Damion stared at the grain of the rich brown wood through the glass top of his desk, lost in thought, leaning back slightly in his luxurious black leather office chair. He was a thickly built man with carefully trimmed thick, black hair and narrow glasses. The office wall to his left was covered in bookshelves, and the rest of the white walls were mostly bare except for a few landscape pictures from various planets and a circular clock. A potted plant with football-sized leaves occupied the corner behind him to his right.
His computer made a low beep. "Mr. Peters, Kevarin Gaartha from Public Relations is here to see you."
"Send him in." Damion placed both feet flat on the floor and leaned forward over his desk. A moment later, the silver door slid silently open, and Kevarin walked cautiously into the room. He wore a blue collared shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a black tie, and his hair was bright green. He scanned the office with his deep blue eyes, then took a moment to gape at the antiquated paper-and-ink books.
"Have a seat, Kevarin." Damion's quiet, deep voice almost made Kevarin jump. Kevarin dragged a black cushioned chair over from by the door and plopped down into it.
"I've got the report you asked for." Kevarin pulled an orange flash drive from his shirt pocket and dropped it on the desk, then quickly withdrew his hands into his lap.
"Can you give me a quick summary?" Damion grinned gently as he slid his hand over the flash drive and closed his fingers around it.
"Yeah. The UGS are definitely gonna go after our smuggle teams, 'cause they definitely know about what we're wanting to smuggle and they totally know that we're totally going to go for it. Somebody must've leaked the information or something. We're gonna need to have our smuggle teams be pretty tough fighters or something if we're gonna make the operation work."
"Do you know what extent the UGS has mobilized its counter-operations to?"
"Not a clue."
Damion's grin faded and he leaned forward a little further. "Our Celestial Eclipse team was attacked before they even left their home planet. They just barely contacted me from the Vantares system."
Kevarin reeled back, wide-eyed. "Crap. Somebody's leaking info. I'm pretty dang sure now."
Damion leaned back in his chair and raised his voice slightly. "Tell your supervisor I need your department to confirm that the attackers of the Eclipse were indeed from the UGS. I will grant him administrative access to the recording of my conversation with Captain Takashi. Do you have any questions?"
Kevarin's eyes shifted left, then right, then he spoke. "Nope."
"You are dismissed."
Kevarin stood and moved quickly out of the room. Damion looked down at his desk and started tapping his fingers on it slowly.
I thought I was becoming CEO of a merchant company, he thought. And now we have a spy department hidden in our public relations department, and a military force in our security department. We're fighting a secret war with pirates and malicious companies. And there's no telling what the governments are going to turn into...
He pressed a button on his computer. "Get me Kypher from Security."
It's time to see if our smuggling teams are up to our challenge.
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