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Chapter 4: A taste of war

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Part 7

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Ba'al forward outpost

World Code Name: Balmora

Milky Way Galaxy

Somehow, Jek'il found himself not only intact but attached to a bunch of the heavily armored maniacs. Those crazy warriors were no Jaffa like he knew. They were nothing like him!

His heart raced, when the commander of the small group, called a Sergeant, nodded once. The veteran Jaffa pointed at the dark door leading into a mostly complete pyramid.

"Lord Perun wants that sorry excuse for a pyramid taken, and we're going to make it so!" The large veteran eagerly growled. "Shield-bearers on front. You!" A blood-soaked toothy sword pointed straight at Jek'il. "Are right behind them, providing covering fire. When you breach the choke-point, the rest of us will charge in, and we'll rip and tear our way to glory!"

"FOR PERUN!" The crazy Jaffa cheered as one.

"For Perun!" Jek'il croaked a moment later.

"Look, lad, you survived your first battle." The Sergeant put the dull back of his sword on one large pauldron. "There's nothing to fear in there! Those sorry bastards won't know what will hit them!"

Jek'il mutely nodded, as six sealed helmets stared into him.

"Good lad. Now go! For glory!"

The Sergeant pulled out his last shock-grenade and threw it into the door. It bounced off something with a dull clang then a blinding light shone from inside.

"GO!" The Sergeant barked, and the Shield-bearers jogged into the breach.

Jek'il didn't think. He just acted like he had trained for months now. The young Jaffa pulled his rifle up, secured it on his shoulder, and quickly walked after the Shield-bearers. The odd Zat and staff blast came from inside, momentarily lighting up the otherwise dark corridor. The Shield-bearers kept their advance and returned fire with Zats. Jek'il shot downrange over their heads, and more orange bolts of power flew back. Those shots that hit staggered the huge Shield-bearers. The rest tore large chunks out of the stone walls, throwing hot shards of stone everywhere.

Some burned the side of Jek'il's face, and he screamed his pain and defiance back at Ba'al's Jaffa. Heavy footsteps came behind him, and large armored bodies pushed him forward.

The Shield-bearers advanced under a withering hail of fire, yet they pushed through. Just as they reached the end of the corridor, the two large Jaffa at the point roared. They raised their shields and braced themselves behind them. Then, they stormed in, making themselves even bigger targets.

Jek'il had no choice but to follow or get trampled. He jogged through the entrance, firing at anything that moved and wasn't the Shield-bearers. Something big shoved him aside, saving his life. A staff bolt blasted a chunk of pauldron, staggering one of the Wolves.

The Jaffa howled a challenge shot the offending Jaffa twice and ran deeper into the pyramid.

Jek'il got to his feet, glad that he didn't lose his rifle in the dark. He soon heard the familiar sound of a ring transport. Jek'il reached the next big room just in time to see the rings retract into the floor, leaving behind four armored Jaffa.

The poor bastards found themselves within the reach of two blood-crazed wolves. Swords roared, metal teeth screamed, and cut through plate, chain, and flesh.

The Wolves butchered Ba'al's Jaffa before the poor bastards knew what hit them, painting everything around in red. Without sparing their handiwork a moment, they stepped within the ring platform and called it back. The rings came back up, and the Wolves, along with some of the gore, vanished to continue their grim work.

Jek'il looked wildly around, and when he saw no more enemies in sight, he puked out his gut. Seeing such a butchery, outside and at some distance was one thing. Seeing it here in person, smelling it… Jek'il retched again and had to hold the wall not to collapse.

This was pure hell!

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Khalighat
Lady Kali's throne world
Milky Way Galaxy

Overseeing the assault on multiple worlds from the comfort of her palace was less than ideal, Kali decided. At least as far as getting timely news, and being able to exercise effective control went. On the other hand, it was as safe as a way to command an interstellar campaign as it could be.

When all was said and done, Kali was an assassin, not a field commander. Broad strategy and setting up goals was her forte, her Primes could take care of the details.

