Crisis of Faith (6 page)

As usual, Thrawn had been right. Gray Squadron’s sweep had confirmed that the rest of the city was completely covered, with gaps not even big enough to drop an MSE droid through. Only in the western sector, where Nuso Esva had set his traps, was there anything Fel could use.

With the juggernauts and stormtroopers now in harm’s way, it was time for the TIEs to persuade Nuso Esva to start springing those traps.

As it turned out, the onetime warlord didn’t need any persuading. Fel was passing over the lead juggernaut and starting to make his turn when the city below him erupted with laser cannon fire.

“Evasive!” Fel snapped, twisting his fighter around as a bolt came through one of the shield gaps and burned past his portside wing. Not that his pilots really needed the warning. “Target those lasers and destroy.”

He was cutting dangerously low across the forest of umbrella shields when he spotted the swarm of Quesoth Soldiers appearing from concealment in the ring of Workers’ houses directly behind Lieutenant Sanjin’s stormtroopers.

The first warning was a burst of Soldier Speak from a concealed loudspeaker a few blocks away. /“Soldiers in concealment,”/ Lhagva called out in translation. /“Rise and attack the white-armored invaders.”/

“Vec six!” one of the other stormtroopers snapped, pointing his E-11 back toward the edge of the umbrella shield zone. “Looks like—must be a hundred Soldiers, coming out of the Workers’ houses.”

Lhagva felt his mouth go dry. A hundred Soldiers, against thirty-six stormtroopers. Not good.

“Got another hundred fifty at vec three,” someone else put in tautly. “I guess they don’t want us heading toward the palace.”

“Lucky we didn’t want to go in that direction anyway,” Sanjin said with his usual calm. “Here comes the vec-null  contingent.”

The words were barely out of his mouth when the western half of the city suddenly exploded with laserfire as a dozen concealed laser cannons opened up against the TIEs flying overhead.

“About time,” Sanjin shouted over the noise. “A-racks, stop; gunners, grab the E-Webs. Kicker, find me some useful real estate.”

Lhagva turned from the large insectoid beings closing on their rear, their short swords and heavy maces glinting in the shield-muted sunlight, and peered across the landscape in front of them. There was the vec-null contingent, just as Sanjin had said: another hundred or more Soldiers who had left their places along the juggernauts’ insertion route and were heading toward the stormtroopers.

And that was a direction Sanjin’s assault force /had/ been hoping to go in.

Lhagva looked to the west. So far, that area was still clear of Quesoth. If Sanjin gave the order, and if they turned the A-racks and pushed them to the limit, they could probably get back out from under the umbrella shields and into TIE cover ahead of all three groups of Soldiers.

But that would mean running. And Imperial stormtroopers never ran. Not when they had a job to do.

Not even when they were outnumbered ten to one.

“Kicker?” Sanjin prompted.

“Yes, sir,” a stormtrooper from one of the other squads called back, his eyes on the portable sensor looped over his shoulder. “One of the shield generators is in there.” He pointed at a modest house just ahead and to the east. “Next nearest is over there,” he added, pointing to another house to the northwest. “That enough, or do you want one more?”

“Two should do us,” Sanjin said, looking back and forth among the incoming groups of Soldiers. “If we can wreck both generators, it should open the sky enough for the TIEs to get under the rest and access the whole city. Squad three, take the eastern house. Squads one and two, you’re with me in the other one.”

There was another burst of Soldier Speak from the nearby loudspeaker.  “North and east Soldiers, converge northeast at weapons site; defend and attack from there,”/ Lhagva translated. /“South Soldiers, follow your current track.”/

“What does she mean, weapons site?” Sanjin asked. “A weapons cache, or one of those laser batteries?”

“I don’t know,” Lhagva said. “The term could apply to either.”

“A laser battery would make more sense,” Sanjin decided. “New plan: squad three to eastern house, squad two to northwest, squad one with me. We’ll go to ground somewhere, wait for them to tag the weapons site for us, and try to get in. Smoke grenades; two per enemy force. Everyone ready? Grenades: go.”

