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sideways at the Queen. But this time, his surreptitious glance was accompanied by a surge of unpleasantness that curled through him like a plume of black smoke. What did Nuso Esva mean by dominion? In two years the Queen of the White would arise, the air would change, and the Queen of the Red would die. The Circlings would go
    into hibernation in the lower citadel of the palace, where they would arise and breed a new Queen when their part of the cycle came again. Once the citadel had been sealed, the Midlis, Soldiers, and Workers would start the long journey to the White City; there, those who survived the ordeal would join in with the Queen of the White’s offspring. Eighteen years later, the Queen of the Black would arise, and the cycle would begin anew.
     
    But the Queen of the Red—the current Queen of the Red—would still be long dead. What could Nuso Esva possibly mean by speaking to her of dominion over Quethold?
     
    Trevik had no idea. He also had no doubt that, whatever the meaning, he wasn’t going to like it.
     
    The eight transports put down at the edge of the Red City, landing in a widely spaced semicircle in the fields just outside the outermost ring of Worker homes. The arrangement of the semicircle was typically Thrawn, Fel saw as he and his three squadrons of TIE fighters flew cover over the landing site. Setting Sun Avenue, the road that led due east into the city, was the designated entry point, and Fel had known commanders who would have automatically centered the force on that vector so as to provide maximum flanking cover to the main thrust.
     
    But Thrawn did things with a bit more subtlety. This semicircle was centered instead on a creek that flowed west-southwest across the city, crossing the line of transports about half a kilometer south of Setting Sun Avenue. The gently sloping banks of the creek offered another wide entry point, one that a clever and unconventional commander might choose to exploit. It was certainly a tactic Thrawn might use, and one Nuso Esva would surely anticipate.
     
    Sure enough, Fel could see movement now in the inner parts of the city, the Midli and Circling areas protected by Nuso Esva’s umbrella shields. Some of the Quesoth Soldiers who had been deployed there were leaving the center city and moving down the hill along the creek-bed toward the handful of natural strongpoints on the banks.
     
    Fel smiled tightly. Nuso Esva didn’t know that most of the transports arrayed against him, including the one positioned along the streambed, were just for show.
     
    “Commander Fel?” Thrawn’s voice came through Fel’s helmet comlink.
     
    “No resistance so far, Admiral,” Fel reported. “I have Soldiers redeploying to the stream, but so far everyone’s staying well back inside the shield zone.”
     
    “Any of the laser cannons in evidence?”
     
    Fel took a moment to glance at his fighter’s compact tactical board, wishing briefly that he was in his usual TIE interceptor with its better instrument array. But of course, the newer, sleeker interceptor wouldn’t have worked nearly so well with this particular mission. “Nothing visible,” he said. “Shall I make a pass across the larger holes in the shield array and see if I can draw some fire?”
     
    “Not yet, Commander,” Thrawn said with that mixture of respect, patience, and amusement that Fel had noted the Grand Admiral always seemed to use with him. “Are we intercepting any of the Queen’s orders yet?”
     
    “Negative on that, too, sir,” Fel said. “We’re probably still too far out to pick up anything from the loudspeakers.”
     
    “Stay on it,” Thrawn instructed him. “I want to know the minute you start hearing Soldier Speak. Armor Commander?”
     
    “Armor Commander,” said a flat nonhuman voice coming into the circuit.
     
    “Are the juggernauts ready?”
     
    “They are.”
     
    “Deploy juggernauts.”
     
    Fel turned his fighter into a tight curve back toward the