Weaken, then
shatter. It was a traditional principle of warfare when facing an entrenched enemy position, and one that The Mongrel had been given ample opportunities to explore. The Brotherhood was waging war on the entire galaxy, and its great crusade out of the Unknown Regions set it on a crash course with the established civilizations of Known Space. Every one of those governments had defenses in play, methods of keeping the ravening hordes from instantly overrunning them. By the time of the Battle of Noris, the Maw had besieged
many.
The trick, The Mongrel had learned, was to keep a balance of forces - and to know when to use each one. At Noris, this balance had been wielded to perfection. The enemy had been distracted and overwhelmed with expendable fodder, softened up with artillery, and surprised with a sudden shock troop attack; now the strong
core of the Brotherhood forces was moving up, exploiting the chaos they had sown, consolidating their gains. The hammer had fallen on the foe. Now the anvil was grinding into position, leaving the enemy nowhere to go.
As the NIO's forward units fell back to the reserve trench, the Tarar warbands - and their Scav King anchors, moving among them like living saints surrounded by a mass of frenzied disciples - swiftly occupied the defenses their foes had vacated. They'd learned a thing or two since Csilla, though, when their enemies had detonated their trenches the moment they had withdrawn from them. The Scav Kings had built
jammers into their battleframes, each of them projecting a bubble in which no remote detonation signal could reach nearby explosives.
They couldn't stop the
mines from blowing, of course...
... and that
did take its toll on the Mawite advance.
Further, the jammers had a major disadvantage: jamming a wide spectrum of signals to ensure that both enemy comms and any potential detonation signals were prevented, they
also blocked all Mawite communications between the command post and the front. So as the squads moved up, each was an island, the Scav Kings commanding the individual Tarar warbands like independent generals rather than as elements of a cohesive, centrally coordinated line. They were all hardened veterans, accustomed to the rigors of field command...
... but inevitably their line was not without
gaps.
As the warbands moved up, they ran into the Imperial fighting withdrawal. The Tarar hosed down trenches with plasma bursts and lightning guns. Scav Kings licked at the heels of retreating stormtroopers with flamerthrowers and heavy repeaters, or opened up on Imperial walkers with missile launchers and concussion rifles. As some warbands got bogged down in conflict, encountering a dug-in squad or enemy vehicle, others continued their sweeping advance, hitting resistance much further along. Still others were wiped out to the last.
Even the mighty Scav Kings were not invincible.
The end result: the takeover of the NIO trenches was highly piecemeal. Although the defenses could not easily be detonated and denied to the Maw, the strong fighting withdrawal by Imperial forces - and the lack of easy coordination among the bloodthirsty Brotherhood warriors - bought time for the bulk of their surviving forces to fall back to the rear defensive line. Without a cohesive advance, the Mawites cleared the front fortifications slowly, and dug in even slower. They were losing momentum far short of the city they hoped to burn.
It as the sort of situation that needed a frontline commander...
... but The Mongrel was in no state to act as one.
I don't think our recovery and healing depends on us whether we want to or not, Keilara told him.
All I can do is delay yours so that it doesn't happen now. Kallan let out a sad little laugh at that. His mind was bursting free of the durasteel bonds the Taskmaster had placed around it, healing from the scars of the torture and reprogramming he had been subjected to... and that was a
bad thing, because if it ever
finished, he would be discovered and put to death. That or put back into the endless nightmare he had been living, which was worse.
~ What strange lives we have, you and I, ~ he replied, holding her gently. The world swam around him, the battlefield and the garden overlapping in his flickering vision. She let him lean on her, got him on his feet, helped him into the house - no, the tent. Both? It was hard to tell, hard to keep them separate. She told him she could hide all this from the Taskmaster, that she would kill the Ebruchi if she had to. She told him she wanted to be with him, a family, away from all this. Somewhere safe, beyond the bloodshed, to grow old together.
It broke his heart, because she
should not love him.
He was the reason she was broken.
I think you have to decide who you want to be, she told him, and he knew she was right. He couldn't keep containing all of these people in his mind, all of these memories and frameworks of thought. He was no telepath, no mystic with sensitivity to the Force; this was too much for his brain to handle, and he was coming apart under the weight of it all. But how could he decide? If he became fully Kallan, if he cast out the monster that had been built into him, he would be discovered. Kallan was no warrior. He and Keilara would surely die.
But now that he could feel empathy and love again...
... could he go back to being The Mongrel?
Deep in their joined minds, Kallan and Ziare touched... and for the first time, she recognized him for who he was. She stepped back from him, fear in her eyes, and his heart
broke all over again. This was the person he had become, the person the Brotherhood had twisted him into. He had always told himself there had been no choice, but perhaps that was an excuse. Perhaps the brave thing to do would have been to
die, to give in and pass from the galaxy, rather than letting the Maw forge him into a heartless, blood-soaked weapon.
He didn't know what to say to her.
She spoke instead.
She told him she was
sorry. Sorry for what had been done to him, for all that he'd been through. She told him that she
forgave him, that it wasn't his fault. And as her words came spilling out, he felt
grief and
guilt and
regret and
self-loathing bubble up in him, so strong he nearly fell to his knees.
~ Don't forgive me, ~ he told her, eyes full of tears.
~ I don't deserve it. I was weak. I gave in. I let them use me to continue the cycle, to keep hurting others the way they hurt me. ~ He looked up at her, shaking, his gaze full of remorse.
~ I wish I could undo all of this. ~
~ I wish I could set you free. ~
Free. What would freedom look like for them? The Mongrel, the notorious monster who had burned a score of worlds, could not just walk away from the Maw. No hulking, bloodstained cyborg could settle down and grow old on some peaceful farm. And the part of him that was still The Mongrel, warlord of the Brotherhood, did not
want to leave. If he gave up now, if he turned his back on his dark gods, then all the suffering and killing would have been for
nothing. He had to gain his martyrdom, to earn his way to paradise, or it was all meaningless.
But Kallan? Kallan wanted out. Wanted
release.
Wanted the life Keilara had described.
Mercy was keeping up the illusion that they were discussing strategy, pointing out points of attack on the city that the Brotherhood sought to claim. She was always protecting him, keeping him safe... and yet she was
also the reason he was coming apart, remembering the buried parts of himself. It was the paradox of their relationship, this impossible bond between damaged, fragmented people.
Concentrate, she told him.
Don't let everything fall apart now. He tried, tried with all his might... and with her help, he held onto lucidity. For now.
~ They can't coexist, ~ he told her, realizing the truth.
~ Kallan and The Mongrel. They can't stay in the same mind. Kallan makes The Mongrel soft, too kind and compassionate to serve the Maw. The Mongrel makes Kallan sick, traps him and crushes him down, makes him want to die. ~ He knew what needed to happen... but he didn't know if it was possible, if even Mercy could do it for him.
~ He has to come out. Kallan. His memories, his personality, his consciousness. They have to come out of this body, this brain. ~
~ It's the only way he can be free, with you. ~
It was what they both wanted. The Mongrel, the monster, wanted his body back, cleansed of the weakness of an old
self he had discarded long ago. And Kallan? Kallan needed to escape. He wanted to go with Keilara, or Ziare, or Mercy, or all three; he wanted to find a place to live that quiet life she'd told him about, to grow old together, away from all this bloodshed. But could they be separated? Could one of them exist without the other? Could Mercy use her telepathic gifts to pull them apart, to carry Kallan with her in her mind?
He didn't know... but it was the only way he could see to go on.
If he didn't separate them, or
kill one of them, he would die.
Kyrel Ren
