The convoy crossed the Atlantic under cloud and silence.
No radio chatter, no anthems, no words. Only the growl of turbines and the long metallic hymn of a fleet that no longer sailed for liberty but for permanence.
From the decks of their transports, the soldiers could see nothing but the gray sprawl of the ocean, endless, impartial, ancient.
The flags above them were the same as they had always been, thirteen stripes and forty-eight stars, but the meaning had changed.
The Republic had become a crusade.
They reached North Africa in the fading hours before dawn.
The coastline was a broken silhouette of dunes, wreckage, and half-forgotten empire.
French colors no longer flew here; the tricolor had been torn down by militias months earlier, replaced by the banners of a dozen self-proclaimed republics and caliphates that rose and fell with the tide.
Now, they were all about to be erased.
