In the beginning, when the Maw had first returned to the galaxy, War had been like fire. It had spread everywhere it touched, racing across vast swaths of space, consuming entire worlds as tinder, leaving only ashes in its wake. The Brotherhood had seen the strange, isolated empires of the Unknown Regions collapse before their savage fervor, their dark domain steadily growing as planet after planet fell under their shadow. The Chiss should have been no different from the Croke or the Gundanbard or the Shi'ido or the Lugubraa or the Tianese.
But the destruction of Csilla, the sudden strike that ought to have scattered the Chiss Ascendancy and left them easy pickings for the ravenous Maw, had instead summoned the firemen. The galaxy awakened to the threat of the Brotherhood, and the fire went out. War was different now. The new war, this Second Great Hyperspace War, was more like the grinding of teeth: straining, crunching, chipping away at the enamel, wearing down until they were nothing more than cracked nubs with raw, exposed nerves and shredded, bleeding gums.
Hate. Rage. Frustration. Battle after inconclusive battle they grew, the unstoppable force meeting the immovable object, bloodying both time and again for a
decade. The Maw paced within the cage that three galactic superpowers had built around it, throwing its weight against the bars again and again, testing those who held the line and defended the galaxy from an age of merciless carnage. So far, the bars had held. But now the Brotherhood had gathered its full strength, renewed its burning fervor in the form of their Holy Crusade.
Across the trenches of Noris, through mud and blood...
... they would break the line at last.
And the Chiss would pay.
"Break them" the Dark Voice demanded,
"or break upon them."
The Mongrel bowed his armored head as the words washed over him, his metal warframe whirring and creaking as he moved. He had heard such commands before, across dozens of worlds, in the decade and a half he had served the Brotherhood. This planet, the dirt that clung to his durasteel feet and the winds that buffered his unfeeling faceplate, felt no different from countless others where he had fought to bring about the holy will of the Three Avatars. Perhaps it was inevitable that they would all begin to blend together.
Perhaps he was getting old, at least for a soldier.
The Lord of the Scar Hounds had long ago lost track of how many people he had
personally killed, let alone how many deaths he and his tribe were responsible for. He had even lost count of how many brushes he'd had with death; mortality had become a tease, occasionally showing him a flash of corpse-white leg beneath its burial shroud to string him along, but never quite letting him taste the endless peace of the grave. He was tired,
so very tired... but the Heathen Priests had reforged his soul with iron bands of faith and obedience.
He could not stop. He could not turn away.
He could only serve.
Odessen had nearly been his last battle. He had accepted that he would not leave the planet alive, had been determined to earn his way into paradise at last... or perhaps just to be
finished, paradise or no, to find in oblivion an end to suffering. His only regret had been to leave behind Mercy.
Keilara. More than faith or fervor,
she tied him to this galaxy, to this war-torn existence. Only she could understand him, the torment of his fractured mind... because he had put her through the same torment, subjected her to the same
shattering of soul.
He did not deserve her love, or anyone's. He was a monster.
But she loved him all the same, and she had saved him.
He hated her for it. He loved her for it.
He did not know what to feel.
Kallan. Her voice, the only voice that could speak his long-lost true name, emerged above his dark thoughts like the rising sun. He had grown close enough for their minds to touch, to allow them to speak in the way that no one else could hear. Though he was no telepath, and could not reach out to her in the way she could to him, he had become well-practiced at making his mind a safe haven for them both. Where once the jagged edges of his sundered past had been sharp and painful, now he had learned to smooth them into gentle dreams.
There wasn't much left of the old Kallan. The Mongrel couldn't remember his parents' faces, his old address, even the
name of the little colony where he'd lived when the Maw had enslaved him. His childhood was gone entirely, his youth indistinct. There were only little flashes, points of vivid light amongst a gray haze. But he had taken those moments, those little bits of a better man, and he had built them into something. At first, he had met Mercy alone in a stormy void. But he'd grown. Now he met
Keilara in a place he had built just for them.
The house he had built in his mind was small and cozy. There were only a few rooms, and not always the same number; his memories were still scattered, and it was hard to hold onto them. But there was always a garage, a place where Kallan and Keilara tinkered with swoop bikes and fixed up landspeeders. There was always a kitchen, a place where he cooked the only food he could taste; The Mongrel had no tongue, but in his mind
Kallan did. There was always a room with a couch and a holoprojector, where they sat and watched movies.
