Crisis of Faith (5 page)

“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.

The downside, which Lhagva always thought about when he rode one of the things, was that it also left the squad bunched close together and thus vulnerable to ambush.

But so far the enemy here hadn’t made any such moves. The houses the three A-racks rolled past were showing no signs of life, not even the occasional furtive peek by a curious face at any of the windows. The Workers were apparently all out of the city as usual for this time of the morning, laboring in the fields, forests, and mines stretching out beyond the urban area.

As for the Soldiers, most of those Lhagva could see from his angle were gathered in clumps along the juggernauts’ line of travel a few hundred meters to the north. Their backs were to the incoming A-racks, with no indication that they were even aware that three squads of stormtroopers were coming toward them from the south. It was as if Thrawn had completely blindsided Nuso Esva and the Queen of the Red.

Lhagva didn’t believe it for a minute.

“Tighten it up, troopers,” Sanjin called from the A-rack’s gunner’s seat. “Things are about to get hot.”

Lhagva shot a quick look upward. They’d reached the outer circle of Midli houses, and the sky above them had gone dark and shimmery as they passed beneath the edge of the city’s new patchwork of umbrella shields. From this point on, Commander Fel’s TIEs would be unable to provide the stormtroopers with any cover fire.

Readjusting his grip on his BlasTech E-11 blaster rifle, Lhagva returned his attention to the houses and open areas on his side of the A-rack.  Whatever Nuso Esva was planning, he knew, the battle was about to begin.

“Excellent,” Nuso Esva said, his lips curled back, his faceted yellow eyes intent on the line of eight large monitors the other Storm-hairs

had set up in the Dwelling of Guests gathering area. “Thrawn is nothing if not always precisely on schedule.” He gestured to one of the monitors. “Observe, O Queen. Here come his soldiers.”

The Queen leaned closer toward the image. Surreptitiously, Trevik did the same. The white-armored soldiers were heading northward through the..southwestern part of the city, riding on three bouncy and fragile-looking metal frameworks. On one of the other monitors, larger,.ore substantial vehicles were rumbling into the city along Setting Sun Avenue.

And just like the soldiers, the large vehicles were moving in a straight line. Trevik didn’t know much about tactics, but even to him that seemed foolish.

It apparently seemed that way to the Queen, as well. “I will order my Soldiers to attack,” she said, picking up the special far speak that rested beside her armrest, its wires snaking across the room to the

connector in the wall. “They will make short work of them.”

“Not yet,” Nuso Esva said, holding out a hand. “Not yet.”

Trevik flinched. The outstretched hand was a signal of command, a gesture Trevik had used many times when overseeing Workers and one that he’d received in turn from senior Midlis and occasional Circlings No one ever used such a gesture toward the Queen of the Red. Ever. The very thought of such a blatant insult was both fantastic and outrageous.

Yet once again, the Queen gave no indication of such outrage. “Then when?” she simply asked.

“Be patient, O Queen,” Nuso Esva said. To Trevik’s relief, he lowered the discourteous hand again to his side. “The enemy fighter craft are about to make their first attempt to enter through my trap. When they  do, my soldiers will open fire with the blaster cannons I set up in concealment—”

“The guns /my Workers/ set up in concealment,” the Queen corrected him.

Nuso Esva’s eyes might have glittered with new fire. Trevik wasn’t certain. “The cannons your Workers set up,” he amended coolly. “Once they open fire, destroying or scattering the fighter craft, the cannons that I”—he inclined his head—“the cannons that your Workers set up along Setting Sun Avenue will destroy the first and last juggernauts in line.

/Then/ you will order your Soldiers to destroy the stormtroopers. All is as I predicted.”

Nuso Esva turned his eyes on Trevik. /“Exactly/ as I predicted,” he added.

“Yes,” the Queen said, and out of the corner of his eye Trevik saw her turn to him. Automatically, he lifted the bowl as he likewise turned to face her.

But to his surprise she didn’t drink. To his even greater surprise, she continued to stare at him. “O Queen?” he asked, not knowing what else to say.

“Nuso Esva of the First of the Storm-hairs did indeed predict all,” she said. “You, Trevik of the Midli of the Seventh of the Red, have betrayed me.”

Trevik froze, a horrible flood of fear and shame exploding inside him. She knew. She knew about his brother Jirvin and the others who’d been in the house that evening. She knew about the cam Trevik had brought into the Dwelling of Guests. She knew that Trevik had given that cam to his brother, who had then given it to the enemy Thrawn.

And Trevik knew that he was dead. The Queen would call in her Soldiers from outside, and they would kill him—

“Calm yourself, O Queen,” Nuso Esva said calmly. “You’re frightening him. At any rate, it’s hardly betrayal when his actions are a deliberate and necessary part of a plan.”

“His actions may have been a part of /your/ plan,” the Queen said, still staring at Trevik. “But in his hidden heart, the Midli committed treason against his Queen.”

“We thought he was controlling you,” Trevik breathed, finally finding his voice. “I was told he was controlling you.”

“No one controls a Queen of the Quesoth,” the Queen said darkly. “It is /she/ who controls.”

“Which you should have realized from the beginning,” Nuso Esva said. “ How else do you think that Circling was actually willing to pretend to treason? He acted that way under his Queen’s orders so that he could persuade you to take the pictures I wanted Thrawn to have.”

Trevik tore his gaze away from the Queen’s stare. “To persuade…,” he began weakly.

“Pictures of these,” Nuso Esva said, waving a hand toward the walls of the gathering area. Even with his alien face and voice it was impossible for Trevik to miss his deep and malicious satisfaction. “Artwork carefully selected to lead our oh-so-clever Grand Admiral to exactly the wrong conclusions about my strategy.”

Trevik could feel his breath coming in short, painful gasps. Jirvin had also said that about Thrawn, that in artwork he could read the hidden hearts of people. Trevik had accepted his brother’s word, but he had never truly believed it.

Now, as he felt Nuso Esva’s triumph wash over him, he knew that it was indeed true.

“You don’t believe it, of course,” Nuso Esva continued. “No one does.  But rest assured, Thrawn is able to perform such magic. The Queen’s own confidant and ally stayed aboard the star caravan long enough to confirm it.” This time, his eyes definitely glittered. “Before he pulled all of your Stromma allies out of the battle.”

“Which he would still have done without this Midli’s betrayal,” the Queen said.

“Calm yourself, O Queen,” Nuso Esva said again. “Let us watch and savor the defeat of our enemy without these petty distractions. There will be plenty of time later to execute this Midli and his friends if you so choose.” He turned back to the monitors. “Besides, I daresay Thrawn will have another trick or two waiting behind his back. Watch—and see how I

anticipate and destroy each of them.”

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.