Chapter 80 · Cadence

The room they were given wasn’t much — just a stripped-down briefing chamber with a dead projector and a dented metal table. But it was quiet, and that was enough.

Stent stood in the center, shoulders squared, hands clasped behind him. His posture somewhat stiffer than his usual self.

Eli circled him like a worried instructor.
“Again,” he said. “From the start.”

Stent inclined his head. “Very well.”

He stepped forward, posture straightening, chin lifting just slightly — an echo of authority so subtle Eli felt it before he saw it.

When Stent spoke, the shift was almost invisible:

“This is Grand Admiral Thrawn. You will grant immediate access to the command uplink.”

Eli raised a hand. “Stop. Too flat.”

“That is precisely how he spoke.”

“No,” Eli said, stepping closer. “He was flat, but not empty. There was always intent underneath. Like he already saw the next move you were going to make and had judged it inadequate.”

Stent blinked once. “That is a strange way to describe a superior officer.”

“Yeah, well,” Eli muttered, “he was a strange guy.”

They reset.

Stent tried again — this time dropping his tone half a step, letting the syllables linger just long enough to imply patience thinning.

“This is Grand Admiral Thrawn. You will grant immediate access—”

Eli’s eyebrows shot up.
“…okay, that’s closer. Try shifting your weight slightly. He did that thing where he didn’t move until you had to.”

Stent adjusted.

The result was unnervingly convincing. Eli’s stomach tightened — instinct, memory, something he wasn’t ready to name.

He stepped back. “All right. Your turn.”

Stent’s eyebrow lifted. “My turn?”

“You’re supposed to be a Grand Admiral. That means I’m the aide. I have to sound like someone who belongs at your elbow instead of running terrified in the other direction.”

Stent considered this gravely. “Proceed.”

Eli cleared his throat, straightened his spine, and put on the clipped enunciation he hadn’t used since the Chimaera.

“Authorization packet is prepared, sir. Relay is expecting a code transmission within ninety seconds.”

Stent nodded. “Adequate.”

“Adequate?” Eli scoffed. “What do you want, a parade?”

“You rushed the end of the sentence.”

“Oh for— fine, let me—”

They ran it again. And again.

Sometimes Eli laughed.

Sometimes Stent corrected him in that maddeningly calm tone that always made things both better and worse.

And sometimes, between lines, the silence sharpened.

After the seventh run of the whole dialogue, Eli leaned both hands on the table, head down.

His breath fogged the battered metal. “Stent,” he said quietly, “how does it feel? Pretending to be him?”

Stent didn’t answer immediately. He considered the question the way he considered everything — carefully, with the exactness of someone who knew the difference between thoughtlessness and precision.

“At first,” he said slowly, “it felt… abstract. A task of posture and diction.” He paused, eyes drifting to the datapad on the table. “But the more I study his recordings, the less abstract it becomes.”

Eli looked up.

Stent continued, “Ar’alani spoke of him to me sometimes, but distantly, as one speaks of an officer respected but gone. The CEDF acted as if he didn’t exist, even if there were records about him.” He touched the datapad lightly, almost reverently. “You have given me access to something different. These holologs. These diary fragments. They show a man who… thought.”

Eli swallowed. “Yeah. He did a lot of that.”

“He valued you,” Stent said simply. “It is clear in the fragments. Even in the cadence of his voice when he says your name.”

Eli blinked hard. His throat felt tight. “Yeah, well… he wasn’t exactly easy to read. But he tried. That was the crazy part. He tried.”

Stent studied him. “You fear he is dead.”

Eli’s breath hitched — half a laugh, half a break. “I’ve feared it since the day he vanished. The galaxy’s been tearing itself apart, and he’s just… gone. That man doesn’t just ‘go.’ If he were alive, he’d find a way back. He’d send something. A signal. A breadcrumb. Anything.”

Stent nodded once. “And yet you chase him.”

“Because I can’t—” Eli stopped, jaw clenched. “I can’t not. If there’s even a chance he’s out there, I have to follow it. Even if it ends up being a wild bantha chase.”

Stent stepped closer, voice quiet. “It is not futile.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do not,” Stent agreed. “But I know devotion when I see it.” He held Eli’s gaze without flinching. “Thrawn is not simply your former superior. He is the axis on which your past turns. The line that shapes everything you chose afterward.”

Eli’s eyes burned. “And if that line ends in a grave?”

“Then you will know,” Stent said softly. “And knowing is better than wandering forever.”

The silence between them wasn’t sharp anymore. It wasn’t heavy either. It was something steadier — like the space where grief could rest without collapsing.

Stent glanced once more at the datapad. “When this operation is done,” he said, “I wish to read the rest of his diaries. All of them, if you will allow it.”

Eli blinked. “You… want to.”

“I am intrigued,” Stent said. “Not by the rank he held. But by the person he was. The one you knew.”

Eli nodded, voice low. “Yeah. Yeah, you can. All of it.”

“Good,” Stent murmured. “Understanding him may help me understand… this.”

He gestured delicately between them — the plan, the mission, the weight of Thrawn’s absence that both carried in different ways.

Eli let out a long breath, steadier this time. “All right. Let’s run it again.”

Stent made a small pause.

“What we are doing is calculated. Not emotional.”

“Yeah,” Eli murmured. “I know. But that doesn’t make it simple.”

“No,” Stent agreed softly. “It does not.”

Eli straightened. “Then let’s keep at it. If we’re doing this, we’re doing it perfectly.”

Stent gave a small nod — warmer than anything he’d shown in public since they arrived.

“Begin when ready, Lieutenant Commander.”

Eli smirked. “Look at that. You’re getting into character.”

“I am merely practicing,” Stent said.

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

Stent took his place. Posture straightened. Shoulders squared. The faint, unnerving ghost of a man who once commanded worlds.

They resumed, the room echoing with the ghost of a man who wasn’t there —
and the two who were trying to outmaneuver his shadow.