**_Golondrina_, Suez, Egypt**

Luis stood against the lip of railing on the cruiser's forecastle, surveying the passing of the final mile of the Suez Canal. Up ahead, the point vessels of the Spanish Armada had already broken through into the open sea beyond - the Gulf of Suez, the northernmost tip of the Red Sea. From this point on, the fleet would have ample space to maneuver and flank any opposition. No more would the captains need to beware lurking seamines, no more could scraps of debris halt the caravan of steel. Blue, open water was all that separated Admiral Santin's fleet from the Ethiopian coast. It was all that separated Luis from what he feared was certain doom.

Only a week ago, he saw his first combat. The _Golondrina's_ hull and lip railing was still pocked and cratered from that firefight on the cruiser's deck, and Luis too remained battered from what he had witnessed. When an Ethiopian bullet found its mark on the clavicle of a compatriot, he lost consciousness and remained in triage for the duration of the Battle of Port Said. The medics concluded the cause of his fainting was "low severity shell-shock" and discharged him from triage the day afterward.

But Luis remained terrified. If his was a minor case of battlefield trauma, he could only imagine the mind-shattering horrors that lay across the sea before him. The Ethiopians were surely outgunned in this war, but what they lacked in technology they made up for in resourcefulness and determination. They had seen European invaders before; the Ethiopians had routed an Italian invasion from their homeland in the last century. The military leadership above him seemed absolutely certain that Spain's military primacy would obliterate Ethiopia's more numerous yet technologically deficient armies, but a constant and fearful voice within Luis' mind insisted that his demise was imminent.

Suez, the namesake of this canal and the southernmost port on the waterway, rose from the dunes on the right side of the canal. The town appeared to have seen recent fighting. Nothing approaching the absolute destruction of Port Said and Fuad, but the damage was substantial enough to notice from a distance. Several edifices were missing hunks of plaster or had black sooty scorchmarks staining the walls just above any windows. Bullet craters were scattered across cinderblock facades and the once-towering petrol silos near the harbor were reduced to warped, burnt-out shells. The Ethiopians must have fought indigenous resistance here to allow their expeditionary force to pass the Sinai Desert to the Mediterranean. But those native warriors were nowhere to be found as the Spanish fleet made its way down the canal. The inhabitants of Suez who remained did not but stand on the bank of the canal, watching passively as the steel caravan went inexorably onward. Even for the demure Luis Morazan, the timidness of the Egyptians was astounding. Why had they resisted so fiercely against the Ethiopian expeditionary forces, only to pay no mind to the Spanish Armada that had played the larger part in flattening an entire city?

"Luis!" A familiar voice called out. Luis turned and found his compatriot and friend from basic training, Héctor, approaching to greet him. "Holy shit, the guys and I were worried sick you'd caught a bullet in the shootout at Port Said. I haven't seen you since! How the Hell are you, _cabron_?"

"Fine," Luis lied. And what a lie it was. Luis had been a nervous wreck since being dismissed from triage. Whenever he was afforded the opportunity, Luis chose to lounge in his bunk, skipping most meals and spending as much time as possible asleep. Only in dreams, or in the nothingness of a dreamless sleep, could Luis escape the coming nightmare.

"I'm glad to hear that, my friend." Héctor joined Luis in leaning against the railing, looking out into the southward expanding sea. A steely gray thunderhead rose up from the South, darkening the sea and the skies before them: a storm generated by the summer monsoon. Luis had overhead fellow soldiers of the Ejercito and the cruiser's shipmates mention the same storm; it had surprised the Armada's meteorologists with its unseasonably early and northerly formation. Though, unfortunately for him, the meteorological experts had not deemed it sufficiently detrimental to postpone the attack. The fighting in Port Said had wasted enough time as it was.

"So, are you excited?"

"Excited for what, exactly?"

"What the Hell do you mean 'for what'?" An astonished Héctor demanded. "I mean _this_," he opened his arms and gestured to the fleet of warships steaming into the rumbling mass of stormclouds. "We're going to battle, to _history_, Luis! Your children and their children are going to be asking you about these days years and years from now. They're going to want to know what it was like to fight the communist hordes, save Europe, and all those good things! When we get back to Spain - oh! - when we get back, let me tell you! Luis, when you tell they girls back home you were killing communists in Africa..." Héctor pursed his lips and loudly mimicked the sound of falling water droplets. "You're gonna make all the ladies wet!"

"Aren't you worried at all?" Luis asked soberly, unable to find it in him to pretend he was not concerned. "We're going to be in a war. We could die."

