“You know, I almost feel sorry for the Zarian,” Yarani said.

“Why?” I asked. “Because their entire society is doomed to collapse sooner or later? Because they’ll witness its death throes harming their fellows even if they aren’t killed? Because the Dominion is going to be history?”

She blinked. “Uh, I didn’t think of it like that. I was talking about the soldiers who are going to die in a more immediate sense because of our efforts.”

I gazed out over the field, green grass and wildflowers rising high enough to reach my knees in some spots. At first glance, it looked like any other meadow, though a more careful examination would show a few irregularities. Chances were it was going to be unrecognizable at the end of the day. Tomorrow at the latest. “I get that,” I said.

“You really think the Dominion is going down that surely?” she asked.

I shrugged, glancing at Kajare and Elis, and beyond them, at a group of what I would call technicians from the Basement. “I’m pretty sure. Even if they can beat us off - and that’s still more likely than I’d wish - the Dominion isn’t going to be the same afterward, in the long term.”

“We’ve only taken a few cities,” she pointed out, but she didn’t sound contentious.

“Sure. But the facade has cracked, Yarani. It might not be as bad as some, but at its core, the Dominion’s a repressive regime.” I shrugged. “Even if they do win, it's not going to be without suffering severe casualties. And more importantly, all the lower-tier citizens are going to see what’s happening here. You think the Basement is just going to give up if our army leaves? Especially if we hold on long enough for them to get a taste of life under Imperial conditions? And they’re hardly the only ones.”

Yarani nodded slowly. “I see. I haven’t thought about it like that before, but that makes sense. And I suppose this is part of the reason why you’re so insistent about properly managing and integrating the occupied cities?”

“Right.”

I made a face at the thought. To probably no one’s surprise, managing those cities was proving harder than we’d like. We just didn’t have enough of many things we really needed, like trained translators, supplies for educational efforts and more, reliable police, or even trade opportunities and productive ways to get economic incentives. But we were making a lot of progress.

A shout from farther away distracted us and ended the conversation. I walked towards it, carefully picking my way forward, while Yarani and the ever-present guard detail accompanied me. But by the time we reached it, the problem appeared to have been solved. For a moment, I watched the young Lighter standing at attention and trying to pretend he wasn’t watching us getting closer. The earth beside him still looked dug up, but not enough to hint at why. I smiled and changed course, figuring I could spare both of us the embarrassment. Besides, it wasn’t really my place to manage the soldiers here.

I wandered around the field for a few more minutes, checking to make sure that everything was progressing according to plan. Besides a few minor hiccups that the officers in charge quickly took care of, everything was going smoothly. Then I headed back to the corner we’d marked off as an impromptu command post, not that it really deserved that name. Aston, who’d stayed there and conferred with several of the officers and elites, saluted as we came back.

“Everything’s on track, my lady,” he reported. “Site Three just radioed in, they report full readiness.”

I nodded. “Thank you. Good work, everyone.”

I cracked my neck and sat down on one of the folding chairs. With the several sites and contingency sites, the detailed planning, and the positioning of our soldiers, this had taken most of the day. I shuddered to imagine how long it would have been if we hadn’t had cultivators working on it.

“And enemy movements?” Yarani asked, coming to stand beside my chair.

“They’ve kept moving as projected, my lady,” Aston answered. He nodded to one of the large maps hovering in the air where everyone could see. Various colored markers had been attached to it. “They do seem to have sped up a little, although we still need confirmation on that point. Newest estimates are contact within ten minutes to two hours.”

I raised an eyebrow. Looks like the moment of truth is approaching. No wonder the guards were standing more closely around us, and even watching the regulars finishing up outside with suspicious gazes. The recent attempts on me and Al hadn’t made them any less paranoid. And considering they were squarely in the line of fire, too, I doubted anyone would blame them.

“I think it’s about time for us to scram, then,” I said. “Aston, you’ll take care of things?”

“Of course, my lady.” He smiled slightly.

It didn’t take long for us to get to the perch we’d previously chosen. It should be some distance away from the fighting, although, if things didn’t got exactly according to plan and we had to divert or improvise, we might not be able to see anything from here. Still, I leaned against the towering rock face that crowned the knoll we stood on, gazing out over the cluster of trees below. The upper part was free of trees, just enough to give us a good view while hiding us from casual inspection if someone was standing further away.

I wished Kajare was here, but he’d gone to coordinate with the Terbekteri navy again. They’d run into stiffer resistance than anticipated south of the nearby bay, and our strategists were adjusting operational plans while we scrambled to build a new, stronger task force of combined Terbekteri and Imperial forces. I didn’t envy him the headache of getting fractious captains to get along, but he was clearly the best person for the job, and probably safer there than he would be here.

