(This is a collaborative post by [@gorgenmast] and [@Vilageidiotx]) (This is a continuation of the events of [url=http://www.roleplayerguild.com/topics/19063-precipice-of-war-we-write-under-the-sign-of-the-goat/ic?page=9#post-2630603]this Hassan post[/url] and [url=http://www.roleplayerguild.com/topics/19063-precipice-of-war-we-write-under-the-sign-of-the-goat/ic?page=9#post-2635010]this Spanish post.[/url] If you don't remember what happened in them, it might not be a bad idea to read them again for context.) [b]The Battle of Djibouti: Night 1[/b] The pilot sat in silence. It was not true silence, not with the choppy purr of the fighter's engine roaring near his ears, but that was a sound that he had grown accustomed to. It still felt like a silence, punctuated by the calmness of night. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness beyond the bubble of glass that protected the cabin from the freezing cold air outside. The only light he could see aside from the stars was the green, supernatural glow of the radium paint that illuminated the dials on the dash. Any more light in the cabin could cause night blindness, so that radium glow was the only thing cutting through the blackness he sat immersed in. He could make out the rugged rocky details on the ground below, a moonscape of jagged hills broken by dry scrubland and thin, salty dunes. It was a hell of a place to fight a war, he thought. The port at Djibouti was all there was to fight for in this part of Africa, and the pilot doubted they could retake it. Was reconquest even the purpose of this attack? It wasn't his business to question, he supposed. He was here to bring down a few ferengi and go home. The Ethiopians had came out in force - seven hundred aircraft, aging fighters bought from Germany during Iyasu's reign and the newer streamlined and silvery fighters purchased from China during Yaqob's, arranged like migratory birds in extended V's bristling with torpedoes and bombs, and machine guns that would pepper the Spanish with millions of lethal shots before the night was over. Part of their training had been to gain a personal relationship with their birds. Once a week, they slept underneath them at night. They took part in the maintenance, helping to refuel when they landed and to do mechanical repairs when necessary. They had also been allowed to paint their own planes, the paint supplied to them by the air force itself. The colors they used were vibrant and alive, and they covered most of their planes so that few retained their original metallic sheen or any traces of dull factory paint jobs. He had decorated his bird with an image of Saint George riding a charging, muscle-bound horse. The Saint leaned forward on both sides of the plane, gilded red robes flowing about him like the clouds of heaven, and his couched lance ending where the plane's guns jutted from breaks in the fuselage. This image graced both sides of his craft - not exactly identical, but close enough to seem so without being able to see both at the same time. Others had chosen similar images. There were Lions of Judah, and angelic cherubs that looked like disembodied heads with wings. Some had painted warriors on their fuselage's, others women, while pilots from other parts of the Empire used geometric designs made of interwoven diamonds and webbing lines. Animals were a popular choice as well. There were leopards and gazelles speeding through the sky alongside his Saint George, though it was difficult to seem them in the dark. In fact, it was difficult to make out [i]anything[/i] in the dark. Before war was declared, after the enemy had stated their intent to invade, Hassan had ordered the airforce to drill in night flying. It was a tricky skill, he could not doubt that now if he ever had before. To fly at night required a completely different level of concentration. It was difficult to see anything more than shadows, and the sky was so profoundly black that they could crash into an enemy aircraft just as soon as they spotted it. He would have doubted their ability to fight in these conditions if he hadn't been assured that the problem was accounted for by command. Their training had prepared them for caution above all else, but it had also trained them how to interpret what they were seeing with too few visual clues. His eyes scoped the few hints of earth he could see in front of the wings. He could see the mottled ground below as it slopped down toward the ocean. The tumbled hills gave way to an open plain, with a halo of orange light crowning the eastern horizon like the first hints of sunrise. But this was not the sun, which had set less than an hour earlier. The Spanish fleet was there, he realized. That was their light. Olive-drab patches on the sandy ground below suggested the scrub and palm groves of the coastal desert. They were dry this time of year, the wet season having given way to the quenched heat of summer. He examined the ground as a massive landing strip now, considering where he should go if he were forced to land. It would be dangerously open, and the Ethiopian forces would be tucked further west in the protection of the hills behind him. If he were to wander in that direction on foot, he would run the risk of getting lost in an unforgiving desert, but the alternative would be captivity. He had no intentions of waiting out the war in a prison camp. The orange halo grew closer, and as it came closer it became more mysterious. It wasn't the blistering white beams of spotlights, nor was it the dull blush of the few streetlights that Djibouti had along its main thoroughfares. It was organic and blotchy, like the glow of a lamp behind an animal-hide cover. Some parts of the city still lay in darkness, while others seemed to grow. He saw flashes bloom brightly before becoming part of the luminous whole. And that was when he realized it was fire. Djibouti was on fire, and the fire was growing. Radio silence was cut when the electric voice came from the static. [i]"//Targets sighted. Eleven o'clock... gunships.//"[/i] [i]"//Waaahaaa!//"[/i] and excitable second voice cut in, loud enough to obscure itself in frantic feedback. [i]"//Free kills! Take them out, brothers!//"[/i] The darkness was not a problem. Djibouti had become a lamp for them to fight by, and he could see the enemy targets like black bugs against a burning sky. The engine whirred as he dove, and he felt sweet gravity pressing him to his seat. He lined his sights and, with adrenaline filling his veins full of a new energy, he opened fire. Machine guns in the nose of of the craft punched out murderous rounds, and he could feel the power of the attack coursing through his arms. -- What had been a faint, orange haze glowing on the horizon minutes earlier had grown into a proper inferno. The sea was cast in the hellish glow of the city ablaze, waves shimmered with warm hues as the landing craft crawled ever closer to shore. Beyond the last hundred yards of surf and foam that separated Luis and his companions from the shores of Ethiopia, a seething wall of fire towered before them. Hector and the others no longer had ridicule to pour upon the defenders. The Spanish infantry bided in solemn silence, basking with trepidation in the glow of the blaze. Gunships swooped overhead, drowning out the crashing of waves against the beach and the hum of the boats' motors for a moment as they drove into the veil of embers and