“To you and to me, Commander,” Faro said. “Not to everyone.”
Eli stared at Thrawn’s back, his brain automatically counting down the ships’ acknowledgments as they came from the comm station. Was Faro right?
And if so, was that why Thrawn had manipulated Eli’s career to keep him as his aide? Not as a punishment, or even on a whim, but to train him in the art of command?
The last ship reported in, and Eli saw Thrawn’s back straighten a bit. It was time. “Very good,” the admiral said. “Shyrack, Flensor, Tumnor: Move in.”
“Hold position,” Faro added quietly to the Chimaera’s helmsman.
Eli took a breath, let it out slowly and silently. Sending all three of the task force’s light cruisers into harm’s way was a terrible risk, one that most commanders would be hesitant to make. But it was the only way this plan would work.
He frowned. Was Faro right? Was Eli one of a relative few who could genuinely understand Thrawn’s tactics?
The cruisers were moving inward toward the planet, their turbolasers firing at Scrim Island. At the moment it was a waste of effort; even without the island’s shield, the shots would have been mostly ineffective. But as the warships dropped lower and penetrated deeper into the stratosphere, the level of energy delivered would become progressively higher. Eventually, if the cruisers continued, the blasts would begin to stress the shield and possibly overload the generator. Before that happened, the insurgents would have to make their move.
They didn’t wait until the situation became that critical, of course. The cruisers were still in the upper atmosphere when the shield contracted simultaneously from the entire shoreline, opening firing vectors for all three ion cannons. “Ion cannons clear,” Thrawn called. “Cruisers: Fire at will.”
The three warships shifted their targeting vectors from the center of the shield toward the new targets. It was, Eli thought, like a replay of Admiral Durril’s first attempt.
But this time something new had been added to the mix. Even as the cruisers’ turbolasers hammered at the ion cannon emplacements, a fourth ion cannon opened fire from a position on the southeast shore.
The Shyrack spotted it and tried to shift its aim. But the ship’s response time was too slow for that large an angular shift, and the hazy ion blasts shooting up from the surface were too fast. Before the cruiser’s fire could track to its new target the ion clusters splattered across its hull, knocking out sensors and silencing weapons. Before the Flensor and Tumnor could shift their own aim, the fourth cannon had sent a salvo at each of them, as well, and their attacks also went silent.
“So the admiral was right,” Faro commented. “They did have a fourth active cannon. Must have had a spare cathtron tube when they first took the island.”
“We’ve tangled with Nightswan before,” Eli reminded her. “You learn not to take anything at face value.”
“Cruisers: Report,” Thrawn called.
Eli listened closely as the reports came in. Nightswan was smart, all right. But he didn’t know everything.
Including how tough even Imperial light cruisers were. All three ships had lost primary weapons and main drives, but their communications and some of their secondary weapons were still intact.
Most important of all, so were their auxiliary drives.
“Final maneuvering,” Thrawn ordered. “Flensor: Now.”
The Flensor began drifting to starboard. Thrawn watched it a moment, then gestured. “Shyrack: Now.”
In turn, the Shyrack and the Tumnor moved casually to their assigned positions. “What about that fourth ion cannon, Admiral?” Faro asked.
“It will not be a problem,” Thrawn assured her. “Captain Yelfis? The Tumnor took the last salvo. What were your observations?”
“The cannon was already sputtering, Admiral,” Yelfis’s voice came from the speaker. “My engineering officer says that’s the sign of a cathtron tube emitter in the process of burning out. Whatever black-market dealer they got it from, they were robbed.”
“Given that its primary goal was to force us to withdraw and reevaluate, I would say its brief functionality was probably worth the cost,” Thrawn said. “Fortunately, we are not so easily dissuaded. Commander Faro, take us in.”
Ahead, the planetary horizon rose a little higher as the Chimaera shifted position. It moved in behind the three partially disabled cruisers, entering the stratosphere and moving ever closer to the surface…
“Northern ion cannon clear to fire,” Flensor’s captain warned.
“Compensate, Commander,” Thrawn ordered.
“Compensated,” Faro confirmed calmly.
Eli smiled tightly. The insurgents had seen the Chimaera moving in and had hoped to take it out as they had the Judicator. But a small shift in the Imperial ships’ positions had put the Star Destroyer directly behind the damaged cruiser.
“Commander?” Thrawn asked.
“Still moving inward, Admiral,” Faro reported.
“Western ion cannon clear to fire,” Brento reported from the Shyrack. “Adjusting…you’re covered, Chimaera.”
“Thank you, Captain,” Thrawn said. “All ships, continue as planned.”
Faro took a step closer to Eli. “I wonder if they’re getting worried yet,” she murmured.
“I doubt it,” Eli said. “Whoever they’ve got running things down there, he’s clever enough to know that shadows work in both directions. If his ion cannons can’t hit the Chimaera, the Chimaera’s turbolasers can’t hit his ion cannons.”
“What about the island’s turbolaser?”
“He’ll wait until we’re closer,” Eli said. “With only that one target still available to us, he’ll assume we’ve already locked in on it. He won’t want to open the shield until he’s got his best chance at a kill shot.”
“As you said, a clever man,” Faro said. “I almost feel sorry for him.”
The island’s three ion cannons continued with sporadic fire, clearly trying to get a shot past the cruisers to the Chimaera. But Thrawn had positioned his ships well, and the four captains had followed their orders precisely. Each time the cannons fired, their bursts merely expended themselves against the cruisers.
The standoff couldn’t last forever, of course. If the cannons continued to fire, the cruisers’ systems would eventually become so frozen that the ships would have no power or mobility of any sort and be unable to restart. At that point, they would begin the slow inward spiral that would ultimately send them crashing to the surface.
Fortunately, that wasn’t going to happen. The Chimaera eased its way inward…
“Optimal firing distance, Admiral,” Faro reported. “Turbolasers standing ready.”
“Thank you, Commander,” Thrawn said. “Target One. Turbolasers: Fire.”
Through the viewport, Eli watched the sky light up as the brilliant green bolts hammered their way toward the planet below.
But not to the island itself. As Admiral Durril and the Judicator had so painfully demonstrated, the insurgents’ defenses were more than adequate to fend off any orbital attack.
But Scrim was an island…and the ocean immediately off its shore was not under the protection of that shield.
“Direct hit on Target One coordinates,” a voice came from one of the 96th’s two frigates, flying high observation over the battle zone. “Water crater—implosion—waves heading outward—”
“Impact!” a voice shouted from the second frigate. “Tsunami-scale wave has slammed into the western shoreline.”
“Target Two: Fire,” Thrawn ordered. “Damage at Target One?”
“Unclear, Admiral,” the second frigate’s observer said. The man was trying to stay calm and professional, but Eli could hear the awe creeping into his voice. “But the tsunami made a direct hit on the western ion cannon emplacement.”
“Report on Target Two,” the first frigate’s observer cut in. “Turbolaser emplacement also hit. Looks even more swamped than Target One—the ground must be level or even bowl-shaped there.”
“Alternate fire,” Thrawn said. “Targets One and Two.”