Five days had passed since the storms and floods brought by the Mediterranean Sea hurricane swept through Derna City, but the weather had already turned dry and unbearably hot, especially beyond the city's oasis.
This was the normal summer weather in North Africa's Mediterranean Sea climate zone. Calling the earlier extreme weather a once-in-a-millennium event would have been no exaggeration.
On a road marking the boundary between desert and wasteland, some ten to fifteen kilometers downstream from Derna City's urban area, five armored military vehicles flying the French tricolor slowly approached.
"Colonel, you really didn't need to go to the trouble of taking me there. I could have walked."
Inside the third armored vehicle in the middle of the convoy, a blonde woman wearing a somewhat worn set of field camouflage spoke gently.
She looked about twenty-five. Although she had Western features, her eyes and brows possessed a certain delicate Eastern elegance. Her long, wheat-gold hair was tied in a ponytail reaching her hips, and a medium-sized medical bag hung at her waist.
Her face was not as striking as a movie star's, but the gentleness and holiness radiating from within her made people feel as though they were looking at the Virgin Mary.
"Miss Jeanne, after helping the wounded in Derna City, you're rushing straight off to comfort the flood victims downstream. You've worked so hard. What does this little favor amount to?"
Colonel Bastian's skin was as black as charcoal, and his uniform could barely contain his powerful muscles. He resembled a chimpanzee dressed in human clothes, yet his words and manner were those of a polished gentleman.
He was a third-generation descendant of a foreign soldier who had immigrated to France after the war. Apart from his skin color, he was thoroughly French in both character and