We waited for a few minutes, until the communication bracelet I’d wrapped around my wrist chimed. I knew what that meant. We were going to see the start of it any moment now.

I recalled the blueprints once more for a second before dismissing them from my memory. We weren’t entirely sure how things would work, which was one reason we had that many layered plans. Due to the nature of things, field-testing had had to be limited, and we could hardly test against functional Zarian technology in the first place. But I was confident. San Hashar, the others, and I had taken the Zarian device the Basement had given us apart down to the smallest piece, made sure we had a good idea what each of the runes did, and put it back together again, several times. Undoubtedly things were going to go pear-shaped in some way, but that was just life.

“The Zarian are moving,” Aston reported a few seconds later. “Apparently, they’re maintaining the same formation as of their last report, and their elite and high stage strike team is sticking with the main army for now.”

I nodded. We’d known there was a chance they wouldn’t actually use their teleport option. We’d just use the grounds we had prepared as best we could. They had to come to us, since we’d occupied a large town at the edge of a low mountain range, at a strategic bottleneck, and put up a fortified base forward of it. That gave us avenues to strike either of two important Zarian cities.

“That information is from Source Beta again?” Yarani asked.

“Yes, my lady.”

Yarani didn’t know who that referred to. For that matter, I wasn’t exactly sure who it was, either. The Basement leader who’d talked to me had been cagey. But I did know the information came from the train of the enemy army.

Unlike the Imperial ones, the Zarian army did bring along people to fill support roles. From what I’d read, half of those were there specifically to service the high-stage senior officers. (Seriously, was I the only one who thought bringing servants on campaign was a bad idea?). But from the hints at an unsavory occupation I’d picked up from the Basement member, I suspected the person was either the Zarian army’s main smuggler or madam. Possibly both, I supposed. In any case, she had an in with or maybe dirt on several of the officers, and she’d proved to be well-informed on what the army was doing and where it was going.

Sending us information via her radio was still risky. Even if the Zarian didn’t seem to have figured out how to locate the source of an emission or have cracked our encryption. But when I’d mentioned that, I’d been assured she was aware of the risk and was taking it freely.

“I don’t think we need to worry about the reliability of the info,” I said. “But anyway, if they’re moving in together, let’s make sure we can get to the action quickly.”

“We’ve cleared paths, my lady,” Aston said. “The headquarters section is staying with the main base for now, but they’re shifting the right flank. The Basement liaisons are falling back.”

I nodded. The Basement leader I’d talked to was a young woman who’d called herself the Zarian word for ‘Spark’, which probably wasn’t her real name. To be fair, she probably hadn’t shown me her real face, either. We weren’t as tightly tapped into the Basement as I’d expected, partly because they’d taken to having Elis do the checking of their members. I was confident he’d tell me anything I really needed to know, and I was okay with it if he wouldn’t give us detailed reports on the Basement’s inner workings. If nothing else, those actually might get leaked.

The Basement was clearly good at ‘operational security’. That helped to explain why they were the most prominent and powerful of the ‘underground’ organizations in the Dominion. From what Elis and Kariva had dug up, they had at least connections to several others, too. If I wanted to engineer a regime change, they were where I’d put my money, and the Dominion’s security organs had to know that, too. Under the circumstances, getting Elis and Elia to help them was probably a good idea on its own.

Another chime interrupted my train of thought. I tensed and waited for Aston to check in with his communicator talisman.

“They’ve moved, my lady,” he finally said. “Enemy strike force near Site Two.”

I suppressed a curse. That was some distance from here, and we couldn’t see it from our current vantage point. “Let’s go!”

We wasted no time in taking to the air, although we kept low to the ground while we repositioned. I didn’t need Aston to tell me that the Zarian’s main army had reached the combat zone, too. Smoke was already starting to billow, and I got a good look at the clashing forces around a stony barricade and muddy fields. The sound of explosions reached us as the Zarian soldiers triggered the mines buried there, but their army kept pushing.

The Zarian must have tried for a flanking attack on our main defenses. When we reached the previously agreed upon distance, I slowed down and cycled light qi to my eyes to get a better look.

It appeared they hadn’t quite hit where we’d wanted them. We’d tried to predict the best position for them to emerge and prepared accordingly, but they had come slightly to the side, only partly covered by the prepared field. Maybe our appraisal had been off. Or they could have come at a less than optimal position by accident or design.

Aston and his guard detail drew the cordon tighter around me and Yarani as we approached. He’d argued against me coming to see the presumed battle in person, but I’d put my foot down. I needed to see with my own eyes how our plan worked out, not to mention poke my own qi senses into the sites to gauge how our hardware performed. I’d take my team to turn over every stone after the battle was over, assuming we could, but right now I was just glad I could be here to see it, anyway.

