Chapter 29 · A Line Item

By the eighth week of Thrawn’s custody, Aurek-Seven had stopped being an emergency and become a line item.

That, Kallus had decided, was how governments survived impossible things: not by resolving them, but by assigning them a budget code, a rotating security roster, a legal review schedule, and three names no one outside the room was supposed to use. Grand Admiral Thrawn had become the detainee in some documents, the former Imperial officer in others, the strategic prisoner in the files no one admitted existed, and Aurek-Seven in conversations where people had grown too tired to distinguish man from containment arrangement.

Kallus had begun to hate the phrase ongoing review with a purity that approached devotion.

He had also not eaten since morning. That last failure, unlike the others, had an obvious solution.

The Defense Ministry cantina was three levels down, badly lit, too efficient to be comforting, and open through night cycle for the benefit of officers, analysts, aides, couriers, and the particular species of government employee who forgot food existed until a tremor in the hands made the point administratively urgent. Kallus entered with a datapad under one arm, three unread messages from forensics, two from legal, one from Madine marked not urgent, which in Madine’s language meant read before it becomes urgent, and a headache that had become so familiar he suspected it would soon require its own access badge.

He was halfway to the service counter when Brant fell into step beside him.

Not fell, precisely. Captain Tessa Brant did not fall into anything. She joined movement as if she had approved the corridor’s direction before using it.

“Kallus.”

“Captain.”

“You look terrible.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“Recently?”

“Continually.”

“That means it has stopped being informative.”

He glanced at her. “Did you come here to assess my appearance?”

“No. I came here because if I eat another ration bar at my desk, I may begin sympathizing with criminals.”

“That seems operationally concerning.”

“It would be if the ration bars deserved better.”

They joined the line.

The cantina offered five hot options, three cold ones, and one gray stew that had appeared on the menu often enough that Kallus suspected it was not a dish but an institutional test of loyalty. Brant took a tray and studied the options with the same restrained distrust she brought to custody protocols.

“I recommend avoiding the stew,” Kallus said.

“You’ve had it?”

“Once.”

“And?”

“I survived.”

“That is not a recommendation.”

“No.”

She chose grilled meat strips, greens, and something labeled root mash with implausible confidence. Kallus took noodles, because noodles required less belief.

They moved toward a table near the side wall, not private but less exposed than the center. Brant sat with her back to the room’s main entrance. Kallus noticed.

“I am off duty enough to sit like a civilian.”

“You are never that off duty.”

“No,” she said, and began cutting her food. “But I am practicing.”

He sat opposite her.

For a few moments, they ate without discussing Thrawn, the fake Pantoran, the sealed cards, the courier, Eli Vanto, the letter to Hera, the edited footage, the war-crimes charges, the library request, Veyr’s latest filing, Antilles’s latest insult disguised as a procedural clarification, or the fact that the Republic had now built enough process around one prisoner to support a small ministry.

The silence was almost suspiciously pleasant.

Then Kallus said, “How is the tookling?”

Brant paused. “The tookling?”

“The black one. You mentioned him during the lockdown.”

“I mentioned him once.”

“Yes.”

“That was six weeks ago.”

“I remember things.”

“That is what makes you unsettling.”

He accepted that with a small inclination of his head.

She took a bite, considered, then said, “He is fine.”

“Name?”

A pause. “Vader.”

Kallus stared at her. Brant kept eating. “Your tooka is named Vader.”

“He came with the name.” she shrug.

“You kept it.”

“He responds to it.”

“And you did not feel that, perhaps, in the current political climate—”

“He weighs four pounds and is afraid of the cleaning droid.” Kallus lowered his fork. Brant’s expression did not change. “He also steals socks,” she added.

“Vader steals… socks?”

“Only left ones.”

Kallus looked down at his noodles. He was not going to laugh. That was clearly the trap.

Brant continued, “He has strong preferences.”

“He sounds ideologically complicated.”

“He is a tooka. His ideology is food, warmth, violence against curtains, and betrayal when doors close.”

“Very Imperial.”

“He is also extremely affectionate.”

“Less Imperial.”

“Depends on the admiral.”

Kallus looked up. Brant’s mouth moved by a fraction. Not quite a smile. He gave a small breath through his nose. It was not quite a laugh. That, apparently, counted.

They ate another few bites.

Then Brant said, “I need to ask you something.” Kallus set his fork down. She looked at him. “Not about work.”

