Crisis of Faith (8 page)

“Yet they have entered my city,” the Queen persisted. “You said they would not. You lied.”

“They won’t be there for long,” Nuso Esva said. “Unlike the primitive cannons my Chosen have been forced to work with, the juggernauts’ weaponry is equipped with computerized sensor targeting capabilities. Once we’ve gained control of them—”

One of the Storm-hairs by the monitors called something in the alien language. “The hatches are breached,” Nuso Esva announced. “Now watch as I destroy the enemy fighters.”

Trevik looked at the monitors. One of them showed an image that bounced dizzyingly while the Storm-hair carrying the holocam ran behind a group of Soldiers through the jagged metal edge where a hatch had once been. The Soldiers rushed inside, spreading aside out of the view of the cam.

Suddenly the image went still. Very still. For a pair of seconds it showed a view of a compact metal chamber, empty except for blinking lights, softly glowing displays, and some sort of small, round-topped metal object at the far end. Abruptly, the image spun around, paused, spun around again, paused again—

Nuso Esva spat something vile sounding. “No,” he bit out as he snatched

up his farspeak. /“No!”/

“What is it?” the Queen demanded. “What’s happened?”

Nuso Esva ignored her, snarling more of his alien speech into his farspeak. The image on the monitor began bouncing again as the Storm-hair with the cam raced to the end of the metal chamber and stopped beside the round-topped metal object. There was a close-up view of the lights and monitors—

/“What has happened?”/ the Queen bellowed.

Trevik shrank back in terror. Never in his life had he heard the Queen shout that way. Never had he realized she /could/ shout that way.

Nuso Esva barely even took notice. He continued snarling into his farspeak, his free hand gripping the weapon belted at his side. Around the room, the other Storm-hairs also had their hands on their weapons.  Trevik tensed, waiting for the Queen to shout again.

But she remained silent. A moment later, Nuso Esva lowered his farspeak, his yellow eyes glittering with fury. “The juggernauts have no crews,” he bit out. “No crews, and no soldiers. Their drivers are nothing but droids. Mechanical Workers.” He hissed something vicious sounding. “And there are no weapons. All have been removed.”

For a long moment the gathering room was silent. Trevik kept his eyes on Nuso Esva, afraid to look at the Queen. “Then you have failed,” she said at last.

“I haven’t failed,” Nuso Esva, turning his head back to the monitors.  “The juggernauts are useless to us? Fine. There are other targets that will serve.” He looked back at the Queen and gave the gesture of command. “Order your Soldiers to the transports waiting on the ground outside the city. They are to capture the vehicles and kill everyone aboard.”

“Do the transports hold the weapons you claim will bring you victory?” the Queen countered. “Or do you simply seek a means of deserting Quethold and escaping back to the stars?”

“Don’t waste precious time with foolish prattle,” Nuso Esva spat. “Give the order.”

“I cannot.” The Queen pointed toward the monitors. “The loudspeakers have been silenced. There is no way for my voice to reach my Soldiers.”

“What?” Once again, Nuso Esva twisted his head around toward the monitors. “So,” he murmured bitterly. “We see now Thrawn’s true strategy. He draws the majority of the Soldiers to the juggernauts, where they will be useless to me, then destroys the means by which they could be ordered elsewhere.”

He turned back to the Queen. “But as always, his strategy is flawed. If your voice cannot travel to the Soldiers, then you, O Queen, must do the traveling.” He gestured toward the Workers crouched beside the litter. “Order your Workers to their places. We travel at once to the juggernauts.”

Trevik felt his eyes go wide. “You cannot order the Queen into battle,” he objected.

“Silence, traitor,” Nuso Esva said, not even bothering to look at him.

“Perhaps Trevik of the Midli of the Seventh of the Red is not the true traitor here,” the Queen said darkly. “Perhaps it is /you/ who are the traitor, Nuso Esva of the First of the Storm-hairs. You promised us victory. You promised me eternal life. You have broken faith on both.”

“You wish eternal life?” Nuso Esva countered. “Then go to the juggernauts and order your Soldiers to attack the transports.”

