The interior of the Katarn-class boarding shuttle was darkened and it felt very much alone in there; one person exhaled and someone else inhaled at the same time. So many bodies in a space, nerves jangling more than a little, tended to raise the temperature and add humidity enough to be noticeable.

Meanwhile, in the rest of space, the Intruder and the Freedom Fighter, two CR90 frigates, moved to engage INV-648, a Vigil-class Corvette providing escort to ships in a large convoy. It was hardly alone; there was a Ton-Falk Class carrier in the area as well providing TIE support for the cargo ships as they hypered in.

Intelligence had provided them with a pinpointed rendezvous location based on a huge amount of data culled from planetary traffic reports and other numbers-intensive stats that they then interpreted and tried to apply to a larger scheme. Rebel Intelligence had a certain advantage in this, because they'd picked up a number of experienced beings that did this during the Clone Wars for the Republic that were put out when Palpatine took over and began his pro-human policies. His loss. Alliance's gain.

The upshot was that Intelligence was actually pretty good at working the same job but from the perspective of the insurgent this time, though they also had some ex-Seps in the ranks. Both sides had been manipulated, it seemed, to allow the likes of Vader and the Sith to take over and run the show, and perhaps the rueful recognition of the way both sides were shafted into a war to cull the Jedi was what kept politics from flaring up in squad bays and small bases and even operating cells all over the Alliance. 

In this particular case, intelligence also identified that the INTN-842 would be hypering in at a given time and the probable point, and the idea was to take the ships as they hypered in -- mostly using the talents of the Death Jesters, a Y-Wing squadron with a rather flamboyant name composed of ex-smugglers and swoop jockeys that enjoyed applying the same cunning used in outwitting authorities to how to hit the Empire. The squadron commander outfitted one of his better pilots with ECM pods in place of photon torpedos and used that to guide much of the squadron through the asteroid field near INTN-842's hyperspace arrival point; when it jumped in, before it could fire 72 TIE fighters out of the tubes, the Y-wings were swooping in to torpedo the badly-shielded ship and its deadly cargo. Meanwhile, Intruder and Freedom Fighter were engaging INV-648 and, as appropriate, splashing the few TIE's that got out of the carrier with rapid blaster fire from the anti-starfighter batteries. 

But the idea was to disable, ideally with ion blasts from the Y-Wings once they finished the primary jobs, INV-648, because it was a newer class of ship and the Alliance wanted to see the inside of it. Also, the mission was to boldly take out the convoy escorts and then take down the convoy as the ships arrived, masquerading as Imperial Navy. The Y-Wings would hide once more and crew from the Intruder would operate INV-648 as a prize ship and masquerade as the Empire long enough to let the Y-Wings disable the ships as they arrived a few at the time.

Captain Hud, back at Vanguard station, devised this plan while consulting with Intruder's experienced pirat--err privateer crew, using other intelligence data. The schedules were regular, that's where Intelligence found the weakness, because the Imperial Navy's sector commander was enjoying his quiet sector, and the Alliance decided to go hunting once it had the resources assembled to do that.

Freedom Fighter had a crew, but not a boarding party. They'd been killed in some operation off in Mos Jalasa and had not been replaced. That was why 1st Platoon, Echo Company, 2nd Battalion Liberators was packed into a shuttle, rocked only slightly by return blaster fire by the intended target as it got past the firing arcs of several blaster turrets, ready to board. Their job was to take the ship from the inside. Blasters and dets, tight corridors.

There was a thump as the boarding shuttle's nose locked onto the hull of the shuttle, picking what the schematics said was a maintenance hatch that would get them into the tunnels of the lower decks and let them move rapidly through the system-- the plan called for securing the engines and the bridge at the same time, and then working to sweep the rest of the ship. They were coiled, a fist ready to swing, but they had to sweat it out while the rest of the task force was actually fighting their part of the battle. If the plan got this far, it was a good thing -- or a bad thing, since they were boarding a ship and that was one of the uglier types of fighting you could encounter.

