When I sat down in the meeting room all the ghosts of the disaster were behind me. Cassandra was already there and the look she gave me when I entered helped me understand how scary was my face. I tried to make it better adjusting my hair and smiling a bit.

Balthror wasn't in a better mood but Rafkin's snouts are less expressive. He was just low on his chair, messy fur, tired eyes. There were two others with him, I never knew if they where just helpers of him or representatives of the Citadel, they never said a word.

"Teculpa Tau gave us clues about the route of the marauders." said Balthor "They didn't tell us how they found intelligence, but they were sure the pirates were heading a certain planet, out of the known borders of the space. We set a course to that immediately"

Cassandra and me looked each other, we already knew what planet was that, the real mystery was how Teculpa Tau found the information. Considering that the Origin clan was from a time before the schism it was possible that all the empires shared informations about them, but how Tau found the planet puzzled me.

We didn't say our doubts out loud, so Balthor went on with the report "The Sot'Quan is not a fast ship, but we drifted to reach the planet. During the travel someone intercepted us so we had to drifted out in this system. Then the marauders came for us"

"An ambush" I said, a more complex maneuver than the other attacks marauders did, in my opinion.

"They used their technique.. to... blink in and out from nowhere, shooting conventional bullets to us. We weren't able to return fire but... they were weak, the Sot'Quan wasn't taking real damage"

"How many of them?" I asked.

"Three vessels, as the first attack, same kind of ships"

I took note of the number in my mind and nodded, silently.

"After a while, one of the attackers pointed to us directly, as he wanted to crash on the Sot'Quan. We focused our fire on it with no result and then he fired some kind of torpedo. Our countermeasures, before that, were able to stop most of the devices used against us, but the guide system of that torpedo was similar to the one of their ships, ability to disappear and appear back included. He arrived on target"

"On the flank of the ship"

"It wasn't an explosion. Non at the beginning. It was just... light, a lot of light, harmless. But it went on growing for more than a minute, interfering with all our sensors. We lost contact with all the people in that section and in the end the light... dived inside the Sot'Quan, crashing in it and making all explode. Our axis tilted more than 20°. Something I never saw before, in all my life"

Balthor blinked and its little hands grasped the air, as he was expecting his ship to shake again under the memory of the disaster. He was shocked, he was one of the most experienced Rafkin warriors I ever met and he was trembling like a little child. There wasn't anything of incredible in it, not for me, not after I saw ground zero.

"What did marauders do after that?" I asked, just to drag him out of the painful remembrance.

"We needed few ours to regain control of the ship. We were blind for all that time. When we finally were able to scan the space around us again they were disappeared"

"Do you think they..."

"Yes, they spared us. Another blow like that and they could break the Sot'Quan in two. With less firepower, they could just board us and go on killing, impossible to say how much damage they could cause before any reaction from us. We... we don't have procedure to recover from something like that"

"Sot'Quan is still a menace for them, you're not so damaged to be not able to..."

"We're not sure you're right"

Balthor felt real pain admitting that, I saw that from his claws, he firmly closed them after speaking, making his teeth creak.

"Did you contact Teculpa Tau?"

The commander nodded no. "The fleet sent to the planet didn't respond"

I suddendly felt tired. I was prepared to solve a mystery, going on the planet, I was having something similar to a funny adventure... but that... that wasn't fun at all. "I need some time to rest" I said, grabbing the root of my nose "It has been a long day"

"Sure, diplomat Callus" answered Balthor, someone that recently saw too many long days "We hope you could use your ship as private quarters... We didn't... arrange anything for you"

"No problem, commander" considering Rafkin way to arrange cabin for humans, no problem at all.

Cassandra and me went back to the Queen Charlotte, on the way I noticed Cassandra was too quiet, her look low on the ground.  "It's a bad thing" I said her "And it will get worse fast"

She looked at me "Why do you say that?"

"Because someone lied"