Chapter 21
Tyrol awoke to a soft hand rubbing his chest. Looking across he could see it was Viper, she seemed to be around him a lot more lately, which he wasn’t entirely comfortable with. The parties were obviously starting to take control, as he didn’t even remember seeing her last night. Nonetheless, she was nothing short of athletic, and had many hidden talents.
“Where did you come from?”
“Well some would say heaven, my love.”
“Yes, and you’ve sent many more to hell.”
“Well,” she said, caressing his chest, “be thankful you’re on my good side then.” She started to slide across him, her naked body was so hot he thought she would catch fire.
“Wait.” He pushed her aside and sat up in the bed. “Business first. I have a few loose ends I need to tie up. There is a certain group of people that are at their use-by date. I have others taking care of some of the concern, but need you to go and strike a couple of dickey birds.”
“Agency or Government men?”
“No, off the grid types. May be handy with weapons, almost certainly have plenty.”
“Quiet or noisy?”
“Doesn’t matter, they’re out of town, and no one will miss them.”
“Two-hundred grand, and we stay here for the rest of the morning,” she said, running her finger down his forehead, over his nose, and stopping on his lips.
“Deal.” Tyrol tapped the privacy sensor on the bed post, the doors locked and windows hazed. He suddenly forgot why he had an issue with Viper as she threw herself on him and took complete control.
He woke to the sound of someone knocking at the door. Somehow he’d dozed off, understandable he assured himself, after the morning of intense exercise. “What?” he shouted in a clearly disgruntled voice.
“Sir, it’s Xan on the comm, he wants to talk to you.”
“Yeah, ok, tell him I’ll flash him in a minute.” Tyrol quickly got changed and went to his study. Looking in the mirror as he passed, his five foot ten frame looked a little less buffed than last night, nothing a few hours in the ring wouldn’t fix.
He sat in his chair, tilted it back, and activated the comm-holo, Xan came up on the screen immediately.
“Good morning Tyrol, I trust you are well?”
“Indeed, and yourself?”
“Quite fine. It has been an eventful few days, and I am interested in your update of the situation with Wing’Tan, and our acquisition of the technology they were developing.”
“Well, as advised, their base was completely destroyed. Seek and the woman named Trina are both dead. Two technical members got away, one by the name Loach, the other is Ping. It seems the group that attacked the Wing’Tan base were also after Ping. I have made contact with Loach, who has been very helpful with information.”
Tyrol continued to tell Xan how Loach had placed a bio-tag on Ping, and tracked his whereabouts to within a twenty kilometre radius, which became easy to pinpoint as they were now out of town in a sparsely populated area. Loach, for his trouble, was to get financial support from the Ordained, and would continue to serve them with ongoing development of the technology. Once Tyrol had acquired all of the components, that was.
“Good Tyrol. You have proved to be a most resourceful brother, which I knew you always would be. I will talk with the other members about your deal with Loach, a mere formality, but I’m sure you appreciate the order of command.”
“Of course Xan, I am but a cog in the machine.”
There was a pause for a moment. After what seemed to be some careful consideration from Xan, he nodded. “So what are we to do with these renegades that attacked the Wing’Tan, and what will be their next move?”
“I believe it was their sole intent to obtain all of the technology for the project the Wing’Tan were working on, probably for financial gain. They also attacked a Fed facility last night.”
“And do you propose to bargain with them for the tech?”
“Well we could, but I have another plan.” Tyrol had a sly grin. “They are split into two groups at present, and so not strong. I have operatives currently tracking them, and expect to have them eliminated, and their tech with us soon.”
“Excellent work Tyrol. If this tech is as powerful as our intelligence suggests, it will propel the Ordained to great power and strength. And you, my friend, will be revered among all Alphas as a true warrior of our way.”
“Tell me Xan, what does this tech have that has everyone climbing over each other to get?” Tyrol knew exactly what they were after, but wanted to know if Xan would be ‘on the level’.
Xan explained the basic principles of the technology, as far as they were aware. Most of the applications to date were around vehicles or weapons, as was the normal default-mode for any new technology. But what the minions around them were not considering was the practical commercial use for it. They had a two-pronged approach once they had all of the technology for themselves.
First, they were going to develop applications for mining, farming, harvesting etc that would increase efficiency and productivity ten-fold. The unfortunate side-effect of this though, was that they would engineer the tech to only last up to five years. They would then have to replace the items, and of course, only the companies of the Ordained could contract that. People would not have to use their products, but the difference in productivity would have most of them bankrupt in a year.
The second approach was that of deep subterranean mining. This tech had the ability to be designed and developed to operate in environments that no electrical system could hope to function. It was well known that living organisms existed deep into the earth's crust. They would use various technologies of swarm-exploration, and subductive mining to release chemicals and minerals that were previously unreachable.
This was the extent of Xan’s knowledge, as it had been passed to him, and Tyrol was suitably impressed. “Exceptional Xan. We will soon become the most powerful entity in the world.”
“Yes, we will. There will be sacrifices along the way, and you will need to make many, as will we all. You must know that most of the people you are now involved with cannot know of any of these activities. Any leak of information of our activity will put our entire future in jeopardy.”
“I have devoted my life to the Ordained, Xan. Any order I can fulfil, will be fulfilled.”
“I am pleased you see this life as I do, friend.” Xan cut his comm feed.
Tyrol leaned back in his chair, thoughts of fame and fortune swirled around his head like an intoxicating cocktail of pleasure and satisfaction. “Warrior,” he said out loud. “I like the sound of that.”
On that note, he got up and went down to the gym for a training session with his holo-trainer. Perfection is not only in the mind, but in the body.