Chapter Six: Shadows Without Masks
805 Words
Echoes Through the Force
Chapter Six: Shadows Without Masks
There was an old saying among Resistance scouts:
The most dangerous enemy is the one who learns your habits.
Seris had begun to realize something far more unsettling.
Kade Vire had learned hers.
He knew she skipped meals when she was anxious.
He knew she paced when she couldn't sleep.
He knew she always reached for the pendant around her neck when she was thinking too hard.
And somehow, despite every wall she tried to build, she was learning him too.
She knew the silence that settled over him before he gave an impossible order.
She knew the slight tilt of his head when he was unconvinced.
She knew that beneath the armor and command, he carried exhaustion like a second skin.
The Force had become an unwilling witness to the smallest parts of their lives.
And that was more dangerous than any battle.
---
It began just after midnight.
Seris was in the ship's gym, throwing punch after punch into a battered training dummy until her knuckles ached.
Sweat dripped from her brow.
She struck again.
The dummy vanished.
In its place stood Kade.
Not in armor.
For the first time since their strange connection began, he wore only a simple black tunic, sleeves rolled to his forearms.
He looked... younger.
Less like a commander.
More like a man who had forgotten to sleep.
"You train when you're angry," he observed.
She lowered her fists.
"You appear when you're annoying."
"So often, then."
She fought a smile.
He noticed.
"I almost won that exchange."
"You absolutely did not."
For a heartbeat, they simply stood there.
No battlefield.
No shouting officers.
No explosions.
Just stillness.
It was the quietest moment either of them had known in months.
---
"Tell me something true," Kade said.
Seris folded her arms.
"Why?"
"Because every time we meet, we speak in half-truths."
She hesitated.
Then, against her better judgment, she answered.
"I hate flying through asteroid fields."
His eyebrows rose.
"Really?"
"They make me nervous."
"You hide it well."
"My turn."
He nodded.
"Tell me something true."
He looked out at the endless stars beyond whatever room he occupied.
"I never wanted command."
She blinked.
"What?"
"I accepted it because someone had to."
"You expect me to believe that?"
"I didn't say you would."
The honesty in his voice unsettled her.
It would have been easier if he had lied.
---
The Force rippled.
Without warning, the world around them shifted.
They found themselves standing in a memory.
A grand ballroom bathed in golden light.
Music drifted through the air.
Children laughed as nobles danced beneath crystal chandeliers.
Then the music stopped.
Masked soldiers stormed the hall.
Panic erupted.
The crowd scattered.
A woman carrying a silver pendant shoved two terrified children toward opposite doors.
"Run!" she cried.
One child obeyed.
The other looked back.
Then smoke swallowed everything.
The vision ended.
Seris staggered.
Kade looked pale.
"You saw it too."
She nodded.
"Every detail."
"This isn't imagination anymore."
"No."
He swallowed slowly.
"The Force is trying to tell us something."
"Or warn us."
---
An alarm pierced the silence.
Not hers.
His.
The bond remained open long enough for Seris to glimpse officers rushing onto his bridge.
One shouted, "Commander! An assassin has breached the inner levels!"
Kade turned instantly.
"Lock the corridors."
The Force should have severed.
It didn't.
Seris watched helplessly through his eyes as a cloaked figure emerged from the shadows with a crimson energy blade.
The strike came fast.
Too fast.
Kade barely twisted aside.
The blade sliced across his shoulder instead of his neck.
He hit the attacker with a blast of Force energy that shattered a nearby console.
The assassin crashed into the wall—but before Kade could unmask them, they triggered an explosive charge.
Flames engulfed the corridor.
The bond snapped.
---
Seris gasped and stumbled backward into the gym.
For the first time since this impossible connection had begun, fear overwhelmed curiosity.
Not fear for herself.
Fear for him.
She hated that realization.
Across the galaxy, medics wrapped Kade's shoulder while officers searched the wreckage.
No body.
No identity.
Only fragments of black fabric and a single object left behind.
A coin.
Silver.
Stamped with the same six-pointed star that adorned the pendant around his neck.
Kade closed his hand around it.
Someone else knew.
Someone else had been searching for the relics.
And if they were willing to send an assassin into the heart of his flagship...
Then Seris Vael was almost certainly in danger too.
As he stared into the stars, the Force stirred one last time that night.
Not with words.
Not with visions.
Just a single, overwhelming emotion that flowed from one mind into the other.
Relief.
Because against all reason...
They were both still alive.
- Writer
