Ten years, four months, and seventeen days after the Battle of Yavin...
Or the forty-fifth year, fourth month, and seventeenth day after the Great Resynchronization.
(One year and thirty-two days since the Arrival.)
The Rancor Battalion attacked Carannia from the eastern direction.
Unlike the forward units of the 501st Legion, to which they had been attached for the duration of the operation on Serenno, their armored vehicles had not advanced from their positions after the Guardian, the Allegiance, and the Chimaera resumed their work of shattering the shields of the enemy occupying the capital.
Major General Maximilian Jurgen had given the order to move out only after confirmation came that the deflector had fallen.
After the ships in orbit began to churn the enemy's so carefully prepared positions into the soil.
And now, the battalion's personnel had already crossed what was once the enemy's first line of defense.
The rays of a new day's dawn played on the armor of the AT-ATs, and streams of white-green fire poured unceasingly from their cannons.
Despite the Dominion not having (not yet having) its own source of tibanna gas, the weapons of the regular fleet and army ships and combat vehicles were, as before in the Empire, supplied exclusively with high-quality gas for armament.
Hence the visible green tint of every laser shot.
Lieutenant Roach commanded the command walker.
Watching the chaos that reigned along the entire path ahead, he felt an unpleasant prickling between his shoulder blades.
This was not a battlefield their AT-ATs and AT-STs were advancing across to support the 501st Legion's offensive in this part of the city, replacing stormtroopers who had been killed or wounded and their damaged or destroyed vehicles.
This was a slaughterhouse.
Destroyed buildings, piled high with charred and mangled droid remains.
Huge blast craters.
Billowing black smoke, turning dawn into an inescapable gloom.
From two garrison bases, walkers from the 501st Legion were already speeding to provide support, because — even though the stormtroopers had plenty of Juggernauts — against an army of droids firmly entrenched in the central and coastal parts of the city, they had nothing to counter with.
The stormtroopers had already done the impossible: they had captured half the city, grinding down several hundred thousand enemy combat droids.
And had suffered losses equal to a couple of battalions.
That was counting only the dead, of course.
A pair of Xg-1 assault gunships streaked past the lead AT-AT's hull.
Waggling their wings, on which the golden gears of the Dominion were visible, the pilots surged forward.
They had another strafing run ahead on the new forward edge of the line of contact.
The city was not wiped from the face of the earth, but it was thoroughly destroyed.
The enemy had fallen back to its last remaining defensive lines.
And clearly intended to fight to the last.
Following a pre-planned route, the lead AT-AT under Tychus's command emerged from a side street onto the central avenue.
A wide — a hundred meters — street along which the enemy had been delivering reinforcements from the underground warehouse territory to their fortifications and strongpoints.
But now...
"Emperor's black bones," Tychus whispered, running his hand over his face, hoping to dispel the hallucination.
It didn't work.
What he saw before him was no hallucination.
The incredibly wide avenue now most resembled...
The lieutenant couldn't even find the right words to properly describe what he saw.
And it wasn't even about the hundreds of massive buildings lining both sides of the avenue.
Nor even the holes "decorating" those structures.
Nor the shattered glass, the mangled building frames, and the enormous cracks covering the building facades.
Out of the hundred meters of duracrete-covered space of the wide avenue, stretching for dozens of kilometers through the city's superstructure, only the section in the middle remained relatively intact.
Between it and the sidewalks, the road had been transformed into two enormous trenches, filled to the brim with mangled, crushed, or simply torn-apart enemy armored vehicles and droid chassis.
Many bore signs of scorching, which in places turned into deep, melted furrows on the rebels' armored hulls or even on the building facades.
The surviving third of the roadway was covered in a network of large and small cracks, creating the impression in one's mind that it was about to crumble and add the AT-AT to the pile of twisted metal.
But the onboard computer stubbornly insisted that the path was perfectly fine and the integrity of the central section was beyond doubt.
And it made sense — if you looked closely, you could see that beneath this section there were no structural trusses or metal frameworks, as under the other two parts of the avenue.
Only indestructible skarn.
"And here I didn't believe Kaine that the pilots actually pulled off something like that," Major General Jurgen's voice held tones of both admiration and surprise simultaneously.
