[b]Addis Ababa[/b]

In his mind, Ras Hassan envisioned himself on a dusty battlefield. He was young now, lean and fit without any aches or tiredness in his limbs. He held scimitar in his hand. The edge of the blade was as sharp as a fresh razor, and firelight danced across the steel in a bloom of red and yellow. Death cries and the rattle of rifles filled the smokey heat-choked air, but where they came from did not matter. His imagination focused on the faceless soldier on the other side of the field. He was an enemy - a Spaniard - and in his crisp uniform and emotionless stance he looked inhuman - more automaton than man. The Spaniard was nothing but death holding a firearm. His weapon was tipped with a long bayonet reflecting the same fiery light as Hassan's sword.

The Spaniard charged, and Hassan met him. Somewhere on the battlefield, battered flags caught the air and twisted violently with the winds of war. A solar yellow and vivid red covered the sky against the Lion of Judah framed on proud African colors; green, red, and yellow. Were those hoof-beats or the choking hum of tank engines? It did not matter. The world was far away and the Spaniard was right in front of him, bounding silently across the dirt.

Hassan sprinted, jumping away from the Spaniard as he thrust his bayonet through the smoke. Before Hassan could land a blow, his foe snapped backward and parried with his rifle. Sparks flew when steel met steel, and the dance was on. The Spaniard did not use his weapon like it was meant to be used - he did not look for the opportunity to shoot, nor did he pay attention to the trigger or the barrel. It was a pike to him - another ancient weapon to meet Hassan's sword in equal combat. Even when Hassan's scimitar dug into the wooden stock of the enemy's weapon, when splinters flew from the gnawing blade, the rifle stayed together as if it were made of iron. 

The Spaniard was the personification of hate. He did not wince when he received a cut on the forearm, nor did he relent. There was nothing in his face, if he had one at all. His eyes were like two stones and his lips pressed together with dutiful sternness. He could have been anyone, jabbing at Hassan like it was a drill and not a matter of life or death. Burning clouds whirled in the background, casting a flickering light. Memories faded into one another. He remembered the first man he killed, in the mountains of Ethiopia when the countryside rallied against their Emperor. The smell of blood and ash came back to him - reminders of The Congo, the Highlands, and Syria. 

When Hassan finally struck the killing blow, the enemy's head flew from his body as if it meant nothing to him, and a fountain of blood took its place. The corpse fell cleanly to the ground, but the grisly remnants of the neck continued to bleed. Blood turned the dust into coagulating mud and flooded the ground around his feet. Blood soaked through his shoes and turned his socks damp and cold. The body was painted crimson, and it glistened prettily in the light. [i]In my dreams, they always bleed more.[/i]

The daydream was over and he was back in the gardens of the Imperial Residence. The sky was crisp and blue, with bulbous grey clouds floating like islands in the sea. A marble fountain bubbled in the background, cooling the greenery. In the shade of the arched colonnade, it was cooler. Hassan stood next to a pearly white column, the wool of his dress uniform itching at his skin. It was an olive-green, but stitched together so skillfully that the fabric hardly moved. [i]It's stiff and heavy. This isn't soldier's clothes.[/i] The public liked their fighting men dressed like royal guards, as if it distracted from the bloody reality of their work. 

Two Palestinian men stood by his side, dressed in Ethiopian uniforms with only their new flag stitched on their lapels to distinguish them. The Turkish wars had been going on for longer than the public ever realized, and they had produced men who were warriors to the core. Wartime had given them a purpose. It gave them all the food and cash they could kill for, and they always knew where they would be the next day. Peacetime had promised them little and less - perhaps police work if they were lucky, but what else was there? Crime promised them a lifestyle they understood, but they could hardly return to the factories or live life as shepherds or taxi drivers. It was something Hassan had understood, and when he offered to hire mercenaries from those who could never find military work in their homelands, many had taken him up on the offer.

They weren't all Palestinian, though most were. There were Greeks and Armenians, Georgians and Syrians in the mix. Hassan had hired them with Hejaz in mind. Most of them were of Arab blood. If anybody could learn to control rebellious Arabs, it would have to be their own kind.