smog. Downdrafts from their propellers agitated the fires below as they flew above the city, leaving momentary whirlwinds in the blazes spewing from the windows and rooves of waterfront tenements. "About a minute out...!" The driver crowed from the landing boat's helm. "When that ramp goes down, you get your asses to cover - stones, trees, dunes, whatever." Ayesta ordered once the roar of the gunships had passed. "If bullets won't go through it, get behind it. Rally on me once the beach is clear and we'll move south along the coast around the city and the fires." Luis could feel the waves lurching up under the hull of the boat, jostling him back and forth. The waves were crashing down over sandbars just beyond the hull. Almost there. "About to lower the ramp!" The helmsman reported. "Get into pos- [i]Jesucristo[/i]..." A glance above the infernal horizon and one could see what had interrupted the driver. A helicopter erupted into fire - a sizzling red blaze engulfed the propeller mast as it tumbled into the burning city in a trail of sparkling embers. Luis' gut wrung itself at the very sight; he couldn't bear to imagine the fiery demise of his fellow infantrymen aboard that craft. He wished the comrades aboard that doomed Barracuda a quick and painless death as the helicopter plummeted into the hellscape of a city. "How did that even happen?" "Ember got in the intake? I'm not sure if that's even possible." "Poor bastards." Someone mumbled solemnly. And then another gunship met a violent end. Sparks created by metal striking metal flashed into being briefly amidst the maelstrom of embers as another Spanish aircraft disintegrated in a shower of metal scraps. It was apparent at that moment that the streaking flashes of red light materializing around the fleet of Spanish choppers were not embers at all - but tracers. A shower of hot red tracers fell through the smoke clouds like infernal rain. As a third and fourth gunship were struck by the torrent of lead and fire, the surviving fleet of Barracudas were joined suddenly by squadron of propeller fighters. Their undersides glowed in the light of the inferno below as they swooped triumphantly down from the night. The soft rumble of Djibouti ablaze was drowned in the roar of a hundred propeller engines as airplane after airplane fell out from the blackness and into ember-laden airspace above the city. The Ethiopian fighters advanced against the Spanish gunships. With the savagery of wolves loosed against pregnant ewes, the fighters swarmed about the gunships, flanking about the relatively-cumbersome attack helicopters with an ease that caused the Luis and his comrades extreme distress. "You said we had air superiority! What the fuck is going on, Lieutenant!?" "Hector!" Ayesta snapped, throwing his index finger at the turret beside the driver's perch, "get up on the machine gun and put some lead in the air! Take some pressure off the Barracudas so they can get the fuck out of here!" Without response, the unseasoned recruit clambered up a ladder of steel rungs into the driver's nest at the stern of the boat. Luis' heart palpitated as the airborne massacre played out before his eyes. The Barracuda gunships could scarcely back away before the unending swarm of airplanes were upon them, flitting about the helicopters with the grace of swallows and picking them off with short bursts of gunfire. Luis watched as a Barracuda rocked backward to halt itself and turn around, and then spun about hastily to retreat for the sea. Bursts of gunfire from pintle-mounted machine guns pointed out of the fuselage of the choppers amounted to a futile attempt to retaliate against the pursuing fighters; the Spanish pilots ceded the skies to the swarm of Ethiopian planes as the survivors all beat a hasty retreat toward the Armada ships. This was not how this war was supposed to be fought. The adversary was to be a technologically-deficient and backwards excuse of a modern nation. [i]Africans[/i] were not supposed to be able to rout mechanized infantry in gunships. Ethiopia had deviated from the script so carefully written by Prime Minister Sotelo and his generals... or perhaps the stratagems of Spain's military leadership were not so well crafted after all. Perhaps a crafty and judicious African general [i]could[/i] outfox the might of the Spanish Ejercito. Perhaps Djibouti would be to the Second Republic what Coquilhatville was to Juan III. "Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit..." Luis whimpered under his breath, cursing with each exhalation as he began to hyperventilate. "For fuck's sake Hector, shoot something!" Ayesta demanded. In the turret, the panicked recruit fumbled with a belt of ammunition. His trembling hands failed to insert the lead round into the slot. After several tries, the belt slid into the chamber. With a deft tug on the lever and a quivering finger on the trigger, the landing boat's turret fired off its response to the Ethiopian fighter planes. Their boat was joined by numerous others as the waters beyond Djibouti sparkled with the muzzle flash of dozens of machine gun turrets firing up into the teeming swarm of airplanes. A brief, bright burst of light flashed momentarily above the coast, followed by a percussive thud that rang out across the water. Several other thuds, followed by a series of flashes that all produced the same dull rumble. Flak shells: the Armada was opening up on the Ethiopian air force. The beams of high-power spotlights from the Spanish warships flickered on one-by-one, and then pointed their beams down across the water at the sky above Djibouti. The bright lights and shells did not seem to deter the Ethiopian pilots - they pressed on across the water, seeming intent on hunting down each gunship and then attacking the Armada itself. Starting with the landing craft. A shower of tracers fell about Luis' boat. For each red-glowing tracer, dozens more rounds fell down upon the boat, sparking and ricocheting against the armored hull. Luis cowered and covered the back of his neck with his free hand, too frightened to notice the splotch of wet warmth against his inner thigh. "I'm hit!" A fellow infantryman wailed who sounded more surprised than anguished, "I'm fucking hit!" "Lower the ramp!" Lieutenant Ayesta commanded the boat's driver. "We're swimming the rest of the way!" Under normal circumstances, the ramp at the front of the landing craft would only be lowered to allow troops out when the boat was beached or in very shallow water. Being strafed by dozens of enemy fighter planes, however, did not fall under the purview of normal circumstances. And so the driver nodded in accord, turning the knob on his console that lowered the ramp. A motorized whirring accompanied the descent of the ramp, giving Luis and his fellow soldiers full view of the hellscape that awaited them beyond some hundred feet of foamy surf. Waves and surf colored red by the glow of the inferno washed against the beach. Everything in sight burned - even the beachside palms were alight, their fronds crackling and throwing clouds of smoke and embers into the wind. "Everyone off!" Ayesta bellowed as the ramp crashed into the water in a foamy splash. A string of bullet geysers shot forth from the surf before the boat which ended in the helmets of two of the frontmost soldiers. Their bodies fell limp into the seawater flooding into the floor of the hull, but did little to impede the survivors from