[b]Socotra[/b]

Like vultures descending upon a fallen beast, ten vaguely-humanoid beings sank into the blue depths of the sea. The regulators clamped firmly within their mouths let off billowing curtains of bubbles with each exhalation. Hoses ran from the mouthpieces to long cylinders of compressed air mounted onto bodies clad with close-fitting rubber wetsuits. Long, webbed fins extended out from their legs, giving each of these beings the ability to give powerful kicks against the water. In spite of their monstrous appearance, these creatures of sea were in fact human. They were [i]hombres ranas[/i] - frogmen - the salvage divers of the Spanish Armada.

The sea around them resounded with the sharp pulse of air flowing from the pressurized airtanks into their mouths, followed by the gurgle of a thousand bubbles of spent breath trickling surfaceward. Diving with such a system made it possible to remain underwater for an hour or more: plenty of time to accomplish their appointed task.

Steely eyes behind bug-eyed facemasks surveyed the underwater world rising up to meet the frogmen. A landscape of brightly-colored corals - the surface of an alien realm - manifested just below them. A school of anchovies moved across the teeming reef below in a shimmering, undulating cloud. A pair of hammerheads harried the anchovies along, repulsing the swarm of tiny fish whenever the hammerheads approached. The sharks disengaged from the anchovies and made an ambling, lazy pass by the divers. Sharks very seldom gave the salvage divers any trouble, but that didn't stop one of the frogmen from pre-emptively gathering his powerhead in his arms. Even while under the sea, the Spanish were prepared for a fight. In addition to various salvage tools, each diver carried with him a fiberglass rod terminating in a firing tube upon which a shotgun slug was mounted. With a deft jab into the intended target, the powerhead would discharge directly into anything that got close enough to threaten its wielder, issuing a swift death to even the most aggressive undersea beasts.

But the Armada had not issued the frogmen their powerheads with sharks or barracudas in mind.

The Armada's command chain had learned that Ethiopia had lost something very dear off the desert isle of Socotra. Surely enough, after a week of conducting sonar sweeps around the island, the [i]Delfin[/i] found what the admirals sought: the unmistakable profile of an airplane resting upon the seabed. The Spanish suspected - hoped - that the Emperor had allowed some sort of secret weapon to fall within Sotelo's grasp.

Now, with their own eyes, they could see the wreckage. Beyond where the reef dropped off into an open plain of furrowed sandbeds, pale aluminum wings stretched outward against the blue abyss. As they approached the derelict plane, the story of how it came to arrive at the bottom of the Gulf of Aden was revealed. The fuselage was peppered with bullet holes, and the left engine pod had been completely mangled by a machine gun fusillade. Wide, swathes of sooty black scorchmarks fanned out from the ruined engine and mottled the rest of the wing. The nose end of the plane, including the cockpit, had snapped off completely save for a twisted sinew of metal and wiring that kept it attached to the wreckage - a wound that likely occurred during the water landing. The tattered nose of the airplane rested in a crumpled heap underneath the right wing.

Some of the frogmen pulled strings attached to the vests wrapped around their torsos, allowing air trapped in buoyant bladders within the vest to vent out as a gurgling string of bubbles. With the excess air released, they sank down to just a few feet off the sandbed, sending little crabs and long-legged shrimp scurrying away to safety. Some of the other divers circled around the wreckage, searching the site with powerheads in hand for any hazard or sign of trouble. A pair of divers descended to investigate the remains of the cockpit. Within a coffin of spiderwebbed glass, a pair of skeletons slumped against their seats clad in pilots coveralls. The two Spaniards watched with apathetic interest as a tiny guppy swam about one vacant eye socket and nibbled at a scrap of flesh. In a cloud of disturbed sand - the pair left the cadavers to the scavengers and regrouped with the rest of the party near the opening of the fuselage.

