High Above: The Air War
The priests had told him the war would be like this.
Even as the first corvette group and its accompanying bombers returned to orbit, the survivors falling back to lick their wounds, Arukovi could already see a second one descending. It was just as the Maw's dark gospel taught: the forces of the Old Galaxy, their fleets and armies and ancient Force orders, would fight with all their might to preserve the corrupt, rotting status quo. The decrepit kings whose power came from stagnant traditions, going through the same cycles for millennia now, would throw everything they had at any who dared to try to bring change and renewal.
The Brotherhood had no such reserves. The force they had brought to Korriban had seemed excessive at the time; did they really need so many elite troops or ships for a simple mission to pillage the last artifacts of a long-dead world? They had justified the troops only as an honor guard for the Dark Voice, a worthy escort for the Master of the Maw. Small units had been taken from many different tribes and auxiliaries, more a symbolic collection of the Brotherhood's diversity than a cohesive, combat-effective army. They weren't there to invade, after all, only to stand guard.
They had expected to face little more than a few desperate Sith Eternal holdouts on their now-evacuated former capital. Instead, they had found themselves
impossibly outnumbered as vast fleets and armies from across the galaxy descended on Korriban. Strategically, it was a disaster, likely to cost the Brotherhood many of its finest warriors. Spiritually, however, it only served to confirm the teachings of the Heathen Priests, and to heighten the fanaticism of marauders everywhere. The legend of this last stand, screaming defiance at the whole galaxy, would inspire millions.
So Arukovi knew no fear as he stared down the incoming second wave. He was going to die, there was no avoiding that now, but in so doing he would become immortal.
"Have no fear, brothers," the Chiss slave-soldier told the rest of his crew,
"for today we pass into legend! Today we earn our place at the right hand of the Avatars themselves, and our deliverance into their New Galaxy. Seize your rebirth with open hearts! We are the chosen few, leading by example, and the ashes from which new creation will rise are not only those of our enemies... but also our own." So he believed.
All blood would water the Coming Paradise. The Avatars cared not from whence the blood flowed, only that it flowed.
So the Spider Cruisers and their dwindling
Divine Eagle escorts were
eager to face the oncoming corvettes and bombers, even more eager with the attack wing from the
Tonnant adding to the enemy numbers. After all, legends were born from incredible odds, not from minor challenges. As the enemy streaked in, a wall of overwhelming force, Arukovi led his air wing straight at them, guns blazing. Every weapon fired freely as they attacked, the huge MegaCaliber turbolasers opening up on the corvettes while beam cannons and laser cannons streaked in toward bomber formations.
The sandstorm raging below was only gaining force as more and more of the desert and hillside were atomized by incoming bombs, and the craft on both sides were forced to fly practically blind, relying more on sensors than visual scanning. Waves of wind-whipped sand, churning in the tempest, were turned to glass midair as laserfire superheated them, then fell like deadly rain on the battlefield below. Just holding steady in such unstable, turbulent conditions would challenge even a highly-skilled pilot, and making a clean, straight attack run was almost impossible amid the tempest.
The Mawites rode the storm in one last suicidal charge.
Tactically, Arukovi knew that the air war was lost. They'd never had a chance, not against an entire fleet of bombers and support vessels, not when their entire strength could be counted on fingers and toes - including the starfighters. But they'd maimed the first wave, the first group of attacking corvettes, and if they gave this attack
everything they could savage the second. What happened from there would be in the Avatars' hands.
"Set all missiles and engines to overload," he ordered, gripping the arms of his command chair with white knuckles.
"We die in their midst."
The Chiss shut his eyes.
"We take many with us."
Beside the two doomed Spider Cruisers, firing their last salvos before they whipped toward their foes and prepared to self-destruct, the Knyghts of Kasparov flew their deadly fighters with equal ferocity. Their vessels were too small for a suicide bombing to cause significant damage to the oncoming battle groups, so they would simply fight to the last. Half the squadron now remained, six of the twelve
Divine Eagles that had descended to support the Spider Cruisers, and they would sell their lives dearly. They were among the Maw's best, and they too knew no fear.
