Eight Juggernauts were already moving, pulling out from behind the duracrete wall, twice the height of a man, that surrounded the armored vehicle park of the main garrison base.
The machines moved at low speed.
Or so it simply seemed to the pilots flying over the heads of the stormtroopers clad in black-and-white armor.
Captain Tomax Bren had seen the armored transports when his Scimitar squadron had roared over the main positions of the 501st Guard Stormtrooper Legion.
Over the years of service, Tomax had seen many different tactical approaches to ground force operations.
He knew commanders who would concentrate mobile armored forces on the flanks, placing walkers and repulsor tanks in the center.
A single powerful frontal strike, followed by a mobile penetration through the enemy's defenses along the flanks.
He had also seen another variant of a frontal assault — where instead of one direction, heavy armor was concentrated on the flanks to shatter the enemy's formations, isolate one sector of the battle from another, and create local pockets.
In such situations, armor cut off one enemy unit from another, mixing fortifications with mud and corpses, allowing mobile infantry to breach the fortified areas under the cover of walkers, which drew the attention of the enemy's heavy weapons and artillery.
Yes, any of the above tactics could have worked during the third assault on Carannia, too.
But today, Tomax saw something completely different below him.
The 501st Legion was attacking exclusively with HAVw A5s and HAVw A6s.
Heavy assault armored vehicles were moving without any cover whatsoever.
And this tactic could be called idiotic, suicidally dangerous, absurd, even detrimental, because neither of these two types of armored vehicles had, nor could have, protection against the semi-autonomous proton cannons of Separatist manufacture.
J-1s were deadly even for AT-AT walkers, which, mind you, possessed blaster-absorbing armor, making them exceptionally tough and difficult targets for enemy artillery — both energy and kinetic.
And also slow.
In the distant past, his air wing, the Scimitar, had been used time and again during the Empire for swift raids on enemy ground fortifications to enable breakthroughs of enemy defensive lines by infantry or stormtroopers.
Here and there, he heard data on the characteristics of the Empire's primary ground armored vehicles.
Which were also in service with the Dominion.
The HAVw A5 could reach a maximum speed of two hundred kilometers per hour.
The HAVw A6 could only boast a top speed of one hundred and sixty.
An AT-AT couldn't keep up with either the second or, certainly, the first assault armored transport.
The limit for the Empire's walking symbol of power and terror was a mere sixty kilometers per hour.
That was far from enough to reach the outskirts of the city at the appointed time.
The garrison bases were located outside the range of the enemy's semi-autonomous proton cannons to avoid artillery bombardment and unnecessary losses.
Therefore, the swift thrust of the stormtroopers would be provided by the armored vehicles.
This assertion, however, applied exclusively to the ground phase of the operation.
In the air, there were those who would ensure the survival of the stormtroopers far better than their own slow boxes on big wheels, bristling with weapons.
"We are making our attack run," Tomax warned on the squadron frequency. "Prepare all systems. Activate weapons. We move fast, clean, and without delay. We will not have a chance for error. Nor, in fact, for a repeat."
Eleven single clicking sounds of confirmation rang in the squadron commander's helmet.
"Did I ever tell you that you're the craziest, most concussion-addled pilot I know?" Alex, seated behind the commander of the Scimitar-01, inquired.
"Only the third time this sortie."
"You're a sick pilot in the head," the flight mechanic said without malice. "Torpedoes ready. Fuses activated, homing heads on standby. Though, I don't think we'll get a chance to use them..."
"There are no other options," Bren stated, running a final check on all systems. "An order is an order."
"I know," the mechanic's heavy sigh came through the headphones. "You know, if this doesn't work out, I'd rather blow up with the ship than get captured by the droids."
"Cancel the defeatist attitude," Bren snapped. "Everything will be fine."
"Or we'll get splattered against Carannia's shields like a minokk on a bridge viewport during a hyperspace jump," came another heavy sigh from Alex. "Either way, it's been an honor serving with you, Tomax. Even if your brains are clearly scrambled soup if you signed up for this."