rushing out into the waves. The force of the soldiers pushing themselves out the front of the landing craft shoved Luis along with them. In a blur of uniforms and metal hull, the world disappeared with a loud splash. -- Djibouti looked like a city on the surface of the sun. Old homes of mudbrick and plaster were swallowed by the flames just as quickly as the newer cement and cinder block constructions, and the air was so hot that it seemed to shift and shimmy across the ground. Dry bushes and solitary palm trees seemed to burn from the sheer heat of the scorched air all around them, and everywhere everything glowed. He could hear the roaring blaze over the sound of his engines, and it only seemed to fade when he let the nose-guns scream. The Ethiopian pilot watched a gunship burn and dive, losing its shape as it struck the orange-tinted ground. Nearby the crash site a shell exploded, and the flash from its flaming mushroom plume stung his eyes. He shielded his face out of instinct. Would he be night-blinded now? No. That was ridiculous. There was too much fire for it to matter. He could see it glittering on the fuselages of his colorfully painted comrades. Everything caught the glean of that devilish light. It was dancing on the ocean as well, a mirror image of hell scattered by the waves. The sight of it stopped his breath. "Holy Mother Mariam" he muttered, making the sign of the cross over his face with one hand as he piloted with the second. He composed himself and prepared for the descent. They had came in high, purposely avoiding the super-heated air rising from the city's inferno. That meant that the planes carrying torpedoes had to dip sharply toward the sea in order to deliver their payloads. He gently pushed forward on the stick and felt himself grow lighter. He could see the coast directly in front of him now, where dozens of bristling steel battleships held against the kicking red sea. Tracers cut a line between him and a diving comrade moving away from him on his right. He watched the white-hot flash of whistling gunfire glisten on that plane's fuselage, where a snarling cheetah reached for a mutilated impala on the craft's nose. The pilot buzzed over empty landing craft bobbing gloomily in a glowing sea. Beyond that was his target. Instinct reached into his gut and wrenched it. Now was the time for Torpedoes! He flipped a switch. -- The cacophony of battle was swallowed into a dull gurgle as Luis was wholly enveloped by the sea. He threw his arms and legs about in the dark, turbid water to try and find the bottom. Before long, his boots kicked against something soft yet unyielding. Luis allowed his feet to settle against the underwater sandbed before shoving off with a powerful kick up to the surface. The water was quite shallow even this far out from shore, a little over six feet deep, for Luis had little difficulty clearing the surface. Salty ocean water infiltrated his mouth as he inhaled sharply and stole a glimpse of his surroundings. Most of the landing craft appeared to be making it to shore, although the boat he had bailed from seconds before was now listing forward and sinking quickly into the waves - due to being swamped by the premature disembarking rather than battle damage. A string of bullet geysers frighteningly close to his head sent Luis sinking back to the bottom. As his head slipped back underneath the waves, the sea around him rang out with the sound of something heavy crashing through the surface. He could not tell where it came from, for underwater it was impossible to determine the source of any sound, but the very volume of the suggested that it was close indeed. It was followed shortly thereafter with a mechanical whir that droned through the inky water. That mechanized whine could be nothing other than a torpedo, one much too close for Luis' liking. The unseasoned recruit threw his arms upward - pushing his body down to the seabed and allowing him to shove off and bounce toward the shore. His head cleared the surface and Luis opened his eyes once more. The sting of saltwater irritated his eyes as he looked about and stole a breath. The Ethiopian planes were flying overhead low and fast against the firelight, several dropping black, cylindrical tubes into the sea before the landing craft. Luis submerged once again and kicked toward shore. A flash of light pierced the blackness of the ocean around him, and a terrible sound tore through the water as he shoved upward into the whitecapped waves. Where his landing craft listed in the surf moments before, a smoldering mushroom cloud of fire now rose up amongst the African fighter planes. Much farther out, an orange flash appeared that illuminated the Armada a mile back. There was no time to fear for his countrymen or the mission at hand, the flight-or-fight instinct had utterly seized Luis - and it commanded him to get out of the water. Four more hops off the seabed placed Luis into water shallow enough to wade through. The waves rolled over his shoulders and face, knocking his back and forth and tugging at the FE-74 strapped loosely to his back. As he waded closer to shore and the seawater fell to chest-height, he found that he was not alone. Some of his comrades had surrendered their heavy guns and bullets to the sea and had swam to shore, and were gathering in the surf. In the midst of the gaggle of survivors of Luis' boat, another Spanish landing craft rumbled through the waves and lodged itself up against the beach. Its ramp fell down into the seafoam, the boots of a platoon of Spanish infantry splashed against the ebbing foam as the soldiers within disembarked. It seemed the Ethiopian counterattack had not proven entirely successful. An exhausted Luis collapsed onto his hands and knees in ankle-deep water, inhaling and exhaling deeply now that he had made it to shore. His soaked combat uniform clung against his chest as it heaved with every breath. But no sooner than he had stopped to rest, someone's hand firmly gripped his right shoulder and pulled Luis to his feet. "Is that you Luis? Are you hurt?" A familiar voice asked. Luis turned about and saw it was Hector's face glowing in the firelight. "No," Luis managed between pants, "only tired." "This is no place to stop for a rest, friend." Hector continued on, wading toward the burning city. "Remember what Lieutenant Ayesta told us: find cover." Without comment, Luis trudged through the final few yards of surf and followed Hector begrudgingly toward the inferno. -- Before the pilot prepared for another dive at the panicking Spanish navy, he reached an angle that gave him a commanding view of the battle at sea. Against a night sky filled with the demon dance of red and orange, the Ethiopian planes swarmed. They looked like gulls at a food-littered beach, and the sound of so many planes screaming as they dove or sputtering in a climb sounded like the dissonant music of hell. Hundreds of them shared the sky, diving and spraying their stationary targets. The Spaniards fought back, fiery flashes of returned fire erupting from dozens of intimidating steel vessels. Tracers filled the sky, as did searching white pillars from the spotlights on the decks of the ships. The sky was now cast in a muddy brown with streaks of pale, rusty clouds. Where light fell, florets of black smoke hung still in the air. He dove. His engine screamed as he aimed the craft at a ship below. His muscles tensed. He could feel the