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..."

"And exactly what is the nature of the strategy we participate in here and now?" Tanzamia demanded as, hands planted wide, she leaned on the conference table. "What is coming?"

"Look!" Qeskan Wa'entrud shouted before the Ambassador could respond.

Looking outside, they could see the sands of the surrounding dunes begin a slow, undulating ripple, as if something underneath the surface was swimming through the soil, moving upwards, and then the ground glowed with a shimmering inner light, illuminated from within. Abruptly, a thick and viscous red liquid, slow as running lava and bubbling with froth at its edges, began to ooze up in mass quantities from below and the red light intensified. The ground wobbled and vibrated, emitting a horrifying, harshly resonant groan that originated from deep within the planetary mantle. Bur'heddam's massive insectoid mech-legs shifted and quick-stepped multiple times as the colossal scarab's chassis management system fought to maintain its gyroscopic balance on the suddenly fluid terrain.

"Would it be safe to assume you have a protective defense field capable of surrounding the entire city?" the Ambassador said.

"Yes," Tanzamia answered.

"Then I strongly suggest you activate it right now," he said, frowning.

She nodded to Qeskan, who in turn, grabbing up the comm-mic, swiftly relayed the command to the Bridge pilothouse.

And then the ground of Shi'draih-Hakaba sprayed up towards the sky in a tumultuous cloud, erupting in a seemingly endless and blinding torrent, roaring as several hundred thousand tons of coarse sand, shattered stone, aged concrete, wooden wreckage and rusted, twisted steel violently defied gravity all at once.

The Kolyoptux scarab that contained Bur'heddam lurched sideways, the massive insect chassis of the machine-city twisting as it rode a tsunami-sized breaker of earthen sediment and shattered rock.

Tanzamia Cleriq clapped her hands over her ears and screamed...

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The dune-crawler had just breached the southwestern edge of Shi'draih-Hakaba, passing the dilapidated remains of the outer perimeter fortress walls, just as the devastating geyser of sand and stone shot skyward.

The front end of the squat, rectangular vehicle jumped several feet into the air, riding a gusher of spouting soil, and it jerkily slewed from left to right and then back, its steering suddenly rendered useless as its caterpillar track tank-treads momentarily lost traction. Then the machine dipped low, threatening to flip back end over front, and the path on which it headed was obliterated by a rolling wave ground-slide. Visibility inside the cabin was nil as the spouting dustcloud blocked any view from any direction. The crawler's engine alternately growled and wailed as it fought for stability. D'Spayr wrestled with the pilot drive-stick and gear-selector until the vehicle was able to regain purchase on the shifting ground.

Mune'stahr fought to breathe as he was rendered breathless from being slammed around in his passenger chair. The security-straps for the seat constraining his broad chest pressed suffocatingly into his ribcage and abdomen , even through the protective buffer provided by his body armor, as the dune-crawler was wrenched across the downward valleyside of the small plateau they crested. The forward windshield of the crawler cracked and spider-webbed as the vehicle's fame twisted. Pylott uttered a short, sharp bleat of agony as the crawler's chaotic motion whipped her head forwards and back, cracking her eye-visor and snapping her head back into her seat's headrest and then, as her torso folded, rebounding her forehead to slap onto the frame-edge of a closed circuit console-monitor.

They all reflexively ducked their heads between their hunched shoulders as the dirt and rocks that had been spewed high into the sky began to rain back down, pummeling the rugged vehicle in a dusty, debris-riddled cascade. The sound inside the cabin as the desert fell, hammering the crawler's metal roof, was deafening.

"Is everyone all right?" D'Spayr sputtered, asking as the last echoes of the pounding rain of dirt, gravel and masonry subsided.

Mune'stahr coughed raggedly, but held up a fist giving the Knight a thumbs up as he drew in a rasping lungful of air. Pylott muttered a string of curses as she cupped her bleeding forehead, but managed to nod in the affirmative to the question.

"What just happened?" Mune'stahr asked.

D'Spayr fanned away a cloud of dust particles that streamed into the passenger cabin from a rent in the surface of the vehicle's drive control console.

"Volcanic subterranean core ejection, explosive gas cloud, tectonic fault plate collision... I don't know for certain," he said, "but I have a suspicion that things just went from bad to worse."

"How so?" Mune'stahr said, anxiously pressing for an answer.

"I think the hibernating Xherim'efarr may have been awakened," the Knight said.

He turned his attention to the drive console and flipped a pair of switches and ratcheted a dial, reading a trio of gauges displayed on the console. He then pushed a button and the crawler shuddered as he tested the tread actuation.

"We're still operational," he said after a moment.

Pylott unbuckled her restraint belts and slid from her seat unsteadily. Quickly regaining control of her wobbly balance, she knelt and scooted across the metal floor over to a viewing portal.

"This crawler has guns, right?" she asked.

"Weaponry is limited with this model crawler, but, yes, we have offensive capability. Three explosive projectile launchers with four missiles each and a particle pulse cannon with a one hour charge capacity," the Knight responded. "Why?"

"Because I think we're in the middle of a war," she said. "And there a gigantic shadowy something, I can't make out what, looming in the near horizon."

D'Spayr and Mune'stahr wiped grit and grime from off the laminated glass windshield and peered past the jagged fracture lines. They could, in the glare from weapons fire and flames from surrounding wreckage following the eruption, see a cadre of armored Ashen Brood sentries engaged in heated battle with a group of wild-looking, half-reptilian and half-simian attackers. There were easily forty to fifty lethal individuals fiercely fighting on the uneven terrain. It was a fast moving and brutal clash, with neither side showing mercy, and it was merely a quarter kilometer away.

But it was the towering monstrosity behind the combatants, emerging from the mist and fog of the sand-geyser and eruptive blast, on which the occupants of the dune-crawler abruptly found their attention focused...

D'Spayr grasped the hilt of his shatter-sword and said, "You two armor-up and crank your assault systems' power levels high. This is not going to be pretty."

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