What surprised Kali the most, was that news from Perun's front came back so soon. While all other assaults proceeded apace on the ground, the Jaffa had barely been able to breach the Chappa'ai successfully. They were still busy establishing a defense line to hold while being reinforced.

In every single case, the news was the same. It took thousands of dead Jaffa to secure the Chappa'ai, neutralize the enemy dug in its vicinity, and hold off an immediate counter-attack by Ba'al Jaffa.

At the same time, Perun's Jaffa had destroyed the defenders of the Chappa'ai they assaulted. Then they slaughtered the counter-attack, before moving in and offering Ba'al's troops a field battle. A battle that Perun won handily. Then he sent his people to secure the pyramids and now lightly defended enemy camps.

The contrast was staggering – the main field battles to secure the other staging grounds were yet to be fought. As bad as the butcher's bill to secure the Chappa'ai was, it would pale in comparison at what was yet to come as far as lost assets went.

"I'm rarely impressed." Kali eventually told the freshly returned observers. It was obvious how they felt – not a single one of them was able to hide their shock at what they saw, which was expected. They were all reliable, trusted, and bad at lying, which was one of the key qualifications for this kind of job.

"I heard what Perun did. He might just earn his tittles as a master of war. Now tell me, how he did it!" Kali demanded.

She listened intently to the preliminary reports. The more the System Lord heard, the more convinced she was that Perun didn't have his Jaffa fight like, well, Jaffa. It was a brutal and efficient application of the tools Perun currently had. In execution, it had more in common with what an assassin would do, instead of a warrior's handiwork.

It was all cold, methodical, and professional. Further, it was all disguised by the Jaffa's screams about glorious combat in the name of their god. The best of it all was that this was a crude application of new and untested tactics. When refined, and given better tools, her Jaffa would be able to do even better. That by itself would go a long way in erasing any advantage the other System Lords had on the ground.

With that issue solved, or on the way to being solved anyway, only space remained. If Perun's ideas there panned out as well…

Kali's eyes flashed involuntarily. Like it or not, Perun already changed the face of warfare. It would be foolish to believe that Ba'al wouldn't get enough information on how he lost on the ground. And if there was one other System Lord beside Yu, who would be eager to accept new and better ways, it was that smug bastard.

Perun was turning into a key for Kali's continued survival and prosperity, which only made him even more dangerous. She had to watch him closely and find a way to bind their fates together.

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Part 8

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Ba'al's outpost

Far Forest

Milky Way Galaxy

Chappa'ai assaults were nasty, wretched affairs at the best of times, Prime Valerian knew. They were even worse, when you weren't alongside your fellow Jaffa, serving your god.

Valerian prayed to Perun in thanks that Kali's First Prime didn't shove him through the Chappa'ai in the first waves, alongside the riflemen units he had been training over the past few days. That was a surprising amount of foresight or discipline. The Prime wasn't sure which was it, and at the time, didn't care. All he knew for sure was that hundreds, then thousands of Kali's Jaffa ran through the Chappa'ai, to meet all but certain death.

It took nearly three full operating cycles for the Chappa'ai before Kali's warriors managed to secure the breach. It was at that moment, her First Prime waved Valerian forward, along with the last groups to go through, before the Chappa'ai closed off.

Valerian flew through a bridge of racing stars and saw impossible things, his mind failed to remember. Then he stumbled over blood and shattered glass-fused stone. The crude glass cracked under his armored boots, and Valerian was barely able to twist around a bunch of corpses piled up high. Their sorry, burned state showed that Kali's warriors used them for cover.

The Prime kept going, avoiding blown-up craters, torn apart bodies, and piles of corpses that littered everything in sight. Most of the thousands of Jaffa who went through before him were dead. He saw a small area designated for the wounded to the side. It was nothing like the field hospitals designed by Perun. Instead, it was an old-fashioned place to dump the injured to either heal or die together, so they wouldn't be in the way. Valerian shuddered at the thought of what had been normal until mere months ago and kept going.