“That is rarely true when people begin that way.”

“It is not about Thrawn.”

“Better.”

“Are you contributing to Organa’s gift?”

He blinked. “What gift?”

Brant stared at him. Then, slowly, her face changed. Not amusement exactly. Something worse. Delight under discipline. “Oh,” she said.

Kallus narrowed his eyes. “What?”

“The man from Intelligence does not know.”

“Know what?”

She leaned back, and this time she did smile. It transformed her face so unexpectedly that Kallus found himself immediately suspicious.

“Leia announced her pregnancy.”

Kallus did not move.

For one second, the cantina noise seemed to pull away from him: trays, voices, utensils, the hum of refrigeration units, someone arguing three tables over about whether Defense Ministry sauce counted as a chemical weapon. Then it returned all at once.

“Pregnant?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Senator Organa? Leia?”

“Yes.”

“And Solo.”

“I assume he was involved.”

Kallus looked at her. Brant’s smile sharpened. “That was a joke, Director.”

“I recognized the structure.”

“Did you?”

He picked up his fork, put it down again, and reached for water instead. “When?”

“She told senior staff this morning. Public announcement in a few days, likely after the next medical appointment. Not galactic broadcast yet, but not secret inside the immediate circle.”

“And no one told Intelligence.”

Brant lifted an eyebrow. “Perhaps they assumed Intelligence would know.”

“That is not funny.”

“It is a little funny.”

“It is a personal matter.”

“It is also Senator Organa, Han Solo, the first child of two of the most recognizable people in the New Republic, and a potential security planning event. So yes, Director, I am enjoying that the gift committee knew before you did.”

“There is a gift committee.”

“There is always a gift committee.”

“In the Ministry?”

“Informal.”

“That makes it worse.”

“It makes it inevitable.”

Kallus looked toward the cantina entrance as if the news might become less improbable if viewed from another angle.

Leia pregnant.

Of course she was. Or rather, of course she could be. People had children. Even generals. Even senators. Even women who had blown up Death Stars by proxy, defied Sith Lords, negotiated grain relief, argued fleet allocations, and looked at Grand Admiral Thrawn as if he were both a man and a problem the galaxy had not finished inventing.

But the fact struck him strangely.

Not as vulnerability first, though part of him catalogued it with automatic horror: security adjustments, medical privacy, press exposure, threats, kidnapping risk, symbolic targeting, the unbearable stupidity of political extremists near unborn children. Not as political consequence either, though that would arrive soon enough.

It struck him as life.

Rude, bright, unreasonable life, moving quietly beneath meetings about prisoners and evidence and wars not yet named.

Brant watched him. “Are you all right?”

“Yes.”

“That was unconvincing.”

“I am recalibrating.”

“Try congratulating first. Recalibrate later.”

He gave her a look. She returned it blandly. “What is the gift?”

“We are still arguing. Vorr suggested something traditional and Alderaanian, which immediately made everyone afraid of choosing wrong. Someone from Mon’s office suggested a handcrafted mobile with Chandrilan stars. Madine suggested, apparently, ‘anything that makes noise so the kid learns early.’”

Kallus closed his eyes. “Of course he did.”

“Captain Draven’s old office suggested a security blanket.”

“That is not a joke I enjoy.”

“It was a literal blanket. Then someone realized the phrase and withdrew it.”

Kallus rubbed a hand over his face.

Brant continued, “The current leading proposal is a memory box. Small. Handcrafted. Neutral enough not to offend any surviving culture, personal enough not to look like office furniture.”

“That sounds reasonable.”

“Will you contribute?”

“Yes.”

“How much?”

He reached for his datapad. “Whatever the standard contribution is.”

Brant made a small sound.

“What?”

“That is how men who do not know how gifts work answer.”

“It is a pooled fund.”

“It is a baby gift. Those have rules?”

“Many. Most unwritten. You should feel afraid.”

“I often do.”

“Good. Personal growth.”

For a while, they ate again.

The absurdity settled slowly into something gentler.

Leia had announced her pregnancy.

The Republic had a baby coming into its most impossible family, and somewhere in the same city Thrawn sat under guard while Kallus’s team tried to determine whether a false Pantoran had carried both military intelligence and a letter that might have crossed from Ezra Bridger’s hand into Hera Syndulla’s life by way of an edited security file.

