The contingency was designed to be activated only after my custody conditions permitted lawful disclosure. I was given the location and access code before surrender. I do not know when the packet was placed.”

“Convenient,” Kallus said.

“Yes.”

Antilles closed his eyes.

Leia looked at him. “Counselor?”

Antilles opened his eyes with the weary dignity of a man who had just watched strategy walk through a wall and politely call it a door. “Do not look at me, Senator. I am learning this along with you in what I can only describe as a hostile educational environment.”

Madine made a low sound that might have been amusement if it had belonged to a happier day.

Brant’s voice returned. “Team is five minutes out. Station security notified under maintenance pretext. No alarm raised.”

“Good,” Leia said.

She looked at Thrawn again. “Give us the code.”

“No.”

Kallus’s head snapped up.

Antilles turned toward Thrawn. “No?”

Thrawn remained composed. “Not until your team confirms visual identification of the locker and begins the chain-of-custody recording.”

Kallus laughed once, coldly. “You are still setting conditions.”

“Yes.”

Leia stepped closer to the table. “We are not going to tamper with your evidence.”

“I do not believe you intend to. I do believe error is more likely before procedure becomes active.”

“That is insulting,” Brant said over the speaker.

“It is statistical.”

“That was worse.”

Vorr lifted one hand, still writing. “Annoyingly, the cleanest chain begins when the recovery team identifies the locker and requests the code on record.”

Kallus stared at him.

Vorr did not look apologetic. “This is not my fault.”

“It feels like your fault.”

“Many legal truths do.”

A brief silence followed.

Thrawn reached for the glass of water beside him and drank at last, slowly, not enough to suggest discomfort, enough to remind Leia that there was a body at the far end of the projection and not merely a mind arranging rooms from a distance. The motion was precise, controlled, ordinary in a way that made the rest of it worse.

When he set the glass down, he looked toward Antilles. “I request a recess.”

Antilles blinked. “For counsel?”

“No. For the refresher.”

For the first time since the proffer began, Leia saw Caro Antilles fail entirely to produce an immediate legal expression.

Kallus stared. Madine looked away. Vorr lowered his stylus.

Brant said, after one dead second over the speaker, “Medical accommodation permits reasonable pause.”

Leia pressed her lips together. “Granted.”

Thrawn inclined his head. The projection view shifted as he rose from the table at Aurek-Seven. The camera did not follow him beyond the approved field. Antilles remained seated in frame, hands folded, expression carefully neutral until Thrawn disappeared from view. Then he exhaled. It was not quite a sigh. It had more professional despair in it.

Leia looked at him through the projection. “Counselor.”

“Senator.”

“Do you have any idea what is in that locker?”

“No.”

“Do you have any idea who placed it there?”

“No.”

“Do you have any idea how many other contingencies your client may have placed around Coruscant before walking into Parliament?”

Antilles looked at her for a moment. Then he picked up his datapad, woke the screen, and said, “I am now adding that to my list of questions.”

“That is not reassuring.”

“No,” Antilles said. “But it is billable.”

Kallus, still issuing orders through his own datapad, did not look up. “If your client is using legal privilege to stage-manage evidence planted by an unknown network—”

“Then you will make that argument with great energy, Director,” Antilles said. “But at the moment, the Republic is retrieving material he offered to disclose under chain of custody, from a public locker you are free to surround with as many nervous officers as you like.”

“It could be a device.”

“It could.”

“A trap.”

“It could.”

“A dead drop designed to expose our methods.”

“It could.” Antilles looked up then, and for the first time his patience showed the seam. “It could also be exactly what he says it is.”

“Convenient,” Brant said.

“Yes,” Antilles replied. “Useful things often are. What I fail to see is why my client would construct this entire spectacle—public surrender, legal containment, medical disclosure, provisional counsel—only to make his great strategic move an attack on whatever unfortunate security team you send to inspect a storage location he voluntarily identified.” He glanced from Brant to Kallus, expression polite enough to be admissible and sharp enough not to be mistaken.

Kallus’s eyes narrowed.

Antilles held his gaze. “At some point, Director, cooperation has to be allowed to mean cooperation. Not trust. Not innocence. Cooperation.” A brief silence followed. “Search it,” Antilles added. “Scan it. Quarantine it. Bring three bomb droids and a priest if that makes the room feel better. But do not confuse caution with analysis.”

Kallus’s jaw worked once. That, Leia thought, was becoming the most exhausting category of all. Exactly what he says it is.

The next four minutes passed with the dense, airless slowness of moments in which everyone was waiting for a fact to arrive.

