[B]Out to Sea past Cape Guardafui[/b]

The Royal Flight had stuck to the sight of land for as long as it could, following the coastline over the jagged brown deserts sand-washed dunes of Somalia. This route was out of the way, a southerly detour on the path to their refuel stop in Persia, but sticking to the land provided them some security. Commercial and Private planes were nowhere to be seen over the Red Sea or the Gulf of Aden; the flights had been grounded for fear of the approaching Spanish fleet. Even the Air Force stayed clear, excepting a few reconnaissance flights or coastal patrols, as they rest of the Ethiopian fighters were kept running on their tarmacs to respond to the first sight of a Spanish landing. The speed in which the African Empire abandoned their home sea was disheartening, but it was inevitable. The Ethiopian Navy had been lost in their short war against the dying Ottoman Empire, and what remained couldn't pretend to put up a fight against the Spanish. Their remaining ships had been pulled into the Strait of Mandeb to hamper any Spanish naval actions beyond the Red Sea. 

Sticking to the continent might have been a futile gesture - the Spanish Air Force could have easily moved against targets in the airspace above land - but the pilots were betting on the probability that their enemy would hold back until they had a better understanding of African defenses. It meant that they did not see the Ocean until they reached the Cape of Guardafuii. Once past that point, after watching the sandstone lighthouse at the tip of the Cape fade into the arid haze behind them, ocean was all they would see. 

Azima sat silently. The low moan of the engine engulfed all other sounds and put her into a sort of trance. She sat near a window and watched the world pass by. It was mid-afternoon now, but the sky was darkened to a brooding grey by the weak rain storm that was passing across the sea. Big, fat raindrops smacked against the round porthole windows from time to time, but they were few and far between. Below them, the sea seemed calm. It went on forever in every direction, with layers of blue and turquoise clinging to the surface above the deep, dull black. 

The children hadn't cried or panicked like she feared they would. Tewodros had fallen asleep, and Olivier sat calmly and stared. The one-armed boy that Taytu had adopted sometimes worried Azima. He was a serious boy - a serious toddler - and that did not seem normal to her. Elani had not caused any noise either, but Azima could tell that her mother-in-law kept quiet out of feelings of fear rather than safety. She sat in her seat. At moments, her eyes darted back and forth across the room. She had spent most of her time fidgeting and mumbling, and If her attention ever stayed on anything for long, it was usually the priests and their holy cargo.

The priests sat around the room-sized box that held the Ark. They kept their swords - curved steel shotels - on their laps at all times. They took their duties with deadly seriousness, but their pious stoicism seemed ridiculous to Azima. Their parents, and villages, and all of the individual churches and priesthoods and ancient monuments that had defined their entire lives were now threatened with invasion, but they didn't seem to care. All that mattered to them was this Ark that had carried on without them for thousands of years.

The buzz of the radio caught Azima's attention. They would hear it occasionally - the jumbled sound of distant conversations. Conversations about the war, there could be no doubt. It was peaceful here, and that made it easy to forget that the continent they had just left was entering a war more horrible than any it had seen before. When she thought about the war, she could feel the discontent stir within her. She wanted to be there, armed and ready to defend her people. She might been a Queen now, but she had spent her early years as a warrior. It was the safety of her son that kept her on the retreat. Above all else, Tewodros came first.

The radio buzzed again. She tried to make out words, but they were to make out over the sound of the engine.

"Can you understand any of that?" she shouted up to the pilots. The plane was completely open, with its seats cramped up near the pilots so that there was enough open space for the Ark.

"They were hailing some aircraft spotted near Farasan a while ago. Probably Spanish Reconnaissance." the Pilot replied, raising his voice to be heard over the loud drone of the engines.

"Farasan?"

"Near the Hejaz Yemen border" he replied. "They say they spotted them going fast across Yemeni airspace."

"I wonder what the Yemeni will think of that."

The pilot let out a laugh that, Azima thought, sounded like a clucking bird. "I don't think they have a choice. Not like the Yemeni have the ability to do anything. I don't think they have they even have fighters."

"If they are going south, do you think they are coming for us?" she asked. 

"They can't catch us from that far away." the pilot replied. "We'll be in Persian airspace once we cross over Oman. The Persians have something they can fight back with. Spain won't want to bring them in to this."

She sat back down, content.

Oman was not that far away, she reckoned. Persia was the gateway to Asia, and beyond the ancient home of the Iranians was a world where Spain had no power. There was something almost heaven-like about East Asia as an idea. It was a place that meant safety for her, where there would be no existential threat hanging over their heads at all times. That the Chinese had managed to pull that off was frightening, and she wondered how much of the invisibility of the eastern communist bulwark was real and how much of it was smoke and mirrors.

The priests began to mutter their prayers again. They had annoyed the pilot by choosing to sit on the floor near their Ark rather than in their seats. "Suit yourselves then" he had admonished them, "When you fall over and crush your skull, you'll have to hope that the Ark can cure your wounds."

"It can." a priest had said. He had spoken with crystal clear resolution, and Azima had seen that the priest had got under his skin. She had never considered herself superstitious, but she had to admit that they prospect hidden Ark in the gold-lined wooden box made her paranoid. She tried to imagine what it might do if disturbed from its hiding. Kill? Maim? Damn? Melt their faces, or tear down the remainder of the already crumbling walls of Jericho? The more she thought about it, the sillier the thought seemed to be.

"What is your name?" she asked the youngest priest, who had been looking around the cabin while his partners sat sagging and inert. This priest's eyes were defiant, and in some ways terrifying. Everywhere he looked, he looked ready to hand out a death sentence.