At the yawning entrance of the decapitated airplane, the Spaniards conducted a final check of the equipment they had brought down with them from the [i]Delfin[/i]. Two inspected the tethers of steel cable they had brought down, which terminated in heavy duty carabiner hooks and ran all the way to winches onboard the ship. Another diver tested a hydraulic pincer, pressing the claw-like tool against a section of the airplane's aluminum skin. An audible whine could be heard through the water as the twin blades of the implement bit hard into sheet metal and left a long, clean cut through the aluminum. The other divers were equipped with more mundane tools - prying tools, hammers, and crescent wrenches - but they were well prepared to bring any valuable Ethiopian hardware back to the surface nonetheless. With their gear assured to be in good working order, the divers slowly filtered inside the plane.

As the divers floated inside the cavernous fuselage, they quickly discovered they were not alone; illuminated in a ghostly beam of blue light filtering in through a porthole, was the spectral form of a skeleton wrapped in a white dress. The dress, stained and muddied by prolonged exposure to seawater, billowed and ebbed in the currents. The skeleton sat upright against the hull, still restrained to the bench seat where she had spent the final moments of her life, as if to watch the frogmen as they entered her underwater tomb. A chill ran up the spine of more than one Spanish diver.

Refocusing their attention on the task at hand, the frogmen took note of the massive object that dominated the airplane's interior. Surrounded by clusters of nondescript schoolfish was a crate so large that it almost seemed like the airplane was built around it. Satin blankets that had once been colored in rich, royal colors had shifted about in the crash and lay strewn all throughout the back side of the fuselage. The crate itself was abnormal as well, solid hardwood - perhaps teak. Given its quality, it seemed like the last material someone would ever use to make something as mundane as a crate.

Unless that crate carried something valuable indeed.

One of the divers approached the crate with what looked like a modified crowbar. He planted his webbed feet against the floor of the airplane, pressed the chiseled end between two planks, and attempted to pry the crate apart. The planks, however, didn't budge. Not only was the crate luxurious, it was thick. But not thick enough to withstand the hydraulic pincer. Its wielder placed a corner beam in the maw of the device and started it. A cracking sound reverberated through the airplane as the blades dug deep into the wood and snapped the beam in half. Another three cuts around the top of the crate and some prying by the other divers finally resulted in the separation of the top from the rest of the crate. At last, the Spaniards removed the top and allowed it to sink unceremoniously to the floor.

Upon looking upon the crate's contents, their eyes bulged in their masks.

Inside the crate was a chest made of a yellowish wood darkened by the passage of millennia. Its facets were adorned with inlays of brilliant gold. Two beams of wood ran lengthwise along the artifact, each held a safe distance from the object itself by gilded rungs. The top of this box was entirely covered in the same majestic gold. A glassy surface of smooth gold formed the cover, which was adorned with a golden figure depicting a pair of four-winged angels. Each angel kneeled before the other one, shrouding its body with one set of wings while forming a crown of outstretched feathertips over the box with the other set.

Being the devout Spaniards they were, each diver recognized immediately that they had laid eyes upon the Ark of the Covenant.

The pace of their gurgling regulators increased, leaving a shimmering cloud of bubbles trapped against the ceiling of the airplane. For some time, the divers hung idly against the open crate, dumbstruck by their discovery. Underwater, nobody could communicate with one another to say what should be done with such a relic. But they all understood that no matter what, something as precious as the Ark could not be left to wither and rot on the seafloor. It had to come to the surface, that much was unanimously understood.

The pincer made short work of the airplane's roof; a square large enough for the Ark to pass through upward toward the surface was quickly opened, allowing the six winch cables down into the fuselage. Knowing full well the fate that befell the who laid hands directly upon the Ark, the Spaniards took immense care to avoid touching the relic itself and slid the carabiner rungs over the handle beams, lest they suffer the same fate as ancient Uzzah.

Three deft tugs were given upon the cables: the signal for the crane operator to activate the winch. At last, the Ark of the Covenant rose from its crate up toward the long shadow cast by the [i]Delfin[/i]. The frogmen swam upward to accompany it, watching the ancient relic intently to assure no harm came to it. So intently, in fact, that the divers failed to note the cluster of dinghies surrounding the ship, nor the red tint to the water around its hull.

The crown of seraph wings burst through the surface with a crash of frothy seawater, and came to a stop beneath the arm of the Delfin's onboard salvage crane. The divers that had released the Ark from it's watery tomb soon cleared the surface as well, tearing the regulators out of their mouths and breathing unassisted for the first time in an hour. As they pulled their facemasks up onto their foreheads, they were greeted by a quick succession of firearm reports.