"An order is an order, and we will carry it out," Bren promised, returning his hands to the ship's controls. "How much time until this all begins?"
"Ten seconds."
"Distance to the enemy?"
"Forty... And it's too late to write a will, isn't it?"
"You can dictate 'I leave nothing to anyone' to the controller; he'll enter your last wishes into the registry," Bren snorted. "Just imagine how surprised your heirs, if you have any, will be."
"Oh, how I hate you at moments like this!" Alex groaned in feigned helplessness. "Let's get to work, before I bail on this suicide mission!"
With a quiet chuckle, Tomax confirmed that the onboard computer had logged the correct course.
His hand reached for the control panel of its own accord...
* * *
"Nine seconds until the shield rotation begins, sir."
Pellaeon's voice was anxious, but not afraid.
Gilad, despite the long time we have fought side-by-side, understands but sometimes fails to accept clearly non-standard tactical, and even more so strategic, measures.
Yes, he could have continued the siege of Kirannia without issue, maintaining its blockade for months.
We could use TIE droids or old decommissioned ships to force the enemy to expend their limited resources as quickly as possible.
But there lies the problem.
We do not know the size of the enemy's stockpiles.
We do not know how long he can hold out.
And we do not have the time to keep the chief of staff and a contingent of several hundred thousand sentients on Serenno, waiting for the droids to surrender.
That is why I got involved in all this.
That is why the Guardian, the Allegiance, and the Chimaera are firing upon the surface of Serenno, pouring streams of white-green-blue fire and spewing dozens of anti-ship missiles every second.
Missiles that can only dent the enemy's deflector, not destroy it.
The Guardian, the Allegiance, and the Chimaera are sending Tey-Zuka and his droid armies flaming "greetings."
Tey-Zuka assures me his reserves will last almost ten years.
I am certain the droid is distorting objective data.
He has no obligation to tell me the truth — I am nothing to him.
Tactical superdroids generally afford sentients no authority whatsoever.
Except for a few, like Count Dooku, Admiral Trench, and a couple of other, now deceased, Separatist military leaders.
Those who earned unquestionable authority from the war machines through their effective actions.
Though, the fact that these military leaders were not killed by the super-tactics may not be a result of the former's success, but a guarantee of the latter's quality programming.
Either way, it works for me.
This galaxy already knows what droids that have gained self-awareness, an artificial personality, are capable of.
The Yuuzhan Vong galaxy felt that firsthand as well.
But that corner of the universe we live in has known not only the destruction that self-aware artificial intelligences bring us, but also creation, integrity.
Take the Skywalker family's R2-D2, for example.
That droid hasn't had his memory wiped in decades, and he is, in fact, already an artificial personality.
A full participant in every major event in the galaxy, and in some cases, their instigator.
Has he done anything bad?
That depends on your perspective.
But, he is now exclusively my supporter, the R7, reprogrammed by the best slicers in the galaxy.
All his memory, all his consciousness — all of it is now part of my strategy.
His personality, though... That's another matter.
However, this droid is not the only one.
For example, in the galaxy, there is an experimental warship equipped with artificial intelligence.
As a result of a certain incident, the starship left the territory controlled by its owners and set off on an independent journey.
It exterminates pirates and those who harm lone travelers, protects the weak and wounded.
A machine that, upon gaining its own consciousness, does not commit genocide.
Yes, the majority of artificial personalities have been relentlessly striving for the destruction of organics.
There are hundreds of such examples in this galaxy alone.
Tactical superdroids are no exception.
If anything, they are proof of that rule.
Securing even one such asset for the Dominion is a great stroke of luck.
The Empire worked hard to ensure all these machines were destroyed beyond recovery.
Tey-Zuka and his assistants could make an invaluable contribution to the Dominion's campaign to defend its territories from the Zann Consortium and the Silri Syndicate.
Not because they are smarter than the officers under my command.
But because they are versatile.
Capable of commanding both the space fleet and ground forces.
Given the constant shortage of qualified command personnel, even a single versatile tactical superdroid would be incredibly valuable to the Dominion.
