I was half naked, wearing shorts and a T-shirt coming directly from home, no uniforms, no titles. I have found a window on the heereen ship and I was just staring at it, thinking. As I said, the Rafkin colonial ship was huge and the ship of our new friends was just a toy linked on his side, but my well trained eye measured the vessel was as long as a Human cruiser, something very big for our fleet scale.

A cruiser. A ship made for war.

Rafkin sensors weren't able to find informations about weapons onboard the heereen ship. A truly scientific deep space research vessel could have none. If you don't know if there're other species out in the space the last thing you do about it it's preparing to shoot them. Noone shoots the unknown. Fireworks begins when we start knowing each other a bit.

Cassandra appeared out of the gym, still sweating in a tiny top and yoga pants. I didn't know a gym was there, I came just to see the heereen ship from the window, but as I see her I just think about myself as a stalker. 

She blushed "Good day, diplomat Callus"

"Good day. I... was here just for the ship"

She didn't understand and it was quite normal, because I was just talking on my guilty conscience, so I pointed the heereen vessel out of the window.

"Oh... that..." 

I relaxed a bit seeing that the situation was turning out normal, so I kept talking. "Considering I could argue very few from heereen message, I thought that something could come out looking at the architecture of their vessel. You know? There are many studies about correlation between the aggressive design of Teculpa spaceships and their attitude for war"

She smiled. "Did you find the heereen ship aggressive?"

The heereen ship was something like a long cigar with little pyramids section hung to it. We thought it was full of the black liquid they used in the fish tank so the design obviously needed to help a situation like that. There where very few edges and a lot of curved surfaces. It made me think about something fluffy. "No, I cant' see anything aggressive about it"

"But... you'd like to, wouldn't you?"

"What?"

Cassandra touched her long hair. The string she used to keep them together during the gym was losing its grasp. "You give impression you consider the heereen an hostile race. Also if they didn't give you any clue of it"

That was true. And that wasn't just true in that situation. "Yes I do. It's my work"

"Your work is about considering all the others enemies?"

"It's needed, at start. And it's also true"

"True? How can you be sure?"

"They don't know you. They fear you and they would be happy if you never existed" It was a quote from Loranna Artell, but I didn't expect her to recognize it.

"It's sad"

"It can be fixed. With time. For instance, we are friends with the Rafkins now and... well... Most of the Teculpa people isn't plotting to destroy us"

She looked out of the window, but not to the heereen ship. Just to the stars. "You know? I thought about the diplomatic career before taking linguistic. I gave up considering my low self-confidence"

"You don't need so much self-confidence for diplomacy! You just need to fake a little of it when you're in official meetings!"

She laughed. "I'm not a great liar, too"

"Well, that's a big problem"

We laughed together so we didn't hear the Rafkin running towards us, shouting my name. I saw it only when he stopped in front of me. "What's happening?" I asked.

"The heereen asked for a meeting now. They said we are all in danger!"