"Sir?" Tychus, having made sure the driver-mechanic had crossed the prefabricated bridge that the engineer-sapper units had thrown across the chasm separating their street from the central part of the avenue and was turning the vehicle's "head" toward where the enemy was hiding, turned to look at the expression on the Rancor Battalion commander's face.
"The commander of the Scimitar squadron that attacked under the shields used his hyperdrive on the avenue," Major General Jurgen explained. "First they worked over their targets, and then, when the proton torpedoes ran out and the Guardian dropped the shield, they accelerated... We can see the consequences for ourselves."
Tychus felt the hair on the back of his neck and head stand on end.
A speed bomber had used its hyperdrive in the atmosphere?
Close to the planet's surface?
The lieutenant was barely familiar with piloting technique, but he understood clearly what the shockwave from a super-fast acceleration, even of a small ship, could do to structures.
Nothing like that could happen in space because there was no medium for the impulse to propagate through.
The only exceptions were strikes on ships that punched through their hulls.
The atmosphere venting during decompression, the volumes of air rushing into the vacuum, contributed to creating a shockwave.
But on a limited scale.
But what Roach had seen...
"Interesting," Tychus licked his dry lips, "so why didn't our bombers use that trick to raze the city to the ground? The enemy army would have suffered colossal losses."
"From what I heard, the Scimitar's crew was saved only because the avenue ends at the ocean," the Major General said. "The ship lost control and the crew ejected. They survived only by a miracle. Thrawn won't take that kind of risk. It would take hundreds of such sorties to raze the positions the enemy holds to the ground. Captain Bren only managed to achieve that result because he descended literally right over the droids' heads. There wouldn't be much benefit from the Scimitars making a low-level pass over the buildings. They'd take off the top floors, nothing more. The enemy would hardly suffer, and we would definitely lose the bombers and the pilots. Even Bren's clones aren't as effective as their original — the commander of the Scimitar squadron."
"They simply lack sufficient experience in that kind of operation," suggested Tychus, who was himself a participant in the GeNod-Dominion cloning program.
Clones of the Dominion Armed Forces' best specialists were, of course, professionals, superior in training and skill to the green youth who showed up after service in the Defense Forces.
But for the clones to remain the best, at the level of their genetic originals, they still needed regular practice.
Transferring the knowledge of ten, twenty, thirty years of service during cloning was possible.
And that's how it happened.
But assimilating it just because you were a clone was physically impossible.
Practice was needed.
Theoretical knowledge could not replace practical implementation.
Stormtroopers had it easier in this regard: a few battles, and the knowledge implanted in their minds became an integral part of the cloned body of a soldier loyal to the Dominion.
Loyal, that is.
Unquestioningly.
Not because they were programmed that way.
Tychus had already spoken with his clones.
The motivation behind their loyalty to the Dominion was exactly the same as Roach's own.
Grand Admiral Thrawn did not waste time changing his new soldiers and turning them into obedient puppets, as — according to stories — had been done with the clone troopers of the Grand Army of the Republic.
The Supreme Commander simply cloned those who were already loyal to his regime.
A win-win scenario.
However, Lieutenant Roach had no doubt that he knew far too little about the process of creating new soldiers and fleet personnel of the Dominion to claim he was reliably informed about the plans of the Dominion's Supreme Commander.
Shoving all these useless thoughts aside, Tychus refocused his attention on the coming battle.
And even if they had a march of several dozen kilometers ahead to the enemy positions, he could already see the glow of the continuous artillery preparation the 501st Legion was conducting against the enemy fortifications.
And from the skies, an unending rain of missiles, bombs, and laser bursts poured down on the droids.
Carannia was fighting desperately.
But the outcome was sealed.
Any organic opponent would have long ago admitted obvious defeat and requested negotiations.
But droids...
They didn't understand the value of their own existence, unlike biological lifeforms.
Stupid tincans.
It would all end today.
The rebellion in the D'Astan sector would be crushed.
And the destruction inflicted on Serenno's capital would become that very lesson that this nest of traitors to any ruling regime would learn once and for all.
And if not...
Most likely, next time, no one would stand on ceremony.
Serenno would simply be burned.
