BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. Missiles streaked in all around the
Messy Blighter, sending up huge plumes of smoke and dirt and shattered stone and mangled metal. A LuchsHai technical right next to them took a hit right on the front hood, going up in a colossal fireball; its thundahvelins cooked off all at once, spraying into the sky at random angles and bursting midair like mono-color fireworks. On the other side, a war skiff took a hit low along its hull, and several of its repulsorlifts guttered out. The nose plummeted, plowing a furrow in the ground.
The
Blighter itself was not unscathed. A missile clipped one of the steering vanes on the aft section and exploded, making the entire craft lurch. Shrapnel flew in all directions, and Slim went down, struck by flying metal. An instant later, though, the Weequay was back on her feet. Blood streamed freely from a ten-centimeter shard of durasteel embedded in her cheek, but she resumed her place at the helm anyway, ignoring the pain by force of will. She'd have a hell of a scar when this was all over, if she survived. If
any of them did.
And then, all at once, it was over. The enemy missiles ran out.
"WHEW!" Mucknose sighed, finally crawling out from behind the fallen MetaCannon barrel. The deck of the
Blighter was scorched and strewn with debris, but remarkably intact considering what they'd just flown through.
"Oh my gods, I can't believe we just saw a JEDI and we're not dead!" A nervous chuckle ran through the crew at that. Here they were on the Jedi
homeworld, a place they'd
known they would run into Ashla's demigods from the moment they'd landed, but their first actual encounter with one had still shaken them.
As the Pact ambushers fell back from the burning foothills, the War Skiff crew sprang back into action. The rusted, dented
binary loadlifter assigned to the
Blighter, which the crew had nicknamed Ol' Scrappy, unfolded from its storage position in the ammo bay and clomped over to the heavy Maser barrel, lifting it so that the gunners could mag-lock it into place. They were short their spotter now, so they would have to rely entirely on instruments and old positional data to make their shots, but they were aiming for a huge energy shield.
How hard could it be to hit a shield covering a
square kilometer?
The remaining war skiffs pulled up along the cliffs overlooking the temple ruins, finally in their desired firing position; from here, it would be almost impossible to miss. Once they dropped the shield, they could go back to lobbing incendiaries, frag rounds, and chemical payloads into the ranks of the Alliance marines, softening them up for the incoming Mawite infantry. A staccato
braaaaamph braaaaamph braaaaamph rang out over the valley as the charric masers went to work, directing long blue lines of energy into the plasma shield.
The maser didn't require reloading like shell-based artillery did, just a little time to cool down between shots - and eventually a new battery, which resembled a massively oversized power cell. That meant that Mucknose had a lot more downtime than he'd had when loading the incendiary shells... which was why he noticed that one of the Mawite speeders was
not where it was supposed to be.
"Uh, hey Slim," he said, narrowing his eyes and pointing at the incoming LuchsHai.
"Doesn't that one look like it's coming right... at..."
The gunner's eyes widened. That driver was no Mawite.
No blood runes on her, for one.
"INCOMING! AGAIN!" Mucknose and Big Rûg ran for the deck guns, Mucknose once again taking the E-WEB repeater while the bulky Gundanbard took the missile launcher. They might already be too late; the speeder was moving fast, and it'd taken Mucknose a while to notice that it was acting oddly. Being out of position was hardly odd among the chaotic tribesmen, after all. But if there was any chance of stopping that speeder before it hit them, they'd take it. Both auxiliaries opened fire, trying to light up the LuchsHai in time.
If they'd known the driver was a Jedi, well...
... they'd have tried even harder.
As they fired, as they made their desperate play to save their own lives, the heavens above rumbled.
By the power of Solipsis, the surface of the moon Ashla crumbled, as if he was flaying the skin from the goddess herself. Huge meteors made fiery trails across the horizon as the skies themselves seemed to fall. Great shadows crisscrossed the ground, and in moments the battlefield began to shake under the titanic impact of falling celestial bodies. Mucknose stared up in awe and terror as moon rocks rained down...
