The Developing Empire
1920 March 1, Addis Ababa, Menelik Palace banquet hall.
My birthday, exactly one year since my return. The scent of tej honey wine mingled with doro wat aromas and the rhythmic beat of kebero drums assaulted my nose and ears all at once in this space.
To be honest, I still hadn't gotten used to it. In my previous life, birthdays meant buying a convenience store cake alone and quietly eating it in the library reading room. No candles, just a silent bite with the tiny plastic fork from the box before returning to my thesis draft. That was my idea of a birthday.
But now...
"The Saintess of Adwa, Her Imperial Majesty Empress Zenebework! We celebrate your natal day!"
The cheers pouring in from Addis Ababa's plaza vibrated the palace walls. The banquet hall, lit by hundreds of candles, blazed brighter than daylight, with the rases lined up on either side. My father, Ras Mikael, sat in the first seat to my right. Tafari Mekonnen claimed the first to my left. The sight of those two bowing their heads in the same space, facing the same direction—it had felt bizarre at first, but now it was just part of the scenery.
Leaning back against the throne of ivory, I raised my glass. Tej. Not alcohol-free, but low-proof enough to drink casually.
Twenty-four, huh. I said it only in my mind, gazing quietly at the rim of my glass on the outside. Born March 1, 1896, so today made twenty-four by the body's age when I possessed it. By my previous life's count, I was over forty-six. I'd been twenty-two in 2026. I wasn't sure which age to go by, but a birthday was a birthday either way.
"Please eat plenty, Your Majesty." Ayenash said it by sliding a plate toward me. The chief maid's eyes were a bit mistier than usual—she got like this every year. The very fact of the Saintess of Adwa having a birthday moved her like an annual ritual. I pulled the plate closer, pretending gratitude.
Doro wat. Boiled chicken, onions, and fiery berbere spices. Paired with injera, it was Ethiopia's most reliable way to fill your belly. It had taken a month to adjust to the fermented smell at first. Now I just ate it.
...Not that I didn't miss a good bowl of gukbap. I still craved it. But what could I do? Unless it was Korean-made, it never tasted right.
As the banquet ripened, I quietly scanned the room. The rases enjoyed it each in their own way. Hailu Tekle Haymanot held his tej glass while deep in serious talk with the ras beside him; Kassa Haile focused on his food. Seyum Mangasha glanced my way from afar, raised his glass, and bowed his head. And Tafari, as always, was the quietest. He held his glass but never drank. I could tell from his back alone that his sweeping gaze was calculating. To him, banquets were just time to gauge the diplomatic landscape.
Ras Tafari will probably be like that until the day he dies. I thought, setting my glass down.
Then my father, Ras Mikael, spoke low. "You're not eating."
I knew it was aimed at me from the tone. Looking up, his eyes were unusually soft today.
"I am eating." I replied, tearing off a piece of injera from my plate.
"Eat more." Ras Mikael said.
That was it. He wasn't one for many words to begin with. Losing his son Iyasu had trimmed his speech even further, but today he'd stayed by my side the whole banquet. I knew now that was the fullest expression he could manage.
With the plate before me, I ate bit by bit and naturally reflected on the past half-year.
1919 August 22. I'd finished the rifle blueprints in the study. Right after, I collapsed into bed. I woke the next morning to find Tafari had taken them straight to the arsenal. Thanks to that, the prototype test wrapped on August 23. That bang echoing that day. The rifle I'd designed didn't explode. The bolt didn't fly off. The casing ejected cleanly.
The next month went to tweaking facilities and stabilizing processes. Fine-tuning tolerances, optimizing part machining order, confirming defect rates converged. Early days, one in ten was faulty. By month's end, down to three in a hundred. Full production kicked off early October.
1,600 per month on average. 8,000 cumulative in five months. Now sequentially deployed to the Mehal Sefari.
A small number, if you thought about it. Nowhere near enough to arm Ethiopia's entire army. But it was the first cumulative production of a rifle made entirely by Ethiopia, from start to finish. No foreign blueprints. No foreign parts. Machined and assembled in the Addis Ababa arsenal by Ethiopian craftsmen to Ethiopian standards.
That alone felt enough. Next up: light machine guns.
Design started in September. Rifles had taken two months; this was different. I'd learned from rifles—how to set tolerances, what the arsenal smiths could achieve, which part configs jacked up difficulty. That sped things up.
Of course, light machine guns were leagues more complex. Feeding mechanisms. Gas systems. Rate-of-fire controls. Squeezing every past-life memory, I designed one fitting the current arsenal's capabilities. Pieced it together in spare moments; took three months. Prototype done end of December.
This time, reviewing alongside Alemou and the Daehan Empire tech team from the start made revisions smooth. Full production from January.
More parts, higher precision than rifles, so monthly output was under half. But 300 in two months, now deployed to the Mehal Sefari.
I remembered Fitawrari Habte Giyorgis's eyes when I'd first mentioned 400 rounds-per-minute machine guns to him in 1916. When I said Italy would bring them next time. Now the Mehal Sefari held their own.
Still short, of course. 300 light machine guns couldn't stop Italy's mechanized legions. Pipe dream.
Meanwhile, word of our weapons reached French consul Brice early January, as light machine gun production hit stride. Reports of Ethiopia producing indigenous rifles and LMGs went to Paris; somehow caught a war ministry staffer's eye.
Post-war, France struggled dumping surplus ordnance. They approached via Brice: want to buy mothballed arsenal and steel mill gear?
Wartime rush-jobs, now scrap metal with no demand. Sell cheap? Win-win for them. I mulled it one day.
Take it.
Conditions were tough: our inspection of condition. They cover half shipping. Six months techs minimum. Talks took ten days, Brice telegraphing Paris. Settled near my terms—theirs were disassembly costs otherwise.
Bonus: 100 Schneider 76mm mountain guns. We'd imported 60 before; now 160 total. Shells too.
Plenty of light industry gear: looms, lathes, mills—distributed to provinces, running now.
And mines. Gold and iron surveys started 1917. Hired foreign geos discreetly via Sarkis for south and southwest. First gold signals 1918; viable scale confirmed late 1919. Around then, Daehan team found iron in western highlands.
Both early-stage, but direction clear. Gold to steady currency economy. Iron for steel mills. Domestic sourcing? Self-evident impact.
No political strife meanwhile—and that's the real shocker. Ethiopian history with rases going over a year sans coup, productively aligned with the emperor? Not in my studies.
Yet now, the Ras Council convened regularly. Provincial reports up. Industrial phases shared. Road budgets, ammo quotas hashed out.
Iyasu's faction hadn't vanished. He idled north; Ras Mikael updated occasionally, no stirrings. Gugsa Araya Selassie and conservative rases grumbled, sure. I knew it. Couldn't not.
But with Council humming, provincial economies up, imperial prestige rising—no open rebellion had grounds. Word I'd personally designed the rifle spreading empire-wide helped. Saintess of Adwa blueprints guns? Boosted throne on solid fact. Not intended, but good result.
Well, it worked. Good enough.