Especially since Thrawn had demonstrated how useless the galaxy's customary faith in the impenetrability of ground shields could be.
* * *
A column of Juggernauts breaking through behind enemy lines under massive fire — that was more than a risky venture.
Major General Maximilian Kaine understood this better than anyone.
Reconnaissance reported that the enemy had pulled all available forces into the underground warehouse area.
A territory with excellent fortifications and approaches that were beautifully covered from all sides.
Monolithic, multi-meter walls encircling the above-ground warehouse territory.
Overlapping fields of fire for blasters and heavy weapons, literally drenching anyone who tried to venture out from the urban development.
And simply a vast number of droids guarding this warehouse complex.
The duracrete, with which the builders had covered square hectares of surface, creating numerous boxy buildings with thick walls and narrow windows, possessed great hardness and density.
It also interfered with scanning systems.
As a result, no one could say with certainty what lay beneath the multi-meter layers of duracrete and skarn.
The information obtained from the Baroness, that there were supposedly old mines there, dug back in the days of the first settlers for mineral extraction, didn't particularly clear the fog of war.
What was the depth of the adits?
What were the dimensions and capacity?
Were there autonomous generators?
What was the surface area of the tunnels and rooms carved into the skarn?
All this was necessary to know in order to understand how much weaponry and reinforcements the enemy could possess while remaining in these positions.
Without this, they could continue the siege for hours, days, and months, unable to either destroy the fortifications or storm them without enormous losses.
Losses that Grand Admiral Thrawn refused to accept.
"I am against any senseless losses, Major General," the Supreme Commander had said after the commander of the 501st Legion informed him that to break through the last line of defense, it was necessary to increase the number of attacking forces.
The projected losses Kaine had stated — around seventy percent of the attacking personnel, and that was only counting those who would die to capture the above-ground part of the warehouses — did not satisfy Thrawn.
Or Kaine, either.
Jurgen, who was currently grinding up a second enemy group in the coastal zone, also wasn't thrilled by the thought of having to sacrifice most of his units.
One such assault, and the 501st could be pulled back for reorganization.
It would simply be combat-ineffective for months to come.
The usual practice for replenishing losses in the Dominion Armed Forces was integrating replacements into the ranks of already active units.
Green soldiers and specialists were put into a collective of veterans, which reduced future losses and increased the speed of skill consolidation for clones.
In the case of the 501st, if it were thrown into such an assault, you couldn't even hint that the unit would ever return to its former professional level.
Thirty percent veterans in a unit — that was an army-scale catastrophe.
But Kaine simply didn't see another option.
Not only was the enemy holding those monstrous walls, but they also had embrasures and caponiers for both repeaters and heavy weapons in them.
Like those damned J-1s, which had already drunk the mercenaries' blood during the first two assaults.
Maximilian, pulling back from the holographic map, massaged his temples.
With the help of assault aviation, they had managed to clear the warehouse territory, driving the enemy's armored vehicles and infantry under the roofs of the buildings.
Then they tried to land a drop force from shuttles — they were destroyed in short order.
The plan was proposed by the mercenaries, and they also carried it out.
An entire landing battalion was wiped out.
And immediately after that, the mercenary who had taken the place of Captain Anilex was killed by his own.
The auxiliary troops of Kavil's Corsairs were enraged by the endless losses.
When you're being sent to the slaughter under a hail of shells and the enemy's relentless blasters, you kinda stop wanting to be a mercenary.
Kaine, realizing that a little more and the former criminals would simply snap and create a problem of insubordination, assumed command over them, ordering the execution of ineffective commanders under whom the mercenaries were dying by the thousands an hour.
It was decided to pull the Kavil's Corsairs from the front line to the nearest rear area, located on the outskirts of the city.
The endless streams of death day after day that rained down on the mercenaries' heads could drive anyone mad.
In this regard, the stormtroopers were luckier.
After losing three AT-ATs in the first assault, the 501st had pulled back from the line of contact.
A territory several kilometers wide formed between the positions of both sides, uncontrolled by the Dominion and certainly not by the spawn of the Clone Wars on the side of the Confederacy of Independent Systems.
Thanks to Grand Admiral Thrawn, such a state of uncontrolled territories came to be called the "gray zone."
