111 - And Your Little M.O.M. Too!

Mom was almost at the top of the cliff, a few minutes more and they'd be up over the rim when the vehicle stopped.  All signs of bug life, swarms everywhere, were suddenly gone.

“Mom?” Terry couldn't help his reflexive look around though they only had the forward screen on. “What's wrong? Why have you stopped?” Cringe bushes folded themselves into the pockets where they grew, though there was nothing to threaten them that he could see.

“Brace yourselves, please. We require a protected spot. There is a rogue cluster of storm cells forming.”

“The rains?” Terry looked around, bewildered as both Davood and Eshmaeel dove out of their chairs and into bunks as if they were somehow safer. The rains came through Xanadu regularly, twice a year, but they were, at worst, cute little thunderstorms.

Mom activated screens showing all the way around, even as the machine scuttled sideways into a tsingy crack that was too small, that narrowed too fast to fit into. The cabin began creaking and groaning as the mechanical legs dug into the stone and the skin of the sandflea writhed around to try and present a rounded profile to the storms bearing down on them. 

The wind came first, hurling sand from hundreds of metres below against them like the clatter of nails flung against brick, then stones.

The clouds had boiled up across the basin, building speed and fury, greenish black with a hundred or more lightning strikes hissing into the sand under itself. “What?” The colour of the light went coppery orange.

Terry braced himself as full restraints came on and the cabin roof lowered. “I am engaging emergency protoc--”

The first hit was loud enough to make the sandflea ring like a bell and the screens showed nothing now but sheets of rain wrapped around them like a fist. Then another hit and suddenly hail bounced up into the cameras, balls as big as Terry's fist and then the roar as the rains turned entirely to ice and hammered over them.  The shattered eyes of broken hailstones stared in at them, rings of white and black, unblinking, before tumbling down sliding away into the murk. Some had spines like enormous glass bugs, broken spikes. Torus shapes that spun in wildly unpredictable trajectories.

Terry's mouth hung open and he couldn't even move to put his hands over his ears as lightinging shining green flickered, flickered, flic---KAWHAMMMMMM! 

Mom slipped. The lightning had hit close enough that the rock broke and the sandflea lost its grip. The screeching of metal feet against their dubious shelter could clearly be heard over the – CRACKBOOM, KAWHAM! KAWHAM!

Dirt and flying vegetation turned the wind reddish black and a tree of some kind flew into splinters against the cliff, silent in all the other noise.

Screens flickered and went out as Mom shifted all power to her legs. One screen only, showing the sky and the funnel clouds dropping down down down. One, two, three, five, a dozen. More. They marched across the bit Terry could see he clutched at the arms of his chair as his protective restraint shut off for a microsecond. CRACK! CRACK! SCREEeeeeeeeee

One of Mom's legs, the lowest part flew upwards, ripped right off the machine. “Full restraint, Impact node engaged.” He could barely hear the vehicle's voice as Mom was peeled out of the crack in the rock, her anchor feet sheered off completely.

Every internal light went black and he could only hear the pounding roaring snapping CRACK KABOOM. 

SCReeeeeeeeeeeiiiiiii ---The sandflea snapped into a roughly hexagonal ball as it was flung into the sky, by one of the funnel clouds.