“You wanted to see me, Xander?” I asked as I came through the doorway and into the command center.

“Greetings my lord, I heard the operation went well?”

“It went fine. Now what did you find out about the convoy?”

Xander leaned over the holo table. The holo table displayed the Haderes system in which Rafar was situated with its sister planets. Amira the ice planet and the desert world of Zevia with its ever-vigilant green moon Deros. “Our scouts have come back, though they brought heavy losses with them. It turns out that pirates attacked the convoy.”

I raised an eyebrow “Pirates? All the way out here?”

“I’m as perplexed as you are my lord, but the irrefutable truth remains, which is that one of our scout ships has taken serious damage from a pirate vessel.”

“What was the location of the pirates when they attacked the scout ship?”

Xander changed the view on the holoscreen and a second later a red path digitally manifested itself between Rafar and Amira. “What type of ship did the pirates attack with?”

Before Xander could reply he was interrupted by the metal clanking of a soldier’s boots.

The soldier came to a sudden stop as half the command center's personnel aimed a pistol a rifle or a coffee mug at the guy. Looking the soldier over I noticed a set of fresh and bloodied bandages around his head, and one of his arms dangled at his side like a marionet’s arm whose string had been cut. “Belleran! What the hell are you doing here?!!” Bellaran seemed unfazed by the fifty-ish weapons aimed at his cerebrum as he screamed “Where are those bastards?!!” and Ignored Xander's command as he took another step forward, he seems to be searching for something.

“Soldier if you take another step towards Lord Rafar your head will be filled with something that ain’t muscle!!”

Judging by the fact that Xander hadn’t shot the soldier yet he must be familiar with him.

“Are you lord Jason?” Asked the half-crazed Belleran.

Ah crap....

“And what if I am soldier?” I said with more grace and composure than I felt. A trick my father taught me for when I would take up the mantle of ruler one day.

“My lord I need permission to-”

“Woh slow down buddy, let’s take a breath first,” I said as I slowly walked towards him. “Okay?”

I got his full attention as his eyes focused on me.

“Okay, now what do you need my permission for?”

“T-ttt they killed him, lord! Those bastards killed Haruk!” said the man who barely seemed to notice his arm bleeding all over the floor.

I came even closer to Belleran as I spoke. “You have my word Bellaran that we will find and punish those who murdered loyal men like Haruk, but first we need to figure out where they are.”

“But!” and that was all he got out as Xander knocked him out from behind. “Ferrick get Belleran back to medical before he bleeds out and make sure to have someone guard him and the rest of the scout team before they get themselves killed. And you lot.” Xander looked at a group of security watchers. “Find out how in the void this man got here without encountering any security.”

“SIR! YES SIR!” Shouted the soldiers in the room who quickly went to follow their orders.

Xander turned and bowed to me solemnly. “I am sorry for the incompetence of both me and my soldiers.”

“We handled the situation Xander it’s fine.” I waved him away as I walked back towards the holo table.

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“No it’s not!” hissed Xander.

I turned around. “But we prevented the loss of a loyal soldier,” I asked confusedly.

“You don’t understand the significance of your life right now! With your parents out of commission, You are the last of your bloodline to represent the entirety of Rafar. I know that most of us here including you don’t care for such outdated thinking but the Autarchs from the Union certainly do, and the only reason they haven’t taken over our world is because of the service your family has rendered to the union in the past. So if anything happened to you or your bloodline Rafarian society would collapse within a week! And I assure you that most Autarchs don’t care for the populace in the way that your family does.”

The command center grew quiet as Xander’s words echoed off the walls.

Xander sighed “Look, Lord Jason, this situation was not your fault, if anyone is to blame it is the door guards who hesitated to either shoot or incapacitate the wounded Belleran. I will make sure to drill them so that something like this doesn’t happen again, but I need you to understand the weight your life holds right now.”

“I... I understand.”

Xander didn’t look entirely convinced but backed off. He was probably afraid that all kinds of rumors would spread, rumors that we couldn’t afford right now.

“For what it’s worth though, I’m glad we didn’t have to shoot Belleran thanks to your efforts.”

“Who is Belleran anyway? You seem to know the guy.”

Xander nodded. “Belleran was part of the crew sent out on the scouting mission.”

“That explains a lot. Will make those pirates pay for what they've done.”

“We will lord, but first we have to find them, now as for your earlier question, the pirates were using fighters.”

“Do we know the fighter model they are using?”

“Not precisely, why do you want to know my lord?”

I used the holo screen to display a circle zone originating from the last known location of the pirates.

“Because if we know the fighter model we know how much fuel they can carry, which will help us narrow down their field of activity. And using that we can surmise that somewhere in this region” I pointed to the zone “There is a way to refuel, which is where we need to strike.”

Xander looked thoughtfully “I hadn’t considered approaching the problem from that angle, I’ll see what we can find out and narrow down the area of their refueling base.”

“Good, but that still leaves us with another question, how did they find out about the convoy?”

“I don’t know. The only ones who knew of the convoy were Lady Miranda, Lord Collin, and the outer colony partners who sent the convoy.”

I furrowed my brows. “What's the chance the pirates stumbled across this information by themselves?”

Xander shook his head “Next to none, everyone involved in the convoy swore to secrecy. If they didn’t the union would have taken control the moment they heard of the convoy.”

“Then that means that there is a traitor among us.”

“My lord, while I agree that this is certainly a concern, there are more pressing matters at hand.”

“Like?”

“Our fleet's capacity. As you know we aren’t rich. To put it bluntly, having two corvets, two fighter squads and one scout ship is about all we could scramble together. I fear that we may lack the resources to deal with these pirates, given that the majority of our forces aren't experienced fighters and that we don’t know the number of pirate vessels out there.”

I scratched my head. “Right, and unlike the pirates we can’t take the fighter squads with us due to a lack of a refueling base.”

Xander shook his head. “And that is not even the end of our problems. Even if we do manage to fix the fuel problem and send out all our forces, our space station will be left defenseless.”

Which we can’t lose as it is the only way Rafar currently has to get access to new opportunities to improve our situation.

“So to summarize we need to find the pirates and their base of operations, find a way to expand our navy, and increase the orbital defenses surrounding the station. Any idea on where to start?”

Xander scratched his chin in thought. “We can take care of the scouting problem once the scout ship is patched up, the main problem will be increasing our navy and the defenses. All the ships we currently have are the ones we bought for cheap and fixed up ourselves, from back when your family first came here with the space station. Until now Rafar never needed a big fleet as no one would come all the way here.”

“but now we will have to figure out some way to build up our fleet, I’ll check back in with Grimar and Henry to see what can be done, are there any other pending issues I should look at?”

“There are always more problems, but not that I know of right now. For the domestic problems, you will need to check in with Orik.”

“Alright send someone to fetch Orik and bring him to engineering where I will meet with Grimar and Henry to see what we can do.”

“Yes, Lord. I will also send Talos there so that you can all discuss what resources could be allocated to fix the coming problems. ”

“Good, while heading there I will also inform our outer colony partners to inform them of the pirate threat.” I said as I walked out of the command center and back to engineering. I let out a silent groan as I left.

This is going to be a long day…