An unofficial term, because according to military doctrine, it was supposed to be called nothing less than "a territory temporarily uncontrolled by the armed forces of the Empire."
Not the simplest name, but senior officers had already grown accustomed to rattling off the string of words that Imperial bureaucracy demanded, and they no longer noticed any discomfort from the fact that designating one section of terrain took about a minute.
"Gray zone" that designation takes a second.
And fifty-nine more of those can be spent on something more useful.
Kaine kept his eyes fixed on the cargo transports descending over the enemy-occupied warehouse territory.
Ordinary freight trucks, crudely up-armored so they wouldn't fall apart from one or two enemy artillery hits.
Though the latter had been silenced for now by assault gunships and fast bombers, dumping tons of explosive payloads on enemy positions every second.
But even that wasn't enough to level the fortifications.
An orbital strike was also out of the question.
All because the cornered enemy had claimed that in the underground labyrinths of the old mines, adapted for food storage, were the city's residents, frozen in carbonite.
Maximilian could readily admit that carbonite units existed in the dungeons.
After all, they were often used for freezing and storing perishable food.
Bounty hunters loved to freeze their slow-witted victims in carbonite.
Rumor had it that even the hero of the Alliance, now General Han Solo, had once been a carbonite decoration in the palace of the crime kingpin Jabba the Hutt on Tatooine.
But those were details.
Maximilian felt his brain was about to boil and trickle out through his ears and nose.
The assault on Carannia was a test of his endurance and professional competence.
And the general knew that his second day without sleep, running on stimulants alone, was doing him no good.
He had essentially agreed to a plan from the Naval Special Forces that was extraordinary in its degree of audacity.
And he had approved their plan to march straight into certain death, right into the enemy lair.
But it was the only chance they had to clarify the situation with the possible hostages.
Too bad the Jensaarai couldn't sense civilians frozen in carbonite.
"Physiological reactions of the body are suspended during freezing," the Jensaarai Defender Eler Dersen had explained to him, having returned with other surviving members of the sabotage squad to the government troops' position after the central part of the city was liberated and the droids pushed back. "To the Force, their life signals will be as faint as if they were insignificant. I regret that I can neither confirm nor refute the words of that tactical droid."
Now it was up to the Naval Special Forces.
The special assault commando units, bloodied from being deployed behind enemy lines during the night assault, couldn't provide support — either wounded or on other parts of the front.
In principle, the Special Forces could conduct surface operations — the Empire trained them to be dropped behind enemy lines before a fleet assault.
Sabotage, disorganization, destabilization...
Maximilian reached for his mug and downed the remains of his now-ice-cold caf in one gulp.
He yawned, trying to fight the fatigue and drowsiness.
It didn't help.
And that was bad.
Veers, briefing him and Jurgen, had said that lack of sleep was the main cause of tactical errors.
A tired mind couldn't assess a situation comprehensively.
Hence, increased casualties among personnel forced to compensate for command mistakes with their own heroism.
And the more soldiers died from idiotic orders, the fewer remained to accomplish the combat mission.
Kaine had approved Captain Makeno's plan because he couldn't think of anything better himself.
Thrawn, after hearing both officers, had agreed to allow this raid by Captain Makeno's squad.
Just one squad.
And ten Juggernauts under droid control as diversionary targets.
Under droid control and full of droids.
All they had to do now was hold out long enough for Makeno to do what he had planned.
"Good luck, Captain," Kaine said quietly, watching as ten old transports landed inside the fenced perimeter of the above-ground warehouses and immediately became targets for crossfire from the enemy.
Luck was all he could offer the crazy officers of the Naval Special Forces right now.
* * *
All ten old transport ships, inside which were an equal number of Juggernauts.
Both the first and the second had sustained considerable damage, the latter getting theirs during the Carannia operation.
Some machines had such serious combat damage that they had to be stripped down to the frame to repair.
That could be done in the field, but Thrawn had ordered them used as expendable material for the invasion behind enemy lines.
Ten armored assault transports, a huge number of droidekas and B2s inside the troop bays, B1s as crew...
And only five Naval Special Forces operatives for this whole crowd of armored vehicles.
