In legends and holovids, the duels between great heroes and their sinister foes could go on and on, trading blow after blow with their laser-swords in a drawn-out dance of death. In The Mongrel's reality, his every encounter with Jedi was measured in seconds: seconds that he had left to live at any given moment. He was perpetually outmatched, not remotely an equal to even an apprentice in their mystic arts. He could not possibly win against these living gods. His only goal was survival, and his only tactics were to delay, evade, and misdirect. By then, he had survived enough encounters with Jedi and their ilk to develop strategies that generally worked against them...
... which just meant buying a few more seconds at a time.
The crate drop had exceeded his wildest hopes, not only putting a barrier between him and the oncoming warriors of light but actually wounding them; the woman had been knocked from her feet by the impact, and the armored man at least bruised by a wayward chunk of durasteel. With any luck, that injury to his arm would be enough to slow his swings. The Mongrel had no illusions about what would happen if he allowed even a single hammer blow to catch him, and he had no particular desire to become a slurry of red paste painting the station's walls. Still, it was only a temporary reprieve. Jedi were stubborn and self-righteous; they would keep coming after him.
Which was why it was a blessing indeed to have his desperate transmission to the Knyghts reach someone even more fearsome: his chosen Warlord,
Zachariel Steelblood
. The Mongrel bowed low as the founder and ruler of the Bloodsworn Tribe leapt from his shuttle and entered the field of battle, moving to engage the white-haired woman. The marauder had seen his master battle Jedi before, and knew that he was more than a match for the mage-knights. Steelblood would surely triumph, bringing glory to the Maw... but in a less reverent thought whispering at the back of his mind, The Mongrel found himself noticing that the Warlord had engaged the Jedi
student.
That left him, with no skill in their mystic arts, to face the
teacher.
As if in answer, the armored Jedi ripped through the blocking cargo crate with the power of his magic, an invisible hand tearing apart thousands of pounds of metal like an eager child shredding wrapping paper. A storm of metal fragments and chunks of ore flew from the container's ruined center, striking with deadly aim. Had The Mongrel been unarmored, they would have pierced his torso and annihilated his organs. As it was, the barrage slamming into his chestplate drove him back half a dozen steps, sharpened splinters making a horrific grating sound as they scraped across the surface of the durasteel armor. One shard, deflected upward, cut a long streak across his cheek.
The marauder was winded, gasping for air after the impacts, but he couldn't afford to take a moment to recover. Any moment now,
Michael Sardun
would advance and finish the job. Still, The Mongrel laughed at his words.
"Not at my hand? Of course not. None of us matter. There are a hundred thousand more like me, but even without them, this age will still collapse into fire and ruin. Everything ends. Everything dies." The Jedi was holding position for the moment, offering him a quick end. That made him stand out in the marauder's mind. Jedi he had encountered before, like
Romi Jade
, would have offered to spare him if he surrendered.
This one clearly had a different philosophy... one more like his own.
The Mongrel used the opportunity to back up, putting more space between him and the Jedi... and that massive hammer. If he could keep the armored titan talking, that might buy him an opportunity to think of how to survive the next few minutes.
"Jedi and Sith have been killing each other for thirty thousand years... but there was a galaxy before them, and there will be a galaxy after. You seek victory through your stagnant traditions. We seek true rebirth." As he backed up, The Mongrel kept looking around, searching for more opportunities. Every moment he bought allowed his raiders to seize more and more of Outlander Station's valuable cargo.
Nothing in easy reach jumped out at him, so the marauder fell back on basic weapon tactics. The armored Jedi had easily repelled projectile weapons with his magic barrier, but that was why The Mongrel carried a wide variety of weapon types; all of the mage-knights seemed to have different defenses. This one didn't carry a lightsaber to deflect blaster bolts with, so perhaps the old standard would be effective. Letting his scattergun hang from its shoulder strap, The Mongrel thrust his arms forward, sliding a pair of blaster pistols down his sleeves and into his hands; he always went into battle strapped with a small armory's worth of concealed weapons. Raising them, he laid down a withering hail of fire, opening up on his foe with guns akimbo.
He didn't expect that it would kill Sardun, but how the mage-knight reacted to the blasterfire would at least tell him something about the Jedi's capabilities.
Adhira Chandra
Aerarii Tithe
Faith Organa
Dracken Pryce