Waiting for them on the loading deck at the rear of [i]Delfin[/i] was a macabre sight. Meandering trickles of watery blood ran off the stern into the waves, emanating from a pile of unceremoniously-stacked bodies - bodies the divers recognized as the deckhands and officers of the [i]Delfin[/i]. The cold eyes of a cadre of gunmen standing vigil about the ship focused themselves upon the surfaced divers. The gunmen did not appear to belong to a well regimented military organization; for their clothing was a mismatched hodgepodge of hand-me-down combat clothing and battle dress from many nations. The only article of their uniforms that spoke of any cohesion were black vests adorned with a purple eye. The same symbol flew upon a black flag that hung upon the [i]Delfin's[/i] mast where the flag of the Spanish Republic was normally flown.

Standing at the bow of the ship stood a man with a flowing purple robe, with an immaculately-folded turban of the same color resting atop his head. The figure, who had been enrapt with the Ark of the Covenant dangling above the waves, at last took note of the bewildered frogmen floating nearby. The divers had outlived their usefulness; with a dismissive wave of his hand, the robed figure bid his gunmen to shoot.

____________________________

Another burst of gunfire echoed across the water, sending adrenaline pumping through the priest's bloodstream once again. He waited for a time after relative silence settled over the ship before peering over the lip of the vessel from his hiding spot. The fore deck of the ship was still spattered with blood and littered with bullet casings from the initial gunfight.

For the past hour, the priest had been hanging from the anchor chain of the ship, waiting for the moment the ferengi were the least alert to emerge from his hiding spot and remove the threat the invaders posed to the Holy Tabot. Once the divers had descended, he reasoned, he would strike out against the invaders.

But just before the priest made his attack, what seemed to be a mutiny broke out - firefights broke out without warning throughout the ship. Shortly thereafter, inflatable boats arrived from the island, carrying armed gunmen who boarded the ship and assisted the mutineers in wresting control of the ship from the ferengi.

At first, the priest had hoped that the Lord had sent the Emperor's fighting men against the ferengi. But after watching the execution of the Spanish at the hands of the boarders and embedded mutineers, it became apparent that a darker power had taken control of this vessel  and - if the Spanish divers could retrieve it - the Tabot.

With the immediate area clear, the priest climbed overboard at last and crept along the deck of the ferengi ship, removing the knife from between clenched teeth and twirling it about in his hand. Stealthily and unseen, he made his way toward the rear of the vessel, where the divers had jumped off into the sea.

Hanging over the water, he saw the Holy Tabot. Hanging above the churning waves from a number of cables affixed to a small crane was the physical manifestation of the alliance between the Lord and his chosen people, still dripping with seawater. A monstrous travesty. These invaders would pay with their lives. By his hand, they would all feel the wrath of the Lord of Israel and the House of Solomon.

The priest's assault of the loading deck came with the ferocity and suddenness of lightning from a blue sky. One gunman - one of the original ferengi mutineers armed with a Spanish sidearm - only heard the thumping of bare feet on the deck before he felt the knife plunge through his neck. The priest withdrew his blade from between severed vertebrae and made for the next apostate.

He vaulted over a rack of airtanks and was upon a swarthy-skinned fighter from the Levant. This one made an attempt to defend himself, loosing a spray of bullets from a Great War firearm that drew the attention of the other gunmen. It was a futile attempt, and amidst the sparks of lead striking metal, the priest got in between the gunman and the barrel of said gun. The dagger tore from sternum to throat, and he fell in a bloody heap upon the deck. A hail of bullets honed in on this half-naked warrior priest as every armed man on the [i]Delfin[/i] opened fire.

The priest moved swiftly to his next victim, using the crates and equipment scattered about the loading deck as cover from the murderous deluge of bullets. His next victim could only watch as the wild-haired Ethiopian lunged toward him with a knife in hand. In his robe and turban of royal purple, the priest reasoned this man standing on the edge of the bow near the suspended Ark must be the leader of these people. For such a role in this heinous affair, his death [i]had[/i] to be assured.