But now a new war loomed. Spain. Hassan had smelled it coming long ago, and he welcomed it. He had not rose so far to become a politician. Hassan had no interest in discussing policy and shifting money. He had been raised on the stories of his grandfather, Mansuur ibn Ra'd. His grandfather had been driven out of Arabia during the rise of the Saudi's, and he had taken his sons to Somalia where he fought the British alongside Muhammad `Abd Allāh al-Hasan, the man the British called the "Mad Mullah", who gave Mansuur land. The old man took on the name "Mansuur Ra'd al-Soomaaliyeed" as a sign of his pride in his new home. When the Mad Mullah died, their family had taken up common cause with the Ethiopians. His grandfather's life had been one of honor, and he was revered as a warrior by his people. A sandstone statue stood in the middle of Jowhaar where Hassan had been born, and thought it had looked powerful when it was erected, time had already taken a bite from it the last time he visited his old home. Wind had tore at the old rock, smoothing its features and covering its surface in pocks. Hassan had risen further than his grandfather could have imagined. When they built his statue, it would be made of marble.

The royal family had met in the garden, standing in line like and awkward formation of wealthy soldiers. They wore their pale silk robes and the women their dripping jewelry, but their heads were covered by rubbery Chinese gas masks. These were the typical sort - black with large buggy eyes and a stubby tube hanging from the mouth like an elephant's trunk, not like the asymmetrical monstrosities the Chinese military preferred. 

An IB agent studied the fit of the masks, fidgeting with them and tugging on the seams. "Do they feel comfortable? Do they fit right?" The agent worried, "Are they loose? The gas the Spaniards use will kill you in an instant if they can get through."

"Ah-by" little Tewodros whines, his voice muffled by the expressionless mask they had fitted him. "I don't want to be kill." He was spooked, but the boy didn't cry. [i]He has my blood.[/i] Hassan thought. Sometimes it was easy to forget that his grandson was the heir to the throne. Even raising her, Azima had always seemed like a foreign child. He never needed a girl. He wouldn't have claimed her if it wasn't for Yohannes's insistence. 

"You won't, Tewo." Yaqob's soft voice was softened further by the mask. He lifted the boy in his arms, a lanky ghost holding an infant phantom. The royals looked like dead things in their masks, but not frightening. With their tall, spindly bodies and wealthy clothes, they looked all together silly.

Hassan frowned. "Never mind the comfort." he bellowed. "We have ways to test it. Get on with that."

The agent looked at him and nodded. "Right, Ras. I apologize." he fumbled in the pocket of his black coat and pulled out an blank aerosol spray can. "We filled this with a scented material with a similar weight." he explained. "If you can smell it, it means there is a compromise." The masked royalty nodded. Holding the can at arms length, the agent sprayed it in front of their faces. They did not flinch.

Hassan sniffed. It smelled like sweat and oranges. He wrinkled his nose. "What is that, captain."

"Perfume, sir." the agent said. "It was hard finding something that smells strongly and is a similar consistency to VX. This seems to work though."

"Perfume?" Hassan snorted. 

The agent grinned. "From China. Beijing Woman's Scent Number Four. The communists don't make names to sell things, as it turns out."

Hassan nodded abruptly. "Get on with it then."

The royal family sniffed behind their masks, bobbing their heads so that they looked like insects curiously inspecting their surroundings. The silence loomed heavy. Hassan looked at the sky. [i]It will come from there.[/i] He thought. In the back of his mind, he half expected to hear the distant roar of a Spanish bomber squadron as it took them by surprise from the skies. [i]That would be one hell of a war. Addis Ababa turned into Africa's Seattle, and the rest of Africa fighting like a pack of hounds missing their master.[/i] If the Spanish VXed the city right here in this moment, even the royal family wouldn't be safe. VX went to work as soon as it touched and bare skin, so the Chinese IB had told them. They had full body suits for the most important personnel, but right now those were sitting in a crate somewhere in the Walinzi offices downtown.

"Get it off." a weak, gray voice called from the rubber mask on the short, plump woman dressed in black. Elani, the Queen Dowager, was going into senility at an early age. She was hardly older than Hassan, but life had taken its toll on the sensitive widow of Yohannes V. She had lost a husband to an assassins bullet, and another son had went missing shortly after being deposed and imprisoned far away. Her second son, Yaqob, had only barely survived an assassination and was left a dour shell of the inspired young man he had once been. [i]I've had the blood of my friends splattered across my clothes. I saw men die and be tortured. It hasn't driven me insane.[/i]

Elani tugged anemically at the gasmask crowning her head. "You shouldn't do that..." the Walinzi agent fretted. He reached out to stop her, but Taytu - a ridiculously tall girl in a European mockery of a man's suit - reached her first. "It's okay, Mother. They are just testing it."