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Northeast: The Petrite Front
The sandstorm intensified, surrounding the valley in a near-impenetrable wall of flesh-stripping grit and rock, nearly tugging the dueling ships above out of the sky with the ferocity of its winds. Within the eye of the storm, however, the battle was no less a vision of hell. The Rhandites unleashed the Way of the Dark, the deep entropy they believed was the ultimate power in the galaxy, and in the wake of each unholy blast men and machines aged and withered away. By the power of the Sorcerers, corruption and decay took hold of the northeastern slopes. Flesh to ashes, armor to rust.
And in the midst of it all, the dead continued to rise. As Khazzak clambered atop the fallen corvette, walking fearlessly over its burned surface, he could feel the wicked sorceries at work
everywhere. The hull shook beneath him as the shattered ship's crew, twisted and broken by the impact, clawed their way back to unlife. The bulkheads shook with their moans and roars, and with the scraping and beating of corpse-hands turned to claws, now seeking to rend the flesh of the living. The witch Tegan Starfall had come to the wreck, more powerful than Khazzak could ever dream of being.
The shaman wondered what fresh horrors she'd unleash.
But there was little time left to wonder, for the enemy leader had answered Khazzak's challenge. Their chosen battlefield was one for the legends - a twisted, burning wreck atop a hill of shifting, half-glassed sand, with the twisted forms of the dead clawing their way up bulkheads shattered by heavy laser cannons. As the black-armored Petrite elite took to the sides of the wreckage, trying to fend off the rising tide of zombies, their commander charged in, running up the makeshift bridge with a crimson blade in each hand. Khazzak's eyes blazed, and he smiled defiantly.
He had but one thought: this would be a good death.
Spinning his grisly spine-staff, the severed hand at its top wriggling its fingers like a drowning man trying to find something to hold onto, the shaman stepped forward to meet mighty Jorel. With one arm he thrust out his force-imbued weapon in a vertical block, trying to intercept his foe's descending blades and knock them aside in a right-to-left sweep across his body. With the other he seized the dark power of the Force, the power to crush with all his hate... but he did not direct it at the Chiss, not directly. Instead he aimed it all the hull of the corvette, deforming the metal with his power.
He was trying to trap and smash Jorel's legs as he ran.
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South: The Galidraani Front
The Rough Riders had been spotted. There had always been a chance, a good one, that they'd be seen before they got halfway into their glorious flank charge, and now it had come to pass. But the Rough Riders, and Fre'shaa had to give her rivals credit for this, didn't turn away. The battle was already lost, with little chance for any of them to survive the clash at the excavation hill, surrounded and outnumbered on all sides. The Kagan-Jin alone could have fled the valley, past the Ashlan and Galidraani lines, but they had chosen instead to earn glory in one last strike at their foes.
Heedless of Torayga's support troops, heedless of the AFVs falling back to protect the vulnerable flank, the Rough Riders charged on, their orbaks devouring the distance down the riverbed hoofbeat by hoofbeat. The riders' armor, and the natural toughness of their mounts, allowed them to shrug off the first few bolts they took, but they were charging a firing line, and losses were inevitable. Orbaks and riders tumbled into the sand as they were shot down, filling the gulley with corpses and the thrashing of the wounded, but the Kagan-Jin did not stop. This was their moment.
This was their chance to be written into the legend.
Lances poised, ready to tear into men and vehicles alike, they came on... but that was not all they did. For each rider armed his bandolier of anti-vehicle grenades as he drew closer, a trio of heavy explosives strapped across his chest. For each rider that reached the Galidraani lines, there would be a terrible final reckoning as he triggered those grenades, a last explosion that would deliver them to glory. They were all going to die, every last one of them, but there was no avoiding that now. The Battle of the Mongrel's Hill would be known as the greatest example of Mawite fanaticism yet.
High above, on the jagged remains of the shattered hillside, Fre'shaa and her riders prepared their own last play. As
Aemilio Valaar
led the wedges of AFVs up through the blasted wasteland, seeking safe paths toward the hilltop, the Deathgangs roared down the slope, whooping and hollering. Their voices and engine noise echoed among the craters and rocky pinnacles thrown up by the bombs and exploded mines, making it difficult to tell where they were coming from. That was the goal, of course. Without a clean charge available, misdirection was their last advantage.