"And you can die driving on the Madrid beltway - what's your point? You heard Lieutenant Ayesta, these guys can barely give all their soldiers a uniform. It's going to be like shooting fish in a barrel. You don't think they'd invade a country if they didn't know for certain they'd be able to win?"

"I think you're underestimating how dangerous this could be."

"_Jesucristo_, Luis. Maybe you should have waited until your balls dropped before you enlisted. What exactly did you think you'd be doing in the Ejercito?"

A warbling roar of airplane propellers punctuated the discussion. Luis and Héctor turned to the sky and watched a quadret of fighters climb upward into the sky above against the satellite clouds of the gathering storm. Luis and Héctor were afforded a close view of their undersides as they proceeded South. Torpedoes and fusiform bombs of varying weights were bolted under the wings of the _Halcon_ fighters; this was no reconnaissance sortie that they undertook.

"Two days, Luis," Héctor continued once the thrumming of the four planes faded over the whitecaps of the Red Sea. "They say it will be the day after tomorrow when we reach the Ethiopian coast. I don't know about you, but I'm ecsta-"

Héctor was interrupted by a howling scream that tore through the sky above the cruiser. Luis flinched as the source of the ear-splitting roar tore through the air above the canal in a bluish-gray blur. Luis and Héctor spun on their heels to spot the source of the sound. It was a plane, small and streamlined, that buzzed past the forward ships of the Armada on a trail of diffuse smoke before arcing up into the clouds and leaving the _Halcones_ in its wake of exhaust despite having taken off the carrier's deck minutes afterward. 

"What was that thing!?" Luis blurted, the roar of the craft still resonating and rumbling through the air. "Was that a plane? Where were it's propellers?"

"You know why I am not afraid, Luis? Because we have _those_ on our side."

Luis looked back to where he had last seen the plane. It was long gone. Did he imagine seeing that craft? Such a machine did not even seem possible.

"Have a little faith in the higher-ups. We can't lose this war, so loosen the Hell up. We're about to see history unfold!"

**To the attention of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington DC**

Michael Norman, Esteemed President of the United States of America,

Firstly, I must take this opportunity extend my congratulations to you for your victory in your election. By casting out Eric Fernandez and the other socialist elements in the American government, you have my most sincere commendation. Your victory, and the subsequent departure of the United States of America from the Chinese-led Comintern, was a matter of great satisfaction to our Republic. Your victory has demonstrated that the United States of America will not be lost to ideals of thievery and public criminality so espoused by Marx and Hou. You have restored honor to the United States of America, and for that you have my most sincere respect.

I regret to inform you that respect is in jeopardy.

Recently I was provided a transcript of your address to the Congress of the United States, and I have learned of your intent to provide assistance to the Ethiopian Empire. I must here correct your erroneous belief that this is an unprovoked war of colonization on the part of the Second Spanish Republic. Let it be made clear that the military operations currently underway in Ethiopia have the aim of neutralizing the destabilizing regime of Yaqob Yohannes. It was Yaqob Yohannes, who with Chinese support, has plunged Africa into substantial unrest through the forcible spread of Marxist ideals throughout Africa. This Republic reserves the right to combat communist sympathizers and halt the spread of their toxic and destabilizing ideologies. As such, it is in the interest of preserving Europe and liberated Africa that I have conducted this operation against the Ethiopian Empire.

Nor shall I abide those who would enable such venomous regimes and undermine the military operations of the Second Spanish Republic. The so-called 'humanitarian and economic relief' outlined in your address may seem an innocuous and uncontentious way to mitigate the unavoidable collateral damage that will be wrought by this conflict. Your desire to protect to limit the destructive potential of this conflict is noble. However, because relief materiel cannot be readily distinguished between civilian aid and supplies destined for the Ethiopian military, any aid rendered unto Ethiopia must be considered military aid. The act of providing military aid to an enemy of the Republic would quite obviously be a hostile act indeed. I am not one to take hostile actions with scant regard.

If you wish to provide assistance to the people of Ethiopia in a way that is mutually beneficial, I invite you to contact the Republic's Ministry of Foreign Affairs to establish a joint effort to provide civilian aid to Ethiopians. Should you choose instead to move forward with your initiative to provide support of any form to the regime of Yaqob Yohannes, I regret to inform you that there must be unsavory consequences.

It is my hope that this matter might be concluded in a manner that is mutually agreeable to these two great republics.

With utmost respect,

_Alfonso Grijalba Sotelo, Presidente del Gobierno de la Segunda Republica Española_