"Paulos" the priest replied. He spoke with an overwhelming, resolute confidence. It struck her as insolent - she was his Queen, after all - but the royal niceties were starting to seem trite now that she was fleeing the land that had crowned her.

"What will you be doing with the Ark once you have delivered it?" she asked.

"We will protect it from the Heathens." he replied. "At all costs."

"The heathens." Azima repeated. "The Chinese are our allies. You won't have to worry about them." 

"China is a country of atheists and pagans." he replied. "There will be many there who want to destroy the Tabot of God so to be blasphemous. We will be there to keep that from happening."

Azima took a deep breath and reminded herself that they were the best thing they had to security at the moment. She knew they would have trouble when they arrived.

Another message came over the radio. This one she heard clearer. "Flight 1989... be advised... over." That was their flight number, and they were being "advised". Azima leaned in to listen, imagining every possible horror that the coming war could spare them. She thought back to the unidentified planes seen speeding toward Yemen. 

"Say again?" the pilot responded. It felt like time had slowed down as they waited for a response. She began to stare into the speakers, their chipped black paint and rounded plastic mesh taking on the life of a dreaded messenger.

"Flight 1989. This is... Bosaso. Be advised. We have... targets approaching your position. They are coming in at... speeds from due northwest. Over."

"This is N-1989. We are not seeing any targets to our northwest. Are we looking at an intercept? Over." Azima looked out the window, squinting and scanning the rolling grey clouds painted across the horizon. She saw nothing.

"Confirming intercept." Bosaso replied. "Targets moving at... estimate, eight hundred kilometres per hour... God... over"

The look on the pilots face set Azima's heart diving into her stomach. He looked more than frightened. He had went pale, and he stared dumbstruck at the radio. His widened, and his mind seemed to wander away for a second. Azima looked around the cabin. She could see the priests, as alert as she was. They did not seem to fear. Elani must have sensed the tension that was building in the small plane, and she began to choke down quiet tears. Tewodros watched curiously, and Olivier sat next to him with an expression that gave nothing away. The Pilot finally replied. "Repeat that speed again, Bosaso."

"Eight Hundred Kilometres. Confirmed. Over."

Azima heard the pilot whisper. "Eight hundred." he rubbed his face. "That's impossible. I don't think I have been in an aircraft that could go half of that. We can't pretend to outrun... we're only going a quarter of that speed! Could it be... from space?"

"From space?" Azima questioned. Did anybody have that sort of technology. She remembered how storytellers and junk-journalists shared stories about a second Great War being fought outside of the atmosphere. There had even been a novel that took this war to the moon, where battles played out in dusty trenches spanning the dark-pitted lunar seas. But they had always been, very clearly, a collection of silly fictions.

"A meteorite." he clarified, "Or a comet... something they misread. No... But... No..."

That made more sense. There had been talk of how Ethiopia could not compete with Spanish technology. When the war was discussed, the tech gap was always one of the first things cited as a problem facing the Africans in the fight to come. Even now, she could imagine Yaqob discussing ways to mitigate the enemy's advantage here. It was easy to completely intellectualize the gap - to consider it in such academic terms that it hardly seemed real. She had never realized what it truly meant. Not until now. The gap could mean more than a simple advantage - it could mean that there was no way for Africans to react. This was that scenario, and it was horrible to contemplate. There was no confirmation, but she knew in her heart that this was their enemy coming for them. Crafts of indeterminate ability with death's head painted on their wings. 

She looked north again , desperate for a glimpse. That was futile. If she saw it, what would she do?

The pilot reacted. He jiggled with the frequency, then picked up the radio. "Mayday, mayday, mayday!" he said, clear and loud. "Enemy aircraft confirmed moving to intercept non-combatant aircraft. We are carrying refugees bound east. Targets estimated at speeds near eight hundred kilometres per hour. Repeat, targets estimated at speeds near eight hundred kilometres per hour. We are at coordinates 13.331066, 53.200498. Repeat, we are at coordinates 13.331066, 53.200498."

"Buckle up." he shouted to his passengers. Azima complied, and hastily began to take care of the children and Elani. Nearby, the priests were starting to filter into their seats. 

"This is Bosaso, repeating the mayday at 13.331066, 53.200498. Enemy aircraft bearing down on confirmed Class 1 target. Repeat, Enemy aircraft bearing down on confirmed Class 1 target. All aircraft in the vicinity are on orders to scramble. Repeat message on emergency frequencies. Out." 

""Mayday, mayday, mayday!" the pilot repeated his message to the radio. "Enemy aircraft confirmed moving to intercept non-combatant aircraft. We are carrying refugees bound east. Targets estimated at speeds near eight hundred kilometres per hour. Repeat, targets estimated at speeds near eight hundred kilometres per hour. We are at coordinates 13.331066, 53.200498. Repeat, we are at coordinates 13.331066, 53.200498."

"Well then." he said to them. "Lets see if these guys have limitations." he abruptly pulled up, and the engine began to whine. She felt gravity pushing her into her seat, and the reality of what was going to happen here set in. They had no weapons, and their enemy was coming at them with an unheard of technology. Their only hope was the relics of the Ethiopian air force and, a foolish thing she couldn't help but think about, the ancient Relic-Weapon of the Jews sitting right behind them. 

She heard Elani began to shriek, and she held out her arm to comfort Tewodros. With her child's hand in hers, She looked out the window, into the smoke-colored clouds as they passed by the glass. When they came above the first layer of cloud, she looked out in to the distant north and, to her horror, she saw sunlight glint from the metallic surface of something moving very fast.