Hover scooters were both a tool and a weapon in the Tuareg society. They could carry a rider anywhere on the surface quickly, efficiently and elegantly. They left no footprint on most common radars as they flew very close to the ground; yet thanks to the minified counter-gravity technology that they adapted, widely available across Sirius, they rose no sand behind them. "Aatlar", as the Tuareg called them, or "aat" in singular, struck the right balance between stealth, speed and simplicity. In battle most soldiers would find them impractical, but Tuareg people trained to shoot from an aat since an early age and they were almost inhumanly precise. Skirmishes and blood feud were common among desert tribes, and although usually small scale, they were characteristically fast and fickle: the entire tide of battle could change entirely within just a couple seconds.
Daud Peretz was a timarli, he was given an artefact mine by the emir in exchange for military service. His twenty men were sipahis, professional soldiers that he was due to train and equip. The white sheets that fully covered them reflected the sunlight and exuded otherworldly halos of light around them. The fronts of their aats were decorated with artefacts that shined on their own, but not too many so to preserve lightness. Though most notably, they all wore an unusually cumbersome kind of glasses, certainly not only meant to protect their eyes from the winds and the sand. The men dismounted before the scattered batallion and the timarli waited for the Iberian commander to come to him. Their introduction was formal and curt; everything that could be omitted was omitted. Seth was not a man to be impressed with mere spectacle. For Peretz, Seth's appearance held no specific notability - he had seen the desert do worse things to people than any man. Here, nature was the eternal enemy. Conflict with other people was only a casual necessity.
"My good men will help yours prepare for battle. There is no time to rest. Come with me, I must lead you to master Ali immediately." The timarli folded up an auxiliary seat on the back of his aat, which didn't look very sturdy, but there was a pressing haste in the timarli's black eyes. "'Aaydi, 'aydi! Vamos!", he spoke an odd mixture of Tuareg and Iberian, with an accent in both. "Put this on!", he hissed at Seth, handing him the seatbelt.
Within a moment, they were up in the air, and then down in the wadi. There was an unexpected commotion. It was as if, for some reason, everyone was preparing for sudden movement with great haste. Several men removed a sand-coloured sheet, no doubt a camouflage, off of a large object: it was a Decurion-class light fighter, and it appeared to be the only one they had. Near a cave entrance they dismounted and the timarli spoke to Seth: "When you meet master Ali, bow to the ground, do not look at him and do not speak until he allows it. If you have any questions for me, you should ask them quickly." In the background, near the Decurion, there was a woman dressed in clothes with ornate patterns, but although her appearance was delicate, she was hectically moving around and shouting in an imperious tone. Her eyes met with Seth's for a split second. Seth could not discern the colour: they seemed brown, amber and green at the same time. Noticing this, the timarli's eyes suddenly started exuding annoyance, but even more worry and guilt.