The grenades had just hit the ground when, in the distance, the rearmost juggernaut lumbering along through the city exploded.

In the dim light filling the /Admonitor’s/ ground-tac center, a second display flared unnaturally bright and then went dark. “Juggernaut One has been hit,” General Tasse reported. “Cam out; telemetry data … it’s  still moving, but just barely. Another hit like that and it’ll be as dead in the mud as Juggernaut Nine.”

“Acknowledged,” Thrawn said.

Parck stole a sideways look at the admiral. Thrawn was standing in front of the tac board, his eyes sweeping methodically across the myriad displays and status readouts. To all outward appearances he seemed as calm as always.

But Parck knew better. The Grand Admiral’s campaign against warlord Nuso Esva had been a long and bloody one, a road littered with betrayal and destruction, new allies and barely thwarted genocide. Now, at long last, Nuso Esva’s end was finally in sight.

At least, all indicators pointed in that direction. The once-proud conqueror was trapped on Quethold, with limited resources, no more than thirty of his most loyal followers, and only a single medium-sized ship buried away out of easy reach in one of the mines north of the Red City. The remnants of his once-powerful battle fleet were scattered across probably a million cubic light-years of space, where they would, presumably, wither and die once Nuso Esva was no longer there to command.

And yet…

Parck ran his eyes over the tac board again. Preoccupied with the stream of reports from the scouts searching for Nuso Esva’s remaining ships, he’d been somewhat out of the data loop for the planning of the Red City attack. There were undoubtedly a few pieces of Thrawn’s plan that he didn’t know.

But as he gazed at the turmoil being presented on the boards, he could  feel an unpleasant sensation starting to tingle between his shoulder blades.

The /Admonitor/ had six squadrons of TIEs aboard, yet Thrawn had chosen to deploy only three of them. He had over three thousand troopers available, not even counting allied forces, yet had sent only three squads of stormtroopers against the Red City’s Soldiers. The line of juggernauts now under heavy attack was even more of a gamble.

And Liaison Nyama had been right about the number of Soldiers that Nuso Esva had available. The observers and sensors were registering at least four thousand of them, two thousand along the juggernauts’ route, a few hundred attacking the stormtrooper squads, the rest arrayed in a defensive line between the palace and the transports. How could Thrawn

have so badly underestimated his opponent’s strength?

Or had he? Could it instead be that this long, wearying war against Nuso Esva had so blunted the Grand Admiral’s tactical prudence that he was determined to defeat his enemy with the absolute minimum force possible?

Had this become personal?

The thought sent a fresh shiver up Parck’s back. Four years earlier, Emperor Palpatine had traveled to Endor burning with hatred for the Rebel Alliance. Four years before that, Grand Moff Tarkin had similarly made the attack on Yavin a matter of personal vengeance.

Both men had died at the scenes of their hoped-for triumphs, their certain victories snatched from their fingers. The Rebel Alliance had survived, and had gone on to turn much of their Empire into the so-called New Republic.

Parck had always assumed Thrawn knew better than to let emotion cloud his military judgment. Could he have been wrong?

“Patience, Captain.”

Parck jerked out of his thoughts. “I’m sorry, Admiral?” he asked carefully.

“You’re worried,” Thrawn said, his voice low enough to assure that his words would be for the senior captain’s ears only. “Worried about the operation”—He looked sideways at Parck—“and by extension, worried about me. But observe.”

He pointed to one of the tac display’s city overlays. Scattered amid the bright red spots marking Nuso Esva’s laser cannon positions and the muted yellow dots of the umbrella shield generators were a dozen glowing blue lights. “The Queen’s loudspeakers,” he said identifying them. “The sensors in the TIEs, the juggernauts, and the stormtrooper A-racks are all listening for the distinctive sound of Soldier Speak. Every order she gives her troops brings us that much closer to our final thrust.”

“Yes, sir,” Parck said, trying to filter the doubt out of his voice.

Apparently, he hadn’t filtered out /all/ the doubt. “Patience, Captain,” Thrawn said with a faint smile. “Patience.”