In pairs and trios the swoop gangers came on, firing their grenade launchers at the approaching AFVs before zooming behind the cover of jagged ravines and hills of glassed sand. While one zoomed in front of the enemy armor, another would zip in from behind, lashing out with a power lance or tossing a sabotage charge. It would only slow the enemy, Fre'shaa knew, not stop them, but that hardly mattered;
every front would soon collapse under the weight of the bombing campaign. But every Galidraani, Ashlan, and Light Sith they slew was one denied a role in future campaigns.
They would bloody their foes as they died.
Fre'shaa herself streaked in toward Aemilio's formation, wild hair flowing out behind her, face set in a savage rictus grin. She guided her swoop with her weight alone, maneuvering with her knees and the position of her feet; she had to, for her arms were occupied with the weight of the grenade launcher.
Thunk, thunk, thunk went the heavy weapon, kicking hard in her grasp as it lobbed anti-vehicle explosives downslope. Behind the formation, two more of her riders came up from where they'd hidden in a ravine, lances aimed at the back compartments of the rear AFV.
"Die, pretty boys!" Fre'shaa screamed.
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The Hilltop
It was all coming apart. The little honor guard was surely doomed, giving ground faster and faster as warriors were whittled away by the constant pressure from all sides. The survivors of each clash were being pushed back up the hill, back toward the excavation pit at the top, where the slaves had abandoned their digging to cower among the unearthed ruins of long-forgotten Sith tombs. Even if they'd escaped with whatever artifacts they could dig out of this dead, ravaged world, the trinkets of these minor Sith - unworthy of the Valley of the Dark Lords - wouldn't have been worth it.
But battle, slaughter for the Avatars, was
always worth it.
That was why The Mongrel hardly even noticed the apocalyptic conditions, the bombing and the sandstorm and the rising dead. The tempest of fire and glass that raged around him was secondary in his eyes, mere set dressing to a duel he had anticipated for so, so long now. If all his warriors died here, if
he died here, if the Mongrel's Hill was also the Mongrel's tomb, then he and his troops would drag every last foe they could down into the grave with them... and these cracked, abandoned sepulchers would finally have occupants worthy of honoring. Blood would forge their legend.
All that mattered was that Gowrie shared his grave.
The Mongrel came in half-swording, and the Lord-Colonel adapted. With a move the veteran marauder would not have expected from a man trained in the refined art of rapier dueling, Gowrie hurled his weapon pommel-first, then followed it with a leap and a brutal drop-kick. The durasteel mask rocked back into The Mongrel's face as he staggered backwards, his forward momentum stolen, and stumbled over the rocky ground. Both men hit the earth, and the Mawite tasted blood as a trickle ran down from his nose - bruised and battered by the impact, but so far unbroken.
Gowrie found his feet first, turning to argue with his spectral companion. The Mongrel used the moment to lever himself up, driving his warblade into the cracked earth and using the strong durasteel to find his feet. Behind his slightly-dented mask, he grinned as his foe explained the ghost's identity.
"It's good to have a witness," he hissed in reply.
"I was hoping Barran would be here to watch you die, but his second will have to do." That was what mattered to him, amid all the death and destruction: that someone would survive to carry word of his deeds at this last stand.
An indestructible ghost would be perfect for that.
'AGAIN, DAMNIT!!!' the Lord-Colonel shouted, and the words took The Mongrel back to his duel with the old general on Ilum, when the man had bellowed the same, time after time. Barran had been tireless, eternally eager to see what the marauder would try next, and it seemed that some of that attitude had rubbed off on his protege. The Mongrel was glad to oblige. He had thus far been unable to seize the momentum in the fight for more than an instant, for the highly-skilled Gowrie was always quick with a clever counter. Perhaps it was time to change tactics once again.
Obliging his foe, The Mongrel came in hard once more, intending to exploit the fact that Gowrie had pocketed his razor. His right arm, wielding the heavy warblade with inhuman strength, came in with a sideways swipe at the Lord-Colonel's left side. At the same time, his left arm snapped out in an outward sweep, trying to slam Gowrie's rapier aside as the metal limb crossed his body. It was an odd fusion of a martial arts block and a buckler parry, enabled only by the fact that his arm was made of durasteel, or his foe's sharp blade would surely have mangled the limb deeply.
With any luck, it would keep Gowrie from parrying his strike.
Thalia Senn
|
Kirie
Sergeant Omen
