[b]West of Djibouti[/b] They were on the sand swept road heading west to Djibouti, in a plain staff car with none of the flags or escorts or military symbols present that might make them a target. Hassan sat in the back, wearing military fatigues and the sort of decorated peaked cap that he favored. His Palestinians wore fatigues and many varieties of wiry Arab facial hair. Underneath, they wore rubber suits. Hassan detested his rubber bodysuit. It retained the heat, and his sweat, and it held both so well that he felt like he was being pickled in his own juices. The horrific heat of the brown, sun-beaten desert made his discomfiture worse. There was dark clouds ahead, the sign of the storm rolling along the coast who's presence had cooled the air to a comfortable ninety degrees Fahrenheit. Comfortable, at least, compared to the blistering temperatures the desert usually gave them. It could not be helped. The rubber bodysuit was what protected him from the potent nerve gas that the Spanish were known to possess. The suit included a mask that could be pulled up as soon as an attack was reported so that his body was entirely encapsulated by it. His Palestinian guards wore the same caliber suits, and they were trained to take him out of danger the moment it was clear that such an attack was underway. This was what bothered him the most about this war. The gas was a dishonesty. The Spanish were the foe he was born to fight, but they practiced war in a way that was dirty. Deception was not the problem; deception was cream of war, and the deceived only cried foul because brilliance is like immorality to people who do not know how to be brilliant. A clever man still took a risk, just the same as a strong man on the field. It was not even the mercilessness the Spanish had shown in their dealings with the Tueregs or the people of the Ivory Coast that bothered the Dejazmach. That was an accusation Hassan had earned as well, but it was just as foolish as accusations of deception. War was blood, and every man was a unit in his people's wars. Even children at the very least gave their fathers a reason to fight. But fighting with gas was not just deceptive and cruel. It was damnably evil because of its cowardice. It could kill thousands with only a single bomber bearing all the risk in delivering it. That was not the way men fought. There was no skill, no earning the kill. The Spanish could sit back and murder their enemies by the millions without having to face them. In truth, Hassan couldn't help but be in awe of that ability, and through that awe he had an uncomfortable respect for what they could do with gas. Or, at least a respect for the technology itself. It was impressive, even if it was chicken-hearted. He wondered how much of his hatred for the Spanish Gas could attributed to how these damnable suits made his balls feel puckered. They traveled for miles before they saw a small caravan of beaten trucks traveling slowly down the road from the east. Refugees, he knew immediately. There were children sitting on the roofs of the vehicles, and a goat was tied to a rod that ran across the top-edge of a Land-rover. The animal was sleeping in a hooded girl's lap. She stared silently at it from behind a thin mask of dust, petting its mud-clumped fur like a mother trying to sooth her child. The people that he could see, through the windows and curled up on top of the vehicle, had seen a rough time. They were all covered in the same dust as the girl and her goat. Some were bruised and injured, though the worst of their suffering could be seen in their distant stares. The Rover at the head of the caravan slowed down as they met with Hassan's car, and Hassan's driver followed suit. Curious, Hassan rolled down his window. "Somewhere, somehow, somebody must have kicked you around some!" he yelled out the window over idling engines as a greeting to the driver of the opposite vehicle. When he could get a good look at him, Hassan realized that the driver was Walinzi. The agent spotted Hassan and recognized him, but to his credit he said nothing. His recognition was a secret he communicated to Hassan with his face. A quick secret that he knew how to keep. The Walinzi, Hassan reflected, were one of Ethiopia's greatest assets. "The Spanish having made their landing in Djibouti." he exclaimed, pointing to the hills on the eastern horizon. "They are shooting civilians. We heard that they are firing on people who tried to flee across the water." Hassan put on a disturbed face, but the truth was that this information did not shake him. It was to be expected. These were a people raised to believe that their enemies were evil on a demonic level. The contest of war, the honor and manliness in fighting an equal foe were not the nature of this new European warrior. These were men taught to smile as they kill, and to see every kind of mercy as treason. They were taught to imagine the rest of the world as enemies, and Africa as a place to be conquered. It was how they were taught to think. There was the blatant propaganda of course, but the most effective lessons were the subtle ones. Their literature praised the explorers that had came before, and painted the entire dark period of European colonization as a great adventure. Even the children's stories presented Africa as a continent filled with man-eating cannibals and ape-like pygmies. A clever adult might grow up to see these stereotypes as silly stories, but the image was always there. When they talked about this war, they would discuss the political practices of African governments and the military maneuvers on the field, but in the dark heart of their subconscious they would be imagining Sambo in a grass skirt dancing around a boiling pot. "How many people are left?" Hassan's own Palestinian driver asked. "Some." the Walinzi replied. "Afraid, or stubborn. Some are stuck, I think. Not everyone was able to join in the evacuation." "We will do what we can." Hassan said politely. He knew that, in truth, they couldn't do a thing. Those left behind would have to suffer in the way that people suffer when