Brant remained on the security channel, voice clipped as she coordinated the recovery team. Madine stood near the wall display, one arm folded, the other hand resting against his chin. Tessek reviewed the station map in silence. Vorr wrote three versions of the chain-of-custody notation and disliked all of them. Leia remained standing, because sitting now would have felt like conceding to gravity.

On the projection, Antilles checked his datapad. He did it with the deliberate restraint of a lawyer trying very hard not to appear to be reading messages while the entire New Republic watched him do nothing. He scrolled once, stopped, made a note with his thumb, then looked up when he realized Kallus was staring. “Legal correspondence,” he said.

“Of course.”

“It is.”

“I did not say it wasn’t.”

“You thought it loudly.” Antilles gave him a small smile.

Kallus’s eyes narrowed. Before the exchange could continue, Brant’s voice cut across the room. “Recovery team on site. Visual confirmed. Locker seventeen, bank Cresh-Two. Exterior intact. No visible tampering. Chain recording active.”

Leia turned back to the projection. Thrawn had not yet returned. Antilles glanced toward the edge of the frame. “Former Grand Admiral” she called. A moment later, Thrawn reappeared and sat. Leia could not tell whether the timing was genuine or another small discourtesy to coincidence.

Brant repeated, “Visual confirmed. Chain recording active. Request code.”

Thrawn folded his hands on the table. “Seven. Three. One. Nine. Four. Two.”

Kallus entered it into his own notes. Vorr entered it into the formal record. Somewhere across Coruscant, inside a transit station whose ordinary commuters had no idea that six government offices, two lawyers, a military commander, and a former Imperial Grand Admiral were all focused on one locker among hundreds, a New Republic recovery officer entered the code.

Brant listened. So did all of them. A soft click came through the open security channel. “Locker open,” the team lead reported. “No immediate trigger. Interior appears empty.”

Kallus’s face changed. Thrawn said nothing.

“Check upper interior surface,” Antilles said suddenly.

Everyone looked at him. He looked at Thrawn. Thrawn inclined his head once.

The team lead’s voice came back, muffled by movement. “Stand by.” A pause. Then: “Visual on four data cards affixed to the upper panel. Adhesive strip. No wires visible. No packaging. Request ordnance confirmation before removal.”

Kallus was already typing again before the sentence finished. “Camera focus on the upper panel. I want the adhesive imaged before touch. Chemical scan. Fingerprints if possible. Biological trace. Microfiber. Manufacturer mark on the cards. Serial numbers before removal. And pull every maintenance record for that bank—no, for the whole level. If someone had enough time to attach four cards to the ceiling of a locker, they had enough time to be seen somewhere else.”

Brant said, “Or not seen deliberately.”

“Yes,” Kallus said. “That too.”

Madine looked at the station map. “Who uses Merid Aurek?”

“Commuters, mostly,” Tessek said. “Mid-level transfer, government-adjacent but not official. High volume, low attention.”

“Good place for a dead drop.”

“Good place for anything one wishes to become one more ordinary inconvenience,” Thrawn said.

Kallus looked at him. “You would know.”

“Yes.” The answer was so unadorned that for a moment no one had anywhere to put their anger.

The recovery team continued. “No explosive residue detected on preliminary scan. No active transmitter. No heat signature. Data cards standard civilian shell, no visible markings. Removing with evidence field.”

A second later: “Cards secured. Four units. Bagging separately. Locker interior being scanned.”

Leia let out a breath she had not realized she was holding.

Vorr said, “Chain of custody confirmed from locker opening to evidence bagging.”

“Not from placement,” Kallus said.

“No,” Vorr replied. “Which is why you will now attempt to reconstruct placement.” Kallus gave him a look. Vorr added, “Please pretend I did not say attempt.”

“I intend to.”

Thrawn said, “The cards should be read in sequence. One, three, two, four.”

Kallus’s head came up. “They are unmarked.”

“Yes.”

“Then how—”

“The first card will contain an index. The third contains corroborative incident material. The second contains doctrine context. The fourth contains predictive indicators.”

Brant’s stylus had stopped moving halfway through.

“Encryption?” Kallus asked.

“ISB field algorithm,” Thrawn said. “A restricted variant. The one Colonel Yularen used personally.” The room changed around the name. Not dramatically. No one gasped. No one looked away. But attention tightened, as if every person present had felt the floor shift by a centimeter and was now deciding whether to acknowledge it.

“Yularen,” Kallus said.

“Yes.”

“You expect us to believe you have Yularen’s personal encryption key sitting in a storage locker.”

“No.”

Antilles made a small sound beside him, the exhausted beginning of a legal objection that had not yet found the strength to stand.

