[b]September 27th, 1917, Dire Dawa. 'The Battle of Meskel'[/b] Emperor Iyasu V looked out from the hills south of Dire Dawa, across the smoky remains of the battlefield. Only the shadow of the railroad town at Dire Dawa stood out on the horizon; a city in a bowl made of mountains, with the Dechatu river valley flowing parallel to it in the north. A hand-rolled cigarette dangled from his lip. The pleasant scent of the tobacco helped to nullify the smell of sulfur and ash rising from the battlefield. This had not been his first fight, but it was most spectacular he had ever witnessed. The truth of the matter was that the [i]real[/i] battle, the one that decided the war, had been fought and won eleven months ago at Segale by Iyasu's father, the Negus of the North Mikael Ali of Wollo. The enemy that he had just witnessed being decimated in front of him was the remnants of those defeated rebels, and this battle had been more of an excuse for the victors to show off for their newly confirmed Emperor than a tactical necessity. The Germans and Turks, eager to keep Ethiopia fighting in the Great War, wooed him by demonstrating the use of aeroplanes on the battlefield. The planes were simple double-winged constructs of wood and canvas, with powerful rotary engines that turned propellers on the nose. As simple as they looked, they were delightful, and Iyasu had trembled with giddiness when he watched the men in the rear seats of the crafts toss grenades and bombs on top of the rebels from the safety of the sky. He also had the Europeans to thank for the supplying the ammunition that powered his army's machine guns and rifles. The Central Powers were not the only force to perform for the Emperor that day. Mansuur ibn Ra'd, Iyasu's ally in Somalia, had sent him a regiment of his Dervishes. They were wild-haired Somali warriors who, wielding more swords and spears than they did rifles, led charge after charge alongside other Somali, Harari, and Afar Muslims while Iyasu's own Ethiopian troops held back and exchanged gunfire with the enemy. This had all happened in the trenches that the rebels had hastily dug around the edges of the city; an attempt to buy themselves time with European tactics. That had been a desperate move. They no longer had the support that they once did, and isolated in the Muslim-leaning eastern half of the country, they were cut-off from what little natural support they still had in the highlands. The rebelling nobility, having lost their homeland, had fled south-east, hoping to link up with the British and French Askari forces along the coasts. Ras Tefari had managed to escape, alongside a handful of lesser nobles, but the rest had been caught and surrounded at Dire Dawa. To Iyasu, he felt like he was looking at his truest victory, even if it had been inevitable this time. He was standing above it all, surrounded by the reserve cavalry in their full battle array, with lances and guns, and war horses draped in colorful armor. European spectators, under the lead of his German adviser Johan Bruno Freiherr von Schnitzler, kept to themselves just behind the Emperor and his entourage. The Baron Schnitzler himself stood out the most among them. He was a middle age man with the thick-built body of a warrior. He wore a wide-brimmed straw hat, an unbuttoned khaki uniform-shirt, and Prussian cavalry boots. One thing that nobody could ignore about von Schnitzler was that he had lost an eye. He told people he had lost it during the war, and that was partially true, except that he had lost it in a fight at a tea house in Werder while visiting the town as part of an Ethiopian delegation to the Dervishes. Except for on formal occasions, he refused to wear an eye-patch, and the scarred hole was most often out in the open for all to see. Today was no exception. Iyasu himself wore the padded robes of a cavalryman, with a full lion's mane crown, a thick embroidered cape with arms that draped down over his shoulders and to his waist, and a smaller lion's fur cape on his shoulders. A curved shotel hung at his left side, and the German Luger that Baron von Schnitzler had given to him as a gift was holstered at his right. The young Emperor held his two year old son Yohannes in his arms, taking care to keep him a safe distance from the smouldering remnant of the cigarette in his mouth. The young prince was wrapped in a white cloth, which was pinned to his body with a Lion-of-Judah brooch. Yohannes' mother was Faaiso, one of Iyasu's favorite concubines, and she followed next to the Emperor, timidly waiting for the moment that Iyasu needed to pass their child to her. Faaiso was not a naturally timid girl; she was the daughter of a merchant from Harar, with a taste for western jewelry and food, but she was supremely uncomfortable on the battlefield. She was not like his grandfather's queen Taytu, who had followed his grandfather when he was on campaign, commanded troops at Adwa, and had made full use of her power in politics. For Faaiso, her place in court was about luxury and prestige, and that was fine for Iyasu. Taytu had been a meddler. She had