"Everyone, get into the trucks now!" Dominic had to shout because of the wind. The dust storm tore at their eyes and throats as they scrambled to get onto the heavy transports that had just rendezvoused with them. Dominic was grateful for the evening sandstorm; it would cover their escape into the mountains. For the first time since they crashed onto the desert moon, he felt a slight tinge of hope.
As Dominic got into the second truck's cabin, he saw two other members of the delegation crammed in with him as well as a silent, stone-faced John Shive who was at the wheel.
"Let's get going shall we?" Dominic said with a smile.
Shive did not answer as he shifted the truck's gears and the vehicle started to lurch forward again. Dominic was about to ask what was wrong but then realized what the situation was and wisely kept his mouth shut for the rest of the trip.
Just as Mandrissa Monika Lee was about to climb onto the back of the third truck, she instantly felt a cramp on her hip and she fell back down onto the sand, the howling winds tearing at her mercilessly. Almost immediately, steady hands got her back up and proceeded to place her at the back along with a few other exhausted delegates. As she cringed with pain, a soft hand began to rub her anguished hip. As the official delegate of the Capellan Confederation looked up, she saw the reassuring smile of one of the stewardesses of the Amerigo, Jessica Bradshaw.
"Easy, Mandrissa." Bradshaw continued to massage her swollen hip. "You should not be putting too much pressure on this."
Mandrissa Lee gasped as the biting pain tore into her until it suddenly subsided. "How did you do that?" She asked, surprised.
"I learnt a bit of acupuncture during my days as a teenager." Bradshaw grinned as she continued to apply pressure on Lee's swollen hip as the truck that they were in began to move. "The pain should fully subside within a few hours."
"Thank you, my dear. Where are you from by the way?"
"My family hails from Spica, formerly the St. Ives Compact." Bradshaw said. "Due to the peace and order situation, my father felt that the best way to keep away from trouble was getting a job as part of a commercial flight crew. How wrong he was."
Monika Lee laughed despite the pain. "Well, maybe just this once you got a bit of bad luck. So your parents were formerly with the St. Ives Compact then?"
"Yes." Bradshaw said as she sat back among the crates that the truck was carrying. "But they didn't care who was in charge, they just wanted peace so that they could get on with their lives."
"And what about you, my dear? Did you think that the Capellan solution to reintegrate St. Ives back into the fold was a wrong one?"
"I am like my parents. I just want peace." With that Jessica Bradshaw got up and crawled over to where the other delegates were in order to see if they needed help, leaving the Mandrissa alone with her thoughts.
Several hundred kilometers to the west, Precentor Brandon St. Jamais listened with growing frustration as the fury of the howling winds and dust swirled outside while he and the other senior officers sat in the luxury of the DropShip's comfortable climate control systems. Adept Achmed Faud was delivering the last of his operational readiness report.
"Both the Bloodhound and the Initiate are complete write-offs, I'm afraid." Achmed Faud said.
"Status of their pilots?" Amon Goth asked.
"Bloodhound pilot was killed when he failed to eject when his reactor core melted while the Initiate pilot had the unfortunate luck to be sitting beside his 'Mech when the attack started. He is in serious but stable condition, burns on over ninety-percent of his body."
Brandon grimaced. Two casualties among the many others, but two he could ill-afford to lose. "What about the Spartan?"
"Give my team forty-eight hours, Precentor." Faud sighed with obvious exhaustion. "We will have it back to full operational status. The pilot wishes to avenge himself upon the Black Widow."
"Our Holy Order is blest to have dedicated individuals such as yourself working selflessly for us, brother Faud. When will the Gnats be operational again?" Brandon said.
"We are almost finished in getting our new remote control systems operational again, Precentor. Once the Sherji dissipates, the Gnats will be airborne."
"Good." Brandon turned and faced Jason Cornelius. "What about our infantry?"
"Well, we were supposed to have a full squad of Purifiers but the attack on the DropShips have seriously damaged most of the suits. We have two operational Purifiers only. As far as light infantry, we have two platoons." Cornelius explained.
"That should be more than enough." Brandon said. "We still have the numerical and firepower advantage. I want the Purifiers deployed with the LOM infantrymen; they should be able to complement each other perfectly."
"I agree." Cornelius said.
"Once the Spartan is back to operational status that gives us ten 'Mechs. I want permission to hunt the Black Widow down." Goth asked.
