Chapter 11

Morning of the day after hitting the missiles dawned for Ninian. The night before the truck died, ran out of fuel. Rather then, move on, he slept in the bed, getting much needed sleep. The activities of the last 24 hours caused him to sleep normally, not the half sleep he had been doing. When he woke, he counted his lucky stars that no one came in the night. He opened his other FAM, ate the entree for breakfast, and refilled his hydration bladder with his canteens.

Gathering everything he needed he left, hiking towards Roman Lines. His best guess told him he would reach them tomorrow at his current pace.

About an hour, later Ninian could hear a truck. The area held various boulders of different sizes and Ninian jumped behind one, waiting for the truck to pass. Ninian's luck ran out. The truck stopped in the same area, but the boulders hid Ninian. He's trapped with nowhere to go, with plenty of ammo, but no grenades or any idea how many enemies there were.

Voices drifted to Ninian's hiding place. Low enough that he could not make out what the words, but loud enough to know they were not speaking Latin. He chanced a look in the direction of the voices. There stood four enemy soldiers right in front of the truck. Moving back behind the boulder he took a quick breath and popped up shooting. Bullets flew as he emptied the C-drum on them and the truck.

Dropping the mag from his rifle, Ninian went into his Assault pouch and grabbed the other one. Out of the corner of his eyes, he spots another soldier rising from behind the truck aiming his rifle at Ninian. In one fluid, practiced motion, Ninian drops both his rifle and new mag, and draws his Gladius. The enemy soldier gets off some rounds, one of which hits Ninian in his upper right thigh. Ninian went down, while keeping his grip on his Gladius firing all the while. He managed to get several rounds to hit home, one in the soldier's face.

Sitting up he inspected his wound and placed a field dressing on it, the best he could. Luckily, the wound went through without hitting any bones, but it bleeds quite a bit. Ninian then looked at the truck. The front and rear tire was hit in his attack, it was not going anywhere. He needed to get away from here as fast as possible, so he gathered all of his stuff, and limp jogged away from the bodies.

Hours pass and Ninian can feel himself getting weaker and weaker. He knows it is because of his leg wound. The bleeding has slowed, but it is still bleeding. He has had to change his dressing twice already. He knows he should just give up, that he is just prolonging the inevitable; he is going to pass out and die from blood loss. Nevertheless, a little thing in the back of his mind tells him to keep going, never give up.

However, try as he might, his strength left him and his eyes closed.

Mamercus stepped out of the boat and onto the shore of Africa about 213 pu from Aksum. He thought to start there. He would travel to Adulis, the coastal port, and set up a warehouse for his transactions. They would be real, as well as a way for Rome to contact him. His new name, Hadi bin Mahdi, came with a family to back him up. They were Roman informants tasked to answer questions about him if asked.

The trip to this point included one to the Ostia Naval Base to get on a Sub and travel through the Suez Canal. When they got near the shore, the sub surfaced and launched an inflatable boat to get him to shore.

After getting his warehouse together, he set off for New Aksum, the capitol of the Empire, deep in the heart of Africa.

The journey took three weeks. Three long bone jarring weeks, because the roads were not that good. A lot of them were dirt and the vehicles could not travel that fast. He did see some road construction going on, placing asphalt on the road, but it only happened closer to the capitol.

The city is what you would expect from a capitol, grandeur all its own. In any other city, it would look ridiculous, but here it was perfection. The palace was the easiest to find, from there he found another warehouse to store his purchased goods. Mamercus then went to all of the businesses and started to drum up business. He told them he was new to the city and wanted to know more about it. His father had sent him here trying to establish a trade route, but he did not have any info on the city.