Besk couldn't help himself, he was shaking as the shuttle gave a loud shudder and the torches in the nose started up -- you could tell by the sound of the power converters humming throughout the thing. The Katarn-class shuttle was designed for boarding actions and it was built into the Intruder, a CR90 corvette built by pirates for piracy -- lots of engines, lots of electronic warfare, and a boarding shuttle built flush into the underside. The crew was from Korpo, a planet known for piracy and smuggling in loosely allied family-clan units that took their grudges seriously, and when the Empire went and cleaned out some of their relatives, and not the ones actually doing the piracy, in attempt to deter criminal activity, they decided to take the ship and join the Rebellion. 

The ship was made to do this sort of thing, and it had a platoon of Liberators, one of the roughest organizations in the Alliance, tough enough to fight the Imperial Army toe to toe and come out battered, bloodied and bruised but not necessarily unbowed.

Besk was a thick-shouldered sort of guy in a Rebel-brown jumpsuit festooned with the tools of the trade; a blast vest reconfigured for modularity and configured to his sense of ergonomics -- he knew where to reach to get what he wanted when he needed it. He'd dispensed with the helmet in favor of being able to see and hear, which was against regulations in a sense, but he'd spent years on Uslam fighting without one and the damn thing was just too bulky. They supplied them at Vanguard for some inspection and told them to use them, but it was this long thing that got in the way.

Instead, he wore a breather mask. Loss of oxygen in this boarding action was a distinct possibility for a number of reasons. If they decompressed...well, it was all over. They needed skinsuits or actual armor, but they didn't have it and you went to war with what you had, not what you wished for. 

The little red light went on in the cabin, which was the signal to stand up and get stacked for the entry. That would be tricky if there were Imperials on the other side. When the light went green, the hatch at the front of the shuttle shot open, and it was Besk and Vannin who were at the sharp end, grenades and blaster pistols in hand. The Liberators weren't the sort of unit to send the new guys in first, even if it was a really dangerous operation. The veterans carried the unit and ran some incredible risks. It was also logical; guys like Beskad were experienced zero-G miners before during their time as guerrillas in a local rebel cell, then they were converted into conventional infantry. Now they were marines, but it was a happy combination of skills that some inspired Navy commander argued for in the first place -- the Liberators were a ready made boarding force, cheaper than training one from scratch. The survivors were merged into one regiment and deployed in platoon and company strength all over the various ships that worked from Vanguard station as raiders, putting out fires for the Alliance and starting them for the Empire.

It all went fast from there; sonic grenades went off, blaster bolts were fired as the veterans led the way first, moving fast and sure to cover each other's blindspots. They'd choreographed this movement before, several of them, in the cargo hold to make sure they had the essentials still down. Once the first chamber was secured, it was a matter of breaking off into smaller units and taking the two most important objectives -- Engineering and Bridge. Speed was of the essence as boots hit deckplates and troopers moved in fast, low crouches, weapons at the ready. These weren't the clean white corridors of the ship that you moved lots of troops down, or took a Senator on a tour, this was the pipes and cables part of the ship, the maintenance access artery system that ran through the entire ship. A small group of fighters had to be prepared for the chokepoints in these dimly lit spaces, ready to fight first, fight fast and fight hard. The upside of that was that they weren't likely to get flanked or overrun easily, especially if they kept moving.

The plan called for 'the element of surprise' and 'violence of action.' That was a nice way of saying, 'fight dirty.' The platoon was fine with fighting as filthy as it had to, if it could minimize casualties and get the job done.

They'd brought extra grenades, Besk made sure to squeeze the supply guys at Vanguard as hard as he could to do it, because he was expecting the tight corridors. Sonic grenades weren't frags, but they didn't puncture hulls or destroy electronics, either. That was pretty important because he wanted to live through this.