[b]Djibouti, Pan-African Empire[/b]

With all the grace of muddied rats, Luis and Hector's adopted platoon escaped the inferno.

One by one, they scrambled through the opening of a drainage culvert on the far side of Djibouti. The filthy concrete tube, barely wide enough to accommodate an adult man moving through at a crouched scurry, left each passing Spaniard thoroughly smeared with what they dearly hoped to be mud. Even so, it was preferable to braving the flames. Tongues of flame crawled down the berm from which the culvert emptied, unfurling a red coal carpet of smoldering scrubgrass as it spread; winds flowing off the sea blew hellfire seeds over the land, depositing them on the dry hills where they sprouted into wildfires. The inferno was growing out of control; it seemed Luis and his compatriots were fortunate to escape the city when they did.

The landscape laid out beyond the outskirts of Djibouti was a rugged and barren expanse. Wadis ran down from the hills and then expanded into dry gravelly washes that ran down toward Djibouti's western flank. The hills themselves glowed, reflecting the light of burning Djibouti. 

A shooting star flickered across the smog-choked sky, a bright red cherry illuminating the hellclouds wafting from Djibouti with a spasmic glow. It raced overhead at great speed, arcing over the city on a sputtering contrail of smoke and embers and fell down to the mountains. It fell to Earth with a white-hot flash, generating a blossom of pulverized rock and soil that ringed a flowerhead of orange fire. Before the rumbling bang traversed the kilometers separating that burst from the Spaniards' ears, another four fireballs howled overhead with a whistling scream and crashed into the hillsides with a high-explosive punch. The hillsides roiled with ejected dust and rubble, it reminded Luis of the clouds of agitated silt that invariably kicked up when his feet hit the bottom of his childhood swimming spot.

"Prometeos..." Hector declared in reverent murmur. "They're firing the Prometeos."

The shadows cast by the Spanish infantry pivoted about their boots as the fireballs arced past. The Prometeos, armored rocket artillery that had so terrified the Batistan Loyalists in the Italian Civil War, had finally issued their response to Hassan's incendiary shells. Rockets laden with explosive warheads rained destruction upon the hillsides where the Ethiopian artillery had been positioned minutes before. Any soldiers or equipment that had not yet escaped the abandoned lines would be destroyed utterly.

Under the withering fire of the Spanish rockets, the platoon advanced. In the scrublands beyond the city, suitable cover was scarce and far between. Maneuvers had to be conducted quickly and with appropriate strategy. Luis and Hector scurried across the gravel and dust to a cluster of scrap-built huts situated alongside a gravel road far enough of Djibouti's outskirts so as to not succumb to the blazes. Rusting boxes of corrugated metal orbited around a scorched pit of ashes, crude doorways were shut with splintered pallets, chain link fencing, even mattress springs. Whatever the city could not find use, the tribesmen who occupied this camp utilized.

"Clear the buildings!" The platoon leader ordered as the Spaniards approached the camp. Any edifice that remained unburnt could very well harbor Ethiopian soldiers or armed militia; any building encountered had to be assured to be clear of any potential threat. The machine gun team took care of this duty on behalf of the platoon: the gunner bore the mighty firearm down on the shanties and squeezed the trigger. His body shuddered as the machine gun coughed forth a torrent of lead. The sound of metal on metal was heard as the bullets tore jagged holes through aluminum and tin, one particularly flimsy hut collapsed in a cloud of dust and rubbish under the fusillade. A small pile of belt links and hot bullet casings clinked at the gunner's boots as he raised the gun back to his shoulders.

"Clear," the gunner declared, admiring his work as his companions moved forward around him. Luis dearly hoped that nobody had been inside these huts, but made sure his expression betrayed no sense of disapproval. He had learned by now that any lack of enthusiasm was best kept to himself.

"Good work. Go and check these things for supplies. After our landing, I don't know if I can trust our leadership to supply us once we move inland. Meet back here in two minutes."

The Spaniards fanned out into the slum, tearing their way into the refuse-built shanties. Luis made his way to one of the nearer huts and wrangled with a 'door' made from the springy skeleton of a mattress - tatters of upholstery flesh still hanging to the rusting bones.

"Hey, Luis, try [i]knocking[/i]!" Hector teased. He launched a booted foot into the tin wall of the same hut, kicking his way clear through the flimsy metal sheeting before barging inside and ransacking it.

Luis joined him through the gaping hold he had kicked in, searching for anything they might need. Firelight flickered inside through a scattering of bulletholes in the walls, but there was no corpse laying in their midst. It seemed the tenants of this place had fled before the arrival of the Armada, a relief to Luis. As Hector rooted through the inhabitant's meager belongings like a famished hog, Luis noted an opened can on the dirt floor beside a bedroll. 'Kippered Herrings' the label read in English. Only two filets of oily fish remained - the dweller of this hut had been diligently rationing this meager can. Perhaps it was the only protein this person would consume in an entire week. For Luis, it brought into question the validity of Spain's mission in Africa: how much threat did the Ethiopian Empire really pose to Spain when this sample of its citizenry seemed worse-off than many beggars in Madrid. Luis and Hector returned to the rally point empty-handed, as did most of the other infantrymen.

