[b]Suez Canal, Egypt[/b]

The [i]Aksum[/i] shuddered and quivered again. A sharp, raucous screeching pierced the ears of the Cazadores as their stolen ship raced up the canal, another piece of debris had struck the commandeered Ethiopian flagship against her steel belly. In a short time, the Africans had managed to thoroughly trash the floor of the canal. It would not be fit for the Spanish Armada to traverse it for some time, but the task of clearing out the rubble would be possible now with the [i]Aksum[/i] steaming for dear life out into the Mediterranean.

With the assumption that the [i]Aksum[/i] survived the race out of the canal, that is.

The Ethiopians, at this time, knew that they had lost the canal. Even from the vessel's bridge, the Cazadores could see the muzzle flashes of the Ejercito in the darkness to the North; a sweeping curtain of lightning falling over the collapsing African line. Ethiopia was in full retreat, but even if they could not deny Spain the canal, they were intent on denying them the [i]Aksum[/i]. Any mortars that continued to fire were being focused on their own flagship.

Minarets of pulverized water shot skyward all around the canal, as if the ship were caught in a storm tremendous raindrops. Others fell upon the ground on either side, erupting in mushrooms of fire and peppering the vessel's hull in shrapnel. Others still found their mark on the ship itself, leaving smoldering craters in the metal sheeting where the shells hit. The Africans were putting all their effort into this one last endeavor to render the canal utterly impassible, they knew full well that a lucky shot could detonate the explosives in the [i]Aksum's[/i] hull and buy Ethiopia weeks of precious time.

The Cazadores stood within the bridge and watched as the hellscape of battle rolled past them. Explosions and muzzle flashes sparked everywhere on their flanks, and there they stood watching idly as the start of the war raged all around them. For such men of action, to do nothing while the battle was being won without them was deeply unsatisfying. Their mission, though, was tantamount. They would see this ship out of the canal even if it did feel like retreating.

It was a retreat under fire. An Ethiopian mortar team with a clear shot at the passing [i]Aksum[/i] had simply leveled its barrel and launched a mortar directly at the ship. The Africans were rewarded with a direct hit on the superstructure of the Ethiopian warship right underneath her smokestack. The diffuse diesel exhaust wafting from the stack was suddenly blown away by a roaring fire and thick black smoke that belched forth deep within the wounded vessel. Beneath the feet of the Cazadores, the engine could be felt seizing and jerking beneath their feet. The mouth of the canal was now only a little over a kilometer away and closing, but it seemed now that the [i]Aksum[/i] might not even make it that far.

"There's no reason for any of you to remain onboard." Captain Oliviero Jaco said to his subordinates, staring intently out the broken pane of glass from whence he had boarded the ship. "I'll guide the ship out of the canal from here, I want you to bail and make ready for extraction."

"The mission parameters are straightforward, Captain. We'll stay here until this ship is clear of the Armada's right-of-way." 

"Nor will we miss the end of the last mission of your career!" Another added, giving their commander a slap on the shoulder. Captain Jaco gave a warm grin to his steadfast compatriots before returning to his cool, steely gaze out into the canal ahead.

The mortar barrage had suddenly slowed, likely for the advancing Spanish infantry scattering what remained of the Ethiopian forces. Despite the waning fire, another two shells found their mark on the deck of the battered [i]Aksum[/i] in succession, sending shrapnel tearing through the air that shattered the remaining bridge windows. The engine shuddered and rattled below, threatening to fail and die at any second. It just had to last another few seconds, and the vessel's momentum could carry it out of the harbor. The mouth was approaching fast; the ship was almost there.

Without warning, a thunderous blast jarred the right-side of the ship, sending the Cazadores tumbling to their feet. A vast pillar of water rose up over the starboard side of the [i]Aksum[/i] and spilled over the deck and washed into the bridge. The ship had stuck an Ethiopian mine with devastating results; the engine had halted completely and the hull itself could be heard buckling and warping under the strain. To complicate the mission further, the roaring fire spewing from the smokestack was now spilling over to envelop the rest of the superstructure. Under this much stress, the explosives that lined the vessel's hold could detonate at any moment.

"Get off of this ship now." Captain Jaco commanded of his Cazadores. "This time that's an order."

"It's been a pleasure to serve beside you, Captain. Congratulations on a successful and complete tour of duty." One of the Cazadores said in farewell.

"It was a pleasure to work with you all as well. Now bail already."