"It smells." Elani whimpered. "I'll tell Yohannes. I'll tell your father they made wear it. It was hot in there. I couldn't breath."

"I couldn't smell the perfume." Azima said, taking her mask off. The tight rubber made her hair fall into a mess. Sometimes, Hassan could see his eyes in the Queens. It was one of the few things she had gotten from him. 

"That is good." the Agent smiled. "Very good then." Yaqob helped Tewodros with his mask before taking off his own. It was only the little rebel child, Olivier, Taytu's Garengenze whelp who she adopted after Hassan took his arm during the war, still wore his mask. The boy didn't seem to miss the limb, and it had helped end a war that could have cost them more than a few tiny hands. [i]These people haven't seen fighting. Only Azima. They don't understand that they pay me and my army to hurt people for them. It's not like it is in the movies.[/i] People who couldn't slice parts off a child to end a war had no business thinking about his work. They had no business with anything to do with soldiering. 

The little boy stood behind them like a fool, staring through the insect eyes of his mask, saying nothing and doing as much. The agent noticed and quietly went to help the kid.

"VX catches the skin, does it not?" Yaqob asked. "Just masks won't work?" 

The agent nodded. "We will be getting full-body suits, like the ones we use to sweep contaminated areas. The Chinese have been gracious in getting us the supplies we need."

"How about the rest of the city?" Taytu added, holding her mother against her chest. "I read in the briefing that the police would be getting a large supply of masks to hand out to people."

"Yes." The agent fidgeted. [i]He doesn't like this part. He doesn't have the guts.[/i] "We... can't get everybody suits. Emergency ventilated bunkers are being built, but we don't know if we will have any operating aside from the two or three that were built during the last invasion crisis. Our plan is to evacuate as many people as we can, should we be gassed, but part of that is avoiding panic. If people think the masks are in place and can work, we might be able to avoid a evacuation failure."

"And nobody knows about this? I would hope we have chemists that understand even just the basics of VX gas." Taytu countered.

"We do." the agent replied. "We're doing what we can to keep everything quiet."

Taytu nodded. [i]Hopefully the bitch is satisfied.[/i] She didn't like him, and she said it openly. European learning had addled her brain, and she had came back with ideas that clashed with the way things really worked. If Hassan had been given a choice, he would have nominated one of the veteran diplomats as Adviser of Foreign Affairs, but instead Yaqob had given the job to his sister -a college graduate who had spent half of her life outside of he country. 

Yaqob handed Tewodros to Azima with a smile. The boy was aware, staring at the two soldierly Palestinian mercenaries in wonder. Azima took Olivier by the hand and led the children out of the garden, passing Hassan with nothing but a polite glance. Taytu followed suit, leading her mother. Taytu's glance was not as polite. [i]She looks at me as if I had caused her mother to go crazy. Maybe the dumb bitch blames that on me too.[/i]

"Ras Hassan." Yaqob said warmly, tossing the masks in his hand into a nearby crate. "We need to talk."

"Of course, you're Imperial Highness." Hassan said. They began to walk.

The colonnade opened at one end of the garden into a gap between the walls, where the stoney walkway opened into a veranda facing the city. A wall of palm-trees blocked much of the view, but gaps between their fronds showed patches of white and grey scattered across the green distance. Beige mountains stood over all, made transparent by a distant haze. The wind caught the palm-fronds and caused them to chatter. Whistling songbirds sang over the distant city sounds.

"The war is inevitable I take it." Yaqob said. He sounded dolorous as usual, but he had managed to make that trait seem thoughtful. 

"Their navy is moving through the Mediterranean as we speak. We lost our navy to the Ottomans, so there is little we can do to resist." Hassan explained. 

"I heard you sent a ship." Yaqob asked. "The ENS Aksum, they say."

Hassan smiled bitterly. "They have too big of a mouth, then." he joked. Yaqob continued to stare at him sullenly, looking for an answer. "Yes." Hassan confirmed. "The ENS Aksum will meet up with them in the Suez Canal. We cannot stop them, but we can slow them down." he paused. "Have you ever heard of Thermopylae?" 

Yaqob nodded. "I saw a movie about it when I was in China. They misidentified the Persians as Turks in the movie, but I know the real story as well."

"The Suez Canal might just serve as our Hot Gates." Hassan said.