The tremble we felt was just the space station adjusting his position to face the attack. The marauders did a mistake, appearing in the space too far away from Hettula. They tried to approching it and reach attack distance, but the cohort orbiting around the second planet was already intercepting them, so they just vanished again, alerting all the system with no damage.

This situation made me and Hiraku exit his office and split up. He went down to the control room of the station, to command the fight, while I went again under the protection of his guards, that tried to lead me to a safe place.

We were in a corridor when the marauders came out from nowhere again, Hettula in their fire range.

They fired two complete salvos of missiles, four missiles each. Countermeasures from Hettula blocked most of them, but two fell on the outpost, close to each other. The first scrapped away most of the armor of the station, the second penetrated in the structure, blowing up part of it. The corridor where we were was very close to that spot.

I can't say how I saved myself. When these things happen (and they happen more often than you think) people talk about space instinct, something that make you able to feel the safe direction and the safe movement to do. When the first missile crashed on Hettula I knew, someway, where it blew then, ignoring what guards wanted me to do, I started run in the opposite direction. 

Teculpa guards hesitated, not understanding what I was doing, so when the second missile stroke, the flame caught them. I don't know exactly what happened, from a ballistic point of view, I just know what I saw: a great, hot light coming down from above, devouring the metal of the roof, vaporizing the two poor Teculpas, all of this in front of me.

My EVO suit was already active and I was wearing the helmet (standard procedure, again)  so the sensors caught up the huge increase of temperature and activated the thermal screen, while my body was touched by the far breath of the explosion, something at 2000 grades Celsius. Fortunately, the open space is good for extinguish fire and all the flames rapidly disappeared, leaving me a good vision of a portion of the galaxy, through a hole in the hull of the outpost 70 ft. large.

"Diplomat, for the hell! Answer!"

The voice of captain Valtair resonated in my head. "What are you doing, captain?"

"We're waiting for you! The situation is becoming hot! One of the marauders fired something like a laser weapon to the docking bay where we are, trying to stop ships from coming out! You have to reach us fast!"

"Negative, captain. No way to arrive where you are. Leave the station and do an emergency drift to a safe system"

My mind was analyzing the track between me and the Queen Charlotte, judging it too long and too dangerous, considering holes like the one I was staring at.

"Are you asking me to leaving you here?"

"Actually, I'm ordering you to do that. It's useless for you to risk the Queen Charlotte. I don't think we're their target, you could luckily escape them if you move fast!"

"Diplomat, that's not how I work!"

"I know you have discipline issues, captain Valtair, but for now I just want you to realize how impossible is your plan to save me"

Silence. Valtair was balancing all the options in her head. As I said, I trusted her to act rationally also in a situation like that.

"Then... good luck, diplomat. Queen Charlotte out. We'll inform human senate about this"

Situation of the ship solved, I knew that I needed to move to a place where the open space wasn't so close. I was already breathing the air from my personal reserve, that was giving me just around two hours of autonomy. I wanted to run back to Hiraku office, just to find out how much of my section was compromised. I was hoping to find an airlock safe enough to let me pass through, to reach a part of the outpost where the life support was still working. My poor knowledge about the base deceived my intentions, making me get lost after few turns.

A new salvo of missiles solved the problem.