"Indeed.  ...If you want a better class of hyperdrive for your trouble, I believe I recall picking up a spare recently that will save us a bit more travel time than we lose by waiting to install it, but it's a thin enough margin that it shouldn't matter too much."

"One second." How do you think that'll go with Tim? she signs to Daisy.

    She has to think about it for a moment. I should be able to get him to a yes by the time they're ready to start putting it in.

Thanks. "We'd appreciate it, thank you."

"I'll let engineering know, then."  Or rather, she'll let Elsie know, who'll let engineering know.

"Anything else?  I can let logistics know to send someone to help with your stocktake, if you'd like, but I can imagine why you might not want that."

"We'll be fine without, thank you." And she gets up to go.

Kalbetis has seen the Spectrum's lounge, decorated in an understatedly Sithy style with the metal trim blackened and the seating upholstered in a roiling ash and carmine pattern fabric. The cabin Pradnakt shows her to is similar, with the bed made up in plain grey linens with a silvery sheen, a small tray with a handful of datadiscs that turn out to contain a variety of poetry and short stories on the bedside table, and a single piece of art on the wall, a hand-calligraphed poem in silver ink on black paper:

the dream of the quiet year

to be joy

to be the sunlight on the leaves

to not know fear

to wear fear like a pair of sturdy boots

to leave them muddied at the door

to rest by the fire

to rest—to open your eyes to a new day

to carry a new day in your bones

to breathe in the cold air

to turn breath to song

to see the irises reach up

to reach up

to reach up

to reach

[source]

The medbay, on the other hand, is a tiny closet off the lounge, with the space freed up by the downgrade having been used to expand the kitchen into the other part of that corner. Medea can fit into it, barely, and Daisy says that she's welcome to either that or the other cabin, or to stay in the lounge, as she prefers.

What an apt piece.

Medea takes a third option to resolve the problem of not having a medbay worth mentioning to terrorize quite firmly metaphorically install herself in - she'll just stand watch over Darth Kalbetis, instead.  An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.  (Not to mention, L5-C3 will appreciate it, being as she cannot do that herself like she normally would in the field.)

Tim cedes the helm to Daisy at her suggestion that he might prefer to monitor the new hyperdrive during its maiden voyage, and once everyone is settled, away they go.

Meanwhile, elsewhere:

He should go back. He knows it. There's no excuse not to give a proper report on Master Chenk's final days, or to put off turning the artifact they were picking up over to the archivists. It's just that every time he makes his way to the space station to get a ticket to Coruscant, it gets harder. There are so many other places he could go, and he's seen so few of them. Surely one more won't hurt anything. Next time he'll go back. One more, and surely the ache in his gut will be satiated, and he'll go back to being a well-behaved Jedi Padawan, only going where he's told, never really getting to see any of it.

Next time.

Surely.

It doesn't take long after Rafiik boards his ship for the wall comm in Kalbetis' room to chime.

He's moving, I'll have a new heading shortly.

I'll let our backup know what you'll find.

Every planet is a marvel, if only you look at it the right way, and Nexora is no different. Rafiik follows his intuition and some seedy-looking locals to find a cheap hostel, where he uses nearly all of his money to book a bed for a week; the rest will have to cover a few meals while he scopes out the area and finds out how best to make some money here. So far that hasn't been hard, and he doesn't expect it to be long before he's going on the culinary tour advertised in the pamphlet that convinced him to come here or heading out to see the ruins north of the city.

Something seems...  Wrong, though.  Subtly, but undeniably off.  In the Force and in the people.  The longer-term residents of this place, they're wary - they go nowhere alone.

After the first night there he awakens to a note left by his bedside: 

You're not going to trust me.  But it's not like I trust you, either, stranger.  Still...  Somebody's gotta look out for us desperate folks, especially younglings.  The government sure ain't.

...Watch your back.  People are disappearing around here, and whatever you're hiding, whatever you're running from, I guarantee you don't want them to find it.  Or find you.  Be careful.

So that's creepy. But whatever distractions he might've gotten lost in, he's still a Jedi, and the kind of thing the letter warns of is still his job to look into. (And he's already got a bit of money; it's really not hard, if you're willing to keep late nights.) He'll just unpack his 'saber...