However, I do not delude myself with hopes that Tey-Zuka will keep his word and surrender when the shields fall.
That would be an overly idealistic approach to conducting combat operations on territory the enemy has already thoroughly fortified and considers an impregnable fortress.
"Seven seconds, sir."
Indeed.
How fast thought can be.
Processing such a vast amount of information inside a skull in just a couple of seconds...
One way or another, but today, now, it will all end.
If the plan succeeds, we will capture Carannia and the active combat operations of the civil war in the D'Astan sector will cease.
However, they will transition into a counter-terrorism operation, since one doesn't need to be a genius of operational planning to conclude that after defeating the enemy's main forces, any potential underground movement must also be eliminated.
Operations on a single planet, in one region of a state, differ from how similar operations proceed across the scale of even one, even small, star sector.
The latter encompasses thousands of star systems.
Some are well known, others merely surveyed, and still others undiscovered even after thousands of years of colonization of already actively used space.
There will always be someone who knows some inaccessible, unknown, or godforsaken star system from which they will inevitably begin striking our logistics.
This is the difference between formal control — which conditionally consists of "raising the flag" over conquered territories — and actual subjugation.
In the latter case, it is necessary to find and burn out every nest of potential resistance.
Proud peoples will never accept conquest if the rulers spit on their customs and traditions.
That is precisely why we need Baroness D'Asta.
Even if it is her clone.
If she is in power in the sector, there will be far fewer problems.
Then I will have the opportunity to withdraw regular forces from here, leaving only the Defense Forces, supported by Dominion counter-intelligence operatives.
Will the conscripts handle the pirates and separatists?
They will.
Because even in the Defense Forces, clones of proven and experienced sentients occupy key command posts.
Conscripts and volunteers are no more than the necessary "muscle mass," needed also for operating Dominion warships.
Little by little, the Defense Forces will represent the necessary military power, respected within the Dominion just as the regular fleet is respected outside it.
And now...
"Three seconds."
There is no need to remind the crews of the Guardian, the Allegiance, and the Chimaera of their orders.
Everything was coordinated in advance.
The executors are as reliable as Mandalorian iron.
Otherwise, they wouldn't be here.
"Two seconds..."
As if by an invisible command, the turbolasers, ion cannons, and missile launchers of all three warships — the Super Star Destroyer, the battle cruiser, and my flagship Star Destroyer — ceased fire.
Three giants hung motionless in orbit of the planet, allowing the lower deflector of Carannia to begin thinning at the very center of its dome, simultaneously forming a wisp of energy over the point of collapse.
The element of the upper shield had only just begun to form when markers for twelve small craft appeared on the tactical display, their transponders signaling their affiliation with the Dominion regular fleet.
"How is this even possible?!" we heard the slightly sleepy voice of Baroness D'Asta.
Turning, we looked at the aristocrat, who, wrapped in a blanket, was staring fixedly at the tactical screen.
"A squadron of our small craft has just penetrated below the upper deflector," Pellaeon explained.
"That's impossible!" the baroness exclaimed, her mind reeling from something she could not accept or comprehend. "No one and nothing can make a hyperspace jump into a planet's atmosphere. Gravity will never allow the laws of physics to be broken and..."
Fina D'Asta looked at me with a disbelieving but intrigued gaze.
"For the Dominion, nothing is impossible, Baroness," I said calmly, with no intention of revealing details. "Remember that when we install you to rule the D'Astan sector. There will be no ceremony with the enemy. If the need arises, we will go where we are not expected and do what we are not anticipated to do."
In the complete silence, the sound of the aristocrat loudly swallowing a lump in her throat rang out.
"Point taken..."
Her whisper was barely audible.
But her intonation betrayed the girl's fear of the unknown.
Well then.
The "minimum" objective is complete.
Moving on to the primary combat mission.
"Vice Admiral," I addressed Pellaeon, "ensure our gunners receive telemetry from the ships under the shield and lock onto the enemy artillery. Everything not destroyed by the small craft must be suppressed by turbolasers before our assault troops enter the enemy artillery's kill zone."
