Gems, Supplies, Allies and Shady Deals

[Pavel]

- Leaks are something we indeed worry about. As such, mercenaries' true allegiance should be known to the Elders themselves only, director Wattenscheid. We cannot use common mercenaries in that wing, sooner or later they'd betray us. We need specific kind of people, the ones with unquestionable loyalty. Our Secret Projects department is working on such qualified human material, suffice to say extensive advanced psychlogical conditioning and drug use is involved. Test subjects are chosen from skilled fighters who worked for us previously, either as regular employees of Security Division, or as trusted mercenaries.

Another thing, however, is the problem of supplying such squadron. There is no doubt once our Cretan base of operations is fully set up, materiel input requirements for squadron will be lessened; repair materials, advanced tools etc will be available locally. Until that, we need to divide shipments meant for Crete between the mercenary squadron and Corsairs' needs. Solution to that would be actual hiding our disguised transports in crowd of average smugglers and unlawful traders doing business with Crete. Benefits would be double, not only our support is hidden better, but also we can boost trade exchange with Corsairs to theoretically unlimited size, given there are enough freelance captains willing to risk dangerous smuggling route to Omicron Gamma.

After few breaths to let the tongue rest, Von-Geld continued:

- I can think of even one more additional benefit. Directors, it simply will be cheaper to hire actual smugglers for help with shipments, than dispatch more of our own ships in disguise, what'd require us to invest more into local infrastructure, fuel costs, bribes for occasional Federal Police patrol and so on. That way squadron would achieve combat readiness sooner; shipments for Corsairs per se will be handled chiefly by freelance shippers. *cough*

That of course means also we can smuggle more Artifacts back, as we won't be forced to use majority of our ships for Corsair needs. I'm not an accountant myself, but Secret Projects department predicts, if there are no setbacks and our initial plan is executed at one hundred percents, operation should cross profitability level and start earning money in around a year.