blood in his body shifting as the gravity went to his head. He lined himself up with the big guns, hoping to do some damage before he corrected his path. The trigger pulled, and gunfire jostled his soul. He felt his plane jolt, accustomed with the shrill sound of screeching metal. He pulled up immediately, showing his belly to the ship below. In front of him, a comrade was shot out of the sky. He watched the other plane as it was consumed by a ball of sparks before spiraling into an orange sea. The pilot's blood was boiling now. This was what it felt like to be a warrior. A couple of enemy vessels were listing, caught in vital places by the Ethiopian torpedoes. A fuselage illustrated with a twisting tribal warrior passed by his window so near that he was afraid he would hit it and the craft it belonged to. He dove again, and saw an enemy aircraft carrier towering above the waves. The planes on its deck were burning. -- During the initial barrage, one of Ras Hassan's artillery shells had overshot the city and landed ineffectively on the beach, managing to only ignite a copse of palm trees lining the waterfront street. Within the lip of the blackened crater that shell had created, Luis and Hector found a platoon of fellow infantry. A two man machine gun team lay at the forward edge of the crater, flanked by three other soldiers armed with standard issue FE-74s, all of whom aimed anxiously into the city that burned just across the beachfront road. Others busied themselves checking over their gear loadout and supplies, or kicking sand onto resilient tongues of flame burning out of the beach. Others still looked into the sky, watching helplessly as Ethiopian fighters swooped by over the inferno. Hector and Luis jogged over and slid down into the char-lined pit. The two drenched recruits elicited curious glances, but it was only their commander who offered any verbal response to their arrival. "Identify yourselves," the unit's lieutenant demanded sternly. "Hector Allega," Hector spoke up for Luis, gesturing to himself, "and Luis Morazon. From Lieutenant Ayesta's unit." "Where's the rest of your platoon, [i]Cabo[/i] Allega?" "I don't know, Lieutenant." Hector offered after exchanging a confused glance with Luis. "Our boat went down, I don't know where the rest of us are." "[i]Jesucristo[/i]." The lieutenant snarled, turning about to face his orderlies. "Gentlemen, as you can see, this invasion has become an unmitigated clusterfuck before our very eyes. If this were the [i]Armee Francais[/i] or even the [i]Preuissiche Wehr[/i], this would be just about the appropriate time we raise a white flag and turn tail back home. But, unfortunately for us, we enlisted in the Ejercito Español. We comprise the finest fighting force in all the world, and as such, neither cowardice nor failure are tolerated." "We have not been dealt a fair hand. Our leaders have demonstrated extreme incompetence in preparing an invasion against an enemy that they have grossly underestimated." At this moment, a passing fighter began a strafing pass on the beach. The soldiers within the crater collapsed to the ground and waited for the roar of the plane's engine to pass overhead. A dozen or so rounds impacted into the sand around the crater, crashing safely against the berm of impact-thrown sand that formed the crater's lip. Cautiously, the Spaniards returned to their feet. "We're going to adapt and overcome in spite of these highly adverse conditions. As we can see, advancing south across the coast around the city isn't an option - until the Armada gets its shit together and gets some planes in the air, moving across open ground like that will be a deathmarch. So we're going to go [i]through[/i] the city and emerge on the other side to engage the Ethiopian positions inland." Luis looked over the Lieutenant's should and saw Djibouti's skyline roiling in flames. Did this madman not realize that the city was [i]on fire[/i]? Not just burning - completely ablaze. And just how did he plan to get through this wall of burning rubble - form bucket brigades running from the sea through the city? A glance around to his companions - all wide eyed and fixed upon the infernal city before them - demonstrated that he was not alone in his sentiments. A pair of planes roared past through the smoke clouds rising above them, prompting the Spaniards to duck down into the charred sand once again. As the drone of the propellers passed into the distance, the Lieutenant bolted to his feet. "Now's our chance! Move!" At once, Luis, Hector and the others rose to their feet and clambered up the walls of the crater and back onto level sand. Blackened dunegrass crunched underfoot as the Spaniards charged across the last remaining stretch of open ground to the waterfront district of the doomed city. Even at this distance, the heat put out by the blazes was sweltering, and Luis turned his head back to avert his eyes from the uncomfortably warm air. He could see the battle raging at sea, where the Armada did battle with a locust swarm of Ethiopian planes. There, across the black sea, a second conflagration seemed to have emerged - a horizon of fire illuminating the Spanish warships. It was the flagship: [i]La Ira de Dios[/i] was ablaze. Even at this distance, burning masses could be seen falling into the ocean. The flagship of the invasion was doomed to suffer the same fate as the [i]Vanguardia[/i] nearly a decade before. Thoroughly distraught, Luis reverted his attention to the task at hand: escaping Djibouti. -- The Spanish Navy had taken their licks. Fire consumed proud iron fortresses, forcing their crews out of the battle so they could fight to salvage their vessels. The Ethiopian Pilot could see them frantically running across the decks. He wanted to sweep down and strafe them, to watch them dive away or die, but he held himself back. They were no longer a threat, and he had limited ammunition. He passed over them instead. The ocean itself was a wreck. Where the water didn't reflect fire, it was as black as tar. Debris tangled with corpses floated near the ships. There were places where petroleum skimmed the surface on the water, and in those places the sea itself was burning. The order went out over the radio that the Spaniards had taken the beach. That was no surprise. The Ethiopian military was entrenched in the hills outside of the city, unable to repulse the enemy beach-head. The inferno that swallowed Djibouti made it impractical to defend. There were no building left untouched by the blaze, leaving no hiding places for defenders. As he turned around to face the city again, the pilot realized another problem that made a ground defense impractical. It would be so hot down there that the air itself would be dangerous. Smoke would make it difficult to breath, and the temperature would be infernal. Over the radio, a captain rattled off the location of the Spanish landings in a voice that was cool and professional. The pilot didn't need that information, he could see it for himself in places where landing craft had managed to beach. They were in clusters, far enough from the city to be safe but in a precarious place none the less. They were out in the open, stuck between an unwelcoming sea and a city that threatened to cook them in their clothes. And there were no places to hide on the beach. A flash of flame erupted quite suddenly from the sand near the water, followed by a second. That was