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Tomas reached the welcoming party with his security detail following close behind

“Nathan, it’s been too long.” Tomas said as he shook Nathans hand.

“Seven years, it’s funny, but it doesn’t seem that long, and you of course look the same.”

“As do you, and what are seven years compared to more than a hundred.”

“A drop in the ocean,” Nathan smiled slightly, and then nodded towards Elias “Mr. Bakas”

“Mayor.” Elias nodded back.

“Tomas, I believe that you are acquainted with Professor Hyeon Seo-yun, who is a consultant on our little project.” Nathan gestured to the woman standing beside him, Tomas of course already knew her. She like most every other person in Concordis looked like she was in her twenties, she was an attractive woman, of Korean heritage, with straight brown hair tied in a tail and brown eyes, though the pictures from her file failed to convey the full depth of intelligence that shone from her eyes. She had degrees in many areas, she was a professor of astrophysics and astronomy, with her other degrees including such as thermodynamics and robotics. Based on her file she was close to eighty years old, ten years older than Tomas, and one of the brightest minds in the world. Tomas has been trying to bring her into the Olympus family for the past twenty years, she refused all his offers, saying that working for Olympus had no interest or challenge for her, and Tomas had offered her more than he had offered anyone else. He had made it a sort of a quest for himself, to bring her into the company, Tomas could wait a long time to reach his goals, and he had all the time in the world.

“Professor Hyeon, I must say that it gives me immense pleasure seeing you in Olympus uniform.” Tomas smiled slightly.

“Humph, yes, I imagine it would for someone like you.” She said in return with a tight smile on her face that somehow managed to convey utmost contempt for him.

“Oh, someone like me?”

“Yes, a person with a pathological need to control everything he lays his eyes on, person with delusions of grandeur, in other words a megalomaniac.” Her words were followed by absolute silence and wide eyed looks of the rest of the party turned towards her, Tomas could appreciate honesty, he rarely got it from his subordinates, he found it refreshing.

“Why, thank you Professor that was exactly what I was going for.” He smiled widely, and then turned back to Nathan, but not before seeing the shocked look on the Professor’s face.

“Lead the way Nathan, I’m eager to proceed.”

“Of course Tomas, this way please.”

They entered the elevator in silence, and after Nathan provided the terminal with right codes started moving down, towards the city, a few times they could feel the elevator slowing and moving sideways, meaning that they changed shafts, the project facility was at the bottom of the ocean, a few kilometers outside of the cities limit, it was listed as a storage facility which explained the less frequent traffic to and from the facility.

After a few minutes Nathan finally broke the awkward silence “As per your instructions, no one has entered the ship, since the doors opened, and security has been placed on red alert we—”

“Wait, since the door opened? You mean to tell me that the door opened on its own?” Tomas asked sharply, that wasn’t included in the report, and now that he thought about it the actual opening of the door was described rather vaguely, all Tomas was interested was that the door was opened, and didn’t really focus much on the means of how, stupid of him really, but he was very much excited about a prospect of exploring the spaceship that it slipped his mind, he mentally issued commands to his implant, recording this entire incident and making sure that another such oversight doesn’t happen again.

“Well we aren’t really su—” Nathan started nervously but was interrupted by Professor Hyeon.

“The events surrounding the opening of the door are somewhat unclear, and we can’t say with a hundred percent certainty what happened until we enter the ship, but what we do know is that a technician was working on trying to open what we believed to be an access hatch, the technician was frustrated and in a fit of helplessness yelled at the ship to “open the door”, though he didn’t use that exact wording nor proper language, after which the door lowered.”

“You are telling me that we have an unknown ship under power inside our facility, a ship that seemingly opened a door on its own? And you didn’t see it prudent to inform me about it!?” Tomas said raising his voice slightly, and letting a touch of steel to slide inside his tone, tone which he used when he was very displeased.

“I have presented the mayor with my recommendation, which was for a science and security team to enter the ship, and the facility to be evacuated immediately. I assumed that you had denied my request director.” Professor Hyeon said in a voice that made her previous remark clear to Tomas, she believed that he had knowingly endangered his people just so that he could have a chance to enter the ship first.

“Nathan.” Tomas turned to the mayor of Sedna.

Nathan’s face had turned white and he nervously looked around to the other faces in the elevator with them, the Professor had her superior mask on while Elias had his usual uninterested face on, seeing how he wouldn’t get any help from them Nathan turned back to Tomas “Ah, we – when I informed you about the situation, y-you ordered that no one goes inside u-until you got here, I— I just followed your orders sir— ah director.” Nathan said dropping the familiar tone he used earlier. By the end of his speech Nathans eyes were fixed on the floor, while he nervously rubbed his palms against his uniform.

“Yes, I gave you orders, orders I made without all the information I was supposed to have, if you had told me the circumstances I would have reacted much differently. A part of the blame lies with me, for not asking for an elaboration, but a much greater part lies with you for withholding it from me. I have placed you in the position of leadership, because I trusted your judgment and capability, trust that you have now lost. I don’t need sheep who are too cowardly to tell me to my face when I’m in the wrong. You are dismissed from your position effective immediately; your second will replace you until such a time when I can choose a suitable replacement.”

”B-but sir, please I was ju—” Elias’s hand on his shoulder silenced his attempt at an argument and coaxed out a soft “Yes sir.”

Chapter Three

The rest of the ride was spent in silence that was even more awkward than the one before. There was one thing that Tomas hated more than anything else, and that was incompetence from competent people. He could understand when the people who didn’t have the drive to do their best, to rise above all others, who didn’t have the means nor abilities to succeed acted incompetent, but when someone who had decades to rise and better themselves, made the same mistake, that was another matter entirely. He could forgive someone even if they made such an mistake, even he made mistakes from time to time, but when one tried to place the blame on others or to justify his mistake when that mistake put people in their charge in danger then it was much harder to forgive. Tomas was running an empire and he needed competent trustworthy people who would tell him things he needed to hear, not things they thought he wanted to hear, because at the end of the day he made his decisions based on information provided to him by those who worked for him.