The U-Wing came to a height of a meter or so above the planet's surface, and the ship's long doors slid open, flooding the dark cabin with harsh, blinding light.

Raya Valkheva’s boots were the first in Blue Squad to hit Khol Jogoth’s surface, and her rifle was the first to speak. Her Blues streamed out of the U-Wing behind her, and a stream of red lances followed as the rebels made planetfall. 

The startled COMPFORCE squads that found themselves in Blue Squad’s sights returned fire, but their hurried shots flew wide as the nimble rebel fireteams fanned out to a wide spread with practiced alacrity. The Imperials took a casualty, then another, then two more. They popped smoke, a white cloud issuing from a pair of hurled cannisters, but it was too late. Raya’s Blues made short work of the enemy, carrying out their grim work with cool efficiency, and without losing a single soldier.  

Raya gave the order to cease fire, and then the order to advance. She took the lead into the smoke, and her Blues followed behind. Their quadrant was quiet now but for the din of distant combat, conversant exchanges of blaster fire and explosives that grew quieter as the rebel forces won skirmishes across the field, and swelled as new engagements flared.  

Raya emerged from the smoke on the other side to find a slew of bodies strewn across the ground. The soldiers had been recruits, she knew. This had likely been their first combat engagement, and they’d died. Or, at least, most of them had. There was movement. She counted two, three troopers wounded—severely, even—but alive. She moved forward carefully, remembering Petja Mosvic lying in the rubble of Lorya’s outermost defenses. The girl had been nearly crushed under the rubble of a collapsed building, but even while pinned and dying she traded fire with the advancing troopers until they’d shot her dead where she lay. 

“Sergeant, we’ve got survivors,” one of her team announced, the voice seeming far and away to her ear. The troopers had flooded Petja’s position with plasma, firing until the stone and durasteel pinning her to the Uslam earth had turned to smoking, partially melted slag. She'd been a model before the war. Raya remembered her plastered across multi-story holoboards in downtown Lorya, advertising some electronics product. When the city's defenders recovered her body, they’d found that the Imperials had left her without a face.

She tested the grip of her pistol with the unfeeling steel of her left arm. “Leave them,” she ordered after a long moment. “We don’t have the time to waste.” They pressed on, deeper into the compound, rifles at the ready and senses electric with anticipation. 

It was not long before they had reengaged with the enemy and begun trading blasterfire with the Empire once more.

The Blues took their first casualty as a high-powered laser cannon cut through their ranks and struck the earth, kicking up dust, dirt, and gore. Lance Corporal Gastol, the Mantellian rifleman, found himself caught in the blast. His body, missing a leg, flew through the air and landed with a sickening thud. Raya swore aloud as they faced their first piece of armor on the field.

The TX-225 GAVw Occupier was a brutal combat assault tank bristling with medium laser cannons. The Occupier had turned a corner around a small building and opened fire, a slow rain of methodical, powerful shots that threatened to wipe the squad out two and three at a time. 

Private Fen Cato, the massive Nautolan, brought a launcher to bear. The RPS-6 was Clone Wars-era tech, but the warheads were modern enough, and Cato had six of them. Raya’s Blues laid down small arms fire on the tank and the COMPFORCE troops in tow as the Nautolan prepped the launcher.  Another pair of twin lances issued from the tank’s left battery, passing near enough to Raya’s head for her to smell the crackling ozone in the air. She heard a scream from behind her, and then a blaster bolt took her fireteam’s point rifleman in the chest directly ahead of her. 

She put the offending COMPFORCE trooper down, her fourth of the day, and then shielded her eyes from the blast as Cato landed the rocket on the tank, and then another. The armor was a smoking ruin after the dust settled, and the handful of surviving COMPFORCE troopers fell back in the wake of the blast.

“Medic!” Raya shouted, continuing to place blaster bolts down range.