artillery. [i]Ethiopian[/i] artillery. They were shelling the Spanish beachhead now. The pilot dove toward the enemy. Flecks of ash settled on the canopy of glass that surrounded him, speckling the action with grey smears. He saw where men were moving on the beach, and he opened fire. Geysers of sand spouted around them. Some men ran while others fell to the ground. Whether those who fell were wounded or had simply fallen to shrink their profile was hard to tell. He pulled up and straightened his plane. -- Warbling klaxons rang dissonantly throughout the steel bulkheads of the aircraft carrier, rallying all hands aboard [i]La Ira de Dios[/i] to action as they had the past hour and a half. Thunderous bangs and the roar of Ethiopian propellers from outside the warship contributed to the discordant music of battle. And from the stairwells, the pitter-patter of a score of deckhands racing down the steeply graded stairs provided the percussion. They negotiated the carrier's stairwells as quickly as could be done without falling down. Shipmates, ensigns, and officers all came down the stairs and charged through the corridors toward the access to the flight deck. Armed not with firearms, but fire [i]extinguishers[/i], theirs was a last ditch effort to salvage the Invasion of Ethiopia. A haphazardly-organized fire brigade, with officers and enlisted shipmates alike cobbled together to restore their carrier's runway Near the main doors to the flight deck, Admiral Santiago Santin cradled in his arms three more fire extinguishers he had raided from the corridor walls. His pressed admiral's jacket had been cast aside in the control tower, leaving his white button-up undershirt rolled up to his elbows; now was hardly the time to ensure one was observing proper dress. "Take these." the Admiral commanded as the makeshift fire brigade reunited with him. Greedy hands immediately snatched two of the red cylinders from his arms as his comrades ran past. Santin followed behind the stragglers with his own extinguisher as they charged out at once onto the carrier's tarmac platform. The fire brigade was met with towering plumes of fire belching acrid smoke and embers into the night. At the heart of each of these blazes, a blackened Halcon fighter plane roasted, sizzling and popping on the tarmac deck. The Spaniards wasted no time in combating the fires, spreading across the deck and assaulting the burning. crumpled aircraft. A trio of forklift trucks were started and driven up to the nearest Halcones. The Ethiopians had made a terrific mess of Spain's flagship, a mess Santin had every intention of remedying in spite of the danger. Earlier in his career, he had seen the [i]Vanguardia[/i] lost; and he had no intention of allowing [i]La Ira[/i] suffer the same fate. "This one first!" Santin ordered, beckoning one of the forklift drivers over to a wrecked aircraft nearest the elevator that hoisted aircraft from a belowdeck hangar up to the flight deck; this area was the most critical part of the deck to be cleared. A tug of the safety pin and the Admiral fired off a puff of white foam into the heart of the blaze. The fire retreated with angry hisses from the blasts of frothy retardant, exposing a segment of charred metal to the air. There, Santin directed the driver's forks to be skewered into the warped fuselage of the fighter, who then lifted the mast up a foot off the surface. "Now dump it over, quickly!" They escorted the forklift under threat of gunfire as it moved forward with the mass of ardent scrap threatening to spread to the truck and set it ablaze. Santin and a few of his cohorts shot the burning Halcon with their extinguishers sporadically - aiming to contain the fire for a few more seconds. The burning plane was shoved, scraping and screeching against the flight deck the entire way, to the edge of the tarmac, beneath which choppy water crashed against the vessel's plowed hull some fifty feet below. On the precipice of the carrier, the forklift truck braked to halt, allowing the momentum of the burning plane to send it tumbling down off the deck. With the groan of strained metal and a fiery swoosh, the plane fell into the ocean - the fire that enveloped it immediately being quenched in a cloud of steam. The swarm of fighters over the Armada had shifted away in the previous minutes, directing their ire to the forces landing on the African shores instead. While that development made for a severe complication in the landing efforts, it had provided the Admiral enough of a lull to clear the runway just enough. With the fire no longer roaring in his ears, he could hear the plane elevator winching up under his feet. Little time remained. "Get these off as well!" Santin commanded, gesturing to a fighter that had been cut in twain by a well-placed string of bullets. "We cannot have that plane waiting to take off for one [i]second[/i]! Move it!" An African fighter swooped over the carrier's runway, loosing a volley of bullets on one of the forklifts as it wheeled over to the wrecked plane nearest Admiral Santin. The truck's windshield spider-webbed as two rounds pieced the cab and rendered the driver lifeless. Santin grimaced; bastard communists'd pay for that shortly. As the larger chunk of that smoldering Halcon was plunged into the sea, the plane elevator behind him had reached the flight deck. One plane sat upon that platform hanging precariously over the sea: the Fantasma jet fighter. It had been placed in the hangar deck as an investigation concerning its dogfight over the Gulf of Aden was conducted. Stowed safely below decks, it had been spared the onslaught wrought by the African planes. But now it's sleek, predatory outline glimmered in the flashes and fires of battle, her belly was full of jet fuel and laden with belts of ammunition. "We're out of time!" Santin declared, gesticulating to his orderlies to clear the runway. "Get out of the way!" A cone of yellow fire erupted from the Fantasma's thruster, jerking the plane forward but only until the gear brakes caught, holding the fighter fast against the pavement. Although Santin and his compatriots had cleared some wreckages from the deck, the far end of the carrier's runway was still littered with burning fighterrs; the Fantasma's pilot would have to make due with the clear runway, taking off [i]diagonally[/i]. Within seconds, the Fantasma's jet engine had built up sufficient thrust. Its pilot cut the gear brakes, allowing the Fantasma to rocket past Santin and his deckhands; the scream of the jet engine left the ring of tinnitus in the ears of the Spaniards. As the jet shot off the edge of the runway, it fell down beneath Santin's field of sight. A harrowing several seconds passed, and for a moment the Spanish Admiral feared that the jet was lost - it's take-off just slightly too ambitious. But the Fantasma rose upward, the white-hot glow of its thruster pod shining against the blackness of the ocean shot triumphantly skyward before disappearing into the flak-strewn night. A pair of Ethiopian fighters attempted to pursue the Fantasma as it banked away, but were immediately separated by a great gulf of night as the jet rocketed away. A smirk crawled across Admiral Santin's mouth as he witnessed the Fantasma escape into the dark. The superior technology of the Spaniards would turn this debacle around. Ethiopia would be reminded why resisting Europe was folly. -- When it came, it was like watching an eagle snatch a lesser bird from the sky. But what was it? The Ethiopian pilot could not tell. The Spanish aircraft - it was an aircraft, he knew that much for no other reason but because it was in the air - shot an African plane out of the sky and disappeared like a comet into the towering smoke that overcame Djibouti. The pilot watched in heart-wrenching dismay as his countryman helplessly rode his dead craft, a fuming ruin with a laughing hyena on it's side, into the oily sea. That man had certainly drowned. The eyes of the Africans were all in the sky. The smog-choked night was a bigger place now that it was hiding a weapon so unbelievable that the Pilot's heart told him it was a monster. There were rare stars in the smokey vale surrounding Djibouti, and when they twinkled behind the ashes, they caught the sudden attention of panicked eyes. [i]"//Where did it go//?"