The sixth of the nine juggernauts had passed beneath the edge of the umbrella shields, and the stormtrooper force was nearly halfway to its target flank, when the order finally came. “Commander Fel, you may initiate your attack pattern,” Thrawn said. “Let us see what exactly we have facing us.”
“Acknowledged, Admiral,” Fel said, turning his fighter into a smooth arc back toward the western part of the city. Thrawn’s assumption had been that Nuso Esva would close off the entire umbrella shield array except in the western areas of the city. But even 90-percent-sure assumptions needed to be checked out, and Fel’s TIEs were the logical ones to do it. Especially when they had nothing better to do anyway.
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?