not known her place in the world. The rest of the Imperial party was made up of guards and loyal nobles. They wore loose fitting battle robes, lion's mane caps and turbans, and held fast to traditional spears, swords, and connicle shields, though many also had rifles strapped to their backs or pistols holstered at their sides. That was how things stood when Iyasu's father and his Oromo cavalrymen came whooping up the hillside. The men, with lions-mane headdresses and bushy goat's skin capes, looked like warriors riding straight from the time of Zara Yaqob. Their flags were three banners in Ethiopian colors. The sound of their horses climbing the hill all at once reminded the Emperor of what it was like to stand on a rock next to the crashing waves of a sea stirred by a monsoon. It wasn't just a sound - it was pure power, and like war-drums before a battle, it moved him. It made him feel as if he was a lion waking up to a fresh kill. Mikael of Wollo dismounted his horse. He was an old man now, and a thick layer of dust covered him so that he looked almost like an Egyptian mummy. Beneath his headdress, he wore a silk rag wrapped around his head, and he wore a shamma over his riding clothes. When the old man saw his Imperial son, he bowed. "You have cleared the field?" Iyasu asked. "It is your majesty's field now." Mikael rose. "Your enemies are beaten." "We would very much like to tour the battlefield, and we wish for your to accompany us." His father responded with a curt nod. Iyasu's attendants understood what was being said, and they did not hesitate to bring the Emperor and his favorite companions their horses. The Emperor handed his son off to Faaiso and mounted a bay Dongola stallion. Faaiso, after passing Yohannes to a servant, climbed onto a small mare. The servant passed her son back to her. A number of nobles rode with them, as did a couple of Europeans and the Baron von Schnitzler. It was Iyasu, von Schnitzler, and Mikael who led the procession down the hill and toward the field, underneath the green, yellow, and red banners of the nation. "This war is over now, friend Schnitzler." Iyasu said to the gruff German. "Will you still be staying in Abysinnia?" "Yes." the Baron replied. "I haven't received new orders, and I have no reason to want to leave. There is more fighting to be done here anyway." he hesitated for a moment. "If it pleases your majesty to say, what is Ethiopia's plan?" "We will ride east, to lend our aid to Mansuur ibn Ra'd." "Ethiopia will crush them, I am sure of it." the Baron replied. They were passing onto the battlefield now. The battle stink was stronger here, and sulfur was joined by the reek of blood and rot. They were at the edge of the battle, where the first corpses lay. A few royalist men lingered here at the edge of the field, where they pillaged corpses and generally loitered about, having nothing to do for the moment but to wait until they were accounted for by their commanders. "Very quickly I expect." The Baron continued. "Has your majesty decided what Ethiopia shall do next, when the countries of him and his allies are subdued? The King of the Germans humbly petitions that your majesty come to the aid of his servants laying siege to Kenya." "We have many issues to balance." Iyasu replied. "I have opinions about this." Mikael of Wollo spoke. The three of them were ahead of the rest now, and Iyasu's father felt less conscious about royal manners. He spoke respectively, since they were still in the presence of the German, but he did not speak ceremoniously now. "Britain is a powerful kingdom. It would be unwise to disturb her when we are still healing from our war." "Your majesty." the German interjected. He spoke curtly - perhaps he dared to act too familiar, but both Iyasu and Mikael liked him, so they let the matter go. "Britain is a powerful kingdom, but so is the Kingdom of Germany, and the Kingdom of Austria. And your people know how powerful are the Turks. These are the friends who will stand beside you in this war." Mikeal of Wollo did not responded, but he did not look pleased either. It was clear he still had reservations. Mikael's uncertainty was not unwarranted. It was just as Mikael had been coming to adulthood that Emperor Tewodros infamously imprisoned a handful of Europeans, which had provoked the invasion of a small British force. It was in the camp of Queen Worqitu, an enemy of Tewodros who had helped the British in their campaign, that Mikael had saw how effective British power could be when it was unleashed. But when the German Baron compared him to the monarchs of Europe, it made Iyasu feel like a giant on top of his horse. He imagined himself marching proudly down the streets of London - a city he had never seen, and had no understanding of what it looked like, though he imagined it to look much like a lithograph of New York City that he had once seen on a cookie-tin for sale in Djibouti - at the head of one hundred thousand well-armed African soldiers. Adwa had been Menelik's victory, and Segale had been his father's. What great thing would he accomplish now that he