The galaxy had no sense of proportion.

Brant finished her meal first. “Vader likes children,” she said.

Kallus looked up. “Your tookling?”

“Yes. I assumed we had returned to him.” she explained, and finished her water “He pretends not to, but he does. My sister’s little girl pulls his ears and he only leaves the room with dignity.”

“That is not liking children. That is tactical withdrawal.”

“He sleeps outside her door when she visits.”

Kallus considered that. “Then he is protective.”

“Possessive.”

“Again, ideologically complicated.”

This time Brant actually laughed. It disappeared almost at once, but it had existed. Kallus found himself unexpectedly grateful for it.

Then his datapad chimed.

So did hers.

The same alert, from different channels. The moment ended with bureaucratic precision.

Kallus looked at the message. Forensics had completed the first full pass on the data cards. Brant read her own alert and her expression closed back into the captain’s.

“Review room?”

“Yes.”

They stood together.

Trays in hand. Half the noodles unfinished. The gift committee, Vader the sock thief, Leia’s child, all of it receding but not vanishing. Kallus felt the strange ache of that: not interruption, exactly, but layering. Life did not pause for crisis. Crisis did not pause for life. They simply learned to occupy the same hallway until someone dropped something fragile.

At the disposal unit, Brant said, “Kallus.” He looked at her. “She looked happy when she told us.” Leia, she meant.

He held that for a moment. Then nodded. “Good.”

Brant’s expression softened by one degree. “Yes.”

They left the cantina and walked toward the lifts, back into the upper levels where sealed rooms waited, where Thrawn’s cards had begun to speak, where Ezra’s letter had not yet finished changing everything, and where the Republic, for one impossible morning, contained both a future child and an old enemy arranging facts into weapons.

Halfway to the lift, Kallus opened a secure donation request and added his name to the gift fund.

Then, after a moment, he doubled the standard contribution.

Brant glanced sideways at him.

He did not look at her. “Not a word,” he said.

“I would never.”

“That is untrue.”

“Yes,” she said. “But gracious.”

Kallus heard about Leia’s pregnancy twice before he saw her.

The first time from Brant, over noodles and institutional root mash.

The second from a security update flagged under **PERSONAL STATUS CHANGE — PROTECTIVE DETAIL REVIEW**, which was perhaps the least warm way anyone had ever been informed that a child existed.

By the time he reached the review chamber, the news had stopped being surprise and become something else: a bright, private fact moving beneath the gray surface of the day, impossible to classify correctly and therefore, for once, not his responsibility to classify at all.

Leia was already there. Of course she was.

She stood near the main display with a cup in one hand and the posture of someone who had learned to occupy command space without taking more of it than necessary. She was not visibly different. Not yet. The pregnancy had not altered the line of her body in any way an officer could name without becoming ridiculous, but Kallus found, with some irritation toward himself, that the knowledge changed how the room arranged itself around her. Not weakness. Never that. Not fragility. Something more intolerable: continuity.

A future standing in the same room as Thrawn’s data.

He stopped beside the table. “Senator,” he said.

Leia looked up. For half a second, she seemed to brace for another report, another objection, another demand that something be decided before it could be understood. Then she saw his face. Something softened. Only briefly. “Director.”

“Congratulations.”

The word came out more formally than he intended. Leia’s mouth curved. “Thank you.”

“I only found out this morning.”

“So I heard.”

Kallus glanced toward Brant, who had entered behind him with a file case under one arm and an expression so innocent it should have triggered an inquiry.

Leia followed his glance. “Brant?”

“She took pleasure in the gap in Intelligence coverage.”

“I did,” Brant said, proudly.

Leia’s smile deepened, tired but real. “Good.”

Kallus accepted that defeat with dignity. Or something adjacent to it.

Vorr arrived next, already reading a datapad, which meant he was either late or trying to avoid eye contact with the contents of his own work. Madine came in behind him, grim and awake in the particular way of soldiers who had stopped expecting the night to end just because light had returned. The review chamber had been configured around the map: central display active, side panels ready for source correlation, separate channel for Admiral Ackbar’s secure holo.

No lawyers. No prosecutors. No Thrawn.

That absence was beginning to feel less like relief and more like a condition no one trusted to last.

“Where are we?” Leia asked.

