by James Luceno
Trevik blinked. “The artwork?”
“Thrawn is able to read the hidden hearts of people through their choice of artwork,” Jirvin said. “Or so the Stromma claims.”
“The pictures will also prove that the Queen is with Nuso Esva of her own free will,” the Circling added. “If, indeed, she is.”
“If she allies herself freely with him, then we shall cease our efforts here,” Jirvin assured Trevik. “Like you, my brother, we seek only what is best for our Queen, our city, and our world.”
Trevik lowered his gaze to the floor. The Queen had accepted Nuso Esva as her guest—he was sure of it. But there was no way to prove that to Jirvin and the others except by doing what they asked. “Very well,” he said, the words stinging his throat. “Where is this holocam?”
Jirvin rose from his couch and pulled a small, flat object from one of his vest pockets. “Here,” he said, laying it across Trevik’s hand.
Trevik frowned. The device was smaller than even the smallest of his fingers. “This is a cam?”
“It is,” Jirvin confirmed. “You’ll note it has the same texture and color pattern as your official bowlcarrier vest. Once secured there, it will be invisible to even the most strong-eyed observer.”
He was right on that one, at least, Trevik had to admit. The cam would blend in perfectly. Whoever this Stromma was, he knew precisely how a bowlcarrier’s vest looked. “How do I operate it?”
“You touch the upper right corner as you arrive at the Dwelling of Guests,” Jirvin said. “The cam itself will do the rest.”
“And make certain that it faces each piece of Nuso Esva’s artwork during the time you’re in the dwelling,” the Circling added.
“I will.” Trevik drew himself up. “And I will bring proof that the Queen has indeed chosen Nuso Esva as our ally. Then will you cease this foolishness?”
“If you bring back such proof, we will cease,” Jirvin promised. “But if the proof is of her captivity under Nuso Esva’s strength of mind, then our opposition to his presence will continue.”
Trevik grimaced. How does one prove a negative? But it was clear that this was the best he was going to get. “I will bring the cam back at this hour tomorrow,” he said, rising from the couch. “And then you will cease.”
“Agreed,” the Circling said, finally stepping away from beneath the lintel. “Farewell. May you eat and sleep deeply.”
“May you eat and sleep deeply,” Trevik replied with a sinking heart.
A minute later he was once again walking beneath the strange sky, heading toward his home. Surely he was right. Surely the Queen had chosen Nuso Esva as her ally of her own free will and depth of thought.
But if she hadn’t, what did that mean for her? What would it mean for the rest of the Quesoth?
More immediately, what would it mean to Trevik if he was caught spying for Thrawn?
He had no way of knowing. But he was certain that it would not be pleasant.
Trevik slept poorly that night, and his food was equally unsatisfying. He woke early, groomed himself with extra care, and made certain he was at the palace a few minutes earlier than required. The nectar bowl was waiting for him beside the Queen’s litter in the welcoming chamber, along with the Workers who would carry the two litters and half of the Soldiers who would escort them. Borosiv arrived a few minutes later and without a word took his place on the smaller litter.
His timing was perfect, as was only proper for the Circling who was the chosen attendant to the Queen. Barely a minute after Borosiv had settled into place, the inner doors opened and the Queen strode into the welcoming chamber, flanked by the other six Soldiers of their guard. She climbed up onto her couch, and the Workers hoisted both litters to their shoulders.
And with Trevik trying not to look as nervous as he felt, the group headed out the door and across the courtyard to the Dwelling of Guests.
After all of the evening’s worry and the night’s fitful sleep, the day turned out to be a welcome anticlimax. No one spotted the cam, nestled into the pattern on Trevik’s vest, and it was easier than he’d expected to surreptitiously take the pictures that Jirvin wanted. By the time the Queen recalled her Soldiers from their defensive ring outside the Dwelling and the group returned to the palace for her midday meal, he had managed to face the holocam toward every one of Nuso Esva’s chosen artworks. After the meal, when they had returned to the Dwelling for more talk with Nuso Esva, he made sure to take a few more pictures.
