Source: Rafinin Family Drive, last known owner—Isi Rafinin (inherited from Trevor Rafinin)
Type: Personal Journal
Publication Date: Hasperin 24, 98 AFB
Catalog ID: DWR-C8-549-128
Will asked me to write this down, so I have. Though I fear it might just bring down scorn upon my family. Still, Will convinced me that people would need to know, someday, when we figured this all out. Some will probably hate me for what I write here. Please know that I will regret my actions for the rest of my life, but I’m also not entirely sure what I would have done differently. My decisions haunt me like specters, ever present and just out of sight. But regret changes nothing, and I’ve done all that I can to rectify the situation.
We stopped at Daedalus spaceport before this all happened. It was just a regular stop, a chance to get off the ship, even if the port wasn’t quite the same as being planet side. It was a welcome change for me. Most of the crew was staying in one of the highrises a few miles from the docks. Will had been giving me those looks again. Most of the time he was, and still is, a consummate professional, a captain to a fault, but sometimes portside, he let his feelings show.
I liked him of course, though I would never have admitted it then. He was only two years older than me, but he got an earlier start at the academy, and he was a brilliant leader, of course.
But I wanted my own ship. I had my path all planned out. I liked him, but I liked my plan more, and I told him that. He respected it, but he was moody that night, and he kept shooting me those glances. So, I left. I took a walk to think about things.
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That part of the city was safe, so I didn’t think that walking outside alone would be a problem. It never had been before. I was a few blocks away when two men and one of those reptilian traders from Sritfiri cornered me.
They took me to the docks at blaster point. They had my sister there. They were very clear that if I didn’t do exactly as they asked, then she would die. They said they needed to get on the ship. There was something on there that they wanted.
I thought they would take cargo. Maybe something valuable, but something recoverable. My sister’s life was worth any object that we had on that ship, so I got them on board. I got them into the service area.
I erased all evidence of their time on the Atalanta. They demanded it. I had the clearance to do so. They released my sister to me after, left us standing on the docks and disappeared. I was terrified to send the port authority after them. It’s not unheard of for them to take bribes, and I worried they might have been paid off. So, I wrote up a message to send after the Atalanta left port, and I brought my sister on board. In retrospect, I should have told someone. Who knows if my message even got through? Maybe if I had then there would have been some tie to what happened, some trail to follow to find us.
I checked the computer systems before leaving to make sure they hadn’t changed anything in the system. It was only later I realized that I was looking for the wrong things. They hadn’t stolen information, nor had they added any sort of virus.
But they did plant files. Map files.
And then they hid some sort of tracker on the ship. That last part may not even have been necessary. Our route was well known. Whoever did this obviously arranged it all. They sent the distress signal. They sent the attack to cripple our ship, and then they made sure that our maps would show Aralin as the most promising location for repairs.
I couldn’t have been the only one involved. I didn’t let them tamper with the statherium storage. There must have been someone in engineering. Maybe they survived, maybe not. A lot of our engineers died in the attack. If they survived, they never came forward. Maybe they were protecting someone like I was. Or perhaps, they were in on it the whole time. I never identified anyone.
Filed under: Pre-First Burst, Enigma, Atalanta
