[b]Arratzu, Spain [/b]

Something had gone horribly wrong.

He shivered feverishly in the bindings that held him against the seat. Bloodshot eyes flitted across the room - now vacant save for him. His lips quivered, as if he were stuttering profusely as he tried to sound out words.

The interrogation had ended perhaps hours ago, and his captors had left him on his own to come down off of the cocktail they had pumped into his head. Even with a dose of inhibitor to keep the melange from completely destroying his mind, the chemicals seemed to have done exactly that. Julio's mind raced - a hundred thoughts per second flitting through his head - too fast to control or register. Disorganized memories and ideas ran through his mind as though someone had strung together a film reel composed entirely of random pictures and projected it onto his mind. By the time he tried to address one thought - a thousand more had passed before him.

But among the dissonance, a fear bubbled up and rose quickly throughout it all. Fear that this would last forever, that his mind was being lost before his eyes, rose above all else. The thoughts coursing through his mind coiled on themselves and swirled downward like frothy bathwater swirling down into the blackness of the drain. And as every thought he had ever had ran past, a shrill buzzing sounded above it all - panic screaming above a billion thoughts all sounding at once. His eyes rolled back into his head and a long spittle of saliva slid down from an open, chattering mouth. For a time of indeterminate length, Julio sat in a catatonic torpor as still as the few surroundings in the spartan office.

A sound from the ceiling galvanized the listless Julio from his torpid state perhaps an hour later. Lethargically he looked up to the empty, gray ceiling with the same stupid curiosity that a dog might exhibit upon hearing an unfamiliar noise. Distant, disembodied speech echoed down from a ceiling vent and could be heard rather clearly in the silent office. Questioning taking place in another office carried across the ventilation down to Julio, though he seemed to be in no position to register what he was hearing.

"The tablets. We want to know where you're getting them." An authoritative voice demanded.

"I am a dealer of drugs." Another voice - more defensive - responded with a nervous chuckle. "I deal with a great many tablets. You'll have to be more specific."

"You're going to find that playing a fool will do nothing to help you." Said the authoritative voice coldly. "The ones with the man on them. The ones that say 'Try me'."

"Right. Well... I'm not really, exactly, too sure abou-"

"Give him another injection."

"Oh God - no! Sorry! I'm sorry!" A pause as the man presumably accumulated his thoughts. "The one who sells me them knows a guy who knows a guy in Malabo. That's where all the Spanish acid is coming in from. That is - honest to God - everything I know."

"Wait, please, no...NO!! PLEASE NO!"

Anguished screams came down into the office with a cold, metallic echo. Whether by the association of the terrified wailing with agonizing pain he had felt only hours before, or simply due to the loud noise serving to snap him out of his torpor - Julio's cognitive faculties suddenly returned to him. With a shiver and no recollection of what had just happened to him, he looked about frantically to see where he was, and then looked up to the vent from whence these cries were coming.

"No inhibitor - not this time." The interrogator could be heard through the vent over the wailing - likely to his assistant. "Let him stew in it."

It was then that Julio realized the extent of the diabolical nature of this monstrous place. A horrendous, painful death awaited all those damned to this facility.

"Yes... I'm quite certain. Guijon wants some of them scrambled from now on."

[b][i]La Ira de Dios[/i], Suez Canal[/b]

"Contact sighted!" The communications ensign cried out upon the carrier's bridge to their Admiral. He turned excitedly from looking out of the windshield into the empty Sinai Desert stretching to the horizon; parsed by a narrow ribbon of blue sea through which Armada sailed. "Azimuth 175 degrees!"

"Which ship put eyes on it first?" Santin demanded, making his way from the windshield to the communications terminal.

"[i]Golondrina[/i], Admiral." The officer reported. He slid the headphones back over his ears as he saw a red light on the console light up indicating new transmission. The ensign's eyes threatened to bulge out of his eyes not long after putting them over his ears. "Sir, it's flying Ethiopian colors."

No sooner than the Admiral could speak, a new voice cried out across the bridge - this time coming from the radar screens pulsing with warm green light. "We're picking up multiple contacts on radar. Moving along the periphery of the canal and closing fast on our fore squadron."

It was an ambush.

The Ethiopians must have discovered their Armada and intent well before their arrival in the eastern Mediterranean. No other way could the Ethiopians have mobilized a counterattack unless they had known several days beforehand. But in spite of the reversal of the element of surprise and this grievous intelligence leak, Admiral Santiago Santin did not seem particularly bothered. In fact, a smug grin had drawn itself across his face; totally bewildering to his exasperated officers.

"I look around this bridge and all that I see is worry and concern on your faces!" Noted Santin, striding confidently through the bridge back to the windshield. "Worry... on the account of an Ethiopian ship and a smattering of ground vehicles? Now I wonder... did I choose a pack of cowards to serve as the crew of my flagship?"

A handful of shameful 'No, sir's could be heard.