"Yes, sir!"
* * *
"The jump is complete!" Alex's voice rang out, but Bren already knew that perfectly.
The Scimitar-01's systems were screeching hysterically, warning the crew commander, who held the high-speed craft's controls in whitened, tightly clenched hands.
Exactly the moment the enemy began rotating the deflector shields, twelve ships of the Scimitar squadron launched from their positions, hurtling forward.
The section of the deflector shield covering the city is standard, and its dimensions are well known.
A geometrically regular hexagon, with sides of one standard kilometer.
The distance between two deflectors is ten meters, and it is dangerous in itself.
No physicist has yet managed to overcome the static interference discharges between two energy screens.
Even Coruscant suffers from this.
The Scimitar's speed when using the PLAE sublight accelerator is extreme.
A second — and they had already completed the jump, finding themselves under the "umbrella" of the rotating deflector, but above the yawning abyss of the collapsing central segment of the lower deflector.
A branching lightning discharge flashes to the right.
The polarities of the enemy's shields discharge against each other, creating a zone of turbulence.
For them, the squadron is like a negatively charged electrode to a positive one.
The edge of the discharge strikes the shields, and they lose a good third of their power.
The systems screech from the overloads.
A rich, epithet-laden stream of curses from the flight mechanic can be heard: the left maneuvering thruster has failed.
Alex begins the restart procedure — another lightning discharge damaged the engine, but the instruments stubbornly report that the circuits are normal and functional.
The safety "fuse bank" was burned out.
Unpleasant, but not fatal.
Restart via secondary systems.
The Scimitar will hold!
It must hold!
No one but them can do this!
The mission is set, and it will be completed!
At any cost!
Even at the cost of everything!
No Dominion soldier will accept defeat from a machine, even one created to be better than them.
No sane sentient will agree to leave millions of Dominion inhabitants under enemy control simply because they weren't good enough to save them!
Every pilot of the Scimitar squadron knows what military honor is.
They know, because they are all clones of Bren.
And Tomax, more than anyone else in the unit, knows what military honor is.
He was born with it.
He was raised to preserve it.
He will do what he must do!
There is no other way!
The ship must be controlled, or they're done for.
The organism is working at its absolute limit.
Like a droid doing what no artificially created object is capable of.
The PLAE lever is returned to its original position, and the nimble ship, banking into a turn, plummets like a stone.
The distance to the surface is kilometers.
Ten.
That's nothing for his ship.
But streams of laser fire from the enemy's anti-aircraft artillery are already flying towards it, and the other eleven Scimitars.
This is how most pilots die — when they close in on their target.
This is how the Empire lost practically all its best aces during the Civil War.
This is why bombers are considered the most vulnerable and easy targets for fighters and interceptors.
This is why Tomax created and modernized the high-speed Scimitar bomber.
A second passed after reaching the attack line.
Scimitar-12 vanishes from the screens, and out of the corner of his eye, Tomax notices a blooming fireball on the starboard side.
No, the enemy gunners hadn't hit the target.
Exactly what Alex feared happened to Twelve.
The ship was smeared across the deflector shield.
It was just a fraction of a second too late.
There is simply no time to grieve for a fallen comrade.
His hands guide the ship vertically down on their own.
Scimitar-01 races like a comet towards the surface of the capital city on the planet Serenno.
A powerful wall of defensive fire on the way.
Alex is yelling, reporting target acquisition.
The ship shakes, overcoming Serenno's atmospheric resistance, slowly heating up against the dense layers.
The deflectors absorb the hits.
Ten percent remain, but diverting energy to them now would mean reducing speed.
His thumb presses the launch button.
Two proton torpedoes fire at identified target number one.
The projector for the lower deflector field is just one kilometer from the penetration zones.
A massive structure with a signal-reflecting dish and a central transmitting antenna.
Too large to hope it will be destroyed by just a pair of proton torpedoes.
This isn't the Death Star's cooling vent.
Two crimson projectiles strike the rotating joint of the deflector field projector's control mechanism.