Kallus took his position beside the table. “The first full pass on the cards is complete. Forensics reports no malicious software, no active beacon, no embedded external call, no self-erasing architecture. There are layered access locks, but they are internal sequencing protections, not intrusion mechanisms. Card one contained the index, as Thrawn said it would. Card three contained incident corroboration. Card two contains doctrinal context. Card four contains predictive indicators, still under restricted review.”

“And the biological sample?” Madine asked.

“Fresh enough to matter,” Kallus said.

Leia’s eyes sharpened.

“Vanto?”

“Yes. Eli N. Vanto. The sample degradation window suggests it is far from recent, though medical forensics refuses to define the timeframe in a way anyone can use politically.”

“That may be the wisest thing medical forensics has done all week,” Vorr muttered.

Kallus continued. “The packet itself does not include Vanto’s location. It includes references to prior survey work, route notes, and several linguistic annotations that appear to be his, or are designed to make us conclude they are.”

Brant’s gaze moved to the display. “So either Vanto contributed.”

“Yes.”

“Or someone wants us to see his fingerprints, by using his late work.”

“In effect.”

Leia set her cup down.

“And the map?”

Kallus brought it up.

The room’s lighting dimmed automatically, and the display expanded into a wide starfield stitched with transit lines, hazard zones, unstable coordinates, annotated gaps, and plotted incidents. At first glance, it seemed too large to mean anything. That was the problem with space. Scale could make intention look like accident until one learned where to place the eye.

Kallus highlighted the outer boundary. “Namadi to Ueda,” he said. “Outer Rim, past the Cantonica approaches and out toward the beginning of the Unknown Regions. The packet includes route detail, partial survey corrections, old Imperial fragments, independent annotations, and a surprisingly exhaustive mapping of corridors that most New Republic databases treat as marginal, outdated, or commercially irrelevant.”

Madine leaned closer. “That is a large area. A quite large one.”

“Yes.”

Leia studied the display. “Too large for one fleet.”

Madine gave a short nod. “Too large for the Seventh.”

The holo field activated before Kallus could answer. Admiral Ackbar appeared in blue-white projection, not seated in some calm office but on the command deck of a cruiser, officers moving behind him in ordered silence. His expression was grave, his large eyes fixed not on the room but on the map already transmitted to his own display. “I have reviewed the preliminary correlation,” he said, without preamble.

Leia inclined her head. “Admiral.”

“Senator. General. Director. Captain. Counselor.”

Vorr, who had long ago accepted that being included in military greetings usually meant paperwork had already become dangerous, nodded once.

Ackbar continued. “My staff has begun independent comparison with old Imperial navigational fragments, Rebel reconnaissance reports, convoy insurance records, and frontier distress logs. The packet’s mapping between Namadi and Ueda is more complete than anything currently held in a single New Republic archive.”

That landed hard. Not loud. Hard.

Kallus watched Leia absorb it without flinching.

“Could it be fabricated?” she asked.

“Parts could be,” Ackbar said. “Not all. Too many minor corrections align with obscure sources that Thrawn should not have accessed from Aurek-Seven, and that were not in the public materials provided to him. Several route deviations match reports my people had not yet integrated. Some hazard markers correspond to incidents classified locally under unrelated causes.”

Madine folded his arms. “So the data predates his custody.”

“Yes.”

“By how much?”

“That remains uncertain.”

Kallus looked at the map rather than the admiral. That was the question under everything now: since when did Thrawn have this intelligence?

Before Lothal? During exile? After return? Through Chiss channels? Through Vanto? Through what remained of the Seventh Fleet? Through someone else entirely?

Every answer produced a different kind of danger.

Leia asked it aloud. “Admiral, is there anything in the packet that tells us when he began collecting this?”

Ackbar paused. “No.”

Vorr looked as though he had expected that and still resented it.

Ackbar continued. “The internal references are layered. Some material appears to derive from old Imperial exploration archives or Chiss-adjacent route knowledge. Some appears much more recent. The annotations are not timestamped in a manner we can trust. If Vanto contributed to them, we do not yet know whether he did so last month, last year, or across a longer period.”

“Convenient,” Kallus said.

“Yes,” Ackbar replied.

There was no irritation in the admiral’s voice. Only agreement. That was worse.

Brant looked at the highlighted zone. “If this is where the Seventh Fleet is, or what remains of it, the area is broad enough to hide a war.”

Madine’s jaw tightened. “Or a grave.”

No one corrected him.

