The Excavation
All things must come to an end. The Brotherhood embraced this simple truth as their central gospel. Even the stars die in time, burning out and going cold, so why should any man expect to live forever? No one can hold back the churning, devouring cycle of ages, a cycle that devours pain and pleasure, joy and sorrow, hope and fear. To be eternal, forever
unchanging, would be a torment beyond what any mortal could bear. They are not
meant for immortality, and that is what gives their lives meaning: the knowledge that all life must be lived to the fullest before it yields to time.
In the excavation pit, with the heat of the magma rising from below and the fury of the storm raging above, The Mongrel sensed an ending approaching. It was the ending, he believed, of a contest that had begun years earlier, among the flurrying snows of Csilla. In the hours before the Chiss homeworld had been shattered, he had matched gazes with Aron Gowrie and seen a kindred spirit: a man driven by ferocity and skill at arms. Neither of them could rest until he tested himself against the other at his peak, until he knew whether Mawite savagery or wild Tuath blood was superior.
Now there was no way out. Mongrel's Hill had finally fallen to the three armies assailing it, and the honor guard was dead to the last... save The Mongrel himself. There would be no escape for him this time. If he fell before Gowrie's blade, he was dead; he would have it no other way, for he could not bear for the Lord Colonel to show him mercy twice. That earlier mercy had been solely to ensure that they met as equals, fresh to the fight, and there was no purpose in repeating it. But if The Mongrel won, striking Gowrie down, he would surely die in a fusillade of vengeful NIO blasterfire.
But that didn't matter, not in the slightest, because this wasn't about survival. If The Mongrel emerged from the pit carrying Gowrie's shattered sword, that would send a message to the galaxy - that even hopelessly outnumbered, the Brotherhood would take the heads of their enemies' leaders and drench the ground in foemen's blood. That there was no stopping the march of the Maw until every last Mawite was dead, and that the galaxy would have to pay a terrible price to make it so... if they even could. That every last Mawite was eager to die so long as he dragged a foe with him.
Such a dying message was a death worthy of paradise.
And besides, The Mongrel
had to know. His road had begun on a nowhere planet in the deep Unknown Regions, where a man who'd never so much as thrown a punch had been made a slave. That slave had fought for the Brotherhood, had learned to fight by
doing it without so much as a day of formal training. Now that road was drawing to a close, asking a final question: could three years of a battlefield "school of hard knocks" possibly match up to the discipline and training of a veteran Galidraani officer? If it could, if The Mongrel actually
beat Aron Gowrie, surely that meant the Maw was blessed.
He
had to know. None of the surrounding apocalypse mattered.
The warriors leapt at each other, blades bared, wounded and exhausted but determined to see this through to the bitter end. The light of rising lava gleamed on their blades, and their chests heaved with exertion. The swords met in a clash of durasteel that spat sparks over the half-molten sand... and then, all at once,
destiny was denied. There was a sound like wet fabric tearing, but as loud as a speeder crash. Then The Mongrel felt himself pulled backward, wind and sand rushing past him as if an airlock had undergone explosive decompression right at his back. He fought, struggled, pushed forward...
And he lost. Tegan's unstable hyperspace rift swallowed him whole.
---------------------------------
As the battle wound to a close, NIO troops putting final blaster bolts in any Mawites that looked like they might still be twitching, Fre'shaa Vokk crept across the battlefield. She'd been a back alley kid on Nothmir, surviving through stealth, hiding from the police and the gangs that roamed the rundown parts of her home city, and she put all those old skills to use now. A few times she had to use her vibro-knife, cutting down a straggling enemy soldier as she flitted from boulder to boulder, wrecked tank to crashed starfighter, dune to dune. She did it one-handed, one arm still hanging limp.
She was a survivor, and she'd been through worse.
The rest of her swoop gang were dead, that much she was sure of. There was no way they could have slipped past the tightening NIO noose, and many of them had been fanatics anyway, as determined as any Cirihut to meet their deaths in battle. Fre'shaa wasn't quite like that. She wanted glory and plunder, sure, but she wasn't ready to travel to this supposed paradise just yet. There was too much in the way of booze, spice, and hunky zeltrons that she still wanted to experience in the present galaxy for her to seek rebirth into a future one. So she crept across the battlefield, searching for a ship.
That was when she saw it: the sky opened, ripping apart in a swirl of dark blue and dizzying grey that just
appeared in midair, and something tumbled out. It fell about twenty feet, thudding onto a sand dune, and more sand and rock fell on top of it. Fre'shaa paused. She shouldn't let it distract her - all sorts of bizarre, impossible,
apocalyptic things were consuming Korriban right now, which just meant she should focus all the harder on getting off this crazy, haunted rock. But she'd seen what was hidden in the midst of the debris that the rift had just spat out: a human form, still twitching.
It was The Mongrel... and he could be her ticket out of here.
Rushing to the dune, Fre'shaa tore at the sand, pushing it away with her one good hand. For a moment she despaired; the warleader must have hit the ground hard, for he was clearly deeply buried, sinking into the unhallowed ground. Perhaps it was only his corpse that had been tossed about, thrown through space and unreality, or perhaps the passage through hyperspace had killed him; unprotected mortals were not designed to survive such travel. The swoop gang leader leaned back with a sigh. Well, it'd been worth a try. She could still find some back-line supply shuttle to hijack, escape that way.
A durasteel hand burst from the dune, grabbing her by the wrist.
Fre'shaa gasped, tried to jerk her arm back... but that iron grip held. So instead she did her best to dig, and the hand's owner did his best to pull himself up. Finally he was unearthed: The Mongrel, bloodied and bruised, grit sticking to the wounds on his scalp and leg.
"So I'm not the only one left alive," Fre'shaa said, chuckling nervously as the warleader finally caught his breath; his gasps were eerily distorted by his metal mask, now covered in deep blade scratches.
"Good. Between the two of us, it should be easy to hijack a ship and get out of here." She rose, turning to scan the horizon for transporation.
Then she gasped again as something cold slid through her back.
Fre'shaa looked down, uncomprehending, at the length of warblade piercing her stomach. Blood spread across her shirt and biker jacket, and she swayed on her feet, eyes glazing over. The Mongrel kicked the gang leader off of his sword, letting her fall, and then casually wiped the blade on her trousers. She stared up at him, uncomprehending, trying to gurgle a question.
"Mawite warriors do not flee," The Mongrel said, his voice cold.
"They stand, no matter the odds, and kill until they die. That is the lesson Korriban will teach the galaxy. The Honor Guard died bravely, fighting to the last man."
The warleader stepped forward, until he stood beside Fre'shaa's terrified face.
"You will not jeopardize their legend with your cowardice." Raising an armored boot, he stomped on her head, smashing through flesh and bone like a sledgehammer obliterating an egg. The Mongrel paused a moment, grinding his foot in the sand to remove the gore. Then he began to walk, heading for the transport he knew he would find over the next hill. He had survived the hyperspace void, had dug himself out of his sandy grave, for a reason. The legend of the Honor Guard would fuel his own legend's growth.
The Heathen Priests would say that the Avatars themselves had interceded to save the battle's greatest warrior... and he would wield that supposed omen to his advantage. He would rise in the Brotherhood's ranks once again. He would bide his time, grow in might and influence.
And one day, at long last, he would
finish Aron Gowrie.