The explosion paints the canopy with an orange-white blaze capable of blinding, but the crew commander's helmet visor polarization system handles it.
But this isn't all.
This isn't even the beginning.
The squadron's lead ship, under Tomax's control, turned in a shallow arc, evading a salvo of anti-aircraft missiles.
The ordnance, flying past the target, awkwardly turned, again trying to lock onto the escaping high-speed bomber.
Tomax, noting the destruction of several more projectors, noted with satisfaction that only two crews had been lost.
It was expected that by this point in the operation, he would have lost three or four.
But for now, they were cheating death and continuing their work.
"Two missiles on our tail!" Alex shouted.
"Then shake them off!" Tomax barked back.
He banked again towards the city.
He has other work to do.
The pilot shouldn't worry about what the flight mechanic can do, as long as he's alive.
* * *
Grunting in Mandalorian could be heard.
Mortok glanced at Hedz, who was bandaging a wound inflicted by a saboteur droid in their last skirmish.
He was doing this on the balcony of the penthouse the diversionary group had been cornered into.
"Well, what's out there?" the Devaronian yelled back discontentedly, firing into the broad torso of a clumsy B-2 trying to climb out of the turbolift cab to reach the ruined main entrance.
"Ours!" there was cheerfulness in Spar's voice. "The Scimitars! They broke through under the shield!"
"I'm so glad my horns got stiffer," Mortok hissed, rolling behind a wall to avoid a shot to the face.
The buzzer on his rifle indicated the energy cell and gas cartridge were depleted.
Just great, simply great.
"Mandalorian iron for your full schematics!" came the shout from the doorway leading to the balcony.
Spar had said goodbye to his long-unusable helmet two battles ago, when they were first pinned against the skyscraper, forced to retreat into it.
Following the voice, the Mandalorian himself appeared.
All that remained of his armor was the chest plate, blackened with blaster impact soot.
The under-suit was covered in bandages and patches over burned wounds.
In the Mandalorian's hands, the rotary barrel of a heavy blaster spun up, showering the enemy with a white-blue blaster suspension.
The droids, though incapable of feelings or emotions, still hesitated, not understanding what was happening.
What stopped them wasn't just Spar's battle-worn appearance, but the chassis of a destroyed B-2 blocking the path.
But those are details.
While Mortok changed the power sources for his weapon, Hedz, with precise yet chaotic fire, mowed down another wave of enemies, then, yanking a thermal detonator from his belt, threw it into the cab a moment before the doors closed.
"They called the lift for reinforcements," the Mandalorian informed the Devaronian.
"Twenty seconds to catch our breath and..."
The blast was so strong that glass shattered and doors shook.
Some ornate vase, which had miraculously survived until then, wobbled sharply and flew towards the floor...
A couple of centimeters from certain destruction, the work of art froze in mid-air, then flipped right-side up and settled onto the floor without a sound.
"Here you are!" Spar's greeting was far from friendly. "What, got distracted by meditation out there?!"
The Mirialuka, ignoring him, walked over to a small strategic cache of supplies, food, and ammunition, took a few gulps, and turned his back to both men.
His ever-present cloak was burned and slashed in dozens of places, and the surface of the armor he wore under the ruined garment was covered in scratches and scorch marks.
"The staircase is collapsed," the former Jedi stated after drinking, wearily sitting down where humanoids usually sit. "They won't be coming from the rear now."
Right. Droids aren't people.
Those automatons are smart enough to march two hundred and forty floors on foot up a staircase built only to appease oversight services and indicate there's a fire exit and a way to leave the high-rise if it needs to be de-energized.
The Jensaarai handled this task, volunteering for it immediately.
As soon as he saw the droids had such intentions and had already sent an advance squad.
Now Dersen was sitting, knees tucked to his chin, face buried in them.
Right there, in the middle of the studio apartment, their last line of defense from which there was no retreat...
Looks like the kid single-handedly cut through an entire army.
A lot, but at the same time, not enough to survive and tell the tale.