“As I anticipated,” Nuso Esva said, his voice brimming again with satisfaction. “You note, O Queen, that as the smoke clears the white-armored invaders are no longer anywhere to be seen?”

The Queen made a grotesque sound Trevik had never heard from her before. “True Soldiers would not flee a battle,” she said.

“Nor have these,” Nuso Esva said. “They’ve merely taken refuge in some of the homes, most likely the two or three nearest that contain shield generators. They no doubt hope to destroy or disable the generators before they’re overwhelmed by the approaching Soldiers, thereby allowing the fighters overhead to enter your city. Hoping their deaths will not be useless.” His eyes glittered. “But of course, they will.”

Trevik gazed at the monitor, feeling an unexpected and discomfiting surge of sadness for the invading soldiers. From the earlier speech between the Queen and Nuso Esva he gathered that humans were like the Stromma, where each member had the same free choices that Quesoth Midlis and Circlings possessed. Unlike Quesoth Soldiers, the white-armored

attackers were not bound irrevocably by their orders, and therefore could have retreated to safety when they saw the numbers arrayed against them.

Yet they had not. What kind of leader was this Thrawn, that his people willingly gave up their lives at his command?

“The shield generators must not be damaged,” the Queen said, lifting her mike. “I will send more Soldiers.”

“No need, O Queen,” Nuso Esva said. “I have anticipated this move, and have prepared for it. No, keep your Soldiers where they are. The real battle will take place at the line of juggernaut vehicles. You see how the rearmost has already been disabled, blocking the rest from retreat? As soon as the one in the forefront has likewise been stopped, your

Soldiers can move against the true prize.”

“Yes, I see,” the Queen said again. “You didn’t say that two of the nine would be destroyed.”

“I told you sacrifices would be necessary,” Nuso Esva said. “In this case, the loss of two assures that we can capture the other seven intact.”

“And seven will be enough?”

“More than enough,” Nuso Esva said. “I’ve seen the strength of the Red City’s lower citadel. I doubt that the White City’s defenses will be any greater. Seven juggernauts will be more than sufficient to break through the barriers.”

“The White City?” Trevik asked, the words coming out before he could stop them. “What? Break the /barriers?/ What is this madness you speak of?”

“The old ways are at an end, Trevik of the Midli of the Seventh of the Red,” the Queen said, her voice as calm as if she were asking for a drink of nectar. “Why should I accept death for myself and my city merely because the Queen of the White has arisen?”

“But—” Trevik stared at her. “But the old Queen always dies when the new Queen arises and the air changes. It’s the way of the world.”

You’re a naïve fool,” Nuso Esva said scornfully. “A Queen—a /true/ Queen—doesn’t simply sit back and accept the way of the world.” He held out his hand toward Trevik, his fingers closing into a fist. “A true Queen grasps the world by the throat and squeezes her own destiny from it. Understand?”

“No,” Trevik said, the sheer shock of it draining all emotion from him as if a vein had been cut. “But I do understand one thing: the Queen of the White cannot arise if the Circlings of the White are dead.” He looked at the Queen. “If they are murdered.”

“It’s a matter of survival,” Nuso Esva said. “Survival of the strongest.  That’s how the universe operates, Midli. I have no doubt that the Queen of the White, if given this same choice, would take the same action.”

“It will serve all of us,” the Queen said. “Including you yourself, Trevik of the Midli of the Seventh of the Red. No more will you and the other Midlis and Circlings need to travel long distances to a new city, many of you dying along the way. You will remain here, in familiar surroundings, living out your lives in your own homes.”

“And when you die?” Trevik asked.

The Queen smiled. “I will not die,” she said, an unpleasant edge to her voice. “Without the changing of the air, I will live forever.”

/All living things die/. Trevik wanted to say that.

But he couldn’t. Not directly to her face.

Not to the Queen of the Red, who was supposed to be the leader of her city, and the steward of all the Quesoth.

She had betrayed them. She had betrayed them all.