reigned shoulder to shoulder among the mighty Kings of the Earth? They passed by the trenches now. They were pitiful things, so shallow that a tall man would have to bend down to avoid being shot. Along their edges were scraps of wood and metal placed haphazardly in an attempt to slow down attackers. Perhaps they had done so, and perhaps some of Iyasu's dead would have been alive if not for that half-measure, but it hadn't been enough. The rebels had lost anyway. Their corpses scattered a bloody field, mingled with the Royalist and Somali dead. He saw where a royalist body was tangled around an Islamic version of the Ethiopian flag - the green, yellow, and red, with a crescent in its center, and the [i]shadada[/i] written in black across the bottom. It was one of several Islamic renditions of the national flag that Iyasu tacitly approved, though he was not yet bold enough to change the national flag to one of their designs. Some of the royalist Ethiopians were searching the field for wounded enemies, and when they found them, they made their agony worse with forced castrations. The howls of these wounded men, castrated or not, struck out from the silence and the smoke. To his credit, the German did not flinch at the castrations being performed nearby them. It was known that Europeans looked down on the behavior of Abyssinian warriors, but none of it seemed to effect von Schnitzler, who rode as firmly and comfortably on the battlefield as any of Iyasu's best nobles. That endeared the man to the Emperor. They entered the city slowly, passing by the humble shacks and mud-huts that made up Dire Dawa. The town had taken minimal damage, though holes from stray bullets and the ashen pock-marks of misplaced bombs scarred a few parts of the otherwise pristine town. It was where they entered the town that they met up with the small company of German ferengi soldiers that had participated in the battle. There were ten white men, with dusty mustaches and a tired look about their eyes, and they were accompanied by several dozen ink-black soldiers from the German colonies. All of them were dressed in khaki military uniforms, and they wore scrappy pith helmets with no pomp or decoration. They had been milling around nervously, watching their Ethiopian and Somali comrades as they went about their grisly work. When the Germans saw the Emperor ride in, they quickly came to attention. The Baron von Schnitzler hopped down from his horse to inspect the men. They spoke in German for a period of time, and though Iyasu listened carefully, he did not understand what was being said. One of the white soldiers pointed to the sky above the town, where plumes of black smoke were rising. The Baron looked perplexed. "Your people are gathering the wood from the rebel barricades and heaping them into bonfires." he told the Emperor. "It is Meskel." Mikael of Wollo said, leaning on the horn of his saddle. "The day of the finding of the true cross. They just wish to celebrate." The holiday was an ancient Christian one, coinciding with the end of the rainy season and the beginning of planting. It was more important than the European 'Christmas' in Ethiopia, and was celebrated with great bonfires, which reenacted the bonfires used by Saint Helena to find the burial place of the True Cross. The Baron looked toward the smoke uncertainly. "It is dry. If they start too many fires, they might burn the town down." "Yes." Iyasu nodded. "We would like to keep our city unburned. Let us stop them." And so the German baron hopped back on top of his horse, and they rode off toward the city center. The Emperor felt his head swim with excitement at the thought of getting to shut down a Christian ritual. The town orbited a small European-styled train station, in front of which was a large square with a single tree surrounded by a couple of acres of paving stones. The body of a lynched man hung from the tree. As they came closer, Iyasu recognized him as the customs-master Ydlibi - a Syrian merchant that Iyasu had befriended and given the lucrative position of Customs-Master despite the protests of his greedy nobles. This had been the work of the rebels, he knew, and his hatred for his enemies reached for new heights. "Ho! Stop!" the German Baron shouted, leaping from his horse again. He rushed at a number of Ethiopian warriors who were, as the German soldiers had said, piling wood scraps and flammable battlefield debris into growing bonfires. Iyasu and his party rode after the German. To the surprise of everybody - the Emperor, his entourage, and the soldiers in the square - the German Baron grabbed one of the Ethiopians by his shamma, spun him around, and slapped him as if he was a misbehaving child. He than began shouting in a volatile mix of German and Amharic, about how the soldier needed discipline, and how he needed honor, and how they might burn down the very town they had fought so hard to take. The soldier reached instinctively for his weapon, but was bewildered by the presence of the Emperor, and the confusion of his entire circumstance. Iyasu loved the spectacle, and he began