“So, this is the creature that saw fit to take our friends from us.” Iman’s voice sounded like the last winds in September, and her strange eyes rippled and danced. “The retribution of the Beretta State will be as a scouring pad, cleaning this blight off the face of the earth.”
“Captain, picking up G emissions – they’re targeting us!” A young Beretta officer turned his wide eyes to her.
“Battle stations, Berettas!” Iman stood to clear her orders, “Let the Mollyhock speak!”
The early morning tranquility was shattered by the cuffing roars of the Mollyhock’s broadside armaments. The dunes rippled and the dark matatu Mogwai – so mysterious with its lack of tracks – rocked and stumbled under the concussive onslaught from the Beretta State’s heavy destroyer.
The dark machine snarled into life and its myriad guns chattered and sparked sending a cloud of lead up to the Berettas. In the same instant, its strange tires blurred forth and made to carry the monster out of its unfavourable tactical position.
Iman smiled as the bullets crumpled harmlessly on the Mollyhock’s thick hide.
The Mogwai leapt up out of the dune with astonishing speed, but all its energies were focused on the Mollyhock and it didn’t make a move to defend itself from the Snow Pharaoh until it was far too late.
Swooping in out of the rising sun in the east, the Pharoah tilted its twin Joho guns towards the opposite flank of the Mogwai and tore open a seam in the side of the strange matatu. The iconic stuttering bark of the Joho guns was like music to Iman’s ears, and Commander Hatasu brought the Pharaoh well clear of the Mogwai’s boiling counterattack.
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Now the dark matatu swung its giant cannon in Iman’s direction. She and her Berettas stared down its rifled barrel without an ounce of fear. With blurred hands the pilots pivoted the Mollyhock out of the canon’s firing line and made a charge for the cover of the nearby dunes. The Sheda’in announced itself in the same moment by launching a ruinous rocket that caught the Mogwai’s proud gun on its snout, and disabled the weapon entirely.
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Without letting up the pressure, Rama Sinclair guided his blade of a matatu right up to the wheel base of the dreadnaught, right under the firing cones of its defensive guns, and fired a second rocket into the imposing matatu’s miraculous wheels. Mogwai gave a shuddering jump, then leaned severely into the sands and under the titanic weight of its own inertia, buried its nose deep into the shifting dunes and tore itself in half from the scar the Snow Pharaoh wrought.
The Berettas gathered themselves in a semi-circle around the stricken matatu as its fuels caught and went up in flames. Iman watched with grim satisfaction as the black smokes, so similar to those of her fated scouts, billowed up into the atmosphere.
“Such a fearsome contour,” Rama Sinclair said to himself as he eyed the fallen matatu, “Yet it moved only as an ambush predator – when it became the prey, the creature was undone in an instant…”
Suddenly, from within the glowing wreckage, a hunched figure wrapped in a flaming cloak stumbled out before the Beretta court. With a twitch of its arm, it tore the flaming cloth from its body and roared its challenge to the merciless matatus surrounding it. Iman was out on the ground striding toward the figure before anyone on the bridge even noticed her absence. Her eyes were like ice, and her jaw was set.
The figure revealed itself to be a jitu – a lesser demon from some fathom of the Dark City – and it slung a heavy rifle off its shoulder, leveling at Iman’s head as she marched over. Its face was a horned skull, and its chitinous body was brightly coloured and ornamented. It stood a good two feet taller than the Beretta Captain.
“Iman Maridadi,” its rasping voice clattered across the dry air, “You have committed a grave sin by striking against us.”
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Without breaking her stride Iman split the creature’s skull with a heavy bullet from her revolver, and she walked over its still twitching corpse to get a closer look at the Mogwai’s wheels. The intense heat of the raging fire meant she couldn’t get too close, but even from this distance she could feel the influence of some power emanating from the strange matatu’s tires. A power that she was familiar with.
“So this is how you were able to glide across the dunes without ever leaving a trace of your passage…” Iman spat on the ruin and climbed back onto the haunches of the Mollyhock. From her perch, she signalled the Berettas to return to the desert camp.
On the return journey, Rania asked Iman about the Mogwai’s tires. “How was that monstrosity able to move so delicately, Iman?”
“Its tires were blessed by Tuasa.”
“The desert god?!”
“The very same.”
“But how is it possible that you recognize the aura of the desert star himself?”
“That is a story for another time,” Iman laughed, “For now, let us hurry back to the embrace of our friends.”
Every Beretta listening in on the conversation shook their head in wonder and joined Rania in a hearty, “Aye Captain!”
The four matatus whistled into the new day, homeward bound and ready for whatever adventure next awaited the Beretta State.
END.
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