Leia’s gaze remained fixed on the starfield. “Is that your assessment, Admiral? That the Seventh Fleet is somewhere inside that region?”

Ackbar did not answer quickly.

His eyes moved over the map, slow and deliberate. “It is a possible assumption,” he said. “Not a conclusion. The packet’s coverage suggests familiarity with the region between Namadi and Ueda, and with routes leading beyond Ueda toward less charted space. Thrawn’s disappearance with the Seventh Fleet makes that association difficult to ignore.”

“But?” Leia asked.

Ackbar’s face shifted in the way Mon Calamari faces did when impatience entered through restraint. “The Seventh Fleet was not large enough to account for the breadth of this intelligence.”

Madine nodded once. “Exactly.”

Ackbar continued. “Even before Lothal, his available forces did not represent a fleet capable of monitoring this entire region in sustained detail. After the disappearance, whatever remained would have been diminished, damaged, displaced, or otherwise constrained. If Thrawn possesses intelligence across this area, it does not require that his ships are present across it.”

Kallus looked up. “Informants.”

“Informants, local contacts, Chiss sources, commercial traffic, coerced reporting, allied observation posts, former Imperial assets, independent scouts, or data exchanged through networks we do not yet see.”

“His network,” Brant said.

“Possibly,” Ackbar replied.

Vorr made a note and looked unhappy about the shape of it.

Leia said, “So this does not tell us where he was. Or where the Seventh Fleet is.”

“No.”

“It tells us that someone has been watching that region carefully.”

“Yes.”

“And Thrawn can access that watching.”

Ackbar’s eyes settled on her. “That is my assessment.”

The room went quiet around the map. The highlighted region pulsed faintly, as if the display itself had mistaken uncertainty for life.

Kallus hated the elegance of it. Thrawn had not given them the answer they wanted. He had given them an area too large to search easily, too detailed to dismiss, too suggestive to ignore, and too incomplete to act upon without coming back to him. And also had showed them how unprepared for the task they were.

Again.

Always again.

Madine said, “Any evidence of Imperial remnant activity in the mapped corridors?”

“Some,” Ackbar said. “Not enough to explain the whole pattern. More importantly, the packet separates remnant movement from other disruptions with a consistency that suggests access to comparative observation.”

“Meaning he is not confusing remnant operations with the external pattern.”

“No. Or he wants us to believe he is not.”

Kallus almost smiled. Almost.

They were all beginning to sound like each other.

Leia looked at the packet summary. “What does card four predict?”

Kallus answered. “Three pressure points where disruptions are likely to emerge if the pattern continues. One commercial corridor, one communications relay cluster, one colonial supply line. The first is already showing anomalies in insurance claims. The second went into delayed maintenance status five days ago. The third is quiet.”

“For now,” Madine said.

“For now.”

Ackbar’s voice came through with more weight. “I am departing for Coruscant.”

Everyone looked at the holo. Vorr actually stopped writing.

Leia straightened. “Admiral?”

“I will arrive within two days.”

Kallus’s expression sharpened. “For what purpose?”

“To review the packet directly, coordinate naval assessment, and begin work with Thrawn.”

The room froze. Not metaphorically. No one moved.

Vorr’s mouth opened slightly, then closed, perhaps because every procedural objection he could form had collided at once with the fact that Ackbar had not requested permission.

He had informed them.

Madine looked at the admiral for a long moment, and then, to Leia’s irritation and reluctant admiration, did not try to pretend surprise. “Direct contact?”

“Of course,” Ackbar said.

Kallus leaned forward. “That is premature.”

“Possibly.”

“It compromises the separation between verification and detainee consultation.”

“It also recognizes that the packet has now produced questions only the source may be able to answer efficiently.”

“Efficiency is not our first concern.”

“No,” Ackbar said. “Survival is. And that is what matters to me. We have a galaxy to protect.”

Kallus went still. Leia felt the sentence strike the room and remain there.

Vorr recovered enough to speak. “Admiral, there are legal, custodial, procedural, prosecutorial, and political barriers to direct military collaboration with a defendant awaiting trial on grave charges.”

Ackbar looked at him. “I am aware.”

That was all.

Vorr blinked once. Leia could almost hear him deciding that further explanation would be both correct and useless. It would also have to be made to Thrawn later, which would be worse.

Madine rubbed a hand over his beard. The Chancellor will need to be informed before your ship enters Coruscant space.”