to laugh. His laugh was contagious. It spread to his entourage, and then slowly among the soldiers that had gathered around. The laughing cooled the anger of von Schnitzler, and it caused the confused soldier whom he had slapped to become even more confused. "Men, take these ridiculous piles of trash down, and put out these fires before they grow to strong." Iyasu ordered. "We cannot burn this town. This town is where the trains come in, and if it burns down, we will no longer get the sugar and tobacco that our ferengi friends like to sell to us." The spectacle had calmed any religious tensions that might have erupted then, and the men obeyed their Emperor's order without complaint. For Iyasu, it felt like he had scored a victory against Ethiopian Christianity. He felt confident of the future. And then the Emperor remembered. He pointed to the hanging body of Ydlibi and shouted. "Somebody cut that man down. He has been a friend to us. He should not hang like that." -- The Emperor and his father were led to a shed where vegetables were typically stored, but which now stored a captive rebel noble waiting for Imperial judgement. Most had ran, or had made sure to die in battle, while some had killed themselves. This meant that having even one captive was a personal victory for Iyasu. He was holding his son Yohannes now, parading the young child among the men so that they would know him as his heir. The boy did not make a noise. The sun was setting in the west, filling the lingering gunpowder haze with a thick red light. It was in this atmosphere that Iyasu entered the vegetable shed. There were two men inside. The first was a dead man - Ras Gugsa Welle, who had once been married to the rebels chosen 'Queen' Zewditu, Iyasu's aunt. Now Gugsa was a corpse. He had committed suicide with a pistol shot to the head, leaving behind an ugly body. The top of his head was now a gaping hole of skull and flesh. His eyes protruded out from his face like swollen grapes drooping on the vine. All of his life's blood had drained from the hole in his skull, and from the bullet wound in his mouth, and it covered his clothes and left his skin an inhuman grey. It was his son who sat in chains nearby him. Eba Gugsa was a pitiful captive. His clothes were torn, and he no longer had shoes. Both his wrists and his ankles were in chains. Who knows what he might have been thinking, sitting next to the ruined carcass of his own father. He did not betray those thoughts, but instead kept his head cast down, and his eyes focused on exactly nothing, with nothing but spilled vegetables for comfort. The room smelled like onions and blood. Iyasu felt triumphant, standing with his heir in his arms above two defeated enemies. "Have you anything to say in your defense?" The Emperor asked the living prisoner. "I ask for a pistol, so I may go the way of Tewodros, and my father. They are my heroes." Eba replied. He did not look up. Iyasu squatted so that him and Yohannes' faces were square with the beaten prisoner. "You are a betrayer." the Emperor hissed "[i]You[/i] are a betrayer." Eba spat Iyasu's words back at him. The two men were eye to eye, with only a foot of space between their faces. Iyasu can smell the rancid breath of the prisoner, like a week-old stew baked in a dry-season sun. "Kings cannot betray anyone but other kings." Iyasu retorted. Eba began to speak before Iyasu had finished his final word. "You betrayed God." The rebel said. "That is why I am not a betrayer. Any man who follows you is a betrayer of God." "God has given me the victories." Iyasu felt anger throbbing in his chest. He wanted to take the rebel by the head and smash it into the ground again and again until his skull shattered in a million bloodied pieces. "That is the work of an evil." Eba replied. "There was an evil wind that day, at Segale. You know it. I do not know what witchcraft you used, but it will leave its mark on our country." Iyasu's anger was abated for a moment when he remembered the old 'Evil Wind' story. It was said that, as the rebel forces of Ras Tefari prepared to meet the royalist forces of Negus Mikael of Wollo at Segale, the wind shifted so fiercely that it caused superstitious men to blame the devil. Some even reported that the wind was powerful enough to cause canons to shift. "That is debtera vomit. Smart men do not believe it." Iyasu smiled. He felt vindictive now, and he pointed to the bloodied corpse of Eba's father. "Did that man believe it? Was he so stupid." "He knew that you were up to evil things. He was a good man, and a better one than you!" Eba thrust forward as far as his chains would allow, and for a moment Iyasu thought that he was lunging forward to bite at him, so he pulled back and stood up. Eba was still in chains, and he made a pathetic show of wallowing on the floor, but Iyasu still felt a burning nugget of shame for having been made stand up. "That man?" Iyasu thrust his finger like a spear, pointing angrily at the corpse. "That man is nothing! That man is a dead man!" Iyasu looked up the corpse and hunched back for a moment. War-like anger burned in his eyes. He thrust himself forward, like a viper preparing to strike, and he spat on the corpse with as much rage as he could muster. He heard chains rattle, and saw from the corner of his eye how Eba was fighting to break free. "That is the man that he is." the satisfied Emperor said. - [u][b]Dire Dawa: Modern Day.