And this was against several hundred thousand enemy combat droids and machines that kept hiding behind the strong walls of buildings that the Grand Admiral had ordered not to bomb.
All because Tey-Zuka, that tricky-metallic tactical super-droid whose place had long been in a scrapyard, had told Thrawn that he had frozen the city's residents and hidden them in the dungeons.
And booby-trapped everything down there.
If there was any attempt to destroy the defenses, the dungeons would be blown up, and the death of millions of sentients would be on the conscience of the Dominion's Supreme Commander.
How could Thrawn have so underestimated his artificial opponent after he had turned an entire city into a source of problems that had pinned down the Grand Admiral himself?
And Thrawn should have been dealing with problems in the eastern part of the galaxy by now, not babysitting Pellaeon and the capture of Carannia.
Yet Thrawn had decided to stay.
He had decided not to subject the enemy's last stronghold to orbital bombardment.
He had ordered them encircled, blockaded, cut off by water and land, to prevent even the slightest attempt to escape the trap.
And that the tactical super-droid clearly valued his artificial hide had become obvious from the fact that Captain Makeno's squad, which had stormed the enemy headquarters with the support of Torrent Company of the 501st Legion, hadn't found the tactician at the pinpointed location of the holoterminal he had used to communicate with the Chiss.
Instead, they had found an underground passage and a turbolift that led the search group to the borders of the enemy's last defensive line.
Right there, the group had been buried when a directed explosion destroyed the passage and entombed the scout stormtroopers under tons of rock.
Recovery operations had allowed them to find the soldiers' bodies, which would soon be buried with military honors.
But using the underground passage was out of the question — it wasn't just blocked with rocks.
The enemy had filled the spaces between them with liquid duracrete, whose flow the search parties had barely escaped.
And now the multi-kilometer tunnel was an impassable obstacle.
Slightly weaker and marginally less durable than the surrounding bedrock, but even digging through that was no fun.
It would take several months to punch through this secret passage even to the cave-in site.
Pellaeon watched Thrawn calmly observing the firefight unfolding on the above-ground warehouse territory and wondered: could it be that some "tin can" had outsmarted the Grand Admiral?
No matter how hard Thrawn tried to defeat him, Tey-Zuka had taken adequate countermeasures.
General Kaine demanded three full legions to take the above-ground part of the warehouses.
And somewhat uncertainly reported that after such an assault, at best only one of them would survive.
In the Empire, such tactics were worth the candle.
The vast majority of Imperial commanders wouldn't even think about the number of losses they would sustain in the final battle on the eve of total victory.
But Thrawn had refused, stating that he wasn't interested in victory at any cost, and needless losses were unacceptable.
He intended to capture the Separatists' last fortified area with only the 501st Legion and the Rancor Battalion.
These words instilled in Pellaeon the belief that Thrawn once again intended to defeat a numerically superior and by no means stupid enemy with limited forces.
Or was that not it? Perhaps this protracted, grueling war with the New Republic, the behind-the-scenes confrontation with the Imperial Remnants, the campaign against the crime syndicates, and the stabilization of life in the Dominion, while remaining officially "dead," had so dulled the Grand Admiral's tactical acumen that he thought his winning streak in military campaigns couldn't be broken by some obsolete tactical super-droid?
Or had professional pride gotten the better of him?
Or was the delayed triumph the result of Thrawn's favorite tactic — studying the art of his opponent, understanding him, striking at the weak point, and defeating him — not working against those who thought in different categories?
Like other commanders and senior officers, Pellaeon hadn't slept a wink since Thrawn's arrival.
And he felt completely shattered, exhausted, drained, and useless.
So much so that his periodically arising doubts about Thrawn's ability to win had taken hold of him again.
What if he simply couldn't defeat these droids because he was incapable of doing so?
And what if the plan Captain Makeno had approved by Thrawn failed because Thrawn couldn't see the full depth of the tactical trap Tey-Zuka had set for him?
At this thought, Gilad broke into a cold sweat.
Almost six years ago, Emperor Palpatine had gone to Endor, burning with hatred for the Rebel Alliance.
And four years before that, Grand Moff Tarkin had similarly turned the attack on Yavin into a personal vendetta.