But, anyway, he shouldn't be bothered with questions and inappropriate jokes right now.
Even Spar held back.
When there are only three of you against an entire enemy army, there's not much time, desire, or mood to poke fun at each other.
Everyone is giving their all.
While there's a chance to rest, it must be taken without delay.
The Jedi will rest now, then one of the other two — the Devaronian or the Mandalorian.
And so on until the next enemy wave.
Somewhere far below, an explosion sounded.
But, compared to the one that had just rung out, this one was far less powerful.
"And which one of them did your detonator set off?" Mortok inquired, referring to the previous strong explosion.
"The last one," the Mandalorian didn't dodge. "Looks like our bombers are blowing something up hard."
"Ours broke through?" the young Mirialuka raised his head anxiously, turning it in all directions. "Oh... I see them..."
"Maybe you can also see what they're blowing up?" No, Hedz couldn't resist injecting sarcasm into his tone.
"I see it," the Mirialuka ignored him.
"And... what exactly are our pilots with the big bombs blowing up?" Mortok asked.
The answer was brief in essence, but exhaustively comprehensive in its content.
"Everything."
* * *
The buildings the Scimitar-01 flew past with a deafening roar showed no signs of life: no one even tried to look out of the windows or fire at the ship with any type of weapon.
The population seemed to have vanished.
Though, that's not the kind of problem bomber pilots should be dealing with.
Tomax had already fired half his bomb load, destroying, along with the other Scimitars, everything that was a primary objective.
Proton torpedoes — singly or in groups — attacked the vulnerable points of the deflector shield projectors, struck at power stations and turbolasers placed within the city blocks, which were trying to land a deadly, treacherous dose of pure energy on the weakly shielded ships.
Thus, the droids had already managed to ambush three bomber crews.
Two had turned to ash in an instant.
The last, its engines gone, dove into a cluster of enemy armored vehicles, carving a crater half a kilometer in diameter on impact and collapsing several buildings.
The blown-off cockpit, serving as an escape pod, was torn to pieces by a missile hit.
Further proof that the enemy had no intention of taking prisoners — and still didn't.
Here, they would either win or die.
There was no third option.
And at this point, it wasn't even needed anymore.
Tomax swept over the flat roof of another building and began his turn, lining up the next target on the list — a jamming station — when the city below erupted with laser salvos.
"Four torpedoes, disable the seekers!" he warned the flight engineer and cranked the yoke to its limit.
A laser beam slipped through a gap in the shields, nearly scorching the bomber's left solar panel.
Tomax twisted away, but two long, burned scars marked the hull — the lasers had grazed him.
It also meant his bomber was completely stripped of deflectors.
"Done!"
Tomax raced toward the domed structure ahead, jerking the ship from side to side, dodging direct-fire hits.
The forward cannons never stopped firing, but their power wasn't enough to punch through the duracrete bunkers shielding the enemy's automated anti-air guns.
But the torpedoes would.
Receiving confirmation from Alex, Tomax switched the fire selector, and the laser cannons went silent.
Instead, four crimson lights emerged from beneath the ship, streaking forward at insane speed.
No homing guidance.
Just engines and explosives.
There was no need to guide the hits himself.
Alex could handle that when the ship pulled out of the danger zone.
The bomber's laser cannons roared back to life, hosing one of the anti-air guns mounted on a rooftop as the Scimitar-01 climbed along the building's flank.
The hit coincided with the proton torpedoes' strike on the jamming station.
"Got it!" Alex roared. "All four punched through the structure!"
"Full scanners!" Tomax ordered. "Keep the comm channel open to the ships! Transmit everything we see!"
Clicking his comlink, he relayed the same order to the five surviving crews.
Half the squadron was dead, and they hadn't even finished clearing all the deflector field projectors yet.
The inner shield's power was almost gone, but the outer shield — the one still holding — had yet to get the Scimitar squadron's attention.
Same for the power stations.
Though that would be remedied soon enough.
Tomax veered away from an anti-air missile fired almost point-blank.