Thrawn continued. “The cards are coded to a biological sample stored separately. Locker twenty-seven, lower tier. The sample will permit decryption if handled correctly.”

Brant looked up sharply. “Biological sample,” she repeated.

“Yes.”

“Whose?”

A pause. “That information is not necessary for recovery.”

Kallus’s eyes narrowed. “It may be necessary for assessment.”

“After recovery, yes.”

“You know whose sample it is.”

“Yes.”

“And you are withholding that.”

“For the moment. It is not relevant.”

For three seconds, no one spoke.

Then Brant turned away from the table so fast that one of the junior officers standing near the wall straightened on instinct. “Recall the recovery team,” she said.

The officer blinked. “Captain?”

“Now. Before they open anything in the wrong sequence.” Movement broke through the room, professional but not smooth. A comm officer reached for the wrong channel, corrected herself, and flushed. Someone at the far console pulled up the storage facility schematic and then minimized it when the wrong overlay appeared. Another analyst muttered something under his breath about biological containment and got halfway to the door before remembering he needed authorization tags first.

They were good. That was obvious.

They were also, for one brief and human moment, not prepared for the sentence a biological key is in locker twenty-seven to become an operational instruction.

Brant cut through it. “Stop.” The room obeyed. “Recovery team holds position outside the facility. No entry. No locker access. No handling of cards, containers, seals, residue, dust, or anything that looks harmless. I want bomb disposal, biohazard containment, digital quarantine, and chain-of-custody officers routed there under sealed orders. No names on open comms. No speculation on open comms. If anyone says Yularen over an unsecured channel, they spend the rest of the year inventorying cafeteria utensils.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Team two prepares a sterile transport case for biological evidence. Team three prepares a separate digital isolation carrier for the cards. Nothing travels together. Nothing touches the same scanner. Nothing is opened at the facility unless containment says it must be opened there.”

Kallus had gone very still.

Antilles looked from him to Brant, then back to Thrawn. His expression was no longer amused. “Grand Admiral,” he said, very quietly, “is there any other detail about this storage cache that would make trained security professionals briefly forget how doors work?”

“Yes,” Thrawn said.

Brant closed her eyes for half a second.

Kallus said, “Go on.”

“The sample is unlikely to remain viable if exposed to standard decontamination heat.”

Brant opened her eyes. “Of course it isn’t,” she said.

Antilles exhaled through his nose. “For the record, this is what cooperation looks like when everyone insists on treating it as attempted murder.”

Brant did not look at him. “For the record, Counselor, your client just informed us that an unidentified biological key may be sitting under four encrypted cards in a civilian storage locker.”

“Yes,” Antilles said. “And he informed you before your people opened it.” That landed. Not comfortably. But it landed.

Leia stared at him. “You encrypted them and numbered them by content but physically left them unmarked.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“If found by an unintended party, unmarked cards provide no information.”

Kallus’s voice was flat. “Except to you.”

“Yes.”

“And anyone you told.”

“Yes.”

“Who did you tell?”

“No one.”

“Then whoever placed them did not know the sequence.”

“Correct.”

Kallus’s stylus stopped. Something in his face sharpened in spite of himself. Leia saw it too. If true, that mattered. The custodian had placed the packet without full knowledge of its use. A courier, not a partner. Or a partner trusted with logistics but not content. Or Thrawn was lying. Always that. But even the lie had structure.

Antilles looked at Thrawn. “You understand that this will provoke questions about the person who placed them.”

“Yes.”

“You intend not to answer those questions.”

“Not yet.”

Antilles smiled without pleasure. “I was afraid you would say that.”

Brant’s voice returned. “Evidence is en route to secure review facility. Estimated arrival twelve minutes. Station sweep continuing. Transit authority cooperating under sealed order. No public disturbance.”

“Yet,” Kallus said.

“Yet,” Brant agreed.

Leia looked at Thrawn. “You have just demonstrated the presence of an operational support chain on Coruscant.”

“No,” Thrawn said. “I demonstrated that I prepared a method of evidence transfer which did not require real-time communication.” His eyebrow rose by a fraction. “Surely that cannot surprise you.”

“It doesn’t.”

“Then your objection is emotional rather than analytical.”

Antilles turned his head very slowly toward his client. “Grand Admiral.”

“Partly analytical,” Leia said, voice gone flat. “Entirely justified.”

“That is not the same thing.”

“No. It is narrower.”

“And more convenient.”

“Yes.”

Antilles made a small sound. Leia looked at him. He lifted both hands slightly. “I have learned not to object when accuracy damages him only moderately.”

Madine asked, “If the cards are unreadable?”

“They will be readable.”

“If they are corrupted?”

“They will not be.”