There was one other big difference between Trevik’s first and second days as the Queen’s bowlcarrier. The day before, his mind had been fully occupied with keeping himself motionless and the bowl level. Today, after all those strange things Jirvin had said, he made an effort to listen to the conversation.
It was confusing. That didn’t surprise Trevik—this was the Queen of the Red, after all, along with an alien she found intelligent enough to spend hours conversing with. Their talk was probably above even the wisdom and intelligence of a Circling, let alone a mere Midli like himself.
But the parts he did understand were disturbing. There was talk of shuttles, and of the building of fighter aircraft, and of weapons that were either hidden or soon would be. There was talk of umbrella shields, and traps, and more hidden weapons.
And there was a great deal of talk about death.
But none of that was important. What mattered was that the Queen was clearly not a prisoner of Nuso Esva and the rest of the Storm-hairs.
Later that evening, as he returned the cam to Jirvin, he told his brother exactly that. Jirvin said nothing, except to reaffirm his promise that he and the others would end their opposition to the Queen if the record bore out Trevik’s own observations. His unexpected and unwanted mission finally ended, Trevik again made his way to his home.
And that night, he did eat and sleep deeply.
The recorder erupted with a bewildering cacophony of squeaks, clicks, and squealings. “Go through the Dwelling doors,” Nyama translated, his ears twitching with concentration as he listened to the recording their Circling contact had delivered an hour ago. “Surround and protect the Guests.”
There was another squeal. “We obey the Queen,” Nyama translated. There was a faint scuffling of feet, then the sound of opening and closing doors. “And they’re gone,” Nyama added, leaning back in his seat. “Everything else from now on should be in Quesoth Common Speak. Which I presume you understand.”
“We do,” Parck said, looking at Thrawn at the head of the conference table. The Grand Admiral’s glowing eyes were narrowed, his full attention apparently on the photos of the Dwelling of Guests artwork that the secret recorder had also provided. “What do you know about Soldier Speak, Liaison Nyama?” Parck asked as he keyed for a quick-search of the audio track.
The Stromma gave a snort. “Obviously, I can understand it,” he said. “What else is there to know?”
“What Council Liaison Nyama means,” the conciliator put in, “is that there is nothing more that anyone except a Quesoth Queen and Soldier can know. It is a highly secret language.”
“Yet you know it,” Parck pointed out. “So do several of our Stromma recruits.”
“Including two of my stormtroopers,” Balkin said.
“And will understanding gain you anything?” Nyama shot back. “I tell you right now that it will not. We’ve fought the Quesoth, Captain Parck. All that an understanding of Soldier Speak will gain you is the brief advantage of knowing which of your troops will be the next to die.”
“Which can also be useful,” Thrawn said, looking up from his datapad. “More important, understanding a language is the first step toward speaking or otherwise reproducing it.”
“No,” Nyama said flatly. “There’s no reproducing of Soldier Speak. Believe me, Admiral Thrawn, we tried.”
“That was a long time ago,” Thrawn reminded him. “We have resources that weren’t available to you back then.”
“There’s no reproducing of Soldier Sp
eak,” Nyama repeated, his tone sharper this time. “Queens have a unique set of vocal cords and resonance cavities, which even Soldiers themselves don’t have. Besides that, Soldier language utilizes at least five different resonances and pitch variants, not to mention an entirely different vocabulary from Common Speak. The fourteen loudspeakers they’ve set up beneath the umbrella shield zone have to be specially designed to handle that entire range.”
“So they don’t use comlinks in battle?” Fel asked.
“Weren’t you listening?” Nyama ground out. “I said they needed special loudspeakers. No comlink ever built can even come close to handling the necessary frequency range. Their speakers are simply too small.”
“Yes, we heard you,” Fel said. “So if we can knock out the loudspeakers, we’ll cut off all communication between the Queen and her troops.”
“For all the gain that will bring you,” Nyama said contemptuously. “They’ll just continue to follow their previous orders. Most likely something simple like ‘Kill all the attackers.’ ”
“There may be other ways to exploit that sort of communications system,” Thrawn said.
Nyama snorted. “If you think that—”
“Wait—here comes more Soldier Speak,” Parck interrupted as the computer caught the language keys. He turned up the volume, wincing as the squealing sounds again assaulted his ears.
