I'm not sure Indira started talking about her past just because I asked her looking in her eyes. I think she was going to do it anyway, probably to convince me to join her side, against the Teculpa and all the other forces of the galaxy that she considered enemies.

However, talking about her past appeared painful since the first word.

"There was this... consortium, a bunch of merchants sat on a rock in a part of the galaxy noone cared of. They didn't want anyone from the Human Senate around them, but the Senate wasn't interested, so the situation was good for all o them. Except, one day, Teculpa-Rashiki seized one of the other asteroids of their system and created an outpost in the name of the Warrior Emperor. Human fleet asked the consortium if they needed diplomatic support, they declined, again, saying that Teculpa were just customers like all the others and that they could exchange with them with some profit. Again, we all forgot about that corner of galaxy"

"Teculpa are not always deadly" I said.

Probably, in the past, captain Valtair would agree with me about that, but the look she gave me said her present opinion was another.

"All went well until a Teculpa legion coming from the People's Emperor decided that the system was important for his strategy. They made a step in the system, the Rashiki found it... impolite, the day after the place was a battlefield"

"Did the Human Senate did something, then?"

"They said that was impossible to intervene because there wasn't data about the situation. Honestly, they didn't want to spend resources with someone that wasn't collaborative at all at first. They tried just to gather information, keeping themselves away from the flames"

"But the situation changed..."

"They called us. They said they needed help because the Teculpa were... enslaving them. All was strange about that but someone on the top felt guilty about it and sent four battleship"

"Were you captain of one of them?"

"First officer. Captain Salas was my mentor until then, one of the most honorable persons I ever met. I was a bit young for my role, but he wanted me with him when he took the command of the Persepolis and obviously I followed him"

The Persepolis rang a bell in my historical records, but nothing I could focus on. I just nodded, letting captain Valtair go on.

"What we knew was that the legion of the People's Emperor was defeated, but that the Rashiki decided to take over the consortium because they played tricky during the conflict. When we arrived we found no battleship waiting for us so we just went to the human outpost to inspect it and find out was going on"

"It was a trap" I supposed "by the Teculpa"

"It was a trap by the Teculpa and the humans"

"What?"

"They lured the captains in the outpost, saying they had to report about the situation. Two of them went, Salas and another stayed on their ship. The captains at the outpost were slaughtered while a complete Teculpa Rashiki fleet drifted in, taking us as sitting ducks. We were the only ship to manage to leave the outpost, the other three were boarded and captured"

"But... how is this possible?"

"Rashiki and the consortium were allied during the war, they fought the People's Emperor fleet together. In the end, they found themselves still friends, but poor, so they designed a plan to capture human battleships"

"Absurd, how could they go away with that?"

" We were blind about the actual situation. They could set up something and keep the loot. I don't know why the Rashiki found that convenient, but warship like ours was more  of the entire value of the consortium"

"So you fought..."

"Persepolis was the only free ship. Rashiki had just little assualt ships. They disabled our drift engine first, because the most important thing was preventing us from escape. We had more firepower but they managed to board us so we had to fight deck by deck against Teculpa soldiers. You know what that means. Captain Salas left the bridge to me to go fighting on the frontline. My orders were to hold until the secondary drift engine was online. I kept fighting hostile ships for more than an hour, then they told me captain Salas was dead. I decided no secondary engine would come online and noone would help us, so I made my move"

"What did you do?"

"I fired all my weapons on the consortium outpost"

I gasped "You..."

"They deserved that. I destroyed that snakes' nest. One of the three captured ships, thank to that, managed to run away and drifted, while the Persepolis was captured. Teculpas took me and twelve survivors as prisoners. They released us very soon, to avoid retaliations by the senate. The consortium ceased to exist"

That was the bell that rang. The massacre of the Persepolis, I heard stories about that, stories different by the one coming from captain Valtair. It was surely a diplomacy mess, with a lot of mistakes from every side. Many carreers were destroyed with that outpost.

"So they gave you the Queen Charlotte"

"All the fleet had mixed feelings about me. I was the reason consortium's plan failed, but I was also the one that shot on a civil outpost destroying it, burning so many lives... I helped them deciding what to do with me, I was... wrecked, impossible to control, full of anger and hate. I slowly fell down to the Queen Charlotte, in a place where i couldn't hurt noone"

"Until now"

"Yutan is wrong. I don't want a battle. I don't need to fight anymore. I just know it will happen, because I know more about the nature of the races  than most of you."

"I think I can trust that"

Valtair was surprised, as I expected "Trust?"

"What you said is something I can understand. Something horrible, but something I can relate with. Now that I know"

"I hope that. It wasn't easy to speak about that"

"Yeah, but long journeys like this are made for stories like that"