We were looking down on a roundish approach to the incline housing our main base, flanked by rocky spines. But that meant less than it might have for strong cultivators, and the Zarian elites were already swarming all over the place with scant regard for little things like slopes and cliffs. In this case, though, that arrogance came back to bite them. I could tell many of our buried surprises had already sprung, and they were triggering still more of them, since we hadn’t spared the rougher terrain, either.

Large laser-cannons set up at our firing positions cut into their strike force, depleting their shields. Mines and explosives battered them and churned up the ground, making the footing even worse.

They fought back, of course. Qi attacks, everything from fireballs to ice spears to churning black balls, splattered against the walls, sending dust and debris flying into the air and gouging holes out of the fortifications. But the Imperials kept firing, and kept throwing attacks of their own back.

And then the first Zarian soldiers began to fall.

I advanced carefully, watching them closely. I knew they would have preferred to appear inside our defenses, like they’d done before, but that was out of the cards today. They’d had to divert here, presumably with little notice, and this concerted attack couldn’t be doing their morale any favors. But they were professionals, and they kept fighting fiercely.

I almost fell out of the air when I recognized one of the fighters at the back. Cursing, I grabbed my trusty spyglass from my storage ring and took a closer look. With the battlefield in this state, there was no chance I could pick out his aura with my qi senses, but he hadn’t bothered to disguise his appearance. And the way he moved and fought fit the man I’d seen in Niali.

As I was watching, one of the Imperial soldiers on a rocky protrusion at the edge of the valley stiffened, his eyes starting to roll into the back of his head, his arms starting to twitch. He took a step closer to his companions, then stopped and whirled around.

I turned to Aston. “Quick, get a strike team. That’s the assassin from before! The one in templar robes with blue eyes at the back. We need to cut off his retreat. I’m going in.”

“Your Highness!” Aston managed to catch my arm before I’d taken more than two steps forward along the air corridor he’d created. “We can’t rush in. At least wait for that team.”

“We don’t have time to waste, Aston!” I jerked away from his grasp. “We can’t give him the time to run away. Look, he’s already moving back. We’ll circle around to avoid the battlefield proper. Come on.”

I couldn’t dilute the defenses, and Aston and his detail were the strongest fighters close by. With a burst of focus, I wove a mingled light and darkness technique that should hide us from observation. My guards looked less than happy, but they followed orders, and we started to move closer.

“I’m not sure this is going to work,” Yarani muttered.

She was probably right, but I didn’t say anything.

We moved reasonably quickly, but I could already tell we should have acted earlier. The Zarian were beginning to retreat, maybe even break. We must have succeeded in blocking teleportation around here, but they could still cut and run the old-fashioned way. And a few were starting to do just that as their casualties mounted, even as most of them held firm and inflicted casualties of our own on the Imperial soldiers.

I dropped the technique I was maintaining as soon as we descended on the area my target was in. It wouldn’t work for much longer, and I needed to use others. Almost immediately, we were pelted by scattered attacks, but the guards kept them off me.

The Auditor’s son looked up and our eyes locked for a moment. His eyes narrowed, and he dashed off. I grew my wings and turned sharply to take up pursuit.

He darted into the cover of the rocks and gorges to the southeast. We had to descend lower than I would have liked not to lose him. But my intuition guided me forward, and while a few of the guards fell back to cover us against the other Zarian, we followed him into the mountains.

I was just starting to catch up to him when something slammed into my arm and deflected it to the side, twisting me around. I spun, beating my wings frantically. A slab of rock loomed to my left. I skimmed against it with my left wing and managed to only impact it with my shoulder, bouncing off. Quickly, I dismissed my wings and angled myself to land on a flat part of the ground, skimming slightly after a jarring impact, but intact.

I glanced around, quickly putting the situation together. Yarani had tripped me. Been made to. She landed beside me, her face pale and eyes wide. I stretched out my senses, but I didn’t get a whiff of our quarry.

I swallowed another curse. “We’ve lost him.”

Aston nodded. “We need to leave.”

“Alright.” I sighed, then took out my flying sword and ascended into the air, arcing back towards the battle. “We should at least make the best of this and catch them in the back.”

Aston looked rebellious. “My lady …”

“I’m not planning to fight, myself, don’t worry. Just use a few of your soldiers.”

When we got back closer to the battle, it was pretty clear that it was as good as over. The guards sent a few attacks into them from long range, while Yarani and I hovered at the back under Aston’s watchful eye.

That might have been the last straw, and by now most of the Zarian were running. Imperial soldiers ascended from the base to hunt them down. I noted the number of Zarian who wouldn’t be going anywhere lying on the broken battlefield, but that didn’t lift my mood after our failure. I really wanted to get the Auditor’s son.