The missile's seeker head failed to lock the fast-moving target and exploded, slamming into the building behind the Scimitar-01 and literally ripping out its middle floors.
With a roar, hundreds of upper stories came crashing down, a rain of stone falling onto the droids and enemy armor moving along the streets below.
"Don't they have a bit too many droids?" Alex asked, firing the rear turret. "Battle droids, spiders, tanks... and they're all marching down the main avenues — nice, long, straight, wide ones. Begging for everything we've got..."
Alex paused.
"Everything we've got left."
Tomax banked the Scimitar-01 hard, dodging a shot from an Octuptarra battle droid stomping several kilometers ahead, returning fire with his forward weapons and scoring a hit on its spherical "head."
Then, after leveling the ship and immediately jinking with the maneuvering thrusters to avoid fire from another nearly four-meter-tall droid of the same type, he destroyed one of the three support legs on this new enemy.
The Octuptarra battle droid.
And only then, spotting a fairly wide intersection, he slowed slightly while diverting reactor power to replenish the deflectors, then peeled off Carannia's main avenue.
"We'll give them a go," he promised. "But later. First, I'm blowing their entire defense infrastructure to hell."
Glancing at the instrument panel, Tomax felt regret and disappointment.
His offhanded words had been prophetic.
The Scimitar squadron was completely wiped out.
Only the Scimitar-01 remained.
Kirannia blazed with the glow of fires from all corners of the capital's sprawl.
Phase one targets were destroyed.
At this point, there should have been four of them left.
Now there was only him.
Behind him, Alex, hosing any enemy firing point with his cannon.
In the belly of the lead ship, only six proton torpedoes remained out of the thirty-two carried at full bomb load for a fast bomber.
And he still had to destroy at least eight more targets — the projectors for the enemy's sole remaining deflector shield, as well as the power stations feeding that hated energy screen.
The simplest way would be to climb above the buildings, let the onboard computer lock targets, and launch homing proton torpedoes.
But the moment he broke cover from the urban sprawl, the enemy would hit him with everything they had.
He had to play the role of a crazed swoop racer, desperately trying to win a race against death.
* * *
"Grand Admiral, sir," Captain Pellaeon's voice came through the comlink. "Receiving telemetry from the surface. The enemy's electronic warfare system is destroyed."
"Bren pulled it off," Senior Pellaeon exhaled, if he could even be called that in this situation.
"Nothing's over yet, Vice Admiral," I reminded him. "Captain Pellaeon, has the enemy redirected power from the remaining power stations to support the deflector shield?"
"Affirmative, sir," the Guardian's commander reported. "Shield strength has increased by a third."
"Forward the data to the Allegiance."
A few seconds later, the tactical display blinked and showed the data I was interested in.
It took fifteen seconds to study.
"What's the status of the Scimitar squadron?"
"Eleven craft lost, sir. Only Captain Bren's crew is still in the fight."
"Bantha poodoo," Pellaeon grimaced. "Tomax can pull off the impossible, but this..."
"Run a simulation cross-referencing the bomber data with our scanner readings," I ordered. "Resume bombardment of the deflector shield. All batteries to full power. Do not spare anti-ship missiles."
To breach the deflectors of this localized version of a planetary shield, we would need everything we had.
Besides, the anti-ship missiles raining down on the droids' heads would occupy most of the enemy's anti-air artillery — giving Bren, who, as Vice Admiral Pellaeon rightly noted, could pull off the impossible, a chance.
That's why he was down there, single-handedly demolishing enemy positions.
"Acknowledged, sir."
"We should've started pounding the upper deflector the moment the Scimitars got inside the dome," Pellaeon said with frustration, clenching his fists. "Now it'll take longer."
"We have time to spare, Vice Admiral," I said, watching as the guns on all three capital ships came to life. "And yes, from a purely military efficiency standpoint, you are absolutely right. We should have unleashed our full potential on the deflector field under those circumstances. No doubt the upper shield would already be down by now."
"But you didn't order it," Baroness D'Asta said softly. "You knew it was the simpler course, but you didn't give that order. Why, Grand Admiral Thrawn?"