...or not. He's genuinely unsure where he lost it; he's been traveling incognito, and hasn't unpacked it in half a dozen planets. The artifact is still safe, thank the Force - he was a little more cautious about packing it - so this is only a minor crisis. He'll just have to be very careful investigating the disappearances, and then actually go back and report on everything and take whatever chewing out the loss gets him.

So, what does the Force have to say about the locals' discomfort?

It's that way.

...There's something strange in the Floating Markets.  Something hidden beneath the surface of the tourist attraction.

There's also reports of a Sith Lord ...visiting, if he looks - someone spotting a ship recurring near the water-washed crystal caverns, and someone very bold getting a picture of its passengers disembarking, spotting the black robes and the saber, even if from a great distance.

(What are you looking at her for, she's still a week out.)

That's bad! And more urgent than can wait for him to make the trip back to Coruscant.

He puts out a priority call for nearby Jedi to come and help. (There's an emergency fund for such things, of course.) Even the nearest Jedi are unlikely to be very close, though - he's been careful not to wander into Empire territory proper, but not every part of the contested zone is equally hotly contested, and he's been wisely wandering deeper and deeper into the calmer backwaters. He estimates based on the space maps that it'll be maybe a week and a half before anyone shows up.

The smart thing to do would be to tap the emergency fund again and get off-planet; it's not likely he'll be able to do anything to help without backup, and he'll be in even more trouble than the locals if a Sith Lord spots him. Instead, he goes to the Floating Markets; even without being able to do anything maybe he can gather some intel.

There is intel to gather, yes, and, for that matter, the markets to admire.

It seems, after a few days' investigation, that the Sith is quite literally hiding something beneath the surface - a cheap tourist attraction amongst cheap tourist attractions is hiding a submarine(!) full of kidnapped kids-his-age beneath the surface.  ...Did that guy just say something about "the specimens"?

...Did that guy notice him - shit, he'd better run!

Shit! He runs!

Maybe the guy just doesn't like being watched, and his cover isn't actually blown? Maybe? He'll stick to physically plausible maneuvers for now just in case but if it comes to it Force Parkour is his favorite.

"Thief!  Thief!  Stop that boy!"

Oh, his cover is definitely blown, or at least horribly deflated.  A blaster bolt - stun, whether thankfully or not - sears past his ear the first time he tries to go up and over the crowd.

Thank the Force for danger sense, that was way too close!

He doesn't have much choice but to try the upward route again a few moments later, though; the crowd isn't so thick as to be completely hopeless to move through, but it's close, and he doesn't trust the Sith or his people not to hurt bystanders to get to him if he stays in it.

The Sith does have some understanding of strategy, but Rafiik is quite right about the lack of care for collateral damage.  (The hue and cry he's raising sure aren't helping, either.)  But as the stun-bolts fly towards his silhouette and all Rafiik can do is think is 'I wish I had my lightsaber', it's really quite cold comfort that the bystanders will be alright.

A few hours later, Pradnakt abruptly looks up from her lunch and raises a hand to stop Nine in the middle of the story he's telling. "Our guy's in trouble. I can't tell how at this range but I'd bet it's the alchemist."

"...Force save us all from impetuous teenagers.  He sent an alert, you can tell by the ship movements - normally Jedi in the field rarely converge like that - but no, he just had to go investigate Tuscias himself.  Kriff, what did he do with the artifact?"  (A rather rhetorical question.  They'll find it when they get there, anyway.)  "We're not too far off from Nexora.  I'll see if I can speed us along any, and alert the Cloak we're going after Tuscias afterwards.  We'll need their support to force the issue."

Hmm.  What a report.  An experimental subject with high M-count.  Likely not a Jedi, even, having no lightsaber.  He shall retrieve them at once - Force-sensitives can be very slippery, and he'd know.

The planet of Nexora does not want to have a Sith Lord on it, but neither can they stop him.  The Force renders him above such petty bureaucrats, and the planet has no good response - not wishing to hide behind the Republic's skirts, even if they could, earns something of a grudging respect from a (so-called) self-made man, but it doesn't stop him from throwing his weight around to get access to certain otherwise restricted sites, like the caverns.  (Unfortunately they were not, themselves, of particular interest to him - the 'glow' of the crystals is produced by a bioluminescent microflora, not by the Force or some other means like radioactivity.  Still, he's made do with what he has.)