Both had died already anticipating their triumph, while certain victory turned into defeat.
The Rebel Alliance had survived, transformed into the so-called New Republic, and deprived the Empire of many territories.
All last year, Thrawn had put the victors over Palpatine and Tarkin into poses so indecent for mention in polite society, doing things with them that no strategist would have thought possible, that...
Was it possible that Thrawn was simply intoxicated by his victories and couldn't see that his point of view might be wrong?
Pellaeon believed that Thrawn would never let emotions cloud his military judgment.
Or was he mistaken?
Or was he, once again, thinking about the Grand Admiral in this vein completely unjustifiably, even though he had repeatedly sworn to trust the Chiss's word and never contradict him?
Or had he himself simply grown so accustomed to Thrawn filigreeing his way to victory that the protracted campaign on Serenno was forcing him to think blasphemously?
"Have patience, Vice Admiral," Thrawn's words snapped Pellaeon out of his reverie.
"I beg your pardon, Admiral?" he asked cautiously.
The Dominion had adopted the Imperial understanding of "generic military ranks," which allowed addressing major generals, lieutenant generals, and colonel generals simply as "generals."
A similar approach applied to various "prefix" admirals, like rear admirals, vice admirals, and others...
Pellaeon had decided back last year that he wouldn't use that "liberty" with Thrawn.
And now, as they say, he had "reached his limit" and let it slip.
"You are concerned," Thrawn said, lowering his voice so only the captain could hear. "Concerned about the operation's progress." He glanced sideways at Pellaeon. "And, consequently, worried about me and the outcome of Captain Makeno's raid. But look..."
He pointed to the city map glowing on one of the tactical displays. Among the bright red dots marking identified heavy-caliber artillery firing points and the yellow lines indicating fortified positions, five bluish dots were visible.
"Captain Makeno's squad fighters," Thrawn explained. "While our transports are destroyed and block the enemy's view, and the Juggernauts, droidekas, and B2 combat droids carry out a diversionary maneuver, Captain Makeno and his men have begun their assigned task."
Tracking the Naval Special Forces fighters was done thanks to chips implanted in them (as in all regular army and fleet fighters, specialists, and officers) for tracking the movement of potential saboteurs on regular fleet ships.
This technology had been discovered during the capture of a Star Super Destroyer belonging to a mad clone and, coincidentally, self-proclaimed Lord of the Sith.
Using such chips, the Super Destroyer's onboard computer tracked the whereabouts of crew members and, if necessary, combined with other security measures, could easily block intruders, thereby neutralizing boarding parties.
The implementation of this technology had begun not so long ago — all this time, it had been undergoing study, modernization, and reproduction by the company IsoTech-Dominion, headed by the former flame of the commander of the legendary treasury "Sa Nalaor."
The Star Super Destroyers Guardian and Fellblade were the first to be equipped with them, along with automated defense turrets, force fields, and other protective systems.
The new "Threes" were also outfitted with such security measures and, oddly enough, didn't require a deep reworking of the structural frame and internal systems.
It was unclear why the Empire, which had faced boarding actions on its large ships during the Galactic Civil War, hadn't bothered with such security measures.
The Dominion, as had become the norm, made it a rule to fix the shortcomings of its parent state.
"Yes, sir," Pellaeon replied, trying not to let doubt show in his voice.
Apparently, he hadn't succeeded.
"Patience, Vice Admiral," Thrawn said with a barely noticeable smile. "Have patience."
And immediately after these words, the five bluish dots vanished.
Pellaeon felt a stream of burning-icy sweat run down his back.
And only Thrawn radiated absolute calm.
Gilad glanced at the Grand Admiral.
The Chiss, in his characteristic manner, was smiling faintly.
And the next moment, more and more converted and crudely up-armored transports began appearing over the above-ground warehouse territory. From their open cargo bays, Dominion droids rained down directly onto the heads of the enemy "tin cans."
One artificial army fought against another.
But according to Thrawn's plan, no matter who won this landing operation, the beneficiary of the strategic success of the Carannia campaign would be the Dominion.
* * *
The CIS B1 battle droids, created thirty years ago, could be called the most primitive fighters Captain Makeno had ever dealt with.