"For the same reason I didn't allow Vice Admiral Pellaeon to rain thermonuclear and nuclear warheads on the civilian population," I explained.
"To avoid destroying the city, and instead capture it," the Baroness repeated my own words.
"By 'city,' I primarily mean its population, not a collection of buildings and their strategic value," I said — they clearly still hadn't understood. "Using weapons of mass destruction would have resulted in the deaths of sentient beings and radioactive contamination of the territory."
"What changed your mind to allow the bombardment to resume?" Pellaeon already suspected it wasn't that simple.
His eyes were scanning lines of updated reports, flipping through them one after another.
I, however, was interested in one very specific line in the intelligence data the Scimitars had been collecting.
"Captain Pellaeon," I hailed the Guardian's commander on the comlink. "Inform our special forces to prepare for planetary insertion via drop pods. Designation point — the enemy command center. I want that droid and its subordinates taken alive."
"Acknowledged, sir."
"Black bones of the Emperor," Pellaeon muttered, his voice stunned underneath his mustache. "No... It can't be!"
"What did you find there?" the Baroness D'Asta asked impatiently, tossing her blanket aside and hurrying toward us on her high heels. "Energy readings, military equipment concentrations, anti-space defense positions... What's wrong? You look like you found something you don't like!"
"On the contrary, Baroness," I countered, watching the orbital bombardment of Carannia with detached calm. "To my regret, I did not find what I was hoping for."
"And that's why you gave the order to bomb the city," Pellaeon said, running a hand over his face as if trying to wipe away the tension. "Sith seed... I forgot these artificial bastards could be so soulless and cruel."
"They are optimized for efficiency," I said. "From their perspective, the decision made meets the requirements for defending the city. No concern about armed civilian militias operating in their rear. Total control over everything happening in the capital."
"That's why he set that condition — no one leaves the city," Pellaeon clenched his hands so hard his knuckles went white. "Mechanical Hutt bastard. And you want to add a commander like that to your collection, Grand Admiral?"
A question born of emotion and helpless rage.
The impossibility of fixing anything.
"What is going on?!" the Baroness burst out, abandoning her examination of the tactical screen where she hadn't found her answer. "What are you both talking about! If it concerns the population of Carannia, then as their rightful ruler, I have a right to know! Explain yourselves immediately, gentlemen! Stop treating me like a fool!"
"No one is, Baroness," I replied, picking up a laser pointer and highlighting the relevant report position on the dark screen matrix with a green dot. "We have won this war. But we have lost the final battle for the minds and souls of Carannia's inhabitants."
"No," the girl said, her eyes wide as she stepped back from the wall monitor and looked at us. "Your equipment is malfunctioning! Perhaps your ships were damaged in battle and..."
"These are cross-referenced data," Pellaeon said in a hollow voice. "From both the small craft over Carannia and the scanners on all our ships in orbit. There can be no mistake."
"The probability of such a large number of scanners all displaying the same erroneous information simultaneously is negligible," I said, trying to contain my anger and despair behind general phrases, but it wasn't working well.
My throat burned with the urge to give the order for Base Delta Zero and burn it all to hell.
Just bake this city in its own juice, fusing it with the bedrock beneath.
But at the same time, I understood that emotions were a wretched way out of this situation.
Pellaeon was silent, staring straight ahead.
I was silent, watching the hurricane bombardment drain the enemy shield's power.
The Baroness was quietly crying.
Only the tactical monitor with its updated scanning data remained calmly impassive.
In the list of scan parameters, a line glowed:
"Number of detected organic life forms — three units."
And next to it, the beacon markers of the sabotage team members.
Jensaarai Defender Eler Dersen, Mandalorian Hedge Spar, Lieutenant Mortok.
Carannia was dead.
Tey-Zuka hadn't only destroyed the aristocrats.
The droid had eliminated the entire civilian population of Serenno's capital.
Hundreds of thousands of peaceful sentient beings.
Millions...
That thing had to die the most painful death a droid could suffer.