He could hear shouts and fighting in the distance. A small hill obstructed the view. It bore the scars of desperate struggle. Kali's Jaffa had paid a steep price to secure it. There were at least a thousand of their corpses piled up below it or abandoned where they fell on the gentle slope. At the top, a thin line of warriors clung to their positions, shooting at Ba'al's Jaffa, who were presumably behind the hill.

At a closer look, there were a lot of Ba'al's Jaffa dead all over the place as well, showing this has been by no means a one side slaughter.

"Form behind the hilltop, just like we trained! Use it as cover and make your shots count!" Valerian shouted after checking that Kali's Jaffa under his command still followed him. "Your brothers bought us this opportunity! Do not make their sacrifice a waste!"

A wordless cry answered him, and they ran up the hill.

Valerian managed a single glance over its crest before he had to duck, to avoid getting his head shot off. At least a couple of thousands of enemy Jaffa moving up on their positions. Thankfully, the enemy wasn't concentrated into a single coherent force. Instead, they kept streaming out in smaller groups from a long valley and the forest surrounding it.

"We hold this position! Get me a runner – our reinforcements must cover our flanks." Valerian ordered.

The old staff weapons were anything but ideal for firing from a prone position. If you wanted anything more than suppressive fire, you had to expose yourself nicely over the crest of the hill. Either that or use the shorter ranged Zats.

The rifles had no such drawbacks, making the riflemen wielding them much smaller targets. Some were hit anyway, and any staff shot to the head or shoulders tended to be fatal. Close misses could cripple, which they did, sending screaming riflemen rolling down the hill. However, most enemy shots either hit well below the hill's crest or missed it entirely.

The only real issue was there were many of the bastards, and their weapons slowly but surely chewed their way through the hill. Sooner or later, the crest would collapse. Valerian had to judge that moment carefully and pull his men back until they could use whatever would pass for a new crest.

Meanwhile, his riflemen reaped a frightful harvest among Ba'al's Jaffa. His relatively small group must have killed hundreds of the bastards, while they slowly ground the riflemen to dust.

By the time the crest became unstable, about half the riflemen were out of action, most of them dead. At that point, Valerian gave the pull-back order.

"Ready grenades, at my mark!" The Prime ordered. He did not doubt that Ba'al's Jaffa were busy storming the hill as he spoke.

The survivors readied multiple shocks, and the odd explosive grenade they had available and waited.

Valerian took a moment to finally look around and breathed a sigh of relief. It was obvious, that Kali's First Prime had used the sacrifice of the riflemen to bring forth more reinforcements. He had taken the time to gather them into larger units instead of throwing them into the fighting piece-meal.

Even better, he saw the stragglers of two Jaffa formations entering the woods at the flanks. Very soon, Ba'al's sorry bastards wouldn't know what hit them.

"Grenades!" Valerian barked as soon as he heard the first enemies approach the crest.

Flashes of light and dull cracks followed the thrown volley. The crest imploded, the last few meters collapsing into an avalanche of dirt and rocks, heading straight towards the enemy.

"Get the new top and hold it!" Valentian gleefully ordered and ran up, setting up an example.

At least a thousand of the enemy milled aimlessly at the bottom of the hill. Only the front ranks were busy, trying to dig out their brothers. Then the reinforcement finally announced their presence and began firing on the enemy from the flanks. More shots exited the forest, heading to intercept Ba'al's reinforcements, which were still surging up the valley.

The riflemen poured their aimed fire in the rich target environment below. Valerian found himself wishing that he had a larger grenade or a way to call bombers on to the enemy below them.

Ba'al's Jaffa didn't break. However, they did soon die. The enemy's reinforcement ware divided into two groups. The first and much larger one turned tail and marched back where they came from. The rest of Ba'al's Jaffa ran back to the middle of the valley. They were an obvious blocking force.