stuck in the crossfire. -- They arrived at the battery at sunset. The sky glowed that brilliant orange that so often followed a thunderstorm, leaving every cloud to look like an inert fire smeared across a burning sky. The desert heat was subsiding now that the sun was gone, but it did not give Hassan relief. The sweat he had produced during the day was now cooling under the rubber of his gas-proof suit, leaving him to feel clammy and unclean. He did not like the feel of the material rubbing between his thighs, and his attempts to avoid it had turned his gait into something of a waddle. He heard what sounded like thunder at first, but the continued cadence gave it away as the heavy guns of the Spanish ships. they were far enough away, dozens of miles or so, but the echo of their weapons still managed to reach this far. He wondered if they were firing on the city, or just giving some sort of salute to their conquering marines. He wanted them to be bombarding the city. He wanted that very much, more than he cared to say. From the ground, the long-barreled Ethiopian guns could be seen under a netted mesh of desert colored cloth. From the air, it would take an excellent eye to pick out the camouflaged batteries amongst the massive expanse rock and sand. An artificial hollow had been blasted into the side of the hill where this battery sat, so that only the side facing Djibouti needed the mesh. There were only two guns here, both already attached to trucks so that a retreat could be attempted. The men who manned these guns greeted Hassan lethargically. Their officer - a skeletal-looking man with buggy eyes and a patch of wiry black fuzz reaching out wildly from his chin - saluted intensely as Hassan approached. The snowflake-patterned likeness of an Ethiopian cross hung on a string around his neck. He was the only one that saluted. The rest of the crew just stood and stared. "At ease" Hassan grunted. The officer followed that order to the best of his ability, but he was too tense of a man to ever truly be at ease. As they began to walk together, the Ras could see the officer's tension in the way the muscles in his neck seemed to always be straining. Hassan watched suspiciously as the officer fondled the cross charm that hung from a cord around his neck with a nervous urgency. "We are ready and in place, Ras Hassan." "I expected nothing less." Hassan grumbled. He looked over the rest of the men in the battery. They were in various states of undress, some wearing button shirts while others wore no shirt at all, or wore them wrapped around their heads like turbans. The heat had gotten to them as well, but they did not have to suffer the rubber suit that Hassan wore. There were worn-out cloth gas-masks hanging from nails in the side of the blasted rock wall, but Hassan knew that they would be useless in case of a VX attack. They could protect against the other sorts of chemicals that required inhalation to work, like those that had been used during the Great War. The Ethiopians did not know how much VX nerve gas the Spanish could produce, so it was entirely possible that the enemy would resort to the less effective and much older alternatives. Hassan did not think it prudent to bet on that possibility, and he hadn't. These men in this trench were expendable. They were soldiers, and soldiers were made to die in war. "Are your men prepared to do what has to be done here?" Hassan asked. "A Walinzi agent reported here earlier today and informed me that his work had been a success. Djibouti is as flammable as they can make it." the officer blurted. "And my men are ready. Yes sir. We will do our jobs here." Hassan nodded. "I do have to ask though... about the refugees." the officer began, his fingers on his cross. "I mean, it would help a lot of I could tell the men..." "There are still civilians in the city." Hassan said bluntly. "We will be firing on our own people here. It is not perfect, but that is the circumstances we have been dealt." "How many?" the officer asked hollowly. "More than we wanted." Hassan grimaced. "Twenty thousand perhaps? I do not know, I have not been in a position to see the statistics." It was probably more than that, he knew. Much more. But he could hardly quote the numbers he truly expected if he were to maintain morale here. The officer winced. He held the cross up to his mouth and kissed it. "I will still do my job. But this is not good news. There will be many dead by our hands tonight." Hassan smiled politely. "Heaven only accepts the dead." he said. The officer did not like that answer. Hassan spotted a section of the indention separated from the rest by a makeshift wall. It had been erected from scrapwood taken from packaging crates and wrinkled lengths of tent canvas. He gestured toward it. "Is that your quarters?" he asked. The officer nodded. "We'll go there for now." Hassan replied. "We have things to talk about." The Officer's quarters were small, a cot stuffed into a crevice of rock and a small wicker table with a stool. Hassan noticed a wooden Ethiopian cross with an icon of Christ painted on it in colorful hues. Hassan decided to stand, comfortable with not having to bend in his rubber under-suit. He gestured for the officer to sit. "We will open fire..." he stopped to thing and pulled out a watch. "...in ten minutes. All batteries have the same command." "Yes." the officer said. Sweat pooled on his grey-brown skin, and he was fondling his cross more aggressively than before. "Yes... Yes." "Have you heard reports from the front?" Hassan asked. He was referring to the Seventh Sefari. They were stretched thinly along the coast, and bulged in numbers around the city. In the rough terrain surrounding Djibouti, they would be able to hold the Spaniards in the city for as long as Hassan's purposes required. They would test Spanish defenses around the city itself, but Hassan did not plan to launch a full scale assault. He wanted to use his forces to hold the Spanish military in Djibouti while he threw everything at them that he could spare. The enemy was high off of two victories, one against a token