Though indisputably a fanatic in service to dark gods, The Mongrel tackled the subject of fighting Jedi with a methodical, scientific approach. Whenever he saw a lightsaber, his mind filled with tables of observations he'd made over all his past encounters, running quickly through new calculations to add data with each action the warrior-monks took. There was a checklist in his head that included every tactic he'd ever used against them. Some entries were struck out, determined to be worthless against the laser sword-wielders. Most had conditional check marks at best; if there was a magic bullet for killing Jedi, he had yet to find it.
The marauder put another half-tick in the mental box beside his modified flashbang. It
did seem to have slowed the Jedi down; the blinding flash had been at least somewhat effective, though the wave of noise clearly had not, given that the big one was still talking. Perhaps they'd been too far away, or perhaps the 180 decibel audio burst hadn't been directionally targeted enough. The Mongrel's tricks and traps were never stock, off-the-shelf devices, and sometimes the things he built worked better than others. He would reexamine how to effectively and fully use the directional "grenade" when he returned to Brotherhood space... if he survived to do so.
The big Jedi pulled the willowy one - his student - behind him, providing her with some protection against the searing flash. Then he lashed out with his magic, creating a radiant light of his own that streaked across the cargo bay at his foe. It was a good symbolic choice, but not one destined to do terrible damage to a mere marauder.
Force Light could burn away spirits of
Chaos, purify a nexus of evil, and disrupt the powers of the Dark Side, but The Mongrel experienced it only as a flash of brightness and heat upon his scarred face. His polarized lenses kept him from being blinded. Then the light wormed its way inside his head, seeking darkness to burn out.
But some kinds of evil aren't tangible shadows of corruption. Some kids of evil are simply born of broken minds, reshaped by fanaticism and the honeyed promises of wicked men. There was no Bogan in The Mongrel for the power of Ashla to burn out, only madness that this searing light could not heal. The marauder felt a sense of sadness as the radiance passed through his mind, awakening shards of memory that his torture and rebirth had buried deep... but it passed. There was no going back, not for him, not after all he had done.
"Your 'true' light fades, Jedi," he spat, firing his scattergun, though the pellets just pinged off of Sardun's invisible barrier.
"This cycle is ending. A new age will rise from your order's ashes."
It was good that the big Jedi's magic did not incapacitate him, because the woman Jedi was coming right at him. She charged in eerie silence, her pale hair drifting in a halo around her, lit from above by the beam of light streaking from her master's hand... and from below by her own alabaster blades. She was quick and lithe, and The Mongrel found her movements difficult to anticipate; she did not fight like the saber-wielders he had encountered before, and not just because she carried two of her order's signature weapon. When she finally revealed how she would strike, sliding in to cut his legs from under him, the marauder found himself taken by surprise.
Had he been sprinting forward, The Mongrel would have tried to leap over her low attack... but he was not, and a standing jump would not carry him high enough; he'd end up with feet severed at the ankle. So he scrambled frantically backwards, letting his scattergun dangle from its shoulder strap as he reached out behind him with both hands. He was seeking to do what he always had in duels against Force-mages: to use his environment to stay alive. In his very first encounter with one, fighting the crimson-blade
Calruss Shiman on Batuu, he had scrambled beneath a market stall to survive the boy's assault... though not before taking a terrible leg wound.
Thankfully, the cargo bay was full of environmental opportunities. One of The Mongrel's searching hands closed over
the steering bar of a hovercart loaded up with heavy shipping crates, and a simple plan took shape. He swung it around, interposing it between himself and the incoming Jedi. Instead of cutting his legs to ribbons, her pure white blades cut an X through a shipping container filled with asteroid ore. Scraps of durasteel crate and fragments of rock scattered between the two combatants, their edges glowing a molten orange from the heat of the laser swords. The handle of the hovercart, severed at the base, came free in The Mongrel's hand.
He stared at it a moment, then tossed it aside.
Time and again the marauder had gone up against Jedi and, against all odds, survived... but this wasn't
a Jedi, it was
two, and a pair fully accustomed to fighting side by side. Clearly the big one didn't need his eyes to lash out with his magic, and his student had hardly even been slowed down, though The Mongrel credited some amount of lingering flash-daze in her vision to the fact that he wasn't yet chopped into pieces like the hovercart. Regardless, there was a point at which even the proud warrior had to admit that some glories could not be chased alone. He needed backup, or this raid was going to end with
his head on the trophy rack.
Or whatever Jedi used, he wasn't really sure.
He couldn't just flee, or the raid would fail. Behind him, dozens of Bloodsworn tribal warriors swarmed over the cargo bay, dragging off supply crates and screaming captives to the assault shuttles. Every Brotherhood strike had a dual purpose, both causing havoc for the enemy and replenishing the Maw's resources. In order to achieve the best results for both, The Mongrel had to keep these two Jedi from becoming a whirlwind of carnage among his raiders. The Bloodsworn were savage and ferocious, a match for any well-drilled grunt on the open battlefield, but ten of them would be lucky to last even thirty seconds against these mage-knights.
Fortunately, the Maw had
Knyghts of its own. As The Mongrel scrambled back, putting a little more distance between himself and the oncoming Jedi, he transmitted a preset signal from his wrist communicator. A few Knyghts of the First House, Monastery Daedalon, had accompanied the raid in case of Jedi intervention. They were not technically The Mongrel's to command; his authority was limited to the Bloodsworn tribe raiders allotted to him by their Warlord,
Zachariel Steelblood
. But all Knyghts, like The Mongrel himself, were hungry for glory. They would come if the promise of Jedi skulls to take was laid out before them.
He just had to last until they arrived.
Casting around as he fell back before the oncoming Jedi, The Mongrel spotted an opportunity: a
binary loadlifter awaiting new commands, placidly standing out in the open. The droids were infamously dull-witted, able to carry out only the simplest of commands... and often ignoring any context that might affect
how they should achieve their tasks. This one had a
huge shipping container laid across both of its flat lifting arms, twelve meters long by two and a half meters high and wide; it had to weigh a good four metric tons
empty, and who knew what might be inside it. The Mongrel scrambled between its wide legs and out behind it.
"Drop the crate," he commanded, hoping it would crush his pursuer with its terrible bulk. Even if it did not, it would put a barrier between him and the pair of Jedi. That would give him a moment's breathing room, until they managed to get around it... or cut through it, and whatever cargo lay inside. The loadlifter's huge, paddle-like arms tilted toward the ground, sending the massive shipping container sliding down right at
Ishida Ashina
...