They possessed little knowledge, few artificial brain cells, and their tactics boiled down to trying to overwhelm the enemy with numbers.
But their chassis were sturdy enough to withstand even one or two blaster hits — unless you hit some vital node, of course — and they fired from weapons of not the highest quality, but no less deadly.
And their numbers definitely matched their chosen combat tactics.
It quickly became clear that they had no intention of remaining passive observers of an enemy landing on the warehouse territory they were defending.
At least, not as long as any of them could still move and hold a weapon in their manipulators.
"Left flank!" Orsan's voice cut through the roar of the Special Forces' blaster rifles and their opponents'. "Suppression fire! Fall back deeper into the building!"
The captain fired one last salvo through the first-floor window of the building they had taken cover in, turned, and dashed through the door, down the corridor, straight into the common room.
The fighters were right on his heels.
Behind them, shots thundered — several droidekas and B2s, under whose cover they had infiltrated the designated target building, were covering the group's withdrawal.
The droids would hold out until they were destroyed or their ammunition ran out.
Orsan leaned more toward the first outcome than the second.
In his memory, not a single droid had ever ended a fight with empty tibanna reservoirs or depleted power sources — enemy blaster bolts, munition fragments, shockwaves, tank treads, or walker legs always found them first.
Makeno stopped at the threshold of the next room, where, judging by the sounds, his fighters were already busy finishing off the remnants of the artificial enemy.
Dominion droids were exchanging fire with droids obeying the tactical super-droid.
The artificial commander was leading part of his army in an attack to wipe out the landing force.
B2s and droidekas, supported by the still-functioning Juggernauts, were busy clearing out enemy forces, reducing the number of enemy infantry in any way they could.
Missile launchers and laser cannons thundered.
Small arms and grenade launchers never stopped firing.
From both sides.
The Dominion droids, with newer programming and improved weaponry, approached the task of eliminating the enemy more efficiently, mowing down entire units of outdated B1s.
Under different circumstances, trading one Dominion B2 for a squad of enemy B1s would have been ideal.
Sooner or later, the enemy would run out of combat machines.
The problem was that the Dominion had far fewer at their disposal.
And if the operation wasn't completed before the Dominion's droid landing force — constantly replenished by captured, decommissioned, or requisitioned transport ships — was destroyed, they could kiss the plans for a swift end to the campaign goodbye.
Because Thrawn certainly wouldn't send stormtroopers into this hell without a chance of survival.
Through the roar and din of battle came the rumble of bombers and assault gunships coming in for an air attack.
The rear ranks of the droids pressing the Dominion landing force began to thin under the onboard weapons of the Small Craft.
Orsan cracked his neck, loosening the stiff muscles.
Stepping over the threshold, he assessed the floor and corners of the room, littered with inactive droid chassis.
"All clear, sir," a fighter reported.
"Entrance to the tunnels found?"
"Yes, sir, Captain."
The fighter pointed to a massive door built into the floor of the room.
Locked, of course.
But the thermal gel being applied to the hinges and lock would soon solve that problem.
"Well then," the commander of the Naval Special Forces squad picked up a portable radio, modified specifically to punch a directed signal through the thickness of duracrete and the rocky foundation of the dungeons hidden beneath the soil of the warehouses. "Let's begin, gentlemen. Let's find this cleverly programmed super-tactical bastard."
His finger touched the push-to-talk button, tapping out a short coded signal.
* * *
"Sir," General Kaine flinched at the communications officer's address. "A condition signal has been received from Captain Makeno's group. They have found the entrance to the dungeons."
"Excellent," Maximilian forcibly pushed aside the fatigue and drowsiness. "Contact the flyboys and artillery. Have them pound any enemy reinforcements in the surface warehouse area."
Let that nasty "tin can" think they were preparing a bridgehead for an assault.
Rocket, bomb, and artillery strikes, according to Imperial tactics, were mandatory before a full-scale invasion of an enemy fortified area.
Thrawn said the tactical super-droid thought in standards, using the available assessment data on his opponent's tactics, which he had already evaluated.
Well, then they would show him Imperial tactics.
The Dominion preferred to fight differently.
More subtly.
Whether it would work or not was a separate question.