“If they contain malicious software?”

“They do not.”

Kallus said, “You will forgive us if we decline to take your word for that.”

“No forgiveness is required. Verification is appropriate.”

There it was again: Verify me. Do not trust me. Do not believe me. Do not like me. Verify me.

Leia hated how cleanly the request fit inside the Republic’s own bones. A tone sounded from Vorr’s datapad. He checked it, then looked up. “The prosecution wants to know whether the recovery has occurred.”

“It has,” Leia said.

“They also want to know whether this constitutes accepted cooperation.”

“No,” Kallus said.

“Not yet,” Leia corrected. Kallus turned to her. She did not soften it. “Not yet,” she repeated.

Antilles, through the projection, looked as though he had just watched a small and expensive seed take root. “Recorded,” he said.

“Do not,” Kallus snapped.

Antilles looked at him. “Director, it is literally my job.”

Kallus looked ready to say something unwise.

Leia cut across him. “The proffer remains open until the cards are authenticated. No statements regarding cooperation, value, or admissibility until review.”

Vorr wrote quickly. Madine nodded.

Tessek said, “Once the cards arrive, I recommend isolated hardware, no network, military cryptography present, intelligence forensics present, defense observer through visual-only feed.”

Kallus looked at him. “Defense observer?”

Tessek blinked slowly. “The chain will be cleaner.”

Kallus exhaled. “I hate clean chains.”

“No,” Vorr said. “You hate chains you do not control.”

“That too.”

Thrawn watched all of this from the far end of the projection, silent now, as if his part had concluded and the Republic had been left to discover how much of its own procedure it could tolerate.

Leia recognized the maneuver. It was not that he had given them control. He had given them enough control that refusing to use it would look like fear. She straightened. “Commander Tessek, prepare the review room. Kallus, forensics. Madine, Ackbar’s office. Vorr, prosecution notice under seal. Brant, keep the station contained as long as you can.”

Brant’s voice answered immediately. “Already doing it.”

Leia looked at Thrawn one last time. “This does not change your status.”

“No,” he said.

“It does not change the charges.”

“I know.”

“It does not grant you further access.”

“No.”

“It gives you nothing today.”

A pause. Then Thrawn said, “It gives the Republic four data cards.”

For a moment, Leia wanted, with surprising violence, to cut the link. Instead she said, “Session adjourned pending authentication.”

Vorr echoed the formal closure. The projection faded.

This time there was no afterimage, no lingering red eyes in the empty field. Only the blank space where he had been and the knowledge that somewhere in the city, four small pieces of stored data had just become heavy enough to bend the room around them.

Kallus spoke first. “He had a locker.” Madine looked at him. Kallus’s expression was dark. “A locker. On Coruscant. Sitting there while we tore apart his route, his clothes, his shoes, his seventeen credits and eighty, his lunch, his scarf, his medical chip. He had the packet within reach the entire time.”

“Not within reach,” Tessek said. “Within infrastructure.” Kallus turned to him. Tessek did not move. “That distinction may matter.”

Kallus laughed once. “It always does with him.”

Leia looked at the blank projection field. “He did not need external contact,” she said.

“No,” Madine replied.

“He let us think he did.”

“No,” Vorr said quietly. “He let us discover what we were afraid of.”

Leia looked at him.

Vorr’s face was pale and tired. “He asked for procedure. We assumed network contact. We built objections around that assumption. Then he produced an answer that complied with our concern while proving he had anticipated it.”

Kallus’s jaw tightened. “In other words, he made us argue with a door he had already walked around.”

No one contradicted him. Because that was exactly what had happened.

Brant’s voice came over the speaker again. “Recovery team leaving the station. No disturbance. However, station security reports two local news stringers arrived on the upper level five minutes ago.”

Leia closed her eyes. “Coincidence?”

“No way to know yet,” Brant said, which meant no.

Kallus was already moving toward the door. “I’ll take the review room.”

“Take someone who has slept,” Madine said.

Kallus did not stop. “I’ll find one.”

The door shut behind him.

Madine watched him go. Then he looked at Leia. “He is going to run himself into the floor.”

“I know.”

“He will not listen if told.”

“I know that too.”

Vorr gathered the drafts with both hands. “And the lawyers?”

Leia looked at the empty projection field again. “They will wait.” Antilles and Veyr would wait. Thrawn would wait. The cards would not. Somewhere in transit, inside four separate evidence bags and beneath three layers of custody protocol, the packet moved through Coruscant toward the review room. Leia placed one hand, briefly, against the edge of the table until the faint dizziness passed. No one commented. Small mercies still existed. Then she straightened. “Let’s see what he decided we were ready to know.”