force on the Suez and another against the last remnants of a navy that had suffered its true death in the war against the collapsing Ottomans. This was the first battle where Spain would face a force prepared to meet it, and it was a force with Hassan in command. "It is quiet." the officer quavered. "They are landing troops." "Good." Hassan said. "Now, what is wrong with you, soldier?" The Officer bristled. Not angrily, but like a child who had been caught. He took a deep breath and shuddered. "I thought it would be easier, Ras. I thought this would be good and evil. But... we are firing on civilians." "We are firing on Spain, though there are civilians in our way." Hassan replied. He was irritated, but he politely hid his irritation. "This is a war. There will be corpses until it is over. Do not think that all the corpses in all the wars deserved to become corpses so soon." "I can't put this out of my head." the officer said. He seemed to shrink as he spoke, his body illuminated by a flickering gas lamp. "You will have to." Hassan said. "Or you will have to be replaced. Now come, it is nearly time." When they left the Officer's small ramshackle room, Hassan saw that the stars had came out. Aside from the pale glow of several gas lamps sitting on the ground near the guns, there were no other lights for miles. There was a vague orange halo on the eastern horizon where Djibouti sat, cast by the Spanish invasion force in their process of invading. Those poor lights could not hide the stars, which came together in places as mists of impressive light, in uncountable numbers across the entire sphere of night. It was a powerful sight. The men were giddy now, doing their work as dutifully as they did casually. That was the Ethiopian military. A rag-tag militia of men who were unkempt, poorly armed, and underfed. They came from across a continent. The short ink-black men of the Congolese forests, and the thick built men from the south with skin so dark that it seemed almost green. Some were the milk-chocolate Ethiopians and Somalians with their almost European features, and others the thin-bodied Swahili of the Sahara. This was one third of a continent represented in a single force. They were not professionals, but they had fought for most of their lives, for their OWN lives and they had more experience with the difficulties of their continent than the Spaniards could hope to know. Hassan looked at his watch. One minute. This would be the third battle of this war, but it was the first that would be fought in the Pan-African Empire itself. To him, this was the true beginning of the war and he was here to witness it. "Clear." he heard a man cluck to his crew. All else was silence. "Volley!" another voice shouted suddenly in a crisp, concise voice. The guns fired and lit the earth, and the sound of them drank up the air. Hassan felt their reverberations in his chest, like ancient war drums sounding the beginning of the war. "Incendiary rounds!" Hassan yelled. That first volley had been a test, but the second would open his plans for the Spaniards here. These rounds would start the air to burn in Djibouti. He heard the metal scraping as they prepared the second volley. "Volley!" he heard. Then the magnificent pounding! They continued like that. Despite their shabby appearance, the artillerymen moved like surgeons. If one man was adjusting the gun to keep it on target, another was retrieving new rounds. This was the first time many had seen a war, he realized. "Volley!" Hassan knew that this was not the only battery. Scenes like this were happening all across the desert, in a semi-circle surrounding Djibouti. "Volley!" The guns had distracted him from the cold, and from the ugly feelings that his rubber suit gave him. Now his entire body was electrified by the thought of combat. He wanted to hear a report from the front. He scanned the darkness, hoping to see a messenger on a motorcycle in the flashing gunlight. "Volley!" A shirtless Congolese artilleryman positioned himself directly behind a gun and began to pump his pelvis in its direction. "Look!" he shouted in a shrill French accent. "Thees is mah Deek!" he cackled like a crazy man, and Hassan couldn't help but laugh along with him. "Volley!" the Congolese man's dick ejaculated fire. "I am sorry, Ras." the shaky Officer said. "The men have been making that joke since we arrived. They think it is still funny." "It is." Hassan replied with a grin. "Volley!" They heard a buzzing sound in the distance, and their ears perked up. Planes. The Officer looked worried at Hassan. He hadn't been expecting that. "We have no way to counter aircraft." he said. "We need to bug out." "Volley!" The buzzing grew louder, a growl that seemed to come from everywhere in the sky and nowhere all at once. "No bugging out." Hassan said. This had been his master stroke. He had let very few know about this, to keep it as secret as he possibly could. "These are ours. "Volley!" In the flaming light of the artillery, they could see them coming from the west. Dozens of V's, black shadows against the starry sky. Africa's Air Force come out in its entirety. Hassan had known that the Air Force would have few chances to be useful in this war. So long as the Spaniards relied on carriers and lacked a comfortable base of their own on this continent, the Africans could take some advantage. "Volley!" The planes were over them now, as loud as diesel trucks. The artillerymen stopped to cheer, whooping wildly at the air. These were the most planes any of them had seen in the air at once, Hassan included. From here, it looked like the war was already over. The Dejazmach himself knew better, but the power of the moment still swelled in his heart. The cheering turned into a contest as the men on the ground tried to out-shout the rumble of the air force. Men howled like hyena's and roared like lions. Some screamed words, like "Africa!" or "Yaqob!" One man shouted "Hassan!" and Hassan smiled. Another scream overtook the rest. It was a victory cry before the victory. "Djibouti!" men began to scream. "Djibouti!" and then, "Volley!"