Or tried to, anyway. He could never remember the endings.
In the house he had built, there was no Mongrel. Kallan was flesh and blood, not durasteel and wire. He could feel the softness of the carpets beneath his feet, the cold of a metal hydrospanner in his hand, the warmth of Keilara when her body pressed against his. In here, and in here only, he could remember what it had been like to truly live... and to
enjoy life. He did not deserve it. These were the things he had taken away from
other people, destroying their lives, ending their joys. But selfishly, desperately, he clung to it all the same.
He stood at the door.
~ Come in, Keilara. ~
The sight of her made him smile.
But only
inside.
"Wipe them out. All of them."
The harsh command, dripping with disregard for life and love and peace, dragged him back to reality. He stood, not in his peaceful little house, but amid his howling, frothing Scar Hounds, every one of them eager to draw blood in the name of the Three Avatars. Battle was upon them, a battle in which the Dark Voice had informed them there would be no retreat.
Break them or break upon them. Do or die. If he wanted to make it back to the one place he could feel something other than this endless emptiness, he would need to see them
win.
The Brotherhood was already deep into this battle. An endless horde of
Moon Children poured forth from the slave ships of the Overseers, throwing themselves mindlessly against the fortifications of FOB Belisarius, heedless of danger or pain or mounting losses. They were cheap, expendable, nothing more than fodder drawn up from the cloning vats of Exegol and expended as a simple
distraction without a moment's thought. Behind and among them came eager squads of
Marauder Aspirants, mismatched and chaotic and
fierce.
The Mongrel had been one of them once. Young. Untested.
Seeing them now made him feel terribly, terribly old.
All of that, all the fury raging across the cratered earth of the No Man's Land on the outskirts of Primus City, was being
used up as little more than a distraction, a test of the enemy's defenses while the Brotherhood's more valuable assets got into position. How many times had The Mongrel seen it before? Korriban, Nirauan, Odessen, over and over the Maw's dark masters were more than willing to sacrifice entire
armies to achieve their aims. In the name of faith, and of earning entry to paradise, legions died to the last man without fear.
After Odessen, the Scar Hounds could not afford such losses. Again and again they had been depleted by brutal battles, worn down until only the most hardened veterans remained. It was up to The Mongrel to wield what was left, to make them the hammer that would shatter the foe while these faceless hordes before him became the anvil. Opening a channel to
Subject 54 Havoc
, he gave the order.
"It is time. Open fire on the forward ramparts of the Belisarius fortification. We will use your barrage as cover for our advance."
Something to keep the NIO's heads down during the charge.
Now to actually
make the charge. The Brotherhood needed something to pick up where the artillery left off, to crack open the walls of the enemy FOB and expose its guts to their relentless warriors. Many Scar Hound vehicles had been lost at Odessen, but there was one type of craft that The Mongrel had not expended there.
"Bring up the walkers," he ordered,
"and prepare them to charge as soon as the barrage begins to fall." By his command, a long line of
Mawite Raider Walkers strutted forward, parodies of Imperial design.
These particular walkers were something of a mixed bunch, for the craft were (like most Brotherhood creations) highly modular and easy to repurpose for different roles. About a third of them were Infantry Support walkers, with mounted chain guns and grenade launchers to shred any NIO troopers who foolishly poked their heads out of cover - and to lob explosives
into that cover. The rest were an experiment: Psycho pattern walkers, each outfitted with half a dozen explosive lances. Whenever and wherever they touched the wall...
Boom. An opening for the horde outside to pour through.
All the other assets were in place. The warlord
Romund Sro
and his 909th Regiment were ready to advance. Bold
Erion Justeene
had already begun infiltrating enemy lines, ready to shred them from within once the chaos began. And Mercy, faithful Mercy, had already prepared the intelligence reports The Mongrel would require to direct the battle. Now he ought to deploy her. He ought to send her out to infiltrate enemy lines as well, to break open their weak points and give his forces another way into Fortress Belisarius.
And yet he hesitated. Inside him,
Kallan begged him not to.
"Mercy," he finally said over the comlink,
"come to me."
"I need your report."
I need you.
Darth Solipsis
The Mongrel
Zachariel Steelblood