With that, the four subordinates under Captain Jaco briskly made their way out of the bridge, making haste off of the [i[Aksum[/i] per the final order of their commander. The Cazador captain was alone now on the bridge, the flicker of the growing blaze swallowing the ship glimmered in the spiderweb of cracks in the bridge's windows. The roar of the blaze and the groaning of stressed metal was all that he could hear as the sounds of battle faded behind him. The ship had coasted out of the canal by this point; the sea walls and jetties flanking the bridge opened up into the open blackness of the Mediterranean Sea and the Spanish fleet biding their time on the inky horizon. Captain Jaco spun the wheel hard to the left, pulling the burning warship hard to the East out of the path of the Armada. The vessel need only coast another hundred meters further out of the way. The success of the mission was assured. And as the dying [i]Aksum[/i] rolled out into the Mediterranean, listing onto its starboard side as the hull took on water, Captain Oliviero Jaco took the bridge's onboard radio mouthpiece into his hand and flipped the instrumentation on, hoping that the fire had not yet rendered the radio masts totally inoperable.

"Admiral Santin, come in. I repeat: Come in, Admiral Santin." Loud pops and hisses could be heard as the Aksum's fuel burned in her lines. The bridge was warming rapidly as the fires intensified. "This is the [i]ENS Aksum[/i]."

//Admiral Santiago Santin speaking from [i]La Ira de Dios[/i]. I read you with some difficulty. I see I was right to trust the Cazadores with this thing. I can see her burning from here; recommend that you bail at once.//

"I'm afraid it's too late for that, Admiral." Captain Jaco relayed, his eyes following the dripping of burning, molten plastic falling down past the bridge windows. "The Ethiopians loaded the hold full of explosive. Any second now, the fleet's going to be in for quite the firework display. I had the rest of my squad bail out already, but you know as well as I do that the captain goes down with the ship."

//I regret that it had to be this way.// Santin's voice crackled in solemnly.

"I knew what I was signing up for." The bridge was beginning to reek of thick, acrid smoke as the fires swallowed the superstructure and worked into the innards of the ship, forcing from the Cazador a bout of coughing. "You know what? It's funny, Admiral. This was the last mission of my tour of duty. Mission accomplished, so I suppose I'm a free man now. This wasn't how I was planning on spending my retirement, you know?"

//You're cutting out... Sir, what is you name?//

"Oliviero Jaco. Captain Oliviero Jaco."

//Understand me, Captain Jaco. I'm going to see that you're not forgotten for this. The world is going to remember what you did here tonight.//

"That'd be nice..."

At that moment, the night became day. A brilliant white flash illuminated Ports Said and Fuad; a radiant light shone across the water and the deserts beyond the cities, and a clap of chest-pounding thunder rocked the battlefield. Rising into the sky from the sea was a great orange fireball, riding upward on a column of steam and smoke where the [i]Aksum[/i] once was. The swirling cloud of fire rose up over the city like a second sun, swirling with angry tongues of yellow and orange, and then a dim red before fading into the night. The canal was wide open; the War for Africa had begun in earnest.

"We're not going to forget you, you brave bastard."

[b] Sahara, Spanish Morocco[/b]

"Is everyone alright?" Joaquin asked, shifting to his feet with a lean against the handcuffs anchoring him to his seat as the dust within the fuselage settled. The attention of all those trapped on the grounded bomber gravitated toward Joaquin, all seemingly receptive to someone stepping up to take command of the situation. "Is there anyone seriously hurt?"

"My leg's fucked." One of the captive passengers spoke up somewhere in the front.

"I think my shoulder is dislocated." An older prisoner groaned from a few rows behind. No one else reported any other injuries.

"So, we all made it? How about that!" Now that Joaquin mentioned it, it was a minor miracle that anyone had made it through the crash; to say nothing of the survival of every single passenger. For their part the pilots had done an admirable job landing the plane in a controlled fashion. But for all their skill, the pilots themselves were likely killed when the cockpit separated from the rest of the craft. Julio felt little pity for them, even if they had saved their lives.

"Now then," Joaquin continued, "is there anyone who is free from their cuffs or can free themselves?" This time there was no verbal response. Manacles and chain links clattered together as everyone struggled against their binds. Julio too tugged against the pair of handcuffs affixing his right wrist to arm of his seat, but it held fast as did the bolts anchoring the seat to the dust-strewn corrugated flooring below. It was clear that he was going nowhere. Nor was anyone else.

