The Withered Land, THE EMPIRE FALLS: HELL'S AVATAR

HELL'S AVATAR -- PART TWENTY-THREE

The scarab-encased city of Bur'heddam crested a series of eight story-high, kilometer-wide dunes just as the twin suns fell behind the horizon, draining the sky of their fuzzy color palette of sage and olive hues. The stars shining through the dark void of space overhead were twinkling pinpricks in dirty velvet. A quartet of gargoyle totem-topped stone pillars marking the edges of the ancient, fallen necropolis greeted the mobile cyborg-habitat, standing as evidence that the massive city was once a magnificent and dominant, terrifying fortress. As was usual in this arid region of sunbaked terrain, a hot wind rushed across the pebble-infested sands and its passing injected the air with static electrical charges that occasionally flashed spontaneous, bright eruptions of smoking sparks that rode the breezes like fiery seed pods. Towering dust devils abruptly swirled and danced, their conic shapes writhing as they rotated like angry serpents, to then quickly collapse and die as the surging wind fanned the dry soil.

"We have arrived," Primehunde Storm-Captain Qeskan Wa'entrud announced to the others in the Command Center chamber. "Initial long range biothermic imaging scans detect multiple organic sentients moving among the city's surface structures. Some of the bounce-back imaging registers within the human range of the spectrum, but other bounce-backs indicate that there are a large percentage of parahuman variants, evolutionary mutants, scattered throughout the area. Polychromatic beam and energy-sequencing scans indicate there are multiple small non-lethal power sources throughout the necropolis, but there is a large, anomalous subterranean blip charted that indicates there is a power source of massive potential buried nearby."

Dame Tanzamia Cleriq rose from her seat at the head of the conference table in the room, posture rigid, the tension of the situation reflected in her stilted manner. She strode over to the forward viewport, her eyes narrowed as she peered past the cloak of shadows draped over the fragmented edifices of crumbling Shi'draih-Hakaba, and she was momentarily lost in thought evaluating the city's current circumstances.

"Do our scans pick up any weaponry directed at us?" she asked.

Qeskan shrugged. "There's no real way to scan for that kind of specificity. We would be able to tell if any residents within the necropolis had directed any kind of electrical or magnetic probe at us, but we would not be able to classify whether or not it was tied to weaponry."

"Have we received any transmissions yet from Platoon Leader Geslan Tu'um and the Ket'Horreau cavalry? Any word from Troop Captain Devere Axlan? Do we even have any readings from their vital signs telemetry?" she said.

"Their telemetric bio-monitor readings fell off-chart nearly an hour ago," Qeskan said. "Their bio-chips do not respond to any network packet verification acknowledgements. They're all offline."

Tanzamia swore bitterly.

Ambassador Jhonwin Czuek cleared his throat loudly before saying, "I do believe I warned you such would happen. Your men are gone."

Tanzamia whirled around and stomped away from the viewing portal, her simmering anger overflowing. She stabbed her finger at the Ambassador and hissed angrily through her facial mask, "I would not be so smug about reminding me how you and your damnable scheming are responsible for the probable deaths of my men!"

"Madam, I do not scheme," Czuek said, his tone even although his jaw clenched with his indignation at being made the object of Dame Cleriq's anger. "There are strategies at work here that were developed at the highest official levels. We do not anticipate nor engineer the harm or deaths of loyal citizenry with a cavalier attitude. I will thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head and keep in mind the extreme gravity of the stakes for which we play. The world as you knew it has irrevocably changed. Bur'heddam is vital among the Emperium's last line of defense against what is coming..."