The meeting could be arranged only two days after the arrival of the Queen Charlotte. I already relocated to the cabin captain Valtair gave me. 

During the night I slept very well in a comfortable, long-enough military bed, but I was still very worried about the situation. I tried to contact every friend I had in the Teculpa empire and none of them responded. I found it very strange because I thought that they all would gladly exchange informations on the situation with someone on site.

The day of the meeting I wore my high uniform as always but after I left the human spaceship situation rapidly got worse. Jeremhia came to me in the corridor, trying to catch me before entering the meeting room. "There's a problem" he said.

"What kind of problem?"

"I'm in charge of the mission no more"

You could think that a Rafkin ship would have a complicated hierarchy that lead to a Rafkin captain, but it's not exactly right that. A section chief like Jeremhia is in charge for everything happen in his section as an absolute king. A section on a Rafkin ship is usually large as a big human spaceship, but it's nearly seal-contained: it has crew, resources, docking bays. This way a chief can command on his people for all his life with no interference. The only thing  not under his control is the direction of the global ship, that usually is something he is not interested in at all.

"How is it possible?"

"People from the Citadel are here"

The Citadel is the core of a Rafkin ship. Most important people live there, like a council, they discuss and actuate all important matters for the whole ship. They obviously were watching at us to understand what was happening with the Heereen and the Teculpa but their presence wasn't expected.

"Where are they?"

"In the meeting room, they participate to the meeting"

I felt a bit of sickness opening the door of the meeting room and the sickness grew when I saw the three high level Rafkins waiting for me. I recognized Bathor, the Rafkin warlord. He was a quite peculiar Rafkin because his fur was blonde and he usually kept it very long.  This way, his body was wrapped in a robe of gold. While all the Rafkins are similar to rats, he was more like a fox.

However, he wasn't the most important of the bunch. On his side there was a big black Rafking, big has twice the height of Jeremhia, with red eyes and hair strictly kept under some kind of coronet.

"Welcome to the meeting, diplomat Callus" he said, giving no clue about his presence there.

"Hail to the citadel. I'm happy you joined us, I wanted to come to you but I was very busy"

"There's no need to pay too much respect to us, diplomat. We don't need it and we don't want you to celebrate too much because we have sad news"

I looked around. Captain Valtair and Cassandra were already there. Valtair eyes were burning with hate.

"What kind of sad news do the citatel brings to us?"

The black rat heavily stomped his foot. "We are at war with the marauders"

In any case, war is always a bad word. "Marauders?"

"That's the name Teculpa empire gave to the people that attacked us"

In that moment I learned the Rafkins were doing talks with the Teculpa, while I wasn't able to.

"They didn't attack you, they attacked the heereen ship"

"Attacking a guest is like attacking us"

I knew that there was something dirtier in that declaration. When Rafkins are at war they usually do nothing. They usually let the enemy try to besiege them. This way they can use the complete firepower of their colony ship with no risk to get hurt.

"I understand. You have the right to do that"

"We're in contact with the Teculpa-Tau. They said that they can help us, because they're very interested in eliminate the marauders from the space. There's just one little obstacle"

"Please, tell me if I can..."

"Teculpa-Tau asked us to stop hosting human ships or human crew on the Sot'Quan"