"We're stuck!" Someone exclaimed. "We're stuck in this thing!" His panic was contagious, even as Joaquin tried to hush the anxious murmurs rising up amongst the captives. "Settle down, please!" Joaquin commanded. "We're going to get out of these seats and find help! I'll cut my hand off to do it if I have to!"

Julio kept his own pessimistic thinking to himself, but he could not help but doubt the optimism of his new friend. Joaquin had been a police officer; his training demanded he be reassuring in the face of crises to stave off panic. His impeccable optimism affirmed Julio’s worst fears. Joaquin knew as well as anyone else that they were all going to die here; he simply wanted them all to die in peaceful optimism rather than hysteric fits. Even if they could remove these cuffs, what then? The 'help' of which Joaquin spoke was illusory, like a mirage of the desert beyond the yawning opening in the airplane's fuselage.

""Help? Where exactly were we go to find help?" That most vocal and pessimistic of the passengers demanded. "Do you even know where we are?"

They had crashed deep in the Sahara - the heart of Spain's African empire. Julio knew it could be nowhere else. The plane may as well have landed out a thousand miles at sea, or onto the barren glaciers of Greenland. No one lived in this desolate and hellish place. If the prisoners could escape their downed plane, they would be doomed to walk aimlessly to the mountains in the distance. Without water, the midsummer's heat would kill them all inside of three days. Investigators seeking out the crash site would find a gaggle of mummies half-buried in the among the debris field. There was no escape from this fate. Julio and his fellow captives had only traded one prison for another.

"Don't talk like that!" Joaquin commanded of the naysayer. "We will find someone!"

But it was someone else that found them.

A single gunshot rang through the air, silencing the plane. Another followed several seconds thereafter. Two shots, one for each pilot. The blast that had shook the plane before it fell from the sky immediately returned to Julio's mind. The plane had to be shot out of the air. But this was the Sahara, [i]Spanish[/i] Africa. To think this plane was shot down within its own airspace…

Footsteps were heard beyond the hull crunching against the sand. Shadow-veiled silhouettes flitted past the cracked and broken windows. Their attackers were approaching the plane; briskly working toward the front, moving stealthily and quickly as they hung just behind the jagged opening at the fore of the bomber. The prisoners held perfectly still and quiet, out of fear or desire not to startle the assailants.

On either side of the gaping wound in the plane, they came into view against the backdrop of orange desert. They were clad head-to-toe in black and blue robes, scarves and turbans wrapped around their heads so tightly that their eyes were scarcely visible. Cold black eyes scanned the inside of the plane, each pair set beside a ruddy-colored nosebridge just poking up from within the scarves. In their hands, straight-bladed steel swords glinted with yellow light. Some among them carried more modern arms such as hand-me-down rifles. The assailants almost seemed to be ancient warriors transplanted into the times of firearms and airplanes. A surreal sight indeed; Julio thoroughly expected it to be his last.

"Please don't hurt us!" Someone blurted, breaking the silence. "We're prisoners, not soldiers! Don't kill us!"

The antiquated warriors, seemingly confused, turned to themselves and spoke in their native tongue. Julio recognized it immediately as Arabic. It was a language he was well-accustomed to in his exile in the Middle East. It was a throaty, punctuated exchange intermixed with gestures and glances to the passengers and it ended abruptly with one of the robe-clad fighters stepping out of the aircraft as if to fetch something. The other speaker holstered a blocky Mauser pistol onto his belt and faced the prisoners.

"Do not be afraid, we can help you." He reported in perfect Spanish. His accent struck Julio as it bore little similarity to any Arab or North African who had learned to speak Castillian. It was a soft, yet regal and dignified means of enunciation. It reminded him of the way Samel and his friends spoke. "But we must move quickly. Are there any among you who cannot walk?"

"My leg... it's hurt." The same prisoner who had spoken up before reported. The warrior who had left the plane returned at this time with a pair of boltcutters in his arms. With a feverish pace, he began snipping the chains of each set of manacles and freeing the passengers

"Then you will ride with me. Everyone else will have to follow us on foot. We will take you to safety, but you cannot slow us down. The Spanish will be upon us very soon and we must not be here when they arrive."

The cloaked man soon arrived at Julio's row and unceremoniously clipped the link holding the cuff attached to the seat's arm and leaving a manacle with free-hanging chain around his wrist. Joaquin too was freed moments after. Without a moment's hesitation, the two filed out with the other prisoners and bounded off the plane into the desert.