The Scar Hounds were ready. Marauder Aspirants howled their eagerness for death and glory, while their more experienced comrades recited psalms from the Bleak Gospel. The infantry force was arranged like a figurative arrow. The young and wild warriors acted as the sharp point that would break the skin, beginning the wound. The veterans behind them were the broad head of the arrow, widening that wound and doing the real damage. Between them, they aimed to pierce deep into the heart of their enemy, drawing forth much blood.
They needed to take this post, disable the temple's guns...
... or they'd never be able to aid the attack on Kaleth.
Scar Hounds were not afraid of
sacrifice, of giving a thousand lives to gain a few meters of ground, but they were not the witless barbarians that galactic media liked to portray. Sacrifice was
part of their strategy, not a replacement for a nonexistent strategy. When they spent lives, no matter how apparently freely, their warleaders were highly conscious of
which lives they were spending, and for which specific gains. To charge headlong into the Alliance mortar crews would ultimately be a necessity, but that would be a waste of
warriors.
Even young and inexperienced ones.
So those who came over the hill first weren't warriors, but
madmen.
Much has been written of the
Moon Children, the well-known Mawite weapons of frenzied terror. But to actually
face these insane clones was far different from merely reading about them. To hold one's ground and shoot as a legion of frothing, howling lunatics, scrambling on all fours, saliva dribbling from between their gnashing teeth, claw-like nails scraping furrows into the earth... it was a different feeling than facing the united advance of a Stormtooper battalion, or even the wild charge of tribal warriors. This was something
primal.
It was a legion of beasts who wore the faces of men.
The roaring, screaming, and gibbering of the mad clones filled the valley, audible even over the thunderous zapping of the masers and the steady thumps and booms of Alliance mortars. Shells that landed among the filthy mass of tightly-packed bodies, freshly released from great durasteel cages that the Mawites had towed in their wake, wreaked terrible destruction; limbs flew, heads burst, and the slopes of the valley were bathed in blood and entrails. But the Moon Children did not stop. Their entire lives were pain and violence.
A mortar barrage, to them, was just more of the same.
The goal of the Moon Children's charge was simple: drive the mortar crews back inside the shield. Killing them would be a bonus, but the Scar Hounds would accept far less; this was only the opening move in the long game that would be the siege of the Alliance firebase, and sacrificing pawns to force the enemy out of position was a worthwhile trade. At a careful distance
behind the swarm of madmen, lest their appetite for killing be turned back on the Maw, came the first waves of Marauder Aspirants, walking over carnage-slick ground.
They would be the first to try to breach the shield.
The souls of Moon Children, cloned in under two weeks under highly artificial conditions, were too thin and weak to be of any use to the Prophet's ritual. No one had bothered to draw the Ur-Kittat runes upon them; it would have been a near-impossible task even if it
had been worth the trouble, with the half-brained madmen snapping and clawing at anyone who tried to touch them, for they knew no loyalty. But whenever one of the Marauder Aspirants fell, the crimson runes upon his skin flashed white, then faded to burnt obsidian.
Soul by soul, death by death, the galaxy would be remade.
As if in response to the harvesting of their faithful spirits, the skies above rumbled and the horizon shook.
By the power of Solipsis, the surface of the moon Ashla crumbled, as if he was flaying the skin from the goddess herself. Meteors streaked down from the heavens, chunks of the wounded celestial body of the goddess that the Prophet sought to destroy. None fell
on the warriors of the Brotherhood, as if their devotion to the Mawite Scriptures shielded them from this act of cosmic terror. But some fell right toward the temple ruins...
... a rain of heavenly fire descending toward the unbelievers.
-----------------------------------------
Maple Harte
Onas watched the flooded plain through her macrobinoculars.
As she watched the battle - an unexpected and unwelcome complication to the Scar Hounds' original battle plan - unfold across the swamp, the Shorak nodded in grim satisfaction. The charge of the bogaranths had gone just as she'd hoped, the huge and unruly beasts smashing through enemy lines with their sheer bulk and poisoning the ground all around them with trails of caustic slime. The Legion of the Leech, right at home in these swampy conditions, carried out their hit-and-run attacks on any who crossed their ambush spots.