"This is what I get for expecting to forage from a people who haven't evolved past hunting and gathering." The Lieutenant declared, unimpressed with their findings. "I hope for our sake that our supply routes remain intact."

A deep, gut-rattling blast shook the land, shaking the earth beneath the Spaniards' feet and even knocking down a poorly-constructed hut. Their attention was immediately raptured, Luis and his countrymen turned to the hills to their west, and discovered that one of them had ceased to exist. A cloud of dust spread and collapsed where one hill had stood moments before. The pitter-patter of rain could be heard falling on the hard desert earth around them - except it wasn't rain, but rather tiny fragments of pulverized rock. A brief flash of yellow-white light manifested as another peak tumbled down in a cascade of dust and rock. Another hill had succumbed to the Armada's cathartic vengeance.

"Safe to say, any enemy presence in those hills that was there before is gone now," their Lieutenant spoke up, bits of rock plinking off his helmet. "Let's advance." To the drumbeats of naval artillery in the harbor, the Spaniards left the slummy encampment and made their way westward down the gravel road. The road was filthy, even by impoverished, East African standards. All manner of refuse, from cigarette butts to goat pellets, had fallen into the gravel; much of the litter appeared to be fresh. A great deal of traffic had traveled these roads recently. Refugees, likely.

And a new surge of traffic was coming down the road now. Phlegmy diesel motors roared behind the infantrymen as they hiked up the road, dozens and dozens of pairs of headlights coming up the road going westward from the burning city. The Spaniards stepped off the shoulder of the road to make way for the approaching vehicles. The first column was comprised of armored trucks, each one a metal-plated brick of an automobile riding on massive tires with aggressive tread. They moved at a respectable speed for rigs of their size - every bit of 50 kilometers per hour by Luis' reckoning. Gunmen stood waist-high from portholes on the top of the cars, each one manning high caliber machine guns or fat mortar-esque cannons depending on the vehicle's loadout. They regarded Luis and his adopted platoon with apathetic curiosity as they sped past into the night. The armored cavalry units of the Third Mechanized was on the move.

Not far behind the armored trucks came the halftracks - giant trucks fitted with huge tires in the front and treads in the rear like a tank. The first ones to trundle past were fitted with howitzer-like guns in the rear; these were vehicles equipped to deliver firepower comparable to that of a tank in a vehicle that was twice as mobile. After the cannon-mounted halftracks came those carrying personnel. Beneath canopies of olive-colored fabric, up to ten Spaniards clad in the khaki combat dress of the Spanish rode past.

“Hector!” A familiar voice called over the din of the heavy motors. “Luis! Is that you?!”

Before Luis and his companion could ascertain who called for them, someone vaulted over the lip of the bed of a passing halftrack. He tumbled to the ground and jogged over to the pair. It was Lieutenant Ayesta, their superior who they had presumed killed in the landing.

“Christ, are you two a sight for sore eyes.” Ayesta gave Luis a friendly knocking on the helmet. “I’d thought I lost you all.”

“What happened?” Hector blurted. “What happened to the rest of our platoon?”

“Our boat was torpedoed not long after we’d disembarked. Wasted them all except me, or so I’d thought.” Luis felt Ayesta’s matter-of-fact tone seemed rather inappropriate. Here was a man who had been charged with the lives of twenty subordinates, and virtually all had been killed in a single fell swoop. For loosing perhaps eighteen of his men, Lieutenant Ayesta seemed to be in fantastic spirits. Luis expected just a little more despair given the circumstances. “What a relief to see you two, and to be rid of that clusterfuck.”

They glanced over to Djibouti burning bright against the night behind them. Winds bearing down off the sea agitated the inferno behind them, churning and bellowing the blazes into swirling torrents of fire. It would be weeks before the fires died completely, all the while burning hot enough to reduce metal to wilted lumps of formless slag and render brick and mortar chalky cinders. Djibouti had ceased to exist, there would be nothing for the Spanish to occupy here.

“Then what do we do? What is our aim now?” Asked Luis.

Ayesta pulled his lips taut and whistled sharply and loudly enough to be heard easily over the halftrack engines. He waved up into the air and flagged down a halftrack coming down the road, which pulled off the dusty shoulder and came to halt before Ayesta and the other Spaniards.

“We give chase to the Africans, and repay them.” Ayesta declared, nodding to the parked halftrack.

“Mount up!”