The Ethiopian seized the robe-clad man by the shoulder, sending the turban tumbling behind him into the sea and revealing a smooth, bald head. The priest grabbed him tightly and presenting him before his accomplices like a human shield while placing his bloodied dagger against his throat. The gunmen immediately ceased their fire and the nearest three approached cautiously with firearms raised against the priest. Within fifty paces of the priest and his hostage, the Ethiopian threatened to press the blade down into the bald man's neck, giving his would-be rescuers pause. Save for the lapping of the waves against the ship's hull, the roaring hiss of an airtank ruptured by a bullet, and the heavy breathing of the Tabot's guardian, a tense silence fell upon [i]Delfin[/i].

"You have menaced the Holy Tabot of the Lord God of Israel and the House of Solomon. For this, you must all perish."

None of them seemed to understand the priest's Amharic. The bald man, an olive-skinned man with the almond eyes of Asia, glanced to his accomplices. They seemed ready to set their firearms aside, but looked about to each other and their robe-clad leader for confirmation. The bald man gave a knowing nod, and the gunmen begrudgingly set their weapons on the floor. One of the fighters, upon setting his rifle on the deck, reached for a rack of powerheads and passed one to each of his partners. They then brandished the spearlike weapons, challenging the priest to his preferred means of combat.

[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhGEGIBGLu8]((Suggested listening. Thanks to vilageidiotx for suggesting this.))[/url]

The priest released his hostage and accepted their challenge.

He twirled his knife about in his hands, inviting his combatants to make the first attack. Judging by their confused glaces to one another, it seemed they were not accustomed to combat with hand to hand weapons. Nonetheless, one of his opponents opened with a swift jab to his chest. He evaded the lunge, and brushed the powerhead away with his wrist before getting in close and pressing in with his dagger. His companions held the priest at bay, presenting the points of the powerhead spears at his chest.

The priest held his ground as the three attempted to encircle him, and parried away two jabs meant to force him into the reach of another powerhead. One of the combatants lunged at the priest at the moment he expected him to be caught unaware. But instead, the priest caught the lunging attacker by surprise: the Ethiopian seized hard upon the powerhead's fiberglass rod and pulled the weapon - along with it's wielder - in close. With his free hand, the priest plunged his dagger afgainst the attacker's clavicle. With a bloody gurgle, his opponent released the powerhead and collapsed to the deck. Now the priest had two weapons - one for each of his remaining opponents.

One of his remaining opponents, clearly one of the Spanish mutineers, took the offensive. He swung his powerhead down at the priest as if it were an ax while his surviving partner jabbed squarely for his head. The priest took the powerhead's shaft into both hands, allowing the knife to fall to the deck as he diverted the jab and held off the mutineer's swing. While his opponents recoiled, the priest twirled the powerhead around his arms and in one graceful, fluid motion, pressed the powerhead hard into the Spaniard's gut. To the priest's surprise, the sound of a gunshot rang out from where the weapon's point made contact. A spray of red mist materialized, and the mutineer crumpled to the deck clutching an oozing wound in his stomach.

Curious weapons indeed, the priest mused.

Now that he was alone against the warrior priest, his last remaining opponent appeared truly frightened. As if to say 'To Hell with this,' the apostate threw his powerhead to the deck and reached for the more familiar FE-74 he had set aside earlier. Understanding that he would not reach the man in time to dispatch him, and knowing the capabilities of this curious ferengi spear, the priest took his powerhead into his hand like a javelin. With a powerful throw, he launched the powerhead at the apostate.

This time, there was no gun-like report, but the spear found its mark regardless. His opponent groaned and fell to the deck, flailing to extricate the powerhead lodged in his neck. The priest could see it was not a fatal blow. He retrieved his fallen dagger from the deck and went over to finish his work. He stooped over his dying victim, plunged the dagger into his beating heart, and twisted.

The priest found himself too exhausted now to return immediately to his feet. His ribcage expanded and contracted for a few moments beneath coffee colored skin mottled with the blood of half a dozen men. After several labored breaths, he struggled to his feet, ready to kill the bald man in the purple robe.

But he was already behind him. The last thing the Ethiopian priest saw was the bald man crashing a rifle butt into his head.