He flexed his fingers experimentally, astounded that he
had fingers again, astounded by the way they moved - the frantic little
click-click-click of countless tiny servos shifting the position of each digit. After so long in the spidery droid body he'd inhabited after his fall at Nirauan, so long with nothing to do but scuttle about on six delicate legs and brood on his grim fate, it felt gloriously free to have a humanoid body again. Perhaps he'd needed to adjust to the simpler form first, time for his damaged brain to relearn walking, looking, and speaking.
But it had been torment, and he was glad it was over.
The new body his Scar Hounds had built for him approximated a human form, though there was precious little that was human about it. All that remained of The Mongrel's organic body was his damaged brain, the greyish patches of dead neural tissue dotting it now covered by a mess of implants to restore full cognitive function. That brain was housed in the "head" of his new body, beneath a thick transparisteel "skull". It was symbolic, proving that he was no mere droid. He was still The Mongrel, Terror of the Galactic North, the Risen Hound.
The titles meant little to him anymore. There had been a time when he had believed he was carving his own path to paradise, forging a legend that would see the Three Avatars welcome him through their gates and into the Galaxy To Come. From a lowly slave-soldier, he had risen to become a warlord, ruler of a conquered world and ravager of a dozen others. He had faced Jedi and Sith and the most elite soldiers of
several galactic great powers, and when he had finally fallen he had known in his last moments that he was worthy at last.
But the Maw had refused to let him die.
They had found him there, collapsed in that ruined New Carannia street, and dug him out before his oxygen-starved brain had time to die completely. They had saved what they could, and replaced what they could not, and propped him back up in his old position. The Scar Hounds and their warlord were needed to continue the Dark Voice's crusade, so the servants of the prophet had snatched him back from the gates of heaven. By their sorcery and dark artifice, they had chained him to this wretched galaxy, to the torment of physical existence in this corrupt age of pain and decay.
He wanted to believe that it was temporary, a brief extension of his flickering, fading life so that he could win even more glory for his dark gods and ascend to an even greater reward. But although he was savage, his higher reason largely stripped away and replaced with vicious cunning, he was not stupid. The Brotherhood cared about him as a symbol, a commander, and a warrior... but not as a soul. They would keep using him until he was entirely used up, for it did not advance their goals to grant him the eternal rest he had surely earned.
He was going to keep doing this forever if they had their way.
But what was his alternative? If he turned away from serving the Maw, if he selfishly allowed his own destruction without doing everything he could against the Brotherhood's enemies, then the Avatars would find him wanting. All his progress on the long road to paradise would be stripped away the
instant he failed to give his all in service to the gods. There was no choice; The Mongrel had to keep fighting every time they brought him back from the brink. He could not even pray that this time would be the last; the Avatars were listening.
Watching for signs of unworthiness, even among their favored servants.
Explosions shook him from his contemplation of wonder and horror, and a signal soon reached him; the time for battle had come again. The Taskmaster had always known that
someone would come to interrupt the looting of Epoch Engineering Corporation, and it sounded like whoever it was had chosen to be particularly ruthless. The Mongrel crouched, then launched into a sprint, his powerful mechanical legs propelling him up the corridors of the building at inhuman speed. It took him only seconds to reach the unfolding action.
The hangar bay was in the midst of a massacre. Mandalorian warriors and house soldiers were opening fire seemingly on everything that moved, gunning down helpless Drudges and riddling the crates they carried with blasterfire. Transports had been ripped apart by heavy cannon blasts, crippling them before they could make their escape. Whoever was attacking didn't seem to care about the cargo itself, making no effort to recover it. They merely sought to deny these resources to the Brotherhood... a very Maw-like tactic.
They were teaching the galaxy the power of Total War.
From a sheath built into his hip, The Mongrel drew forth the hilt of his
dread blade and toggled it on. The red-orange laser sword, a crude parody of a lightsaber powered by a tormented half of a kyber crystal, cast its bloody glow over his dark metal body. He was sleeker this time than he had been on Jedha and Nirauan, trading raw power and heavy armor for speed and finesse, for he had learned the limits of the former all too well. In his other gyro-stabilized hand he drew forth a heavy blaster. With both weapons he waded into the fray.
When he was killing, the existential horror of his half-life faded away.
But he was not just a warrior; he was a warleader. His Scar Hounds, all but destroyed at Jedha and Nirauan, licked their wounds back on Mar'zambul, but that did not leave him entirely without troops.
"Hold the doors!" he commanded, his voice booming out even above the blasterfire and explosions.
"Contain them in the hangars!" At his back, squads of crimson-armored Final Dawn troopers took up positions at the doors leading deeper into the facility. They swiftly deployed an E-WEB repeater at each one, firing madly into the carnage.
There was no hope now of evacuating most of the building's components and raw materials; the Brotherhood transports had been largely trapped or destroyed in the hangar. But the Mawites
could still make sure that the Alliance war machine never saw a single crate of them, and these mysterious attackers would only help them in that regard. It was the strategy of a petulant child throwing a toy in the fireplace when asked to give someone else a turn with it -
if I can't have it, no one can. The Mongrel was glad to indulge such destruction.
The Final Dawn troops were not the kind of soldiers he was used to leading; they were disciplined, reserved, sticking together in carefully-deployed squads rather than charging madly forward to seize martyrdom and glory. The Mongrel considered them lesser than his Scar Hounds on that basis... but they were clearly more effective on the
defensive, where his own marauders - needing forward momentum - would have struggled. As his blade flashed and the E-WEBs thundered, he tried to smile, then remembered he had no lips.
Here was a bloodbath in which no one would win. Such was war.
Kahlil Noble
(engaging)
