“Fire in the hole!” the private screamed as he cocked back his arm to throw a grenade down the short hallway. The action drew his body slightly out from behind the bulkhead that sheltered him. A blaster bolt from down the corridor struck him in the side and spun him back against the bulkhead hard, the grenade falling from nerveless fingers.

“Medic,” Lieutenant Adriana Racine called by reflex as she leaned out and kicked the grenade down the hallway clattering it across the deck plating. There was a shout of alarm from the Imperials at the end of the hall and then the subsonic WHUMPH of the grenade’s detonation filled the air. These Imperials were good, caught by surprise, underequipped and in a poor defensive position they were still managing to make a real nuisance of themselves. Well, Racine was good too and platoon E-1 was at least as good as its newbie CO.

“Go, go,go!” she screamed at her troops, suiting words to action and springing forward from behind the shelter of her bulkhead, muscles screaming as she raced forward, her skin prickling with adrenaline as the rush of hormones burned through her blood. Cassik, one of the Ulsam veterans, fired a long burst from his blast rifle into the billowing smoke even as he grabbed one of the replacements and shoved the man bodily forward after his Lieutenant.

Racine, Cassik and two replacements whose names escaped her, burst into the small room the Imperials had been using as an improvised strong point. There were a half dozen of them in naval security uniforms and two in the white laminate plate of Stormtroopers. Presumably they had organized the hasty defense which had delayed the attack for several critical minutes. Not all the Imperials were dead but the effect of a close quarters concussion grenade was a horrifying thing. The waves of energy released had jellied the internal organs and ruptured the membranes of the defenders; blood was evident at ears,  eyes and nose. The room stank of expended cordite, burning plastic and the sickly sweet smell of charred meat.  

Both of the stormtroopers were still moving, albeit weakly, their armor was some protection from the blast but not much. Racine shot one of the struggling figures in the chest and neck with her blaster rifle while Cassik drew some sort of vibro weapon from his boot and thrust it under the remaining troopers helmet, yanking it free with a vicious twist.  Racine turned her head back down the passageway.

“Clear up front!” she yelled.

“Coming through!” a voice yelled back. Mastin? Marsteen? Damnit she should know the name but she was new to the unit and they would have to manage. There were more important things than names for her to know right now.  She took deep breaths, deliberately refocusing herself and oxygenating her blood. The room was hot, heated by blaster fire and the combustion of the grenade, the pollutants tickled the back of her throat. She touched the side of her heavy blast helmet.

“Echo one six to Echo one four,” she spoke, her helmet AI triggering the link to corporal Besk, currently in command of the group that had been assigned to the engineering section. He had already breached engineering, ahead of schedule where she had been delayed.  She smiled wryly to herself, she was lucky to have such good NCOs, too good in fact, to promote them up to officer rank when there were so many replacements to integrate into the unit. Racine knew from her own experience that good corporals and sergeants were much more important to a unit than good officers. Although by all that was holy she would try to be a good one.

“We have reached the bridge, breaching in figures two, say again two minutes.” She turned to the shuttered blast door, watching as the demolitions expert spread the quicklfash gel that would burn through the heavy door in a matter of seconds. If it were her in there, she would open the door toss grenades and shut it again before the attackers could react. No point in trusting to defenses they must have known the attackers could defeat.  She smiled grimly. It would be what it would be.