“Naturally,” Ackbar said.

Vorr made a sound that suggested naturally was doing more work than any word had a right to do. “Brevin’s team will object,” he said. “Possibly before they finish reading the first sentence. The Advocate-General’s office does not enjoy surprise military contact with defendants awaiting war-crimes trial.”

Ackbar’s expression did not change. “Then they should be informed before it occurs.”

“That is not the same as approving it.”

“No,” Ackbar said. “But it is more than Thrawn would receive from me if our positions were reversed.”

Vorr looked as though he had just been handed a moral argument he could not file anywhere useful.

Madine leaned back. “Defense counsel will enjoy the objection, the delay, the appearance of military necessity, and every line of the transcript we are about to create for them.”

“I expect so,” Ackbar said.

“That expectation,” Vorr replied, “does not make my morning easier.”

“No,” Ackbar said. “But it may make the Republic safer.”

Kallus leaned forward. “Or it may give Thrawn exactly the legitimacy he has been building toward for two months.”

Ackbar’s gaze turned toward him. “Yes,” he said, and this time the single word did not belong to a pattern of answers, but to the center of the problem. “That is why I am coming myself.”

Madine said, “His defense will enjoy it.”

“Likely.”

“Kallus will object.”

“I am present,” Kallus said.

Madine did not look at him. “He will object more later.”

Ackbar inclined his head. “I expect so.”

Brant’s face remained expressionless, but Leia could see the calculation behind it: transport, meeting room, surveillance, escort, medical accommodation, no classified exposure, no uncontrolled conversation, no heroic old soldiers deciding that strategic necessity made locks decorative.

Leia looked at the map. Then at Ackbar. “You are not asking.”

“No, Senator.”

“Because you believe this is necessary.”

“Yes.”

“And because if we say no, you will make us explain why we are preventing the Supreme Commander of New Republic forces from evaluating a credible strategic warning with the only person who may understand its origin.”

Ackbar’s eyes softened by a fraction. “Your phrasing is more political than mine would have been.”

“That was not a denial.”

“No. But, Senator Organa, you know me well enough to know that in my role, I will not mince political or legal words if I believe they are interfering with the legitimate defense of the New Republic.”

Vorr made a small, wounded sound. Leia ignored him. Kallus did not.

“This is exactly what he wants,” Kallus said.

Ackbar’s gaze turned toward him. “Yes. And if I have an opportunity before me to obtain strategically valuable information, I am not going to stop and contemplate the political implications it may have. Grand Admiral Thrawn has proven his intentions with actions.” One of his claws tapped twice on the screen of his tactical datapad. “That is enough for me. And that is why I intend to work with him.”

The agreement cut through the argument.

Kallus stopped.

Ackbar continued. “He wants to become necessary. He wants the Republic to define its limitations around him. He wants every verified datum to pull us closer to consultation. I see that, Director.”

“Then why give it to him?”

“Because seeing the maneuver does not make the information useless.”

Kallus’s hands closed slowly around the edge of the table. Leia watched him fight for control. Ackbar’s voice lowered. “I have fought enemies whose traps concealed falsehood. I have also fought enemies whose traps concealed truth, because the truth itself forced movement. Thrawn is capable of the second. That is precisely why I must speak with him.”

Madine looked grimly pleased, or perhaps only grim. Vorr looked as though he had begun composing the worst memorandum of his career.

Brant had been silent long enough that, when she spoke, everyone turned.

“Then Security defines the room before anyone enters it,” she said. “No unsupervised contact, no informal exchange after the recorded session, no external communications, no opportunity for him to turn Admiral Ackbar’s presence into a message for anyone outside that room, and no classified material visible without prior authorization.”

Ackbar’s large eyes settled on her. “The last restriction is impractical.”

Brant did not move. “It is standard.”

“It is useless,” Ackbar said.

The room went still.

He continued, with the patient gravity of someone who had no intention of mistaking procedure for sense. “If I am to assess high-level defensive strategy with him, the material will be sensitive. Force disposition, escort capacity, response windows, frontier weaknesses, relay dependencies, academy readiness, classified incident correlation. A tactical analyst without relevant information is ornamental. Thrawn has spent most of his career operating inside first-order military intelligence. Pretending otherwise does not protect the Republic. It only makes the conversation less honest.”

Kallus’s mouth tightened. “And more dangerous.”