[/i] A shaky voice inquired over radio static. [i]"//Keep your eyes alert.//"[/i] an officer replied. [i]"//And shoot anything that moves.//"[/i] [i]We are in the wild now.[/i] The Ethiopian pilot thought. [i]We were the lions, but now we are the gazelle.[/i] The Spanish craft swooped in a second time, somewhere from behind them. As soon as it was spotted, it opened fire on its new target, another one of the pilot's comrades, and blew a hole so hot in that plane's engine that the explosion made him momentarily lose sight of Djibouti. This time, however, they were ready. As the Spaniards= rushed past them, the Ethiopian birds veered to chase and opened fire. The burning arcs of their enfilades crossed each other in confused needles of sky-fire. [i]"//Fuel tanks are getting low.//"[/i] a shaken voice announced. Vengeance, hatred, and fear all boiled in the heart of the pilot. He chose that moment to open the channel and reply. [i]"//This is not the time to forget we are men, with all the body parts that remind us of our manhood.//"[/i] he said. [i]"//We will get this one, and we will go home, and we will never have reason to doubt ourselves if we ever grow old.//[/i] That settled the issue. Hundreds of African warbirds fixed their designs on a single aircraft. -- They had cut into the mouth of a drainage canal running through the city, inside of which a trickle of garbage-riddled water wound in a snaking ribbon of filth before emptying out into the sea. There was little that could burn at the bottom of this ditch, and as such it was the safest means of passage through the heart of the city. Luis, Hector, and their adopted platoon marched through the muddy sand that reeked of festering sewage. The smell did not seem to bother any of the soldiers - they were all grateful that the air at the bottom of the channel was not choked with smoke and that they could breath. They carried their weapons loosely as they trudged forward. Over the concrete retaining berm, the Spaniards gawked upon the conflagration that surrounded them. Every single building - regardless of its original purpose or construction - was ablaze. The tires of the cars burned to the asphalt they sat upon, buildings spewed torrents of fire from their windows and doorframes. In this apocalyptic state, there could be no enemy presence in Djibouti - no danger of encountering an ambush nor fear of snipers in the minarets. Luis, Hector, and their compatriots entered the damned city with impunity, as if they were tourists rather than invaders. The howl of shells arcing high above pierced the roar of a million bonfires burning as one. Of the louder, sharper whistles, Luis cringed and ducked down in instinct the same way one might at the crack of a particularly loud clap of thunder. The loud explosion of an artillery shell impacting the earth at the speed of sound was never registered - only the dull bang of explosions rumbling in the distance behind them. It seemed that the Ethiopians were shelling the beach now with the landings intensifying. "Take it easy, [i]cabron[/i]." One of the machine gunners teasingly punched Luis in the shoulder. "If you can hear 'em, you're safe. Ever hear those Great War veterans talk about being shelled? They say you never hear the shell that actually kills you." Luis' grandfather had fought with the French during the greatest war in history, but he had never recounted his experiences. When he was younger, a curious Luis once asked to hear what it had been like fighting off the German army. He expected to hear stories of high adventure and bravery, holding the line at the Fourth Battle of the Marne or the daring Stuttgart Salient. Luis' grandfather offered no such stories; he remembered his veteran grandfather glanced down at the scaly stump where his left elbow should have been and declared had nothing to recount. "Bull-shit," contested the soldier carrying belts of machine gun ammunition draped across his shoulders. "Of course you're gonna hear a shell that's about to kill you." "No you [i]won't[/i]. The shells are moving faster than sound even. If an artillery shell is moving toward you faster than the sound it makes, then you won't hear it until it blows you up." Luis found that to be a decidedly uncomfortable thought: that at any moment, he could die without any warning. He would rather have some notification that the end of his life had arrived. Just enough time to utter a plea to God for forgiveness was all he wanted. But it seemed even [i]that[/i] was a luxury that a soldier could not be guaranteed. The drone of an engine screamed out of the smog-choked sky, signalling the presence of an Ethiopian airplane swooping out of the night. The platoon's commander pressed himself against the canal's retaining wall, prompting his orderlies to do the same. The chatter of machine guns firing sounded over the roar of the inferno, causing the Spaniards to flinch and duck under the wall to avoid another Ethiopian strafing pass. Rounds could be heard tearing through the air above, smashing into the plaster facade of a burning repair garage on the other side of the ditch. Sure enough, the propeller-driven Ethiopian fighter flashed by overhead. But it too was on fire - Luis saw a billowing contrail of flame rolling over the fuselage from the propellers. That plane did not swoop up out of the way of the horizon of flame as the other African planes had before - it careened into the infernal city and plunged into the ruins with a meaty crash. A scream shot through the night, tearing the collective attention of the Spanish infantry from the crashed fighter back into the sky. A blur of light raced across the sky, following the embery contrail of the downed airplane before zipping back into the night. A cone of glowing exhaust followed the object as it rocketed back into the sky. The whistling howl resounded over the burning city as this object's exhaust shot into the city, fanning the fires below and ejecting embers as the downdraft splashed against the burning city beneath. Luis had heard that sound before, when he left Malta to rendezvous with the Armada: the propellerless aircraft that flew faster than anything he had ever seen. The smoky haze blanketing the sky over Djibouti boiled as a hundred planes followed that ghost out of the night. More planes than Luis could count tore the smog layer apart with their propellers and chased after it as a single swarm. A buzzing swarm of African hornets chased this one aircraft over the city, unleashing thousands of glowing tracer rounds after it. Portions of