"Then act like it! I want to see some smiles, then... Because today we are going to finish what our Republic failed to do three years ago at the Dahlac Islands." Santin drew a microphone at the fore of the bridge up to his mouth. 

"All ships: All hands to battle stations!"

[b]Madrid, Spain[/b]

"Tell me again, why exactly I am hearing about this." Prime Minister Sotelo sighed, massaging his temples as he took a break from tapping away at the keys of an electronic typewriter. He paid little attention to the visitor to his cavernous office, failing even to return eye contact as his fingers descended upon the keys of the machine once again.

"Because, your Excellency, this is a matter of national security." The suit-clad orderly reminded anxiously. "The reserves armory at Bilbao was broken into. As of this morning - when the armory personnel inventoried their supplies - over 40 firearms including eleven FE-74 Standard Issue assault rifles and an anti-tank rifle had been reported as missing."

"I understood that the first time." Sotelo groaned as he pecked out a string of letters on the keypad. "What I do not understand is why you felt it warranted your coming here and bothering me about it. Some forty guns have gone missing. Unfortunate, I agree. An emergency on my part? I think not."

"With all due respect, your Excellency, It does constitute an emergency when those weapons are very likely in the hands of an insurgency determined to dismantle the Second Republic as we know it." The aide deposited a file folder upon the desk for Sotelo to inspect. Clearly annoyed with the interruption, Sotelo pushed the typewriterback across the desk and thumbed through the manila dossier. Within the folder were a number of photocopied mugshots each accompanied by several pages of typewritten profiles and arrest forms.

"They call themselves the Partisans - political dissidents from the ever-unruly Basque Country. Many of their number have ancestors who fought in the Carlist Wars of the last century. Of course, nationalist sentiment in the Basque Country effectively died out during the repressions of Juan III, but in recent years dissidents have resurfaces in the form of these [i]Partisanos[/i] to contest what they see as an erosion of freedoms under your tenure as Prime Minister. In the interest of appealing to and drawing support other disenfranchised groups in the Republic, they have largely abandoned their Basque nationalism and seek to incite revolution against your administration."

"Law enforcement agents have managed to capture or dispatch most of their leadership in the past year, including one-"

"Ignacio Laboa." Sotelo interrupted, reading off the name associated with with one mugshot.

"Indeed. Ignacio underwent interrogation at the Arratzu facility and surrendered much of what is now known of the organization. Under questioning he has explained that his daughter, Graciela, would have likely assumed leadership of the Partisans."

Sotelo tucked the papers and individual dossiers back into the folder and pushed it back across the desk. "It would seem to me that the law enforcement divisions of Vizcaya have thus far done a commendable job keeping these degenerates in line. Many of their leaders are in custody and they seem to know who is in charge among them now." Sotelo's furrowed eyes at last rose from his desk to meet the aide's. "So I will ask you again, one last time, why exactly I needed to be interrupted with this?" The orderly had no words for Sotelo - only embarrassed stammering.

"The previous week," Sotelo continued, "a train car laden with heavy explosives bound for the dam effort went through the heart of Valencia at the peak of morning traffic. Since then, I learned that, if the car were to have exploded, some 500 people could have easily died. Such a thing would have certainly been a tragedy for the whole of the Republic; even so I was never directly informed. No one from the Ministry of Transportation barged unexcused into my office that morning - as you have today - demanding a word with me concerning this errant load of nitroglycerin. Instead, the relevant parties who are compensated to deal with these situations did exactly what they are compensated to do. The conductor was terminated for his negligence, stiffer regulations for reporting hazardous materials on train manifests will now work their way through the Senate, and I was none the wiser... and I am fine with that."

Sotelo got up from his desk and made unbroken eye contact with the the aide, whose face was now a similar shade of red to the banners hanging behind Sotelo's desk. Though he was extremely thin, his lack of body fat left his face very pointed and menacing to look upon and he had several inches over most of his peers in height. He was an imposing man to behold, especially when being grilled like so.

"Can you imagine if every unfortunate thing to happen in this country had to be run by my desk before anything could be done about it? I can scarcely get what I need done as it is now." The Prime Minister gestured to the typewriter and the half-completed document sprouting out from the slot at the top. "If everyone from every ministry and office of this Republic impeded me so, nothing would be accomplished."

"I'm terribly sorry, your Excellency."

"No you are not. But if you are the cause for another needless distraction, then you will be." Sotelo made his way to the door of the office and held it open for the aide. "You are dismissed."

The Prime Minister watched with satisfaction as the orderly all but ran out of his office; beads of sweat dripping down his blushing face. As his visitor shot briskly down the great, vaulted corridors, another lackey - this one with [i]Ejercito[/i] medals decorating his tuxedo - jogged in the opposite direction.

"What now?" Sotelo snarled.

"Admiral Santin has radioed in!" The officer panted. "He is preparing to engage assets of the Ethiopian Empire in the Suez Canal!." Immediately, Sotelo's demeanor changed from one of irritation to alarm.

"Come in and patch him through at once."