The monologue was short. “Liaison Nyama?” Parck invited.
“Nothing useful,” Nyama said. “Soldiers: escort your Queen to the Palace.”
“I thought all the Soldiers were outside,” Fel said.
“There are air vents near the ceiling,” Thrawn said, his eyes back on the pictures the holocam had taken. “They can hear her commands through those.”
But now Parck could see that the tension lines in his commander’s face had smoothed out. “You found something, Admiral?” he asked.
“I believe I may have found the solution,” Thrawn said, laying the datapad aside. “From the artwork Nuso Esva has chosen to surround himself with, I anticipate he’ll deploy most of his forces at the western edge of the city, clustered around Setting Sun Avenue.”
Surreptitiously, Parck looked at Nyama. Thrawn’s unique ability to read a species’ deepest psychological core by studying its artwork was one of his greatest strengths, enabling him to anticipate his opponents’ moves right down to their likely battlefield tactics. New allies seeing it demonstrated for the first time inevitably reacted with surprise, awe, or disbelief.
Nyama was apparently going for option three. “Brilliantly anticipated,” the Stromma said sarcastically. “Of course he’ll concentrate his forces there—that’s the only spot on the perimeter where your juggernaut heavy tanks can enter the city. Everywhere else Nuso Esva’s umbrella shields are angled at the edges to block vehicles of any size.”
“Which suggests Setting Sun Avenue is the entrance to a trap,” Balkin suggested.
“Indeed,” Thrawn agreed calmly. “Because the area won’t be guarded solely by Quesoth Soldiers. He’ll also have a number of heavy-weapons emplacements concealed along the route, waiting for our juggernauts. As our forces enter the city, he’ll angle the umbrella shields downward along the route, protecting the shields’ generators from the juggernauts’ fire, as well as preventing the tanks from straying off that path. Once the juggernauts have penetrated a predetermined distance into the city, he’ll blast the first and last ones in line, thereby trapping all the others. At that point, he can destroy them at his leisure.”
Parck nodded, a sour taste in his mouth. It was a tactic they’d seen Nuso Esva use to devastating effect in previous encounters against some of the Empire of the Hand’s other allies. “So how do we counter it?” he asked.
“We first let him think his plan is working,” Thrawn said. “That means sending the line of juggernauts in as he expects.” His eyes glittered. “But before he can launch his attack, we destroy the trap.”
“Allow me to guess,” Nyama growled. “Squadron Commander Fel and his oh-so expert TIE pilots fly in through the gaps between the umbrella shields and blast the hidden guns.”
“You scoff, but it’s actually quite possible,” Fel said. “The shields don’t overlap nearly as well as they should. There are numerous gaps between them, including at least one along one of the steepest parts of the main city hill that’s big enough to fly through if we come in at just the right angle. Once we’re in and below the level of the shields, everything but the palace and palace grounds should be wide open to us.”
“That assumes your pilots are able to insert at the necessary angle,” Nyama countered. “In the heat and flurry of battle, such precision would be impossible.”
Fel shrugged. “Impossible is Gray Squadron’s specialty.”
“And what of the laser cannons spread throughout the city?” Nyama persisted. “We gave them those cannons, Commander Fel, years before Nuso Esva’s intrusion into this region. Each cannon is twin-barreled, with rapid-fire capabilities and enough power to take out one of your vaunted TIE fighters with a single shot. And they have massive forward shield plates, which makes them nearly impossible to destroy along their own fire-lines.”
“But they have only manual targeting,” Thrawn reminded them. “And the very shields that protect them also make them heavy and unwieldy. Even Nuso Esva’s most expert gunners will have trouble with TIE attack speeds.”
“Unless the TIE is coming straight at them, as is the case with Commander Fel’s scenario,” Nyama said acidly. “No, Admiral Thrawn. Trust me: your TIE fighters will be useless in this battle.”
“Perhaps,” Thrawn said. “We shall see.”