[/b][/u] The distant sound of heavy guns echoed from the Danakil. The war was coming. Hassan's staff car stopped at the edge of Von Schnitzler Square, looking out at the old train station and the withered tree that was in front of it. The square was as busy as a bazaar on market day. However, it was not sellers and buyers who busied the square, but rather the logistical staff that kept the Ethiopian military in the field. Trucks were being unloaded, where staff officers paid the locals who had not fled to carry and organize boxes so that they could be inventoried, counted, and prepared for transit to wherever they were needed. Tents had been set up throughout the courtyard, housing the logistical staff, reserve officers, civilian aides, and even a few foreign war correspondents. All of the chaos orbited the silent, stoic statue of the historic German officer Von Schnitzler. Von Schnitzler had fought with the Ethiopians during Iyasu's first civil war, and then in the African theatre of the Great War. Hassan knew that Von Schnitzler was partially responsible for the modernization of the Ethiopian military, but he had not survived to finish the project, having died by the bayonet of a British Askari during the Kenyan campaign in 1921. Now his bronze likeness stood like a planet, orbited by all of the tiny rocks of Ethiopia's military support. Hassan did not feel like just another tiny rock in the mix, however. He felt like a great moon; ascendant, and with a gravity all his own. He stepped off the vehicle and squeaked through the square - or at least, it felt like squeaking, as the stuffy rubber bodysuit he wore under his uniform to protect himself from VX attack always seemed to rub together in awkward ways that made him hate it. The personnel made way for their commander, standing at attention as he walked by, and saluting whenever he was near to them. Hassan carried himself with as much pomp as he could muster, though the trip back from Harar had left him tired. "Ras Hassan." he heard a strange voice come from the crowd. The accent was foreign, but hard to place. A well-tanned ferengi journalist approached him; clean shaved, red-headed, and with an Italian flag pin on his lapel to distinguish him from other ferengi. "Can I have a moment of your time." "You cannot. My time is with the war." Hassan grunted. The Italian didn't pay any mind. He followed Hassan cautiously, keep just out of immediate reach from Hassan's Palestinian guards. "If you could say anything to Alfonso Sotelo, what would you say?" "I would tell him that he will some day be made to eat shit, and he will feel shit ooze between his teeth. That day will come sooner than he expects." Hassan cut through a crowded part of the square, where he lost the ferengi journalist. He wanted no more distractions. He went inside the train station, and when the doors closed, the sound faded so quickly that it felt like depressurization on his skin. The station was mostly empty. There were benches, and signs advertising the price of fare. The lights were off, but had been replaced by battery-operated lamps. Still, except for a few choice men, the room was entirely empty. "Ras Hassan." the familiar gravel voice of General Idrissa sounded in the awkward light. Where he stood, Idrissa eclipsed one of the lamps, but Hassan could recall the Hero of Ta'if's scar-pocked face and worn-down eyepatch in his memory. Those scars had mostly been bestowed by a distant shot-gun blast to the face during the Congo War. Idrissa was most well known for having held back a Saudi army with just a single regiment during the initial occupation of Hejaz, giving the rest of the overextended Ethiopian military time to organize themselves. Idrissa wasn't a great tactician, but he was an especially competent leader of men, and he had a reputation for leading from the front. "How are you? How are your friends?" Hassan greeted Idrissa like an equal. "I have been preparing our defenses here. Though, I am told that you have something else in mind?" It was then that Ras Rais, Hassan's commander in the highlands, joined them. Rais wore a well-starched uniform, and an expression that was just as starched. Though Hassan was above all of them according to the rules of the modernized officer corp, Rais took his Ras title as the suggestion that they were social equals, and he did not defer to Hassan unless he felt especially formal. "You have read the reports about the bombing raids in the north?" Hassan asked. All three men found seats among the simple one-plank benches. Hassan looked around at the mostly dark, empty station, and his mind shifted before the others had time to answer his first question. "Didn't I order this building brought down?" "It is on the list of things to do, but they are still tearing