"Not on your own." Brandon said. "We will do a full-scale attack the next time we spot them. No more playing around." The others nodded in agreement as the meeting broke up.
After leaving the conference room, Brandon pulled his white robes tight around him as he headed for the brig. A fully armed WOB infantryman saluted him as he used his fingerprints to pass through the biometric sensors and entered a small room.
A diminutive illumination bulb on the ceiling bathed the room in twilight. On the hazy floor lay a woman, naked and covered with blood. A slight breath came out of her wheezing throat with an occasional bubble of vomit. She was near death.
Brandon looked down and stared at her pathetic form. So this woman was one of the raiders who so brazenly attacked his base camp and nearly got away with five truckfulls of weapons and ammunition. He had let his ROM-trained interrogators do whatever they pleased with her, knowing that she would die anyway. That the whole thing was recorded on vidtape only pleased him further for he had nearly flown into a rage when one of the trucks that were stolen contained some of his personal belongings, specifically several holovid datadisks that he so cherished. One of them was a recent movie that he had made with Kali Liao and he was looking forward to viewing it in the sanctity of his private quarters. He hoped that it was lost during the raid but if the delegates did manage to get it and view it, it still wouldn't have mattered for he was going to kill them all anyway, preferably with his bare hands. But not before he got some pleasure out of some of them first.
As he knelt over and brushed back the sticky-matted hair so that he could see her swollen, blood-covered face, the woman let out a bubbling sound as droplets of blood and vomit trickled down her bruised, blackened cheeks. Quickly taking a canister of water from a nearby table, Brandon poured it slowly over her face so as to wash some of the blood away. After standing up and admiring his handiwork, Brandon began to remove his robe and unbuckle his belt.
If he couldn't have some fun with his stolen holovid disks, then he would at least have some fun now on this one before she died. Brandon's last rational thought before his perverted lust took over was to remember that he needed to remind the interrogators to make an extra copy for him; he could restart his collection again.
Even with the sun staring straight down at them, the visibility was in mere meters because of the massive dust storm. The Sherji pounded the area mercilessly, the vortex of airborne sand was like a khaki wall that obscured their vision and tore at their bodies. Even within the apparent safety of their vehicles, fine grains of sand still seeped in. The dust would make its way to every corner and every part of one's body, there was no denying of it.
Natasha's Warhammer led the way with its navigational computer as the small convoy of trucks made its way relentlessly towards the mountains. Sometimes the trucks would get mired in the shifting sands but a slight nudge from the Warhammer's gargantuan legs pushed the vehicles back in motion. Within a few hours, all of the vehicles had made it to a sort of bedrock trail that enabled their wheels to grip the solid stone and they were able to proceed much faster.
The Black Widow could see that the Sherji was beginning to die down as the howling winds became less intense as the swirling vortex began to lose its power. Just as the wind forces dropped off to a few kilometers an hour, her 'Mech's sensors immediately began to detect a large landmass in front of them. Expecting trouble, Natasha quickly accelerated the Warhammer using the throttle; she needed to face whatever it was out there before it could possibly be a threat to the vulnerable trucks.
As her Warhammer crested a newly formed sand dune, Natasha let out a cry of surprise. She had not expected this. But then again, everything that had happened so far was uncanny, as if it was some sort of horrid fantasy that threatened to engulf her. First it was the realization that the desert harbored life and then she had a strange, almost supernatural encounter with an old man of the desert that seemed like a hallucination. As she stared back at what lay in front of her, it was merely another in a series of unexpected events that seemed to mystify her even further. Natasha slowed the Warhammer to a stop as she continued to look at it in disbelief. Was this just another sign from the fates? What other strange enigmas would be lying out here?
Dominic was partially thankful that the sky had at last cleared as John Shive drove the truck over the sand dune. They had been traveling for many hours now and only Dominic and Shive were awake inside the truck's driving compartment, all of the others had fallen asleep from pure exhaustion and so therefore the two were one of the first to see it. Shive pressed on the brakes and sat back, speechless. Dominic let out a dry gasp, as he could scarcely believe his own eyes. The SLDF Intelligence Officer rubbed his weary eyes to see if it was nothing more than a mirage but to no avail. Reality stared back at his unbelieving mind.
Across the dunes, the ancient city of Babylon stood before them. Its blue glazed walls scintillating in the setting sun.