The Queen gestured in refusal. “No.”

And then, suddenly, Nuso Esva’s weapon was out of its sheath and pointed directly at the Queen. “Give your Workers the order,” he said, his voice deathly quiet. “Or die.”

The sole remaining loudspeaker was less than two hundred meters from the stalled juggernauts and the thirty-five-hundred Soldiers standing stiffly alongside them. Fel eyed them warily as he settled his TIE into a defensive hover above the support platform, wondering if they would decide they should take some action against the shuttle that was even now lowering a pair of techs onto the platform beside the loudspeaker array.

But they didn’t. They’d been ordered to attack the juggernauts, they’d done that, and they were now waiting for further instructions.

“Patience,” Fel murmured toward them.

There was movement by the crushed hatch of one of the juggernauts, and two of Nuso Esva’s Chosen stepped outside, their yellow eyes glinting in the sunlight. One of them pointed at Fel, and they raised their blasters.

Fel nailed them both with a single shot. Again, the Quesoth Soldiers did nothing.

Fel gave the rest of the juggernaut hatches a quick check, then did another scan of the area to make sure more of the surviving Chosen weren’t rushing to the attack. As Thrawn had ordered, he’d left this particular loudspeaker intact, merely severing the control, power, and communications cables that led to it. That meant the techs not only would have to set up the special Soldier Speak message Thrawn had prepared, but would also have to splice in power from the shuttle’s generators.

With Sanjin’s stormtroopers still battling for their lives against their own clump of Soldiers, Fel hoped the techs would hurry.

Two streets away, another pair of the Chosen were warily approaching.  Fel rotated his TIE a few degrees in that direction and waited for them to come out of cover.

And then, abruptly, the loudspeakers came to life below him, filling the air with a volume and intensity that he could feel right through the lower hull of his TIE as Thrawn’s message blared across this part of the city. The message ended and began to repeat.

For a moment nothing happened. Fel held his breath…

And then, all at once, the Soldiers by the juggernauts began to move. Flowing along the ground, more like a dark fluid than a collection of individual beings, they headed up the hill toward the palace.

The Soldiers had once again pressed their way to the house’s windows, and Sanjin and the remaining stormtroopers had pulled back to one of the inner rooms to make their final stand when Lhagva heard the faint sound of the loudspeakers over the noise of blaster bolts and the thud of maces and swords. He frowned, wondering at the bizarre message—

And then, without a word, the Soldiers lowered their weapons. Turning, they filed quickly back through the doors and the holes they’d battered in the walls, heading out into the city.

Leaving the stormtroopers panting in the middle of an empty room.

Sanjin found his voice first. “What in the void was that?” he demanded.

With an effort, Lhagva worked some moisture into his battle-dried mouth. “You didn’t hear the loudspeaker, did you?”

“No, I think I was getting clubbed with a mace at the time,” Sanjin said, rubbing gingerly and ineffectually at the side of his helmet. “These things don’t block that kind of blow nearly as well as I’d hoped. What happened? Did the Queen surrender?”

“I don’t think so,” Lhagva said. “It sounded like something Thrawn set up.”

“I thought you couldn’t fake Soldier Speak,” one of the others said as he dropped to his knees beside a fallen stormtrooper, his field med-pac in hand.

“He didn’t,” Lhagva said. “It seemed to be just a straight recording, taken right from the Queen’s mouth.”

“Which said?” Sanjin prompted.

/“Go through the Dwelling doors,”/ Lhagva translated. /“Surround and protect the Guests.”/

“But isn’t that an order for the Soldiers to /protect/ Nuso Esva?” one of the stormtroopers objected. “How’s that going to help us?”

“Because,” Sanjin said, and Lhagva could envision the other’s grim smile behind his helmet, “Nuso Esva doesn’t know that.”

Nuso Esva was still pointing his weapon at the Queen when one of the other Storm-hairs suddenly chattered in their alien language. Nuso Esva barked something in return and took a step forward. “What did you tell them?” he demanded. “What orders did you give your Soldiers?”