this rain of lead fell all around Luis and his compatriots, forcing them back down against the berm and sloppy mud. Above their heads, the combined might of Ethiopia's airforce roared past overhead, in such numbers and volume that the Spaniards had to cover their ears. Their fuselages were adorned with lions and elephants and martial tribal paint schemes, in the way that Zulu warriors might have painted their shields and assegai while fending off the British and the Boers a century before. As the last planes thrummed back into the night, the platoon's lieutenant came upright to his feet, beckoning for the others to do the same. Once upright, Luis noted the myriad bullet craters that pocked everything around the drainage canal. "We were damn lucky to have good cover just then, we may not be so fortunate when they return. Look sharp, [i]soldados[/i]; let's move." -- It was the momentary silences in between attacks, when there was nothing to do but keep formation and wonder who would die next, that tore the most at the morale of the Ethiopian airmen. They formed into several V's flying near to one another so that the moment the supernatural enemy aircraft took another victim, they could turn on it and spray return fire until it disappeared at high speed into the smoky night. There was something about their formation that reminded the pilot of traditional warfare. This was a battle-line in the air, trudging forward in tight lock-step so they could throw a united volley at their enemy. It was Napoleonic, a military machine made from hundreds of individuals acting as one, but what they faced was a single craft fighting wielding all the wrath of god against the African columns. They knew when that wrath struck, as it came in the form of sudden violence. There would be a scream of bullets, confusion, and then death. When the enemy came, everyone knew their place in the fight. But so long as that enemy was gone, all there was to do was stare anxiously at the sky all around them. It came again, shrieking violence and fire, but there was no time for panic. When he heard the attack, the pilot knew he was not the victim this time, and he went quickly to identifying the enemy. It shot past them at brain-scrambling speed. Hundreds of Ethiopian planes opened fire at once, filling the sky with tracers, but there was only a second's worth of time before the enemy was out of range, and he always seemed to get away unscathed. //[i]"C Squad is returning to refuel."[/i]// a voice announced over the radio. It was a confirmation of something the pilot already knew. They chose to use the moment they located the enemy as a time to send some squads back to Harar. They could be useful in the fight, but it would be a disaster for the majority of the Ethiopian airforce to crash land their planes in the desert just because they had no fuel. The Enemy came again. The Ethiopian pilot looked desperate, but he only saw the enemy when it was too late to fire. He cursed his impotence, and watched a friend spiral into the drink, where flame-kissed waves swallowed him. On the beach below, the Spaniards were landing the hardware of war to join the battle alongside their infantry. There were armored cars, and tanks, and rigs of every size. They were forced to dodge the fiery blossoms of Ethiopian artillery. With only a handful of light artillery batteries to back them, however, the Ethiopian barrage did not have a strong suppressive effect on the Spanish operation. The Enemy aircraft came again. This time he saw the bloom of fire where an Ethiopian plane was blown out of the air, and he spotted the attacker quick enough to take a few shot at it before it left. [i]//"I have seen the enemy!"//[/i] an excited voice shouted over the radio. [i]//"He has cat eyes! Big green cat eyes!"//[/i] [i]//"He would need such eyes."//[/i] another voice replied. [i]//"To move so fast in this dark."//[/i] [i]//"What dark do you see? Djibouti is like a lamp tonight."//[/i] [i]//"He does not face the city to attack us."//[/i] The conversation made the pilot wonder, what other things could the Spanish do? If they had ways to see in the dark, and to move an attack craft at such speeds, what other horrible things would this war witness. When the enemy came this time, he left his victim in the air with a stalled engine. At first, in the moment that followed the return volley, the pilot could not see that anybody had been hit. That was until another voice came over the radio. [i]//"Brothers, I am dead!"//[/i] it shouted in a pitch that was half panic and half euphoric. The Pilot saw the damaged plane gliding fast toward the beach, its fuselage painted with the image of two ink-black women wrestling naked in a desert. It was going down too fast for a safe landing, and the beach it was heading for teemed with Spanish soldiers. [i]//"Brothers, I know what to do."//[/i] he shouted frantically. Did he still have some sort of control in the craft? The Pilot watched in amazement, wandering if his comrade was going to find a way to survive. [i]//"Brothers, behold!"//[/i] The voice shrieked. The Pilot watched, somber at first, and then filled with glorious excitement as he understood what he was watching. The damaged plane glided at full speed, skimming just above the sand of the beach until it smashed into the broadside of a Spanish tank. The fireball took them both and turned them into blackened ruble. [i]//"Steel was no match to that man's fuel."//[/i] a reverent voice came across the radio. The heroic death of their self-avenged comrade renewed their vigor. They had circled the city, and with the beach now falling behind them, they faced out toward a churning sea. The ships that still floated were putting out their fires and regrouping their sailors so that they could be ready for another fight, but not all of the ships could be salvaged. There were some who's hulls had sunk beneath the water, only blackened guns and rising command and communication towers sticking above the waves. Debris filled the sea, now thick with oil, and the last straggling landing boats struggled to avoid collisions with twisted metal bobbing in the water like apocalyptic sea-mines. The plane at the pilot's right burst into flame, and a familiar shriek filled the air. The Pilot was ready. His was the first stream of fire to announce the volley. The pilot held his stick with sweaty palms, his grip so intense that he felt his skin numb. The silver blip of the enemy aircraft did not disappear as quick as it normally did. This time, it seemed to flicker and fade. And then it reappeared, seemingly closer. A veil of black smoke seemed to obscure it, and as the pilot flew into that cloud he realized something that others already knew but were keeping silent about. Their bullets had found their target, and the enemy plane was moving slowly now. The Pilot took to the radio. [i]//"I am directly behind the target. I will take it out."