Introduction
(For just the warposting, skip to the second section)
Odessen. Placid oceans, majestic mountains, forested hills.
A pleasant planet... one about to be sullied by the filth of war.
The Mongrel stared down at the blue-green jewel his dropships were fast approaching, a gleaming sphere reflected in his goggle-like cybernetic eyes. If he'd come here as a younger man, freshly inducted into the worship of the Hidden Maw, he would have experienced a heady mix of feelings. Eagerness, fear, faith, all would have blended together in his mind, the kind of powerful emotional cocktail that had inspired him to great and terrible deeds. It was why he had risen, earned glory and status, where other slave-soldiers had fallen.
It was why he was the last of those original marauders now.
But as Odessen grew larger in the descending transport's viewports, he felt none of those things. He felt only
tired. Over a decade of war, each battle stripping away more and more pieces of him, had left him all but spent. Twelve long years ago he had been promised martyrdom, a glorious rebirth into a purified galaxy, if only he would fight with all his heart and mind and strength in the service of the Dark Three. And he had, over and over, across dozens of worlds and every corner of the galaxy. He had given up flesh and blood and bone.
He had become a shadow of a man, and still he did not die.
The Mongrel did not know anything of Force nexuses or dark rituals or Sith Lords worshipped as gods. He did not know why the Maw fought for Odessen, and he did not ask. He was a military man, forged in the fires of war, and he did not question the schemes of the Dark Voice and his New Sith Order. Odessen to him was just another battlefield, an opportunity to drive back the Eternal Empire and secure the western reaches of the Unknown Regions for the Brotherhood. For that goal he would fight with all his strength until told to stop.
Because that was what he did. He fought, and he obeyed.
The Mongrel had faced the Eternal Empire and Ashlan Crusade only once before, the Ashlans at Korriban and the Eternals at Dromund Kaas. He had learned quickly enough not to underestimate them. The Ashlans were as fanatical about their holy light as the Mawites were about their holy darkness, and the Eternals possessed highly sophisticated military technology, seemingly always ready for anything their enemies could throw at them. Neither was the Brotherhood's main foe in their campaign toward the core, but both were dangerous.
As the Scar Hounds descended toward the battlefield, their warlord read his most trusted agent's report. She was already securing his tribe's landing zone, as he had expected. The Brotherhood forces had the enemy garrison surrounded, ready to push into the valley where it lay from all sides. The Alliance's defenses were not yet complete, but what they
had constructed was still formidable, especially given all the forces they had managed to pack into the mountain pass. Many of their prominent leaders were there to lead the fight.
More than that, however, she could not tell him.
It was her first failure in his service.
There was a time and a place when he would have been angry, might have raged at her or devised some punishment. But that had been years ago, when he had been whole, when he could still find some pleasure in the galaxy. Now he did not have that luxury. He was alone in his metal case, reduced to nothing but a damaged brain kept alive by a host of beeping machines, without touch or taste or smell. Mercy was The Mongrel's only way to
feel, the only one he dared let touch his thoughts. Without her, he had nothing but emptiness.
In punishing her, he would hurt
himself too.
The warlord sent no reply to her transmission. His ship was coming in for a landing; he would see her in person soon. That was the only thing that offered him excitement any more, the only thing that kept him going now that martyrdom seemed a distant and forlorn hope. Their "relationship" was a twisted thing, dangerous for them both. On Durace, she had told him she loved him... but in his heart, he knew there was no reason for it. He was a broken, vile, corrupted, evil thing, incapable of loving and utterly undeserving of love.
What she felt for him was
dependence, the twisted attraction of an abused victim to her abuser. In the same way, he was dependent on her, dangerously obsessed with the relief her telepathic touch could grant him - the only pleasure he could still experience. Her presence was like a drug to him, intoxicating, addictive. He was possessive of her, viewing her as irreplaceable, protecting her with all his strength because he could not bear to face the galaxy without her. But that was not love, not really. It was ultimate
selfishness.
In his rational mind, The Mongrel knew this. He knew he ought to cast her aside, to fall back on his faith in the Three Avatars and let nothing distract him from their holy purpose. But he was too weak to give her up. Already he felt the rush of anticipation as his dropship came in to land, his hunger for her presence stripping away even the
possibility of anger. Was it making him soft, creating a weakness within him? Perhaps. But he could not find it in himself to care. He had given in to his obsession. He couldn't live without it.
The boarding ramp lowered, and the warlord strode out, his spiked metal feet crushing Odessen's lush grasses with every step. Behind him, the Scar Hounds deployed, preparing their engines of war and chanting verses from the Gospel of the Hidden Maw. The Mongrel hardly even heard them. He simply crossed to where Mercy stood waiting for him, eager to draw close to her. When he spoke, his voice was as harsh and mechanical as it always was; he could not make it tender, could not warm his tone. But his words belied that.
"Your failure is forgiven," The Mongrel told Mercy.
She was the first person he had
ever spared from his wrath.