“We shall see?” Nyama echoed. “Tell me, Admiral: if the Admonitor’s turbolasers are incapable of penetrating the shields, your TIEs certainly won’t be able to do so. What then will you have them do? Destroy the homes of the Workers and Soldiers that lie outside the shield zone?”
“We do not make war on civilians, Liaison Nyama,” Thrawn said, his voice suddenly cold and brittle. “A fact you well know.”
For a second Nyama’s antagonism seemed to waver. Then, his natural Stromma leadership attitude reasserted itself. “Then what will they do?” he demanded.
“As Commander Fel has already stated, there are gaps between the shields,” Thrawn said. “While the juggernauts move into the city, the TIEs will be shooting through those gaps with the goal of demolishing one or more of the shield generators.”
“Generators that are protected by the very shields they create?” Nyama scoffed. “You can’t hit the generators unless you’re already beneath the shields.”
“Unless it happens that a gap between two shields opens up a targeting vector to a third,” Thrawn pointed out. “I admit the probability is low, but as Commander Fel pointed out, the coverage is not as good as it would have been if Nuso Esva had had more shields available. And if such an attack succeeds, the TIEs will be in position to take full advantage of the situation. But no, the downfall of Nuso Esva’s plan will not be our TIE fighters, but our stormtroopers.”
“Your stormtroopers?”
Across the table, Balkin stirred at the implied slight against his forces. Thrawn’s hand twitched a warning, and the other subsided.
“Nuso Esva will have instructed the Queen to array the bulk of her Soldiers along Setting Sun Avenue to prevent a sortie from the juggernauts,” the admiral said. “We’ll therefore send a small stormtrooper force into the city southwest of the main assault, angle up toward the juggernaut line’s southern flank, and attack the avenue’s shield generators from behind.”
Nyama shook his head. “Nuso Esva will not sit idly by and let that happen. Nor will the Queen of the Red. The Soldiers lining the attack route will simply turn around and swarm against the stormtroopers.”
“Of course they will,” Thrawn said. “When that happens, the stormtroopers will retreat, drawing them still farther from the juggernauts and the shields.” He smiled slightly. “And
when they’re too far back to respond, the stormtroopers inside the tanks will emerge, cut their way through the remaining Soldiers, and destroy the shields.”
Nyama snorted. “And all this against Quesoth Soldiers? You have far too much confidence in your humans, Admiral Thrawn.”
“The stormtroopers of the 501st consist of humans and nonhumans,” Thrawn reminded him calmly. “Including a number of your own people.”
“Not anymore.” Abruptly, Nyama stood up. “I’ve heard enough. The Stromma council will not risk its warriors in this mad attack. Particularly not an attack against our allies. I hereby withdraw all of them from Imperial service, effective immediately.”
Beside him, the conciliator’s mouth dropped open in clear disbelief. “What Council Liaison Nyama means—”
“Council Liaison Nyama means exactly what he says,” Nyama interrupted. “Give the orders, Admiral Thrawn. Or I will give them for you.”
For a long moment, the room seemed to quiver with the silence of approaching death. Nyama loomed over the still-seated Thrawn like a grass-covered mountain, his black eyes hard, his mouth set at an angle that warned against argument.
Thrawn stirred. “Very well, Council Liaison,” he said. “If you don’t wish to assist in freeing your allies from bondage, your people will be ordered to your carriers.”
“What I don’t wish is for my people to die for nothing,” Nyama ground out. “And it will be for nothing. In two years Nuso Esva and the remnant of his Chosen will find themselves masters of a deserted city. If at that time you still insist on having your vengeance, we will gladly march in alongside you and sing a song to your honor as you destroy him. But I won’t waste my people in a useless and futile battle.”
He glared at the conciliator, as if daring the younger Stromma to dare try to soften his words. But the conciliator had learned his lesson, and remained silent.
“Nuso Esva can do a great deal of damage in those two years,” Parck said. It wasn’t a particularly politic thing to do, he knew, speaking words of contradiction to a Stromma council liaison. But he had no intention of letting his commander take the full brunt of Nyama’s contempt alone. “And there are manufacturing facilities below Red City that he might use to devastating effect. Are you willing to simply stand aside and watch all that happen?”