It was time. The ritual had truly begun.
All across Tython, the Scar Hounds received the signal.
"Hâsk jiaasen!!!" The dark words of power echoed from a hundred thousand throats and more, echoing across the battlefield as every last warrior paused to reverently speak the phrase. Each of them carried a small ritual knife, one that they now drew. Without fear or flinching they drew those knives across their palms, just as the Heathen Priests had instructed. Blood flowed freely, blood that was their source of life, blood that carried the Living Force that bound all living things.
The Heathen Priests had drilled what came next into their heads, over and over again in the weeks before the assault. Dipping their fingers in their own blood, the marauder tribesmen began to
paint. None of them knew what the runes they drew
meant, what the significance of their actions would be... but that was the nature of
faith, was it not? Foreheads and cheeks and shoulders were stained with crimson lines, crude imitations of ancient Sith runes of power. Crude, but sufficient. They had established the bond that they sought.
Their souls were bound to Solipsis's ritual.
"Our lives for the Dark Voice!" they cried as one.
"Our lives for the Galaxy To Come!" Then the distraction was over, and the charging and fighting began again. The entire process had taken perhaps thirty seconds, a tiny fraction of the time this great battle would take, but its significance could not be overstated. Every warrior likes to believe that his death will
mean something, will contribute to what he believes in somehow. For the warriors of the Maw, their deaths truly
would. Every last soul would now feed Solipsis's ritual.
The ritual to unmake this wretched reality...
... and create the galaxy anew.
The Brotherhood had come here, into the very heart of its greatest enemy, surrounded and attacked by every other major power in the galaxy, without a snowball's chance in hell of a traditional military victory. The numbers arrayed against them were simply too great. But if every last one of them died for their cause, as every last one of them was prepared to do, then all the energies released as their lives were snuffed out would
go somewhere. Their very souls would be the paving stones of the long, bloody road to paradise.
Praise be to the Prophet of the Maw.
A lightshow erupted above Onas Korv's head.
The burly mercenary ducked instinctively, though the exchange of fire was
well above her head. The House Io cruiser had responded to the grounded
Crucifix II's attack with a barrage of his own, lashing out with energy torpedoes and some kind of railgun weapon. It was a
bizarre little duel, two starships either touching or
barely above the planet's surface, the trails of their weapons kicking up a storm of leaves and drawing wakes on the water. Scorch marks soon crisscrossed the flooded plains, thick black lines on the swamp grass.
Beneath the missile-filled sky, the Legion of the Leech was on the move. The
Lugubraa warriors slithered through the cloying muck and thick clumps of reeds, spreading out into the marsh like a stain upon the water. Most of them were dumb brutes, capable of little more than killing and eating their prey, following only the simplest of orders... but the elders among their kind, those that underwent a second phase of brain development in their fifties, were clever tacticians. They would be the ones who directed the dimwitted horde.
The Legion troops dug into the mud,
literally. Their wormlike bodies were perfect for wallowing in the muck of the flooded plain, allowing them to lurk in the fetid water and marshy sandbars with ease. This granted them excellent cover and concealment. When foes passed their hidden positions, they burst forth like a swarm of spiders from an egg sac, hosing down their enemies with heavy repeaters - or snapping their mouths, ring upon ring upon ring of razor-sharp teeth, shut around the bodies of their foes. Then they
chewed.
Lugubraa could digest
almost anything.
Onas needed a different counter to
tanks, though... and the Scar Hounds had already deployed all of their
own armor. Fortunately, that wasn't all they'd brought. The tribe didn't
just make use of vehicles; at their furthest back roots, they were beastmasters.
"Send in the Bogaranths!" Onas commanded, and then ducked back into cover again; she didn't fancy getting trampled by the stampede that was to come. The slime runners came first, living bait, charging across the field on the backs of orbaks to lure their stupid charges into range.
The
Bogaranth Cavalry thundered through the swamp in their wake. The long-legged beasts moved easily through the sucking mire, not at all slowed by the difficult terrain; it was not unlike their home. The creatures were colossal, and their bulk was composed almost entirely of muscle. They could flip or crush an armored tank with terrifying ease, if only they could get close enough... and once their charge began, it was very hard to stop. On their backs, their riders pinged away with
blaster-lances, adding to the Legion's repeater fire.
This bizarre alien alliance would fight for the plains.
For a moment, it seemed that the Akk Riders might stand and fight. The charging Rough Riders felt a momentary thrill of fear pass through them at the sight of a deflected blaster bolt and an ignited lightsaber pike - were these scouts Jedi warriors? If so, it would hardly matter that the Mawites had them outnumbered; Jedi could tear through five times their number in marauders with ease. But the Mawites were not afraid to die. Their faith was in the Three Avatars, and if they died in battle here, they would pass into the Galaxy To Come.
