The Architecture of Wealth (Story book)

[PTScalper]

Elias looked at the three crippled gunboats drifting on the map. They were filled with men who had attempted to break the Iron Toll.

"Sink them," the Grand Master commanded, his voice devoid of mercy.

Elias authorized the Hashashin’s final protocol. In the Strait of Malacca, the Wardens on the bridge of the tanker remotely triggered the secondary charges on the limpet mines they had attached to the drifting gunboats.

[PTScalper]

The analog vessels were violently ripped apart in three simultaneous geysers of fire and boiling seawater. They sank into the dark depths of the strait in less than two minutes, leaving nothing but burning diesel and floating debris.

Elias tapped the terminal, re-routing the seized Sunda Empress to a Templar-controlled deep-water port in Singapore.

[PTScalper]

"The diesel will be re-allocated to the European agricultural sector," Elias said, updating the global ledger in real-time. "The analog warlords just lost a month's worth of generator fuel. And the Iron Famine clock just extended by three weeks."

"They will learn that they cannot run the blockade," Gideon rumbled. "But Julian Graves was right about one thing. They are hoarding the cobalt in the jungle. Sinking their ships extends our survival, but it does not fix the Cathedral’s mortality rate."

[PTScalper]

Elias turned away from the glass, looking down at the obsidian Genesis Node resting on the console.

"Then we don't just sink their ships, Gideon," Elias said, the terrifying calculus of the new world hardening his features. "We use the seized fuel to power a mechanized Hashashin invasion force. If the analog warlords will not bring the iron to the Cathedral, the Cathedral will go to the jungle."