But for all the reputation that the Brotherhood had earned for being a vast horde of warriors, House Io seemed to be far more numberless. Thousands upon thousands of war droids, multiple tanks more than
fifty meters tall, nuetralizers and citizen-soldiers and drones, the forces streaming out into the flooded plain never seemed to end. How had they
fit them all into the cruiser? Onas couldn't tell how the tower-like seismic tanks had been deployed at all; they were
seventeen stories tall, taller than the highest hangars she'd ever seen.
And against legions so numerous and powerful, the Scar Hound rear-guard began to collapse. Explosive drones and air-to-surface missiles tore chunks out of the mighty bogaranths, until even their thick hides and thicker layers of muscle could not keep them alive. Their death cries, a bizarre fusion of chitter, roar, and hiss, echoed across the battlefield, and Onas felt her heart sink. It had been bad enough to
delay the creatures meant to crack open Kaleth. Now many of them were dead, and the rest under dire threat. A disaster.
The Lugubraa, too, were being winnowed away. Though they were difficult to root out when concealed in the mud and reeds of the flooded plain, they were targets the moment they burst out to attack, grenades and explosive drones hurled into their midst. Soon the marshes were full of rubbery chunks of alien mercenary, and the hides of the survivors were pockmarked with shrapnel. They could endure for a long time even under these conditions, for Lugubraa were nothing if not adaptable... but they could not stand against so many.
In death, the runes daubed on their blubbery skin flared white...
... then faded to lifeless smears of ash.
Surveying what little there was left to fight with, Onas found herself torn. The enemy cruiser was still pounding away at the grounded
Crucifix II, and even without the power draw of engines or life support it could not maintain its shields forever. It had never been meant to be an active part of the battle, only a forward deployment zone, a way to get a Brotherhood ground army past the countless fleets of the enemy. Now it, like so many other resources, had been pressed into service against this new and seemingly endless threat.
At the same time, a seismic tank and battle droid legion were headed for the ritual mountain. Throwing the Brotherhood's forces at that group would mean pulling back from defending the Star Destroyer, a momentous decision that could lead to the loss of one of their greatest assets. This had not been in the battle plan; the Mawites had expected to be outnumbered by the Tython Accords overall, but they had
not expected that little House Io, with a
tiny fraction of the Brotherhood's manufacturing capabilities, could field so much
alone.
There was no question of what they must do, however. Their loyalty, in this life and the next, was to the Dark Voice, their prophet and guiding shadow. To give their lives in his service was the highest calling the galaxy could offer, the
only truly righteous act. Onas remembered the Parable of the Mountain, how only faith could move the peaks and shake the heavens, and felt her resolve stiffen. She'd come here for the money, but if she was going to die here, she might as well embrace the Maw and hope its teachings were true.
Besides, she wouldn't get paid if the Prophet died.
"Bog them down!" the Shorak merc cried, pointing in the direction of that advancing force. The last of the bogaranths wheeled and charged, bearing down on the group who would desecrate Solipsis's holy mountain. The remnants of the lugubraa intensified their attacks, even if it meant exposing themselves to the drones and grenades, fighting with all their natural savagery
and the frenzied devotion of the faithful. The grounded star destroyer turned its guns away from the
Rhand-class cruiser, accepting its brutal torpedoes...
... and turning its massive guns on the mountain-attackers.
All that firepower, all that crazed dedication to violence, would surely force the Io armies to turn and confront the Scar Hounds before they could proceed. To do anything else would be to present their undefended backs to the rapid fire of the Mawites. But Onas felt a flicker of fear in her heart, a growing sense of doubt. What if they were not enough? What if the legions of Io marched right through them? They would give their lives, but if that was not enough, what more could they do against such a display of endless power?
Perhaps the Avatars heard her crisis of faith.
Perhaps they answered.
High above the Shorak mercenary's shaven head, the skies rumbled.
By the power of Solipsis, the surface of the moon Ashla crumbled, as if he was flaying the skin from the goddess herself. The sky wept flaming chunks of rock, and they rained down on the flooded plain, guided by the dark will of the Prophet. Each thunderous impact shook the battlefield, sending up a great shockwave that hurled men from their feet and dashed them to pieces upon the hills. Water and earth and trees and shattered metal exploded into the sky.
Let the flooded plain become a land of a thousand craters.
Let the sky come down to answer Mawite prayers.
Project Uriel