“Yes,” Ackbar said. “Useful things often are.”

Brant looked from Ackbar to Leia, then back. “You are asking Security to build a room for controlled classified exposure to a war-crimes defendant.”

“No,” Ackbar replied. “I am informing Security that the room will require that capacity if the meeting is to have value.”

Vorr made a faint sound. “That distinction is going to ruin my afternoon.”

Madine’s eyes stayed on Ackbar, but Leia saw the approval there. Grim, reluctant, military.

Brant’s face remained composed, though something in her jaw suggested she had begun rebuilding the entire protocol in her head and resenting every new wall. “No external transmission,” she said.

“Agreed.”

“No recording access outside the sealed review chain.”

“That’s reasonable.”

“No physical documents leaving the room.”

“That’s standard procedure.”

“No unsupervised recess, no private aside, no medical interruption without escort, no counsel using classified exposure as a discovery argument.”

Vorr looked up sharply. “That last one will require language.”

“It will require several threats,” Brant said.

Ackbar inclined his head. “We can discuss that later.”

Kallus leaned forward. “He will learn from what we choose to show him.”

Ackbar’s gaze turned to him. “Yes. That is the point.”

“No,” Kallus said. “The point is that he will learn what we have, what we lack, what we fear, what we can move, how quickly we can move it, and which facts made us desperate enough to invite him into the room.”

Ackbar did not soften. “He already does!!” Ackbar’s facial barbels twitched with sharp, visible exasperation as he turned his large, bulbous eyes away from the screen. ”Then we choose our materials with discipline. But we do not starve the conversation and call the emptiness security.”

That landed hard enough that no one answered at once.

Leia looked again at the map between Namadi and Ueda.

A vast region. Too much empty space. Too many lines drawn by a man who had never offered the whole picture, only enough of it to make refusal look irresponsible.

She thought of Hera reading Ezra’s letter in her living room.

She thought of the unborn child she had only just allowed the wider circle to know about.

She thought of a Republic still learning how to survive without becoming a polished version of the thing it had defeated.

“All right,” she said.

Kallus turned to her.

“Leia.”

She did not look away from Ackbar. “All right,” she repeated. “We prepare for your arrival. We define terms before you enter the room with him. We tell Mon before anyone else finds out. And we do not let the fact that Thrawn anticipated this make us too proud to do it carefully.”

Ackbar inclined his head. “Agreed.”

Vorr exhaled very slowly. “Carefully,” he said, as if testing whether the word might hold. No one believed it would. Not entirely. But it was, for the moment, the only word they had. Vorr lowered his stylus and looked, with visible resentment, at the packet authorization file still open on his datapad. “Then, unless anyone intends to continue pretending we have not crossed the relevant threshold, I am sending defense counsel the provisional acceptance notice.”

Kallus looked at him. “What acceptance notice?”

“The one we drafted so we could avoid sending it.” Vorr’s voice was dry enough to scrape. “Provisional sealed production accepted for independent strategic review. Chain of custody confirmed. Authenticity and scope pending. No admission of legal relevance beyond review purposes. Cooperation value reserved until verification criteria are satisfied. All the language we used to say yes without enjoying it.”

Madine’s mouth pulled tight. “We are using the cards.”

“Yes,” Vorr said. “Admiral Ackbar is coming to Coruscant because of the cards. The review cell is expanding because of the cards. Security is building a classified consultation protocol because of the cards. At this point, if we do not acknowledge receipt and provisional acceptance, Veyr will correctly accuse us of harvesting the material while pretending our hands are empty.”

Leia closed her eyes for one breath.

Vorr continued, less dry now and more tired. “The notice does not concede cooperation credit. It does not concede mitigation. It does not concede admissibility in the criminal case. But it does concede that the material was received, preserved, and entered into strategic review under the conditions we agreed in principle. If we do not send it before the defense asks why Ackbar is suddenly rearranging his schedule, we will look evasive.”

Kallus stared at the map. “They will use it.”

“Yes,” Vorr said. “That was also true before I said it aloud.”

A silence followed.

Then Leia nodded once. “Send it.”

Vorr made the notation with the expression of a man signing a treaty with a headache. “I will phrase it beautifully,” he said.

“Will that help?” Madine asked.

“No,” Vorr replied. “But if we are going to walk into the trap, I would prefer the paperwork not limp.”