The defenders of Odessen would not be so lucky.
------------------------------------------------
The Battle Begins
It would be like old times, back at the beginning of the Mawite conquests. In the north,
Zachariel Steelblood
and his Bloodsworn Tribe would sweep down on the defenders in a great tide, shock troops taking the brunt of the incoming fire while the elite marauders behind them got into position. The Mongrel knew their tactics well; he had risen to glory from among the ranks of the Bloodsworn, and still viewed the tribe with great respect. They would be fearless and relentless in their sweeping advance, and brutal at close range.
The Scar Hounds were quite different. Rather than the brutal training and endless feudal loyalty of the Bloodsworn, they relied heavily on their scavenged technology. None of their warriors were without cybernetic augmentation, and none of it was uniform; replaced limbs, metal-plated bodies, neural enhancements, integrated weapons, all of it could be seen within their ranks. But these were not the only things that set them apart, for they were famous for using two other advantages: jury-rigged vehicles and fierce warbeasts.
They would need both advantages to win here.
The southern end of the valley, away from the river, had been easier for the defenders to fortify. Mercy's scouting reports indicated three successive lines of defenses ahead of the enemy forward HQ. These were largely open-topped trenches, kitted out with heavy repeaters that would turn the open ground in front of them into a brutal killing field for anyone attempting a frontal assault. Additional heavy ordnance lay behind them, big guns that could be brought to bear on larger targets. It was simple, but efficiently deadly.
A simple mass charge would be ripped apart in moments.
But despite the
stereotype of the Brotherhood that persisted in Core Worlds media, the Mawites were not mindless fanatics. They would not have been able to destroy Csilla, burn Coruscant, or survive a war with every last major galactic power at once without
strategy. Already the wheels in The Mongrel's mind were turning, tactical analyses running through his cybernetic brain as he pondered his opening move. He had learned much in a decade and more of war against all of Known Space. He could turn enemy tactics against them.
Csilla, Ilum, Korriban, Nirauan, Dromund Kaas, Roon - on all these planets and more, the warlord had seen the devastating power of artillery. He had learned from the horrific losses inflicted by the enemy's long-range guns, had carefully analyzed how they had been deployed and used. The Maw had developed new weapons to compensate... and to duplicate. Now it was time to put such tactics to the test, to blend them with the traditional strategies of the Maw and create something new. In this war, you had to innovate or die.
"Begin the barrage," The Mongrel ordered. At his command, the mechanized forces of the Scar Hounds moved into position at the valley's southern mouth, keeping well back from the trench line. Modified
LuchsHai cargo speeders, each one bearing a
Mongrel's Howl artillery piece in the back, moved in among the much larger
Mawite War Skiffs, which were angling their powerful Chiss
MetaCannons up high for arcing shots. As one they opened fire, the speeder technicals unleashing a rain of countless
thundahvelins...
... while the MetaCannons belched out high-explosive shells.
Although the enemy was dug into their trenches, providing them with some cover, those trenches were open-topped. They could be hit from above with impunity, lucky shells landing
inside them, with dire results for the troops taking shelter there. But the barrage did not begin with a direct attack on the trenches. Instead it formed a wall of explosions
in front of the first trench, a wall that slowly began moving further and further up the valley, toward the defensive positions. It was a creeping barrage, devastation
and cover.
DECEASED Erskine Barran
and his ilk had taught The Mongrel all too well.
Behind the colossal wall of explosions came the second attack.
"Send in the dogs!" the warlord bellowed, and at his command the Scar Hound beastmasters threw open their cages. The battlefield filled with baying and howling as a wave of the tribe's fearsome
Firefang Wardogs streaked out across the valley floor, moving in behind the creeping barrage. The idea was simple. Use the artillery to keep the enemy's heads down, then move up forces behind it: the Wardogs, ready to jump into the trenches when the shells passed.
In those close quarters, the hounds would be
devastating.
But there was no telling how the enemy might react, and even if the first trench line fell to this tactic, there were several more behind it. That was why The Mongrel, as always, had several
other plans in motion.
"Scar Hounds, advance!" The bulk of his troops moved up far behind the dogs, sticking to the sides of the valley, staying out of the main fire lanes as much as possible. Their goal was to follow up the initial attack, to occupy the first trench line if it fell to this assault and to prepare the next attack wave if it did not.
Until then, the major threat they still faced was the enemy artillery, the dug-in big guns that would no doubt fire on their advance even through the screening barrage. The Mongrel could not prevent that initial attack, but perhaps he could dispatch his most elite forces to prevent any follow-up. He turned once more to Mercy, for though he was loathe to put her at any risk, he knew he would need to use her skill in order for them both to survive this.
"Their artillery must be brought down before it destroys us," he told her.
"Bring a squad of fleshtakers. Infiltrate and destroy."
His thoughts, however, contained a different order.
Be careful. Return to me.
Darth Maledictio
will meet
Darth Solipsis
in Maw space to cement their relationship, and take it to the next level towards a greater alliance.
