“And if it pleases those same superiors for you to sit this one out?”
Lhagva swallowed hard, wishing he could read Sanjin’s face. But human expressions were always so hard for him to penetrate. “Then I will resign my commission and accompany my former unit to the surface as a civilian,” he said. “Stowing away aboard the transport if need be.”
For a dozen heartbeats Sanjin just gazed at him. “This hearing problem of yours,” he said at last. “Comes and goes, does it?”
It took Lhagva a moment to figure out what Sanjin was talking about. And there was a strange look the human’s eye … “Yes, sir, it does,” he said. “As I said earlier—”
“Sounds serious,” Sanjin cut in. “You’d better report to the medical bay. I’ll let the Stromma liaison officer know that you’ll be remaining aboard until the diagnostic droids have come up with a reading and a course of treatment.” He cocked his head. “I’m sure you’ll be ordered to remain in the bay until the assault transports have all launched at midmorning tomorrow.”
“Hopefully, my hearing will be functional when that order is given.” Lhagva bowed his head. “Thank you, Lieutenant.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” Sanjin warned. “Better yet, don’t thank me at all. If we’re both still alive this time tomorrow Captain Parck will probably flay both of us alive. That is, if Commander Balkin doesn’t get to us first.” He gestured. “Get to the medical bay, and then get some rest. One way or the other, tomorrow is likely to end badly.”
It was midmorning, and Trevik was once again holding the nectar bowl at the Queen’s side when one of the Storm-hairs came unexpectedly into the Dwelling of Guests with an urgent report.
The forces of Grand Admiral Thrawn had left the star caravan and were moving toward the edges of the Red City.
“Excellent,” Nuso Esva said with an almost eager satisfaction in his voice. “All is prepared?”
“All is prepared,” the other Storm-hair confirmed.
Nuso Esva turned to the Queen. “Your forces are also arrayed as I ordered, O Queen?”
Trevik’s eyes flicked sideways to the Queen’s litter. The Queen’s Soldiers, as Nuso Esva had ordered? Had ordered?
Such blatant effrontery should have earned Nuso Esva words of sharp rebuke, possibly even death at the hands of the Soldiers standing their usual guard outside the Dwelling. But to Trevik’s even greater surprise, the Queen made neither response. “They are so arrayed,” she said instead. “You are certain your weapons can stop the invading forces?”
“They will do more than simply stop them, O Queen,” Nuso Esva said with grim satisfaction. “Today is the beginning of your final dominion over this world.”
Again, Trevik looked sideways at the Queen. But this time, his surreptitious glance was accompanied by a surge of unpleasantness that curled through him like a plume of black smoke. What did Nuso Esva mean by dominion? In two years the Queen of the White would arise, the air would change, and the Queen of the Red would die. The Circlings would go into hibernation in the lower citadel of the palace, where they would arise and breed a new Queen when their part of the cycle came again. Once the citadel had been sealed, the Midlis, Soldiers, and Workers would start the long journey to the White City; there, those who survived the ordeal would join in with the Queen of the White’s offspring. Eighteen years later, the Queen of the Black would arise, and the cycle would begin anew.
But the Queen of the Red—the current Queen of the Red—would still be long dead. What could Nuso Esva possibly mean by speaking to her of dominion over Quethold?
Trevik had no idea. He also had no doubt that, whatever the meaning, he wasn’t going to like it.
The eight transports put down at the edge of the Red City, landing in a widely spaced semicircle in the fields just outside the outermost ring of Worker homes. The arrangement of the semicircle was typically Thrawn, Fel saw as he and his three squadrons of TIE fighters flew cover over the landing site. Setting Sun Avenue, the road that led due east into the city, was the designated entry point, and Fel had known commanders who would have automatically centered the force on that vector so as to provide maximum flanking cover to the main thrust.
But Thrawn did things with a bit more subtlety. This semicircle was centered instead on a creek that flowed west-southwest across the city, crossing the line of transports about half a kilometer south of Setting Sun Avenue. The gently sloping banks of the creek offered another wide entry point, one that a clever and unconventional commander might choose to exploit. It was certainly a tactic Thrawn might use, and one Nuso Esva would surely anticipate.
Sure enough, Fel could see movement now in the inner parts of the city, the Midli and Circling areas protected by Nuso Esva’s umbrella shields. Some of the Quesoth Soldiers who had been deployed there were leaving the center city and moving down the hill along the creek-bed toward the handful of natural strongpoints on the banks.
Fel smiled tightly. Nuso Esva didn’t know that most of the transports arrayed against him, including the one positioned along the streambed, were just for show.
“Commander Fel?” Thrawn’s voice came through Fel’s helmet comlink.
“No resistance so far, Admiral,” Fel reported. “I have Soldiers redeploying to the stream, but so far everyone’s staying well back inside the shield zone.”
“Any of the laser cannons in evidence?”
Fel took a moment to glance at his fighter’s compact tactical board, wishing briefly that he was in his usual TIE interceptor with its better instrument array. But of course, the newer, sleeker interceptor wouldn’t have worked nearly so well with this particular mission. “Nothing visible,” he said. “Shall I make a pass across the larger holes in the shield array and see if I can draw some fire?”
“Not yet, Commander,” Thrawn said with that mixture of respect, patience, and amusement that Fel had noted the Grand Admiral always seemed to use with him. “Are we intercepting any of the Queen’s orders yet?”
“Negative on that, too, sir,” Fel said. “We’re probably still too far out to pick up anything from the loudspeakers.”
“Stay on it,” Thrawn instructed him. “I want to know the minute you start hearing Soldier Speak. Armor Commander?”
“Armor Commander,” said a flat nonhuman voice coming into the circuit.
“Are the juggernauts ready?”
“They are.”
“Deploy juggernauts.”
Fel turned his fighter into a tight curve back toward the transport that lay across Setting Sun Avenue. The access door slid up into the curved top of the vehicle and a juggernaut rolled into view, twenty-two meters’ worth of weapons and heavy armor, moving a little awkwardly on its ten wheels as it maneuvered itself onto the road. It had stabilized itself and started toward the city when the second tank appeared, following in the track marks of the first. It, too, made it onto the road just as the one behind it emerged into view.
Fel nodded to himself and turned into another curve back toward the city. If the first three juggernauts had made it out all right, he had no doubt that the remaining six would do likewise.
Meanwhile, his TIEs had another job to do. “Gray Squadron, form up around me,” Fel called into his comlink. “Blanket sweep over the city. Let’s see what sort of holes we can find to shoot through.”
The fourth of the nine juggernaut tanks had emerged in the distance when Lhagva’s squad rolled out of their transport on the first of the attack force’s three A-rack carriers.
The A-rack was a simple device, one that Lhagva was told had been adopted from one of Thrawn’s other liberated worlds. It looked very much like an A-frame, fold-up clothing roller of the type he’d seen being pushed or pulled along busy walkways back in his own home city’s garment district. The A-rack, though, was much sturdier than those, with oversized wheels, a top-mounted E-Web/M heavy repeating blaster, a center-mounted engine, and enough room on each side for five stormtroopers to stand facing outward. With the pair of cramped seats in the center section for the driver and gunner, the carrier could transport a full stormtrooper squad quickly and efficiently across medium-rough terrain.