apart the tracks, and I took your orders to imply that the tracks were more important than the station." Idrissa said. Hassan nodded. "The reports?" "N'djamena isn't a tactically pertinent location. The Spanish bombing of the town does not matter." Rais said simply. "There were forces posted there." Idrissa retorted. "The reports said that the raid managed to destroy an ammunition dump being used by the Second Sefari, and a radar facility, which means we will not be able to detect future raids until Spanish bombers are much further into our territory." "There will be more bombing raids to come then." Hassan nodded. "Well, I have made up my mind already, before I walked into this building. We cannot have our forces in the west just sitting and waiting to be bombed. It is time we launch an invasion of our own. Idrissa, I want you to lead an invasion of the Ivory Coast." Idrissa blinked. "My army is here. I don't think the western commanders will like that decision." "I have been commanding your army for some time now. All of the leaders out west have been angling for a promotion. They hate each other now. You have a reputation that will make it difficult for them to complain." "They will complain, but I will do what I am ordered." Idrissa replied. "When will I leave?" "As soon as you can. I want this moving quickly." "This is a wise decision." Rais added his opinion, though at this point it seemed unnecessary. The far-off buzz of prop-fighters was heard overhead. The sound was faint, muted by the walls and roof of the old train station, but it was clear to all of them what it was. They stopped and listened for a moment, waiting for the pound of Anti-Aircraft guns, and when that sound never came, it told them that the aircraft was their own. "If this war does not go our way, it is possible that this will be the last time the three of us are ever in a room together again." Hassan said, uncomfortable words piercing a silence that seemed to grow once after he spoke them. "That is for God to decide." Rais replied. "Communication will not be simple." Hassan explained, turning to Rais now. "I will try to convey orders, but if the Spanish break us here, we will have to consent to be split so that no half of the country simply falls into Spanish hands. We all have our place in this war. Ras Rais, if you have no orders from me, then it will be your job to preserve your army and keep the fight going in the highlands. That is your priority. Do not risk your forces if you do not see a golden opportunity. Survive. If you are subdued, that will mean leaving the highlands to their own defense, but so long as you are not subdued, the ferengi will be forced to stretch themselves over the countryside. That will mean more casualties for them, and it will mean that our people learn how to hate them." He turned to Idrissa. "I am giving you written orders that confer to you command of the western theatre. Your place in this war will be to drive at the enemy's West African holdings. Do not play defensively. If Spain defeats you and gains control of the Congo, they will have won only a shallow victory. They will be divided by miles of rough terrain where loyalists can replay the old war with Belgium. On the other hand, any victory you win on Spanish territory will be a rusted nail driven straight into Sotelo's eye. If you find an oil well, do not try to hold it, do not try to extract from it. Burn it. Destroy all of their equipment. If you can, raise up the native peoples to fight for you." "And what will you do?" Rais asked. "Should Dire Dawa break, I will move south into Somalia and regroup. When I feel that it is time, I will try to relieve Ras Rais the best I can, unless the Spanish open another front in the south. In that case, I will fight them there." There was nothing else to say. The three men sat for a moment in silence, preparing their thoughts. The war hung over them like a sword tied to a string. But in the darkness, surrounded by the cavernous shell of the station, it seemed to Hassan that the war was somehow paused outside the doors, and that leaving would be to resume it. It was still out there, waiting. It was unavoidable. Hassan stood up. "Go in strength." he said, shaking both commander's hands like a proud father farewelling his sons. Idrissa would take his command in the West, and Rais would prepare the armies of the highlands for their plunge into the war. Lonely footsteps echoed as they left. Hassan went outside. The noise of war preparations washed over him again. He watched a wing of Ethiopian aircraft flying in a V toward the north, where Spain was advancing over the Danakil. In the days directly following Djibouti, the Ethiopian airforce had held the sky, outnumbering the unprepared Spanish fighters, but now time was working for the enemy. At first, with the help of their naval forces, the Spaniards had established air superiority over the Red Sea. With their landing zone secure, that aerial influence was spreading outward across the Danakil like a net, and the newer Spanish technology was turning the tide of the air war. The same