Objective: Interruption — Intelligence Concern & Shifted Trajectory
Outfit: Senate fatigues and utility belt (off-duty), light armor vest
The camp was cooling. Both in temperature, and tension. After a long day, even the rustle of Ewok scouts through brush had become background noise. That meant it was the perfect time for something to go wrong.
Nos had barely stepped out of the tent the
Kain Aldore
intercepted him.
The man had a pilot's gait, fast hands, and zero respect for boundaries. Nos had barely nodded a greeting when Kain opened with a bomb:
"Cool... So I'm sure we can find streamers. But before then we have a problem. I think there's someone in the camp, and I'm pretty sure they don't belong here."
Nos blinked once. Neutral, by sheer force of will.
“...Define not belong.”
Kain started rattling off inconsistencies—carbon scoring on comms relays, misaligned sensor dishes, tampered power cables. Real sabotage, if the man wasn't just seeing ghosts.
“You're sure it wasn’t maintenance error?”
Nos folded his arms. A long pause. A stare that could kill.
No, not Eivii's doing. She wouldn't use me like this again...
His jaw clenched. She
had to be. The fear of history repeating itself dug in. If there was any doubt, any evidence, any way he could stop her before she did anything irreversible.
Like trying to assassinate a diplomat.
Chit.
“Alright. Show me.”
Nos walked to the indicated sites of sabotage perimeter in terse silence, checking relay nodes and mechanical junctions. He was devastatingly silent, a hulking brute of a Zeltron checking carbon scoring like the world depended on it. His world did. If she was the saboteur, this moon might very well depend on it. He absorbed. Noted. Cross-referenced with memory.
At one terminal, a scorch mark did look out of place.
He glanced toward camp. Toward her tent.
He hated the thought. But it crawled in anyway.
She’s been in this kind of work. Close quarters, knives, infiltration. She'd know how to mask it. She said she changed.…
He looked away. The guilt was immediate. And ugly. He
had to know.
You're investigating sabotage. Not interrogating your past. Focus up.
He nodded toward the forest.
“I was heading out anyway. If someone slipped in, they’d leave signs.
He didn’t wait for Kain to agree. Just moved, whether or not the pilot kept up was up to them.
The brush was thicker outside the perimeter. Moss swallowed footfalls. The sky closed in.
After about ten minutes, forest grew quieter.
And then—
A presence. Not hostile. Not hunting. Just... there.
Nos slowed his pace.
Emery Lloren
didn’t move to intercept. Just sat beneath a tree, patient as the dusk.
Nos approached cautiously, but not in combat posture. The moment didn’t demand it. This one was a Jedi. The coincidence was unsettling. He was severely hoping it was coincidence and not the... Force... doing something.
Emery spoke softly, eyes still half-closed:
“You walked far enough to be alone. That usually means something.”
Dank farrik
“I come to places like this to listen. Not to answers. Just to the quiet, when the rest is too loud.”
“Sometimes the Force says nothing. That can be the hardest thing to hear.”
the Zeltron looked at him. Then away.
“I don’t hear it at all. Never have.”
But Nos could hear when someone was trying to help. Voros was conflicted. The hidden panic was rising to the surface.
He was just paranoid. Eivii was the saboteur.
But she has a history of doing precisely this.
Manipulating him as a pathway to her target.
She said she has changed.
Kark it, Nos had believed her.
Her emotions – picked up through Zeltron Empathic Telepathy – seemed sincere.
He wanted desperately to believe she left that life behind.
This has to be the worst timing in the galaxy.
The red brute
was spiralling. He let his guard down for less than an evening. And–
“You don’t owe me words. But I’ll be here a while, if you’d rather not sit with the silence alone.”
The Jedi's words cut through his thoughts.
Nos exhaled slowly. He was no good to anyone in this state. He was reminded of New Cov, of the stranger,
Matthew of Valendale
, who had guided him out of another spiral.
Despite the turmoil within and the urgency a sabeteur implied, Nos sat down across from the Jedi, boots rooted, back stiff.
“You want to sit in the silence? Fine. Just... don’t tell me it has meaning.”
A pause. Then, softer:
“Not everything has to mean something.”
He didn't mention the fear of meaning in this moment, the dread he felt at the synchronicity of events.
He didn’t mention the pregnancy.
The sabotage. The pattern from the past
He sat, even if
Kain Aldore
was still trailing close behind.
The forest encapsulated them.
For now, that was enough. It had to be.