Across New Carannia, fire and blood reigned.
The Mongrel had to admit that he had underestimated the willingness of the NIO commanders to sacrifice their own, soldiers and civilians alike. He had not anticipated that they would unleash their artillery on their own streets, nor demolish their own city blocks with proton bombs from above; the added firepower of Task Force Kingsman was only furthering the brutality of the slaughter now unfolding all over the city. Entire districts that had been full of Imperial citizens not even twelve hours earlier were now reduced to steaming slag by their own government.
They'd paid that cost to kill many, many Mawites.
As he marched through the flames and the swirling dust, bombs and shells exploding all around him, The Mongrel took stock of the losses his forces were suffering. His casualty projections for Nirauan had seemed dire at the time, severely reducing the strength of the Scar Hounds... but as it turned out, those had been
rosy projections, an overly optimistic estimate. They weren't just besieging a fortress world, the heavily-fortified former capital of their foes; they were besieging a city the NIO seemed willing to
level in order to stop them.
The readouts scrolled across his cybernetic eyes, updating him in real time on each squad that was lost, blown apart in the chaos. At this rate, they would never survive to reach the Saffia District, never manage to secure their own artillery. Without those big guns, they would never crack the walls of Fort Imperium... the one place in New Carannia that was
not being hit by the anti-Mawite bombardment, for no Mawites had made it inside. And if Fort Imperium did not fall, it would be left to rule over a city of ashes. A phyrric victory, but a victory nonetheless.
By all reports, things were not going much better in the southward push toward the spaceport. The Brotherhood needed its
Spider Cruisers in order to beat the famous Galidraani tank divisions, and that meant they had to take out the spaceport's AA defenses; the cruisers might be able to run either the gauntlet of Task Force Kingsman
OR the surface-to-air cannons of the starport, but certainly not both. Whether or not the NIO had learned the true reason behind the push toward the spaceport, they were certainly working hard to counter the Mawite push.
Units from multiple districts were converging on the Bloodsworn.
But there was nothing The Mongrel could do for his ally Zachariel's tribe while his own was in such dire peril. They could see the spies of the Saffia District, its tall, gaudy casino-hotels and chic nightclubs glittering in neon even amid the firelight suffusing the burning city... but actually
reaching them was proving a nigh-impossible task while under such heavy bombardment. A command decision needed to be made, for without it the marauders would fragment and die. It would be a decision that would shape the outcome of the battle, and the future of the tribe.
Such decisions fell to the warlord alone.
The Mongrel made his call. He had hoped to keep his most elite forces in reserve, to unleash them when they encountered enemy armored support or other such serious threats to an infantry force, but he could see no other way to keep his battered warriors from being obliterated.
"Scav Kings," he ordered,
"to the fore! Deploy your squad shields and protect our advance." At his word, the most honored veterans of the Scar Hounds stepped forth from where he had sequestered them, awaiting the perfect moment to unleash their heavy weapons.
The
Scav Kings could be relied on for more than just heavy support.
Unlike the disciplined, uniformly-supplied troopers of the Final Dawn - or of the NIO, or the Galactic Alliance, or most other militaries - Mawites were not issued a standard kit by their quartermasters. Much of their armor and weaponry came from scavenging and raiding, with the most successful and brutal warriors taking the best spoils after each battle. Those warriors with technological aptitude and tremendous skill at looting the fallen could rise to become Scav Kings, building their own battleframes of powered armor that contained mighty arsenals.
No two Scav Kings carried the same loadout, though missile launchers, concussion rifles, and heavy repeaters were common choices for the trio of heavy weapons each carried. For this battle, however, The Mongrel had ordered each to carry a
squad shield, a deployable energy shield covering a several meter radius. Because each Scav King's battleframe contained an internal power source, the elite warriors could maintain the shield while on the move, their augmented strength allowing them to carry it with them for some distance.
Enough distance, hopefully, to reach the Saffia District.
Across the shattered streets, bubbles of blue energy sprang up, like translucent umbrellas to hold back the fiery rain. The shields would not survive a direct hit by an artillery shell or proton bomb, but they
could absorb a near miss, turning aside shrapnel and flesh-melting heat and flying chunks of duracrete. If the Avatars willed it, that would be enough. Mustering their strength, howling dark prayers and battle cries in defiance of the thundering bombardment, the Mawsworn horde
sprinted forward, trusting in their shields and their faith.
Many warriors still departed for the Galaxy To Come, their place in that paradise won through fearless martyrdom... but when The Mongrel's tribe reached the neon signs that marked the edge of the Saffia District, they remained a combat effective force. Not one that could take on the Myrmidon Quarter, certainly, but one that just might still be able to seize the advantage they needed to do so.
"The gods are with us!" The Mongrel shouted, lifting his colossal assault cannon over his head one-handed. A ragged but fierce cheer went up.
Swiftly the warlord adjusted his strategy, going from prioritizing protection and mobility to hunting down the Mawite caches secretly distributed throughout the entertainment district. He had a map of where the cultists and well-paid smugglers had left them, and immediately dispatched his surviving squads to seek them out. Some squads had to be combined, each one too severely under strength to accomplish their individual objectives. That would slow them down, but he would not let it stop them.
The siege of New Carannia was a do or die mission. It had been from the moment of their crash landing. There was no way out but through.
The greatest advantage the Mawsworn had in this stage of their mission was that the enemy had no idea what their objective was. It was likely that their pivot toward the Saffia District, far from any military target and known mostly for its associations with gambling and the criminal element, was tactically inexplicable to NIO command; they likely ascribed the maneuver to general Mawite savagery, just wildly attacking at random. But though the horde
was wild and savage, they were also never without a plan. A terrible intelligence guided the chaos.
But the Saffia District was not undefended.
Nukth Kelga'an
and his troops were fighting hard to hold the line, even if they didn't know
why the attack had moved in this direction. Their powerfully-shielded APC moved in to block North 73rd Street, holding the thoroughfare against the Scar Hound advance. It was more than an equal for the wardogs that were swarming the streets, ripping apart enemy infantry but unable to do much damage to a vehicle... but perhaps not for the Scav Kings. Time to take on the commandos, elites against elites.
A trio of Scav Kings tromped up 73rd Street, ensconced in their mighty powered armor. One raised a missile launcher, targeting the commando APC with a pair of armor-piercing rockets that launched from his shoulder with a terrifying
whump-whump-whoosh. Another, his armor painted with fanged skulls the color of rust, swept the street with the detached E-WEB blaster he carried in both hands, opening up on any infantry who poked their heads out of cover. The third fired a concussion rifle mounted on her left arm, shattering that cover to pieces with each teeth-rattling blast.
They just had to buy time to secure the LuchsHais.
Meanwhile, The Mongrel found his attention drawn upward, to a flare launched high into the burning sky. It wasn't a Mawite signal; they had far different ways of contacting one another, generally less visible ones. NIO soldiers, as a rule, were not stupid. They would know that others could see the flare. That meant one of two things: either the signal was a trap, inviting a Mawite ambush that would be counter-ambushed, or the senders were so desperate they were just taking their chances. The Mongrel turned and tromped toward the flare's origin.
Whatever the truth, he'd deal with this
personally.
He did not realize, could not know, that this would take him across
Sephi Karneh
's path as well, for she too was headed for the flare. The houndmasters, enraged by the death she had wrought among their pack, snapped their shock whips at her heels, and threw viciously-barbed prods at her like javelins. They embedded themselves a foot deep in the duracrete walls in her wake, again and again, giving her no chance to rest - or even to slow down. They were hunters just as surely as their warbeasts, and they were hungry for brutal revenge...