was true of the rolling skirmishes between Ethiopian and Spanish armor that had taken place on the salty desert flats. Hassan had deployed some of the precious Ethiopian armor to slow down the Spanish advance and buy him time. But again, only the few newer Chinese tanks in the Ethiopian arsenal could hold their ground, and the aging machines that made up the majority of his armored battalions were out-ranged, and generally outclassed, and their dueling had bought them very little but death. "Take me to the tank grounds." Hassan ordered his driver as he climbed into his boxy Polish staff car. The drive through Dire Dawa was slow. They were forced to wait for sluggish military trucks, and for the personnel that buzzed all around the town. There were civilians and soldiers alike lingering under the French iron-latice verandas of the shops that clung near to the road, and near the adobe walls of Dire Dawa's mostly abandoned homes. There were some houses that did not seem to be abandoned, from who's windows nervous faces peaked out and waited for the feared battle. The activity did not die off once they were outside of the city. Here, north of town, was where the Spanish hammer would fall. His front line had reoccupied and re-dug old furrows that had once been the rebel trenches used during the Battle of Meskel almost seventy years earlier. These soldiers were his Somali regulars - men from Somalia, where military careers were the most sought after, and who were the most professional of his troops. They wore khaki fatigues and steel helmets, and were armed with the best assault rifles available to the Ethiopian military. He had them placed in front because he knew that, when they were forced to fall back into the mountains, they were the troops most likely to keep themselves together while doing so. The rest of his army were volunteers from all over Imperial Africa; men who had been trained, but who's training and weapons had been bought cheaply by the strained nation. Hassan looked north, where the sound of distant artillery and reports of far away rifles told him how near the Spanish advance was. They had cleared the dreaded Danakil, through the horrible heat, harassed by not only Ethiopian tanks and aircraft, but also by angry Afari shiftas. Though the Afar were most often herdsmen and salt traders by profession, they lived a hard life, and it was an open secret that they were known to fight small tribal wars amongst each other from time to time. Now, one by one, the tribes of the Afar wastes were declaring their own individual wars against the ferengi invasion. The Spaniards had came down hard on the Afari. That was a mistake that would play into Ethiopian hands. For the people of the desert, this war was no longer a mere obligation. It was a blood feud, and Spain was going to pay its fair share. Hassan thought of his own artillery, nestled in the mountains between Dire Dawa and Harar. The rest of the war would be a game of hide-and-seek for his guns. They would be a tool in his plan to force Spain to fight for every mountain, and every river, and every amba in the rough Ethiopian nation. Wherever his artillerymen could move their guns, that would be a new place from which to punish Spain, and the more creative they got about it the more effective they could be. Hassan hoped it would be a war of one thousand Tewodroses, moving one thousand Sevastpools up one thousand Magdalas. The car came to a halt beneath the shadow of a small mountain. He had put the bulk of his armored divisions here, placing the mountain between them and the Spanish as to shield them from enemy artillery until the time was right to deploy them. This would be the best time in the war for him to deploy the haphazard armored units of the Ethiopian military, before the war took to the rough terrain of the highlands. Ethiopia's armor was a mixed bag. There were the shiny Chinese Tei Gui's, who would be the sharp edge of the blade for his armored division. They were sturdy built, with no exposed creases despite the three hundred sixty degree turret mounted on the top. Their turrets had long-barreled cannons, and anti-personnel guns mounted on the top of their turrets. But these only made up a minority of the Ethiopian tanks. They were joined by ugly Polish beasts from the earlier part of the century, with rough asymmetrical outlines and sharp-cornered turrets. There were also a few that had no turrets at all, and instead relied on the ability to fire forward. The older models had rivets on the outside of solid steel plates. These were supplemented by a small number of stubby french models from just after the Great War. Alongside the heavy tanks were a number of armored cars. Some were nothing more than "Armenian Tanks"; a term that had come to designate civilian trucks with armor awkwardly welded onto them. Others were half-tracks, or manufactured armored trucks. Together, alongside the battle tanks, the Ethiopian armor in the field numbered near to 600 vehicle. Hassan felt powerful surrounded by so many great monsters of battle. But he was not confident of victory.