"RUN THEM DOWN!" Mandugei bellowed, leading his riders in pursuit. The Akk Riders were swift enough that the Mawite Rough Riders would not easily
catch them while the retreated, but that wasn't their only way to attack. Stowing their lances along the flanks of their mounts, they unslung the blaster rifles on their shoulders and opened fire. Kagan-Jin were practically born in the saddle, riding before they could
walk, and they learned from a young age to shoot with pinpoint accuracy even from atop a moving mount. They were
good.
But the Akk Riders had already shown that they could deflect blaster bolts... so the Rough Riders didn't aim at the
warriors. Instead they aimed at their enemies' mounts, trying to crippled their limbs or drop them entirely with body shots. If the pursuing riders could drop the beasts, then the Akk Riders would be easy prey, unable to reach safety or call for help. Guiding their orbaks with their knees, they fired relentlessly, well-aimed individual blasts rather than bursts in order to preserve their accuracy. Time to see how they'd handle
that.
Mandugei was eager to take their skulls.
"WHOOOOO! Look at 'em blow! KAPOW!"
Mucknose looked up toward the stern of the
Messy Blighter and shook his meaty head. The skiff's designated spotter, called Eyeshine thanks to his habit of staring
directly into explosions, was...
excitable. When the MetaCannon shells started falling, he had a tendency to get caught up in the spectacle of long-range destruction, shouting and jumping and capering around on the deck. He
was a good spotter, though; he had an incredible talent for judging distances and angles, calling out targeting coordinates with near-droidlike precision.
The Alliance firebase on the northern side of the Jedi Temple ruins was their target, and they managed to shell it for several minutes on the approach. They couldn't actually
see the damage they were inflicting, of course; it was all much too far away, at the kind of range that no
true Mawite zealot would tolerate. The marauder tribes despised any kind of fighting except close combat, seeing it as cowardly. It'd taken
years for The Mongrel to get his Scar Hounds to come around to artillery, which had once been the bane of their existence.
So the crew of the
Messy Blighter could only
imagine the carnage that each incendiary shell caused as it fell, presumably scorching stone and burning Alliance marines into little piles of ash and bone. The only visible signs from their position, the hints of destruction that were getting Eyeshine so excited, were the bright flashes of each detonation and the plumes of smoke that followed. Between each belching MetaCannon shot and the rolling thunder of the explosion, the crew worked seamlessly to reload and readjust, each to his role.
Crank down. Load shell. Crank up. Adjust angle. Fire. Repeat.
Sweat glistened on their backs as they worked.
All too soon those distant kabooms were rudely interrupted. "Awww, no!" shouted Eyeshine, clapping a filthy hand to his forehead. Mucknose looked up and saw what had prompted the cry: the incendiaries had begun detonating in midair, slamming into an incandescent barrier and bursting well above their intended targets.
"Cease fire!" Mucknose shouted. The fire-filled shells were anti-infantry, incapable of breaching plasma shields, and there was no sense in wasting ammunition.
"We'd better switch barrels, eh, Slim?"
The rail-thin Weequay captain nodded.
Time for a quick change.
The beauty of Chiss
MetaCannons, the captured designs that served as each War Skiff's main gun, was their versatility. You could change more than just their ammunition; you could change their whole mode of fire. For cracking shields, they didn't want their artillery barrel; they wanted the
charric maser, a Chiss weapon that combined both kinetic and energy damage. Maser beams would drain those plasma shields in a hurry, and then they could go back to merrily blowing up all the distant little figures down in the temple valley.
But before they could start
firing maser beams, they needed to switch out the entire barrel. Slim pressed a button, and the belowdecks storage compartments of the skiff slid open, revealing ammo storage and a variety of different gun barrels. Mucknose and the other gunners ratcheted the cannon down until it was horizontal with the deck, then released the magnalocks that held it in place. It dropped to the deck - they all leapt back to keep from being crushed - and rolled into place in the storage bay. Then they levered out the new one.
"Incoming!" Eyeshine shouted. Mucknose swore.
Couldn't things be
easy, just once?
Abandoning the barrel change, Mucknose and the other gunners ran to the side of the skiff, staring in the direction Eyeshine had indicated. There were some
strange-looking walkers headed their way, crashing into the flank of the Scar Hound armor. The auxiliaries watched in horror as the Jedi at their head slashed his way through the skiff beside them, and as mortar and rotary cannon fire ripped into the LuchsHai technicals around them.
"Return fire!" Mucknose bellowed, eyes wide with panic. The gunners rushed to obey.
On each side of a Mawite War Skiff was one
E-WEB heavy repeater and one
E-WEB missile launcher. Mucknose rushed for the heavy repeater; he'd heard that Jedi could catch missiles with their minds, and he didn't want one thrown back in his face. The Jedi would just block blaster cannon bolts with his laser sword, of course... so he aimed for the legs of the Jedi's scout walker, shooting for the joints and trying to shear them off with concentrated cannon fire. If he succeeded, the Jedi would topple from his perch, and then...
... well, Mucknose hadn't thought that far ahead yet.
Vector Monk