//[/i] This was no moment for the entire formation to converge on one single point. They had acted as a single machine for the duration of this fight, and they would end it the same way. As he approached, he saw where smoke erupted from the damaged engine of a streamlined aircraft that looked like something out of a pulp space magazine. How did this engine even work? He felt uncertain about taking it out, not knowing if there were any other tricks to this craft. The one thing he did completely understand was a bubble cockpit, where the enemy pilot would be fidgeting with the controls trying to correct what he could to regain confidence in his ability to pilot. The Ethiopian would not give him the opportunity. He climbed so that he could drop, and in his descent he leveled his guns to the enemy's cockpit. And then he opened fire. His guns caused his body to shake. What was seconds felt like minutes, and the stream of fire became so heavy that his guns overheated and jammed. It did not matter. His work was done. When he came near enough to the Spanish plane, he saw that the cockpit was cracked and entirely wet with blood, like a ripe berry on a smoking silver ruin. The enemy aircraft fell silently into the sea and disappeared. [i]//"The ferengi has died!"//[/i] the pilot shouted excited over the radio. [i]//"Let us go home!"//[/i] -- Hassan watched the sky whirl with the afterglow of fire. It was like looking at sunlight playing across the ripples of a lake; it would reach out and leap across the stars, and then it would recede, only to leap again. The after-effects of the conflagration reached the artillery batteries in the desert, where the air smelled like smoke and ashes covered everything in a fine layer of dust. He considered how the ashes were from things he had seen before. This was the dust of the French colonial buildings built in Indian style, and the thatching of mud huts. It was also the twenty thousand civilians that had been in the way when the shells fell, and the Spaniards who had advanced to their doom. The artillery still blazed, though not as frequently as they once had. The crews had began to sleep in shifts so that they would have some rest before the next day. Hassan did not know how the Spaniards would react, and there were still gaps in his knowledge of their capabilities. He had not seen evidence of a counter-attack yet, and the reports that had been sent to him from the front by messengers on motorcycles did not suggest that they would be tried in a big way before morning came. The Artillery officer had paced through the camp for most of the bombardment. He was aware of something that most of the soldiers did not know; that the evacuation had been ineffective, and that the Ethiopians had fired on their own people. Hassan was more worried what the Spanish would do with that information, but what could they do? Had they not came here to murder Africans themselves? The average European was a hateful fucker as far as Hassan could tell. They could not possibly care. Hassan considered putting the officer to bed. Perhaps that would be best. His pacing, after all, was nerve wracking for anybody who could see it. Hassan watched the officer scornfully. He considered the man. A coward? Perhaps not. He was one of those types of men who's nobility had never matured. He still saw the romantic virgin warriors of christian mythology as an ideal to be admired. Such a thing was ridiculous in real warfare. In a real war, blood wins over valor every time. A whisper among the servicemen turned Hassan's attention. Before he could ask what was happening, he heard the sound. It was an approaching buzz high up in the air. It was aircraft. This had not been the first to return over their heads. Ethiopian planes flying back home for fuel. But this last group, it was large. Dozens on black-shadow V's against a dull-red sky. They had done their part, and they would have more parts to play before this war was finished. As he watched the planes pass directly over him on their solemn return, the flashing light of a single headlight caught the bottom of his eye. A motorcycle. He watched the bright glow of the headlight bob and hop across the desert as it grew bigger and brighter. When the sputtering sound of a struggling engine began to accompany the light, Hassan walked forward and climbed on the ramparts. The motorcycle stopped and the light went dead. Hassan was blinded for a moment, and the rider seemed to be a vague silhouette camouflaged against the ground, slowing improving until he became a tiny man with bug-eyed riding goggles. "Ras Hassan." he bowed. "I have been sent to give you three apologies from my commander." "Apologies?" Hassan felt his throat tingle. Apologies for what? "Yes." the rider continued. "He cannot send counter-attacks as he was ordered. The fire..." the rider looked back at where the sky danced. "It's too hot, Ras. Djibouti is gone, its just fire now. It would cause more casualties than an attack would be worth." "Right, right." Hassan assured. "I ordered him to assault the Spanish forces if possible. He had judged it is not possible, and I am inclined to agree. Tell me though, what of the Spanish?" The rider grinned. "Their navy is burning, Ras. I do not think that they will take us lightly after tonight. I feel good about this war." "Good!" Hassan shouted, loudly so he could be heard by all around. He chuckled and jumped down from the ramparts and faced the men. "Brothers, I have been told the news. Spain burns!" The men cheered manly cheers. "The planes we just saw fly above us killed the enemy and lived to return! We've had a good night tonight, brothers! We will quiet the guns for now, you all need sleep so we can kill more Spaniards in the morning!" The men cheered again, and they were louder this time. Hassan walked away from them smiling and approached the nervous artillery officer. "I need you to deliver a message." Hassan asked. "Can you do that?" "A message?" the officer looked confused. "That man is a messenger. I am not a messenger." "No, I know this, but the man I want to get a message to might consider it an insult if I send anybody less than an officer. I am here in the trenches, I can command your men for now." "Man? what man is this?" "Do you know Ras Goliad?" "The governor of Harar?" the officer nodded slowly. "I have heard the name. What do you want me to tell him?" "Tell him to raise some men. He has the local legion, but tell him to bring together the village chiefs and the shiftas. I want him to drill them and get them ready for a real fight." "Are we retreating to Harar?" the officer asked. "After a victory?" "Not yet, but we can not hold these hills for long, and now that Djibouti is gone there is nothing of value for us here. We will fight as much as we need to, but only so that we can build up our defenses in the highlands. When it comes time, I want to have Goliad with us." "I will do this." the officer nodded. "Let me get ready for the trip." As the officer walked away, Hassan turned his attention to the west. For hundreds of miles stretched the Danakil, and he had no intention of fighting a protracted war there. The desert was too open, and there was nothing to hold on to. It was a place where water was the most strategic resource, where white sand-scapes and rocky martian dunes divided him and the Seventh Sefari from the protection of the Ethiopian highlands. In this open expanse, hardware would count for everything, and Hassan knew that the Spanish were well ahead of them when it came to hardware. But he remembered a story about the tanks under Kwanza's command during the Battle of Lubumbashi. Bemba tribals, men who had never seen a tank before, snuck up behind three tanks and took them out of the battle. That had been a strange story for a strange war, but he wondered if there was some wisdom in it. How would the Spanish hardware hold up when everything that surrounded them was hostile?