“I gave no orders,” the Queen said. “I cannot give any—”

/“Don’t lie to me!”/ Nuso Esva thundered, taking another step forward.  “An order was given. You’re the only one who can give such orders.” He took another step toward her. “And now they’re all coming here,” he continued, his voice suddenly quiet. /“Why/ are they coming here, Queen of the Red?”

“I don’t know,” the Queen said. “When they arrive, I will ask them.”

Nuso Esva snorted. “No. You won’t.” Abruptly, his weapon spat a blaze of fire, and without a sound the Queen slumped over.

Dead.

Trevik gasped, his body stiffening as he stared in disbelief and horror at the Queen’s lifeless form. This wasn’t the way Queens of Quethold died. It was never the way Queens died. Dimly through the hiss of blood roaring through his ears and brain he heard the sound of more blasterfire…

“You. Traitor.”

Trevik jerked his head around. Nuso Esva was staring at him, his weapon pointed directly at Trevik’s face.

And only then did he realize that there were bodies of dead Quesoth all around him. The Workers, Borosiv of the Circling of the First of the Red—all of them were dead.

All of them had been murdered.

“You’re going to take a message to Thrawn for me,” Nuso Esva said, his voice grim and defiant.

And yet, beneath the alien warlord’s determination, Trevik could somehow sense a bitter-edged melancholy. There were four thousand Soldiers marching on the palace, and he knew that his own death marched alongside them. “Tell Thrawn that he may think he’s won,” Nuso Esva continued.  “But with my death, his own will not be far off. My followers are still

out there, and they’re more numerous than he can possibly imagine. No matter where he goes, no matter where he tries to hide, they /will/ find him. You’ll tell him that.”

With a supreme effort, Trevik forced words into his mouth. “I will tell him,” he promised.

For a moment Nuso Esva held his position. Then, at last, he lowered his weapon. “Go,” he ordered.

Trevik was at the edge of the palace grounds, weaving his way through the lines of incoming Soldiers, when the Storm-hairs opened fire behind him.

He had reached the waiting group of white-armored humans when the Storm-hairs’ firing came to an abrupt end.

Parck looked up from the report. “So that’s it,” he said.

“That’s it,” Thrawn confirmed. “One of the bodies in the Dwelling of Guests was positively identified as his.”

Parck nodded, feeling a strange weariness stealing over him. After ten years of sporadic combat, slippery escapes, and unlikely victories across the Unknown Regions, warlord Nuso Esva was finally, finally dead. “What now?” he asked, setting the datapad aside.

Thrawn shrugged slightly. “There’s little we can do for the Quesoth except aid in rebuilding the damage to the Red City,” he said. “But they should be all right. Historically, there have been several instances when Queens have died prematurely. Sometimes that induces the next Queen to arise ahead of schedule; sometimes the affected city has to limp on alone until the regular time of arising. But whatever struggles the Red City ends up going through, the people of Quethold will survive. That’s what’s important.”

“Yes,” Parck agreed with a shiver. Especially considering what that Midli, Trevik, had told them about Nuso Esva’s plans for the planet. He could have destroyed everything, and might even have gotten loose to spread more of his poison across the Unknown Regions.

But he hadn’t. He was dead, and it really was over. “Actually, Admiral, I meant what were /we/ going to do now,” he said.

“You and the /Admonitor/ will be heading back to the Chaos Triangle to begin cleaning up the legacy that Nuso Esva left behind,” Thrawn said.  “As for me, I can now finally turn my attention to an even more pressing problem than Nuso Esva. Namely, the restoration of the Empire.”

Parck winced. Thrawn had returned only occasionally to Imperial space since Palpatine’s death. Those trips had usually been short, had always been shrouded in secrecy, and had invariably left the Grand Admiral frustrated by the growing disorder there. Between the incompetence of its own leadership and the steady military pressure from the New Republic, the Empire had shrunk to barely a quarter of the size it had attained under Palpatine’s rule. “You may have trouble persuading them to accept your help,” he warned. “Some of their recent experience with Grand Admirals hasn’t been all that positive.”